Hackaday Links: October 17, 2026
While Hackaday doesn’t preserve a criminal offense blotter, we couldn’t assist however begin this week’s put up off with a little bit of civil disobedience — a retired professor from the University of Pennsylvania was arrested earlier this week for standing in front of a delivery robot.
Granted, she was standing there for lengthy sufficient that the police had been finally known as, however nonetheless. Previous reporting signifies that Carolyn Marvin has a historical past of blocking supply robots as a type of protest, however that is the primary time regulation enforcement acquired concerned. We’re not attorneys right here at Hackaday, so we will’t say for positive whether or not or not blocking the progress of a robotic engaged in industrial operation truly violates any legal guidelines. But we do know that refusing a lawful request from a police officer will get you in hassle, and that appears to be what Marvin was truly charged with when she refused to maneuver.
From a robotic stopped in its tracks to 1 that retains on trucking, NASA is reporting that the odometer on the Perseverance Mars rover just lately ticked over to twenty-eight.10 miles (45.22 kilometers). That may not appear like rather a lot, however it formally makes it essentially the most traveled rover within the photo voltaic system, breaking the document set by Opportunity at 28.06 miles (45.16 km). One would possibly count on that the Curiosity rover would maintain the space document because it had been rolling round on the floor for greater than a decade earlier than Perseverance dropped into the neighborhood, however the completely different scientific missions of the 2 practically equivalent rovers have taken them on very completely different programs.
On the topic of navigation, MapQuest recently announced the supply of the “Surveillance Layer” of their smartphone software. When enabled, it reveals the placement of identified license plate readers and cameras on the map, permitting the person to plan their route accordingly. A notice within the software’s person interface mentions that they’re pulling not less than a few of this knowledge from OpenStreetMap, although it’s not clear at present if different sources resembling DeFlock are getting used.
Finally, we’ve got an replace on the Christie’s public sale for the service pigeon knowledge packet despatched again in 2001 by Norway’s Bergen Linux User Group. The public sale home thought the framed datagram would possibly fetch as a lot as $3,000 USD, however when the hammer lastly went down earlier this week the winning bid was a staggering $20,480. Given all of the bizarre devices we’ve picked up on a whim, we’re not ready to lecture anybody else about how they spend their cash…however rattling.
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