Did The BBC And Sir Clive Get It Right Twenty Years Ago?

September 25, 2026 by 17 Comments

Predictions of the future are often laughable when reviewed in the years for which they are made. For example, here in 2026 we neither live on the Moon, nor have flying cars. But sometimes they come closer to the reality than others, and in that the BBC Archive have an interesting offering. It’s a Newsnight feature from 2006 looking at the future of artificial intelligence, and since its main interviewee is none other than Sir Clive Sinclair, it’s worth a second look.

Watching the video it’s a shock to be reminded that 2006 was twenty years ago, as in so many ways it’s close enough to touch. Back then we had laptops with Windows or Linux, we had the Web, and HDTV, as we do today. But as we sat in our Ford Focus family car it would be on a Nokia that we rang home; while technically a smartphone it was nothing like the Apple and Android devices that would take the world by storm in the following years. Sir Clive is positive about the development of AI as he saw it then, seeing it as providing knowledge based services such as education or healthcare from your computer. The following interviewee from British Telecom perhaps puts his finger on the pulse the most, predicting a path “Over the next few years” that seems pretty familiar to us a couple of decades later.

So for once this is a future prediction that doesn’t seem too outlandish. Aside from Sir Clive’s appearance it’s packed with retro technology goodies, so it’s well worth a watch below.

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This Week In Security: FBI Gets Hacked, Muse Vulnerable To ClickFix, Popular Rust Developers At Risk, And New Attacks Against RSA

September 25, 2026 by 12 Comments

The prolific ShinyHunters group has announced it used a zero-day vulnerability in Oracle PeopleSoft to exploit the FBI jobs website and gain access to the AWS GovCloud instances and dump 2 TB of employee data. GovCloud being a special, locked-down version of the Amazon Web Services cloud for US government users.

ShinyHunters has previously been involved in dozens of high-profile hacks and ransomware incidents.  Some of the highest-profile incidents include Jaguar-Land Rover, causing a measurable impact on the UK GDP, Grubhub, Carnival Cruise Lines, Rockstar Games, and multiple universities and educational institutions, casinos, and other government agencies.  ShinyHunters has also been credited with the hack of the Canvas educational program in the spring of 2026 where data including test results and chat logs of hundreds of millions of students, teachers, and staff was stolen.  ShinyHunters has generally been identified as an international group of criminals, often teenagers, who will demand a BitCoin ransom of several million US dollars, with the threat of the stolen data being leaked if the victims do not pay.

On May 15, 2026 the FBI released a bulletin on the activities of ShinyHunters, focusing on the Canvas educational hack.  In the report, the FBI said that the group uses “harassment strategies, sending threatening text messages and phone calls to victims and their family members”.  ShinyHunters says that this is not accurate, and that they will release the FBI employee data, including information of employees and their family members, if the agency does not retract the statements, telling The Register “I have been doing my very best to combat these allegations, and this is the best way to do it”.

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Screenshot of the survey webpage, saying "Invitation to participate in a new fun hardware discussion in the PINE64 Community Pine Store may have stopped production on Linux hardware, but that doesn't mean all production has stopped. Hardware like the Pinecil, PineTime and PineVoice that use MCUs will continue production as normal. This is a great opportunity to come up with new ideas for MCU powered hardware. Now that the PinePhone has stopped production, there is a gap in the hardware lineup for a "fun" device. This definition of "fun" boils down to whether a device can have multiple use cases or purposes. The PineTime, PinePhone and PineNote can be considered "fun" as they can be used for multiple purposes and multiple projects can naturally form around them. An example of the opposite would be devices like the Pinecil and PineBuds which serve a single purpose and build less of a community around them as a result (but both are still great). OKAY, SO! We'd like to share some initial ideas on what a cheap fun tinkerers device could be. 1.What hardware do you prefer?Required Please drag these items from most (1) to least (5) preferred. ?Alarm clock ?PinePhone-esque device but MCU powered (attachments possible?) ?Handy multi-tool with screen, fido hardware key, nfc, etc ?Other (next question) ?MP3 player"

What Should Pine64 Build With Microcontrollers?

September 25, 2026 by 24 Comments

Pine64 is an open-source-community-centered project of mostly-open hardware, known for such hits as the PinePhone, the Pinecil soldering iron, and the PineTime. Now, the Pine64 project wants to know what kind of MCU-powered device you’d want to see built next, and there’s an online form you can fill out to let them know about any fun ideas they could bring to reality, as we all recover from the second round of Hardware Horrors Of 2020s.

In the age of RAM and storage shortage, it’s evident we’re not about to see a new Pine64 Linux SBC – but there’s plenty that can be done with regular microcontrollers, especially seeing how far modern microcontrollers have come in capabilities. On their Discord server and other linked platforms, you can see the announcement post giving you more details, as well as examples of devices that would fit the bill. An MP3 player? An alarm clock? Some sort of electronics multi-tool? PinePhone-esque device but based on an MCU? Digital camera? Whether you have full-on device ideas or specific feature requests for the aforementioned, check out the form and let them know.

Of course, any suggestions will ultimately have to be considered for viability by the Pine Store, the Pine64 hemisphere that actually decides on what to manufacture, so no promises can be made, but we consider this more than promising enough that you ought to have a say. Pine64 has come incredibly far in the 10 years it’s been around, and despite the troubles, we hope they’re here to stay, doing their thing releasing hardware that so often runs circles around the competition, and dropping by hacker cons all over the globe.

