Recently the Practical Engineering YouTube channel featured a functional recreation of a pump design that is presumed by some to have been used to pump water up to the medieval Alhambra palace and its fortress, located in what is today Spain. This so-called pulser pump design is notable for not featuring any moving parts, but the water pump was just one of many fascinating engineering achievements that made the Alhambra a truly unique place before the ravages of time had their way with it.

Although the engineering works were said to still have been functional in the 18th century, this pumping system and many other elements that existed at the peak of its existence had already vanished by the 19th century for a number of reasons. During this century a Spanish engineering professor, Cáceres, tried to reconstruct the mechanism as best as he could based on the left-over descriptions, but sadly we’ll likely never know for certain that it is what existed there.

Similarly, the speculated time-based fountain in the Court of the Lions and other elements are now forever lost to time, but we have plenty of theories on how all of this worked in a pre-industrial era.

Alhambra

Evening panorama of Alhambra from Mirador de San Nicolás, Granada, Spain. (Credit: Slaunger, Wikimedia)
A UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1984, the Alhambra saw its first construction in 1238 CE by Muhammad I, the first Nasrid emir. The Nasrid dynasty would last from 1238 to 1491 CE when the Muslim state of al-Andalus fell during the Christian Reconquista.

Even after the end of the Nasrid dynasty would the Alhambra see further construction by Charles V in the 16th century. This made the Alhambra a rather unique amalgamation of Islamic and Renaissance-era architecture and engineering. Sadly by the 18th century the structure had been abandoned for centuries, invaded by squatters, and partially destroyed by the troops of Napoleon in 1812.

Only after these troubled times did an appreciation for such cultural heritage begin to flourish, with European and American tourists alike frequenting the area. One of them – US author Washington Irving – was so inspired by his visit in 1828 that he’d end up writing Tales of the Alhambra, containing many myths, stories, sketches, and essays pertaining to the site. This book in particular was instrumental in making an international audience aware of this site and its legacy.

This renewed attention resulted in the site becoming recognized first as a Spanish Cultural Heritage monument in 1870 and subsequently by UNESCO more than a century later.

Water Features

Most fortresses of the era relied primarily on water cisterns that collected rainwater, as well as access to local rivers in some form, usually requiring human or animal labor to transport the latter. This was also how the Alhambra started in its initial fortress form, called the Alcazaba, meaning ‘citadel’ in Spanish, from Arabic al-qaṣabah. The water from this cistern didn’t just supply drinking water, but also for the bathhouse (hammam) and water elements like a pool or fountain for houses in the interior urban area. These houses additionally featured latrines that were flushed using this cistern water.

As the Alhambra expanded, with many palaces and related structures added, its water requirements increased correspondingly. Rather than some small decorative water features for a dozen houses and a communal bath, there were now reflective pools, fountains and a much larger population. This necessitated finding more efficient ways to get more water up the hill on which the Alhambra was constructed.
Aqueduct of the Alhambra as it enters the wall. (Credit: Sharon Mollerus, Wikimedia)
In addition to the aforementioned pump, there was also an aqueduct (the Acequia Real) that carried water from the Darro River. At a distance of 6.1 km from the fortress the river is at a sufficiently high elevation to provide water using just gravity. This aqueduct additionally provided water via additional branches to gardens and settlements beyond the Alhambra’s walls.

Many details can be found in this 2019 summary of applied hydraulic techniques at al-Andalus fortresses by Luis José García-Pulido and Sara Peñalver Martín.

As noted in that overview article, the reason for the Alhambra being significantly more advanced than other fortresses in the al-Andalus region was that it was the seat of the Nasrid dynasty, ergo it was only natural that it’d not only get all the palaces and comforts, but also the most advanced technologies for supplying water.

Unfortunately the unique pumping device that was used to supply the Alcazaba with water from the aqueduct was replaced in the 18th century with a more basic syphon system and the original device was removed. Up till that point the previous device had continued to work, despite the new owners of the Alhambra not understanding its operating principles. This left 19th century researchers like Cáceres to essentially fully rely on notes made during the previous century.

That said, there are also hints that the Alcazaba of the Antequera fortress used a similar device to pump water uphill, featuring ceramic pipes and other features that are described in by Sancho de Toledo in 1545. Unfortunately these accounts were all written by people who lacked the engineering know-how of the original Nasrid engineers – or any engineering knowledge at all – and thus had no understanding of the workings of these pumps.

This means that we will unfortunately never know exactly what this device looked like or how it worked, but we can still look at some mechanisms which we are familiar with today that could have been used. The concept of the hydraulic ram or pulser pump would seem to come closest compared to what little we do know.

