Most of us have some form of an on-the-go toolkit, but how much thought have we put into its contents? \there’s a community of people who put a lot of thought into this, and EMF Camp have put up one of their talks from earlier in the summer in which [Drew Batchelor] sets out their manifesto and introduces tinytoolk.it, a fascinating resource.

The talk is well worth a watch, as rather than setting the tools you should be carrying, it instead examines the motivations for your kit in the firs place, and how to cull those which don’t make the grade. If an items seems to see little use, put a piece of tape with the date on it every time it comes out, to put a number on it. As an example he ended up culling a multi-tool from his kit, not because it’s not an extremely useful tool, but because he found everything it did was better done by other items in the kit.

It’s probable we’ll all look at our carry-around kit with new eyes after watching this, it’s certain that ours could use a few tweaks. What’s in your kit, and how could you improve it? Let us know in the comments.

media.ccc.de/v/emf2024-265-the…

hackaday.com/2024/09/22/the-ti…

Although less popular these days, wire-wrap is still a very relevant, easily reversible solder-free way to assemble (prototype) systems using wire-wrap wire and a wire-wrap tool. This latter tool can be either a hand or powered tool, but all it has to do is retain the stripped wire, fit around the wire-wrapping post and create a snug, oxidation-proof metal-metal contact fit. For the very common 30 AWG (0.25 mm) wire-wrap wire, the Jonard Tools (OK Industries) WSU-30M wire-strip-unwrap tool is pretty much the popular standard. It allows you to strip off insulation, wrap and unwrap connections all with one tool, but the question is whether you can just 3D print a wrap-unwrap tool that’s about as good?

First a note about cost, as although the genuine WSU-30M has risen in cost over the years, it can still be obtained for around $50 from retails like Mouser, while clones of varying quality can be obtained for around $15 from your favorite e-tailer website. From experience, these clones have quite sloppy tolerance, and provide a baseline of where a wrapping tool becomes unusable, as they require some modding to be reliable.

Wire-wrap tool model by [KidSwidden] on Thingiverse.Taking a quick look at the wire-wrap tools available on Thingiverrse, we can see basically two categories: one which goes for minimally viable, with just a cylinder that has a hole poked on the side for the stripped wire to fit through, as these versions by [JLSA_Portfolio], [paulgeneres], [orionids] and [cmellano]. The WSU-30M and similar tools have a channel on the side that the stripped wire is fed into, to prevent it from getting tangled up and snagging. On the clone units this channel often has to be taped off to prevent the wire from escaping and demonstrating why retaining the wire prior to wrapping is a good idea.

This leads us to three examples of a 3D printed wire-wrap tool with such a wire channel: by [KidSwidden] (based on a Radio Shack unit, apparently), another by [DieKatzchen] and an interesting variation by [4sStylZ]. Naturally, the problem with such fine features is that tolerance matter a lot, with an 0.2 mm nozzle (for FDM printers) recommended, and the use of an SLA printer probably a good idea. It’s also hard to say what kind of wire-wrap connection you are going to get, as there are actually two variants: regular and modified.

The starting guide to wire-wrapping by Sparkfun uses the WSU-30M, which as the name suggests uses modified wire-wrap, which means that part of the wire insulation is wrapped around the bottom of the post, for extra mechanical stability, effectively like strain-relief. A lot of such essential details are covered in this [Nuts and Volts] article which provides an invaluable starting guide to wire-wrapping, including detecting bad wraps.

Naturally, the 3D printed tools will not include a stripper for the wire insulation, so you will have to provide this yourself (PSA: using your teeth is not recommended), and none of these 3D models include an unwrap tool, which may or may not be an issue for you, as careful unwrapping allows you to reuse the wire, which can be useful while debugging or reworking a board.

Top image: completed wire-wrap on a post. (Credit: Sparkfun)

hackaday.com/2024/09/22/3d-pri…

il ddl 1660 e l'imminente stato di polizia in Italia:
slowforward.net/2024/09/22/all…

giurisprudenzapenale.com/2024/…

ilpartitocomunistaitaliano.it/…

avvenire.it/attualita/pagine/d…

vitawebtv.it/approvato-alla-ca…

usb.it/leggi-notizia/ddl-1660-…

giurisprudenzapenale.com/wp-co…

Thanks a lot, Elon. Or maybe not, depending on how this report that China used Starlink signals to detect low-observable targets pans out. There aren’t a lot of details, and we couldn’t find anything approximating a primary source, but it seems like the idea is based on forward scatter, which is when waves striking an object are deflected only a little bit. The test setup for this experiment was a ground-based receiver listening to the downlink signal from a Starlink satellite while a DJI Phantom 4 Pro drone was flown into the signal path. The drone was chosen because nobody had a spare F-22 or F-35 lying around, and its radar cross-section is about that of one of these stealth fighters. They claim that this passive detection method was able to make out details about the drone, but as with most reporting these days, this needs to be taken with an ample pinch of salt. Still, it’s an interesting development that may change things up in the stealth superiority field.

