Dovremmo imparare a goderci le cose che abbiamo, come se sapessimo che il giorno dopo ce le porterà via. Ma l'incapacità di apprezzare il momento è più forte e così, niente, perdiamo attimi che non avremo mai più.
Per molto tempo abbiamo pensato che non sarebbe successo nulla in Europa, ci siamo preparati a operare in missioni di peacekeeping lontano dai nostri confini e senza una minaccia diretta ai nostri territori. Tutto questo è cambiato con l’invasione russa dell’Ucraina, che è servita da
@Notizie dall'Italia e dal mondo Berlino archivia l'austerità in nome del riarmo, pensa alla leva obbligatoria e droga l'economia con centinaia di miliardi di euro di finanziamenti pubblici a debito L'articolo “La Germania è tornata” proviene da Pagine Esteri.
Laser microphones have been around since the Cold War. Back in those days, they were a favorite tool of the KGB – allowing spies to listen in on what was being said in a room from a safe distance. This project by [SomethingAbtScience] resurrects that concept with a DIY build that any hacker worth their soldering iron can whip up on a modest budget. And let’s face it, few things are cooler than turning a distant window into a microphone.
At its core this hack shines a laser on a window, detects the reflected light, and picks up subtle vibrations caused by conversations inside the room. [SomethingAbtScience] uses an ordinary red laser (visible, because YouTube rules) and repurposes an amplifier circuit ripped from an old mic, swapping the capsule for a photodiode. The build is elegant in its simplicity, but what really makes it shine is the attention to detail: adding a polarizing filter to cut ambient noise and 3D printing a stabilized sensor mount. The output is still a bit noisy, but with some fine tuning – and perhaps a second sensor for differential analysis – there’s potential for crystal-clear audio reconstruction. Just don’t expect it to pass MI6 quality control.
While you probably won’t be spying on diplomats anytime soon, this project is a fascinating glimpse into a bygone era of physical surveillance. It’s also a reminder of how much can be accomplished with a laser pointer, some ingenuity, and the curiosity to see how far a signal can travel.
Here’s the thing about coding. When you’re working on embedded projects, it’s quite easy to run into hardware limitations, and quite suddenly, too. You find yourself desperately trying to find a way to speed things up, only… there are no clock cycles to spare. It’s at this point that you might reach for the magic of direct memory access (DMA). [Larry] is here to advocate for its use.
DMA isn’t just for the embedded world; it was once a big deal on computers, too. It’s just rarer these days due to security concerns and all that. Whichever platform you’re on, though, it’s a valuable tool to have in your arsenal. As [Larry] explains, DMA is a great way to move data from memory location to memory location, or from memory to peripherals and back, without involving the CPU. Basically, a special subsystem handles trucking data from A to B while the CPU gets on with whatever other calculations it had to do. It’s often a little more complicated in practice, but that’s what [Larry] takes pleasure in explaining.
Indeed, back before I was a Hackaday writer, I was no stranger to DMA techniques myself—and I got my project published here! I put it to good use in speeding up an LCD library for the Arduino Due. It was the perfect application for DMA—my main code could handle updating the graphics buffer as needed, while the DMA subsystem handled trucking the buffer out to the LCD quicksmart.
If you’re struggling with updating a screen or LED strings, or you need to do something fancy with sound, DMA might just be the ticket. Meanwhile, if you’ve got your own speedy DMA tricks up your sleeve, don’t hesitate to let us know!
Electricity can be a pretty handy tool when it stays within the bounds of its wiring. It’s largely responsible for our modern world and its applications are endless. When it’s not running in wires or electronics though, things can get much more complicated even for things that seem simple on the surface. For example, measuring moisture in soil seems straightforward, but corrosion presents immediate problems. To combat the problems with measuring things in the natural world with electricity, [David] built this capacitive soil moisture sensor which also has the benefit of using an extremely small amount of energy to operate.
The sensor is based on an STM32 microcontroller, in this case one specifically optimized for low-power applications. The other low-power key to this build is the small seven-segment e-ink display. The segments are oriented as horizontal lines, making this a great indicator for measuring a varying gradient of any type. The microcontroller only wakes up every 15 minutes, takes a measurement, and then updates the display before going back to sleep.
To solve the problem resistive moisture sensors have where they’re directly in contact with damp conditions and rapidly corrode, [David] is using a capacitive sensor instead which measures a changing capacitance as moisture changes. This allows the contacts to be much more isolated from the environment. The sensor has been up and running for a few months now with the coin cell driving the system still going strong and the house plants still alive and properly watered. Of course if you’re looking to take your houseplant game to the next level you could always build a hydroponics system which automates not only the watering of plants but everything else as well.
fatemi capire una cosa... trump vuole re-industrializzare gli stati uniti. teme ad esempio le auto cinesi. in questo contesto, far fallire tesla ha senso? è coerente con il progetto industriale? trump e elon musk sono proprio il gatto e la volpe... un trono per due. sono esagerata se sostengo che il progetto di trump non sta andando come dovuto?
