2026-01-19 20:00:00
Washington State’s House Bill 2321 is currently causing a bit of an uproar, as it seeks to add blocking technologies to 3D printers, in order to prevent them from printing “a firearm or illegal firearm parts”, as per the full text. Sponsored by a sizeable number of House members, it’s currently in committee, so the likelihood of it being put to a floor vote in the House is still remote, never mind it passing the Senate. Regardless, it is another chapter in the story of homemade firearms, which increasingly focuses on private 3D printers.
Also called ‘ghost guns‘ in the US, these can be assembled from spare parts, from kits, from home-made components, or a combination of these. While the most important parts of a firearm, like the barrel, have to be made out of something like metal, the rest can feature significant amounts of plastic parts, though the exact amount varies wildly among current 3D-printed weapons.
Since legally the receiver and frame are considered to be ‘firearms’, these are the focus of this proposed bill, which covers both additive and subtractive technology. The proposal is that a special firearms detection algorithm has to give the okay for the design files to be passed on to the machine.
This blocking feature would have to be standard for all machines sold or transferred in the state, with a special ‘preprint authentication’ handshake protocol required. The attorney general is here expected to create and maintain a database of the no longer legal firearm and parts designs for those without a requisite license.
Putting aside for a moment the ridiculousness of implementing such a scanning feature, even if it wouldn’t be child’s play to circumvent, it also barks up the wrong tree. Although in the most recent ruling pertaining to this topic in Bondi v. VanDerStok it was acknowledged that advances in 3D printing have made this worth considering from a legislative context, the main issue with ‘ghost guns’ comes still by far from kits and similar sources.
Based on this, it seems highly unlikely that HB 2321 will be put up for a vote, never mind get signed into law. Although 3D printed designs like the 9 mm x1 9 mm cartridge Urutau bullpup are apparently quite functional, it’s notable that its manufacturing involves many steps, many DIY store parts, and a bolt carrier manufactured from steel bar stock, not to mention a significant time investment. Trying to detect ‘firearm parts’ at any of these steps would seem to be a fool’s errand, even if privacy considerations were not an issue.
2026-01-19 17:00:00
Famously, the save icon on most computer user interfaces references a fairly obsolete piece of technology: the venerable floppy disk. It’s likely that most people below the age of about 30 have never interacted with one of these once-ubiquitous storage devices, so much so that many don’t recognize the object within the save icon itself anymore. [Mads Chr. Olesen]’s kids might be an exception here, though, as he’s built a remote control for them that uses real floppy disks to select the programming on the TV.
This project partially began as a way to keep the children from turning into zombies as a result of the modern auto-play brainrot-based economies common in modern media. He wanted his kids to be able to make meaningful choices and then not get sucked into these types of systems. The floppy disk presents a perfect solution here. They’re tangible media and can actually store data, so he got to work interfacing a real floppy disk drive with a microcontroller. When a disk is inserted the microcontroller wakes up, reads the data, and then sends out a command to stream the relevant media to the Chromecast on the TV. When the disk is removed, the microcontroller stops play.
Like any remote, this one is battery powered as well, but running a microcontroller and floppy disk drive came with a few challenges. This one is powered by 18650 lithium cells to help with current peaks from the drive, and after working out a few kinks it works perfectly for [Mads] children. We’ve seen a few other floppy disk-based remote controls like this one which replaces the data stored on the magnetic disc with an RFID tag instead.
2026-01-19 14:00:59
Over on YouTube [Kiss Analog] reviews the New Zoyi ZT-QB9 Smart Clamp meter.
If you’re putting together an electronics lab from scratch you absolutely must get a multimeter to start. A typical multimeter will be able to do current measurements but it will require you to break the circuit you’re measuring and interface it to your meter using its mechanical probes.
A good choice for your second, or third, multimeter is a clamp-based one. Many of the clamp meters have the clamp probe available for current measurements while still allowing you to use the standard 4mm banana jack probes for other measurements, particularly voltage and resistance.
If you’re curious to know more about how clamp meters work the answer is that they rely on some physics called the Hall Effect, as explained by the good people at Fluke.
In the video the following clamp meters are seen: Zoyi ZT-QB9, PROVA 11, and Hioki CM4375. If you’re in the market for a clamp meter you might also like to consider the EEVblog BM036 or a clamp meter from Fluke.
We have of course posted about clamp meters before. Check out Frnisi DMC-100: A Clamp Meter Worth Cracking Open or ESP32 Powers DIY Smart Energy Meter if you’d like to know more. Have your own trusty clamp meter? Don’t need no stinkin’ clamp meter? Let us know in the comments!
2026-01-19 11:00:59
For switching high-powered loads from a microcontroller, or for switching AC loads in general, most of us will reach into the parts bin and pull out a generic relay of some sort. Relays are fundamental, proven technologies to safely switch all kinds of loads. They do have their downsides, though, so if you need silent operation, precise timing, or the ability to operate orders of magnitude more times you might want to look at a triac instead. These solid state devices can switch AC loads unlike other transistor-based devices and [Ray] at OpenSprinkler is here to give us an overview on how to use them.
The key to switching an AC load is bi-directional conductivity. A normal transistor or diode can only conduct in one direction, so if you try to switch an AC load with one of these you’ll end up with what essentially amounts to a bad rectifier. Triacs do have a “gate” analogous to the base of a bipolar junction transistor, but the gate will trigger the triac when current flows in either direction as well. The amount of current needed to trigger the triac does depend on the state of the switched waveform, so it can be more complex to configure than a relay or transistor in some situations.
After going through some of the theory around these devices, [Ray] demonstrates how to use them with an irrigation system, which are almost always operating on a 24VAC system thanks to various historical quirks. This involves providing the triacs with a low voltage source to provide gate current as well as a few other steps. But with that out of the way, switching AC loads with triacs can become second nature. If you prefer a DC setup for your sprinklers, though, [vinthewrench] has demonstrated how to convert these sprinkler systems instead.
