Fax machines had a moment in the sun, but they are actually much older than you might expect. Before the consumer-grade fax machines arrived, there was a thriving market for “wire photos” used by, for example, news organizations and the weather service. In the United States, the WEFax from Western Electric was fairly common and shows up on the surplus market. [Thomas] has an English unit, a Muirhead K-570B, that is very clearly not a consumer-oriented machine. His unit dates back to 1983, but it reminds us of many older designs. Check out his teardown in the video below.

The phone line connection on this device is a pair of banana jacks! There are even jacks for an external meter. Inside, the device is about what you’d expect for a 1983 build. PCBs with bare tinned conductors and lots of through-hole parts.

While not a universally well-known name, Muirhead was a pioneering Scottish inventor. He recorded the first human electrocardiogram and collaborated with Sir Oliver Lodge on wireless telegraph patents. While another Scotsman, Alexander Bain, worked out how to chemically print on paper and Arthur Korn built the first machines that optically scanned the page, it was Murihead, in 1947, that worked out using a drum as the scanner, just as this machine does.

Think this is among the oldest fax machines ever? No way. Remember, though, in 1983, the consumer fax machines were just about to appear. Ask FedEx, we are sure they remember.

youtube.com/embed/KDDvCbUzIZc?…

hackaday.com/2025/08/24/wire-p…

As difficult as it is for a human to learn ambidexterity, it’s quite easy to program into a humanoid robot. After all, a robot doesn’t need to overcome years of muscle memory. Giving a one-handed robot ambidexterity, however, takes some more creativity. [Kelvin Gonzales Amador] managed to do this with his ambidextrous robot hand, capable of signing in either left- or right-handed American Sign Language (ASL).

The essential ingredient is a separate servo motor for each joint in the hand, which allows each joint to bend equally well backward and forward. Nothing physically marks one side as the palm or the back of the hand. To change between left and right-handedness, a servo in the wrist simply turns the hand 180 degrees, the fingers flex in the other direction, and the transformation is complete. [Kelvin] demonstrates this in the video below by having the hand sign out the full ASL alphabet in both the right and left-handed configurations.

The tradeoff of a fully direct drive is that this takes 23 servo motors in the hand itself, plus a much larger servo for the wrist joint. Twenty small servo motors articulate the fingers, and three larger servos control joints within the hand. An Arduino Mega controls the hand with the aid of two PCA9685 PWM drivers. The physical hand itself is made out of 3D-printed PLA and nylon, painted gold for a more striking appearance.

This isn’t the first language-signing robot hand we’ve seen, though it does forgo the second hand. To make this perhaps one of the least efficient machine-to-machine communication protocols, you could also equip it with a sign language translation glove.

youtube.com/embed/GmYO-Cum1KA?…

hackaday.com/2025/08/24/ambide…

Although not the first video game ever produced, Pong was the first to achieve commercial success and has had a tremendous influence on our culture as a whole. In Pong’s time, its popularity ushered in the arcade era that would last for more than two decades. Today, it retains a similar popularity partially for approachability: gameplay is relatively simple, has hardwired logic, and provides insights about the state of computer science at the time. For these reasons, [Nick Bild] has decided to recreate this arcade classic, but not in a traditional way. He’s trained a neural network to become the game instead.

To train this neural network, [Nick] used hundreds of thousands of images of gameplay. Much of it was real, but he had to generate synthetic data for rare events like paddle misses. The system is a transformer-based network with separate branches for predicting the movements of the ball, taking user input, and predicting paddle motion. A final branch is used to integrate all of these processes. To play the game, the network receives four initial frames and predicts everything from there.

From the short video linked below, the game appears to behave indistinguishably from a traditionally coded game. Even more impressive is that, due to [Nick]’s lack of a GPU, the neural network itself was trained using only a pair of old Xeon processors. He’s pretty familiar with functionally useful AI as well. He recently built a project that uses generative AI running on an 80s-era Commodore to generate images in a similar way to modern versions, just with slightly fewer pixels.

youtube.com/embed/P0F_hZC6uow?…

hackaday.com/2025/08/24/pong-c…

In the beginning was the MOS6502, an 8-bit microprocessor that found its way into many famous machines. Some of you will know that a CMOS 6502 was created by the Western Design Center, and in turn, WDC produced the 65C816, a 16-bit version that was used in the Apple IIgs as well as the Super Nintendo. It was news to us that they had a 32-bit version in their sights, but after producing a datasheet, they never brought it to market. Last October, [Mike Kohn] produced a Verilog version of this W65C832 processor, so it can be experienced via an FPGA.

