Io i vibe coder li capisco.

spreaker.com/episode/dk-10x25-…

In the blue corner, we have the VENUS FLYTRAP! In the red corner, we have the underdog of the century, AN ENTIRE PARTICLE ACCELERATOR. Yes, you read that right. When you have a particle accelerator, it’s only second nature to throw anything you can into it. That’s why [Electron Impressions] put a poor fly-eating trap into their accelerator.
Chloride and potassium ions leaving cause osmotic pressure in neighboring cells
The match-up isn’t quite as arbitrary as it might seem at first. The flytrap’s main mechanism of trapping and digesting insects relies heavily on intracellular ion movement. Many cells along the inside of the trap have hair-activated calcium channels that respond to a fly landing on its surface. This ion movement then creates an action potential, which propagates along the entire surface, triggering closing. As the potential moves across different cells, other ions leave and create osmotic pressure. This pressure is what creates the mechanical movement.

Of course, this makes it no surprise when the plant finds itself under the ionizing radiation that every single head closes at once. While this is a cool demonstration, there is a slight side effect of killing every single cell by ripping apart the trap’s DNA.

Well, who would have guessed that the underdog accelerator would have won… Anyways, the DNA being ripped apart is far from ideal for repeatability. If you want to learn more about genetic features that SHOULD be repeated, then make sure to check out the development of open-source insulin!

youtube.com/embed/CZIhu9Jiyw4?…

hackaday.com/2026/03/23/venus-…

Supercapacitors rely mostly on double-layer capacitance to bridge the divide between chemical batteries and traditional capacitors, but they come with a number of weaknesses. Paramount among these are their relatively low voltage of around 2.7 V before their electrolyte begins to decompose, as well as their relatively high rates of self-discharge. Here a new design using lignin-derived porous carbon electrodes and a fluorinated diluent was demonstrated by [Shichao Zhang] et al., as published in Carbon Research, that seems to address these issues.

Most notable are the relatively high voltage of 4 V, an energy density of 77 Wh/kg and a self-discharge rate that’s much slower than that of conventional supercapacitors. In comparison with these supercapacitors, these demonstrated versions are also superior in terms of recharge cycles with 90% of capacity remaining after 10,000 cycles, which together with their much higher energy density should prove to be quite useful.

This feat is accomplished by using lignin as the base for the carbon electrodes to make a highly porous surface, along with the new electrolyte formulation consisting of alithium salt (LiBF₄) dissolved in sulfolane with TTE as a non-solvating diluent. The idea of using lignin-derived carbon for such a purpose has previously been pitched by [Jia Liu] et al. in 2022 and [Zhihao Ding] in 2025, with this seemingly one of the first major applications we may be seeing.

Although the path towards commercialization from a lab-assembled prototype is a rough one, we may be seeing some of these improvements come to supercapacitors near you sooner rather than later.

hackaday.com/2026/03/23/low-se…

This week, the European Parliament faces a decisive vote on whether the indiscriminate scanning of private chats and emails by US tech companies (Chat Control 1.0) will be allowed to continue. After Parliament voted on 11 March to replace blanket mass surveillance with targeted monitoring of suspects — thereby protecting the confidentiality of digital correspondence — EU member state governments let the trilogue negotiations fail by refusing to compromise in substance.

Now, in an unprecedented manoeuvre, the conservative EPP group is attempting to force a repeat vote on Thursday (26 March) to overturn the Parliament’s principled decision and keep indiscriminate chat scanning in place. A preliminary vote on Wednesday will determine whether this repeat vote goes ahead or is struck from the agenda.

Digital rights expert and former MEP Patrick Breyer outlines the urgently needed change of strategy:

“Indiscriminate Chat Control is like trying to mop up water while the faucet is still running. It is technologically obsolete and a proven failure in criminal justice terms. Flooding our police forces each year with hundreds of thousands of hits from unreliable US algorithms — most of them either false positives or long-known duplicates — does not rescue a single child from ongoing abuse. This data deluge ties up massive resources that are desperately needed for undercover investigations into actual abuse networks. To genuinely protect children online, we need a paradigm shift: providers must be required to prevent cybergrooming through safe app design and strict default settings. Illegal material on the open internet and darknet must be proactively tracked down and removed at source. That is what truly protects children.”

Background: What exactly expires on 3 April

An EU interim regulation (2021/1232), set to expire on 3 April, currently permits US corporations such as Meta to carry out indiscriminate mass scanning of private messages on a voluntary basis. Three types of chat control are authorised: scanning for already known images and videos (so-called hash scanning, which generates over 90% of reports); automated assessment of previously unknown images and videos; and automated analysis of text content in private chats.

The AI-based analysis of unknown images and texts is extremely error-prone. But the indiscriminate mass scanning for known material — proposed by socialists and liberals — is highly controversial, too: beyond the unreliability of the algorithms documented by researchers, these scans rely on opaque foreign databases rather than European criminal law. The algorithms are blind to context and lack of criminal intent (e.g. consensual sexting between teenagers). As a result, vast numbers of private but criminally irrelevant chats are exposed.

In the run-up to the vote, US tech corporations, foreign-funded lobby groups, and law enforcement agencies are flooding public discourse with warnings about an alleged “legal gap.” A comparison of their claims with internal documents, scientific studies, and the voices of child protection experts and actual abuse survivors, however, reveals an entirely different picture.

