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September 28, 2026

Hackaday Links: September 27, 2026 Al Williams | usagoldmines.com

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It isn’t quite hailing frequencies open, but researchers from Harvard claim they’ve picked up a radio signal directly from a nearby exoplanet. Before you get too excited, planets in our solar system also emit RF, so no one credible is claiming these are extraterrestrial reruns of their version of I Love Lucy, but it is the first time they’ve localized a radio signal to an exoplanet, in this case, Beta Pictoris B.

Speaking of space, the asteroid formerly known as 1981 EC26 is now sporting a new moniker: (14331) Alyankovic. If you think that sounds like (Weird) Al Yankovic, you aren’t wrong. The Tucson Star reports that, thanks to the efforts of several planetary scientists who are also Weird Al fans, the International Astronomical Union made the name official. Apparently, another asteroid now bears a name in honor of Weird Al’s predecessor, Tom Lehrer.

The postmarketOS — er — Nura logo.

If you follow open mobile phone software, you probably know the name postmarketOS, a Linux distribution based on Alpine aimed at mobile phones and tablets. Well, now you can forget it. The project announced a name change, so we’re now talking about Nura. Why Nura? According to the team, it is a shortened form of Nuraghe, some granite structures in Sardinia that are over 5,000 years old. The FAQ mentions that postmarketOS was hard to remember. We aren’t sure Nura is that much more memorable. Perhaps they should have pivoted to Phonz OS.

High performance JavaScript.

Ever write an Arduino “sketch?” We’d bet you have. You might know that Arduino forked from Wiring, and Wiring was, actually, an offshoot of Processing. There is another Processing offshoot, p5.js, and it, unsurprisingly, looks a lot like Arduino. Now p5.js can access your GPU via WebGPU, and if you want to learn about CPU programming, there’s a page for that.

A 2-ton 3D-printed die (photo credit: Baker Industries)

We all want a metal 3D printer, but even when you get one, it isn’t likely to be turning out two-ton dies. Unless, of course, you work for a big national laboratory. The die is six feet long and four feet wide. Apparently, it will be shaping some thermoplastic composite for us in experimental aircraft.

We always thought transformers were a way to step AC voltages up or down. Or maybe they were a Lou Reed album. Then they were toy robots. Now they are the power behind AI chatbots. If you are as confused as you are, this transformer (of the AI kind) explainer might help you.

If you can find the old 2011 Kindle 4 that slipped behind your couch cushions a few years ago, you might be able to load a mainline Linux kernel on it soon. The patches are out there, and the kernel supports a lot of even stranger things, like the IBM System/390, the Sega Dreamcast, and the Nintendo GameCube.


See something interesting that you think would be a good fit for our weekly Links column? Drop us a line, we’d love to hear about it.

 

This articles is written by : Nermeen Nabil Khear Abdelmalak

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