Hackaday editors Mike Szczys and Elliot Williams look through the most interesting hacks of the week. We spent ample time in adulation of the automatons built by François Junod; wizard-level watchmaking wrapped in endless levels of artistic detail. A couple projects stuffed into old cellphones turned Elliot’s head. We got to see what happens if you spin a gear’s teeth on two axes to make a universal spherical gear. And we conclude the episode with a look at how Windows 11 may send a lot of good hardware to recycle center, and at how toothpaste tubes sometimes miss the recycling center completely.
Take a look at the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!
Airships. Slow, difficult to land, and highly flammable when they’re full of hydrogen. These days, they’re considered more of a historical curiosity rather than a useful method of transport.
Hybrid Air Vehicles are a UK-based startup working to create a modern take on the airship concept. The goal is to create cleaner air transport for short-hop routes, while also solving many of the issues with the airship concept with a drastic redesign from the ground up. Their vehicle that will do all this goes by the name of Airlander 10. But is it enough to bring airships back to the skies?
A Hybrid Technology
Airlander 10 seen taking off during its first flight.
The Airlander 10 is not a lighter-than-air craft like traditional airships. Instead, the vehicle uses the buoyancy from its helium envelope to create only 60-80% of its lift. The rest of the left is generated aerodynamically by air passing over the eliptical shape of the airship’s body. This lift can also be further augmented by two diesel-powered ducted fans on the sides of the airship, which can pivot to assist with takeoff and landing. Two further fixed ducted fans on the rear provide the primary propulsion for the craft.
The hybrid approach brings several benefits over the traditional airship model. Chief among them is that as the Airlander 10 is heavier than air, it need not vent helium throughout flight to avoid becoming positively buoyant as fuel burns off, nor does it need to vent helium to land. However, it still maintains the capability to loiter for incredibly long periods in the sky as it needs to burn very little fuel to stay aloft. Reportedly, it is capable of five days when manned, and even longer durations if operated in an unmanned configuration. Using helium for lift instead of solely relying on engine thrust and wings means that it is much more fuel efficient than traditional fixed-wing airliners. The company’s own estimates suggest the Airlander 10 could slash emissions on short-haul air routes by up to 90%. The gentle take-off and landing characteristics also mean the vehicle doesn’t require traditional airport facilities, making it possible to operate more easily in remote areas, on grass, sand, or even water. Continue reading “Could Airships Make A Comeback With New Hybrid Designs?”→
If you follow cybersecurity hacker methods — or just watch Mr. Robot — you probably know that the best way to get someone’s password is to ask for it. Sure, you probably can’t just say “Hi, I’m a bad guy. Can I have your password?” But there are all sorts of tricks you can use like pretending to be in the person’s IT department, someone in management, or by making up a crisis to overcome their better judgement with a sense. But of course, as wise computer people, we are immune to such things, right? We also don’t need those kinds of tricks in our arsenal.
Is that true? It is amazing how many subtle things influence what we think are rational decisions, no matter who we are. Consider going to eat in a restaurant. Simple, right? You look at the menu, pick what you want, and order. No one is influencing you. But they are. According to a BBC article, there’s a whole industry of menu “engineering” that figures out how to get you to order pricey food.
You might not think social engineering for menus is a great skill for us. But maybe your new open source project needs collaborators. Maybe your startup company needs investors. Maybe you’d like someone to look at your resume. Maybe the same tricks that work with diners will work in those cases, too.
When Nathan Copeland suffered a car accident in 2004, damage to his spinal cord at the C5/C6 level resulted in tetraplegic paralysis. This left him initially at the age of 18 years old to consider a life without the use of his arms or legs, until he got selected in 2014 for a study at the University of Pittsburgh involving the controlling of a robotic limb using nothing but one’s mind and a BCI.
While this approach, as replicated in various other studies, works well enough for simple tasks, it comes with the major caveat that while it’s possible to control this robotic limb, there is no feedback from it. Normally when we try to for example grab an object with our hand, we are aware of the motion of our arm and hand, until the moment when our fingers touch the object which we’re reaching for.