@Informatica (Italy e non Italy 😁) Il Ministero della Sicurezza dello Stato (MSS) cinese ha recentemente rilasciato una dichiarazione che getta una luce inquietante sulle dinamiche della cyberwarfare tra Cina e Taiwan. Il
It’s 2025, and you’re still probably pressing modifier keys on your keyboard like a… regular person. But it doesn’t have to be this way! You could use foot pedals instead, as [Jan Herman] demonstrates.
Now, if you’re a diehard embedded engineer, you might be contemplating your favorite USB HID interface chip and how best to whip up a custom PCB for the job. But it doesn’t have to be that complicated! Instead, [Jan] goes for an old school hack—he simply ripped the guts out of an cheap USB keyboard. From there, he wired up a few of the matrix pads to 3.5 mm jack connectors, and put the whole lot in a little metal project box. Then, he hooked up a few foot pedal switches with 3.5 mm plugs to complete the project.
[Jan] has it set up so he can plug foot pedals in to whichever keys he needs at a given moment. For example, he can plug a foot pedal in to act as SPACE, ESC, CTRL, ENTER, SHIFT, ALT, or left or right arrow. It’s a neat way to make the project quickly reconfigurable for different productivity tasks. Plus, you can see what each pedal does at a glance, just based on how it’s plugged in.
La ripresa dei bombardamenti indiscriminati su Gaza nelle prime ore di martedì da parte di Israele è la logica conseguenza degli sforzi delle ultime settimane per affondare la tregua con Hamas firmata lo scorso mese di gennaio.
Somewhere between the period of 1999 and 2007 a plague swept through the world, devastating lives and businesses. Identified by a scourge of electrolytic capacitors violently exploding or splurging their liquid electrolyte guts all over the PCB, it led to a lot of finger pointing and accusations of stolen electrolyte formulas. In a recent video by [Asianometry] this story is summarized. Blown electrolytic capacitors. (Credit: Jens Both, Wikimedia) The bad electrolyte in the faulty capacitors lacked a suitable depolarizer, which resulted in more gas being produced, ultimately leading to build-up of pressure and the capacitor ultimately failing in a way that could be rather benign if the scored top worked as vent, or violently if not.
Other critical elements in the electrolyte are passivators, to protect the aluminium against the electrolyte’s effects. Although often blamed on a single employee stealing an (incomplete) Rubycon electrolyte formula, the video questions this narrative, as the problem was too widespread.
More likely it coincided with the introduction of low-ESR electrolytic capacitors, along with computers becoming increasingly more power-hungry, and thus stressing the capacitors in a much warmer environment than in the early 1990s. Combine this with the presence of counterfeit capacitors in the market and the truth of what happened to cause the Capacitor Plague probably involves a bit from each column, a narrative that seems to be the general consensus.
Image by [StunningBreadfruit30] via redditHere’s the gist: this sexy split grid of beautiful multi-jet fusion (MJF) keycaps sits on top of Kailh PG1316S switches. The CNC-machined aluminium enclosure hides nice!nano boards with a sweet little dip in each one that really pull the keyboard together.
For the first serious custom build, [StunningBreadfruit30] wanted a polished look and finish, and to that I say wow, yes; good job, and nod enthusiastically as I’m sure you are. Believe it or not, [StunningBreadfruit30] came into this with no CAD skills at all. But it was an amazing learning experience overall, and an even better version is in the works.
I didn’t read the things. Is it open-source? It’s not, at least not at this time. But before you get too-too excited, remember that it cost $400 to build, and that doesn’t even count shipping or the tools that this project necessitated purchasing. However, [StunningBreadfruit30] says that it may be for sale in the future, although the design will have an improved sound profile and ergonomics. There’s actually a laundry list of ideas for the next iteration.
Image by [Saixos] via redditSo, it’s adjustable? Yes, in more ways than one. It can utilize either a single RP2040 Zero, or else one or multiple XIAO BLEs. The thumb cluster snaps off and can be moved wherever you like.
And [Saixos] didn’t stop there. In the magnificent repo, there’s a Python-generated case that’s highly customizable, plus MX and Choc versions of the PCB. Finally, Apiaster can use either LiPo batteries or a coin cell.
The other main crux of the biscuit here is price, and the Apiaster can be built for about $37 total minus shipping/customs/tariffs and/or tooling. That’s pretty darn good, especially if this really becomes your endgame.
The Centerfold: A ’90s Kid Works Here
Image by [nismology5] via redditAfter using a Durgod Taurus K320 rectangle for a number of years, [nismology5] decided to lean into ergo and acquired a Keychron Q8 with a knob and the Alice layout after falling in love with the look of GMK Panels keycaps and the Alice herself.
Perhaps the biggest change is going from clacky blues on the Taurus to silent and slinky reds. Who knows why such a drastic change, but [nismology5] is digging the smoothness and quietude underneath those GMK Panels clones from Ali.
Now, let’s talk about that sweet trackball. It’s a Clearly Superior Technologies (CST) KidTRAC with a pool ball swapped in. They are discontinued, sadly, but at least one was available as NOS on eBay. Not to worry — they are being produced by another company out of the UK and come in that sweet UNO Draw 4 Wild drip.