The description dives into the differences between the 32, 16, and 8-bit variants of the 6502, and we can see some of the same hurdles that must have faced designers of other chips in that era as they moved their architectures with the times while maintaining backwards compatibility. From our (admittedly basic) understanding it appears to retain that 6502 simplicity in the way that Intel architectures did not, so it’s tempting to imagine what future might have happened had this chip made it to market. We’re guessing that you would still be reading through an Intel or ARM, but perhaps we might have seen a different path taken by 1990s game consoles.

If you’d like to dive deeper into 6502 history, the chip recently turned 50.

Thanks [Liam Proven] for the tip.

hackaday.com/2025/08/24/the-32…

DaVita, un’azienda americana che gestisce una rete di oltre 2.600 centri di emodialisi negli Stati Uniti, ha segnalato una grave perdita di dati personali dei pazienti a seguito di un attacco ransomware. Secondo i dati aggiornati, l’incidente ha colpito circa 2,4 milioni di persone, sebbene la notifica iniziale al Dipartimento della Salute e dei Servizi Umani degli Stati Uniti indicasse una cifra di 2,7 milioni.

Secondo le informazioni ufficiali, la violazione si è verificata il 24 marzo ed è durata fino al 12 aprile 2025. Quel giorno, gli aggressori sono stati costretti a lasciare l’infrastruttura aziendale, ed è stato allora che DaVita ha presentato una notifica alla Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) degli Stati Uniti, indicando che parte delle risorse di rete era crittografata. L’indagine ha confermato che i criminali hanno ottenuto l’accesso al database del laboratorio, da cui hanno rubato un’ampia gamma di informazioni riservate.

I dati rubati includevano nomi, indirizzi, date di nascita, numeri di previdenza sociale, informazioni sull’assicurazione sanitaria e identificativi aziendali interni. Sono stati rubati anche dati clinici, tra cui diagnosi, informazioni sui trattamenti e risultati degli esami di laboratorio per i pazienti in emodialisi. Per alcune vittime, la fuga di dati includeva numeri di telefono e, in alcuni casi, immagini di assegni intestati a DaVita.

L’azienda ha dichiarato che l’assistenza ai pazienti non è stata interrotta e che l’assistenza medica è stata fornita come di consueto. Tuttavia, tutti gli individui interessati sono stati informati dell’incidente e hanno ricevuto gratuitamente il monitoraggio della cronologia creditizia e altri strumenti di protezione dalle frodi. “Siamo profondamente dispiaciuti per questo incidente. I nostri specialisti, insieme a team esterni, hanno adottato misure tempestive per ripristinare i sistemi e proteggere i dati”, ha dichiarato DaVita in una nota.

Sebbene l’azienda non abbia confermato ufficialmente chi sia dietro l’attacco, il gruppo Interlock ha precedentemente rivendicato il suo coinvolgimento e ha aggiunto DaVita all’elenco delle vittime sulla sua risorsa per la pubblicazione di dati rubati.

Secondo i ricercatori, Interlock è attivo da settembre 2024 e ha già effettuato più di venti attacchi confermati, anche contro organizzazioni sanitarie negli Stati Uniti e in Europa. Quest’estate, hanno colpito Kettering Health, dove un attacco ha portato all’interruzione della chemioterapia e alla cancellazione di interventi chirurgici, e a luglio, Interlock ha paralizzato la città di St. Paul, in Minnesota, costringendo il governatore a dichiarare lo stato di emergenza e a chiamare la Guardia Nazionale.

Le agenzie federali statunitensi, tra cui FBI, HHS, CISA e MS-ISAC, hanno precedentemente emesso un avviso congiunto in cui si sottolineava che gli autori di Interlock agiscono per ottenere un guadagno economico e utilizzano tattiche che non solo disabilitano i sistemi, ma paralizzano anche i servizi critici. Considerato il settore sanitario, le conseguenze di tali attacchi minacciano direttamente la vita e la salute umana.

DaVita ha sottolineato che intende utilizzare l’esperienza di questo incidente per rafforzare le proprie difese e condividere i risultati con i colleghi del settore medico. Allo stesso tempo, l’indagine è in corso e gli utenti interessati sono in attesa di aggiornamenti basati sull’analisi dei dati rubati.

L'articolo I tuoi reni in vendita nel DarkWeb! L’attacco ransomware a DaVita colpisce 2,4 milioni di pazienti proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

Dear Friend of Press Freedom,

For 150 days, Rümeysa Öztürk has faced deportation by the United States government for writing an op-ed it didn’t like, and for 69 days, Mario Guevara has been imprisoned for covering a protest. Read on for more, and click here to subscribe to our other newsletters.

