A traditional computer mouse typically fits in the palm of your hand. However, with modern technology, there’s no need for mice to be so large, as demonstrated by [juskim]’s neat little mouse ring. Check it out in the video below.

The concept is simple—it’s a tiny mouse that sits neatly on the end of one of your fingers. You then get the slightly surreal experience of pointing on your computer just by moving a single finger instead of your whole hand.

The project uses a typical optical mouse sensor for movement, as you might expect. However, there are no conventional switches for the left and right mouse buttons. Instead, [juskim] realized a more compact design was possible by using proximity sensors instead. The sensors detect the presence of his fingers on either side of the ring mouse. When one of the fingers is lifted, the absence of the finger triggers a mouse click, either left or right, depending on the finger.

The build started with junk box parts, but hooking up an Arduino Pro Micro dev board and other modules proved too cumbersome to use effectively. Instead, the build relies on an ATTO board, a tiny PCB featuring the same ATmega32U4 microcontroller. Similarly, the build relies on tiny proximity sensors from STM to fit in the “ring” form factor. It’s all wrapped up in a 3D-printed enclosure that fits snugly on the user’s finger.

We’ve seen some other neat mouse rings before, too. Or, if you want something really different, grab some keychains and make a 6DOF mouse.

youtube.com/embed/vcZNPGWGGOU?…

hackaday.com/2025/02/10/tiny-m…

If you’ve ever looked at the bottom of a bank check, you probably glanced over some strangely formed numbers? If you’re a fan of science fiction or retro computers, you’ve probably spotted the same figures on any number of books from the 1980s. They’re mostly readable, but they’re chunky and thin in places you don’t expect.

Those oddball numerals didn’t come from just anywhere—they were a very carefully crafted invention to speed processing in the banking system. These special fonts were created to be readable both by humans and machines—us with our eyes, and the computers with magnetic sensors. Let’s explore the enigmatic characters built for Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR).

Machines Will Do The Work

Early examples of machine-readable magnetic fonts from the Department of Commerce—Automatic Character Recognition, A State-Of-The-Art Report, May 1961.
These days, much of the money in the world is sent and received via digital transfers. Once upon a time, though, paper was king when it came to moving money. The almighty check was how you got money out of one account and into another one.

Sadly, as populations grew and economic activity skyrocketed, the status quo couldn’t hold. By the mid-1940s, the problem was already apparent, with the Federal Reserve dealing with 2 billion checks a year in 1946. While mechanical adding machines and various other techniques helped, fundamentally, bankers and clerks were processing millions of checks daily, all by hand.

The financial world needed a way to speed handling of checks as much as possible. The solution was to enable machines to read as much of the information on a check as possible, so they could handle the basic sorting and processing steps at speed. This would eliminate much of the manual reading and handling by humans, and greatly improve throughput.

The problem was that in the middle of the 20th century, technologies like optical character recognition, or even digital cameras, were decades away. Instead, the key innovation that saved banking was MICR—short for Magnetic Ink Character Recognition. It involved printing certain characters on checks with an iron oxide-based ink. The combination of the ink’s magnetic content and the unique shape of each number meant machines could read the checks easily and unambiguously—even in the case they were physically damaged. Meanwhile, the MICR characters were also designed to remain human readable, so they could be readily understood by the humans using them, too. This was an important backup in the event a check failed machine reading for whatever reason.
An example US-style check with the MICR line along the bottom—printed with the E-13B font. Credit: Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia
With MICR, checks could be pre-printed with a bank’s routing number and the customer account to draw from, leaving just the payment amount to be read from the check user’s handwriting. Alternatively, even the amount could be printed in MICR characters if the check was fully machine-issued, speeding processing further. With the aid of magnetic ink, processing speeds went up prodigiously. In 1950, mechanical aids had allowed one clerk to process 1,300 checks in an hour. Fast forward to the magnetic ink era just a few years later, and clerks were able to handle 33,000 checks or more in the same amount of time.

As is so often the way, the world did not agree on one standard for MICR purposes. Developments across the banking world occurred during the 1950s, with two major magnetic fonts being developed in parallel.

If you’re based in the United States, Canada, the UK, Australia, or much of the rest of the English-speaking world, you’re probably most familiar with a font called E-13B. This is the one with the gloopy letters and the worst ‘1’ numeral ever committed to print. It was developed by General Electric and the Stanford Research Institute. Its designation was entirely pragmatic—E denoted that it was the fifth font considered, and B denoted the second revision. 13 referred to the fact it was designed for use on an 0013-inch grid.

