I recently wrote about using Klipper to drive my 3D printers, and one natural question is: Why use Klipper instead of Marlin? To some degree that’s like asking why write in one programming language instead of another. However, Klipper does offer some opportunities to extend the environment more easily. Klipper runs on a Linux host, so you can do all of the normal Linux things.

What if you wanted to create a custom G-code that would play a wave file on a speaker? That would let you have custom sounds for starting a print, aborting a print, or even finishing a print.

If you recall, I mentioned that the Klipper system is really two parts. Well, actually more than two parts, but two important parts at the core. Klipper is, technically, just the small software stub that runs on your 3D printer. It does almost nothing. The real work is in Klippy, which is mostly Python software that runs on a host computer like a Raspberry Pi or, in my case, an old laptop.

Because it is Python and quite modular, it is very simple to write your own extensions without having to major surgery or even fork Klipper. At least in theory. Most of the time, you wind up just writing G-code macros. That’s fine, but there are some limitations. This time, I’m going to show you how easy it can be using the sound player as an example.

Macros All the Way Down

Normally, you think of gcode as something like: G1 X50 Y50. Some of the newer codes don’t start with G, but they look similar. But with Klipper, G1, M205, and MeltdownExtruder are all legitimate tokens that could be “G-code.”

For example, suppose you wanted to implement a new command called G_PURGE to create a purge line (case doesn’t matter, by the way). That’s easy. You just need to put in your configuration file:
[gcode_macro g_purge]
gcode:
# do your purge code here
The only restriction is that numbers have to occur at the end of the name, if at all. You can create a macro called “Hackaday2024,” but you can’t create one called “Hackaday2024_Test.” At least, the documentation says so. We haven’t tried it.

There’s more to macros. You can add descriptions, for example. You can also override an existing macro and even call it from within your new macro. Suppose you want to do something special before and after a G28 homing command:
[gcode_macro g28]
description: Macro to do homing (no arguments)
rename_existing: g28_original
gcode:
M117 Homing...
g28_original
M117 Home done....

Not Enough!

By default, your G-code macros can’t call shell commands. There are some ways to add that feature, but letting a file just run any old command seems like an unnecessary invitation for mayhem. Instead, we’ll write a Klippy “extra.” This is a Python class that resides in your klipper/klippy/extra directory.

Your code will run with a config object that lets you learn about the system in different ways. Suppose you are writing code to set up one single item, and it doesn’t make sense that you might have more than one. For example, consider an extra that raises the print speed for all printing. Then, you’d provide an entry point, load_config, and it would receive the config object.

However, it is more common to write code to handle things that could — at least in theory — have multiple instances. For example, if you wanted to control a fan, you might imagine that a printer could have more than one of these fans. In that case, you use load_config_prefix. That allows someone who writes a configuration file to specify multiple copies of the thing you define:
[hackaday_fan fan1]
pin: 8

[hackaday_fan_fan2]pin: 9

The Sounds

In this case, we do want to allow for different sounds to play, so we’ll use load_config_prefix. Here’s the short bit of code that does the trick:

<h1>Play a sound from gcode</h1>

#

<h1>Copyright (C) 2023 Al Williams</h1>

<h1> </h1>

#

<h1>This file may be distributed under the terms of the GNU GPLv3 license.</h1>

import os
import shlex
import subprocess
import logging
class AplayCommand:
def <strong>init</strong>(self, config):
self.name = config.get_name().split()[-1] # get our name
self.printer = config.get_printer()
self.gcode = self.printer.lookup_object(039;gcode039;) # get wave and path
wav = config.get(039;wave039;)
path = config.get(039;path039;,None)
if path!=None:
wav = "aplay "+path+039;/039;+wav
else:
wav = "aplay " + wav
self.wav = shlex.split(wav) # build command line
self.gcode.register_mux_command( # register new command for gcode_macro
"APLAY", "SOUND", self.name,
self.cmd_APLAY_COMMAND, # worker for new command
desc=self.cmd_APLAY_COMMAND_help) # help text

cmd_APLAY_COMMAND_help = "Play a sound"

def cmd_APLAY_COMMAND(self, params):
try:
proc = subprocess.run(self.wav) # run aplay
except Exception:
logging.exception(
"aplay: Wave {%s} failed" % (self.name))
raise self.gcode.error("Error playing {%s}" % (self.name))

<h1>main entry point</h1>

def load_config_prefix(config):
return AplayCommand(config)

Note that the AplayCommand object does all the actual configuration when you initialize it with a config object. So, to create an “aplay object” in your config files:
[aplay startup]
wave: powerup.wav
path: /home/klipper/sounds

[aplay magic]
wave: /home/klipper/sounds/wand.wav
Then, to use that sound in a macro, you only need to use:
[gcode_macro get_ready]
gcode:
aplay sound=startup
You can make as many different sounds as you like, and if you provide an entire path for the wave parameter, you can omit the path. Optional parameters like this require a default in your code:
path = config.get('path',None)
Obviously, this assumes your Klipper computer has aplay installed and the wave files you want to play. Or, switch players and use whatever format you want.

