2026-03-08 14:00:00
You’ve got to be ambitious to target a legend. If there’s one thing the folks at Hermeus Aerospace are, though, it’s ambitious: not only do they plan on their Quarterhorse unmanned arial vehicle (UAV) to outfly the SR-71 blackbird, they’re hoping to do it in record time. They took one big step closer to that goal in March 2026, when Quarterhorse 2.1 took off for the first time from Spaceport America.
The F-16-sized prototype is actually the second first flight Hermeus can brag of in the past year– version one first flew in May 2025. They’re iterating fast. Version 2.1 is hoped to prove a key part of the engine design for v2.2, which is the plane Humerus hopes to use to break the SR-71’s air-breathing speed record of Mach 3.3 from 1976. They’re hoping the next prototype can actually hit mach 5, which would be amazing if they pulled it off. Of course when exactly v2.2 will fly will depend largely on how this current model does in its test envelope.
This Quarterhorse hasn’t yet broken the sound barrier, but it certainly will. With the same F100 engine as the F-15 and F-16 fighters, it’s got the thrust, and one look tells you it has the aerodynamics. Of course an F100 can’t fly at Mach 5 — not on its own — but the F100 isn’t purely stock. It’s actually a component in Hermeus’ Chimera engine, which combines the F100 with a pre-chiller to actively cool the incoming supersonic air so the engine doesn’t melt at high speeds, and a ramjet stage that bypasses the engine entirely. That would make the Chimera a turboramjet engine; starting with an old and well-known turbine stage seems like a good move and is arguably a hack.
It would work like this: the engine takes off on turbine, the chiller kicks in when the aircraft goes supersonic, and the turbine is bypassed completely at high mach. This is how they hope to break the SR-71’s record: as well-designed as the J-57 engine was in that plane, it only pushed bleed air into the afterburner, rather than bypassing its turbine stage entirely, so was limited by the need to not melt said turbines. In some ways, the Chimera reminds us of a cheaper, simpler SABER engine. Of course as ambitious as breaking a 50 year old speed record might be, Hermeus’ goals are downright humble compared to the single-stage-to-orbit dreams the SABRE was meant to allow.
It remains to be seen just how fast Quarterhorse 2.1 will be able to go. Notably, at least as it was first unveiled, the aircraft doesn’t have any kind of shock cone on the inlet. It’s unlikely that the pre-chiller makes that unnecessary; it is more likely that either 2.1 is going to be restricted to low mach numbers where such things aren’t necessary, or it will be fitted later. Either way, we look forward to following the test program, at least as much as it is made public. Check out footage from the test flight in the video embedded below.
2026-03-08 11:00:00
You are at war. Trains are key to keeping your army supplied with fuel, ammunition, food, and medical supplies. But, inexplicably, your trains keep blowing up. Sabotage? Enemy attack? There’s no evidence of a bomb or overt enemy attack. This is the situation the German military found itself in during World War II. As you can see in the video below, the hidden bomb was the brainchild of a member of Britain’s SOE.
The idea was to put plastic explosive inside a fake plastic lump of coal. They hand-painted each one, and the color had to match the exact appearance of local coal. Paint and coal dust helped with that. The bomb had to weigh the correct amount as well.
The coal was safe until it got quite hot, so resistance fighters could easily carry the coal and surreptitiously drop the bomb anywhere coal is stored. Eventually, it will be put in a boiler, and at the right temperature, it will do its job. There’s some actual footage of a test in the second video below.
As the CIA notes, the idea actually dates back to the US Civil War. [Thomas Edgeworth Courtenay] built coal “torpedos” in the 1860s. (In those days, a torpedo could refer to any kind of bomb.) Probably the biggest impact was to tie up soldiers to guard coal stocks. However, in 1864, the USS Chenango’s boiler exploded in New York, and although the Union denied it, [Courtenay] was convinced it was one of his coal torpedoes that had done the trick. Later that year, Greyhound, the personal steamer of Major General Benjamin Butler, exploded right after taking in fresh coal. The CIA also mentions how coal bombs were also produced by the OSS, and even the Axis powers had their own version.
While we are no fans of war, we have to admit we are always fascinated with war technology. Even if that means microwave death rays. Certainly, hiding explosives in coal qualifies as a wartime hack.
2026-03-08 08:00:00
During the 1990s the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant – formerly the Chernobyl NPP – continued operating with its remaining three RBMK reactors, but of course the 1970s-era automation with its very limited SKALA computer required some serious modernization. What was interesting here is that instead of just replacing this entire Soviet-era mainframe with a brand-new 1990s one, the engineers responsible opted to build a new system – called DIIS – around it. This is detailed in a recent video by the [Chornobyl Family] on YouTube.
This SKALA industrial control system was previously detailed in a video, covering this 24-bit mainframe computer and its many limitations. It wasn’t quite a real-time control system, but it basically did what it was designed to do. Since at the time it was not clear for how long these three RBMKs would be kept running, they didn’t want to go overboard with investments either.
