PCB business cards are a creative way to show your tech skills while getting your name out there. This take on a PCB business card, sent in by [VCC], tackles one of the big challenges with them: making them in such a way that they are cheap enough to not feel bad about handing them out.

These cards plug into a USB port for power and have over a dozen small LEDs that light up the stars on the front, and a small buzzer that can play over ten minutes of cracktro music. To keep the cost down, [VCC] went with an ATtiny1616 microcontroller costing under 50 cents and still having plenty of outputs to drive the buzzer and LEDs. The final per-unit cost prior to shipping came out to only 1.5 euros, enabling them to be handed out without worrying about breaking the bank.

To aid in the assembly of the cards, [VCC] 3D printed a jig to apply material to the back of the USB connector, building up its thickness to securely fit in the USB port. He also wrote a small script for assembly-line programming the cards, getting the programming process down to around ten seconds per card and letting him turn through prepping the cards. Thanks, [VCC], for sending in your project—it’s a great addition to other PCB business cards we’ve featured.

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In tutto il Regno Unito le persone si stanno rivolgendo alle reti private virtuali (VPN) che bloccano la loro posizione per aggirare le nuove norme nazionali sulla verifica dell’età online. La scorsa settimana sono entrate in vigore nuove regole per la verifica dell’età attraverso l’Online Safety Act del Regno Unito, che richiede alle persone di presentare documenti di identità, scansioni facciali per la stima dell’età e documenti finanziari come i controlli delle carte di credito per accedere a siti web riservati agli adulti, come le piattaforme pornografiche.

Tuttavia, la verifica dell’età ha un lato oscuro: la violazione della privacy. Considerata la necessità di condividere un documento d’identità rilasciato dal governo per guardare Pornhub, RedTube e YouPorn nel Regno Unito, molte persone si rifiutano di partecipare.

Come abbiamo visto, sembra che Pornhub tenga molto al suo pubblico nel Regno Unito perché ha deciso di rispettare la legge. Se pensiamo al famoso divieto di Pornhub nella Carolina del Sud , possiamo vedere come non abbia rispettato la legge, il che ha portato alla sua indisponibilità in questo stato. Le persone nel Regno Unito possono considerarsi più fortunate, anche se tale legge può essere aggirata molto facilmente.

Aumenti verticali dell’uso delle VPN

Subito dopo l’entrata in vigore della legge, la società VPN Proton ha pubblicato sulla piattaforma social X di aver visto le iscrizioni ai suoi servizi aumentare di oltre il 1.400 per cento nel Regno Unito. L’azienda ha affermato che questo aumento di interesse è stato “sostenibile“, a differenza di altri picchi recenti, ad esempio quando il mese scorso le persone in Francia hanno temporaneamente perso l’accesso a siti per adulti come Pornhub e RedTube a causa di modifiche legislative.

I dati di Google Trends intanto mostrano che le ricerche di aziende VPN come Surfshark sono aumentate del 300 percento nel fine settimana in tutto il Regno Unito e, in alcune aree geografiche, hanno raggiunto il picco di popolarità. Le ricerche di argomenti correlati, come “sistema di verifica dell’età su Internet proposto nel Regno Unito” e “sistema di verifica dell’età”, sono aumentate rispettivamente del 2.450% e del 1.950%.

Cos’è una VPN?

Una VPN (Virtual private network) stabilisce una connessione digitale crittografata tra il computer o il dispositivo dell’utente e un server remoto di proprietà di un provider.