Self-Powered Pumps

1) Inlet – drive pipe; 2) Free flow at waste valve; 3) Outlet – delivery pipe; 4) Waste valve; 5) Delivery check valve; 6) Pressure vessel (Source: Wikimedia)
Unlike a water pump that uses e.g. an impeller to impart kinetic energy and thus move the liquid, a self-powered pump uses physical phenomena like the water hammer effect or the fact that gas in a liquid will rise in order to effect a pumping effect. The hydraulic ram, for example, uses the water hammer effect and relies only on the kinetic energy of the incoming water.

The basic hydraulic ram functional sequence involves the water current pushing the normally open waste valve close, at which point the water hammer effect from the sudden current cessation forces the delivery valve open and pushing water into the delivery pipe.

This process will reverse again after a short while, sending a pressure wave upstream and eventually leading to the waste valve reopening. The downstream flow will then resume again, restarting the whole process.

In terms of technological complexity this is a very straightforward design, with the most complex parts being the valves and the pressure vessel that cushions the system against pressure shocks. This is however a design that would have been technologically quite feasible to manufacture and operate.
Basic pulser pump design. (Credit: Belbury, Wikimedia)
Another, similar type of pump is the gas lift pump. A very small variant of this is commonly used in devices like coffee percolators, with the pulser pump being in effect a very large implementation of the same general principle. Rather than applying heat to the water reservoir in order to create gas (i.e. steam), the pulser pump uses an air compressing effect that’s also used with water-powered trompe air compressors.

As water falls down a pipe it drags air bubbles along with it, which eventually arrive at the bottom where said air is trapped in a cavity while the water flows on to a lower elevation.

The thinner pipe through which water ultimately is pumped is inserted into this air chamber in such a way that it’ll alternately ingest water and air as the level of the latter varies over time. This way pockets of water become trapped between pockets of air, with a resulting pulsing output of water at the end of this pipe.

Whether the original device at the Alhambra or Antequera exactly matches either pump design will likely remain forever a mystery, but neither were beyond the technological means of the time, with the pulser pump arguably even more straightforward due to a lack of need for any valves and pressure vessels.

Time Or Reflective Fountain

Although the Practical Engineering video focuses on this pump design, its author – Grady – was inspired by a Primal Space video that’s basically just history slop content, not citing any proper sources and propagating myths and misinformation as fact. The worst offender is probably the myth that the fountain that is found in the Court of the Lions was time-activated, with the only evidence for it being a clock being that there are twelve lion statues and there are two times twelve hours in a day.
Court of the Lions and its fountain in 2021. (Credit: Sean Adams, Wikimedia)
When we consider the archaeological evidence that exists so far, as well as the findings during the recent restorations, it seems clear that the marble block with its many holes through which the water entered the bowl was intended to diffuse the flow. Around the bowl we can see a corresponding poem of twelve verses by the vizier and poet Ibn Zamrak.

In verses 3 through 7 it specifically refers to “[..] which runs to that which is still, that we know not which of them is flowing”. This quite strongly suggests that the theme was similar to that of the many reflective pools that were so popular around the Alhambra and elsewhere. The idea of it being a time-controlled mechanism would thus seem to be a purely Western interpretation, barring some hitherto unknown evidence appearing.

Lossy History

Perhaps the most cruel aspect of history is that, much like time itself, it has no concern for those of us who live in the present. Throughout the eons as empires rise and crumble back into dust, wondrous inventions are made and soon again forgotten, leaving behind only echoes of deeds and wonder.

If we’re lucky some of it is recorded in a form as durable as Sumerian clay tablets buried underneath desert sands, but if not then what once was shall never be again. This impermanence is the eternal curse of the past, and also the reason why it’s always so important to make multiple copies of your important data.

Due to the passage of time history is mostly just ruins, pot shards and bones buried in mud and sand. Some will try to spruce things up with one’s imagination resulting in faux romanticism, but this naturally bears little connection to the past. That today the Alhambra has been largely restored is testament to how much more respectful we now approach the past, but the parts that were erased after the demise of the Nasrid dynasty are sadly likely to be lost forever.

Featured image: Reflective pool of the Court of the Myrtles, looking north towards the Comares Tower. (Credit: Tuxyso, Wikimedia)

hackaday.com/2026/03/30/mediev…

One of the great things about building electronics today is how affordable SMT components have become — sometimes just fractions of a cent each. That low price often means ordering far more than you need so you’ll have spares on hand the next time a project calls for them. Keeping track of exactly how many of each part you actually have, though, is rarely easy. To solve that problem, [John] built the Dotterboard, an open-source SMT tape counter.

