La Federal Communications Commission (FCC) degli Stati Uniti ha deciso di rafforzare le difese del Paese contro gli attacchi informatici e creare Consiglio speciale per la sicurezza nazionale. Il nuovo organismo si occuperà della lotta contro minacce dalla Cina e aiuterà gli Stati Uniti a mantenere la propria posizione nel campo dell’intelligenza artificiale e delle tecnologie 5G.

Il nuovo consiglio riunirà le risorse dell’FCC e proteggerà sia i cittadini sia le grandi aziende. I compiti principali del consiglio sono prevenire gli attacchi informatici, proteggere da spionaggio e riducendo la dipendenza degli Stati Uniti dalla tecnologia cinese. Il consiglio affronterà anche la concorrenza strategica con la Cina nei settori del 5G, 6G, dei computer quantistici, dei satelliti e dei sistemi autonomi.

Inoltre, negli ultimi anni, la FCC non si è limitata solo alle telecomunicazioni, ma ha iniziato a supervisionare anche i droni e i cavi sottomarini, che possono anch’essi rappresentare una minaccia per la sicurezza.

Una delle prime cose che farà il nuovo consiglio è indagine su un attacco informatico di larga che ha coinvolto il threat actors Volt Typhoon. Da mesi gli hacker cinesi sono penetrati nelle reti di telecomunicazioni americane e intercettano le chiamate.

La creazione del consiglio rientra in una più ampia strategia degli Stati Uniti per contrastare le minacce cinesi. In precedenza, strutture simili erano apparse nella CIA e nel Dipartimento di Stato. Il Dipartimento del Commercio sta già limitando l’accesso della Cina a tecnologie importanti, in particolare nei settori dell’intelligenza artificiale e della produzione di chip.

Mentre in precedenza gli Stati Uniti avevano imposto sanzioni a singole aziende cinesi, ora l’approccio cambierà: la FCC si concentrerà sulla protezione di interi settori. Ciò contribuirà a impedire che le sanzioni vengano aggirate quando le aziende cambiano semplicemente nome. Particolare attenzione sarà rivolta ai servizi cloud, ai data center, ai droni, alle auto intelligenti e all’elettronica di consumo.

L’ambasciata cinese non ha ancora commentato la creazione del consiglio.

Ricordiamo che un gruppo di repubblicani al Senato degli Stati Uniti ha invitato l’amministrazione di Donald Trump a lanciare operazioni informatiche offensive contro la Cina. La mossa è stata motivata dai recenti attacchi hacker collegati alle agenzie di intelligence cinesi, che hanno colpito importanti reti americane.

L'articolo Guerra Digitale: Gli USA Alzano le Difese contro gli Hacker Cinesi! proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

Astrophotography, and astronomy in general, takes some fairly specialized tools and a high amount of precision. Setting up the equipment can also take a lot of time, especially for amateurs traveling to various locations with their equipment, so anything that can reduce the amount of time spent looking for objects and increasing the amount of time looking at them is a welcome addition, especially since nights where conditions are ideal for these activities can be rare. [Anton] developed this real-time tracking tool for deep sky objects (DSOs) to keep tabs on most of the interesting things out there a telescope can be pointed at.

[Anton] calls his tool the Nova DSO Altitude Tracker and gets its information from SIMBAD, updating every minute for a given location on the planet. With that location data, the program calculates altitude and azimuth for various objects and also helps the user keep track of other important variables like moon illumination and angle above the horizon. It also allows the user to highlight specific objects of interest, making sure they are front and center throughout the session. Each DSO can be selected from a list to display detailed information about it such as its path, time visible in the sky, and other properties.

To get the program running, essentially all that’s required is a computer capable of running Python and a display of some sort. From there it provides a quick view of the best objects to point one’s telescope or camera at without any guesswork. With all of the code available it shouldn’t be too much of a leap to do other things with the underlying software, either, such as tying it into a tracker of some sort like this DIY telescope tracking device we featured a while back.

hackaday.com/2025/03/13/tracki…

Everyone knows that there is only one proper English, with the rest being mere derivatives that bastardize the spelling and grammar. Despite this, the hoodlums who staged a violent uprising against British rule in the American colonies have somehow made their uncouth dialect dominant in the information technologies that have taken the world by storm these past decades. In this urgent mission to restore the King’s English to its rightful place, we fortunately have patriotic British citizens who have taken it upon themselves to correct this grave injustice. Brave citizens such as [Declan Chidlow], whose BritCSS project is a bright beacon in these harrowing times.

