Hackaday links: May 26, 2024

Another day, another crop of newly minted minimal astronauts, as Blue Origin’s New Shepard made a successful suborbital flight this week. Everything seemed to be going according to plan, at least until the very end, when an “unexpected leaf event” made the astronauts’ ascent a bit more complicated than usual. The New Shepard capsule had a bad taste of landing with some West Texas brush directly flush with the hatch, making it difficult to find a good base for the platform the astronauts used to do the mandatory “smile and wave” during ascent. Blue Origin’s ground crew, dressed in their stylish black and blue suits, which must be murderously impractical in the West Texas desert, stomped through the brush to position the staircase, but had great trouble getting it to sit straight. Even with the improvised landscaping, it was hard to get a good footing in the terrain without adding random bits of stuff to support one leg, an important task given that one of the new astronauts was a 90-year-old man. Not having adjustable feet on the stairs seems pretty short-sighted, but it’s true.

Over the years, the space has seen several brick-and-mortar stores close in a kind of slow-motion death spiral. While each one is a loss to the fan community, this one hits close to home as it’s the only one we’ve actually visited in person. The “You-Do-It Electronics Center” has been a staple of Boston’s surplus scene for 75 years, a holdover from a time when dozens of major manufacturers made their homes in the suburbs within the I-95/Route 128 loop—all roads in Massachusetts. have at least two names. Digital Equipment Corp., Wang, Data General, and Polaroid, not to mention defense contractors like Raytheon and institutions like MIT and Lincoln Laboratories, all contributed to the abundance of electronic surplus, and much of it ended up on the shelves of You-Do-It’s Big Store. We remember spending an afternoon there and it felt a bit like Disneyworld – there was too much to see in one day and you could easily spend a lot of money. The announcement doesn’t give a reason for the closure, but we’re going to guess that the owners just can’t keep up with the declining demand for random bits of electronics. Goodbye, You-Do-It, and thanks for the memories.

If you enjoy working on vehicles as much as we do, you’ve definitely come across a job that would be a lot easier if you only had access to the car’s original workshop manuals. We’ve been in that boat before and were tempted to give away whatever the manufacturer is asking for a paper copy of the manual, price be damned. Or there’s Operation CHARM, or the Collection of High Quality Auto Repair Manuals, which is exactly what it sounds like — an online archive of scanned manuals for virtually every car or truck made between 1982 and 2013. a bit quirky, scan quality is pretty good. What’s really nice is that you can download a zip file with all the good stuff for offline use. At least in theory; the servers were overloaded every time we tried. It’s hard to tell what the rights situation is for this material or how long it will take to request a takedown, so strike while the iron is hot.

Here’s another con to add to your schedule: Teardown 2024. Scheduled for the weekend of June 21st in Portland, Oregon, it looks like it’s going to be a pretty good time. The CFP link is still active, so it looks like they are still taking suggestions.

And finally, it’s the dumbest toolchain we’ve ever seen: Compilerfax. First, print a copy of the C code, then fax it to a special phone number using a hamburger phone. The Raspberry Pi decodes the fax and performs OCR on it, submits the GCC code for compilation, and generates an output message if any. The Pi then calls back the original fax number and prints the message. Unfortunately, but wisely, this service is not publicly accessible as it only works on the York Hackerspace private phone system in the UK. But if you’re going to EMFCamp next week, you might want to give it a try.