The font was designed to create a unique magnetic signal pattern when each numeral or symbol was scanned by a magnetic reader. The shapes were specifically engineered to avoid any possible confusion – that’s why the 0 has those straight sides, and the 8 is so hefty at the bottom, for example. Each number generates a waveform that’s distinct from the others, making it easy to process the signal and read the check accurately. E-13B wasn’t perfect, with 2s and 5s putting out rather similar signals in some cases that could cause confusion, but it proved itself more than reliable enough to do the job.
The 14 characters of the E-14B MICR font—the last four are for control purposes.This book cover from the 1980s was typical of the era – leaning on E-13B tropes to convey a technical aesthetic.
The standard was trialled in 1956 and was adopted by the American Bankers Association by 1958. By 1963, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) designated that E-13B would be the standard, and by 1967, the Federal Reserve mandated the use of magnetic ink on checks. E-13B went on to become a graphical motif commonly associated with computers and modernity, with artists commonly creating lookalike characters for the whole Latin alphabet. However, the official E-13B standard only ever had 14 characters—numerals 0 to 9, plus four additional control characters for check processing—”transit,” “on-us,” “amount,” and “dash.”
The CMC-7 font, designed by Groupe Bull.
At roughly the same time, French computer company Groupe Bull was working on its own standard. In 1957, it developed the CMC-7 font, which used an entirely different approach to E-13B. Rather than relying on the varying the intensity of magnetism by the amount of ink in a character, CMC-7 instead relied on characters made up of vertical bars. The spacing between the bars could be read by machine to determine the numerals. The design gave CMC-7 characters more of a barcode-like appearance. Notably, CMC-7 also featured a full alphanumerical character set—41 glyphs, including A-Z, 0-9, and five control characters.
An Italian check signed by Enzo Ferrari – note the CMC-7 font along the bottom. Credit: Morio, CC BY-SA 3.0
Thanks to the geopolitics of the mid-20th century, each MICR standard ended up with its own stomping ground. While E-13B dominated in the Anglophone world, CMC-7 ended up being used in France, Spain, and much of Europe and South America. At heart, both standards did the same thing—they enabled machines to read most of the data on a check with a minimum of fuss.

Banks might feel mostly digital these days, but MICR fonts are still an important standard in the financial world. If you’re issuing checks, you might end up running into some problems if you’re not printing them with the appropriate MICR font and magnetic ink. For most of us, checks are a simple tool of the past, but it turns out a great deal of engineering went into perfecting them before the computer came along.

hackaday.com/2025/02/10/how-ma…

Un presunto leak di documenti classificati della National Security Agency (NSA) è stato pubblicato su Breach Forums, uno dei più noti marketplace underground per la compravendita di dati rubati.

L’utente “HumanError”, con il titolo di “GOD User” all’interno del forum, ha annunciato il caricamento di un set di documenti appartenenti alla Five Eyes Intelligence Group, l’alleanza di intelligence che comprende Stati Uniti, Regno Unito, Canada, Australia e Nuova Zelanda.

Secondo il post, il leak sarebbe avvenuto attraverso l’intrusione nei sistemi di Acuity Inc., un’azienda che collabora direttamente con il governo degli Stati Uniti e i suoi alleati.

Cosa è stato compromesso?

Il post pubblica una serie di samples e fornisce alcune informazioni sul contenuto dei dati sottratti, tra cui:

• Nomi completi, email, numeri di telefono (personali e aziendali)
• Indirizzi email governativi, militari e del Pentagono
• Comunicazioni classificate tra Five Eyes, 14 Eyes e i loro alleati

L’autore del leak menziona anche il coinvolgimento di altri membri con gli alias @IntelBroker, @Sangsiero e @EnergyWeaponUser, suggerendo che l’operazione possa essere stata condotta da un gruppo piuttosto che da un singolo attore.

Tali informazioni sono interconnesse ad una precedente fuoriuscita di informazioni di Aprile del 2024, quando IntelBroker pubblicò un post analogo riportando dei dati trapelati dalle infrastrutture della NSA. Infatti i samples pubblicati in entrambi i post risultano gli stessi.

L'articolo NSA Data Leak: Documenti classificati trapelano su Breach Forums per la seconda volta proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

The global status quo on everything from artificial intelligence governance to platform accountability to digital trade is being rewritten.

digitalpolitics.co/newsletter0…

The BASIC language may be considered old-hat here in 2025, and the days when a computer came as a matter of course with a BASIC interpreter are far behind us, but it can still provide many hours of challenge and fun. Even with our love of all things 8-bit, though, we’re still somewhat blown away by [Matthew Begg]’s BASIC interpreter written in 10 lines of BASIC. It’s an entry in the BASIC 10-liner competition, and it’s written to run on a Sinclair ZX Spectrum.