Implemented as a simple, 14 kB JavaScript script to be included in an HTML page, it allows one to write CSS files using proper spelling, such as background-colour and centre. Meanwhile harsh language such as !important is replaced with the more pleasant !if-you-would-be-so-kind. It is expected that although for now this script has to be included on each page to use BritCSS, native support will soon be implemented in every browser, superseding the US dialect version. [Declan] has also been recommended to be awarded the Order of the British Empire for his outstanding services.

hackaday.com/2025/03/13/britcs…

The proliferation of affordable lithium batteries has made modern life convenient in a way we could only imagine in the 80s when everything was powered by squadrons of AAs, or has it? [Ian Bogost] ponders whether sticking a lithium in every new device is really the best idea.

There’s no doubt, that for some applications, lithium-based chemistries are a critically-enabling technology. NiMH-based EVs of the 1990s suffered short range and slow recharge times which made them only useful as commuter cars, but is a flashlight really better with lithium than with a replaceable cell? When household electronics are treated as disposable, and Right to Repair is only a glimmer in the eye of some legislators, a worn-out cell in a rarely-used device might destine it to the trash bin, especially for the less technically inclined.

[Bogost] decries “the misconception that rechargeables are always better,” although we wonder why his article completely fails to mention the existence of rechargeable NiMH AAs and AAAs which are loads better than their forebears in the 90s. Perhaps even more relevantly, standardized pouch and cylindrical lithium cells are available like the venerable 18650 which we know many makers prefer due to their easy-to-obtain nature. Regardless, we can certainly agree with the author that easy to source and replace batteries are few and far between in many consumer electronics these days. Perhaps new EU regulations will help?

Once you’ve selected a battery for your project, don’t forget to manage it if it’s a Li-ion cell. With great power density, comes great responsibility.

hackaday.com/2025/03/13/have-l…

A piece of glass, some bits of tinfoil, a sheet of plastic, a couple of razor blades, and a few assorted bits and bobs are all it takes to build this TEA nitrogen laser. Oh, and a 5,000-volt flyback supply with enough amperage to stop your heart. You’ll need that too.

Seriously, if you choose to follow [MultiverseCurator] ‘s example and build this laser, you’ll want to take the proper precautions. A transversely excited atmospheric laser is simple in concept, but there are plenty of ways for them to go wrong. Unlike the gas lasers used in laser cutters, there’s no enclosed resonator cavity or mirrors. Rather, the excitation takes place across a narrow gap between two electrodes, using atmospheric nitrogen as the lasing medium. This results in hard UV emissions, which means you can’t see them with the naked eye. Add to that the spark gap creating extremely loud discharges as the laser operates, and hazards abound. Proceed with caution.

Construction starts with a flat glass plate and a pair of large capacitors made from aluminum foil plates separated by a plastic dielectric. The razor blades are connected across the capacitors, separated by a narrow gap, with an inductor made from magnet wire in parallel. A spark gap made from nuts and bolts goes in series, and the whole assembly gets connected to a high-voltage power supply — [Multiverse] used a ZVS driver and a CRT flyback transformer with an eight-megohm resistor in series. The video below has all the build details.

It’ll take a little fiddling to get it lasing, and you’ll need something phosphorescent to see the UV light — a scrap of copy paper should do. But the results are pretty amazing for something made from scrap. If you want to take the design to the next level, you’ll want to check out [Les Wright]’s TEA laser build.

youtube.com/embed/uLyVpYIYT1E?…

hackaday.com/2025/03/13/got-ju…

You can argue if bash is a good programming language or not, but you can’t argue that it is a programming language. However, there are a few oddities about it that make it different from most other languages you probably know. For one thing, variables are dynamically scoped. Second, you can easily change variables in an upper scope. This leads to a problem when you want to do something like reset your path:
#!/bin/bash
#: This does NOT work
PATH=/usr/bin:/bin

Well, actually, it does work; it just doesn’t work the way you imagine it might. The key is to realize that when you execute our script (say, resetpath), a new copy of bash runs. It inherits all the variables from your shell. Now the script sets PATH for the new copy of bash. Anything else you run in that script will see your change. But when the script exits, the new copy of bash is gone and the old copy sees the same old PATH it always did.

Sometimes, this is a benefit, similar to “call by value” in other languages. However, what if you want to influence things? What’s more is that the situation is just the opposite within bash functions. For example:
#!/bin/bash

b() {
echo B: $x
x=200
}

a() {
x=100
b
echo A: $x
}

a
#: output
#: B: 100
#: A: 200

Function b has no difficulty reading and even setting variable x.

