Standards/Consortia: V16, UsbGpib, and More

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Dec 30, 2025

• Daniel Estévez ☛ Decoding a V16 beacon

  The V16 beacon is a car warning beacon that will mandatorily replace the warning triangles in Spain starting in 2026. In the event of an emergency, this beacon can be magnetically attached to the roof of the car and switched on. It has a bright LED strobe light and a connection to the cellular network, which it uses to send its GNSS position to the DGT 3.0 cloud network (for readers outside of Spain, the Spanish DGT is roughly the equivalent of the US DMV). The main point of these beacons is that placing warning triangles far enough from a vehicle can be dangerous, while this beacon can be placed without leaving the car.

• CNX Software ☛ Open-source hardware USB to GPIB adapter connects legacy GPIB/IEEE-488 instruments to modern hosts - CNX Software

  XyphroLabs’s UsbGpib is an open-source hardware, inexpensive, and portable USB to GPIB adapter aiming to provide “access to legacy GPIB/IEEE-488 instruments using contemporary hardware and software, with a focus on accessibility, openness, and ease of integration into current workflows”.

• Arpit Bhayani ☛ Clock Synchronization Is a Nightmare

  Every computer has an internal clock, typically driven by a quartz crystal oscillator. These oscillators work by vibrating at a specific frequency when voltage is applied. The standard frequency for most computer clocks is 32768 Hz, chosen because it is a power of two and makes counting down to one second straightforward.

  The catch: quartz crystals are not perfect. Their oscillation frequency varies based on many factors; here are a few…

• Robert Alexander ☛ Does the Internet know what time is it?

  Time is one of those things that is significantly harder to deal with than you’d naively expect. Its common in computing to assume that computers know the current time. After all, there are protocols like NTP for synchronizing computer clocks, and they presumably work well and are widely used. Practically speaking, what kinds of hazards lie hidden here?

  I’ll start this post with some questions: [...]

• Graphics Stack

  • Tom's Hardware ☛ D7VK reaches version 1.1 and adds new frontend and experimental Direct3D 6 support — Direct3D 7-to-Vulkan translation layer runs old games with native performance

    D7VK has added experimental Direct3D 6 support, opening up near-native performance for older PC games without emulation.