Normalmente, quando un utente visita un sito web, viene stabilita una connessione diretta con il server web, che conosce con precisione l’indirizzo IP del client e alcune informazioni relative al dispositivo utilizzato, come il sistema operativo, il tipo di browser, la lingua preferita e la posizione geografica approssimativa. Queste informazioni possono essere utilizzate per personalizzare l’esperienza utente, ma anche per tracciare le attività online dell’utente, monitorare il comportamento sul sito e, in alcuni casi, per fini pubblicitari o di profilazione.
Esempio di comunicazione classica in “clear web” tra client e server web
L’uso di una VPN (Virtual Private Network) modifica questo scenario. Quando ci si connette a un sito tramite una VPN, l’indirizzo IP visibile al server web è quello del server VPN, non quello reale del client. In questo modo, la VPN nasconde la vera identità dell’utente, offrendo un livello di anonimato e protezione della privacy. Inoltre, la VPN cifra la connessione, proteggendo i dati dall’intercettazione durante la trasmissione, soprattutto su reti pubbliche o non sicure. Questo rende molto più difficile per terzi monitorare l’attività online o raccogliere informazioni sensibili.
Schema di funzionamento di una VPN ad accesso remoto che maschera il client nelle comunicazioni con il server target
Nello schema sopra riportato, quando si invia una richiesta tramite internet, questa viene instradata al server VPN, che ne maschera l’origine e la protegge con la crittografia. Successivamente, il server VPN inoltra la richiesta al sito di destinazione e, una volta ottenuta la risposta, la reindirizza nuovamente all’utente. Questo processo garantisce sia la sicurezza sia l’anonimato della connessione.

Tipi di VPN presenti nel mercato

Nel mercato delle VPN (Virtual Private Network) esistono decine di soluzioni, alcune completamente a pagamento e altre che offrono anche una versione gratuita, spesso con funzionalità limitate o cap limiti di traffico.
Le VPN servono principalmente per proteggere la privacy online, navigare in modo anonimo, aggirare restrizioni geografiche e migliorare la sicurezza su reti pubbliche.

Qui sotto trovi una tabella che riepiloga le VPN più conosciute e affidabili, indicando:

• Se sono disponibili solo a pagamento o anche in versione gratuita;
• Il link diretto al sito ufficiale per approfondire.

Conclusioni

Le VPN sono strumenti potenti che permettono di difendere la propria privacy, navigare senza restrizioni geografiche e sfuggire a forme di censura. Per questo motivo vengono spesso utilizzate non solo da utenti comuni, ma anche da giornalisti, attivisti e dissidenti politici che operano in paesi dove la libertà di espressione non è garantita. In questi contesti, una VPN può diventare un vero e proprio scudo digitale per accedere a informazioni libere e comunicare senza timore di essere tracciati.

Tuttavia, l’utilizzo delle VPN non è sempre visto di buon occhio ovunque: ad esempio, nel Regno Unito, usare una VPN per aggirare blocchi, filtri o restrizioni può essere considerato una violazione delle regole locali e delle policy dei fornitori di servizi. È quindi importante ricordare che, pur essendo strumenti leciti nella maggior parte dei paesi, le VPN vanno usate con consapevolezza e nel rispetto delle normative vigenti.

L'articolo VPN Regno Unito, l’utilizzo aumenta del 1400% con la nuova legge Online Safety Act del Regno Unito proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

@Test

Messaggio di prova

The HP 115BR is not one of the most well-known products from Hewlett-Packard. And yet, it was remarkably important nonetheless. This hardware once synced time around the world. Now, for our 2025 One-Hertz Challenge, [curiousmarc] has taken on the job of restoring it.

The HP 115BR itself was not used alone, but in concert with the HP5060A atomic clock. The latter would output a 100 KHz reference output. It was the job of the HP 115BR to divide this frequency down to provide a superbly accurate 1-second tick.

The example on [curiousmarc]’s bench showed up in poor shape. It was “very broken,” and he reported that it had also previously been hacked to some degree. However, he has been able to restore it to proper functionality, including the special modification for continuous tick adjustment, as used in the 1964 flying atomic clock experiment. He was even able to sync it to NIST’s current atomic clock signal from Fort Collins using the WWW radio signal.

We’ve seen plenty of old HP metal restored over the years; it’s always pleasant to see how well things were built back in the day. Video after the break.

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Do you find an odd comfort in the uncanny, regular intonations of a Numbers Station? Then check out [edent]’s numbers station project, which leverages the browser’s speech synthesis engine to deliver a ceaseless flow of (mostly) numbers, calmly-intoned in various languages.

The project is an entry for the annual JavaScript Golfing Competition, in which participants aim to create a cool program in 1024 bytes or less. It cleverly relies on the Web Speech API to deliver the speaking parts, which helps keep the code size tiny. The only thing it’s missing is an occasional shadow of static drifting across the audio.

If you’re new to numbers stations, our own [Al Williams] is here to tell you all about them. But there’s no need to tune into an actual mysterious radio signal just to experience weird numbers; just fire up [edent]’s project, put on some headphones, and relax if you can.