Another week, another example of how the fine print on the EULA is never your friend. This time around it’s the popular Wyze security cameras, where there’s an unconfirmed report that a recent firmware update nerfed the “Recording Cooldown” setting menu, making the option to have no cooldown period between recording a paid feature. As we understand it, Wyze cameras previously had a cooldown feature, intended to keep the camera from overheating or killing the battery if the motion sensor detects a lot of continual movement. But it looks like earlier firmware revs allowed users to bypass the default five-minute period between recordings, a reasonable choice for anyone using these as security cameras. Now, bypassing the cooldown seems to require a paid subscription. We have to stress that we don’t know anything beyond this one unconfirmed report, but this enshittification is certainly something we’ve seen before, so it at least rings true, and it seems like another solid example of the fact that with cheap IoT appliances, you never truly own your stuff.

We hate to be the bearers of bad news — well, that might be a stretch given the two articles above — but this is really the kind of news we hate to hear. The Eugene Makerspace in Eugene, Oregon, suffered a major fire in their community shop on September 15. Judging by the pictures, the place was pretty thoroughly destroyed, and the fact that it was an early morning fire probably contributed to the lack of injuries. Their GoFundMe campaign is doing pretty well, but they could certainly use some help getting back on their feet. If you’re in a position to contribute, we’re sure they’d appreciate it.

When it comes to OpenAI’s newest AI model, you’d better watch what you think — or rather, you’d better not think too much about how the model thinks. Trying to get inside the model’s “head” is apparently against the terms of service, with users getting nastygrams from OpenAI warning them to step off. The “Strawberry” AI model has a feature that lets users have a glimpse into the “chain of thought” used to answer a question or complete a task, which on the face of it seems to be exactly what they don’t want users to do. But the chain of thought is only a hand-waving summary of the raw thought process, filtered through a separate AI model. This is what OpenAI doesn’t want people probing, and any attempts at engineering tricky prompts to reveal the raw chain of thought will potentially get you banned.

And finally, although motorsports aren’t really our thing, we have to admit a certain sense of awe at this video that exposes some of the extreme engineering that goes into top fuel drag racing. Specifically, this video concentrates on drag racing, where nitromethane-fueled engines-on-wheels scream down a quarter-mile track in less than four seconds. Everything about this sport is extreme, especially the engines, which run themselves almost to death for the few seconds they are under full power. The video is packed full of tidbits that boggle the mind, such as these engines burning out their sparkplugs about halfway through the course, with the engine continuing to run in diesel mode thanks to the high compression and temperatures. Drivers experience a brain-squishing 8 g of acceleration during a run, which consumes over 30 gallons of fuel and exerts so much force on the engine that the connecting rods get compressed. The supercharger alone takes 800 horsepower to run, and yet the engine still produces enough power that the car is going 60 miles per hour before it covers its own length. Oh, and that ridiculous exhaust plume? That’s raw fuel that is purposely left unburned until it escapes the exhaust tips, which are angled to provide additional down-force to make sure as much torque as possible gets from the tires to the track. Enjoy!

youtube.com/embed/GHZGPppf8Uw?…

hackaday.com/2024/09/22/hackad…

comprate Corticelli, leggete Corticelli

declicedizioni.it/prodotto/lib…

ikona.net/mario-corticelli-ari…

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Mario Corticelli, Personne ne reste découragé longtemps | Nessuno rimane scoraggiato a lungo, Foglio 2

Mario Corticelli, Personne ne reste découragé longtemps = Nessuno rimane scoraggiato a lungo. Traduction française/Traduzione francese: Michele Zaffarano. Colorno : Tielleci, 2014. – 1 feuille/fogl…

^{Benway Series}

Di Alberto Micalizzi:

DEBITORI UNITI D'AMERICA

Circa un terzo dell’intero debito pubblico USA, pari a $7.000 miliardi, è in scadenza nella seconda metà del 2024. Si tratta di una montagna di titoli emessi circa 1 anno fa al 5% di rendimento, come alternativa all’emissione di titoli a lunga scadenza che avrebbero fatto impennare i tassi decennali e trentennali sui quali si basano i mutui ipotecari, portando sul lastrico le famiglie già piene di debito privato.