Commodore 128 Becomes Marine Vessel Tracker

September 25, 2026 by 5 Comments

The Automatic Identification System (AIS) is a maritime radio communications tool used to allow different vessels to identify each other and communicate their movements and other telemetry. You can readily view a variety of AIS trackers online. Alternatively, you could build your own, and display the data on a retrocomputer from 40-plus years ago.

The concept is straightforward enough—it’s a Commodore 128 displaying vessel tracks from AIS data. The team behind AIS4CBM implemented this with assembly code to receive data over serial, parse and decode the AIS reports, and manage vessel data. Meanwhile, the front end is coded in BASIC 8, which provides useful graphic routines for plotting vessels on a map. There’s also a BASIC 7 text interface if you prefer to view the vessel data that way.

It’s worth noting that you can’t just run this on a barebones C128. AIS4CBM requires a 512 KiB REU RAM expansion, as well as 64 KiB VDC memory. You also need a SwiftLink compatible serial interface to get the data into the machine in the first place from your AIS receiver or other source. The project website notes that an Ultimate-II+ unit is a great way to fulfill most of these requirements with a single piece of hardware.

If you dig the project, you can check out a live stream from the C128 doing its thing below. We wouldn’t recommend a Commodore 128 if you’re a harbor master or otherwise commanding ships on the water. Still, it’s a fun project, and much like the NES that was set up to track planes with ADS-B data. Video after the break.

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A small orange car with a bold horizontal white stripe and the text "XP 512E" emblazoned on the side. The footprint of the vehicle barely exceeds the size of the seats, almost like an Isetta, but the top canopy opens upward and the lower front fascia contains a side opening door. If it were green, it would probably be what an LLM would generate with the prompt, "Make a car that looks like a frog."

GM’s Experimental EV From 1969

September 24, 2026 by 30 Comments

Electricity is the once and future drivetrain for automobiles, but until the advent of lithium batteries their capabilities were somewhat modest. One EV blip on the automotive timeline is the XP-512E commuter prototype by GM.

The 60s saw a wide variety of interesting experiments in the automobile space, and both GM and AMC were evaluating the possibilities of a return to electric cars for short journeys. GM wasn’t set on a particular drivetrain for their new experimental commuter cars, so the XP 512 became a trio with conventional, hybrid, and electric variants. Each car was a two seater with a fiberglass body and steel chassis. The canopy could lift and a small door in the front swung to the side for access to the cockpit. Some images from the time show the car without the canopy and just the rollbar, giving you a very small convertible (83″/2108 mm long).

Lead acid was the only viable traction battery until the 1990s, so the 1,250 lb vehicle was limited to a top speed of 30 mph and a range of 50 miles. GM was exploring a number of alternatives at the time including another blast from the automotive past, steam power, in an effort to reduce the issues of smog and air pollution that plagued cities beset by droves of V-8 powered sedans. While the XP-512E and the AMC Amitron never made it to production, they’re an interesting reminder that technologies that seem infeasible today may just need to bake a bit longer.

We have some thoughts about the opportunities afforded by electric cars, but it’s probably a good thing we didn’t get nuclear powered automobiles.

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FPGA For All — CERN Releases “colibri” VHDL Library

September 24, 2026 by 22 Comments

Since you’re reading Hackaday, we’re pretty sure CERN needs no introduction, so we’ll get right to it– they’re giving back again, this time with a VHDL library called “colibri” containing over 100 components, functions, and procedures to help jumpstart your next FPGA project.

Like a lot of what CERN gives away under its CERN Open Hardware Licence, this library and the functions in it were developed in house to make CERN run better– specifically to streamline the development of gateway devices. As you might imagine, with the prodigious amount of data CERN’s various experiments spit out, FPGAs have become a key part of many of them. The best part is that because the fine folks at CERN don’t want to get locked in, everything here is vendor-independent and has been tested on multiple platforms. Speaking of tested, you get self-checking testbenches in there to make sure everything’s working, and there’s even formal verification, at least for some things. We’ve seen formal verification in software compilers, but its not common in the FPGA world. The whole thing is on GitLab if you want to take a look.

While CERN’s library might not have much to help you make a ternary processor or bus controller with everyone’s favourite programmable silicon, much like software libraries you can save some time at least not implementing say, SPI or i2c– both of which are in colibri, along with a whole lot more.

Thanks to [Alberto Perro] for the tip!

Robot Makes Literal Daisy Chains

September 24, 2026 by 3 Comments

[Jude Robinson]’s robot Daisy has an unusual function: making a literal chain of daisies. The device is his student final project and demonstrates how a system can replace sensing with clever mechanical constraints. Instead of bringing tools to bear on each daisy, the daisies are brought to the tools in a repeatable, deterministic way.

Daisy is essentially two X-Y gantries with grippers facing one another. Between them is a conveyor upon which daisies are fed, plus a blade at the top with a threading post nearby. A gripper takes a daisy, feeds the stem through the hole in the previous one, then lifts the new addition up to a scalpel blade which cuts a short incision. The thin threading post goes through the new hole in the new stem, ready for the next daisy to be inserted. The two gantries alternate roles, building the chain one daisy link at a time.

[Jude] says that daisy stem shape and diameter have the most impact on reliability, so it’s very important to constrain the daisies such that the scalpel and threading operations work reliably. This is primarily done with v-shaped profiles in the grippers which automatically center stems of different sizes. The sheath around the scalpel blade also plays a role in constraining and supporting the stems as they are gently pierced and sliced. Tuning these elements was a big part of making the system work.

Watch it in action in the video (embedded below) which shows how clever mechanical design can turn an uncertain problem — like how to handle daisies of different sizes — into a deterministic one with the help of clever mechanical design. That same concept is at work in everything from simple nut sorters to highly complex paper airplane machines.

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