Why Leaded Fuel Is Still A Thing

May 4, 2026 by Zoe Skyforest 57 Comments

Leaded fuel is considered one of the greatest environmental failures in modern human history. Adding tetraethyl lead to gasoline reduced knock in internal combustion engines, which was widely considered a good thing. It was only later that the deleterious health effects came into view, by which point there was a massive fleet of lead-dependent automobiles and an industry reluctant to change. Still, the tide turned, and over the last 50 years, unleaded fuel has become the norm for automotive use across the world.

And yet, there remains a hold out—a world where engines still burn leaded fuels and spray their noxious fumes across the countryside. In the aviation sector, leaded fuel remains a normal part of everyday operations to this day amidst concerted efforts to eliminate it for good.

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Hackaday Links: May 3, 2026

May 3, 2026 by Tom Nardi 3 Comments

Software that collects public data from the Internet and uses it to provide half-assed answers to your questions might seem like a modern craze, but today we bid farewell to a website that helped pioneer pretend conversations all the way back in 1997 — as of May 1st, Ask Jeeves is no more.

Well, technically they dropped the “Jeeves” part back in 2006. Since then it’s just been Ask.com, but as the name implies the idea was more or less the same. Rather than the relatively rigid parameters and keywords required by traditional search engines, you could ask Jeeves questions about the world using natural language. Early advertisements showed the virtual valet answering arbitrary questions like “How many calories in a banana?,” which of course today seems commonplace and utterly unimpressive, but was a pretty wild for the 1990s.

It might seem surprising that a site designed from day one to offer a human-like Q&A experience should fold right as such technology is becoming commonplace. But of course, that commonality is the problem. When Google can answer your questions just as well (or poorly…) as Jeeves or anyone else, what’s the benefit for the average Internet user to seek out another service? But it’s still somewhat ironic, which is probably why the farewell message on Ask.com ends with the line “Jeeves’ spirit endures.”

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How TTY Opened Up The Phones For The Hard Of Hearing

April 30, 2026 by Zoe Skyforest 15 Comments

The telephone was an invention that revolutionized human communication. No more did you have to physically courier a letter from one place to another, or send a telegram, or have a runner carry the message for you. Instead, you could have a direct conversation with another person a great distance away. All well and good if you can speak and hear, of course, but rather useless if you happen to be deaf.

Those hard of hearing were not left entirely out of the communication revolution, however. Well before IP switched networks and the Internet became a thing, there was already a way for the deaf to communicate over the plain old telephone network—thanks to the teletypewriter!

Over The Wires

The teletypewriter (TTY) has been around for a long time. The first device came into being in 1964, developed by James C. Marsters and Robert Weitbrecht, both deaf. Their idea was to create a method for deaf individuals to communicate over the phone network in a textual manner. To this end, the group sourced teleprinters formerly used by the US Department of Defense, and hooked them up with acoustic couplers that would allow them to mate with the then-ubiquitous AT&T Model 500 telephone. Thus, the TTY was born. A user could dial another TTY machine, and key in a message, which would print out at the other end. The receiving user could then respond in turn in the same manner.

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FLOSS Weekly Episode 869: Linux On Your Toaster

April 29, 2026 by Jonathan Bennett 3 Comments

This week Jonathan chats with Andrei, Mahir, and Praneeth, live on location at Texas Instruments! The team at TI has been working hard to provide really good Open Source support for Sitara processors, including upstreaming support to the mainline Linux kernel. We talk about the CI pipeline for these devices, the challenges of doing Open Source at a big company, and more. Check it out!

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Bicycle Tubes Aren’t Just Made Of Rubber Anymore

April 29, 2026 by Zoe Skyforest 47 Comments

For the average rider, inner tubes have been one of the most enduring and unchanging parts of bicycle design over the decades. They’re made of rubber, they have a Schrader or Presta valve, and they generally do an okay job at cushioning the ride.

However, if you’re an above-average rider, or just obsessive about your gear, you might consider butyl rubber tubes rather old hat. Today, there are far fancier—and more expensive—options on the market if you’re looking to squeeze every drip of performance out of your bike.

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Ask Hackaday: Do You Need A Tablet?

April 29, 2026 by Al Williams 90 Comments

There’s an old saying that the happiest days of a boat owner’s life are the day they buy the boat, and the day they sell it. For me, the happiest days of an Android tablet owner’s life are the day they buy a new one, and the day they buy a newer one. For some reason, I always buy tablets with great expectations, get them set up, and then promptly lose them in a pile on my desk, not to be seen again. Then a shiny new tablet gets my attention in a year or so, and the cycle repeats.

You might be thinking that I just buy cheap junk tablets. It is true that I have. But I have also bought new Galaxy and Asus tablets with the same result. Admittedly, I have owned several Surface Laptops and Pros, and I do use them. But I can’t remember the last time I have used one without the keyboard. They aren’t really tablets — they are just laptops that can also be heavy, awkward tablets.

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The GPS III Rollout Is Almost Complete, But What Is It?

April 28, 2026 by Tom Nardi 33 Comments

Considering how integral it is to our modern way of life, you could be excused for thinking that the Global Positioning System (GPS) is a product of the smartphone era. But the first satellites actually came online back in 1978, although the system didn’t reach full operational status until April of 1995. While none of the active GPS satellites currently in orbit are quite that old, several of them were launched in the early 2000s — and despite a few tweaks and upgrades, their core technology isn’t far removed from their 1990s era predecessors.

But in the coming years, that’s finally going to change. Just last week, the tenth GPS III satellite was placed in orbit by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Once it’s properly configured and operational, it will join its peers to form the first complete “block” of third-generation GPS satellites. Over the next decade, as many as 22 revised GPS III satellites are slated to take their position over the Earth, eventually replacing all of the aging satellites that billions of people currently rely on.

So what new capabilities do these third-generation GPS satellites offer, and why has it taken so long to implement needed upgrades in such a critical system?

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