Do you rock a sweet set of peripherals on a screamin’ desk pad? Send me a picture along with your handle and all the gory details, and you could be featured here!
Historical Clackers: the Fox was Quite Fetching
The lovely Fox was named not for its primary inventor Glenn J. Barrett, but instead for company president William R. Fox. Although this may seem unfair, the Fox is a pretty great name for a good-looking typewriter. Image via The Classic Typewriter Page This nineteenth-century Fox appeared in 1898, shortly after it was patented and had a number of nice features, like a notably light touch. The carriage can be removed easily for cleaning and maintenance. And the machine had a “speed escapement”, which affects the carriage advancement timing. It could be set to advance either when a typebar returns to rest, or as soon as the typebar starts off for the platen.
The first Foxes were understroke machines, which is another term for blind writer, meaning that one must lift something out of the way to see what one had written as the typebars strike the platen from underneath. In the case of the Fox, one need only turn the platen slightly.
Frontstroke or ‘visible’ typewriters were coming into vogue already, so the company introduced a frontstroke machine in 1906. It had many of the same features as the blind-writing Foxen, such as the dual-speed escapement. A one- or two-color ribbon could be used, and the machine could be set to oscillate the ribbon so as not to waste the entire bottom half as most typewriters did. I’d like to see it set to oscillate with a two-color ribbon, that’s for sure!
To capitalize on the portable craze, they built the so-called “Baby Fox” in 1917. Corona found the resemblance to their own portables quite striking and successfully sued Fox. The company went out of business in 1921, possibly because of this litigation. Ah, well.
Probably the best thing about these delicious-looking 3D-printed keycaps are the cheese knife Backspace, Enter, and right Shift along with the novelties like the mousy Esc. Underneath all that fromage is a Keychron V6 Max with unknown switches.
[RobertLobLaw2] explains that cheese and keyboards have more in common than you think, as both hobbies use ‘pretentious adjectives to describe the sensory experience (of the hobby)’. Boy, if that isn’t the thocking truth. Should you require such a charcuter-key board for yourself, the files are freely available.
There’s something that kills coding speed—iteration time. If you can smash a function key and run your code, then watch it break, tweak, and smash it again—you’re working fast. But if you have to first compile your code, then plug your hardware in, burn it to the board, and so on… you’re wasting a lot of time. It’s that problem that inspired [Larry] to create an embedded system simulator to speed development time for simple projects.
The simulator is intended for emulating Arduino builds on iPhone and Mac hardware. For example, [Larry] shows off a demo on an old iPhone, which is simulating an ESP32 playing a GIF on a small LCD display. The build isn’t intended for timing-delicate stuff, nor anything involving advanced low-level peripherals or sleep routines and the like. For that, you’re better off with real hardware. But if you’re working on something like a user interface for a small embedded display, or just making minor tweaks to some code… you can understand why the the simulator might be a much faster way to work.
For now, [Larry] has kept the project closed source, as he’s found that it wouldn’t reasonably be possible for him to customize it for everyone’s unique hardware and use cases. Still, it’s a great example of how creating your own tools can ease your life as a developer. We’ve seen [Larry]’s great work around here before, like this speedy JPEG decoder library.
Siglato oggi il Protocollo d’intesa tra il Ministro dell'Istruzione e del Merito, Giuseppe Valditara, e il Rettore del Politecnico di Torino, Stefano Paolo Corgnati, per promuovere attività finalizzate a esplorare il rapporto tra tecnologia, umanità …
An Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) defines the software interface through which for example a central processor unit (CPU) is controlled. Unlike early computer systems which didn’t define a standard ISA as such, over time the compatibility and portability benefits of having a standard ISA became obvious. But of course the best part about standards is that there are so many of them, and thus every CPU manufacturer came up with their own.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the number of mainstream ISAs dropped sharply as the computer industry coalesced around a few major ones in each type of application. Intel’s x86 won out on desktop and smaller servers while ARM proclaimed victory in low-power and portable devices, and for Big Iron you always had IBM’s Power ISA. Since we last covered the ISA Wars in 2019, quite a lot of things have changed, including Apple shifting its desktop systems to ARM from x86 with Apple Silicon and finally MIPS experiencing an afterlife in the form of LoongArch.
Meanwhile, six years after the aforementioned ISA Wars article in which newcomer RISC-V was covered, this ISA seems to have not made the splash some had expected. This raises questions about what we can expect from RISC-V and other ISAs in the future, as well as how relevant having different ISAs is when it comes to aspects like CPU performance and their microarchitecture.
RISC Everywhere
Unlike in the past when CPU microarchitectures were still rather in flux, these days they all seem to coalesce around a similar set of features, including out-of-order execution, prefetching, superscalar parallelism, speculative execution, branch prediction and multi-core designs. Most of the performance these days is gained from addressing specific bottlenecks and optimization for specific usage scenarios, which has resulted in such things like simultaneous multithreading (SMT) and various pipelining and instruction decoder designs.
