Sal Mercogliano, our regular point of contact for everything related to shipping, has done that a great overview of the whole cascade of failureswhere the electrically interesting part begins the 8:30 mark. Apparently the NTSB investigated a switch box Dali and found a wire with a shrink tag overlapping the plastic body of the end sleeve. This prevented the wire from being properly inserted into a terminal block, leading to poor electrical contact. Over time the connection deteriorated, eventually leading to an undervoltage condition that tripped a circuit breaker and triggered everything else that led to the collision. It’s a sobering thought that something so mundane and easily overlooked could lead to such a tragedy, but it is.
We’ve been whining a bit about the Flock situation in this area over the past few months, but for good reason, or so it seems to us. Flock’s 80,000-strong network of automated license plate readers (ALPRs), while understandably attractive from a public policy perspective, is a bit hard to swallow for anyone interested in privacy and against ubiquitous surveillance. And maybe none of that would be so bad if we suspected that the security startup had at least paid passing attention to the basics of cybersecurity.
But alas, Benn Jordan and some of his cybersecurity friends stole it a look inside a Flock cameraand the news is not good. Admittedly, this seems like a first attempt, but given that the ‘hack’ is as simple as pressing the button on the back of the camera a few times. This creates a WiFi hotspot on the camera, and from there you can head off to the races. There are plenty of other disturbing findings in the video, so check them out.
Sufficiently experienced readers will no doubt remember classic toys from the ’60s and ’70s, such as Lite-Brite and Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots, and games like Mouse Trap and Toss Across. We remember owning all of these at one time or another, and surprisingly they all came from the inventive mind of the same man: Burt Meyer, who died on October 30 at the age of 99. We have many fond memories of his inventions, but to be honest, we never thought Mouse Trap was that important as a game; we just set up the Rube Goldberg-esque trap and played with it. The rest though? Quality fun. RIP, Burt.
Last week we presented the unfortunate story about a Russian humanoid robot that drunkenly made its way into “demo hell” history. And while it might be a little too easy to make fun of something like that, the simple fact is that the upright human form is inherently unstable, and any mechanism designed to mimic that form will fail occasionally. With that in mind, so are the engineers at Disney Research teach their humanoid bots to fall with style. The idea is that the robots protect their vital parts in the event of a fall, something people (usually) do instinctively. They first performed hundreds of falls with virtual robots, rewarding them for correctly ending up in the target position, and eventually developed the algorithms into real, albeit small, robots. The video in the article shows them all holding the landing, and even if some of the finishing holds don’t seem entirely practical, it’s pretty cool technology.
And finally, this week on the Hackaday Podcast, the annoying story of an EV enthusiast who had trouble maintaining the brakes on his Hyundai Ioniq was discussed. Check out the podcast if you want the full rant and color commentary, but the TL;DL version is that Hyundai has the features needed to release the parking brakes that are behind a very expensive paywall. Luckily for our hacker hero, a $399 Harbor Freight bi-directional scan tool was sufficient for the task, and the job was done for much less than what the officially approved tools would have cost. But it turns out maybe it was a cheaper and more pleasantly hacky way to do the jobwith nothing but a 12-volt battery pack and a few jumper wires. Many vehicles with electric parking brakes use two-wire systems, so this is a good tip for the shade tree technician to keep in mind.
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