2026-01-19 08:00:20
Looking for a unique vacation spot? Have at least $10 million USD burning a hole in your pocket? If so, then you’re just the sort of customer the rather suspiciously named “GRU Space” is looking for. They’re currently taking non-refundable $1,000 deposits from individuals looking to stay at their currently non-existent hotel on the lunar surface. They don’t expect you’ll be able to check in until at least the early 2030s, and the $1K doesn’t actually guarantee you’ll be selected as one of the guests who will be required to cough up the final eight-figure ticket price before liftoff, but at least admission into the history books is free with your stay.
The whole idea reminds us of Mars One, which promised to send the first group of colonists to the Red Planet by 2024. They went bankrupt in 2019 after collecting ~$100 deposits from more than 4,000 applicants, and we probably don’t have to tell you that they never actually shot anyone into space. Admittedly, the Moon is a far more attainable goal, and the commercial space industry has made enormous strides in the decade since Mars One started taking applications. But we’re still not holding our breath that GRU Space will be leaving any mints on pillows at one-sixth gravity.
Speaking of something which actually does have a chance of reaching the Moon on time — on Saturday, NASA rolled out the massive Space Launch System (SLS) rocket that will carry a crew of four towards our nearest celestial neighbor during the Artemis II mission. There’s still plenty of prep work to do, including a dress rehearsal that’s set to take place in the next couple of weeks, but we’re getting very close. Artemis II won’t actually land on the Moon, instead performing a lunar flyby, but it will still be the first time we’ve sent humans beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO) since Apollo 17 in 1972. We can’t wait for some 4K Earthrise video.
In more terrestrial matters, Verizon users are likely still seething from the widespread outages that hit them mid-week. Users from all over the US reported losing cellular service for several hours, though outage maps at the time showed the Northeast was hit particularly hard. At one point, the situation got so bad that Verizon’s own system status page crashed. In a particularly embarrassing turn of events, some of the other cellular carriers actually reached out to their customers to explain it wasn’t their fault if they couldn’t reach friends and family on Verizon’s network. Oof.
Speaking of phones, security researchers recently unveiled WhisperPair, an attack targeting Bluetooth devices that utilize Google’s Fast Pair protocol. When the feature is implemented correctly, a Bluetooth accessory should ignore pairing requests unless it’s actually in pairing mode, but the researchers found that many popular models (including Google’s own Pixel Buds Pro 2) can be tricked into accepting an unsolicited pairing request. While an attacker hijacking your Bluetooth headset might not seem like a huge deal at first, consider that it could allow them to record your conversations and track your location via Google’s Find Hub network.
Incidentally, something like WhisperPair is the kind of thing we’d traditionally leave for Jonathan Bennett to cover in his This Week in Security column, but as regular readers may know, he had to hang up his balaclava back in December. We know many of you have been missing your weekly infosec dump, but we also know it’s not the kind of thing that just anyone can take over. We generally operate under a “Write What You Know” rule around here, and that means whoever takes over the reins needs to know the field well enough to talk authoritatively about it. Luckily, we think we’ve found just the hacker for the job, so hopefully we’ll be able to start it back up in the near future.
Finally, we don’t generally promote crowdfunding campaigns due to their uncertain nature, but we’ll make an exception for the GameTank. We’ve covered the open hardware 6502 homebrew game console here in the past, and even saw it in the desert of the real (Philadelphia) at JawnCon 0x2 in October. The project really embraces the retro feel of using a console from the 1980s, even requiring you to physically swap cartridges to play different games. It’s a totally unreasonable design choice from a technical perspective, given that an SD card could hold thousands of games at once, but of course, that’s not the point. There’s a certain joy in plugging in a nice chunky cartridge that you just can’t beat.
See something interesting that you think would be a good fit for our weekly Links column? Drop us a line, we’ve love to hear about it.
2026-01-19 05:00:18
When [Electron Impressions] used a powerful ultrasonic array to project a narrow beam of sound toward a target, he described it as potentially useful in getting someone’s attention from across a crowded room without disturbing other people. This is quite a courteous use compared to some of the ideas that occur to us, and particularly compared to the crowd-control applications that various militaries and police departments put directional speakers to.
Regardless of how one uses it, however, the physics behind such directional speakers is interesting. Normal speakers tend to disperse their sound widely because the size of the diaphragm is small compared to the wavelength of the sound they produce; just like light waves passing through a pinhole or thin slit, the sound waves diffract outwards in all directions from their source. Audible frequencies have wavelengths too long to make a handheld directional speaker, but ultrasonic waves are short enough to work well; [Electron Impressions] used 40 kHz, which has a wavelength of just eight millimeters. To make the output even more directional, he used an array of evenly-spaced parallel emitters, which interfere constructively to the front and destructively to the sides.
Ultrasound shouldn’t be audible, but sound waves travel slightly faster in high-pressure air than in low-pressure air. Since sound waves are just variations in pressure, this means that at high enough amplitudes, they change their own shape as they travel through air, tending to merge together somewhat into lower-frequency waves. When amplitude modulation is applied to the ultrasonic signal, the air itself demodulates it into audible sound (the audio quality isn’t wonderful, but still recognizable). [Electron Impressions] demonstrated the completed device, and it’s possible to hear a clear difference in intensity when it’s pointed at the microphone. It’s also possible to reflect the sound beam off hard surfaces, though multiple reflections tend to decrease the directivity when used indoors.
The circuit itself is very similar to another which we’ve covered before, down to the 555 timer used in the ultrasonic driver, and the overall approach is very reminiscent of this directional ultrasonic array.
