GoKawiil
Tech News
A hobbyist shared a Show HN post featuring a working 3D model of the WWII-era Enigma encryption machine, demonstrating how a message is typed, encrypted letter by letter, and transmitted via simulated Morse code over radio. The project visualizes how the encrypted signal could be openly broadcast yet remain unreadable without the correct machine settings.
A developer working with BMS, a combat flight simulator, describes contributing accurate AM radio physics to a community-built replacement for the sim's existing voice chat program, IVC. The goal is to properly reproduce phenomena like AM radio's lack of a 'capture effect,' where two overlapping transmissions can both be partially heard, unlike the current IVC tool which reportedly just produces a generic noise when pilots talk over each other.
A team from Harvard and the University of Oregon report detecting radio emissions directly traced to beta Pictoris b, a gas giant roughly 11 times Jupiter's mass located 64 light-years away, using South Africa's MeerKAT radio telescope. In their yet-to-be-peer-reviewed paper, they describe rapid, recurring, highly circularly polarized bursts and persistent emission between 0.85 and 3.5 GHz, which they attribute to naturally occurring auroras from charged particles along the planet's magnetic field.
A preprint study by researchers at Harvard University and the University of Oregon reports the first clear detection of radio emissions from a planet outside our solar system. The signal, picked up by South Africa's MeerKAT radio telescope, comes from Beta Pictoris b, a young gas giant several times the mass of Jupiter orbiting a star 63 light-years away. The findings have not yet been peer-reviewed.
Apple is launching a new live music venue called Apple Music Hall inside London's Battersea Power Station, opening September 28. The 600-person venue will host single-show performances that are simultaneously live-streamed to Apple Music subscribers, backed by a 38-foot stage and a 48-speaker Spatial Audio system. Apple also confirmed it is relocating its London-based Apple Music Radio hosts to new studios at the same site.
Researchers have built a biodegradable battery using magnesium and molybdenum trioxide electrodes with an edible ionic-liquid electrolyte, designed to power ingestible medical devices. The battery, described in Nature Chemical Engineering, has been tested successfully in pigs and breaks down into absorbable materials after use.
Amazon is running a limited-time lightning deal on the Energizer Portable Bluetooth Speaker, dropping its price from $129.99 to $99.99, a 23% discount. The offer is time-limited and expected to expire within hours. The speaker supports Bluetooth, FM radio, AUX, USB, and microSD playback, along with features like TWS pairing, RGB lighting, and an 1800mAh backup battery on some models.
Rhizomatica, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit founded by Peter Bloom, has open-sourced HERMES, a digital shortwave radio system paired with its Mercury modem, to help connect remote and indigenous communities in places like Bangladesh, Brazil, and Ecuador. The system uses the ionosphere to bounce signals across 400 to 600 kilometers using just 20 watts of power, letting users send files such as photos, emails, and voice memos over high-frequency radio.
Veteran Spanish radio hobbyist Mauricio Molano used software-defined radios and directional Yagi antennas to capture FM broadcast signals from the Carolinas, over 3,700 miles away, during a sporadic-E event on July 19. He also documented an African opening in May that brought in Togo for the first time, and observed a distinctive 'barber-polling' waveform effect during an Azores opening from his station in Cáceres, Spain.
The House of Representatives voted with strong bipartisan support to pass the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act, which would direct the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to require automakers include AM radio in new cars, trucks and SUVs at no extra cost. The measure now moves to the Senate, where a companion bill co-sponsored by Sens. Ed Markey and Ted Cruz already has 60 co-sponsors, enough to survive a filibuster.
Trevor 7oaks, who discovered Kool FM as an 18-year-old in 1992, has spent years compiling recordings from the influential London pirate radio station into what he calls the Original Kool Archives. Kool FM launched in November 1991 and became central to the rise of jungle and drum & bass, later continuing broadcasts under the Rinse banner.
A technical write-up walks through why physical phenomena like light and sound intensity fall off with the square of distance, rather than linearly or cubically. The explanation builds from the classical formula for a sphere's surface area, using a paper-cylinder analogy to show how wrapping a sphere in a fitted cylinder reveals the 4πr² relationship at the heart of the law.