While working on some of his other projects, [John] found himself managing thousands of tiny SMT parts and decided it was time to automate the counting. The Dotterboard takes inspiration from the BeanCounter — a compact, portable SMT tape counter — but expands the design to handle larger components beyond the 8 mm tapes the BeanCounter targets.

The Dotterboard is mostly 3D-printed and uses just a few common hardware parts such as springs and ball bearings. An OLED displays the current count, which comes from an encoder tracking movement and multiplying by the number of components per hole. At the heart sits an RP2040 Zero that needs nothing more than a single USB-C cable for power, unlike the bulky industrial SMT counters that demand AC outlets and desk space.

Be sure to check out all the details of the build on [John]’s website, and grab the files from his GitHub if you want to make your own. Let us know what are some projects you’ve done to save you the headache of doing the same task by hand for hours on end.

youtube.com/embed/WIFQgdVEmkg?…

hackaday.com/2026/03/30/tame-t…

If you know much about radios and espionage, you’ve probably encountered number stations. These are mysterious stations that read out groups of numbers or otherwise encoded messages to… well… someone. Most of the time, we don’t know who is receiving the messages. You’d be excused for thinking that this is an old technology. After all, satellite phones, the Internet, and a plethora of options now exist to allow the home base to send spies secret instructions. However, the current-day global conflict has seen at least one new number station appear, apparently associated with the United States and, presumably, targeting some recipients in Iran, according to priyom.org.

As you might expect, these stations don’t identify themselves, but the Enigma Control List names this one as V32. It broadcasts two two-hour blocks a day at 0200 UTC and a repeat at 1800 UTC. Each message starts with the Farsi word for “attention” followed by what is assumed to be some header information as two 5-digit groups. Then there is a set of 181 five-digit groups. Each message is padded out to take 20 minutes, and there are six messages in each transmission.

How Do You Know?

While this could, in theory, be from (and to) anywhere, direction finding has traced the signal to a US base near Stuttgart, Germany. In addition to using Farsi, Iran has repeatedly attempted to jam the signal, causing V32 to change frequencies a few times. There’s also a more recent, so far unidentified, jammer trying to block the signal.

In addition to direction finding, there is a surprising amount of information you can glean from the audio. The first few days of broadcasts had specific beeps in the background, which appear to be warning tones from a specific type of American military transmitter that warns the operator when encryption is not engaged. At first, a human read the numbers. Eventually, the station switched to using automated numbers.

Oops

In addition, there have been a few times when Windows 10 system sounds have leaked into the transmission. Other oddities are several cases where a word was read out in the middle of the numbers. We aren’t cryptographers, but that suggests the numbers refer to words in some sort of codebook, and that book doesn’t contain the proper words.

If you want to try your hand at decoding, you can hear the station on USB just under 8 MHz, or just listen to the recordings made by others (like the ones below or this one). You might like to read what other people say about it, too.

youtube.com/embed/3-eg3i9XYt4?…

youtube.com/embed/r6CzkwAXltk?…

We are fascinated by spy stations. Even when they aren’t really number stations.

hackaday.com/2026/03/30/spy-te…

PRESENTED BY

IT'S MONDAY, AND THIS IS DIGITAL POLITICS. I'm Mark Scott, and as the war in the Middle East enters its second month, here's a map that explains we are all in for major energy price hikes (or shortages) in April.

— American and European courts are doing more for social media oversight than the growing list of online safety regimes worldwide.

— Middle Powers are now testbeds for different forms of AI, competition and platform governance regulation. Some will work, others will not.

— Two-thirds of people polled worldwide say they have used AI, in some form, over the last 12 months.

Let's get started:

LITIGATION VERSUS LEGISLATION?

ONE OF THE HALLMARKS OF DIGITAL policymaking over the last five years is the drive toward national or regional online safety rules. The likes of Australia's Online Safety Act; the European Union's Digital Services Act; and the United Kingdom's Online Safety Act epitomize lawmakers' efforts to create greater accountability and transparency for social media giants. That, in turn, has led to a pushback from some of these companies and the United States (at least within the federal government), which criticized these rules as either being overly cumbersome or an illegitimate attack on people's free speech rights.

My day job means I'm pretty clued up on most of these (Western) online safety regimes. If you want a wonky policy discussion about mandatory data access requirements or the inner workings of companies' annual risk assessments and external audits, then I'm your man. Yet we need to be honest about the current state of play of these online safety regimes. They are often too cumbersome, under-resourced and overly-politicized to meaningfully improve people's experiences online — at least in the short term.