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Those of us who like to monitor air traffic with ADS-B aggregators such as FlightAware and ADS-B Exchange tend to see some interesting flight paths. I’m not talking about the truly ambitious pictures drawn by pilots, or even the more ribald ones, but rather flights that follow paths that seem to make little sense from either a commercial or leisure standpoint.

Most of these mystery flights have long straight stretches interrupted by occasional tight loops, and often cover great distances across rural and urban landscapes alike. A glance at the ADS-B data indicates that these flights are usually pretty close to the ground, and are often completed by helicopters. Occasionally, the registration of the aircraft will even indicate ownership by some “three-letter” federal agency.

Although mystery helicopters flying odd patterns in the sky seems like a good excuse to don a tinfoil hat and head to one’s bunker, chances are pretty good that these aircraft are engaged in a far less nefarious and far more useful endeavour: aerial transmission line patrols. These flights are key to keeping the transmission lines that form the backbone of the grid in tip-top shape, especially at a time of unprecedented growth in load and a shift in the generation profile away from fossil fuels towards renewables.

Federal Alphabet Soup

Although the grid as we know it today in North America appears to be a monolithic machine, it’s actually a far-flung collection of interconnected sub-grids, operating more or less in concert to provide uninterrupted service to 400 million people. While part of that cooperation can be explained by market forces doing what they do best, a lot of the interoperability that makes the grid work and gives it the reliability we’ve come to expect can be traced to government regulations.
The North American grid stretches from the northern part of Mexico well into Canada, and is divided into four main interconnected sub-grids. Source: FERC.
In the United States, the regulations that bulk power system (BPS) operators must follow come from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), a federal agency of the Executive Branch that ultimately answers to the President through the Secretary of Energy. FERC is somewhat analogous to the Federal Communications Commission in that regard, but while the FCC creates standards and enforces them directly, FERC delegates its standards-setting and enforcement authority to a separate body, the National Electric Reliability Corporation, or NERC.

For as critical to modern life as the grid is, the existence of a body dedicated solely to ensuring its reliability is a shockingly recent development. In its current form, the NERC has only existed since 2005, created in response to the 2003 blackout in the Northeast United States. Before that, NERC was the National Electric Reliability Council, which itself only came into being in 1968 in response to a prior Northeast blackout in 1965. Both versions of NERC sound a little like closing the barn doors after the horses have gotten out, but engineering something as large and complex as the grid is largely a learn-by-doing exercise, and NERC’s regulations are what BPS operators use to ensure that their systems are in line with current best practices.

On Patrol

Patrolling transmission lines is one of the main ways that BPS operators make sure they’re up to snuff with NERC rules. These patrols give an up-close and personal look at the transmission lines and the structures that support them, along with the rights-of-way (ROWs) along which they’re built, and any defects noted during these inspections can be scheduled for repair before they cascade into widespread system failures.

Transmission line patrols can take many forms, but the simplest to perform in some regions is probably a ground patrol. Ground patrols are often as simple as a single engineer driving a truck along a transmission line right-of-way, visually inspecting each tower along the way. Ground patrols such as these are limited by what can be seen with the linesman’s Mark I eyeballs or perhaps a pair of binoculars, but they’re still a valuable part of the patrolling process. The “boots-on-the-ground” approach also has the advantage of potentially coming across broken equipment that has fallen from structures, like the nuts and bolts that hold together towers, or even fragments of failed insulators. Occasionally, ground patrols will come across the carcasses of unfortunate animals that have completed a circuit,

But given the huge geographic footprint of transmission lines, some of which span hundreds of miles and often pass over remote and rugged landscapes, ground patrols can be limiting. They tend to be very time-consuming; transmission lines often cross privately owned property, and while the rights-of-way usually allow BPS operators to legally access the property, in practice, coordinating with owners to unlock gates can complicate matters. Add to that factors such as the potential need to cross streams or wetlands, potential for property damage from truck tires, and the fact that inspection is limited to what’s visible from the ground, and ground patrols can be difficult.

