Hackaday Links: May 21, 2023

The reports of the death of automotive AM radio may have been greatly exaggerated. Regular readers will recall us harping on the issue of automakers planning to exclude AM from the infotainment systems in their latest offerings, which doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense given the reach of AM radio and its importance in public emergencies. US lawmakers apparently agree with that position, having now introduced a bipartisan bill to require AM radios in cars. The “AM for Every Vehicle Act” will direct the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration to draw up regulations requiring every vehicle operating on US highways to be able to receive AM broadcasts without additional fees or subscriptions. That last bit is clever, since it prevents automakers from charging monthly fees as they do for heated seats and other niceties. It’s just a bill now, of course, and stands about as much chance of becoming law as anything else that makes sense does, so we’re not holding our breath on this one. But at least someone recognizes that AM radio still has a valid use case.

We’ve also spent a bit of time recently dunking on SpaceX for their brief but spectacular Starship flight, which ended when the range safety officer decided enough was enough and detonated the mammoth rocket’s self-destruct charges over the Gulf of Mexico. The destruction wrought by the 33 Raptor engines on the launch pad was epic, with concrete and rebar scattered over a fair bit of the Boca Chica launch facility. But now it appears that debris from the rocket itself is making its way to shore. People have been finding scraps of Starship and inexplicably posting them online, which seems like a great way for SpaceX goons to come knocking on your door to take back your find. Which is nice and legal, apparently, since the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 says that space debris remains the property of the launch operator. But that begs the question: If the rocket that made the debris never made it to space, does the treaty still apply?

Speaking of almost making it to space, we ran into an article about strange sounds being detected in the stratosphere recently. The work comes from Sandia National Labs, where balloons carrying instrument platforms are sent aloft regularly to see — and hear — what’s going on up there. Up at around 50 km altitude, the balloon’s microphones picked up an infrasonic (below 20 Hz) signal of unknown origin. On some flights, the sound is heard repeating a few times every hour, which makes it all the more mysterious. But to us, the really interesting thing here is that the balloons are incredibly simple — just rolls of cheap plastic film from the hardware store, rolls of packing tape to stick the gores together, and powdered charcoal from a pyrotechnics supplier. The charcoal goes in the bag to turn the plastic black, the New Mexico sun heats the air inside, and the next thing you know, you’ve got a balloon up in the stratosphere. No hydrogen, no helium — sounds like a recipe for fun. Or, you know — getting into a lot of trouble.

And now a public service announcement: If you have an old Gmail account that you haven’t used in a while, you might want to check in on it before Google zaps it. The company announced that starting in December it’ll start deleting Gmail accounts that haven’t been logged into for two years or more. They’ll be sending out emails to let you know if your account is on the chopping block, and they’ll deactivate the account for 60 days before nuking it completely, so you should have plenty of heads-up to make sure you don’t lose anything. But then again, these things always seem to catch someone unawares, so better to be ahead of the curve if you can.

And finally, Hackaday superfriend Mark Hughes has been putting a lot of work into Project Boondock Echo, which aims at building a distributed store-and-forward system for remote radio communications. Mark says they’re at the point of pre-beta testing, where devices will be sent out to a couple of people for two weeks of testing. After they find some bugs and make the necessary fixes, they’ll do a limited run of 20 or so units that will go out to beta testers. If you’re interested in participating, head over to the project page and drop Mark a line. Licensed amateur radio operators only at this point, please.