Hackaday Links: September 27, 2026

It isn’t fairly hailing frequencies open, however researchers from Harvard declare they’ve picked up a radio sign instantly from a nearby exoplanet. Before you get too excited, planets in our photo voltaic system additionally emit RF, so nobody credible is claiming these are extraterrestrial reruns of their model of I Love Lucy, however it’s the first time they’ve localized a radio sign to an exoplanet, on this case, Beta Pictoris B.

Speaking of area, the asteroid previously referred to as 1981 EC26 is now sporting a brand new moniker: (14331) Alyankovic. If you assume that feels like (Weird) Al Yankovic, you aren’t mistaken. The Tucson Star experiences that, due to the efforts of a number of planetary scientists who’re additionally Weird Al followers, the International Astronomical Union made the name official. Apparently, one other asteroid now bears a reputation in honor of Weird Al’s predecessor, Tom Lehrer.

If you observe open cell phone software program, you in all probability know the identify postmarketOS, a Linux distribution based mostly on Alpine geared toward cell phones and tablets. Well, now you’ll be able to neglect it. The mission introduced a reputation change, so we’re now speaking about Nura. Why Nura? According to the workforce, it’s a shortened type of Nuraghe, some granite constructions in Sardinia which are over 5,000 years outdated. The FAQ mentions that postmarketOS was exhausting to recollect. We aren’t positive Nura is that rather more memorable. Perhaps they need to have pivoted to Phonz OS.

Ever write an Arduino “sketch?” We’d guess you may have. You would possibly know that Arduino forked from Wiring, and Wiring was, really, an offshoot of Processing. There is one other Processing offshoot, p5.js, and it, unsurprisingly, appears to be like loads like Arduino. Now p5.js can entry your GPU by way of WebGPU, and if you wish to find out about CPU programming, there’s a page for that.

We all need a steel 3D printer, however even while you get one, it isn’t more likely to be turning out two-ton dies. Unless, after all, you’re employed for a big national laboratory. The die is six toes lengthy and 4 toes vast. Apparently, it will likely be shaping some thermoplastic composite for us in experimental plane.

We all the time thought transformers have been a strategy to step AC voltages up or down. Or perhaps they have been a Lou Reed album. Then they have been toy robots. Now they’re the ability behind AI chatbots. If you might be as confused as you might be, this transformer (of the AI kind) explainer would possibly assist you to.

If you could find the outdated 2011 Kindle 4 that slipped behind your sofa cushions a number of years in the past, you would possibly be capable of load a mainline Linux kernel on it quickly. The patches are on the market, and the kernel helps a variety of even stranger issues, just like the IBM System/390, the Sega Dreamcast, and the Nintendo GameCube.

See one thing attention-grabbing that you simply assume could be a superb match for our weekly Links column? Drop us a line, we’d love to listen to about it.