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IT'S MONDAY, SO THIS MUST BE DIGITAL POLITICS. I'm Mark Scott, and am continuing my Euro-trash existence here in Geneva where I'm moderating a panel on March 24 on tech sovereignty and data governance. Watch along here from 12:30 CET / 11:30 UK / 7:30 ET.

Talking of events, I'll also be co-hosting a tech policy meet-up in hipster East London on March 27 at 6:30pm. There are a few spots left for this (free) event. Sign up here.

— We're living through an era of 'tech sovereignty.' No one knows what that concept means — and that's quickly turning into a problem.

— Brussels forced Apple to open up to competitors. That's going to help many US firms that, in principle, oppose the bloc's competition revamp.

— In what must be the least-shocking fact about the latest AI models, almost none of the data used to train these systems comes from Global Majority countries.

Let's get started.

digitalpolitics.co/newsletter0…

Let’s say you’ve got a big bare wall in your home, and you want some art on it. You could hang a poster or a framed artwork, or you could learn to paint a mural yourself. Or, like [Nik Ivanov], you could build a plotter called Mural, and get it to draw something on the wall for you.

The build is straightforward enough. It uses a moving carriage suspended from toothed belts attached to two points up high on the wall. Stepper motors built into the carriage reel the belts in and out to move it up and down the wall, and from side to side. In this case, [Nik] selected a pair of NEMA 17 steppers to do the job. They’re commanded by a NodeMCU ESP32, paired with TMC2209 stepper motor drivers. The carriage also includes a pen lifter, which relies on a MG90s servo to lift the drawing implement away from the wall.

The build is quite capable, able to recreate SVG vector graphics quite accurately, without obvious skew or distortion. [Nik] has been using the plotter with washable Crayola markers, so he can print on the wall time and again without leaving permanent marks. It’s a great way to decorate—over and over again—on a budget. Total estimated cost is under $100, according to [Nik].

We’ve featured some neat projects along these lines before, too. Video after the break.

youtube.com/embed/MOENFOZCs54?…

hackaday.com/2025/03/24/mural-…

Sometimes we come across a wild idea that really tries to re-imagine things, and re-conceiving wearable computing as a distributed system of “fiber computers” embedded into textiles is definitely that. The research paper presents fully-functional fiber computers and sensors that are washable, weave-able, wireless, and resist both stretching and bending.

The research paper with all the details is behind a paywall at this time, but we’ll summarize the important parts that are likely to get a hacker’s mind working.

Each fiber strand (like the one shown here) is a self-contained system. Multiple fibers can communicate with one another wirelessly to create a network that, when integrated into garments, performs tasks like health and activity monitoring while using very little power. And what’s really interesting about these fibers is their profound lack of anything truly exotic when it comes to their worky bits.

The inner components of a fiber computer are pretty recognizable: each contains a surface-mount microcontroller, LEDs, BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) radio, light sensor, temperature sensor, accelerometer, and photoplethysmography (PPG) sensor for measuring blood volume changes through skin. Power is supplied by a separate segment containing a tiny cylindrical lithium-polymer battery, with a simple plug connector. It’s a tiny battery, but the system is so low-power that it still provides hours of operation.

If there’s a secret sauce, it’s in the fabrication. The first step is stretching a system into a long, thin circuit. Each component is nested onto a small piece of flex PCB that acts a little like a breakout board, and that flex PCB gets rolled around each component to make as tiny a package as possible. These little payloads are connected to one another by thin wires, evenly spaced to form a long circuit. That circuit gets (carefully!) sealed into a thermoformed soft polymer and given an overbraid, creating a fiber that has a few lumps here and there but is nevertheless remarkably thin and durable. The result can be woven into fabrics, worn, washed, bent, and in general treated like a piece of clothing.
Closeups of components that make up a single strand of “fiber computer”.
Multiple fibers are well-suited to being woven into clothing in a distributed way, such as one for each limb. Each fiber is self-contained but communicates with its neighbors using a BLE mesh, or transmitting data optically via embedded LEDs and light sensors. Right now, such a distributed system has been shown to be able to perform health monitoring and accurately classify different physical activities.

