L’aeroporto di Berlino (BER) resta in “modalità di emergenza” il quinto giorno dopo il grave attacco informatico alla supply chain. Ne parla lo Spiegel in un aggiornamento di ieri.

Il fornitore di servizi IT Collins Aerospace, una filiale della società statunitense RTX, è stato vittima di un attacco informatico venerdì della scorsa settimana. L’attacco hacker ha paralizzato i sistemi elettronici utilizzati per la gestione dei passeggeri e dei bagagli.

Secondo un portavoce dell’aeroporto, il BER è ancora in “modalità di emergenza” diversi giorni dopo l’attacco informatico al suo sistema informatico. Il sistema di gestione passeggeri e bagagli, paralizzato, rimane inattivo.

Ha sottolineato che giovedì 25 settembre si sono nuovamente registrati diversi ritardi e sono stati cancellati tre voli. Mercoledì, invece, sono stati cancellati 12 voli. I vigili del fuoco e il personale di terra continuano a fornire assistenza per lo smistamento dei bagagli.

Come abbiamo riportato su queste pagine, un massiccio attacco informatico ha scosso diversi aeroporti europei sabato 20 settembre. La mattina del 22 settembre, l’aeroporto di Bruxelles ha chiesto alle compagnie aeree di cancellare metà delle partenze programmate per quel giorno.

Non è ancora stato reso noto chi è la cyber gang dietro l’attacco informatico al gestore dei check-in. Lo stesso giorno in cui gli aeroporti sono stati colpiti da un attacco informatico, l’aeroporto di Dublino è stato evacuato a causa di quella che sembrava una falsa minaccia di bomba.

L’Agenzia dell’Unione europea per la sicurezza informatica (ENISA) ha successivamente affermato che i disagi negli aeroporti che hanno interessato i sistemi di check-in automatico nei giorni scorsi sono stati causati da un attacco ransomware.

L'articolo Attacco ransomware agli aeroporti europei: Berlino ancora in “modalità di emergenza” proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

Commodore Corporation BV è stata recentemente acquisita da fan ed ex dipendenti. Ora, il nuovo marchio Commodore ha annunciato un traguardo significativo: il primo computer Commodore 64 Ultimate in 30 anni ha superato le 10.000 unità vendute.

L’account X ufficiale dell’azienda ha pubblicato i dati di vendita e ringraziato la community per il supporto. Come mostra il grafico pubblicato, le vendite sono iniziate in modo molto attivo il 12 luglio di quest’anno.

Da agosto, il trend è stato più uniforme, ma stabile. La cronologia mostra anche le date di uscita della trilogia video “Let’s Buy Commodore”, che ha ottenuto centinaia di migliaia di visualizzazioni (un episodio ha superato le 400.000 visualizzazioni). Il management dell’azienda ha monitorato attentamente l’impatto della campagna video sulle vendite.
Volumi di vendita Commodore 64 Ultimate / Commodore in X
Nella prima settimana dopo il lancio del nuovo prodotto, Commodore raccolse oltre 2 milioni di dollari. Ciò coincise con la pubblicazione del video “Making History: Signing the Commodore Contract + C64 Ultimate Production Update”, che vide un ulteriore incremento delle vendite. Fu allora che molti si resero conto che l’azienda era davvero in via di guarigione.

Subito dopo il traguardo delle 10.000 unità vendute, Commodore ha ricordato a tutti che c’è ancora tempo per preordinare il primo lotto tramite commodore.net ed essere tra i primi acquirenti quest’anno.

Il Commodore 64 Ultimate, basato su una piattaforma FPGA e dotato della “prima scheda madre con tastiera trasparente al mondo”, ha un prezzo di partenza di 299 dollari. È stato anche precisato che la Founders Edition sarà un’edizione unica.

Non è ancora stato annunciato un sostituto per chi se l’è perso, ma è previsto un modello simile.

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Anche se non avete intenzione di immergervi in una versione moderna dell’iconico C64, questa notizia merita di essere accolta positivamente. Commodore si sta posizionando come Founder’s Sandbox, una piattaforma per nuovi progetti informatici. La roadmap dell’azienda prevede fino a 12 importanti release nei prossimi quattro anni, il che ha già incuriosito la comunità degli appassionati di tecnologia retrò e moderna.

Le vendite del Commodore 64 Ultimate hanno superato le 10.000 unità, dimostrando che l’interesse per i computer retrò rimane forte e che il marchio rilanciato è in grado non solo di attingere alla nostalgia, ma anche di diventare una forza trainante per nuovi progetti tecnologici.

Il Commodore 64 originale (noto anche come C64) fu lanciato nel gennaio 1982 e divenne rapidamente il computer domestico più popolare dell’epoca. Il computer era dotato di un processore MOS Technology 6510/8500 a 8 bit con frequenza di 1,023 MHz nella versione NTSC e 0,985 MHz nella versione PAL.