CPUs today are almost all what in the olden days would have been called RISC (reduced instruction set computer) architectures, with a relatively small number of heavily optimized instructions. Using approaches like register renaming, CPUs can handle many simultaneous threads of execution, which for the software side that talks to the ISA is completely invisible. For the software, there is just the one register file, and unless something breaks the illusion, like when speculative execution has a bad day, each thread of execution is only aware of its own context and nothing else.
So if CPU microarchitectures have pretty much merged at this point, what difference does the ISA make?
Instruction Set Nitpicking
Within the world of ISA flamewars, the battle lines have currently mostly coalesced around topics like the pros and cons of delay slots, as well as those of compressed instructions, and setting status flags versus checking results in a branch. It is incredibly hard to compare ISAs in an apple-vs-apples fashion, as the underlying microarchitecture of a commercially available ARMv8-based CPU will differ from a similar x86_64- or RV64I- or RV64IMAC-based CPU. Here the highly modular nature of RISC-V adds significant complications as well.
If we look at where RISC-V is being used today in a commercial setting, it is primarily as simple embedded controllers where this modularity is an advantage, and compatibility with the zillion other possible RISC-V extension combinations is of no concern. Here, using RISC-V has an obvious advantage over in-house proprietary ISAs, due to the savings from outsourcing it to an open standard project. This is however also one of the major weaknesses of this ISA, as the lack of a fixed ISA along the pattern of ARMv8 and x86_64 makes tasks like supporting a Linux kernel for it much more complicated than it should be.
This has led Google to pull initial RISC-V support from Android due to the ballooning support complexity. Since every RISC-V-based CPU is only required to support the base integer instruction set, and so many things are left optional, from integer multiplication (M), atomics (A), bit manipulation (B), and beyond, all software targeting RISC-V has to explicitly test that the required instructions and functionality is present, or use a fallback.
Tempers are also running hot when it comes to RISC-V’s lack of integer overflow traps and carry instructions. As for whether compressed instructions are a good idea, the ARMv8 camp does not see any need for them, while the RISC-V camp is happy to defend them, and meanwhile x86_64 still happily uses double the number of instruction lengths courtesy of its CISC legacy, which would make x86_64 twice as bad or twice as good as RISC-V depending on who you ask.
Meanwhile an engineer with strong experience on the ARM side of things wrote a lengthy dissertation a while back on the pros and cons of these three ISAs. Their conclusion is that RISC-V is ‘minimalist to a fault’, with overlapping instructions and no condition codes or flags, instead requiring compare-and-branch instructions. This latter point cascades into a number of compromises, which is one of the major reasons why RISC-V is seen as problematic by many.
In summary, in lieu of clear advantages of RISC-V against fields where other ISAs are already established, its strong points seem to be mostly where its extreme modularity and lack of licensing requirements are seen as convincing arguments, which should not keep anyone from enjoying a good flame war now and then.
The China Angle
The Loongson 3A6000 (LS3A6000) CPU. (Credit: Geekerwan, Wikimedia) Although everywhere that is not China has pretty much coalesced around the three ISAs already described, there are always exceptions. Unlike Russia’s ill-fated very-large-instruction-word Elbrus architecture, China’s CPU-related efforts have borne significantly more fruit. Starting with the Loongson CPUs, China’s home-grown microprocessor architecture scene began to take on real shape.
Originally these were MIPS-compatible CPUs. But starting with the 3A5000 in 2021, Chinese CPUs began to use the new LoongArch ISA. Described as being a ‘bit like MIPS or RISC-V’ in the Linux kernel documentation on this ISA, it features three variants, ranging from a reduced 32-bit version (LA32R) and standard 32-bit (LA32S) to a 64-bit version (LA64). In the current LS3A6000 CPU there are 16 cores with SMT support. In reviews these chips are shown to be rapidly catching up to modern x86_64 CPUs, including when it comes to overclocking.
Of course, these being China-only hardware, few Western reviewers have subjected the LS3A6000, or its upcoming successor the LS3A7000, to an independent test.
In addition to LoongArch, other Chinese companies are using RISC-V for their own microprocessors, such as SpacemiT, an AI-focused company, whose products also include more generic processors. This includes the K1 octa-core CPU which saw use in the MuseBook laptop. As with all commercial RISC-V-based cores out today, this is no speed monsters, and even the SiFive Premier P550 SoC gets soundly beaten by even a Raspberry Pi 4’s already rather long-in-the-tooth ARM-based SoC.
Perhaps the most successful use of RISC-V in China are the cores in Espressif’s popular ESP32-C range of MCUs, although here too they are the lower-end designs relative to the Xtensa Lx6 and Lx7 cores that power Espressif’s higher-end MCUs.
Considering all this, it wouldn’t be surprising if China’s ISA scene outside of embedded will feature mostly LoongArch, a lot of ARM, some x86_64 and a sprinkling of RISC-V to round it all out.
