Collaborate Disseminate
As the COVID-19 pandemic has continued along its way through the world, our community has responded as it always does, by designing and making things intended to solve the problems thrown up by the situation we find ourselves in. Much of this effort has gone into the production of PPE …read more
Continue reading Surviving The Pandemic As A Hacker: Making A Mask Of Your Very Own
We’re now several months into the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic, with most parts of the world falling somewhere on the lockdown/social distancing/opening up path.
It’s fair to say now that while the medical emergency has not passed, the level of knowledge about it has changed significantly. When communities …read more
Continue reading Surviving The Pandemic As A Hacker: Peering Behind The Mask
With the launch of the SpaceX Demo-2 mission, the United States has achieved something it hasn’t done in nearly a decade: put a human into low Earth orbit with a domestic booster and vehicle. It was a lapse in capability that stretched on far longer than anyone inside or outside …read more
Continue reading NASA’s Long-Delayed Return to Human Spaceflight
Since 2010, the United States military has been operating a pair of small reusable spaceplanes that conduct secretive long-duration flights in low Earth orbit. Now officially operating under the auspices of the newly formed Space Force, the X-37Bs allow the military to conduct in-house research on new hardware and technology …read more
Continue reading X-37B Spaceplane To Test Power Beaming Technology
In the surreal world of a pandemic lockdown, we are surrounded by news stories that defy satire. The idea that 5G cellular networks are to blame for the COVID-19 outbreak and a myriad other ills has the more paranoid corners of social media abuzz with concerned citizens leaping upon random …read more
Continue reading Radio’s Sordid History Of Being Blamed For Everything
If you haven’t heard from other websites yet, earlier this year a leak of various Nintendo intellectual properties surfaced on the Internet. This included prototype software dating back to the Game Boy, as well as Verilog files for systems up to the Nintendo 64, GameCube and Wii. This leak seems …read more
Continue reading No, The Nintendo Leak Won’t Help Emulator Developers, And Here’s Why
You may have heard about a new bill working its way through the US congress, the EARN IT act. That’s the “Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act of 2020”. (What does that mean? It means someone really wanted their initials to spell out “EARN IT”.)
EARN IT …read more
Continue reading EARN IT: Privacy, Encryption, and Policing in the Information Age
The Apollo program proved that humans could land on the Moon and do useful work, but due to logistical and technical limitations, individual missions were kept short. For the $28 billion ($283 billion adjusted) spent on the entire program, astronauts only clocked in around 16 days total on the lunar …read more
Continue reading NASA’s Plan for Sustained Lunar Exploration
As the world pulls back from the acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, it enters what will be perhaps a more challenging time: managing the long-term presence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes the disease. In the roughly two-century history of modern vaccination practices, we’ve gotten pretty good at finding …read more
Continue reading The Vaccine Factory Inside You: RNA Vaccine Basics
Saying that it was finally time for the community to bid a “fond but firm farewell to Python 2”, core developer Benjamin Peterson marked the release of Python 2.7.18 on April 20th; officially ending support for the 2.x branch of the popular programming language. It was hardly a snap decision. …read more
Continue reading Core Devs Say a Fond But Firm Farewell To Python 2