Disinformation Narratives of Chat Control Proponents — and the Facts

Disinformation 1: “The European Parliament is to blame for the collapse of negotiations and is putting children at risk.”
(Claimed by the lobby alliance ECLAG and US tech companies)

• Fact: It was the EU Council of Ministers that deliberately let the trilogue negotiations fail, for tactical reasons.
• Evidence: Leaked Council cables, classified as restricted, reveal that EU member states showed no willingness to compromise, fearing that any concession could set a precedent for the permanent Chat Control 2.0 regulation. The classified minutes from 13 March show that the Cypriot Presidency already anticipated failure before the final trilogue round, noting it did “not expect to reach an agreement” with the lack of a new mandate given by member states. A majority including Hungary, Belgium, Sweden, Spain, Latvia, Slovakia, Malta, Estonia, Slovenia, Romania and Germany were unwilling to make any concessions on scope. Only a small minority of governments including France and Ireland agreed to the Presidency’s proposal to phase out at least the most error-prone text scanning in search of “grooming”. The Netherlands showed itself “completely flexible”, and Italy had long before criticised the scope of scans and demanded “prior authorization of detection activities by [public] authorities”.
• Parliament’s lead negotiator, Birgit Sippel (S&D), sharply criticised the Council after the breakdown: “with their lack of flexibility, Member States have deliberately accepted that the interim regulation will expire in April.”

Disinformation 2: “Without indiscriminate Chat Control, law enforcement will be flying blind.”
(Claimed by law enforcement officials across the EU)

• Fact: Targeted telecommunications surveillance based on concrete suspicion and a judicial warrant remains fully available after 3 April, as does the bulk scanning of public posts and hosted files. User reports also remain possible. The real problem for authorities is a flood of false leads and a systemic refusal to remove material from the internet.
• Evidence — investigative chaos: According to Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), nearly 50% of chat control reports are criminally irrelevant. This flood of data waste ties up massive resources desperately needed for targeted, undercover investigations into real abuse networks. Where investigations are opened, German crime statistics show that around 40% of suspects are minors themselves, often acting without criminal intent or in consensual situations. The Federation of German Criminal Investigators (BDK) warns that this mass surveillance produces “a flood of tips… often without any actual investigative lead.” Meanwhile, Europol and German authorities systematically refuse to proactively have abuse material removed from the internet, as investigative reporting by ARD/STRG_F has revealed — images and videos remain online despite authorities being fully able to have them taken down, even as they demand ever more surveillance powers.
• Evidence — failure to protect children: Mass scanning for already known images does not stop ongoing abuse and does not rescue children in acute danger. According to the European Commission’s own evaluation report, no measurable link can be established between the mass surveillance of private messages and actual convictions. Yet the Commission and Council demand the extension of a measure whose effectiveness they themselves cannot demonstrate.
• Evidence — risk of annulment in court: The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) stresses that any solution used to detect illegal content must be targeted and not indiscriminate. The Council’s own legal service concluded in 2023 concerning the proposal for a permanent regulation (CSAR): “the detection order regime provided for by the proposed Regulation as regards interpersonal communications entails a serious risk that it would be found to compromise the essence of the rights to privacy and data protection enshrined in Article 7 and 8 of the Charter, in so far as it would seek to authorise access on a generalised basis, through automated and systemic screening surveillance, to the content of electronic communications and personal data of all users of a specific service, irrespective of their direct or indirect link with child sexual abuse criminal activities” (para 58)

Disinformation 3: “The scanning technology deployed is highly precise and protects privacy.”
(Claimed by Meta, Google, Microsoft, Snap, TikTok)

• Fact: The technology is an ineffective legacy system, error-prone, and destructive to the security of private communications.
• Evidence — an obsolete model: Offenders can effortlessly switch to secure messengers where no chat control takes place. Due to the increasing adoption of end-to-end encryption by providers, the number of chats reported to police has already dropped by 50% since 2022. Most recently, only 36% of reports from US companies originated from the chat control of private messages, while social media platforms and cloud storage services are becoming increasingly relevant. Rather than investing in targeted investigative work, the Council clings to a dying surveillance model.
• Evidence — unreliability: A recent international research paper documents the structural weaknesses of the industry standard PhotoDNA. The software is unreliable: criminals can make illegal images invisible through minimal alterations (e.g. adding a border), while innocent citizens can easily be falsely flagged. In a November 2025 open letter, leading IT researchers (including from the universities of Aarhus, Leuven, and ETH Zurich) warned: “False positives seem unavoidable.” According to an open letter by a coalition of more than 40 civil liberties organisations and professional associations (including Europe’s leading digital rights groups), the Commission’s own evaluation report confirms the measure’s failure: the US algorithms deployed show error rates of 13 to 20 percent. Of the billions of messages scanned, only 0.0000027 percent were actually illegal material.

Disinformation 4: “The call for Chat Control comes primarily from victims and civil society.”
(Suggested by the ECLAG campaign)

• Fact: Actual survivors are taking legal action against Chat Control. The real driving force behind the campaign is a network of tech companies and lobby organisations funded by governments and non-European foundations.
• Evidence — survivors speak out: Survivors of sexualised violence are fighting back. Alexander Hanff, a survivor and privacy advocate, writes: “As a survivor, I depend on confidential communication to find support and report crimes. Taking away our right to privacy means further harming us.” Dorothée Hahne of the survivors’ association MOGIS e.V. warns: “We see our safe spaces destroyed.” To preserve safe spaces for victims, a survivor from Bavaria is currently suing with the support of the Society for Civil Rights (GFF) against Meta’s scanning of his chats. The civil society coalition also warns that indiscriminate scanning dangerously undermines professional confidentiality for lawyers, doctors, and therapists.
• Evidence — lobbying: Who truly benefits from this legislation was exposed in an investigative report by Balkan Insight. The US organisation Thorn, which sells scanning software to public authorities, invests hundreds of thousands of euros annually in EU lobbying. ECLAG members are supported by tech corporations and the non-European Oak Foundation.