We’ve seen sensors directly on skin and transmitting power over skin, but this is a clever fusion of conventional parts and unconventional design — wearable computing that’s not just actually wearable and unobtrusive, but durable and even washable.

hackaday.com/2025/03/24/wearab…

Every Super Nintendo console should run at the same speed. They were all built in factories with the same components so they should all operate at the steady clip mandated by Nintendo all those years ago. Except, apparently, the SNES is speeding up as it gets older.

The matter was brought to the public’s attention by the [TASBot] team, a group within the speedrunning community. If anyone was going to notice vintage consoles suddenly running a hair faster, you could bet it would be the speedrunners. Soon enough, a call was put out to crowdsource some data. Submitters were asked to run a set piece of code to test the DSP sample rate on consoles when cold and warm, to get the best idea of what was going on.

As reported by Ars Technica, the group seems to have pinned down the problem to the SNES’s Audio Processing Unit. It’s supposed to run at 24.576 MHz, with a sample rate of 32,000 Hz. However, over the years, emulator developers and speedrunners had noticed that 32,040 Hz seemed to be a more realistic figure for what real consoles were actually running the DSP sample rate at. Developers found that building emulators to run the DSP at this rate was important to run commercial games as expected, suggesting the hardware might have always been a little faster than expected.

However, more recently, it seems that the average speed of the DSP sample rate has increased further. The average result collected by [TASBot] from modern consoles is 32,076 Hz. What’s more interesting is the range of submitted figures—from 31,976 Hz to 32,349 Hz. It seems that the DSP’s ceramic resonator—used instead of a quartz crystal—might degrade over time, causing the speedup. [TASBot] team members also tested temperature changes, but only found a 32 Hz variation from a frozen SNES to one at room temperature.

The fact that console components degrade over time isn’t exactly news; we’ve featured plenty of articles on leaky batteries and corroded traces. Still, for speedrunners, the idea that the hardware standard itself can shift over time? It’s like feeling quicksand under your feet. What even is reality anymore?

[Thanks to s7726 for the tip!]

hackaday.com/2025/03/24/the-sn…

Do you consider your keyboard to be a fragile thing? Meet the glass keyboard by [BranchNo9329], which even has a glass PCB. At least, I think the whole thing is glass.

Image via [BranchNo9329] via redditThere are so frustratingly few details that this might as well have been a centerfold, but I thought you all should see it just the same. What we do have are several pictures and a couple of really short videos, so dive in.

I can tell you that [BranchNo2939] chose a glass substrate mainly due to curiosity about its durability compared with FR4. And that the copper circuitry was applied with physical vapor deposition (PVD) technology.

Apparently one of [BranchNo2939]’s friends is researching the bonding of copper on to glass panels, so they thought they’d give a keyboard a go. Right now the thing is incomplete — apparently there’s going to be RGB. Because of course there’s going to be RGB.

erkbd Can Be yrkbd, Too

Erik + Keyboard = erkbd, and now [EarflapsOpen]’s wide split is open-source and now has a fully documented build guide on GitHub by special request.

Image by [EarflapsOpen] via redditInspired mostly by the Corne and the Void Ergo S layout, this is a 44-key, hand-wired number that runs on a pair of Waveshare RP2040 Zeros programmed with QMK.

I really like the inclusion of OLEDs and rotary encoders, although I feel I would inadvertently turn them by accident. Maybe not. At the very least, they appear to be taller than the keys and might get in the way.

[EarflapsOpen] addresses this a bit at the bottom of the reddit thread, stating that they are not in the way when typing. But since they are kind of far from the home row, you have to move your entire hand to use them. Currently, [EarflapsOpen] uses them for scrolling, adjusting volume, video scrubbing, and so on.

The Centerfold: Battle Axes

Image by [delusionalreddit] via redditSo perhaps [delusionalreddit]’s setup is a bit of a departure from the regular centerfold material, but that’s okay. Just look at all those guitars! Yours truly is down to just six or so, and really ought to have them situated similarly around the laboratory. Maybe someday.

So there isn’t much detail here, especially about the peripherals, and I apologize for that. Please see the next paragraph. Almost no one sends me centerfolds! You know your keeb is sexy; now get it out there.