Oltre a 64 KB di RAM, erano disponibili 20 KB di memoria di sola lettura, incluso un interprete BASIC. Inoltre, il dispositivo offriva supporto hardware per grafica a colori e audio. Il chip grafico VIC-II supportava una risoluzione di 320×200 pixel, 16 colori e sprite hardware. Il tutto era completato da interfacce per joystick, porte video/audio, uno slot per cartucce ROM e una porta seriale IEEE-488 (per unità disco o stampanti).

L'articolo Commodore 64: Dal mito degli anni ’80 al 2025! Vendute 10.000 nuove console proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

If you’re mounting solar panels, everybody knows the drill, right? Point them south, angled according to latitude. It’s easy. In a video which demonstrates that [Everyday Dave] is truly out standing in his field, we hear a different story. [Dave] has a year’s worth of data in his Solar Panel Showdown that suggests there are good reasons to mount your panels vertically.

Specifically, [Dave] is using bifacial solar panels– panels that have cells on both sides. In his preferred orientation, one side faces South, while the other faces North. [Dave] is in the Northern Hemisphere, so those of you Down Under would have to do the opposite, pointing one face North and the other South.

Since [Dave] is far from the equator, the N/S vertical orientation beats the pants off of East-West facing panels, especially in winter. What’s interesting is how much better the bifacial panels do compared to the “standard” tilted orientation. While peak power in the summer is much better with the tilted bifacial panels (indeed, even the tilted single-sided panels), in winter the vertical N/S panels blow them out of the water. (Especially when snow gets involved. Vertical panels don’t need sweeping!)

Even in the summer, though, there are advantages: the N/S panels may produce less power overall, but they give a trickle earlier and later in the day than the tilted orientation. Still, that extra peak power really shows, and over a six-month period from solstice-to-solstice, the vertical panels only produced 77% what the tilted bifacial panels did (while tilted single-sided panels produced 90%).

Is it worth it? That depends on your use case. If most of the power is going to A/C, you’ll need the extra in the warmer months. In that case, you want to tilt the panels. If you have a steady, predictable load, though, having even production winter/summer might be more to your liking– in that case you can join [Dave] in sticking solar panels straight up and down.

These results probably apply at latitudes similar to [Dave] who is in cloudy and snowy Ohio, which is perhaps not the ideal place for solar experimentation. If you’re not an Ohio-like distance from the equator, you might find an East-West array is the best bang for the buck. Of course if you really want to max out power from each individual cell, you can’t beat sun tracking regardless of where you are.

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hackaday.com/2025/09/25/vertic…

The Pentagon faced bipartisan backlash for its ridiculous policy requiring journalists to agree not to obtain or report “unauthorized” information. Now, in a response to an inquiry from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, officials are trying to walk it back.

They claim the rules were intended to restrict Pentagon staffers from giving unauthorized information to journalists, not to restrict journalists from printing “unsolicited” tips they’re given. We’re not buying it. We commend RCFP for getting the Pentagon to elaborate on the policy — but, despite lots of legalese and doublespeak, its clarifications are mostly meaningless.

As an initial matter, a policy solely aimed at government employees would not need to be distributed to or acknowledged by journalists. To the extent that the government is permitted to keep information secret, the Supreme Court says that’s the government’s responsibility — officials aren’t entitled to shift the burden to reporters to keep their secrets for them. Even crediting the Pentagon’s explanation, the memo was clearly intended to do exactly that. It sends a message to the press, and that message is “tread carefully.”

Nor can the government restrict the press to publishing unsolicited tips. News doesn’t fall from the sky into reporters’ laps. Reporters are entitled to ask questions, cultivate sources, and seek out news (otherwise known as reporting), as long as they don’t break the law in doing so. That’s the job description — they’re journalists, not stenographers.

Journalists should not agree to this ridiculous policy in exchange for … what, exactly? The honor of being lied to at news conferences?

The Pentagon’s position seems to draw from the Supreme Court case Bartnicki v. Vopper, which held that journalists can obtain information given to them by sources that obtained it illegally as long as the journalists didn’t themselves participate in the illegality. By soliciting information from sources, the Pentagon’s reasoning apparently goes, journalists participate in the sources’ violations of Pentagon policy.

But nothing in Bartnicki limits constitutional protection to unsolicited information — the only exception it acknowledges is when journalists participate in a source’s illegal acts (in that case, an unlawful wiretap). There is no analogous underlying illegality here.

The whole purpose of the First Amendment is so that the government can’t stop journalists from publishing what the government does not want published. We wouldn’t need a constitutional right to publish what the government authorizes to be released — the government would have no reason to try to prevent that.

That’s the fundamental point that seems entirely lost on this administration. The press exists to hold it accountable, not to keep its secrets or do its bidding.

The other point Pentagon officials are missing – as their response to RCFP makes clear — is that they’re not entitled to scream “national security” like magic words when they want the First Amendment to disappear. The response, disturbingly, reserves the right for the administration to unilaterally deem reporting a national security danger after the fact and punish reporters for it.

But as the Pentagon Papers case made extremely clear, that’s not how it works: “The word ‘security’ is a broad, vague generality whose contours should not be invoked to abrogate the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment.” And that was a case involving a specific set of documents alleged to pose a threat — not a vague reservation of rights to declare hypothetical documents a threat.

