Hiding Virtualization From Other Software

October 26, 2026 by Bryan Cockfield 6 Comments

The Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) allows Linux systems to function as hypervisors without needing any extra software, but VMs created with it don’t behave exactly like real hardware does. Sometimes that’s important, though, so [sandwich] built a tool called vfio-native that obscures the fact that software might be running in a virtual machine.

There are plenty of the ways that virtual hardware differs from bare metal. The VM may behave slightly differently for obscure instructions in ways that are measurable, it may take slightly longer to perform some tasks, or the hypervisor may simply announce itself directly. vfio-native includes some kernel patches that solve some bugs which address the different behaviors, changes the way that the kernel identifies itself, and attempts to force the CPUs to behave in ways that real hardware would behave. With all of this applied to the virtual machine, it scores a 1/85 against a VM detection tool, with a standard KVM virtual machine scoring 10/85.

For anyone looking to test this out, it’s available in the AUR for Arch Linux. Also, it’s probably worth mentioning that there are more reasons to use this than cheating at Counter-Strike. For example, security researchers testing malware need to know how that software behaves when it thinks its on real hardware, and some may behave in benign ways when confined to virtual machines. Some licensed software also may disable itself when it detects its running in a VM, which can be a nuisance for things like software controlling industrial tools which only run on operating systems that are no longer maintained or hardware that can’t be found anymore. Some other tools we’ve seen before perform similar tasks as well.

KiCad… In The Browser?

October 22, 2026 by Zoe Skyforest 11 Comments

KiCad is a useful tool for designing printed circuit boards, but it’s of no use to you if you can’t install it on the computer you’re on. To get around that, [Akshay Rukade] has whipped up a browser-based alternative to help keep you working in less permissive environments. It’s called ZiroEDA.

Quite simply, ZiroEDA is a TypeScript port of KiCad 10.0.6’s C++ source code. You get the schematic editor, the PCB editor, the interactive router, and the electrical and design rule checkers all running in a browser. It can open .kicad_pro files as you’d expect, and you can edit and save them as you would if you were working in standard KiCad directly.

[Akshay] reports that KiCad’s own kicad-cli was used for compatibility testing, and that zone fills came out vertex-identical from ZiroEDA versus using KiCad itself. With that said, the project is still a work in progress, and some dialogs from the original software are still missing. Projects are said to be end-to-end encrypted, but you’ll hopefully lose your job quickly if you try and put anything important to national security through a tool like this. You can always try it, just to give your higher-ups a heart attack.

Source is available on GitHub if you want to see how it all ticks. We’ve featured other great KiCad hacks before, too, like this GPU-accelerated autorouter. If you’re working on PCB tools of your own, don’t hesitate to notify the tipsline.

SolidCraft Is Parametric, Automation-friendly CAD For Desktop And Browser

October 17, 2026 by Donald Papp 36 Comments

If you’re looking to try a new, open source 3D modeling CAD suite, especially one with automation-friendly interfaces, take a look at SolidCraft. It’s under development but there’s support for all the usual features like sketches, solid modeling, and constraints as well as a full parametric feature timeline.

SolidCraft offers desktop, browser-based, headless CLI, and MCP interfaces.

A parametric timeline essentially means the model exists not as a single discrete object, but as the sum of a sequence of operations. One advantage of this is being able to set things up so that if one changes a value (like wall thickness), all the features that depend on that change automatically get rebuilt as a result. But there’s more!

Written entirely in Rust, SolidCraft can run as a desktop app or as a web app in a browser. Everything the user can do in SolidCraft is a command with JSON parameters, and it offers a built-in headless command line interface and even an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server built specifically to give AI agents a way to use the program, should one be interested in experimenting with that sort of thing.

SolidCraft is still in early development, but so far quite a few features seem to work as they should. Check out the development roadmap for details, and there’s a live online demo if you’re in the mood to click around and get a feel for things.

We have seen quite a few open-source, browser-based CAD efforts over the years and it’s encouraging to see developers continuing to explore fresh ideas and features in the CAD landscape.

Rendering 3D Prints From G-Code

October 14, 2026 by Zoe Skyforest 22 Comments

Your CAD software generally has some rudimentary tools for rending images of your parts, from simply-textured models to more photo-realistic options. However, those renders are of the geometry you created—not how that geometry would look after it was sent to a 3D printer. Extrudio is a tool that aims to create more realistic renders for 3D printed parts.

