First of all, we’d like to give a big shout-out to [Afrotechmods]! After a long hiatus, he has returned to YouTube with an awesome new video all about op-amp characteristics, looking at the relatively awful LM741 in particular. His particular way of explaining things has definitely helped many electronics newbies to learn new concepts quickly!

Operational amplifiers have been around for a long time. The uA741, now commonly known as the LM741, was indeed an incredible piece of technology when it was released. It was extremely popular through the 1970s and onward as it saved designers the chore of designing a discrete amplifier. Simply add a few external components, and you have a well-behaved amplifier.

But as the years went on, many new and greatly improved op-amps have been developed, but either because of nostalgia or reticence, many in the field (especially, it seems, professors teaching electronics) have continued to use the LM741 in examples and projects. This is despite its many shortcomings:

• Large input offset voltage
• Large input offset current
• Low gain-bandwidth product
• Miserable slew rate of only 0.5V/uS

And that’s not even the full list. Newer designs have vastly improved all of these parameters, often by orders of magnitude, yet the LM741 still appears in articles aimed at those new to electronics, even in 2025. There are literal drop-in replacements for the LM741, such as the TLC081 (not to be confused with the similarly named FET-input TL081), which has 32 times the slew rate, 10 times the gain-bandwidth product, and an input offset voltage almost 2 orders of magnitude better!

So, check out the full video below, learn about op-amp parameters, and start checking out modern op-amps!

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One of the most exciting trends we’ve seen over the last few years is the rise of truly personal computers — that is, bespoke computing devices that are built by individuals to fit their specific needs or wants. The more outlandish of these builds, often inspired by science fiction and sporting non-traditional layouts, tend to be lumped together under the term “cyberdecks”, but there are certainly builds where that description doesn’t quite stick, including the Cyber Writer from [Darbin Orvar].

With a 10-inch screen, you might think it was intended to be a portable, but its laser-cut Baltic birch plywood construction says otherwise. Its overall design reminds us of early computer terminals, and the 60% mechanical keyboard should help reinforce that feeling that you’re working on a substantial piece of gear from yesteryear.
There’s plenty of room inside for additional hardware.
The Cyber Writer is powered by the Raspberry Pi Zero W 2, which might seem a bit underpowered, but [Darbin] has paired it with a custom minimalist word processor. There’s not a lot of detail about the software, but the page for the project says it features integrated file management and easy email export of documents.

The software isn’t yet available to the public, but it sounds like [Darbin] is at least considering it. Granted, there’s already distraction-free writing software out there, but we’re pretty firm believers that there’s no such thing as too many choices.

If you’re looking for something a bit more portable, the impressive Foliodeck might be more your speed.

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Early photography lacked the convenience of the stable roll film we all know, and instead relied on a set of processes which the photographer would have to master from film to final print. Photographic chemicals could be flammable or even deadly, and results took a huge amount of work.

The daguerreotype process of using mercury to develop pictures on polished metal, and the wet-collodion plate with its nitrocellulose solution are well-known, but as conservators at the British National Archives found out, there was another process that’s much rarer. The Pannotype uses a collodion emulsion, but instead of the glass plate used by the wet-plate process it uses a fabric backing.

We know so much about the other processes because they were subject to patents, but pannotype never had a patent due to a disagreement. Thus when the conservators encountered some pannotypes in varying states of preservation, they needed to apply modern analytical techniques to understand the chemistry and select the best methods of stabilization. The linked article details those analyses, and provides them with some pointers towards conserving their collection. We look forward to someone making pannotype prints here in 2025, after all it’s not the first recreation of early photography we’ve seen.

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La banca americana JPMorgan Chase per la prima volta al mondo ha generato e verificato numeri realmente casuali utilizzando un computer quantistico. Questo sviluppo potrebbe rappresentare un passo importante verso il miglioramento della sicurezza nel mondo digitale e potrebbe trovare applicazione in settori quali la crittografia, il trading e le lotterie online.

Lo Studio è stato pubblicato sulla rivista Nature e descrive come gli specialisti bancari, insieme ai laboratori nazionali Argonne e Oak Ridge, nonché all’Università del Texas ad Austin, hanno utilizzato un computer quantistico di Quantinuum (una sussidiaria di Honeywell) per generare numeri casuali. Dopodiché gli scienziati hanno dimostrato per la prima volta matematicamente che i dati ottenuti erano realmente casuali e non pseudo-casuali, come solitamente accade.

In realtà i generatori di numeri casuali convenzionali utilizzati nei sistemi informatici non sono completamente casuali. Si basano su algoritmi matematici predefiniti che, se eseguiti sugli stessi dati, produrranno sempre lo stesso risultato. Ciò rende tali sistemi potenzialmente vulnerabili, soprattutto se si considera la crescente potenza di calcolo. l’interesse degli hacker criminali e lo sviluppo dell’intelligenza artificiale.

