Author: Maya Posch

Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander’s first look at the solar eclipse as it began to emerge from its Mare Crisium landing site on March 14 at 5:30 AM UTC. (Credit: Firefly Aerospace) After recently landing at the Moon’s Mare Crisium, Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander craft was treated to a spectacle that’s rarely observed: a total solar eclipse as seen from the surface of the Moon. This entire experience was detailed on the Blue Ghost Mission 1 live blog. As the company notes, this is the first time that a commercial entity has been able to observe this phenomenon. During this…

Proof-of-concept of the inductive coupling transmitter with the 12V version of the circuitry (Credit: Hyperspace Pirate, YouTube) Everyone loves wireless power these days, almost vindicating [Tesla’s] push for wireless power. One reason why transmitting electricity this way is a terrible idea is the massive losses involved once you increase the distance between transmitter and receiver. That said, there are ways to optimize wireless power transfer using inductive coupling, as [Hyperspace Pirate] demonstrates in a recent video. Starting with small-scale proof of concept coils, the final version of the transmitter is powered off 120 VAC. The system has 10 kV on…

RP2040-based Pico board acting as U2F dongle with Firefox. (Credit: ArcaneNibble, GitHub) The WebUSB standard is certainly controversial. Many consider it a security risk, and, to date,  only Chromium-based browsers support it. But there is a workaround that is, ironically, supposed to increase security. The adjacent Universal 2nd Factor (U2F) standard also adds (limited) USB support to browsers. Sure, this is meant solely to support U2F USB dongles for two-factor authentication purposes, but as [ArcaneNibble] demonstrates using U2F-compatible firmware on a Raspberry Pi RP2040, by hijacking the U2F payload, this API can be used to provide WebUSB-like functionality. The provided…