The Answer, Of Source Course

The answer to the first problem is to use the source command (which can be either the word source or a single period). This tells bash to avoid running a new interpreter and just pretend you’d entered all the lines in a file from the console.

This is great sometimes. Our resetpath script will actually work just fine with either of these commands:
source resetpath
. resetpath

You don’t even need the #! line, although it doesn’t hurt. However, there are a few problems.

The Catches

First, if you exit, then you exit the entire shell, not something you probably meant to do. Second, you wind up polluting the variable space of the parent. For example, if your script creates a function X, with a regular shell script, that function goes away as soon as your script stops. With a source script, function X now will live forever unless you do something about it.

Neither of these problems are insurmountable, of course, and you’ll see a few ways to address it in the example code in this post.

A Simple Example

If you spend a lot of time on the command line, you might want to have shortcut names for directories. What’s more, you might want to execute a little script when you go to particular directories or even when you leave them.

My plan is to keep a simple file in ~/.proj_dirs. To keep things simple, I’m assuming you can figure out the bash format:
PROJ_DIRS["docs"]="~/library/documents"
PROJ_DIRS["video"]="~/library/videos"
PROJ_DIRS["arduino"]="/home/alw/projects/embedded/Arduino"
. . .
The eventual goal is to replace the cd command (or, at least, allow for that). However, it would be a pain to have to write something like “source pcd arduino” every time.

The Alias Solution

The answer is pretty simple. You can create a script that can install itself as an alias. Here’s the basic flow:
#!/bin/bash
#: This is not a bash shell script
#: But needs to be sourced. However...
#: Try:
#: eval $(__project_dir.sh --__install project_dir)
if [ "$1" == "--__install" ] # this should only be called from "real" script
then
aname="$2"
if [ "$aname" == "" ]
then
aname="pcd"
fi
echo -n "alias '$aname'='source "
aname=$(realpath -s "$0")
echo "$aname'"
exit 0
fi
#: Your source script goes here
...

The idea is that if you run as a regular script with –__install, it returns the alias command. You can then eval that in, for example, a startup script (like .bashrc or .profile), and then you’ll have the alias you want. By default, the code uses pcd, although you can set up any name you like on the command line. You could even create an alias for cd if you wanted to do that.

Why Not Automatic?

You could, of course, detect if you were running normally or as a source automatically. Turns out this is somewhat finicky across shells, although if you are sure you are always using real bash, it is feasible. For example:
if [[ "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}" == "$0" ]]
then
echo I am not sourced!
fi

Variables

Once you have the basic framework, it is easy to write the scripts to read the “database” (also using source) and do the actual work. However, there is a slight problem. Once you produce all the variables you need to do the work, it leaves all that pollution in your shell’s namespace.

Of course, you could write a function to clean up everything you use, but that’s a pain and error prone, too. A better idea is to write your code in a bash function. Then you can use local variables that will go away when the function returns. That leaves you with just your function to clear up with unset.

That leads to this simple framework:
#!/bin/bash
if [[ "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}" == "$0" ]]
then
if [ "$1" == "--__install" ] # this should only be called from "real" script
then
aname="$2"
if [ "$aname" == "" ]
then
aname="pcd" # default alias name
fi
echo -n "alias '$aname'='source "
aname=$(realpath -s "$0")
echo "$aname'"
exit 0
fi
echo "You must source this script"
exit 1
fi

#: Ok your script goes here

main() {
. . .

}

#: Be sure to have this at the end
#: Actually named with underscores in the real code
#: But that upsets the rendering in browser
#: Actual code at gist.github.com/wd5gnr/c5681f2…
go() {
local tmprv
main "$@"
tmprv=$?
unset main, go
return $tmprv
}

go "$@"
return $?
The very bottom calls the go function, which calls your main function. Then the go function destroys your main function and itself. If you create new functions that you don’t want to keep around, you’ll need to destroy them yourself. Besides, you might be creating functions you want to keep, so the framework can’t decide.

The Whole Thing

You can find the entire example on GitHub. Outside of the management of the alias and the variable scope, the script is unremarkable. Note the optional scripts in the directories (.dir_enter and .dir_exit) are sourced also, so they only need to be readable (-r) not executable (-x).

The only other nuance is that if you enter anything as a directory that the program doesn’t recognize, it assumes it is an actual directory, so you can use this to replace the cd command entirely if you want.

Since the script can tell if it is sourced or not, it is possible to start in the source mode and then call yourself as a normal script to do work where that makes more sense. As usual with bash, there are lots of possibilities.