The obvious solution to these problems is to get above it all and inspect transmission lines from the air. Airborne inspection offers significant advantages over ground patrols, but the chief benefit is speed. Airborne inspections can inspect long stretches of a transmission line far faster than a ground patrol, and without worrying about access issues. Airborne patrols can also make inspections over rough terrain a relative snap, although such inspections often call for more experienced pilots.

It would seem that aerial power line patrols are an ideal use case for UAVs, and indeed, many of the 300 to 400 aerial inspection companies operating in the United States today offer drone-based inspection services. But even with the vastly less expensive per-hour cost of operating a drone, helicopter inspections dominate the industry today. There are a couple of reasons for this, but the most important are speed and payload capacity. A typically equipped Bell 407 helicopter, for example, carries enough primary and reserve fuel to inspect 170 miles (273 km) of transmission line with a single takeoff and landing. A UAV patrol, on the other hand, usually has to operate within line-of-sight of the operator, and has to land frequently for battery changes. This leads to frequent relocations of the base of operations, resulting in some of the same access problems as ground patrols. It’s also significantly slower than helicopter patrols, taking up to five times longer to complete an equivalent length of line as a helicopter patrol.

Helicopters also have UAVs beat when it comes to payload capacity. Even large UAVs are limited in how many instruments they can carry, whereas a helicopter has effectively no limit. This makes helicopters a multispectral imaging platform, with HD visible-light video to capture images of potential structural problems, forward-looking infrared (FLIR) scanners that look for overheating due to corrosion in a splice or an internal defect in the conductors, and LiDAR scanners that can image the entire ROW and the structures within it. But perhaps most significantly, UAVs can’t carry aloft an experienced linesman, whose training can be key to quickly locating something that needs a closer look from the sensor platforms onboard.

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My Corona

The breakdown voltage of air is approximately 30 kV, and while this figure varies slightly with atmospheric conditions such as temperature and humidity, it is generally well below the voltage on most transmission lines in the BPS. That makes flashover a possibility anywhere in the system, and the potential damage caused by an intense high-current discharge to both transmission system components and the surrounding environment makes it critical to detect defects that could lead to it.

Luckily, physics provides an early warning system in the form of corona discharge. Corona discharge occurs when the air surrounding a conductor becomes ionized, turning into a conductive plasma. It can happen anywhere along the transmission system, but it’s particularly likely to happen at places where the electric field is concentrated, such as sharp points. These are generally avoided when designing the system, but faults can occur that lead to their formation, such as broken strands in conductors. Sometimes these defects are visible to the naked eye, but more often, they reveal themselves with characteristic emissions in the ultraviolet part of the EM spectrum.

Corona discharge starts when a strong electric field accelerates free electrons in the air surrounding a defect. If the field is sufficiently strong, the kinetic energy of these electrons causes other air molecules to be ionized, starting an electron avalanche. These excited electrons propagate outward to a distance where the electric field is no longer strong enough to accelerate them, at which point the excited electrons return to their ground state and emit a photon of light. Since air is 78% nitrogen, the photons are mostly in the UV range, with just 5% being in the just barely visible end of the spectrum. This gives corona discharge its characteristic purplish-blue glow.

The other principal component of air, oxygen, comes into play as well. The free electrons in the corona discharge can split diatomic oxygen, leaving behind two negative oxygen ions. Each of these can then combine with a diatomic oxygen molecule to form ozone (O₃), a powerfully reactive oxidizer that can quickly corrode aluminum in conductors and steel in the support structure. The ozone can also combine with atmospheric nitrogen to form nitrogen oxides that, in the presence of water and oxygen, eventually create nitric acid. This strong acid can quickly strip the zinc coating from galvanized steel and attack passivated coatings on parts. Without these coatings, metal parts are unprotected from the elements and can quickly corrode and lose mechanical strength.

Corona discharge can be extremely costly to BPS operators. Specialized corona discharge cameras are used to detect corona faults. These cameras filter out the abundant UV-A and UV-B light in sunlight using a “solar blind” filter. This leaves only shortwave UV-C light below 280 nm in wavelength, which the ozone layer completely blocks out. Any light in this band has to come from nitrogen fluorescence, which makes it an effective way to detect corona discharge.

