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.

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.

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…