We talk about bash programming a lot around here. Debugging can be helpful, although they haven’t packaged the debugger for newer versions of bash lately.

hackaday.com/2025/03/13/linux-…

Microsoft ha avvisato che alcune stampanti USB potrebbero stampare pagine casuali dopo l’installazione degli aggiornamenti di Windows di gennaio. Si segnala che il problema riguarda Windows 10 (versione 22H2) e Windows 11 (versioni 22H2 e 23H2). Tuttavia, questo bug non riguarda l’ultima versione di Windows 11 (24H2).

“Dopo aver installato l’aggiornamento di anteprima di Windows ( KB5050092 ) rilasciato il 29 gennaio 2025 o aggiornamenti successivi, potresti riscontrare problemi con le stampanti connesse tramite USB a doppia modalità che supportano i protocolli USB Print e IPP Over USB”, spiegano gli sviluppatori. “Potresti notare che la tua stampante inizia improvvisamente a stampare testo e dati casuali, tra cui comandi di rete e caratteri insoliti.”

Gli utenti interessati da questo problema potrebbero visualizzare un testo stampato dal bug che inizia con l’intestazione “POST /ipp/print HTTP/1.1” seguito da altre intestazioni relative a IPP (Internet Printing Protocol).

In genere, tali problemi si verificano quando si accende la stampante o quando si ricollega il dispositivo dopo averlo scollegato. Di conseguenza, il dispositivo può iniziare a stampare quando lo spooler di stampa invia messaggi di protocollo IPP alla stampante (il driver della stampante deve essere installato sul dispositivo Windows).

L’azienda ha risolto temporaneamente il problema utilizzando Known Issue Rollback (KIR), una funzionalità di Windows che aiuta a ripristinare gli aggiornamenti non di sicurezza problematici distribuiti tramite Windows Update. La correzione verrà inclusa automaticamente anche nei futuri aggiornamenti di Windows.

Si noti che per risolvere il problema sui dispositivi aziendali che eseguono Windows, gli amministratori devono installare e configurare i seguenti criteri di gruppo:

• Windows 11 22H2 KB5050092 250131_150523 Problema noto Rollback ;
• Windows 10 22H2, 21H1, 21H2 e 22H2 KB5050081 250131_082569 Problema noto Rollback .

L'articolo Caos stampanti! Windows fa stampare pagine casuali dopo l’ultimo aggiornamento! proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

[Yaymukund] made an interesting observation. Old-style rotary phones were made to last and made for service. Why? Because you didn’t own them, the phone company did. There was no advantage for them for you to need a service call or a new phone. Of course, many of these old phones are still hanging around like the GPO 746 that appears in the post.

What do you do with an old rotary phone? In this case, you make it play a random tune whenever someone picks up the handset. As you might expect, you don’t need much of the original phone to do this. In particular, you need the handset receiver and the switch hook. We’d have liked to read the dial to select a tune, but perhaps that could be in version two.

All the components wire back to a D92732 circuit board. Finding the right wires was a bit finicky, but eventually, a Teensy, a battery pack, and an audio breakout board were in place. The rest is mostly trivial.

[Yaymukund] spent about £300, but over half of that was on tools most Hackaday readers will already have. The phone itself was £65. You can use these phones as a basis for many projects. Even if you want to go mobile.

hackaday.com/2025/03/13/hackin…

Hackaday Europe 2025 is just days away, and we’ve got the finalized speaker schedule hot off the digital press. We’re also pleased to announce that the event page is now officially live, where you can find all the vital information about the weekend’s festivities in one place.

Whether you’ll be joining the fun in Berlin, or watching the live stream from home, we’ve got a fantastic lineup of speakers this year who are eager to tell us all about the projects that have been keeping them up at night recently:

Saturday Schedule

Registration and Breakfast

9:00 – 10:00

Opening Remarks

10:00 – 10:20

What if the Future [of Electronics] was Compostable?