In contrast, four recent court decisions — two in the US, two in the EU — demonstrate how judges and juries now have had a more significant impact on platform governance compared to the growing number of national/regional online safety rulebooks. For countries similarly seeking to create greater transparency and oversight for the likes of TikTok and YouTube, this "litigation over legislation" strategy may be worth pursuing. That's especially true given how the current White House is embedding provisions to ward off future digital regulation in its trade negotiations with third-party countries.

**A message from Meta** Following the Brussels AI Symposium, hosted by Meta with eco and EssilorLuxottica as supporting partners, the message from leaders was clear: the world needs a strong Europe at the table in this ongoing technological revolution. Read eco’s white paper here.

Before we get to the court cases and their implications, let's lay out two caveats.

First, it's not a question of litigation or legislation. These policy levers do different things. For officials, it's more about potentially front-running lawsuits, based on existing statutory oversight, before more long-term online safety regulation can navigate countries' often labyrinthine democratic processes. Second, litigation often builds on existing regulatory playbooks, providing individual citizens the ability to fill in gaps where slow-moving — and often untested — legislation has yet to take hold.

OK, caveats covered. Now, to the cases. I'll keep these brief, given how much coverage there has been, especially related to the American lawsuits.

In a one-two punch, two US courts — one in California, another in New Mexico, respectively — took swings at Meta and Google and, separately, Meta. On March 25, a jury in Los Angeles awarded $6 million in damages to a plaintiff who had accused YouTube and Instagram of deliberate design choices that had made her become addicted to both platforms. In response, both Meta and Google rejected those assertions and said they would appeal.

Thanks for reading the free monthly edition Digital Politics. Subscribers receive at least four newsletters a month.

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

In New Mexico, a separate jury on March 24 found that Meta had violated state consumer protection laws and ordered the tech giant to pay $375 million in damages. The case revolved around accusations from the state's attorney general that the social media company's services were designed to maximize engagement for children without embedding the appropriate safety measures to protect minors. In response, Meta said it kept people safe on its platforms and would similarly appeal.

In Europe, a regional court in southern Germany upheld a complaint on March 11, initially filed by a local consumer protection agency. It required YouTube to stop online influencers from posting sponsored content if the underlying advertiser was not disclosed and clearly stated. The court decision is not yet final. But the preliminary ruling may force YouTube to place a "sponsored post" label across all such videos, as well as require content creators to make public who is paying for such ads. It's a clarification to the EU's Digital Services Act (Article 26) related to how online platforms handle transparency issues related to online advertising.

Finally, a Dutch court on March 26 forcedElon Musk's xAI to stop generating and distributing sexually-explicit images of people without their consent in the Netherlands — or face daily fines of around $115,000. The case had been brought by Offlimits, a local advocacy group. It followed global outrage — and regulatory investigations — into how xAI's Grok artificial intelligence tool and X, which hosted it, had been used to create realistic deepfake explicit images of women and children. xAI's lawyers had said it was impossible to remove all such abuse from the social media platform. The company also stopped Grok from creating such images in early 2026, though the Dutch judge believed there was still reasonable doubt that xAI's attempts would be effective.

Four legal cases, four slightly different legal issues. More lawsuits are pending, and the current cases may still be overturned on appeal.

Yet what is striking are the similarities between these lawsuits — and what they do compared to slow-moving online safety regulation.

Two central criticisms aimed at legislation whichtarget social media are that 1) These platforms have significant liability carve-outs for what people post online and 2) The likes of Australia and the UK's Online Safety Acts represent illegal attacks on free speech rights. The four separate cases, outlined above, mostly circumvent these issues by focusing on the design of these platforms, not on how they moderate individual social media posts.

This is a significant distinction and one, to be fair, also baked into national/regional online safety rules. The point of these lawsuits was not to dictate what could be posted online. Instead, they took aim at the intrinsic design choices that the likes of xAI, YouTube and Instagram had made that, at least in the views of the American juries and European judges, failed to live up to these companies' obligations under existing legislation. It's hard to accuse these decisions of undermining free speech rights when they focus exclusively on the wonkiness of how content recommender systems operate or the transparency requirements related to influencers' sponsored posts.

The Censorship Industrial Complex, it is not.

The second meaningful difference between these lawsuits and the ongoing conveyor belt of online safety regulation is how much more personal such litigation makes the potential harms associated with social media.

I can count, on one hand, the number of experts who have read the EU's most recent risk assessments and external audits related to how so-called Very Large Online Platforms and Search Engines combat alleged systemic risks under the bloc's Digital Services Act. I joke. But only just. These documents run into the hundreds of pages; are inherently legalistic in both tone and nature; and — after two years of these reports being published — have not provided meaningful transparency for the average EU citizen.

