Lord Vetinari from the Discworld series is known for many things, but perhaps most of all a clock that doesn’t quite keep continuous time. Instead, it ticks away at random increments to infuriate those that perceive it, whilst keeping regular time over the long term. [iracigt] decided to whip up a real world version of this hilarious fictional timepiece.

The clock itself is an off-the-shelf timepiece purchased from Target for the princely sum of $5. However, it’s been deviously modified with an RP2040 microcontroller hidden away inside. The RP2040 is programmed to tick the clock at an average of once per second. But each tick itself is not so exact. Instead, there’s an erraticness to its beat – some ticks are longer, some shorter, in the classic Vetinari style. [iracigt] explains the nitty gritty of how it all works, from creating chaos with Markov chains to interfacing the RP2040 electronically with the cheap quartz clock movement.

If you’ve ever wanted to build one of these amusements yourself, [iracigt’s] writeup is a great place to start. Even better, it was inspired by an earlier post on these very pages! We love to see the community riff on a theme, and we’d love to see yours, too – so keep the tips coming, yeah? Video after the break.

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Many of us know the basic Blink Arduino sketch, or have coded similar routines on other microcontrollers. Flashing an LED on and off—it doesn’t get much simpler than that. But how big should a blink sketch be? Or more importantly, how small could you get it? [Artful Bytes] decided to find out.

The specific challenge? “Write a program that runs on a microcontroller and blinks an LED. The ON and OFF times should be as close to 1000 ms as possible.” The challenge was undertaken using a NUCLEO-L432KC Cortex-M4 with 256 K of flash and 64 K of RAM.

We won’t spoil the full challenge, but it starts out with an incredibly inefficient AI & cloud solution. [Artful Bytes] then simplifies by switching to an RTOS approach, before slimming down further with C, assembly, and then machine code. The challenge was to shrink the microcontroller code as much as possible. However, you might notice the title of the video is “I Shrunk Blinky to 0 Bytes.” As it turns out, if you eliminate the digital code-running hardware entirely… you can still blink an LED with analog hardware. So, yes. 0 bytes is possible.

We’ve featured the world’s smallest blinky before, too, but in a physical sense rather than with regards to code size.

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When a Loch Ness Monster story appears at the start of April, it pays to check the date on the article just to avoid red faces. But there should be no hoax with this one published on the last day of March, scientists from the UK’s National Oceanography Centre were conducting underwater robotics tests in Scotland’s Loch Ness, and stumbled upon a camera trap lost by Nessie-hunters in the 1970s. Just to put the cherry on the cake of a perfect news story, the submarine in question is the famous “Boaty McBoatface”, so named as a consolation after the British Antarctic Survey refused to apply the name to their new ship when it won an online competition.

The Most Extreme Instamatic in The World

Sadly the NOC haven’t released close-ups of the inner workings of the device.
The camera trap has survived five decades underwater thanks to a sturdy glass housing, and appears to be quite an ingenious device. A humble Kodak Instamatic camera with a 126 film and a flash bulb is triggered and has its film advanced by a clockwork mechanism, in turn operated by a bait line. Presumably because of the four flash bulbs in the Kodak’s flash cube, it’s reported that it could capture four images. The constant low temperature at the bottom of a very deep loch provided the perfect place to store exposed film, and they have even been able to recover some pictures. Sadly none of then contain a snap of Nessie posing for the camera.

An underwater photographic blind used in the 1970s. Immanuel Giel, Public domain.
We are not cryptozoologists here at Hackaday so we’re not postulating any theories about Nessie’s existence, but there is some interest to be found in the history of Nessie-hunting, and the complex array of technologies fielded by those who would seek to bag themselves a monster. There have been extensive sonar surveys of the loch, a variety of home-made and more professional submarines have probed its depths, many metres of film and videotape have been shot by Nessie-hunters with long lenses, and of course experts have pored over all the various photographs which over the years have claimed to prove the monster’s existence. Perhaps the epicentre for the world of Nessie-hunting has been the Loch Ness Project, whose website details a variety of the survey efforts. Surprisingly, though they had a connection with the Instamatic camera trap they don’t feature it on their website, something we expect to change now it has become newsworthy.

Where Cryptozoology Tourism Is A Thing

The metamorphosis of a legendary beast into a modern-day phenomenon has certainly gripped the tourist industry of the Great Glen, as you’ll see if you take the drive from Inverness to Fort William. Even if you’re not a true believer, it’s still fun to indulge in a bit of touristic gawping at the various Nessie-themed attractions, though on the occasions Hackaday writers have passed by those waters there’s been a marked lack of monstrous life forms. The Nessie-hunters bring a bit of pseudoscientific thrill to the experience, something the Loch Ness Centre in Drumandrochit positively encourage: they even recruit visitors into their annual Nessie-spotting event. After all, as the camera discovery shows, there is doubtless plenty more to be found in those waters, even the occasional (non-Nessie) monster.

Header image: Bob Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0 .

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Il 18 marzo il parlamento ungherese ha approvato un emendamento alla legge sul diritto di assemblea, che di fatto vieta l'organizzazione pubblica del Pride.

In caso di trasgressione gli eventuali partecipanti potranno essere sanzionati con multe fino a 500 euro. La loro identificazione potrà avvenire tramite registrazione delle immagini e utilizzo di software di riconoscimento facciale.

Nel mio servizio uscito su Valigia Blu, parto da questa storia di straordinario restringimento delle libertà civili per raccontarvi il momento storico che sta vivendo l'Ungheria. Mentre Orbán lancia cupe dichiarazioni, il suo partito si trova per la prima volta in difficoltà nei sondaggi. A un anno dalle elezioni la partita è aperta.

Per capire dove siamo e come siamo arrivati fin qui è utile riavvolgere il nastro degli ultimi 15 anni.

Buona lettura.

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Ungheria: storia di una democrazia sempre più illiberale (e della sua possibile fine) - Valigia Blu

La decisione del governo ungherese di vietare il Pride si inserisce in un contesto di crescente repressione da parte di Orbán. Le elezioni del 2026 saranno una sfida cruciale per il futuro democratico dell’Ungheria.

^{Fabio Turco (Valigia Blu)}