And this administration is guaranteed not to invoke “national security” responsibly. It has claimed the right to deport journalists, activists, and op-ed writers who disagree with, or merely report or comment on its policies. The president has said that when officials want a journalist to give up sources, they can just “tell the reporter, ‘National security’.”

The Trump administration considers anything that threatens to harm its reputation or expose its lies a threat to national security. It considers the First Amendment and free press themselves threats to national security.

The Pentagon is essentially shifting its position from, “You can’t report anything we didn’t authorize you to report” to “You can’t report anything we didn’t authorize you to report unless we decide after the fact in our sole discretion that it’s OK.” That should not provide much comfort to journalists. They certainly should not agree to this ridiculous policy in exchange for … what, exactly? The honor of being lied to at news conferences?

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The wheels on roller suitcases are one of their primary failure points. After the destruction of the wheel mount on her DIY suitcase, [Laura Kampf] wondered if it would be better to dispense with wheels altogether.

To give her suitcase a lift, [Kampf] decided to turn it into a hovercraft so it couldn’t be stopped by pavement or puddles. The first task was finding an appropriate fan, and a compact leaf blower donated it’s body to makerdom for the project. After reducing the blower to it’s constituent components and finding a secret turbo switch, work began on the momentum curtain.

“Nose-holing” the arrangement and size of the holes to pipe air through the stapled tarp and tape skirt seemed to be the bulk of the trial-and-error in this one. Based on other hovercraft designs [Kampf] found, keeping the holes near the center of the inflated portion gave better lift. In the end, the carry-on is able to lift a decent amount even on its lowest setting, resulting in a suitcase that is “not embarrassing” for travel. No word yet on what TSA thinks.

If you’re looking for another unexpected lift off, how about a full-sized flying Delorean replica? We’ve also covered some of the reasons why we don’t see more of these all terrain wonders.

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hackaday.com/2025/09/25/hoverc…

We aren’t sure what [theglassman] is working on, but based on his recent projects, we think it is probably something interesting. He’s been decapping ICs, growing oxide on silicon substrates, and has built a tube furnace capable of reaching 1200 °C.

What would you do with something that can melt cast iron? We aren’t sure, but maybe you’ll tell us in the comments. We do have a fair idea of what [theglassman] is doing, though.

The core of the oven is a quartz tube. Insulation is via refractory cement and alumina ceramic wool. The heating itself is classic Nichrome wire and a tiny thermocouple. The real key, though, is to the proper controller. [theglassman] suggests a ramp/soak controller. These allow you to program sequences that heat up and then stop, which, if done properly, can prevent your fragile quartz tube from cracking.

Naturally, you need the tube furnace to grow oxides on silicon. It is less clear why he’s decapping ICs. We were nervous about his process of boiling down sulfuric acid (fuming nitrate works better, anyway, if you just want to remove the epoxy). If you want to remove everything like he does, sodium hydroxide will also work well.

Obviously, we need to keep an eye on [theglassman]. We are curious what he’s working towards. Maybe making a custom transistor? Or, dare we hope, a homemade IC?

hackaday.com/2025/09/25/tube-f…

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

The Washington Post reported today that officials plan to require Pentagon reporters to pledge not to gather or report any information that the government has not authorized for release, whether classified or unclassified. Violators risk having their press credentials revoked.

Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) Director of Advocacy Seth Stern issued the following statement:

“The Supreme Court has made clear for decades that journalists are entitled to lawfully obtain and publish government secrets. That is essentially the job description of an investigative journalist. The law is also clear that the government can’t require people to contract away a constitutional right, like the right to obtain and publish secrets, in exchange for a benefit, like access to government buildings or press credentials.

“This policy operates as a prior restraint on publication, which is considered the most serious of First Amendment violations. As we learned in the Pentagon Papers case, the government cannot prohibit journalists from public information merely by claiming it’s a secret or even a national security threat. This is worse in a way, because the government isn’t only seeking to restrain specific documents it contends pose a unique threat, it’s seeking to restrain everything it doesn’t want the public to know. That is fundamentally un-American.

“In the meantime, journalists will need to decide whether they’re so dependent on physical access to the Pentagon that they’re willing to trade away their independence to retain it.

“I hope they won’t, and will find other ways to gather news. Agreeing not to look where the government doesn’t want you to look and, by extension, not to print what it doesn’t want you to print, is propaganda, not journalism. Caving to these kinds of demands would in some ways be the most outrageous capitulation yet, and there are plenty to choose from.

“Virtually every time this administration (and past ones) has tried to justify secrecy by claiming it’s protecting national security, its real agenda turned out to be saving itself from embarrassment or from having its lies exposed. There is no reason to think this is any different. Perhaps there are so many embarrassing documents at this point that it’s too difficult to keep finding bogus reasons to keep each of them secret. Maybe that’s why the administration is taking more of a wholesale approach to concealing records that may show wrongdoing, corruption, and incompetence.”

Please contact us if you would like further comment on the dangers this policy poses to press freedom in the United States.

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