The Alternative to Surveillance Overreach: “Security by Design”

The European Parliament advocates a genuine paradigm shift, supported by civil society, survivor networks, and IT security experts: instead of indiscriminate mass surveillance of private communications using error-prone US algorithms, chat and messaging services should be “Secure by Design.” This includes:

1. Strict default settings and protective mechanisms (Security by Design) to make cybergrooming technically harder from the outset and prevent the creation of CSAM.
2. Targeted telecommunications surveillance based on judicially confirmed suspicion.
3. Proactive search by a new EU Center and immediate takedown obligations for providers and law enforcement on the open internet and darknet — removing illegal material at source.

Call to Action

Civil liberties advocates are urging citizens across Europe to contact their MEPs directly ahead of the decisive votes on Wednesday and Thursday. Through the campaign page fightchatcontrol.eu, MEPs can be called upon to reject the undemocratic motion for a repeat vote and to uphold the fundamental right to confidential correspondence.

Breyer warns:

“When a democratic decision is put to a vote repeatedly until the desired outcome is achieved, Parliament itself is devalued. This approach sets a dangerous precedent. It undermines the reliability of democratic processes and sends the signal that majorities only count when they are politically convenient. The responsible actors are damaging not only trust in the European institutions, but the very foundations of democracy.”

On Tuesday, EU governments will strategise in a restricted format and behind closed doors on the issue.

Citizens can contact their representatives via: fightchatcontrol.eu

patrick-breyer.de/en/the-battl…

Patrick Breyer

2026-03-10 14:34:07

🇪🇺 1/7 🌍 Foreign-funded lobby groups from outside the EU are pushing #ChatControl with misleading propaganda. They want to #PassTheLaw to scan your chats, but who are they and who's paying them? Let's expose the network.
Thread 👇

The Z80 has been gone a couple of years now, but it’s very much not forgotten. Still, the day when new-old-stock and salvaged DIP-40 packaged Z80s will be hard to come by is slowly approaching, and [eaw] is going to be ready with the picoZ80 project.

You can probably guess where this is going: an RP2350B on a DIP-40 sized PCB can easily sit on the bus and emulate a Z80. It can do so with only one core, without breaking a sweat. That left [eaw] a second core to play with, allowing the picoZ80 to act as a heck of an accelerator, memory expander, USB host, disk emulator– you name it. He even tossed in an ESP32 co-processor to act as a WiFi, Bluetooth, and SD-card controller to use as a virtual, wirelessly accessible disk drive.

The onboard ram that comes with an RP2350B would be generous by 1980s standards, but [eaw] bumped that up with an 8 MB SPRAM chip–accessed in 64 pages of 64 kB each, naturally. If more RAM than a very pricey hard drive wasn’t luxury enough, there’s also 16 MB of flash memory available. That’s configured to store ROM images that are transferred to the RAM at boot– the virtual Z80 isn’t grabbing from the flash at runtime in [eaw]’s architecture, because apparently there are limits to how much he wants to boost his retro machines.

[eaw] has the PCB fab do all the fiddly assembly these days. Earlier versions were hand-soldered to his credit.There are already drivers to use in certain Z80 systems. You can of course configure it as a bare Z80 with no machine-specific emulation, or set up the picoZ80 with the “persona” of a classic Z80 machine. So far [eaw] has tried this on an RC2014 homebrew computer, as well as Sharp MZ-80A– which we’ve seen here before, in miniature–and Sharp MZ-700. The Sharp drivers are still works in progress, after which the Amstrad PCW8256/Tatung TC01 is apparently next. We’ve seen Amstrad PCWs here a time or two as well, come to think of it.

If somehow you missed it, the venerable Z80 only hit EOL in 2024, so supplies won’t be drying up any time soon. This hack is really more about the quality-of-life addons this allows. Come back in a decade, and we’ll see if the RP2350 lasts longer than the stack of NOS Z80s.

hackaday.com/2026/03/23/picoz8…

We don’t usually speculate on the true identity of the hackers behind these projects, but when [TN666]’s accoustic drone-detector crossed our desk with the name “Batear”, we couldn’t help but wonder– is that you, Bruce? On the other hand, with a BOM consisting entirely of one ESP32-S3 and an ICS-43434 I2S microphone, this isn’t exactly going to require the Wayne fortune to pull off. Indeed, [TN666] estimates a project cost of only 15 USD, which really democratizes drone detection.
It’s not a tuba– Imperial Japanese aircraft detector being demonstrated in 1932. Image Public Domain via rarehistoricalphotos.com
The key is what you might call ‘retrovation’– innovation by looking backwards. Most drone detection schema are looking to the ways we search for larger aircraft, and use RADAR. Before RADAR there were acoustic detectors, like the famous Japanese “war tubas” that went viral many years ago. RADAR modules aren’t cheap, but MEMS microphones are– and drones, especially quad-copters, aren’t exactly quiet. [TN666] thus made the choice to use acoustic detection in order to democratize drone detection.

Of course that’s not much good if the ESP32 is phoning home to some Azure or AWS server to get the acoustic data processed by some giant machine learning model. That would be the easy thing to do with an ESP32, but if you’re under drone attack or surveillance it’s not likely you want to rely on the cloud. There are always privacy concerns with using other people’s hardware, too. [TN666] again reached backwards to a more traditional algorithmic approach– specifically Goertzel filters to detect the acoustic frequencies used by drones. For analyzing specific frequency buckets, the Goertzel algorithm is as light as they come– which means everything can run local on the ESP32. They call that “edge computing” these days, but we just call it common sense.

