Hackaday Links: December 17, 2023

Hackaday Links: December 17, 2023

Disappointing news from the US Senate this week as the “AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act” failed to advance in the sausage-making legislative process. We’ve previously covered this bill, which aims to force vehicle manufacturers to provide the means to receive terrestrial AM broadcasts in their cars and trucks without the need for extra subscriptions or charges. The bill’s sponsors tried to get it through on a “unanimous consent” maneuver, but Senator Rand Paul decided he didn’t like the idea of the government mandating what equipment cars should have. The coverage we’ve seen on this bill leads us to believe its sponsors are missing the point. Instead of pitching this as an issue of freedom of choice in entertainment, what they should be concentrating on is the safety aspect of AM radio. We’ve seen how much the government has invested in keeping AM stations on the air in just about any foreseeable emergency, so it’s only natural to look at a car’s AM radio as essential safety equipment like airbags, antilock brakes, and backup cameras. Seems like that’s something that everyone can agree on. 

Last week, NASA released a preview of flight number 68 of the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars, with a goal of covering a record-setting 828 meters. The flight was supposed to occur sometime last weekend, which gave us hope that we’d be able to feature the results on the flight here. However, try as we might we couldn’t find any news about how the flight went, or if it was scrubbed for some reason. That seems a little ominous to us; NASA is usually pretty forthcoming with news about their missions, even when they get delayed. We’re going to assume there was a scrub for some technical reason and hope for the best, because most of the other alternative explanations don’t bode well for the helicopter. Fingers crossed.

We don’t normally dabble in the occult here, but occultation is another matter entirely. Especially when it involves our favorite star Betelgeuse, which managed to be in the right place at the right time this week to get (very) briefly eclipsed by a main belt asteroid named Leona. To see the rare astronomical alignment, you had to be within a very narrow path — the only place to see it in the United States was southernmost Florida — and you had to be paying very close attention. The video below shows the supergiant star dimming as the asteroid passed in front of it, briefly but perceptibly. It’s a bit like what happens when we look for exoplanets as they transit the disk of their stars relative to our position; indeed, some of the data in this article looks a lot like the exoplanet data we’ve seen.

If you’ve ever been at a loss for just the right connector for the job, you’re in luck — The Electronic Connector Book should be able to help you out. This thing is a whopper — 730 pages, over 900 illustrations, and it appears to cover just about everything ever invented to get two or more pieces of wire hooked together. But as cool as such a book might be, perhaps even better is the companion website, where you can look up information on all kinds of connectors. It even has a visual search feature, which is fantastic when you don’t know what a connector is called, but you know what it looks like. The interactive connector timeline chart is a work of art, too.

And finally, if you’re a woodworker you surely know the name Lie-Nielsen, manufacturers of premium quality hand tools. Their planes are about the best you can buy, if you can afford them. The video below is a look at the process of making their Number 62 low-angle jack plane, from the foundry where the cast iron bodies of the plane are made right through to final assembly and inspection. The number of people involved is amazing, especially in an age where robots have taken over a lot of manufacturing processes. And it’s not like they eschew automation, either; there’s plenty of CNC machining involved. The foundry work is especially hands-on, and we’re equally impressed and appalled by how much the process — and the lack of safety equipment — resembles some of the Retrotechtacular pieces we’ve featured. If you enjoy either woodworking or toolmaking, you should check this one out. And make sure you stick around to the very last scene — you won’t be disappointed.