Corona cameras usually have a UV beam splitter to send light to a pair of detectors, one to capture the visible light coming from the scene and one that captures only the light remaining after passing through a solar-blind filter. The few photons of UV light that make it through the filter are amplified by a UV image intensifier, which uses a photocathode to release multiple electrons for each UV photon. These are accelerated in a strong electric field toward a phosphor screen, which converts them to visible light, which is picked up by a CCD camera and combined with the visible light scene. This shows the corona discharge as an overlay that allows operators to see where the discharge is originating from.
Corona cameras couple detection of “solar-blind” UV discharge with visible-light imagery to detect places where corona discharge might be happening. Here, a drone-carried corona camera shows a corona hot spot near a reinforcement in a phase conductor on a 1,000-kV transmission line. Source: Professionele Drones.

In the Weeds

One of the more stringent sets of NERC regulations is FAC-003-5, Transmission Vegetation Management. It might seem a little incongruous for an organization that sets standards for nuclear power plants and cybersecurity of critical infrastructure to worry about tree trimming, but studies show that vegetation contacts account for 16% to 23% of all outages in the US and Canada. Most of those outages occur in the distribution system, which is bad enough, but if vegetation were to contact lines in the transmission system, the failure cascade could be devastating. For an example of how bad vegetation contacts in the transmission system can be, look no further than the 2003 blackout in the northeast US, which started when overloaded 345 kV transmission lines in Ohio sagged into foliage. A software issue then compounded the problem, causing safety systems to trip and plunging customers from Ontario to the Mid-Atlantic states into darkness.

FAC-003-5 isn’t exactly light reading, going into great detail as it must to define terms and set actionable standards. The gist of the document, though, is contained in just a few tables that list the Minimum Vegetation Clearance Distances (MVCD) for both AC and DC systems. In general, the MVCDs increase with the nominal line voltage, which makes sense; the higher the voltage, the greater the potential flashover distance. More surprisingly, though, is that MVCDs increase dramatically with elevation. This has to do with the dielectric strength of air, which depends on its density. That means the thinner air at higher altitudes has a greater flashover distance, so more clearance is required.

For all the havoc vegetation contacts can wreak, the MVCDs are surprisingly narrow. For a nominal 800-kV line, the MVCD at sea level is a mere 11.6 feet (3.6 m), and only increases to 14.3 ft (4.4 m) over 14,000 ft (4268 m) elevation. These are minimum distances, of course, calculated using equations that take into account the breakdown voltage of air and the potential for flashover to vegetation. In practice, though, BPS operators keep ROWs well-groomed, aiming for to keep trees far beyond the MVCD requirements. Operators are especially watchful for trees at the edges of ROW that might be more than the MVCD away from the lines while standing, but could fall during a storm and make contact.

Assessing vegetation encroachments into the ROW is another job that can be tackled quickly by aerial patrols. The sensor platform in this case is often as simple as a spotter with a pair of binoculars or a camera, but in many cases, LiDAR sensors are used to scan the entire right of way. The LiDAR sensor is tied into the aircraft’s GPS system, resulting in a geotagged point cloud that can be analyzed after the flight. Three-dimensional visualizations of the transmission lines, their supporting structures, the ground below, and everything within and adjacent to the ROW can be viewed interactively, making it easy to spot trees with the potential to cause problems. These visualizations allow users to virtually “fly the line,” giving BPS operators a view that would be impossible to achieve even by flying a drone dangerously close to the lines.

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Non c'è mai stata una reale cessione di sovranità all'UE da parte degli stati membri in materia di politica estera o di politica economica. In questo caso particolare, inoltre, l'unica cosa su cui gli stati membri erano d'accordo era ridurre i dazi del 30% minacciati da Trump.

Trovo abbastanza ridicolo che i governi che non hanno mai voluto un'Europa forte e che hanno dato un mandato così minimalista a Von Der Layen adesso l'accusino di essersi genuflessa a Trump.

Forse sarebbe il caso di arricchire la Netiquette, in modo da estendere la sua ala protettrice anche sopra il Fediverso.

Serve, secondo me, un capitolo "Fediquette".

Per cominciare aggiungerei alla Fediquette questa regola:

- non si possono pubblicare link ad articoli, post o contenuti che per essere fruiti richiedono il pagamento di un abbonamento o l'obbligo ad accettare cookies che non siano tecnicamente necessari al funzionamento del sito.