The downside is that, since we’re just listening at specific frequencies, environmental noise can be an issue. Calibration for a given environment is suggested, as is a foam sock on the microphone to avoid false positives due to wind noise. It occurs to us the sort physical amplifier used in those ‘war tubas’ would both shelter the microphone from wind, as well as increase range and directionality.

[TN] does intend to explore machine learning models for this hardware as well; he seems to think that an ESP32-NN or small TensorFlow Lite model might outdo the Goertzel algorithm. He might be onto something, but we’re cheering for Goertzel on that one, simply on the basis that it’s a more elegant solution, one we’ve dived into before. It even works on the ATtiny85, which isn’t something you can say about even the lightest TensorFlow model.

Thanks to [TN] for the tip. Playboy billionaire or not, you can send your projects into the tips line to see them some bat-time on this bat-channel.

hackaday.com/2026/03/23/acoust…

Graphics calculators are one of those strange technological cul-de-sacs. They rely on outdated technology and should not be nearly as expensive as they are, but market effects somehow keep prices well over $100 to this day. Given that fact, you might like to check out an open-source solution instead.

NumOS comes to us from [El-EnderJ]. It’s a scientific and graphic calculator system built to run on the ESP32-S3 with an ILI9341 screen. It’s intended to rival calculators like the Casio fx-991EX ClassWiz and the TI-84 Plus CE in terms of functionality. To that end, it has a full computer algebra system and a custom math engine to do all the heavy lifting a graphic calculator is expected to do, like symbolic differentiation and integration. It also has a Natural V.P.A.M-like display—if you’re unfamiliar with Casio’s terminology, it basically means things like fractions and integrals are rendered as you’d write them on paper rather than in uglier simplified symbology.

If you’ve ever wanted a graphics calculator that you could really tinker with down to the nuts and bolts, this is probably a great place to start. With that said, don’t expect your local school or university to let you take this thing into an exam hall. They’re pretty strict on that kind of thing these days.

We’ve seen some neat hacks on graphics calculators before, like this TI-83 running CircuitPython. If you’re doing your own magic with these mathematical machines, don’t hesitate to notify the tips line.

hackaday.com/2026/03/23/build-…

If you’ve ever run a game server or used BitTorrent, you probably know that life is easier if your router supports UPnP (Universal Plug and Play). This is a fairly old tech — created by a standards group in 1999 — that allows a program to open an incoming port into your home network. Of course, most routers let you do this manually, but outside of the Hackaday universe, most people don’t know how to log into their routers, much less how to configure an open UDP port.

I recently found myself using a temporary setup where I could not access the router directly, but I needed some open ports. That got me thinking: if a program can open a port using UPnP, why can’t I? Turns out, of course, you can. Maybe.

Caveats

The first thing, of course, is that you need your firewall open, but that’s true no matter how you open up the router. If the firewall is in the router, then you are at the mercy of the router firmware to realize that if UPnP opens something up, it needs to open the firewall, too.

You might think, “Of course it will do that.” However, I’ve found there is a lot of variation in the firmware from different vendors, and if you aren’t in control of the router, it is more likely to have buggy firmware.

The other caveat is that the router needs UPnP enabled; if it isn’t and you have to get into it anyway, you might as well set up port forwarding in the usual way. I was in luck. The router I was behind had UPnP turned on.

In Theory

There are several libraries aimed at working with UPnP and many of them come with simple test clients. I decided to install miniupnpd, which has the upnpc utility. You don’t have to be root to run it. In theory, it should be very simple to use. You can use -l to list all the router’s current UPnP ports. The -a option adds a port, and -d deletes it. There are a few other options, but that covers most of the common use cases.

So, to open external port 2222 to port 22 on 192.168.1.133 you should be able to say:
upnpc -e 'HaD Test' -a 192.168.1.133 22 2222 tcp 3600
The -e option lets us make up a creative title for the mapping. The 3600 is the number of seconds you need the port open. Easy, right? Well, of course not.

Under the Hood

UPnP covers several different areas, including IP assignment and streaming media. However, the part of it we are using is for NAT traversal. Your router identifies as an Internet Gateway Device that other UPnP-aware programs can locate.

Unfortunately, there are two versions of the gateway device specification, and there are many compatibility problems. You are also at the mercy of the vendor’s correct interpretation of the spec.

UPNP has been known to be a security risk. In 2011, a tool appeared that let some UPnP devices map ports when asked from outside your network. Easy to imagine how that could be a bad thing.

UPNP devices advertise services that others can use, and, hopefully, your router advertises that it is a gateway. The advertisement itself doesn’t tell you much. But it does let you fetch an XML document that describes the device.

For example, part of my XML file looks like this:
11urn:schemas-upnp-org:device:InternetGatewayDevice:1OpenWRT routerOpenWRT
openwrt.org/OpenWRT routerOpenWRT router1
openwrt.org/00000000uuid:00000…
urn:schemas-upnp-org:service:Layer3Forwarding:
1urn:upnp-org:serviceId:L3Forwarding1/L3F.xml/ctl/L3F/evt/L3Furn:
schemas-upnp-org:device:WANDevice:1WANDeviceMiniUPnPhttp://miniupnp.free.fr/WAN DeviceWAN Device20260105
...

In Practice

There are a few strange things about the way upnpc works. First, when you do a list, you’ll get an error at the end. Apparently, that’s normal. The program simply asks for entry zero, one, two… until it gets an error (a 713 error).

However, when I tried to add an open port to this particular router, it always failed, giving me an error that implied that the port was already in use. Of course, it wasn’t.

Through experimentation, I figured out that the UPnP service on the router (the one I can’t get into) isn’t running as root. So any port number less than 1,024 is unmappable in either direction. Of course, this may not be a problem for you if you have a sane router. You could argue whether this is a bug or not, but it certainly didn’t give a good error message.