In the case of these robotic limbs, the only form of feedback was of the visual type, where the user had to look at the arm and correct its action based on the observation of its position. Obviously this is far from ideal, which is why Nathan hadn’t just been implanted with Utah arrays that read out his motor cortex, but also arrays which connected to his somatosensory cortex.
The unspoken promise of new technologies is that they will advance and enhance our picture of the world — that goes double for the ones that are specifically designed to let us look closer at the physical world than we’ve ever been able to before. One such advancement was the invention of X-ray crystallography that let scientists peer into the spatial arrangements of atoms within a molecule. Kathleen Lonsdale got in on the ground floor of X-ray crystallography soon after its discovery in the early 20th century, and used it to prove conclusively that the benzene molecule is a flat hexagon of six carbon atoms, ending a decades-long scientific dispute once and for all.
Benzene is an organic chemical compound in the form of a colorless, flammable liquid. It has many uses as an additive in gasoline, and it is used to make plastics and synthetic rubber. It’s also a good solvent. Although the formula for benzene had been known for a long time, the dimensions and atomic structure remained a mystery for more than sixty years.
Kathleen Lonsdale was a crystallography pioneer and developed several techniques to study crystal structures using X-rays. She was brilliant, but she was also humble, hard-working, and adaptable, particularly as she managed three young children and a budding chemistry career. At the outbreak of World War II, she spent a month in jail for reasons related to her staunch pacifism, and later worked toward prison reform, visiting women’s prisons habitually.
After the war, Kathleen traveled the world to support movements that promote peace and was often asked to speak on science, religion, and the role of women in science. She received many honors in her lifetime, and became a Dame of the British Empire in 1956. Before all of that, she honored organic chemistry with her contributions.
There was a time when a new version of Windows was a really big deal, such the launch of Windows 95 for which the tones of the Rolling Stones’ Start me up could be heard across all manner of media outlets. Gradually over years this excitement has petered out, finally leaving us with Windows 10 that would, we were told, be the last ever version of the popular operating system and thence only receive continuous updates
Back in September of 2019, I had the opportunity to climb aboard the restored B-17G bomber Nine-O-Nine as part of a national “Wings of Freedom” airport tour operated by the Collings Foundation. I was excited to get up close and personal with such an iconic aircraft, particularity since Hackaday gave me a platform to share the experience with a global audience. With fewer than 50 B-17s left in the world, and most of those in the United States, taking this sort of “virtual tour” was as close as most people would ever get to seeing what it was really like for the crews who operated these machines over the skies of Europe more than 75 years ago.
Tragically, just a week after the article was published, the Nine-O-Ninecrashed during a visit to Bradley International Airport in Connecticut. The pilot, co-pilot, and five paying passengers were all killed in either the initial impact or the subsequent fire. When crews were finally able to extinguish the flames, the left wing and tail were all that remained of the once mighty bomber. In a twist of fate, some of the images I took for the Hackaday article ended up being included in the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) accident report, as they represented perhaps the most detailed photographic record of the aircraft’s condition before the crash.
Wreckage of the Nine-O-Nine.
In the weeks and months that followed, many voiced their concerns over what the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) calls “Living History Flight Experience” aircraft such as those operated by the Collings Foundation. The main point of contention was whether or not these planes were too old to safely carry passengers, and by extension, whether continuing to fly them around the country presented a menace to the national airspace. Critics argued that whatever cultural benefit offered by the chance for the public to tour or ride these antique aircraft was not worth anyone losing their lives over; a line of logic that’s difficult to find fault in.
Then came COVID-19. By March of 2020, individual states had already started going into lockdown, and suddenly there were far more pressing matters to address than the fate of a few dozen teetering WWII aircraft. It was around this time that the FAA pulled the Collings Foundation’s license to conduct any more paid flights, but since outdoor gatherings such as airshows were being put on hold for the foreseeable future, the measure had little immediate impact. It was clear these airborne museum pieces were going to spend most of 2020 in their hangers anyway.
Now, thankfully, the pall of COVID-19 is finally beginning to lift over the United States. In response to widespread vaccine availability, most states are ending or at least reducing their restrictions on outdoor events. With major airshows like the “World War II Weekend” in Reading, Pennsylvania given the green light to proceed, these legendary aircraft are being awakened from their long slumber and making their first tentative flights of the post-pandemic era.