You can read more about options and other things you can do in the “Adding a host module” section of the code overview documentation. Another good resource is the source code for the stock extras, many of which aren’t really things you’d probably consider as extra.

So next time you want to add some features to your printer, you can do it in Python with less work than you probably thought. Haven’t tried Klipper? You can learn more and get set up fairly quickly.

hackaday.com/2024/10/08/3d-pri…

Using a STM32F429 Discovery board [Jan Zwiener] put together a Game Boy-compatible system called STM32Boy. It is based around the Peanut-GB Game Boy emulator core, which is a pretty nifty and fast single-header GB emulator library in C99. Considering that the average 32-bit MCU these days is significantly faster than the ~4 MHz 8-bit Sharp SM83 (Intel 8080/Zilog Z80 hybrid) in the original Game Boy it’s probably no surprise that the STM32F429 (up to 180 MHz) can emulate this 8-bit SoC just fine.

Since Peanut-GB is a library, the developer using it is expected to provide their own routines to read and write RAM and ROM and to handle errors. Optional are the line drawing, audio read/write and serial Tx/Rx functions, with the library providing reset and a host of other utility functions. Audio functionality is provided externally, such as using the provided MiniGB APU. Although fast, it comes with a range of caveats that limit compatibility and accuracy.

For STM32Boy, [Jan] uses the LCD screen that’s on the STM32 development board to render the screen on, along with a Game Boy skin. The LCD’s touch feature is then used for the controls, as can be elucidated from the main source file. Of note is that the target GB ROM is directly compiled into the firmware image rather than provided via an external SD card. This involves using the xxd tool to create a hex version of the ROM image that can be included. Not a bad way to get a PoC up and running, but we imagine that if you want to create a more usable GB-like system it should at least be able to play more than one game without having to reflash the MCU.

hackaday.com/2024/10/08/runnin…

Gli stipendi dei Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) continuano ad aumentare, ma aumentano anche il loro carico di lavoro e le loro responsabilità. Secondo un rapporto IANS Research del 2024 , il compenso medio per un CISO è di 403.000 dollari all’anno, compreso stipendio, vari bonus e offerte aziendali. Nonostante una crescita dei ricavi del 6,4% nell’ultimo anno, le minacce alla sicurezza cambiano costantemente, aumentando la responsabilità del CISO nel proteggere l’azienda.

Inoltre, nuovi requisiti, come quelli della Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) statunitense, obbligano i CISO a determinare l’importanza di un incidente entro quattro giorni dalla sua scoperta, il che spesso comporta rischi legali. Tuttavia, molti professionisti non dispongono di risorse sufficienti per svolgere questi compiti, il che aumenta lo stress.

Come sottolinea Fred Kwong, vicepresidente e CISO della DeVry University, una prevenzione efficace delle minacce porta a tagli di budget poiché il management si chiede se siano necessarie risorse aggiuntive se le misure attuali sembrano essere sufficientemente efficaci.

Tra il 2021 e il 2022, la domanda di CISO è aumentata a causa del lavoro a distanza e della maggiore distribuzione di ransomware da parte dei criminali informatici. Tuttavia, questa domanda è ora in calo. Secondo Nick Kakolovsky di IANS Research , solo l’11% dei CISO nel 2024 ha cambiato lavoro o ha ricevuto un bonus fedeltà, rispetto al 44% nel 2022.

I professionisti della cybersecurity nelle agenzie governative tendono ad avere meno probabilità di cambiare lavoro, anche se quasi la metà degli Stati Uniti ha assunto nuovi CISO nell’ultimo anno. La permanenza media di un CISO nella stessa posizione è scesa da 30 mesi nel 2022 a 23 mesi nel 2024. Gli analisti prevedono che la pressione su questi professionisti continuerà a crescere, poiché gli attacchi diventano più complessi, i budget si riducono e la carenza di personale aumenta.

Gli stipendi dei CISO presso le istituzioni scolastiche sono attualmente tra i più bassi, con una media di 243.000 dollari all’anno. Per esempio, l’ex specialista di cybersecurity dell’Università di Washington, Daniel Schwalbe, osserva che il carico di lavoro per la sicurezza nelle istituzioni scolastiche era enorme: c’erano circa mezzo milione di dispositivi sulla rete protetta e ogni giorno circa mille di essi potevano essere compromessi. Tuttavia, Schwalbe ha cambiato lavoro non per lo stipendio, ma per la mancanza di prospettive di carriera.