Testing, One, Two…

Just to do a simple test, I issued the following command. (with my firewall off, just for testing):
upnpc -e HADTEST -a 192.168.1.133 8022 8023 tcp 3600
I verified the port opening using the -l option. Then I stood up a really dumb telnet-style server on the local port (8022):

socat readline TCP-LISTEN:8022,reuseaddr,fork

From a machine on another network, I issued a telnet command to my public IP (198.37.197.21):
telnet 198.37.197.21 8023
Of course, I could have used 8022 for both ports, but I wanted it to be clear which argument was which. At this point, typing some things on the remote machine should show right up on the local machine, punching through the firewall.

In case you forgot, you can escape out of Telnet using Control-] and then a “q” will close the program. You can also just terminate the socat program on the local side.

More Than One Way

It is a bummer I couldn’t open up an ssh port using this method, although you can run sshd on a high port and get there that way. But it is better than nothing. Better still would have been to replace the router, but that wasn’t an option in this case.

There are other tools out there if you are interested. NAT-PMP is easy to use from Python, for example. There’s also something called PCP (not the performance co-pilot, which is something else). Many routers don’t support either of these, and we hear that implementations are often buggy, just like UPnP.

For the record, NAT-PMP didn’t give me a better error message, either. So the moral is this: if you can, just punch a hole in your router the old-fashioned way. But if you can’t. Linux almost always gives you another option.

hackaday.com/2026/03/23/linux-…

A switch is simple: connect two pieces of metal together and bam! Except, it’s not that simple at high currents. How much current? Just about 400 car batteries worth would certainly cause some issues. This is the issue that [Technology Hobby] hoped to fix with his clever switch design.

While many content creators are great at finding or making high-current sources (looking at you, Styropyro), their switches can’t always hold up to the abuse. [Technology Hobby] found that many of the switches used by these creators had issues based on an inconsistent and limited contact area. Making a bigger contact patch is always fairly easy; keeping those contacts from skipping can be a bit more difficult.

[Technology Hobby] found success in making a V-shaped channel formed from separated contacts where a matching contact would bridge the gap between, completing the circuit. The construction of the high-current switch was simply done with a 3D printed frame filled with concrete for stiffness.

There’s a lot of fun with high current, but sometimes you need something more practical. For those needing some practical current supply, check out this retro-modern power supply!

youtube.com/embed/JeQpYYZf-d4?…

hackaday.com/2026/03/23/a-simp…

In the early days of aviation, pilots or their navigators used a plethora of tools to solve common navigation and piloting problems. There was definitely a need for some kind of computing aid that could replace slide rules, tables, and tedious dead-reckoning computations. This would become even more important during World War II, when there was a massive push to quickly train young men to be pilots.
The same, but different. A Pickett slide rule (top) and an E6B slide rule (bottom). (Own Work).
Today, we’d whip up some sort of computer device, but in the 1930s, computers weren’t anything you’d cram on a plane, even if they’d had any. For example, the Mark 1 Fire Control Computer during WW2 was 3,000 pounds of gears and motors.

The computer is made to answer flight questions like “how many pounds of fuel do I need for another hour of flying time?” or “How do I adjust my course if I have a particular crosswind?”

History

There were a rash of flight computers starting in the 1920s that were essentially specialized slide rules. The most popular one appeared in the late 1930s. Philip Dalton’s circular slide rule was cheap to produce and easy to use. As you’ll see, it is more than just an ordinary slide rule. Keep in mind, these were not computers in the sense we think of today. They were simple slide rules that easily did specialized math useful to pilots.

Dalton actually developed a number of computers. The popular Model B appeared in 1933, and there were refinements leading to additional models. The Mark VII was very popular. Even Fred Noonan, Amelia Earhart’s navigator, used a Mark VII.
A metal E6B (public domain).
Dalton thought the Mark VII was clunky and developed a way to do vector calculations using an endless belt inside the computer. This proved to expensive to make, so he created a flat wind computer and put, essentially, the Model B on the other side. While he called this the Model H, the Army called it the E6A.

In 1938, the Army Air Corps asked for a few minor changes and adopted the computer as the E6B, although pilots often call it the “whiz wheel” or the “Dalton Dead Reckoning Computer.” Oddly enough, some pilots still swear by the E6B, and flight schools sometimes make you learn them because they help you develop a feel for the math you don’t get with a calculator.

Sadly, Dalton died in a plane crash with a student pilot in 1941. P.V.H. Weems, a well-known navigator and Fred Noonan’s mentor, carried on the work of improving the E6B.

Besides, they are almost a perfect backup computer. Small, light, cheap, not prone to breaking, and they need no power. Some are made of cardboard, some of metal, and others of plastic. Wartime E6Bs were on a plastic that glowed under cockpit illumination. Later, there would be electronic or software E6Bs (see the video below), but a real whiz wheel is something you can hold in your hand, and you never have to change the battery.

youtube.com/embed/tAsOhbjDp7U?…

Not Just a Slide Rule

The front of the E6B is, essentially, a circular slide rule. What makes it unique, though, is that it has special scales and markings to deal with conversions of things like nautical miles or knots. Even the arrangement of the scales work to make a pilot’s life easier.

For example, the top of the wheel is a big mark that represents 60. Why? Because there are 60 minutes in an hour, and this makes it easy to compute things like pounds of fuel per hour.

It also lets you convert things like knots to nautical miles easily because the conversion factors are marked already.

If you know how to use a slide rule, you are almost immediately proficient on the front side of an E6B. Note that the sliding part of the computer is all about the wind computer (see below). All the calculation parts are just on the wheel, like a traditional circular slide rule.