Ora il Tesoro deve rimborsare questo debito ed è costretto a rinnovarlo di nuovo a breve termine. Però, con un’inflazione ormai prossima al 2%, se pagasse un altro 5% di interessi regalerebbe letteralmente soldi al sistema, cosa che abbatterebbe il dollaro.

Ecco che allora si è mossa la banca centrale, e la settimana scorsa ha operato un mega-taglio dei tassi di 0,50% a cui ne seguiranno altri, che ha l’obiettivo di ridurre i tassi a breve e contenere il costo del gigantesco rifinanziamento in corso da parte del Tesoro americano. Ma ormai sono dentro alla spirale e difficilmente ne usciranno con mezzi convenzionali.

Nel caso non bastasse, il disavanzo di bilancio è arrivato a $266,8 miliardi (pari a circa il 7,6% del PIL) ed il deficit della bilancia commerciale viaggia ormai al ritmo di $75 miliardi al mese.
Quest’ultimo dato è forse ancora più eclatante: dal 1971 in poi – cioè dalla fine degli accordi di Bretton Woods - la bilancia commerciale è costantemente in deficit e gli USA sono alla perenne ricerca di qualcuno che finanzi il loro tenore di vita.

Finora il dollaro ha sorretto il debito americano. Nel momento in cui il giochino diventa insostenibile chi sarà disposto a farsi carico del grasso pachiderma che, peraltro, è poco propenso a ringraziare e gioca a fare il gendarme del mondo?

Sono convinto che la Cina, ad esempio, sia seduta sulla riva del fiume..

Whether you’re a landlubber or an old salt, you’ve got to appreciate the effort that [The Aussie boat guy] puts into cutting an old brass propeller down into a far smaller and sleeker specimen. Especially since he does the entire thing with hand tools, a couple different calipers, and that most valuable of natural resources: experience.

The whole process was made somewhat easier by the fact that [The Aussie boat guy] had a model to work from — his friend had a small propeller that was already known to perform well, it was just a matter of cutting the larger prop down to match its dimensions. Using what appears to be pieces of leather (presumably for its flexibility), a template was made to accurately map out the front face of the blade.
As Bob Ross would say — “Here comes your bravery test”
By measuring out from the hub of the prop with his calipers, [The Aussie boat guy] was able to make sure the template was properly positioned before scribing its shape into the larger prop. An angle grinder was used to cut the shape out of each blade, followed by a smoothing off with a flap wheel.

But there was still a problem — the blades were the right shape, but they were far too thick. So he took the angle grinder to the back of each one to start removing material, using another set of calipers to occasionally spot-check them to make sure they were thinning out at roughly the same rate.

This thinning out process continued until the prop was brought into balance. How do you check that, you might be wondering? Well, if you’re a madman like [The Aussie boat guy], you chuck the thing into a power drill and spin er’ up to see how badly it shakes. But this only gives you a rough idea, so he has to move over to a somewhat more scientific apparatus that uses a set of parallel bars to help determine which blade is heavier than its peers.

Along the way, [The Aussie boat guy] also installs a bushing in the hub of the prop to adapt it to his engine, but he doesn’t spend much time talking about that given the far more audacious surgery he’s performing. He takes the end result out for a test run and achieves a notable speed boost when compared to the prop he was running previously — the final product doesn’t just look incredible, it brings the results as well.

This would appear to be the first time we’ve come across [The Aussie boat guy], which looking at some of his past videos, is a bit surprising. His channel is full of engine and boat modifications made in the pursuit of speed; check it out if you’ve ever dreamed of screaming across the surface of the water in a boat not much larger than a bathtub.

youtube.com/embed/wCCUClvZhEA?…

Thanks to [Bill] for the tip.

hackaday.com/2024/09/22/brass-…

Recentemente, Uber Eats, una delle principali piattaforme di food delivery a livello globale, è stata vittima di un nuovo presunto data breach. Un membro di BreachForums, con l’alias “888”, ha pubblicato una nuova violazione dei dati che ha esposto circa 283.000 ordini. Le informazioni trapelate includono dettagli come numeri di riferimento, nomi dei negozi, ID degli ordini, costi di consegna e tasse. Questo data breach rappresenta un nuovo colpo per la piattaforma, che già nel novembre 2023 aveva subito un’altra violazione, in cui 1,4 milioni di record erano stati compromessi.

Al momento, non possiamo confermare la veridicità della notizia, poiché l’organizzazione non ha ancora rilasciato alcun comunicato stampa ufficiale sul proprio sito web riguardo l’incidente. Pertanto, questo articolo deve essere considerato come ‘fonte di intelligence’.