In contrast, the often personal (and routinely tragic) stories at the heart of such lawsuits, as well as the spectacle of high-profile tech executives taking the stand to defend their platforms, cuts through to the average social media user more effectively than decades worth of dense policy documents. They demonstrate the potential real world harms resulting from poor design choices that is just not possible via online safety regulation which, inherently, takes a systemic view of such problems.

Inherently, platform governance litigation does something different than online safety legislation. It is not one over the other. But at a time when regulatory headwinds are gathering against countries' attempts to pass such regulation, a shift toward national courts — as a means to boost transparency and accountability for some of the world's largest companies by centering these debates in the lived experiences of individuals — is a much-needed step.

Chart of the day

THE US LIKES TO THINK IT'S THE CENTER of the AI revolution. And at least when it comes to where these systems are built, that certainly is true.

But Americans remain behind the curve in the use of artificial intelligence tools and applications compared to their peers across both the West and the Global Majority, based on a worldwide survey conducted between Sept - Oct, 2025.

On average, 66 percent of those polled said they had used such services over the last 12 months. At 88 percent, Nigeria was the most AI-savvy country compared with Japan where only 45 percent of people said they had used AI over the last year.
Source: Google / Ipsos

MIDDLE POWERS: LABORATORIES OF DIGITAL POLICYMAKING

IN THE EARLY 1930s, THE US SUPREME COURT justice Louis Brandeis referred to US states as so-called "laboratories of democracy." By this, he meant smaller jurisdictions, with the Union, could try different social and economic models without these experiments unduly harming all 50 states. I can't help but think of that expression as I look over the similar digital policymaking crucible underway in so-called Middle Powers countries, or states like Brazil, Japan and the UK that sit slightly outside the trifecta of global digital policymaking powers of the US, EU and China, respectively.

Taken together, three ongoing experiments in each of these jurisdictions demonstrate how national lawmakers and officials are meeting local needs in an increasingly globalized digital world. They offer potential alternatives for other Middle Power countries that do not necessarily want to be rule-takers from global powers when it comes to digital competition, artificial intelligence and data protection.

First, to London. I remain skeptical the UK government (of all political flavors) has the will to implement a serious digital policymaking agenda. Other, that is, than one that prioritizes foreign direct investment over all other demands. Yet the country's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is slowly implementing the so-called the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers, or updated digital antitrust rulebook, that offers an alternative to the more bureaucratic approach under the EU's Digital Markets Act.

A quick snapshot about how these competition rules operate. Under the UK's regime, regulators first determine if a company has so-called "Strategic Market Status," and then create specific rules to ensure its dominance doesn't skew the market. Under the EU's rulebook, companies are designated as "gatekeepers," and then — collectively — European regulators determine if these firms' activities infringe on smaller players.

Before I get angry emails, yes, Doug Gurr — a former senior Amazon executive – was appointed as chairman of the British competition agency in February. That has raised concerns the CMA will pull back on its digital enforcement work. But since early 2026, the regulator has issued two statements — one linked to how people/business interact with Google's search product; another aimed at leveling the playing field in both Google and Apple's App Stores — that are worth tracking.

Both are designed to loosen these services' control of what are now viewed as dominant parts of the online economy. Critics will say they don't go far enough to hobble these services. But the UK's revamped digital antitrust regime is designed to create bespoke interventions, based on individual companies' services, that may prove more nimble than the one-size-fit-all approach outlined within the EU's Digital Markets Act.

What's worth paying attention to, for other Middle Powers, is whether the proposed changes in both Google search and the app stores gives greater breathing space for competitors, as well as allowing users to more easily swap to rival search products. If that does start to happen in the UK (and it's still an 'if,') then London's digital antitrust approach may be worth adopting.

Shifting gears — both geographically and thematically — takes us to Japan where the country's AI regulation is now more than six months old. Unlike the top-down legislation outlined by the likes of South Korea and Europe, Japan has instead implemented mostly voluntary guidelines, backed up with expanded enforcement powers for existing regulatory agencies, to create a flexible approach to AI oversight. At least, that is what Tokyo would like you to believe.

**A message from Meta** On 24 March, The Brussels AI Symposium hosted by Meta with eco, and EssilorLuxottica as supporting partners, convened political leaders including European Parliament President Roberta Metsola and US Ambassador Andrew Puzder, Italian Vice Minister Valentino Valentini, and leaders across industry. The speakers struck the same chord: the world needs a strong Europe at the table in this ongoing technological revolution.

Regulatory simplification to enable innovation and competitiveness is a necessity. Implementation must match the ambition. To learn more, read eco’s white paper here.