Anche il ruolo crescente dell’intelligenza artificiale aumenta la tensione. Come sottolinea Kakolowski, i CISO si trovano spesso a essere responsabili dei rischi legati all’intelligenza artificiale, anche se non sempre hanno conoscenze sufficienti in questo campo. Ciò può rappresentare un’ulteriore sfida per le aziende in cui i rischi legati all’IA non sono ancora completamente sotto controllo.

Il futuro dei CISO come professione appare quindi molto incerto. Da un lato, la domanda di professionisti della cybersecurity altamente qualificati continua ad aumentare. Dall’altro, la crescente complessità delle minacce, la carenza di personale e i budget limitati stanno creando serie sfide per la professione.

L'articolo Il Paradosso del CISO! Stipendio e Burnout sono Direttamente Proporzionali proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

La società giapponese Casio ha confermato il 5 ottobre un accesso non autorizzato alla sua rete, che ha causato gravi interruzioni del suo funzionamento. Un’indagine interna ha stabilito che l’incidente ha causato un guasto del sistema, compromettendo la disponibilità di una serie di servizi.

L’azienda, insieme ad esperti esterni, sta attualmente conducendo un’indagine approfondita per determinare la portata e le conseguenze dell’hacking. L’obiettivo principale è verificare la possibile compromissione dei dati personali e di altre informazioni riservate.

Un portavoce di Casio ha dichiarato: “Stiamo esaminando attivamente i dettagli dell’incidente e la nostra prima priorità è determinare l’entità della perdita e ridurre al minimo i potenziali rischi”.

Dopo aver scoperto l’hacking, Casio ha prontamente segnalato l’accaduto alle autorità competenti e ha introdotto ulteriori misure di sicurezza. In particolare, sono state limitate le connessioni esterne alla rete e rafforzati i sistemi di monitoraggio per individuare tempestivamente attività sospette.

L’azienda ha assicurato ai propri clienti e partner che si stanno adottando tutte le misure necessarie per proteggere l’infrastruttura di rete e prevenire incidenti simili in futuro. “Abbiamo reagito rapidamente alla situazione e stiamo lavorando con esperti per migliorare il nostro sistema di sicurezza”, si legge nel comunicato ufficiale.

Inoltre, Casio ha rilasciato pubbliche scuse per il disagio causato. In un comunicato ufficiale, l’azienda ha sottolineato il proprio impegno a risolvere rapidamente il problema e a rafforzare la protezione. I clienti sono incoraggiati a prestare attenzione e a segnalare qualsiasi attività sospetta relativa alle loro interazioni con i prodotti dell’azienda.

L'articolo Casio Vittima di Un Attacco Informatico. Compromessa la Sicurezza dei Dati e dei Servizi proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

Plastics are unfortunately so cheap useful that they’ve ended up everywhere. They’re filling our landfills, polluting our rivers, and even infiltrating our food chain as microplastics. As much as we think of plastic as recyclable, too, that’s often not the case—while some plastics like PET (polyethylene terephthalate) are easily reused, others just aren’t.

Indeed, the world currently produces an immense amount of polyethylene and polypropylene waste. These materials are used for everything from plastic bags to milk jugs and for microwavable containers—and it’s all really hard to recycle. However, a team at UC Berkeley might have just figured out how to deal with this problem.

Catalytic

Here’s the thing—polyethylene and polypropylene are not readily biodegradable at present. That means that waste tends to pile up. They’re actually quite tough to deal with in a chemical sense, too. It’s because these polymers have strong carbon-carbon bonds that are simply quite difficult to break. That means it’s very hard to turn them back into their component molecules for reforming. In an ideal world, you can sometimes capture a very clean waste stream of a single type of these plastics and melt and reform them, but generally, the quality of material you get out of this practice is poor. It’s why so many waste plastics get munched up and turned into unglamorous things like benches and rubbish bins.

