Le immagini pubblicate dalla Yale University documentano massacri di massa nella città sudanese di El-Fasher, conquistata dalle Forze di Supporto Rapido (RSF) domenica scorsa al termine di un assedio durato oltre 18 mesi. Pozze di sangue e cumuli di corpi testimoniano l’avvio di un processo sistematico e intenzionale di pulizia etnica delle comunità non arabe.

“Le azioni delle RSF documentate in questo rapporto potrebbero configurare crimini di guerra e crimini contro l’umanità e potrebbero raggiungere il livello di genocidio”, si legge.

Quella che sconvolge il Sudan dall’aprile 2023 non è però una guerra dimenticata. È diventata la più grave catastrofe umanitaria mondiale, con oltre 30 milioni di persone bisognose di assistenza e civili trasformati in bersagli di una violenza indiscriminata.

Oggi si assiste a una nuova escalation genocidiaria. Le condizioni che rendono possibili tragedie come l’eccidio di El-Fasher non sorgono dunque per caso. Sono il risultato del ridimensionamento incessante della diplomazia e della cooperazione internazionale, del cinismo di fronte a gravi violazioni dei diritti umani e del diritto umanitario, e della costante anteposizione del profitto dei mercanti di armi alla costruzione della pace. Da chi, insomma, si trincera dietro il principio per cui il diritto internazionale valga fino ad un certo punto.

Invece, la sicurezza e la pace si costruiscono guardando nella direzione opposta, quella dei diritti fondamentali. Prima di tutto.

L'articolo Sudan: il satellite racconta ciò che il mondo ignora proviene da Possibile.

When Microsoft decided they wanted to get into the game console market, they were faced with a problem. Everyone knew them as a company that developed computer software, and there was a concern that consumers wouldn’t understand that their new Xbox console was a separate product from their software division. To make sure they got the message though, Microsoft decided to show off a prototype that nobody could mistake for a desktop computer.

The giant gleaming X that shared the stage with Bill Gates and Seamus Blackley at the 2000 Game Developers Conference became the stuff of legend. We now know the machine wasn’t actually a working Xbox, but at the time, it generated enormous buzz. But could it have been a functional console? That’s what [Tito] of Macho Nacho Productions wanted to find out — and the results are nothing short of spectacular.

The key to this project is the enclosure itself, but this is no simple project box we’re talking about here. Milled from a solid block of aluminum, the original prototype’s shell reportedly cost Microsoft $18,000 to have produced, which would be around $36,000 when adjusted for inflation. Luckily, the state of the art has moved forward a bit in the intervening two decades. So after working with [Wesk] to create a 3D model from reference images (including some that [Tito] took himself of one of the surviving prototypes on display in New York), the design was sent away to PCBWay for production. It still cost the better part of $6 K to be produced, but that’s a hell of a savings compared to the original. Though [Tito] still had to polish the aluminum himself to recreate the original’s mirror-like shine.

To say the rest of the project was “easy” would be something of an understatement, but it was at least more familiar territory. Unlike the original prototype, this machine would actually play Xbox games, to [Tito] focused on cramming the original era-appropriate hardware (plus a few modern homebrew tweaks, such as HDMI-out) into the hollow X using a clever system of integrated rails and 3D printed mounts.

Some of the original parts, like the power supply, were simply too large to use. That’s where [Redherring32] came in. He designed a custom USB-C power supply that could satisfy the original console’s energy needs in a much smaller footprint. There’s also a modern SSD in place of the 8 GB of spinning rust that the console shipped with back in 2001. But overall, it’s still real Xbox hardware — no emulation or other funny tricks here.

At this point, the team had already exceeded what Microsoft pulled off in 2000, but they weren’t done yet. Wanting to really set this project apart, [Tito] decided to replace the center jewel with something a bit more modern. The original was little more than a backlit piece of plastic, but on this build it’s a circular LCD driven by a Raspberry Pi Pico, capable of showing a number of custom full-motion animations thanks to the efforts of [StuckPixel].

The end result of this team effort is a machine that’s not only better looking than Microsoft’s original, but also more functional. It’s a project that’s destined for a more than just sitting on a shelf collecting dust, so we’re happy to hear that [Tito] plans on taking it on a tour of different gaming events to give the public a chance to see it in person. He’s even had a custom crate made so he can transport it around in style and safety.

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hackaday.com/2025/10/30/iconic…

Force feedback joysticks are prized for creating a more realistic experience when used with software like flight sims. Sadly, you can’t say the same thing about using them with mech games, because mechs aren’t real. In any case, [zeroshot] whipped up their own stick from scratch for that added dose of realistic feedback in-game.

[zeroshot] designed a simple gimbal to allow the stick to move in two axes, relying primarily on 3D-printed components combined with a smattering of off-the-shelf bearings. For force feedback, an Arduino Micro uses via TMC2208 stepper drivers to control a pair of stepper motors, which can apply force to the stick in each axis via belt-driven pulleys. Meanwhile, the joystick’s position on each axis is tracked via magnetic encoders. The Arduino feeds this data to an attached computer by acting as a USB HID device.

We’ve seen some other great advanced joystick projects over years, too. Never underestimate how much a little haptic feedback can add to immersion.

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hackaday.com/2025/10/30/build-…

Has anyone noticed that news stories have gotten shorter and pithier over the past few decades, sometimes seeming like summaries of what you used to peruse? In spite of that, huge numbers of people are relying on large language model (LLM) “AI” tools to get their news in the form of summaries. According to a study by the BBC and European Broadcasting Union, 47% of people find news summaries helpful. Over a third of Britons say they trust LLM summaries, and they probably ought not to, according to the beeb and co.

It’s a problem we’ve discussed before: as OpenAI researchers themselves admit, hallucinations are unavoidable. This more recent BBC-led study took a microscope to LLM summaries in particular, to find out how often and how badly they were tainted by hallucination.

Not all of those errors were considered a big deal, but in 20% of cases (on average) there were “major issues”–though that’s more-or-less independent of which model was being used. If there’s good news here, it’s that those numbers are better than they were when the beeb last performed this exercise earlier in the year. The whole report is worth reading if you’re a toaster-lover interested in the state of the art. (Especially if you want to see if this human-produced summary works better than an LLM-derived one.) If you’re a luddite, by contrast, you can rest easy that your instincts not to trust clanks remains reasonable… for now.

Either way, for the moment, it might be best to restrict the LLM to game dialog, and leave the news to totally-trustworthy humans who never err.

hackaday.com/2025/10/30/why-yo…