The Back Side

The back side is a graphical vector solver for wind problems. You essentially use it to plot a wind triangle. You set the wind vector, the aircraft velocity vector, and you can read off the ground track. By moving things around, you can find your groundspeed, your wind correction angle, or your heading.On some E6Bs, you have to flip the slide to do low-speed or high-speed wind problems.

For an example wind problem, consider if you have wind at 200 degrees at 10 knots. Your true course is 150 degrees, and your true air speed is 130 knots. You would like to compute your ground speed, your true heading, and the wind correction angle.

One reason that the E6B remains useful for training is that it helps you develop intuition that is hard to get from a bunch of numbers on a calculator’s LEDs. You get a feel for how much wind will deflect your track 10 degrees, for example.

You can also use the E6B in reverse. If your groundspeed isn’t what you expect, you might set up the problem to put in your true parameters and solve for what the wind must be to make that result correct.

Sure, with GPS, you probably don’t need to figure out whether you have enough fuel to make it to another airport. But without GPS and a real computer, the E6B can do those things just fine.

Learning the E6B

If you actually want to learn how to use the E6B, we suggest watching a YouTube video. There are some short videos, and at least one that has 14 different videos. The good news is that the E6B hasn’t changed in many years, so any video you find should be just fine.

We like [Aviation Theory’s] two videos, which are worth watching (see part 1, below).

youtube.com/embed/FxkM-z-6b5k?…

If you want to follow along and don’t have an E6B, you can try one virtually in your browser. Or, pick one up. The cardboard ones are fairly inexpensive and widely available.

The Legacy of the E6B

While the E6B isn’t the essential kit it once was, it is still a valuable aid for pilots. It is also a great example of how to turn an ordinary slide rule into something specialized.

We have a feeling Gene Roddenberry, an avid pilot, was very familiar with the E6B. He even thought they’d still use them in the 23rd century, as you can see in the video clip below.

youtube.com/embed/V1nKBrkPUeA?…

You can also catch a glimpse of these in old US Army Air Corps films like the one below (about the 14-minute mark), although we couldn’t find any training specifically for the E6-B that survived.

youtube.com/embed/tEjJIhDanEY?…

If you like old analog computers, read [Nicola Marras’] book. Maybe Spock would have preferred a Star Trekulator.

[Featured image: “E6b-slide-rule” by [Duke]

hackaday.com/2026/03/23/the-ze…

SUPPORTED BY

IT'S MONDAY, AND THIS IS DIGITAL POLITICS. I'm Mark Scott, and I'm not sure about you, but the concept of putting data centers in space — outlined by Elon Musk over the weekend via his so-called 'Terafab' project — doesn't feel like a top priority with all that's going on in the world.

— Europeans want to wean themselves off US tech. Many just don't think it's a realistic option, according to polling from YouGov.

— Social media is awash with AI-generated content about the US/Israeli-Iran conflict. Companies need to do better at flagging and removing these posts.

— About 20 percent of Americans have yet to make up their mind about how data centers will affect their daily lives.

Let's get started:

THE UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTH FOR EUROPE'S DIGITAL SOVEREIGNTY AMBITIONS

THERE'S A NEW VIBE TAKING SHAPE IN MANY European capitals when it comes to digital sovereignty. Once it was mostly French officials that spoke of decoupling from the likes of Amazon and Google. Now, policymakers and politicians in other European Union countries openly talk about paring back dependencies on companies that are perceived (rightly or wrongly) to be leaning too much into current United States foreign policy.

That comes in the form of national governments, like the Netherland's newly-formed coalition, seeking to replace services from Silicon Valley with those from European/national competitors. It comes in the form of billions of dollars of EU taxpayers' money earmarked for Continent-wide AI infrastructure to boost economic growth — albeit almost all of this hardware is powered by US-designed chips. It comes in the form of nascent projects like the Eurosky social media network, whose tagline is "Hosted in Europe, governed in Europe."

Taken together, it represents a hardening of political resolve (though mostly in Western European countries) at a time of deteriorating transatlantic relations, an increase in geopolitical competition around artificial intelligence, and unanswered questions about who should ultimately control the digital services upon which we all now rely.

Yet is such policymaking chatter matched by what the average European believes? That's a fundamental question that often goes unanswered. So I teamed up again with YouGov, the polling company, to find out.

**A message from Meta** On 24 March, Meta, with eco and EssilorLuxottica as supporting partners, will host The Brussels AI Symposium featuring European Parliament President Roberta Metsola, US Ambassador to the European Union Andrew Puzder and some of Europe’s foremost innovators. Does Europe have what it takes to seize the AI opportunity? Learn more here. **

In early March, the firm ran a series of digital sovereignty questions across the EU's largest countries, by population. That includes Spain, Germany, France, Italy, and Poland, respectively. The survey covered just over 1,000 respondents per jurisdiction. The questions focused on 1) Which digital services these individuals currently used, and where these companies were headquartered; 2) Whether people had considered switching from US to European options; 3) If respondents thought it would be a good idea to shift toward EU alternatives; and 4) Was such a "rip-and-replace" strategy realistic?

I come bearing both good news and bad news — for either side of the digital sovereignty debate.

Let's start off with the current vibe among Europe's largest countries.

Overall, roughly 62 percent of those surveyed said it was a good idea for both European governments and businesses to replace US data storage, video conferencing and digital payment systems with those headquartered in the 27-country bloc. (See chart below). Italy had the highest level of support (67 percent), followed by Germany (65 percent); Spain (64 percent); and France (58 percent).