Post rinvenuto nel Dark Web

Secondo quanto pubblicato nel forum, i dati trafugati comprendono informazioni dettagliate sugli ordini effettuati su Uber Eats. Tra le informazioni divulgate figurano i nomi dei ristoranti, gli ID degli ordini, i provider di consegna, e i costi associati, come le spese di spedizione e le tasse pagate dai clienti. Un esempio di ordine trapelato riguarda il ristorante “Guy Fieri’s Flavortown Kitchen”, con dettagli come l’orario di consegna e l’importo totale dell’ordine. Anche se al momento non sono emerse informazioni personali come nomi o indirizzi degli utenti, l’entità e la natura dei dati trafugati destano preoccupazioni in termini di privacy e sicurezza.

Conclusioni

Al momento, Uber Eats non ha rilasciato dichiarazioni ufficiali riguardo al presunto attacco, rendendo difficile verificare la veridicità del breach. Tuttavia, la mancanza di conferme non riduce la gravità della situazione. Se confermata, questa violazione rappresenterebbe un rischio per i clienti, che potrebbero essere esposti a frodi o tentativi di phishing basati sui dati divulgati. Questo incidente, che segue il breach del 2023, evidenzia ancora una volta la necessità di misure di sicurezza più rigorose.

Come nostra consuetudine, lasciamo sempre spazio ad una dichiarazione da parte dell’azienda qualora voglia darci degli aggiornamenti sulla vicenda. Saremo lieti di pubblicare tali informazioni con uno specifico articolo dando risalto alla questione.

RHC monitorerà l’evoluzione della vicenda in modo da pubblicare ulteriori news sul blog, qualora ci fossero novità sostanziali. Qualora ci siano persone informate sui fatti che volessero fornire informazioni in modo anonimo possono utilizzare la mail crittografata del whistleblower.

L'articolo Nuovo Data Breach Uber Eats in Meno di un Anno: Esposti 283.000 Ordini su BreachForums proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

@ nuova versione 0.1.0-beta01 disponibile! Come promesso, una volta terminate tutte le feature più importanti e permesso agli utenti di riportare feedback degli errori riscontrati, si può passare alla fase beta del progetto!

Ci sono molte novità nelle ultime due release:
- possibilità di inviare feedback e segnalazioni dal pulsante "Segnala un problema" nella finestra di dialogo "Informazioni app",
- supporto al codice preformattato nel corpo e nel titolo dei post,
- possibilità di creare post con sondaggi (purtroppo supportate solo dalle istanze Mastodon, su Friendica c'è del lavoro lato back-end da fare ancora),
- finestra di dialogo "dettagli post" in cui è possibile vedere il testo sorgente, il protocollo/rete di origine del contenuto, numero di like/dislike (ove presenti), date di creazione e modifica e altri dati utili,
- revisione barra degli strumenti di formattazione nella schermata di creazione post,
- fix caricamento relazioni con altri utenti nelle liste di utenti (es. seguiti/seguaci o persone che hanno ricondiviso o aggiunto ai preferiti un post),
- miglioramento errori di caricamento iniziali (ad es. se il server va in timeout),
- ottimizzazione caricamento immagini dei post, questo dovrebbe rendere molto più scorrevoli tutti i feed! 😉,
- miglioramento gestione degli eventi di modifica/creazione/cancellazione post nelle liste, per cui l'utente dovrebbe avere un feedback più immediato dell'azione senza bisogno di ricaricare tutto il feed,
- refactoring e pulizia del codice (es. per centralizzare i controlli sulle feature supportate dall'istanza corrente oppure sulle azioni che è possibile effettuare).

Fatemi sapere che cosa ne pensate, e come sempre tante care cose (buon weekend, buon inizio settimana, ecc. ecc.)! #livefasteattrash 🦝🦝🦝

#friendica #friendicadev #androidapp #androiddev #fediverseapp #kotlin #kmp #compose #opensource #foss #buildinpublic

Fabio Bertino è stato autore in tempi recenti di due libri strettamente legati al trasporto ferroviario in Italia, preceduti peraltro in passato da un’altra coppia di pubblicazioni riguardanti appunti di viaggio al di fuori dei nostri confini; tutto ciò non poteva non incuriosire uno come me che con i treni ha avuto a che fare nel corso di tutta la propria vita lavorativa, prima come Capo Treno e poi come addetto nel settore delle Risorse Umane. #Libri

iyezine.com/treni-ad-altra-vel…

Treni ad Altra Velocità - Intervista con Fabio Bertino

Treni ad Altra Velocità - Intervista con Fabio Bertino - Una conversazione con Fabio Bertino, autore in tempi recenti di due libri in cui racconta le proprie esperienze di viaggio lungo il nostro paese, percorrendo linee secondarie o utilizzando per …

^{Stefano Cavanna (In Your Eyes ezine)}