10:30 – 11:20 (Keynote)

David Cuartielles

Manufacturing the Hackaday Supercon Badge

11:30 – 11:50

Giovanni Salinas

Seeing Through Silicon with IRIS (InfraRed, in-situ) Imaging

12:00 – 12:20

Bunnie Huang

Lunch

12:30 – 13:30

Developing a NFC Based Decentralized Payment System

13:30 – 13:50

Daniel Büchele & Andre Zibell

Hacking a Pinball Machine

14:00 – 14:40

Daniel Dakhno

Hardware Startup / Product Pitfalls

14:50 – 15:30

Sera Evcimen

Creating Light Sculptures for Fun and…Mostly for Fun

15:40 – 16:00

Erik Bosman

The Core64 – NeonPixels – 65uino Collaboration

16:10 – 16:50

Geppert, Freyermuth, & Nielsen

Make PCBs Bend Over Backwards for You: How to Design Flexible PCBs

17:00 – 17:20

Rehana Al-Soltane

More Than Motors: Decoding the Software Behind Pen Plotters and CNC Devices

17:30 – 18:10

Francis Stokes

Half-size Hacking – 0.05in Matrix Boards Under the Microscope

18:20 – 18:40

Alun Morris

Dinner

18:40 – 20:00

HEU1993 to WHY2025: Dutch Hacker Camps from the Past and the Future

20:00 – 20:40

Christel Sanders

Vectors, Pixels, Plotters and Public Participation

20:50 – 21:30

Niklas Roy

Live Performance

21:30 – 22:00

Rich Hogben & Aleksandar Bradic

Badge Hacking Ceremony

22:00 – 24:00

Time Has Run Out!

Tickets sold out a few days ago, so if you’ve got one we’ll see you soon, and if not, we will be streaming all of the Saturday talks live, so hit up Hackaday on the weekend and you can play along, at least virtually. And for back-channel chat, join us on the Hackaday Discord #europe-2025 channel.

hackaday.com/2025/03/13/hackad…

L’azienda australiana BiVACOR ha raggiunto un traguardo importante nei suoi sviluppi: un paziente ha vissuto per più di 100 giorni con il cuore meccanico da loro creato, dopodiché è stato sottoposto con successo a un trapianto di organi da donatore. Il nome dell’uomo, che necessitava di un trapianto a causa di una grave malattia, non è stato reso noto.

Il sistema sviluppato, denominato Total Artificial Heart (TAH), è un meccanismo innovativo di circolazione sanguigna. Il progetto si basa su una pompa elettromeccanica con una sola parte mobile, un rotore, che viene mantenuto nella posizione desiderata mediante levitazione magnetica. Il vantaggio principale del dispositivo è la sua capacità di dirigere simultaneamente il flusso sanguigno sia al corpo sia ai polmoni.

Gli ingegneri hanno cambiato radicalmente l’approccio tradizionale alla risoluzione del problema. I modelli precedenti contenevano molte parti mobili che si usuravano gradualmente entrando in contatto tra loro. Nel nuovo modello, il rotore, che ricorda nella sua forma una speciale girante, letteralmente si libra nell’aria senza toccare altre parti.

L’azienda ha addirittura presentato un modello animato in 3D del meccanismo, dimostrando chiaramente il principio del suo funzionamento. Puoi guardarlo Qui .

Il funzionamento dell’impianto è garantito da un sistema di alimentazione esterno. Il controller e le batterie sono collegati al dispositivo tramite un cavo transcutaneo, uno speciale filo che passa attraverso una piccola incisione nel corpo del paziente.

L’anno scorso, BiVACOR ha condotto il suo primo studio negli Stati Uniti, su cinque pazienti sottoposti a TAH come misura temporanea in attesa di un donatore di cuore. Tutti i partecipanti all’esperimento sono stati sottoposti con successo all’intervento chirurgico e sono stati dimessi dall’ospedale dopo qualche tempo. Di due di loro si conosce il destino: uno ha ricevuto il cuore di un donatore 27 giorni dopo l’installazione del TAH, l’altro otto giorni dopo.

L’operazione sul paziente australiano è durata sei ore. Dopo la guarigione, i medici hanno permesso all’uomo di lasciare la clinica. Per più di tre mesi ha condotto una vita normale con l’impianto, finché non si è presentata l’opportunità di sottoporsi a un trapianto.

Il problema delle malattie cardiache resta estremamente acuto e il numero di organi donati disponibili per il trapianto è catastroficamente esiguo. Gli specialisti del BiVACOR intendono potenziare la loro invenzione in modo che possa funzionare fino a dieci anni, più o meno lo stesso periodo di un vero cuore trapiantato.

Tuttavia, i medici avvertono che, nonostante i risultati incoraggianti, lo sviluppo è ancora nella fase di sperimentazione clinica. Negli Stati Uniti sono state approvate solo altre 15 procedure TAH. Ci vorranno anni di ricerca prima che la tecnologia venga approvata per un uso diffuso, sia come supporto temporaneo per i pazienti in lista d’attesa, sia come misura permanente.

L'articolo 100 giorni con un Cuore Meccanico! il futuro dei trapianti è già qui? proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.