It’s All About The IP
The distinction between ISAs and microarchitecture can be clearly seen by contrasting Apple Silicon with other ARMv8-based CPUs. Although these all support a version of the same ARMv8 ISA, the magic sauce is in the intellectual property (IP) blocks that are integrated into the chip. These range from memory controllers, PCIe SerDes blocks, and integrated graphics (iGPU), to encryption and security features. Unless you are an Apple or Intel with your own GPU-solution, you will be licensing the iGPU block along with other IP blocks from IP vendors.
These IP blocks offer the benefit of being able to use off-the-shelf functionality with known performance characteristics, but they are also where much of the cost of a microprocessor design ends up going. Developing such functionality from scratch can pay for itself if you reuse the same blocks over and over like Apple or Qualcomm do. For a start-up hardware company this is one of the biggest investments, which is why they tend to license a fully manufacturable design from Arm.
The actual cost of the ISA in terms of licensing is effectively a rounding error, while the benefit of being able to leverage existing software and tooling is the main driver. This is why a new ISA like LoongArch may very well pose a real challenge to established ISAs in the long run, beacause it is being given a chance to develop in a very large market with guaranteed demand.
Spoiled For Choice
Meanwhile, the Power ISA is also freely available for anyone to use without licensing costs; the only major requirement is compliance with the Power ISA. The OpenPOWER Foundation is now also part of the Linux Foundation, with a range of IBM Power cores open sourced. These include the A2O core that’s based on the A2I core which powered the XBox 360 and Playstation 3’s Cell processor, as well as the Microwatt reference design that’s based on the much newer Power ISA 3.0.
Whatever your fancy is, and regardless of whether you’re just tinkering on a hobby or commercial project, it would seem that there is plenty of diversity in the ISA space to go around. Although it’s only human to pick a favorite and favor it, there’s something to be said for each ISA. Whether it’s a better teaching tool, more suitable for highly customized embedded designs, or simply because it runs decades worth of software without fuss, they all have their place.
Il ricercatore Yohanes Nugroho ha rilasciato uno strumento per decifrare i dati danneggiati dalla variante Linux del ransomware Akira. Lo strumento sfrutta la potenza della GPU per ottenere chiavi di decrittazione e sbloccare i file gratuitamente.
L’esperto ha affermato di aver trovato la soluzione dopo che un amico gli ha chiesto aiuto. Ha stimato che il sistema crittografato potrebbe essere violato in circa una settimana (in base al modo in cui Akira genera le chiavi di crittografia utilizzando i timestamp).
Alla fine, il progetto ha richiesto tre settimane per essere completato e il ricercatore ha dovuto spendere circa 1.200 dollari in risorse GPU necessarie per decifrare la chiave di crittografia. Ma alla fine il metodo ha funzionato.
Lo strumento di Nugroho è diverso dai tradizionali decryptor, in cui gli utenti forniscono una chiave per sbloccare i file. Al contrario, utilizza la forza bruta per ottenere chiavi di crittografia (uniche per ogni file), sfruttando il fatto che Akira genera chiavi di crittografia in base all’ora corrente (in nanosecondi) e la utilizza come seed.
Akira genera dinamicamente chiavi di crittografia univoche per ogni file utilizzando quattro diversi timestamp con una precisione al nanosecondo e ne esegue l’hashing utilizzando 1500 cicli di SHA-256.
Queste chiavi vengono crittografate utilizzando RSA-4096 e aggiunte alla fine di ogni file crittografato, rendendone difficile la decifratura senza la chiave privata. Il livello di precisione dei timestamp crea oltre un miliardo di possibili valori al secondo, rendendo difficili gli attacchi brute-force. Inoltre, Nugroho ha scoperto che la versione Linux del malware crittografa più file contemporaneamente utilizzando il multithreading, il che rende ancora più difficile determinare la marca temporale. Il ricercatore ha ristretto i possibili timestamp dell’attacco brute force esaminando i log condivisi dal suo amico. Ciò ha permesso di rilevare il tempo di esecuzione del ransomware e i metadati del file hanno aiutato a stimare il tempo di completamento della crittografia.
I primi tentativi di hacking furono effettuati sulla RTX 3060 e si rivelarono troppo lenti: il limite era di soli 60 milioni di test al secondo. Nemmeno l’aggiornamento alla RTX 3090 ha aiutato molto.
Alla fine Nugroho si è rivolto ai servizi GPU cloud RunPod e Vast.ai, che hanno fornito potenza sufficiente e hanno contribuito a confermare l’efficacia dello strumento da lui creato. L’esperto ha utilizzato sedici RTX 4090 e ci sono volute circa 10 ore per forzare la chiave. Tuttavia, a seconda del numero di file crittografati da recuperare, questo processo potrebbe richiedere diversi giorni.
Tuttavia, il ricercatore fa notare che gli specialisti delle GPU possono chiaramente ottimizzare il suo codice, quindi le prestazioni possono probabilmente essere migliorate.
Nugroho ha già pubblicato il suo decryptor su GitHub, dove ha anche pubblicato istruzioni dettagliate su come recuperare i file Akira crittografati.