In passato altre aziende si sono occupate della generazione di numeri casuali, tra cui Quantinuum, i cui prodotti sono già utilizzati nei data center e nei contatori intelligenti. Tuttavia, la JPMorgan è riuscita non solo a ottenere tali numeri, ma anche a confermarne la reale casualità. Ciò è particolarmente importante per i settori mission-critical come la finanza e la sicurezza delle infrastrutture, in cui ogni elemento deve essere verificabile e sicuro.

“Questo potrebbe essere utile ovunque sia importante dimostrare che un numero è veramente casuale, come nelle lotterie o quando si effettua revisione contabile” ha affermato Konstantinos Karagiannis, direttore del quantum computing presso la società di consulenza Protiviti. Non è stato coinvolto nello studio, ma ha sottolineato: “Nella crittografia, è tutta una questione di prova: o il sistema è sicuro o non lo è. Non ci sono mezzitoni.”

Il lavoro è durato un anno: da maggio 2023 a maggio 2024, i crittografi della JPMorgan hanno sviluppato uno speciale algoritmo per un computer quantistico, dopodiché hanno utilizzato i supercomputer del Dipartimento dell’Energia degli Stati Uniti per verificare i risultati.

Si tratta di una svolta, afferma il responsabile del progetto Marco Pistoia, a capo della ricerca sulle tecnologie applicate presso JPMorgan: “Il passo successivo è capire dove possiamo applicarlo”.

Le possibili applicazioni spaziano dalla creazione di criptovalute più efficienti dal punto di vista energetico al gioco d’azzardo online e persino alla selezione automatizzata dei seggi elettorali per le verifiche elettorali. Tutto ciò in cui è importante la casualità completa e verificabile può trarre vantaggio dalla nuova tecnologia.

L’interesse per l’informatica quantistica sta crescendo rapidamente: sebbene per ora sia ancora nelle mani dei ricercatori, è chiaro che la sua potenza supera di gran lunga le capacità dei computer classici. L’unico problema è la difficoltà a trovare applicazioni pratiche e l’elevato costo delle attrezzature.

JPMorgan investe attivamente in questo settore da sei anni, individuando opportunità nella finanza, nell’intelligenza artificiale, nell’ottimizzazione e soprattutto nella crittografia. “Per noi la tecnologia quantistica è strategica”, ha affermato Pistoia. Lui e il suo team stanno ora studiando come utilizzare l’informatica quantistica per l’apprendimento automatico, l’ottimizzazione del portafoglio e la determinazione del prezzo dei derivati.

L'articolo JPMorgan fa la storia: numeri veramente casuali grazie all’informatica quantistica! proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

Lord Vetinari from the Discworld series is known for many things, but perhaps most of all a clock that doesn’t quite keep continuous time. Instead, it ticks away at random increments to infuriate those that perceive it, whilst keeping regular time over the long term. [iracigt] decided to whip up a real world version of this hilarious fictional timepiece.

The clock itself is an off-the-shelf timepiece purchased from Target for the princely sum of $5. However, it’s been deviously modified with an RP2040 microcontroller hidden away inside. The RP2040 is programmed to tick the clock at an average of once per second. But each tick itself is not so exact. Instead, there’s an erraticness to its beat – some ticks are longer, some shorter, in the classic Vetinari style. [iracigt] explains the nitty gritty of how it all works, from creating chaos with Markov chains to interfacing the RP2040 electronically with the cheap quartz clock movement.

If you’ve ever wanted to build one of these amusements yourself, [iracigt’s] writeup is a great place to start. Even better, it was inspired by an earlier post on these very pages! We love to see the community riff on a theme, and we’d love to see yours, too – so keep the tips coming, yeah? Video after the break.

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Many of us know the basic Blink Arduino sketch, or have coded similar routines on other microcontrollers. Flashing an LED on and off—it doesn’t get much simpler than that. But how big should a blink sketch be? Or more importantly, how small could you get it? [Artful Bytes] decided to find out.

The specific challenge? “Write a program that runs on a microcontroller and blinks an LED. The ON and OFF times should be as close to 1000 ms as possible.” The challenge was undertaken using a NUCLEO-L432KC Cortex-M4 with 256 K of flash and 64 K of RAM.

We won’t spoil the full challenge, but it starts out with an incredibly inefficient AI & cloud solution. [Artful Bytes] then simplifies by switching to an RTOS approach, before slimming down further with C, assembly, and then machine code. The challenge was to shrink the microcontroller code as much as possible. However, you might notice the title of the video is “I Shrunk Blinky to 0 Bytes.” As it turns out, if you eliminate the digital code-running hardware entirely… you can still blink an LED with analog hardware. So, yes. 0 bytes is possible.

We’ve featured the world’s smallest blinky before, too, but in a physical sense rather than with regards to code size.