The legislation also includes a public commitment to invest $6.3 billion, over five years, in AI-linked emerging technology, as well as other high-tech industries like drones and quantum computing. The idea is to combine a co-regulatory approach to AI governance — again, supported by stricter enforcement from the likes of the country's privacy regulator — with direct investment in local firms competing on the globe stage.

Japan's approach stands somewhere between that of the 'regulate-first' EU and the 'don't-regulate' US, albeit via an AI governance framework that relies heavily on voluntary corporate compliance. Still, it may represent a potential third way for other countries both concerned about how AI is rolled out nationally and wanting to support local industries in this global technology race.

Finally, to Brazil. Latin America's most populous country enacted its so-called ECA Digital law earlier this month, specifically aimed at protecting children online. The regulation gained widespread traction after local YouTube channels were found to be profiting off sexualized videos of children.

Key provisions include: age verification requirements for platforms that host potentially inappropriate content for minors; such age-gating must take place when an account is created; providers of digital services must prevent addictive design practices like infinite social media scrolling; companies must remove child-related criminal content and notify authorities; a new law enforcement center was created to coordinate potential violations.

Sign up for Digital Politics

Thanks for getting this far. Enjoyed what you've read? Why not receive weekly updates on how the worlds of technology and politics are colliding like never before. The first two weeks of any paid subscription are free.

Subscribe
Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup.

No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.

What's different from other online safety regimes is that it puts a significant onus on companies, not the government, to enforce individual provisions. That will inevitably create higher regulatory burdens for companies operating in Brazil — and some firms will likely pull out because of that.

But for other countries, which don't have the financial resources to implement a UK-style Online Safety Act, the outsourcing of such requirements to digital services where much of the potential harm is housed may offer a way forward in adopting online safety regulation without similarly incurring hefty increases in public money to support such oversight.

What I'm reading

— The Reuters Institute at the University of Oxford delve into the online media/news habits of Generation Alpha. It's more social media, less websites. More here.

— The DSA Observatory explains what lessons it learned when its application for data access to privately-held social media data was rejected under the EU's Digital Services Act. More here.

— The Oversight Board published recommendations for how Meta should implement its community notes instrument across its global platforms. More here.

— New York University's Center on Tech Policy produced a comparison of the 60 bills, across nearly 30 US states, aimed at regulating companion AI chatbots. More here.

— Almost 70 countries within the World Trade Organization agreed to an interim pathway toward global rules for digital trade, even though a final deal is unlikely in the short term. More here.

digitalpolitics.co/newsletter0…

SUPPORTED BY

IT'S MONDAY, AND THIS IS DIGITAL POLITICS. I'm Mark Scott, and as the war in the Middle East enters its second month, here's a map that explains we are all in for major energy price hikes (or shortages) in April.

— American and European courts are doing more for social media oversight than the growing list of online safety regimes worldwide.

— Middle Powers are now testbeds for different forms of AI, competition and platform governance regulation. Some will work, others will not.

— Two-thirds of people polled worldwide say they have used AI, in some form, over the last 12 months.

Let's get started:

digitalpolitics.co/newsletter0…

The basic principle of radar systems is simple enough: send a radio signal out, and measure the time it takes for a reflection to return. Given the abundant sources of RF signals – television signals, radio stations, cellular carriers, even Wi-Fi – that surround most of us, it’s not even necessary to transmit your own signal. This is the premise of passive radar, which uses passive RF illumination to form an image. The RF signal doesn’t even need to come from a terrestrial source, as [Jean Michel Friedt] demonstrated with a passive radar illuminated by the NISAR radar-imaging satellite (pre-print paper).

NISAR is a synthetic-aperture radar satellite jointly built by NASA and ISRO, and it completes a pass over the world every twelve days. It uses an L-band chirp radar signal, which can be picked up with GNSS antennas. One antenna points up towards the satellite, and has a ground plane blocking the signal from directly reaching the second antenna, which picks up reflections from the landscape under observation. Since the satellite would illuminate the scene for less than a minute, [Jean-Michel] had to predict the moment of peak intensity, and achieved an accuracy of about three seconds.

The signals themselves were recorded with an SDR and a Raspberry Pi. High-end, high-resolution SDRs such as the Ettus B210 gave the best results, but an inexpensive homebuilt MAX2771-based SDR also produced recognizable images. This setup won’t be providing any particularly detailed images, but it did accurately show the contours of the local geography – quite a good result for such a simple setup.

If you’re more interested in tracking aircraft than surveying landscapes, check out this ADS-B-synchronized passive radar system. Although passive radar doesn’t require a transmitter license, that doesn’t mean it’s free from legal issues, as the KrakenSDR team can testify.

hackaday.com/2026/03/30/using-…

Can you charge those Li-ion based cells with USB-C charging ports without taking them out of the device? While this would seem to be answered with an unequivocal ‘yes’, recently [Colin] found out that this could easily have destroyed the device they were to be installed in.