Incel, abbreviazione dell’espressione inglese involuntary celibates (“casti non per scelta”): è utilizzata per definire uomini eterosessuali che non hanno rapporti sessuali perché si sentono discriminati e rifiutati dalle donne, che incolpano di privarli di quello che reputano un loro diritto.
Newsletter publisher Ghost is now connecting to the fediverse in public beta, updates about the bridge that connects the fediverse with Bluesky, and more.
Newsletter publisher Ghost is now connecting to the fediverse in public beta, updates about the bridge that connects the fediverse with Bluesky, and more.
The News
The public beta for connecting Ghost to the fediverse is here, and the ActivityPub integration is now available for Ghost Pro subscribers. Ghost is a publishing platform for sending out blogs via email. With this latest update, Ghost now has another method of distribution, namely via the fediverse. Ghost’s integration with the fediverse consists of two parts: sending out long-form articles published on Ghost into the fediverse, and a reader app to the fediverse from Ghost.
Publishing Ghost articles on ActivityPub makes them accessible to the rest of the fediverse, similar to how WordPress with the ActivityPub plugin works. For users of Ghost this is an easy sales pitch, it is simply another free and automatic distribution channel for their blog. The second part of Ghost’s integration with the social web is a reader app. This app allows Ghost users to browse and read posts on the fediverse. It is split up into two parts: an inbox for reading other long-form posts from Ghost or WordPress, and a feed for all other types of posts. This allows accounts on Ghost not only to send out posts via the ActivityPub integration, but also to connect, respond and follow their audience. It even allows you to post short-form microblogs (notes), just like you’d use on Mastodon, that do not show up on the Ghost website. This makes the Ghost integration a full fediverse experience.
A New Social is the non-profit organisation that builds and manages cross-protocol tools for the open social web. The organisation currently manages Bridgy Fed, the connector that allows accounts to ‘bridge’ between both ActivityPub, ATProto, Nostr and more, and is currently in the process of setting up and launching the organisation. In their first update they shared this week, A New Social shared that they have a board of directors, consisting of Erin Kissane, Ben Werdmuller and Susan Mernit. Bridgy Fed Config is the first upcoming launch that they announced, scheduled for early April. To bridge their account, Bridgy Fed currently requires people to follow the Bridgy Fed account on their platform, which can be confusing and opaque for people as to what is actually happening and if it is working. The upcoming Config settings page allows people to log in with their social web account (Bluesky, Mastodon, Pixelfed) and turn the bridging on with a simple switch. A New Social also mentions supporting Threads with the new Bridgy Fed Config update, which is currently not supported by Bridgy Fed.
Forte is a new fediverse platform, that comes from the lineage of Hubzilla and Streams, created by the same developer Mike Macgirvin. Forte’s major feature is that it has Nomadic Identity over ActivityPub. Nomadic Identity means that you can port your entire account, including your posts, settings, social connections, etc. It is slightly different than the account migration that Mastodon has, which transfers your social graph to a new account. With Nomadic Identity, you create a single identity that can be connected to multiple different servers, so when one server becomes unavailable, all your personal data can be transferred and accessed from another server linked to your account. Forte, as well as Hubzilla and Streams, remain on the bleeding edge on what’s possible with ActivityPub. However, Forte also suffers from the same issue that its predecessors have, namely that getting to use the software is surprisingly difficult. By design there is no way to see a list of Forte servers. Forte mainly targets people with technical know-how, as the code repository does not include guide on how to setup your own Forte server. It leads to the funny situation where I would like to give Forte a try because I’m interesting in trying out the new features, but I legitimately do not know how.
Myo is a new image-focused client for the open social web, and allows you to connect your Mastodon, Bluesky and Nostr accounts into a single timeline. Combining multiple accounts into a single timeline is similar to OpenVibe, but Myo instead focuses media, in a design that is more reminiscent of Instagram than Twitter. Myo is made by the same developer as SoraSNS, which is also a multi-protocol app that focuses on microblogging instead. Myo and SoraSNS are both available for iOS.
ActivityPub badges is a new project that is currently in development to build a badges/credential system similar to Credly on ActivityPub. The project is currently at the proof-of-concept phase, where badges can be created and send over ActivityPub.
IFTAS, the non-profit for collaborative work on trust & safety on the fediverse, recently had to shut down various of their services due to a lack of funding. In their latest update, the organisation talks about how they are rescoping and moving forward, as the organisation itself is not shutting down. IFTAS will continue with various community support projects, such as their community platform IFTAS Connect. They will also continue providing insight into commonly blocked domains, in a scaled down version of the shut-down FediCheck program.
A new form of spam/scam has recently emerged on the fediverse, and it involves private messages from an account that identifies itself as ‘Nicole the fediverse chick’. So many people have gotten a variation of this message that it is quickly becoming a meme on the fediverse. It is unclear what the exact purpose of this spam is, with either a doxing ex or an elaborate 4chan troll as likely explainers.