One point of caution. There was a significant difference between the four Western European countries and Poland. In the Eastern European country, only 49 percent of respondents said it was a good idea — highlighting a reticence to give up American tech services in a country whose population remains more aligned with the US compared to other EU countries. Interestingly, though, 38 percent of Poles responded "don't know" to YouGov's question. That means a sizable minority had yet to make up their mind (or weren't clued up on the issue to pass judgement.)

Source: YouGov European Political Monthly Survey

So that's the case for the prosecution. A significant percent of citizens in Europe's largest countries, by population, support digital policymaking to replace American tech with European alternatives. Job done. Case closed.

And yet.

Thanks for reading Digital Politics. If you've been forwarded this newsletter (and like what you've read), please sign up here. For those already subscribed, reach out on digitalpolitics@protonmail.com

YouGov then asked a follow-up question: how realistic was it for European governments and businesses to replace US digital services with those from Europe? This goes directly to the vibe question. People may want greater digital sovereignty. But do they think it's achievable?

That's where the pendulum shifted away from Europe's more muscular policymaking. Overall, 41 percent of respondents across all 5 countries said it would not be realistic to go "full European" when it came to digital services. That compared with 40 percent of people who said it was realistic, and a further 19 percent of poll respondents who didn't know.

Again, the country-by-country differences (see chart below) were illustrative. In Germany, Europe's largest economy, skepticism about replacing US tech ran at 51 percent. In France and Poland, that figure fell to 32 percent, respectively, while over 40 percent of respondents in each country said it would be realistic to shift from American providers to those from the bloc.

Source: YouGov European Political Monthly Survey

This skepticism — in which 41 percent of those surveyed said they didn't believe a digital replacement strategy for US tech was realistic — should raise red flags for EU leaders now openly calling for such a move. Yes, 40 percent of respondents said this US-to-Europe tech shift was possible. But when the majority (albeit only just) don't think it's achievable, you run into a perception gap that needs to be filled before pushing ahead with a potentially generational change in the types of digital services across the Continent.

Another point was important via YouGov's polling. Roughly a quarter of people in all five countries didn't know whether it was a good idea or realistic to change from US to European services. That represented a significant education gap between policymakers and citizens, about 25 percent of which were not sufficiently aware of the issues to make a judgement via the Continent-wide survey.

Let's give an example of why this is a problem.

France currently wants to replaceUS videoconferencing services like Zoom and Microsoft's Teams with local alternatives by 2027, in part for digital sovereignty reasons. Yet when asked about this policy via YouGov's survey, 89 percent of French respondents had heard little or nothing about the proposals. That's a failure on the part of Paris to communicate about why it was pursuing a "Made in France" strategy with a population, at least on paper, open to shifting toward more European tech services.

This "I don't know" minority is where the real battle around digital sovereignty resides. Yes, the most digital-literate citizens (some of whom, I'm presuming, are reading this newsletter) already know which side of the debate they are on. Those positions are entrenched. Yet the one-in-four Europeans who have yet to make up their mind are likely open to persuasion — either for/against a shift away from US tech.

That represents a policy communication challenge for European lawmakers, as well as US/EU tech firms seeking to peddle their wares across the Continent. Whoever can convince the 25 percent of the 27-country bloc's citizens that it's a good or bad idea to reduce the Continent's current dependence on US tech will likely carry the day in the battle around digital sovereignty.

Chart of the Week

IN CASE YOU HAD MISSED IT, there's a data center boom underway across the US. As tech giants vie for AI dominance, they are building out this energy-hungry infrastructure faster than you can say 'large language model.'

But a significant percentage of Americans have yet to make up their mind if these data centers are good for them, the economy, and the environment, respectively.

Across five areas that the Pew Research Center polled earlier this year, around one-in-five Americans were not sure on the impact of this fast-growing AI-enabling infrastructure.
Source: Pew Research Center

AI SLOP AND THE FOG OF WAR

ON THE EVE OF THE TWO-YEAR ANNIVERSARY of Hamas militants attacking Israel in 2023, I wrote this about how social media companies were not doing enough to protect users from war-related content, propaganda and illegal content. That was as true for the Israeli-Hamas conflict as it was for the more than 60 other active state-based war zones worldwide.

Fast forward five months, and this problem has been turned up to 11 in the ongoing Middle East conflict. AI-generated videos and images — either depicting attacks against Iran, Israel or other parts of the Middle East — are rife on the likes of X, Facebook, and Instagram. Some of this AI-powered content comes from official government sources (including from the White House's social media accounts.) Other material is created by click-bait merchants seeking to monetize people's views via online advertising.

But beyond why people are posting such AI-generated material, the key question is how social media giants — all of which are using their own large language models to oversee what is posted on these global networks — are failing to catch what is now an avalanche of AI slop directed at the ongoing war in the Middle East.

This was not how it was supposed to be.

**A message from Meta** On 24 March, Meta with eco — the Association of the Internet Industry — and EssilorLuxottica as supporting partners, will host The Brussels AI Symposium.

The event will feature European Parliament President Roberta Metsola, Andrew Puzder,US Ambassador to the European Union and leading European innovators to discuss what it takes for Europe to seize the AI opportunity. The Symposium serves as a critical conversation about how Europe can foster innovation and build on its strengths. Learn more about the event here.

Two years ago, many of these tech firms committed themselves to (albeit voluntary) standards known as the AI Election Accords. Yes, these pledges were linked to that year's election-palooza worldwide. But companies from X and OpenAI to Anthropic to Google said they would develop/implement tech to "mitigate risks" related to deceptive AI election content; find and address such content on their platforms; and provide greater transparency to the public about how they went about those efforts.

A lot has changed between 2024 and 2026. These (again, voluntary) commitments were also specifically drafted around elections, not conflicts. But the pledges should be taken as a benchmark for company commitments to combat AI-generated harmful content — be that related to how people vote or how state-based conflicts play out worldwide.