After being tasked with finding a better way to keep the electronics of some exercise bikes powered than simply swapping the C cells all the time, [Colin] was led to consider using these Li-ion cells in such a manner. Fortunately, rather than just sticking the whole thing together and calling it a day, he decided to take some measurements to satisfy some burning safety questions.

As it turns out, at least the cells that he tested – with a twin USB-C connector on a single USB-A – have all the negative terminals and USB-C grounds connected. Since the cells are installed in a typical series configuration in the device, this would have made for an interesting outcome. Although you can of course use separate USB-C leads and chargers per cell, it’s still somewhat disconcerting to run it without any kind of electrical isolation.

In this regard the suggestion by some commentators to use NiMHs and trickle-charge these in-situ similar to those garden PV lights might be one of the least crazy solutions.

youtube.com/embed/sOCF46_d0Sk?…

hackaday.com/2026/03/30/the-ha…

Anyone who has ever played Nintendo 64 games is probably familiar with the ways that large worlds in these games got split up, with many loading zones. Another noticeable aspect is that of the limited drawing distance, which is why even a large open area such as in Ocarina of Time‘s Hyrule Field has many features that limit how far you can actually see, such as hills and a big farming homestead in the center. Yet as [James Lambert] demonstrates in a recent video, it’s actually possible to create an open world on the N64, including large drawing distances.

As explained in the video, the drawing distance is something that the developer controls, and thus may want to restrict to hit certain performance goals. In effect he developer sets where the far clipping plane is set, beyond which items are no longer rendered. Of course, there are issues with just ramping up the distance to the far clipping plane, as the N64 only has a 15-bit Z-buffer, after which you get ‘Z fighting’, where render order becomes an issue as it’s no longer clear what is in front of what.

One fix is to push the near clipping plane further away from the player, but this comes with its own share of issues. Ergo [James] fixed it by doing two render passes: first all the far-away objects with Z-buffer disabled, and then all the nearby objects. These far-away objects can be rendered back-to-front with low level-of-detail (LoD), so this is relatively fast and also saves a lot of RAM, as the N64 is scraping by in this department at the best of times.

In the video the full details of this rendering approach, as well as a new fog rendering method, are explained, with the code and such available on GitHub for those who wish to tinker with it themselves. [James] and friends intend to develop a full game using this engine as well, so that’s definitely something to look forward to.

youtube.com/embed/lXxmIw9axWw?…

hackaday.com/2026/03/29/writin…

Although generative language models have found little widespread, profitable adoption outside of putting artists out of work and giving tech companies an easy scapegoat for cutting staff, their their underlying technology remains a fascinating area of study. Stepping back to the more innocent time of the late 2010s, before the cultural backlash, we could examine these models in their early stages. Or, we could see how even older technology processes these types of machine learning algorithms in order to understand more about their fundamentals. [Damien] has put a 60s-era IBM as well as a PDP-11 to work training a transformer algorithm in order to take a closer look at it.

For such old hardware, the task [Damien] is training his transformer to do is to reverse a list of digits. This is a trivial problem for something like a Python program but much more difficult for a transformer. The model relies solely on self-attention and a residual connection. To fit within the 32KB memory limit of the PDP-11, it employs fixed-point arithmetic and lookup tables to replace computationally expensive functions. Training is optimized with hand-tuned learning rates and stochastic gradient descent, achieving 100% accuracy in 350 steps. In the real world, this means that he was able to get the training time down from hours or days to around five minutes.

Not only does a project like this help understand these tools, but it also goes a long way towards demonstrating that not every task needs a gigawatt datacenter to be useful. In fact, we’ve seen plenty of large language models and other generative AI running on computers no more powerful than an ESP32 or, if you need slightly more computing power, on consumer-grade PCs with or without GPUs.

hackaday.com/2026/03/29/traini…

Whether it’s a new couch or a rare piece of hardware picked up on eBay, we all know what it feels like to eagerly await a delivery truck. But the CERN researchers involved in a delivery earlier this week weren’t transporting anyone’s Amazon Prime packages, they were hauling antimatter.

Moving antimatter, specifically antiprotons, via trucks might seem a bit ridiculous. But ultimately CERN wants to transfer samples between various European laboratories, and that means they need a practical and reliable way of getting the temperamental stuff from point A to B. To demonstrate this capability, the researchers loaded a truck with 92 antiprotons and drove it around for 30 minutes. Of course, you can’t just put antiprotons in a cardboard box, the experiment utilized a cryogenically cooled magnetic containment unit that they hope will eventually be able to keep antimatter from rudely annihilating itself on trips lasting as long as 8 hours.