Rather than rendering from the geometry of your model, such as by using an STL file, Extrudio uses G-Code instead. It creates its render based on the instructions your 3D printer uses to produce your part, sweeping a virtual bead of plastic along the toolpaths in the code. In doing so, it can realistically display layer lines in a 3D print and other artifacts of the printing process, like stair-stepping on spheres and curves. It can display the render in various contexts, from blank studio backgrounds to a number of “sets” like a bench or kitchen.

The tool’s website notes that this could be useful for generating images for those selling 3D printed parts online, though obviously the realism of actually printing and photographing a part would still be superior. Still, it could prove a useful tool for quickly pitching realistic images of a 3D printed part, particularly if it’s desirable to model different colors or print techniques without putting in the hours to actually produce them.

We’ve featured some other great 3D printing hacks lately, like this nifty trick for doing overhangs without supports.

Continue reading “Rendering 3D Prints From G-Code” →

A PCB layout is superimposed on a grey grid of hexagonal cells. The PCB traces mostly bend at 120-degree angles, and an integrated circuit's footprint is tilted at an angle matching the grid.

Improving An Autorouter With A Hexagonal Grid

October 11, 2026 by Aaron Beckendorf 11 Comments

Despite the recent leaps forward in other forms of computer-driven design, the reliability of PCB autorouters remains questionable; on the positive side, though, the lack of massive training data makes them plausible for a determined programmer to implement. For anyone contemplating this undertaking, [James Bowman] recommends a slightly unusual choice: use a hexagonal layout grid.

[James] built his own autorouter in his CuFlow PCB layout program. It takes a fairly straightforward approach: it represents the board as a grid of cells, and uses Lee’s algorithm to find the shortest routes between connected cells. The program initially used a square grid, but a hexagonal grid had a few advantages: in particular, each cell has six equidistant neighbors, rather than four (or eight, if you accept diagonal neighbors at a different distance), which allows denser routing. Because a hexagon more closely approximates a circle than a square, the same minimum-distance rules allow smaller cells, allowing the autorouter to pack more traces into the same space.

While we have previously seen a self-built autorouter, it’s much more common to interface with an external tool. If you start to get into high-speed PCB routing, though, building an autorouter becomes much harder.

Mars Pathfinder: What Really Happened?

October 11, 2026 by Al Williams 33 Comments

You’ve probably heard of Mars Pathfinder, the NASA lander and its Sojourner rover that took up residence on Mars in 1997. At first, all was well, but after a few days, the lander suffered a series of total system resets. A watchdog timer detected a problem and forced reboots. [Vivek Bhageria’s] recent post looks into what happened and the eventual solution.

The root cause was priority inversion. This happens when a lower-priority task holds a resource needed by a higher-priority task and prevents the higher-priority task from executing. In this case, the operating system was VxWorks, but this can happen on any kind of priority scheduling system.

The simplified version is that there were two tasks that each used the same mutex to avoid stepping on each other. The highest priority was a data distribution task. The lowest priority task dealt with meteorology data processing. There was also a medium-priority task that handled bus maintenance.

The failure would occur when the low-priority task had the mutex and lost its time slot before releasing it. The high-priority task would then find it couldn’t take the mutex. However, the low-priority task didn’t get control again because of the medium-priority tasks waiting to run.

In effect, the high-priority task was now waiting on something that couldn’t become available until the lowest-priority task was able to run. That’s priority inversion.

Continue reading “Mars Pathfinder: What Really Happened?” →

Digital Signage In The Browser With Just A Click

October 8, 2026 by Tom Nardi 13 Comments

There are many ways to display text on a computer screen, but most require at least some manual effort from the user. It’s annoying enough even if you’re dealing with one machine, but it gets even more of a hassle when you’re trying to display something on multiple devices of varying size and capability. That’s where BIGWORDS.PAGE by [SpeakingOfBrad] comes in.

It’s essentially a simple web page you can control via a carefully crafted URL, letting you create all sorts of text displays you can “distribute” to browsers on other devices with a simple link. So, for example, if you wanted to let everyone see what your favorite website is, you need only point the browser on your phone or laptop to https://bigwords.page/#Hackaday. As the image at the top of this post shows, you can also change the font and text colors by adding a few more values.

Continue reading “Digital Signage In The Browser With Just A Click” →