youtube.com/embed/z39v6l6neGo?…

At Berkley, researchers were hoping to achieve a better result, turning these plastics back into precursor chemicals that could then be used to make fresh new material. The subject of a new paper in Science is a new catalytic process that essentially vaporizes these common plastics, breaking them down into their hydrocarbon building blocks. Basically, they’re turning old plastic back into the raw materials needed to make new plastic. This has the potential to be more than a nifty lab trick—the hope is that it could make it easy to deal with a whole host of difficult-to-recycle waste products.
Combining the plastics in a high-pressure reactor with ethylene gas and the catalyst materials breaks the polymer chains up into component molecules that can be used to make new plastics. Credit: UC Berkeley
The team employed a pair of solid catalysts, which help push along the desired chemical reactions without being consumed in the process. The first catalyst, which consists of sodium on alumina, tackles the tough job of breaking the strong carbon-carbon bonds in the plastic polymers. These materials consists of long chains of molecules, and this catalyst effectively chops them up. This typically leaves a broken link on one of the polymer chain fragments in the form of a reactive carbon-carbon double bond. The second catalyst, tungsten oxide on silica helps that reactive carbon atom pair up with ethylene gas which is streamed through the reaction chamber, producing propylene molecules as a result. As that carbon atom is stripped away, the process routinely leaves behind another double bond on the broken chain ready to react again, until the whole polymer chain has been converted. Depending on the feed plastic, whether it’s polyethylene, polypropylene, or a mixture, the same reaction process will generate propylene and isobutylene as a result. These gases can then be separated out and used as the starting points for making new plastics.
Before and after—the plastic has been converted to gas, leaving the catalytic material behind. Credit: UC Berkeley
What’s particularly impressive is that this method works on both polyethylene and polypropylene—the two heavy hitters in plastic waste—and even on mixtures of the two. Traditional recycling processes struggle with mixed plastics, often requiring tedious and costly sorting. By efficiently handling blends, this new approach sidesteps one of the major hurdles in plastic recycling.

To achieve this conversion in practice is relatively simple. Chunks of waste plastic are sealed in a high-pressure reaction vessel with the catalyst materials and a feed of ethylene gas, with the combination then heated and stirred. The materials react, and the gas left behind is the useful precursor gases for making fresh plastic.

In lab tests, the catalysts converted a near-equal mix of polyethylene and polypropylene into useful gases with an efficiency of almost 90%. That’s a significant leap forward compared to current methods, which often result in lower-value products or require pure streams of a single type of plastic. The process also showed resilience against common impurities and should be able to work with post-consumer materials—i.e. stuff people have thrown away. Additives and small amounts of other plastics didn’t significantly hamper the efficiency, though larger amounts of PET and PVC did pose a problem. However, since recycling facilities already separate out different types of plastics, this isn’t a deal-breaker.
The process can even run efficiently with a mixture of polypropylene and polyethylene. Note that propene is just another word for propylene. Credit: UC Berkeley
One of the most promising aspects of this development is the practicality of scaling it up. The catalysts used are cheaper and more robust than those in previous methods, which relied on expensive, sensitive metals dissolved in liquids. Solid catalysts are more amenable to industrial processes, particularly continuous flow systems that can handle large volumes of material.

Of course, moving from the lab bench to a full-scale industrial process will require further research and investment. The team needs to demonstrate that the process is economically viable and environmentally friendly on a large scale. But the potential benefits are enormous. It could actually make it worthwhile to recycle a whole lot more single-use plastic items, and reduce our need to replace or eliminate them entirely. Anything that cuts plastic waste streams into the environment is a boon, too. Ultimately, there’s still a ways to go, but it’s promising that solutions for these difficult-to-recycle plastics are finally coming on stream.

hackaday.com/2024/10/08/recycl…

ISRAEL ATTACKS ON GAZA HAVE KILLED MORE WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN ONE YEAR THAN ANY CONFLICT IN THE LAST 18 YEARS.

instagram.com/p/DAokin9SqvF/?i…

AJ+ on Instagram: "This 10-year-old girl in Gaza wrote a will leaving behind her toys and allowance before she was killed by Israel’s attacks. In the will, Rasha divided her belongings between her cousins and brother Ahmad, who was also killed. “Please

153K likes, 1,850 comments - ajplus on October 2, 2024: "This 10-year-old girl in Gaza wrote a will leaving behind her toys and allowance before she was killed by Israel’s attacks.

^Instagram

The Zeros - Don't Push Me Around: definiti come i Ramones californiani se non addirittura messicani (il leader Javier Escovedo è figlio di emigranti, tutti musicisti). @Musica Agorà

iyezine.com/the-zeros-dont-pus…

The Zeros - Don't Push Me Around

The Zeros - Don't Push Me Around - The Zeros - Don't Push Me Around: definiti come i Ramones californiani se non addirittura messicani (il leader Javier Escovedo è figlio di emigranti, tutti musicisti). - The Zeros

^{Claudio Frandina (In Your Eyes ezine)}

Short, fast, loud and to the fucking point: questa è, da sempre, l’essenza degli ZEKE, leggendario combo speed rock statunitense che, dal 1992 a oggi, ha fatto del rock ‘n’ roll veloce, grezzo, tiratissimo e sparato a manetta la sua bandiera e natura musicale. @Musica Agorà

iyezine.com/zeke-snake-eyes-th…

ZEKE - SNAKE EYES / THE KNIFE 7"

ZEKE - SNAKE EYES / THE KNIFE 7" - Short, fast, loud and to the fucking point: questa è, da sempre, l'essenza degli ZEKE, leggendario combo speed rock statunitense che, dal 1992 a oggi, ha fatto del rock 'n' roll veloce, grezzo, tiratissimo e sparato…

^{Reverend Shit-Man (In Your Eyes ezine)}