Hackaday Links: July 8, 2018

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Software-defined radio has been around for years, but it’s only recently that it’s been accessible to those of us who don’t have tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment in their lab. Here’s a new book from Analog Devices that gives you the lowdown on software-defined radio. It’s heavy on MATLAB and components from Analog, but it’s still a solid foundation for SDR.

Do you like cyberpunk? Do you like stories about rebellious people overthrowing the system? How about androids? Do you like androids? Here’s a Kickstarter that’s tying all of that togetherNeptune Frost is (will be?) a movie about an e-waste village in Burundi that’s home to the ‘world’s most subversive hacking collective’, a coltan miner and an inter-sex runaway. It’s literally got everything.

Hey, this is cool, Hackaday has been cited in a journal article. The title of the article is An open-source approach to automation in organic synthesis: The flow chemical formation of benzamides using an inline liquid-liquid extraction system and a homemade 3-axis autosampling/product-collection device,  and can be found in Tetrahedron Volume 74, Issue 25, 21 June 2018, Pages 3152-3157.

Asteroid day was a few days ago, and there’s a Kickstarter to go with it. The Planetary Society, headed up by Bill Nye (a science guy) is raising awareness about the threat of asteroid impacts. There’s hilarious swag that says ‘Kick Asteroid’, even though actually kicking an asteroid might be a bad idea; a gravity tractor would be the best method of nudging the orbit of an asteroid given enough time.

Last year, a company in the US trademarked the word ‘RetroPie’ and used that trademark to sell Raspberry Pis loaded up with (you guessed it) RetroPie software. This company also used the trademark to force anyone else doing the same to stop. Obviously, this didn’t sit well with the developers of RetroPie. After some generous legal help, the RetroPie trademark issue has been resolved. That’s a tip of the hat to Eckland & Blando who offered some pro bono legal work.

12 thoughts on “Hackaday Links: July 8, 2018

  1. Never heard of RetroPi until now – and it’s definitely something I’m interested in.

    Not only did the other company lose trademark, RetroPi gets all sorts of advertizing and notoriety. Good for them!

    1. I have heard of RetroPie before, although I didn’t know there was a legal dispute. I wonder if RetroPie will contact those 3rd parties who were taken down by the trademark squatters.

  2. I find it interesting that there are so many new cyberpunk novels that feature transgender/intersex characters. Is it because of the genre’s promise of a world where bodily augmentation and biotech free us from the constraints of the flesh we were born in? Or maybe because it’s a great way to explore the hard questions about who we are as people in a world where identity isn’t set in stone? Is it just the trendy topic to explore for a new generation of fiction authors? Or has this always been a thing and I’ve just been living under a rock? *Please don’t launch a flame war about gender, I’m just interested in discussing this as a literary trend and getting some book recommendations.*

    1. Maybe it’s because of all the plastics with hormone-like effects in the food and drink in that biotech future that would make people so confused about gender.?
      As for constraints. I actually don’t feel very constrained by being born a gender. Now when you talk society’s expectations from gender – that’s another topic.

  3. I was surprised to learn that the US actually has nukes reserved for dealing with asteroid that might impact.
    I assumed such things were theoretical and movie stuff, but apparently they really have some at the ready.

    But you can have nukes set aside but you need a deep space rocket and who has those available? Elon? Or do they also have DSVM at the ready already without me knowing? I made up that acronym BTW, Deep Space Vectored Missile, because I have no idea how such a missile would be named.

    1. I think “they” will just refer to it as…
      “We lucked out that time! What a coincidence that it smacked into a Tesla Spider that just happened to be in its path and knocked it out of trajectory!”

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