Hackaday Links: February 25, 2024 [Hackaday]

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When all else fails, blame it on the cloud? It seems like that’s the script for just about every outage that makes the news lately, like the Wyze camera outage this week that kept people from seeing feeds from their cameras for several hours. The outage went so far that some users’ cameras weren’t even showing up in the Wyze app, and there were even reports that some people were seeing thumbnails for cameras they don’t own. That’s troubling, of course, and Wyze seems to have taken action on that quickly by disabling a tab on the app that would potentially have let people tap into camera feeds they had no business seeing. Still, it looks like curiosity got the better of some users, with 1,500 tapping through when notified of motion events and seeing other people walking around inside unknown houses. The problem was resolved quickly, with blame laid on an “AWS partner” even though there were no known AWS issues at the time of the outage. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: security cameras, especially mission-critical ones, have no business being connected with anything but Ethernet or coax, and exposing them to the cloud is a really, really bad idea.

The next Great American Eclipse is rapidly approaching, and if you don’t already live close to the path of totality, chances are pretty good that you’re already out of luck in terms of travel and accommodations. Hotels and campgrounds are booked solid, most at egregiously inflated rates, and flights to the airports along the path are likely going to be hard to come by in the days before and after the big event on April 8. Based on experience, whatever effort is needed to get into the path of totality is worth it, but if you just can’t find a place to stay on the ground, Delta Airlines might just have a solution for you. They’re running a special flight 1218, from Austin, Texas to Detroit, Michigan, pretty much right down the centerline of totality. It takes off from Austin at 12:15 PM CT and arrives in Detroit at 4:20 PM ET, my dude. That means the Moon’s shadow will catch up to the plane, an Airbus A220-300, somewhere over Missouri or so, when the plane will be at cruising altitude and well above the clouds. That should be pretty spectacular for the lucky few on the currently sold-out flight; we just hope they’ve all considered the fact that once the show is over, they’ll be in Detroit.

“The Worm” returns! For the upcoming Artemis II Moon mission, NASA is dusting off their nostalgia-laden “worm” logo, emblazoning the booster and the Orion capsule with the unmistakable twisty letters. Presented as an alternative to the equally iconic “meatball” logo, the worm dates back to 1975 but didn’t really catch on until the Space Shuttle program. Like vexilologists, logologists — if that’s the correct term — have strong opinions about both designs, the details of which are probably best left alone. We will say that NASA is going hard with the worm, though, with letters 2 meters tall on the booster. Like it or hate it, it’s a bold choice.

Remember, kids — never drive through water of unknown depth. And that goes even when you’re driving a Cybertruck, which is supposed to be nigh-impervious to water, as well as bullets and rocks. The electric vehicle has a “Wade Mode” — it really should have been “Ford Mode,” but wasn’t for obvious reasons — that is supposed to pump up the air suspension to maximum height as well as put positive pressure on the battery compartment, to prevent water ingress. The YouTube video that accompanies the article shows someone giving this a try, and all things considered, it worked out pretty well. The truck performed admirably even in a puddle deep enough that the hood (or frunk, whatever) was awash. The water did rip off some plastic trim pieces, which would probably cost about $11,000 to get fixed (just kidding — maybe), and the tailgate and tonneau cover buttons wouldn’t work afterwards either. That the truck survived more or less intact isn’t really the point, though, as anyone who has driven through even a few inches of running water can attest. Water always wins.

Speaking of water, if your iPhone takes a dunk in the porcelain throne, you might be best advised to lay off the rice. That’s what Apple support says, anyway, as the common home remedy for a waterlogged phone may end up “allow[ing] small particles of rice to damage your iPhone.” We assume the mechanism of injury would be dust and broken bits of rice kernels entering the USB-C or Lightning jack. We could see how this would be a problem, especially if the rice nubbins get rehydrated by the water and swell up in there. Maybe silica gel would be a better choice?

And finally, New Mind just dropped a cool video on the evolution of wiring harnesses. He starts with the laughably simple electrical system of the Model T Ford and progresses all the way up to the harnesses needed for EVs. The side-trip into wire insulation types and the different terminations used over the years was fantastic too. We recently did a piece on automative wiring harnesses, so this video was much appreciated.