Ultimately Unit 2 only was active until 1991 due to a turbine fire, Unit 1 until 1996 and Unit 3 was shutdown for the last time in 2000, so this a sensible decision. During those years, an auxiliary information-measurement system (DIIS) was the big upgrade, which got bridged into SKALA via a Ukrainian-made SM-1210 minicomputer, with the latter connected to an 80386 PC which itself was connected to an ARCnet hub.
Best part of this DIIS upgrade was that it made it possible to run modeling algorithms for the reactor core based on measurements, without having to send data all the way over to the central control office in Moscow. Now reactor parameters could be visualized in real-time, and adjustments made via the same PRIZMA program’s magnetic tapes of the SKALA system as before.
Although the result was a bit of an odd mixture of 1970s Soviet mainframe design, 1980s-derived Ukrainian mainframe design and 1990s Intel computing power, it worked well enough to bring the ChNPP to the very doorstep of the 21st century with no issues worthy of note. Definitely a testament to the engineers who hacked this upgrade together and made it work so smoothly.
2026-03-08 05:00:00
Although to the average person a camera lens is just that bit of glass you stick on the front of the camera to make stuff appear in focus, there’s a whole wide world out there of lens designs and modifications with enough variety to make your head spin. Some of these designs make a big impact, while others fade away again, sometimes at the whims of film makers and photographers. Prism-based anamorphic lenses are an oddity that recently [Mathieu Stern] got his hands on. (Video, embedded below.)
During the 1950s and 1960s there was a bit of a competition between anamorphic formats, which use special lenses that ‘squeeze’ a larger image so that widescreen movies could be recorded on standard 35 mm film. By using the same lens for recording and playback, the result was a mostly distortion-free image. Here the Technirama format by Technicolor who teamed up with Dutch company De Oude Delft (‘Old Delft’) to produce the prism-based Delrama lenses that fit on existing lenses for cameras and projectors.
Despite having a clearly superior, distortion-free image than the cylindrical lenses of the competition, Technirama got pushed out of the commercial market, leaving De Oude Delft to try and interest the consumer market for Delrama with 8 and 16 mm adapters. These latter are the ones that [Mathieu] got his hands on and tried out with a DSLR camera.
Troublesome with these Delrama adapters is that their silver mirrors tend to degrade over time, and they also turned out to be rather fragile, which are both things that made consumers sour on them. Another challenge was the fixed four meter focus that’s great when you’re using it with a projector, but terrible for up-close shots. All of these issues resulted in Delrama fading from the market by the 1970s until all that remains are these remnants of a format that once was used to film some of the biggest Hollywood movies.
2026-03-08 02:00:21
Instant photography is a miracle of the analog age, chemical photographs that develop in your hands moments after the shutter has been pressed. You can buy instant cameras and film from Fuji and the successor company to Polaroid, the originator of the technology, but they’re expensive. Fortunately [BoxArt] is here for those seeking a cheaper alternative, with an instant camera featuring a Raspberry Pi and a printer (Lithuanian language, Google Translate link).
It’s a fairly straightforward arrangement, with the Pi Zero and camera driving a receipt printer. There’s a nicely engineered 3D printed case, and the guts of a power bank to provide the volts for the thing. There are a set of status lights on top, and that’s it. Press the button, get a not-very-good grayscale image on curly paper.
You can of course buy off-the-shelf grayscale printing cameras from your favorite import site for much less than the cost of this camera, but we think this would probably take better pictures. Meanwhile if the original instant photography interests you, we’ve got you covered.
2026-03-07 23:00:01
We were talking about [Maya Posch]’s rant on smartphones, “The Curse of the Everything Device”. Maya’s main point is that because the smartphone, or computer, can do everything, it’s hard for a person to focus down and do one thing without getting distracted, checking their whatever feed, or getting an important push notification about the Oscars. She was suggesting tying your hands to the mast by using a device that can only accommodate the one function, like a dedicated writing tool or word processor.
[Kristina Panos] compared the all-singing, all-dancing black rectangle to an everything-device of old: the all-in-one stereo receiver with built-in tape player, record player, and not just FM, but also AM radio receiver. The point being, the hi-fi device also does a whole lot of things but isn’t similarly cursed. The tape player never interrupts your listening to the AM radio station. When the record is over, it doesn’t swap over to FM. Your agency is required.
Similarly, it’s probably not intrinsically problematic that the smartphone has a camera, a web browser, text messages, and heck even a telephone built in. It’s how they interact with each other and the user, each vying for user attention, and interrupting with popups and alarms. It’s maybe a simple matter of software! (Says the hardware guy.)
Where would a distraction-free, but fully featured, phone begin? With the operating system? It would be perverse to limit you to one app at a time, or to make switching between them more cumbersome. How about turning off notifications, and relying on changing context only when you think about it? Maybe that’s a middle ground. How do you cope with the endless distractions offered to you by your smartphone? By your main computer?