Do you rock a sweet set of peripherals on a screamin’ desk pad? Send me a picture along with your handle and all the gory details, and you could be featured here!

Historical Clackers: the Williams

When the people demand some new advancement in technology, the early response by manufacturers can sometimes be less than appealing, visually speaking.
A Williams No. 1 model. Image by The Antikey Chop
This is not the case with the stunning Williams line of typewriters, which were developed in response to heavy demand for visible typewriters — machines that let the typist see what was being typed without having to stop and do something first. Of course, you could only see a few lines at a time, and just by peering over the tippy-top of the machine, but this was revolutionary.

Form follows function in these lovely machines, which don’t seem to waste an inch of space on frivolity. To create visibility, the Williams typewriters had the platen situated in the center, between two sets of type bars that struck from the front and rear, kicking like grasshopper legs. The paper is first secured along the top and curled downward into the basket.

Don’t quite understand? Don’t blame you. Check out this short video, which demonstrates how to insert paper and type on a Williams Academy model.

youtube.com/embed/JGbbcXJcohg?…

Isn’t that cool? The earliest Williams models like the No. 1 pictured above became available in 1891. The keyboard was curved slightly, and the body featured Victorian-inspired filigree. Beginning in 1895, the No. 1 was manufactured with a straight keyboard. The No. 2 came out in 1897 and were nearly identical to the straight-keyboarded No. 1s, but they got an upgrade in the form of typebar alignment. No. 2s were also called Academy like the one in the video, or Englewood.

Inventor John Williams was quite the character and inventor, and was known to rub elbows with Alexander Graham Bell and Emile Berliner. He patented all kinds of things, from cigar cutters to one of the first helicopters in 1912. Unfortunately, the Williams Typewriter Company was fairly short-lived, as they were in litigation for patent infringement pretty much the whole time, until 1909. They were acquired by Jerome Burgess Secor, who would go on to produce a completely different typewriter. Stay tuned!

Finally, Another Use for All Those Melty Beads

So [humanplayer2] was having some fun last Saturday while his daughter played with those melty beads. After some trial and error, it seems we have a new viable switch plate material!

Image by [humanplayer2] via redditThe trial and error was, of course, about finding out what inner bead configuration would result in the snuggest fit. As it turns out, a plain old open square holds them the best, followed by hand-cut-away corners, then full interiors.

For what it’s worth, [humanplayer2] was using Hama beads specifically, which is why the holes are almost all completely melted shut.

Keep in mind that not all melty beads are created equally, so your mileage may vary depending on what you’ve got. But it probably shouldn’t matter too-too much in this case, unless you use the ones that are supposed to be really terrible.

Be sure to check out the custom Hama bead game pad he made for her so she can play Paw Patrol in style.

Got a hot tip that has like, anything to do with keyboards? Help me out by sending in a link or two. Don’t want all the Hackaday scribes to see it? Feel free to email me directly.

hackaday.com/2025/03/24/keebin…

Ricordo che nel 2021 Meloni aveva detto qualcosa di simile ("è un attore in cerca di visibilità") di Richard Gere che aveva testimoniato al processo OpenArms.

Direi che ad un ipotetico campionato mondiale di ridicolaggine potrebbero condividere il primo posto.

agi.it/estero/news/2025-03-24/…

🌟Vota per Borgo Danilo Dolci!🌟

Ciao, ho bisogno del tuo aiuto!

Visita il link qui sotto e vota per Borgo Danilo Dolci come Luogo del Cuore FAI. Il tuo voto può aiutare a preservare e valorizzare questo luogo storico e culturale, centro delle attività di Danilo Dolci già dagli anni Settanta.

Ogni voto conta per mantenere viva la memoria e l'importanza di questo borgo per le generazioni future. 💚

👉 fondoambiente.it/luoghi/borgo-…

Grazie mille per il tuo supporto!

Her father:
God does no wrong, and He wanted this to wake people up," he told Children’s Health Defense. "He’s woken us up for sure, to start a better life and come closer to Him.

foxnews.com/health/parents-gir…