This article by Fassbender examines how state surveillance treats federated and decentralised social networks, focusing on the BlueLeaks dataset, which contains a large amount of internal documentation of state surveillance organisations. Fassbender writes: “[…] surveillance actors are less interested in understanding decentralization within platforms, but rather look at organizations first, then take an interest in all platforms that they spread to. This means that any platform (or in the case of the fediverse, grouping of platforms that share a method for interconnecting) can become suspect.”
Sneak peek: Mastodon’s upcoming update will finally include the ability to show all replies on a post.
FEP Search Tool is a small web tool to search all the FEP’s.
Forum software Flarum got funding by NLnet in 2023 to implement ActivityPub, but recently decided that this effort would be postponed for the foreseeable future.
Notes on migrating an account from Mastodon to GoToSocial.
A Manyfold 3D viewer directly in a Mastodon timeline.
Roboherd is a tool to build automated Fediverse actors.
That’s all for this week, thanks for reading! You can subscribe to my newsletter to get all my weekly updates via email, which gets you some interesting extra analysis as a bonus, that is not posted here on the website. You can subscribe below:
We're excited to release version 7.1 of PeerTube, which continues to evolve graphically, but also to simplify your discoverability! Let's take a close...
Dal Rinascimento a oggi, il mecenatismo è stato un ponte tra potere, ricchezza e cultura. Oggi, dal report di Avant Arte, vediamo una trasformazione di questo fenomeno: una nuova generazione di collezionisti e mecenati non si limita più a sostenere economicamente musei e istituzioni, ma partecipa attivamente alla diffusione dell’arte. Questo cambiamento porta con sé una riflessione fondamentale: il mecenatismo contemporaneo deve solo promuovere o anche valorizzare?
Promuovere vs valorizzare: una distinzione cruciale
Spesso si usano questi termini come sinonimi, ma hanno significati profondamente diversi. Promuovere significa amplificare la visibilità di un'opera, un artista o un progetto attraverso strategie di comunicazione, marketing e diffusione. È un primo passo importante, ma da solo non garantisce la crescita culturale. Valorizzare, invece, è un processo più profondo: significa riconoscere e accrescere il valore di un’opera, mettendone in luce il significato, inserendola in un contesto che ne amplifichi la portata culturale e sociale.
Se il mecenatismo moderno vuole davvero lasciare un segno, non può limitarsi alla promozione. Deve creare connessioni, contesti e significati che permettano all’arte di avere un impatto duraturo nella società.
Il futuro del mecenatismo
Il modello che emerge dal report di Avant Arte suggerisce che i nuovi collezionisti vogliono essere più coinvolti nel processo creativo e culturale. Questa è una grande opportunità: il mecenatismo non è più solo un privilegio di pochi, ma può diventare un motore collettivo per sostenere e dare valore all’arte contemporanea.
Forse la vera sfida è questa: riusciremo a costruire un mecenatismo che non sia solo un investimento di mercato, ma un atto politico e culturale capace di generare un impatto reale?
Secondo l'analisi prodotta annualmente dal marketplace l’88% di questi ha sia le risorse che il desiderio di donare di più ai musei e di sostenerli concretamente
Il mecenatismo contemporaneo deve andare oltre la semplice promozione e puntare alla valorizzazione. Non basta amplificare la visibilità dell'arte: è necessario collocarla in un contesto che ne amplifichi il messaggio e ne approfondisca il significato. Questo significa creare connessioni culturali, storiche o sociali che rendano l'opera rilevante e duratura per il pubblico, garantendo un impatto che va oltre il momento della semplice esposizione. In altre parole, visibilità senza profondità rischia di non lasciare un segno. Il coinvolgimento diretto dei mecenati nel processo creativo rappresenta una grande opportunità per rendere il mecenatismo un motore culturale e sociale, non solo un investimento di mercato. La sfida? Trasformarlo in un atto consapevole, capace di generare un impatto reale.
@Antonio Marano Sono molto d'accordo con te, valorizzare dovrebbe essere una reale creazione di valore e di significato, è creare ragionamento attorno a un contesto. In questo modo l'arte non è solo qualcosa da guardare staticamente, ma diventa finalmente motore attivo che può essere utile a capire la realtà e il contesto sociale e culturale. La cosa che ho notato è che spesso viene confuso o usato come sinonimo di promozione e la sovrapposizione dei piani tende ad andar a invalidare l'una e l'altra.