Speaking of deliveries, anyone building a new computer should be careful when ordering components. Shady companies are looking to capitalize on the currently sky high prices of solid-state drives by counterfeiting popular models, and according to the Japanese site AKIBA PC Hotline, there are some examples in the wild that would fool all but the most advanced users. They examine a bootleg drive that’s a nearly identical replica of the Samsung 990 PRO — the unit and its packaging are basically a mirror image of the real deal, the stated capacity appears valid, and it even exhibits similar performance when put through a basic benchmark test.

But while the drive’s sequential read and write speeds are within striking distance of the official numbers from Samsung, things start to fall apart when doing random speed tests or performing real-world operations. It took the fake drive over 25 minutes to write a 370 GB file, while the authentic one ripped through the same file in less than 4: giving a true write speed of 261 MB/s and 1,861 MB/s, respectively.

Luckily you don’t have to time how long it takes to dump 100+ GB of data on the drive just to see if it’s legitimate, Samsung offers a tool that can communicate with the drive and determine if it’s an original or not. If they don’t already, we imagine other manufacturers will roll out similar capabilities in an effort to combat these sophisticated clones.

Of course, computers aren’t the only things in our modern world that are impacted by the rising prices of memory and flash storage. On Friday, Sony announced that they would be implementing higher prices across their PlayStation line starting this week to compensate for what they call “pressures in the global economic landscape.”

Starting April 2nd (presumably they didn’t want consumers to think this was a joke), the base model PS5 will be bumped up to $649.99 in the US and €649.99 in Europe, while the PS5 Pro will be set at an eye-watering 899.99 in both currencies. Admittedly we’ve done absolutely no research to support this, but surely that must make the latter system the most expensive home game console in history by a considerable margin. In comparison, Microsoft’s top of the line Xbox Series X is currently priced at $799, though the model with the smaller 1 TB drive is still available for $649.

One might think that the skyrocketing cost of memory would force developers to take a lesson from the early days of computing, and usher in a new era of highly optimized code that manages to do more with less. That would be nice. Instead, we have now have DOOM rendered in the browser using CSS.

As Niels Leenheer explains in the write-up, the original goal was to have the entire game running in CSS. But he quickly ran into issues trying to implement the game logic. So he settled for letting Claude port the open source C code for the base game over to JavaScript, which freed him up to work on doing the graphics in CSS.
NASA Astronaut Mike Fincke
If you’re interested in web development it’s a fascinating look at how far the modern browser can be pushed, and even if you don’t, it’s a surprisingly smooth way to play the classic shooter without having to install anything.

Lastly, the public is finally getting some information about the health scare aboard the International Space Station that triggered the first-ever medical evacuation from the orbiting laboratory back in January. As we predicted in our previous coverage, NASA was unwilling to put personal information about one of their astronauts on the public record, and have remained tight-lipped about the situation. So it was Crew-11 Pilot Mike Fincke himself that decided to not only come forward as the individual who experienced the issue, but to detail what he went through in an interview with the Associated Press.

So what happened? Well, nobody is quite sure yet. Fincke says he was eating dinner the night before he was scheduled to go on a spacewalk outside the Station, and suddenly realized he couldn’t speak. His crewmates realized he was in distress, and contacted medical personnel at Mission Control on his behalf. Testing performed both on the Station and back on Earth has yet to provide any explanation for the episode. It lasted approximately 20 minutes, and he’s experienced no issues since. Space is kinda crazy like that sometimes.

See something interesting that you think would be a good fit for our weekly Links column? Drop us a line, we’d love to hear about it.

hackaday.com/2026/03/29/hackad…

Although GNSS systems like GPS have made pin-pointing locations on Earth’s sphere-approximating surface significantly easier and more precise, it’s always possible to go a bit further. The latest innovation involves strapping laser retroreflector arrays (LRAs) to newly launched GPS satellites, enabling ground-based lasers to accurately determine the distance to these satellites.

Similar to the retroreflector array that was left on the Moon during the Apollo missions, these LRAs will be most helpful with scientific pursuits, such as geodesy. This is the science of studying Earth’s shape, gravity and rotation over time, which is information that is also incredibly useful for Earth-observing satellites.

Laser ranging is also essential for determining the geocentric orbit of a satellite, which enables precise calibration of altimeters and increasing the accuracy of long-term measurements. Now that the newly launched GPS III SV-09 satellite is operational this means more information for NASA’s geodesy project, and increased accuracy for GPS measurements as more of its still to be launched satellites are equipped with LRAs.

hackaday.com/2026/03/29/laser-…