On those markers, the companies are failing.

There are multiple reasons why, and it's not all down to a failure of social media giants to effectively police their networks.

The ability to produce lifelike AI slop is a lot better, in March 2026, than it was in February, 2024 when the AI Election Accords were signed. The use of such techniques by state-based actors also complicates responses for companies seeking to navigate the increasingly complex geopolitical world of digital policymaking. The sheer volume of AI-powered posts — which, collectively, have garnered hundreds of millions of views across all platforms related to the most-recent Middle East conflict — makes any comprehensive response a mere whack-a-mole operation.

But it's also true that tech firms are not doing enough.

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After AI-generated fake conflict videos went viral on X, for instance, the company said it would suspend any account involved in such dissemination from its creator revenue sharing program for 90 days. "This will be flagged to us by any post with a Community Note or if the content contains meta data (or other signals) from generative AI tools," Nikita Bier, the company's head of product, wrote on X. That's a slap on the wrist for content that, at its worst, can foment sectarianism and offline attacks in what is already an incredibly hostile environment.

Then there's Meta. On March 10, the Oversight Board, or group of outside experts (which, to be clear, is funded by the tech giant) posted recommendations on how the company should handle "deceptive AI during conflicts." The suggestions — which, under the Oversight Board structure, are only voluntary — were linked to a binding ruling on Meta related to an AI-generated post during last summer's 12-day conflict between Israel and Iran.

Back story on that ruling: a video posted on Facebook depicted significant damage to an Israeli city. It garnered more than 700,000 views despite a fact-checking organization debunking the content (via an identical post on TikTok) as AI-generated. Several Facebook users appealed to Meta for the post to be removed. The company, however, said the content didn't violate its policies, and it didn't require a label saying the video was AI generated.

The Oversight Board said this month that the decision was wrong.Meta said it would comply with that ruling (but only on that individual post, per the outside group's mandate) within 7 days.

"Social media platforms need to provide automated, technical and human-led solutions to limit harmful impacts of AI content intended to deceive, while upholding people’s freedom of expression," said the Oversight Board. Its recommendations included: 1) improved standards for determining how all online content was created; 2) new tools to detect AI-generated material; 3) greater human content moderation, including the use of outside fact-checkers and internal trust and safety teams.

At a time of corporate retrenchment from such activities (and not just from Meta), such recommendations will likely fall on deaf ears. Conflict-driven AI slop will continue to go viral — even as social media giants try, often with reduced resources, to combat it.

As the Middle East conflict rages on, social media increasingly is not a trusted place to understand what is going on in the world (editor's note: for that, read newspapers.) People are confused about what they see online. They often can not legitimately tell the difference between what is real and what is imagined. Without a significant rethink of how that trust can be rebuilt, the utility of social media as a source for news (more than 50 percent of Americans still use it for that purpose) is now in question.

What I'm reading:

— If you're wondering about my sponsorship policy, please check out my advertising ethics statement here. Get in touch on digitalpolitics@protonmail.com if you have questions.

— Courtney Radsch explains the political pressures coming from the White House on Europe's attempts to implement its online safety regime. More here.

— The European Democracy Shield centralizes control, maintains officials' gatekeeping powers and institutionalizes a top-down approach to media literacy, according to Paul McCarthy for the Heritage Foundation.

— The level of democracy across Western Europe and North America is at its lowest level in over 50 years, primarily due to autocratic tendencies in the US, based on an annual survey from Varieties of Democracy.

— The Christchurch Call Foundation published results of a survey into how best to study social media algorithms and the dissemination of terrorist and violent extremist content. More here.

— As the United Kingdom mulls a potential kids social media ban, the country's online safety regulator reminded tech firms of their obligations to keep children under 13-years-old off their platforms. More here.

digitalpolitics.co/newsletter0…

SUPPORTED BY

IT'S MONDAY, AND THIS IS DIGITAL POLITICS. I'm Mark Scott, and I'm not sure about you, but the concept of putting data centers in space — outlined by Elon Musk over the weekend via his so-called 'Terafab' project —doesn't feel like a top priority with all that's going on in the world.

— Europeans want to wean themselves off US tech. Many just don't think it's a realistic option, according to polling from YouGov.

— Social media is awash with AI-generated content about the US/Israeli-Iran conflict. Companies need to do better at flagging and removing these posts.

— About 20 percent of Americans have yet to make up their mind about how data centers will affect their daily lives.

Let's get started:

digitalpolitics.co/newsletter0…

Stream decks are pretty useful in all kinds of contexts, but commercial models can feel a bit pricy for what is effectively a bunch of buttons. [WhiskeyTangoHotel] has whipped up one of their own on the cheap using some readily available parts.

The build came about due to the use of Stream Decks as a common way to control the Flex-6400 software-defined radio. [WhiskeyTangoHotel] figured that using a full-priced Elgato Stream Deck was overkill for this purpose, and that a cheaper interface could be put together for less. Enter the Cheap Yellow Display—a combination of the ESP32 microcontroller with a 2.8-inch touchscreen LCD. It was simple enough to code the device such that it had four big touch buttons to control RIT-, RIT+, XIT-, and XIT+ on the Flex-6400. Plus, with the ESP32 having WiFi onboard, it’s able to control the radio wirelessly—you just need to feed the unit 5 volts, and you’re up and running.

[WhiskeyTangoHotel] set this unit up specifically to control a radio, but you don’t have to feel limited in that regard. The ESP32 is flexible enough that you could have it control just about anything with a bit of different code. We’ve featured more flexible designs along these lines before! Video after the break.

youtube.com/embed/L_q7cIw0ddQ?…

hackaday.com/2026/03/23/stream…