​​New strategies to help journalists in Gaza

Letters and condemnations have their place in press freedom advocacy, especially when dealing with a persuadable audience. But that playbook isn’t working for journalists in Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his arms supplier, President Donald Trump, don’t care about journalists’ lives, let alone their freedoms.

Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) board member and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Azmat Khan and her colleagues, Meghnad Bose and Lauren Watson, spoke to over 20 journalists and activists, including FPF Executive Director Trevor Timm, in search of novel ideas to stop Israel’s slaughter of journalists and concealment of war crimes. Read more in Columbia Journalism Review.

FPF complaint opposes U.S. attorney’s retaliation against press

It’d be journalistic malpractice for reporters to ignore a prominent public official listing a boarded-up house as his residence to claim eligibility for his position. But that’s not how John Sarcone III, acting U.S. attorney for the Northern District of New York, sees it.

He was reportedly “incensed” by reporting from the Times Union of Albany and ordered the paper removed from his office’s media list. In response, FPF, Demand Progress Education Fund, and Reinvent Albany filed a complaint with New York’s Attorney Grievance Committee. Read more here.

Oregon cops cosplay as journalists

Eugene police threatened documentary filmmaker Tim Lewis with arrest if he didn’t back up while filming them. But Lewis noticed another reporter wearing a vest marked “PRESS” filming without police harassment.

Turns out he wasn’t a reporter at all — he was a police public information program coordinator. As FPF Advocacy Director Seth Stern told Double Sided Media, “Police officers obstructing lawful journalism and giving their own publicly funded propagandists the exclusive right to record them up close is unconstitutional, un-American, and absurd.”

Eugene police have reportedly said they will replace the word “press” with “videographer.” Read more here.

Kansas school district fails to censor student journalists

A group of students sued Lawrence Public Schools in Kansas over the district’s use of surveillance software against students, including student journalists. Naturally, the student newspaper wanted to report on the case. But the principal ordered them not to, and the students believed their faculty adviser would be fired if they disobeyed.

Major news conglomerates have caved to official pressure, but not these kids. They sought a court order prohibiting the school from censoring them, leading the principal to drop his censorial directive and a judge to remind the district that the adviser was legally protected from retaliation. Then they published their story. Read it here.

Puerto Rico’s fake news law is unconstitutional

A district court rightly struck down Puerto Rico’s “fake news” law, which criminalized raising “false alarms” about public emergencies. Now, FPF and other rights organizations are urging an appellate court to affirm the ruling in a legal brief authored by the University of Georgia School of Law’s First Amendment Clinic.

The brief explained how the law could be selectively enforced to chill reporting that officials dislike. Read more here.

What we’re reading

Pritzker signs bill to protect freedom of press, Illinois journalists (WCIA). A nonsensical court ruling excluded news reporting from the protection of Illinois’ law against strategic lawsuits against public participation. FPF worked with local organizations and lawyers to help fix the mess.

Human rights groups to university administrators: Dismantle surveillance to defend free speech now (Fight for the Future). Surveillance technology has no place on college campuses and especially in student newsrooms. We joined a letter calling on universities to dismantle these dangerous tools.

Lawyers ask judge to order ICE to free Spanish-language journalist from immigration detention (Associated Press). Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s targeting of Mario Guevara — a lawful U.S. resident — based on his journalism is a flagrant First Amendment violation. He must be released.

US: Excessive force against LA protesters (Human Rights Watch). HRW usually focuses on wars and atrocities. Now, they’re investigating LA cops’ violence against protesters and journalists. It’s not because it’s a slow atrocity news week — it’s because the situation in LA really is that bad.

Israel says it killed a Hamas commander. It killed a Pulitzer-winning journalist (The New York Times). “The military made no attempt to obscure this brazen strike on civilians, which is a war crime.” And as +972 Magazine explained, it’s far from the first time Israel smeared journalists as terrorists to justify killing them. Its army has a unit tasked with linking journalists to Hamas.

Watchdog or ‘witch hunt’? Highland releases final review of town clerk’s office (River Reporter). Good for the upper Delaware region’s River Reporter for not letting an embattled town supervisor’s veiled threat of a SLAPP stop it from doing its job.

Journalists planning to cover McCormick, Perry event in Pennsylvania must prove their US citizenship (Penn Live). “Journalists who are citizens should decline to attend if their peers are excluded. They should spend their Tuesday investigating politicians and arms manufacturers rather than covering their photo ops,” Stern said.

For the Record is MuckRock’s weekly newsletter that keeps you informed on public records transparency battles, threats and wins. Sign-up to get original reporting, access to FOIA trainings and more.

freedom.press/issues/new-strat…