The listing can be viewed as a PNG file on the linked page. It is enough to cause even the most seasoned retrocomputer enthusiasts a headache because, as you might expect, it pushes the limits of the language and the Sinclair interpreter. It implements Tiny Basic as a subset of the more full-featured BASICs, and he’s the first to admit it’s not fast by any means. He gives a line-by-line explanation, and yes, it’s about as far away from the simple Frogger clones we remember bashing in on our Sinclairs as it’s possible to get.

We love it that there are still boundaries to be pushed, even on machines over four decades old, and especially that this one exceeds what we thought was a pretty good knowledge of Sinclair BASIC. Does this language still have a place in the world? We always look forward to the BASIC 10-liner competition.

Header: background by Bill Bertram, CC BY-SA 2.5.

hackaday.com/2025/02/10/basica…

Stepan Borysovych Bilchenko è un insegnante dell'Università di Leopoli. Fa parte dell'Università Nazionale Ivan Franko Lviv (Leopoli).
E' un obiettore di coscienza e rifiuta di prendere le armi. Per questo suo rifiuto sta pagando un prezzo altissimo: è stato trovato picchiato e privo di sensi vicino a Kiev. I reclutatori militari ucraini lo hanno sottoposto a pressioni fisiche. Adesso è con il cranio fratturato. E ora è in gravi condizioni.
Da **Albert** - bollettino pacifista settimanale del 9 febbraio 2025, a cura della redazione di PeaceLink

Stepan Borysovych Bilchenko è stato portato via dai reclutatori militari ucraini. È avvenuto vicino al mercato di Stryi. Stava andando al lavoro. È stato preso dai reclutatori ed è stato costretto a passare due ore nella commissione medica per il reclutamento (è definita VLK in Ucraina). Questo è stato testimoniato da un amico della vittima, di nome Vladislav Kononov. Il quale ha dichiarato: “Questo è il mio amico Stepan Bilchenko, siamo amici da più di 15 anni. Fin dall'infanzia, andavamo in una chiesa protestante a Leopoli. Stepan Borysovych Bilchenko è stato rapito dai dipendenti del TCC a Leopoli, vicino al mercato di Stryi”. Il TCC è il Centro Territoriale di Reclutamento ed è l'organo amministrativo militare ucraino che tiene registri militari e mobilita la popolazione. A partire dal 2022, il TCC ha sostituito l'ex sistema di commissariati militari ucraini.

Secondo Vladyslav, Stepan è stato poi trovato sul ciglio della strada vicino alla capitale con il cranio rotto e un gonfiore cerebrale. Attualmente è in condizioni critiche.

La notizia è del 9 febbraio 2025.

Questo caso non è l’unico e non è neppure il più grave.

A Chernivtsi la polizia sta investigando sulle circostanze della morte di un uomo di 32 anni nel TCC (il centro territoriale di reclutamento militare).

Era ricercato per aver evitato la mobilitazione militare. Questo episodio è stato riportato dalla Direzione Principale della Polizia Nazionale nella regione di Chernivtsi, riferisce Ukrinform. Il 7 febbraio, durante il lavoro fuori dal territorio di servizio, gli agenti delle forze dell'ordine hanno trovato un residente locale di 32 anni nel centro regionale, che era ricercato per eludere la mobilitazione. È stato invitato al TCC per chiarire le informazioni militari, cosa che ha accettato. Secondo le prime informazioni raccolte, le sue condizioni di salute sono peggiorate durante la visita medica militare nell’apposita struttura (in Ucraina si chiama VLK). La visita medica dei coscritti avviene nel VLK che conduce un esame medico delle persone soggette al servizio militare per determinare la loro idoneità al servizio in base alla loro salute. In questa struttura l'uomo è svenuto. Ha immediatamente iniziato a ricevere cure pre-mediche e i medici sono stati chiamati sulla scena. Questo si legge sulla stampa ucraina. Ma durante le misure di terapia intensiva, i medici hanno dichiarato la morte dell'uomo. Il corpo di questo uomo residente a Chernivtsi è stato inviato per un esame forense per determinare la causa della morte.

APRI LINK QUA SOTTO
@meltea@poliverso.

open.substack.com/pub/meltea/p…