L'articolo Scuola di Liberalismo 2025: Giulio Terzi di Sant’Agata – Anche in politica estera, chi sa conservare non ha paura del futuro proviene da Fondazione
Un’altra settimana di appuntamenti importanti per il futuro della difesa europea. La presidente della Commissione europea, Ursula von der Leyen, rilancia sull’autonomia strategica dell’Unione e annuncia il piano Readiness 2030, una roadmap per rendere
@Politica interna, europea e internazionale Mario Draghi dice sì al riarmo, ma solo nell’ambito di un piano che porti alla realizzazione di una difesa comune europea. E che sia finanziato non solo dai singoli Stati, ma anche con l’emissione di titoli di debito europei e con il ricorso a capitali privati. L’ex
Le forze armate americane e quelle ucraine sono divenute ancora più vicine, grazie all’ultima iniziativa relativa al comparto unmanned. Il nuovo progetto, chiamato “Artemis”, mira allo sviluppo di loitering munitions (termine tecnico per i sistemi comunemente noti come “droni kamikaze”)
@Informatica (Italy e non Italy 😁) Il backup automatico è una soluzione indispensabile per proteggere i dati aziendali da errori umani, guasti e attacchi informatici. Con l'integrazione di cloud e intelligenza artificiale, le aziende possono garantire continuità operativa e sicurezza informatica senza complicazioni. Soluzioni e
@Informatica (Italy e non Italy 😁) Gestire la conformità normativa è una sfida complessa per le aziende moderne. I software di compliance offrono automazione, monitoraggio avanzato e integrazione con i sistemi aziendali, semplificando i processi e riducendo i rischi. Scopri le soluzioni per una gestione efficiente della
@Informatica (Italy e non Italy 😁) Grazie a una dashboard costantemente aggiornata è possibile monitorare l'andamento delle rivendicazioni ransomware che impattano sulle vittime italiane. Ecco tutti gli attacchi ransomware che hanno colpito il nostro Paese negli ultimi mesi L'articolo Attacchi ransomware alle
L’industria della difesa europea si trova oggi davanti a una sfida epocale. Accelerare la propria capacità produttiva per garantire agli Stati e alle alleanze continentali un adeguato livello di preparazione militare capace di dissuadere eventuali minacce e proiettare sicurezza ai propri confini. La sfida
GPS is an incredible piece of modern technology. Not only does it allow for locating objects precisely anywhere on the planet, but it also enables the turn-by-turn directions we take for granted these days — all without needing anything more than a radio receiver and some software to decode the signals constantly being sent down from space. [Chris] took that last bit bit as somewhat of a challenge and set off to write a software-defined GPS receiver from the ground up.
As GPS started as a military technology, the level of precision needed for things like turn-by-turn navigation wasn’t always available to civilians. The “coarse” positioning is only capable of accuracy within a few hundred meters so this legacy capability is the first thing that [Chris] tackles here. It is pretty fast, though, with the system able to resolve a location in 24 seconds from cold start and then displaying its information in a browser window. Everything in this build is done in Python as well, meaning that it’s a great starting point for investigating how GPS works and for building other projects from there.
The other thing that makes this project accessible is that the only other hardware needed besides a computer that runs Python is an RTL-SDR dongle. These inexpensive TV dongles ushered in a software-defined radio revolution about a decade ago when it was found that they could receive a wide array of radio signals beyond just TV.
Via libera della Regione all'accesso degli animali da affezione nelle strutture sanitarie, per migliorare il benessere dei pazienti a lunga degenza
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Per gli ospedali deve essere concordato con il servizio di accoglienza il percorso per raggiungere la saletta di uso comune dove si svolgerà la visita. In ciascuna struttura è consentita la presenza di un solo animale per volta e le visite saranno pianificate per non creare sovrapposizioni. Alcuni reparti sono interdetti: gli animali non potranno accedere al pronto soccorso, a neonatologia, alle aree ambulatoriali, di dialisi, di prelievo e di ristoro, nei day hospital e nelle sale operatorie.
@Informatica (Italy e non Italy 😁) I dati relativi alle flotte spesso includono informazioni sensibili, come i dati personali sui conducenti e gli stili di guida: di conseguenza, richiedono l'adozione di misure di sicurezza rigorose. Ecco come trovare
@Informatica (Italy e non Italy 😁) La cybersecurity è diventata una priorità strategica per le aziende di ogni settore, spinta dalla crescente complessità degli attacchi informatici e dalla continua evoluzione delle tecnologie digitali. I software di cybersecurity svolgono un ruolo centrale, non solo nel prevenire e mitigare le
direi che la sentenza della corte non sta sostenendo che l'ucraina abbia deliberatamente compiuto azioni di pulizia etnica verso qualcuno, ma solo che ci sono stante mancanze e carenze, cosa che succede specie quando magari l'organico è mal addestrato, mal pagato, mal preparato. all'epoca polizia ed esercito ucraino non era famoso per efficienza. e la scuola russa nell'uso dell'esercito ai fini dell'ordine pubblico è più simile alla strategia di invasione che non al rasserenare animi turbolenti. ricordo che in partenza l'esercito ucraino era del tutto simile all'esercito russo. pessima scuola, pessimo addestramento, gerarchia molto rigida, logica ottocentesca, e per di più praticamente disarmati in seguito alla separazione dall'URSS.
La Corte Europea dei Diritti dell'Uomo (CEDU) ha emesso una sentenza il 13 marzo 2025, condannando l'Ucraina per la gestione degli eventi del 2 maggio 2014 a Odessa.
@Informatica (Italy e non Italy 😁) I fogli di stile CSS, strumenti essenziali per il web design, vengono sfruttati dai cyber criminali per eludere filtri antispam e monitorare gli utenti. La tecnica “hidden text salting” nasconde contenuti sospetti mentre il tracciamento
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