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hackaday.com/2025/04/01/shrink…

When a Loch Ness Monster story appears at the start of April, it pays to check the date on the article just to avoid red faces. But there should be no hoax with this one published on the last day of March, scientists from the UK’s National Oceanography Centre were conducting underwater robotics tests in Scotland’s Loch Ness, and stumbled upon a camera trap lost by Nessie-hunters in the 1970s. Just to put the cherry on the cake of a perfect news story, the submarine in question is the famous “Boaty McBoatface”, so named as a consolation after the British Antarctic Survey refused to apply the name to their new ship when it won an online competition.

The Most Extreme Instamatic in The World

Sadly the NOC haven’t released close-ups of the inner workings of the device.
The camera trap has survived five decades underwater thanks to a sturdy glass housing, and appears to be quite an ingenious device. A humble Kodak Instamatic camera with a 126 film and a flash bulb is triggered and has its film advanced by a clockwork mechanism, in turn operated by a bait line. Presumably because of the four flash bulbs in the Kodak’s flash cube, it’s reported that it could capture four images. The constant low temperature at the bottom of a very deep loch provided the perfect place to store exposed film, and they have even been able to recover some pictures. Sadly none of then contain a snap of Nessie posing for the camera.

An underwater photographic blind used in the 1970s. Immanuel Giel, Public domain.
We are not cryptozoologists here at Hackaday so we’re not postulating any theories about Nessie’s existence, but there is some interest to be found in the history of Nessie-hunting, and the complex array of technologies fielded by those who would seek to bag themselves a monster. There have been extensive sonar surveys of the loch, a variety of home-made and more professional submarines have probed its depths, many metres of film and videotape have been shot by Nessie-hunters with long lenses, and of course experts have pored over all the various photographs which over the years have claimed to prove the monster’s existence. Perhaps the epicentre for the world of Nessie-hunting has been the Loch Ness Project, whose website details a variety of the survey efforts. Surprisingly, though they had a connection with the Instamatic camera trap they don’t feature it on their website, something we expect to change now it has become newsworthy.

Where Cryptozoology Tourism Is A Thing

The metamorphosis of a legendary beast into a modern-day phenomenon has certainly gripped the tourist industry of the Great Glen, as you’ll see if you take the drive from Inverness to Fort William. Even if you’re not a true believer, it’s still fun to indulge in a bit of touristic gawping at the various Nessie-themed attractions, though on the occasions Hackaday writers have passed by those waters there’s been a marked lack of monstrous life forms. The Nessie-hunters bring a bit of pseudoscientific thrill to the experience, something the Loch Ness Centre in Drumandrochit positively encourage: they even recruit visitors into their annual Nessie-spotting event. After all, as the camera discovery shows, there is doubtless plenty more to be found in those waters, even the occasional (non-Nessie) monster.

Header image: Bob Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0 .

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Come abbiamo visto, Apple ha rilasciato aggiornamenti di sicurezza per i vecchi modelli di iPhone e iPad, correggendo tre vulnerabilità critiche che venivano sfruttate attivamente. Sono state aggiunte correzioni alle versioni precedenti di iOS, iPadOS e macOS, consentendo di correggere le vulnerabilità anche su dispositivi che da tempo non erano supportati.

Il primo problema risolto è un errore di tipo use-after-free nel componente Core Media ( CVE-2025-24085 ), che ha consentito a un’applicazione dannosa di ottenere privilegi elevati. Sebbene il punteggio CVSS sia 7,8, la presenza di un exploit in un attacco reale ne aumenta significativamente la pericolosità. Il problema è stato risolto in macOS Sonoma 14.7.5, Impresa 13.7.5 e Versione iPadOS 17.7.6 .

Il secondo bug, il CVE-2025-24200, con CVSS: 6.1 è associato al componente Accessibilità. Il bug consentiva a un aggressore di disattivare la modalità con restrizioni USB su un dispositivo bloccato. Ciò ha aperto la porta ai cosiddetti attacchi cyber fisici, che implicano l’accesso ai dati tramite il contatto fisico con il dispositivo. Sono stati rilasciati aggiornamenti che risolvono il problema per le versioni iOS e iPadOS 15.8.4 E 16.7.11 .

La vulnerabilità riconosciuta come la più grave è il CVE-2025-24201 (CVSS: 8.8) relativo al componente WebKit. Questo bug consente la diffusione di contenuti dannosi al di fuori dell’ambiente isolato del browser, il che può portare all’esecuzione di codice arbitrario all’apertura di un sito web appositamente predisposto. Gli aggiornamenti iOS includono anche delle correzioni. 15.8.4, 16.7.11 e le versioni corrispondenti di iPadOS.

Apple non solo ha corretto le vulnerabilità presenti nelle versioni correnti del sistema operativo, ma ha anche rilasciato patch per i dispositivi che da tempo non ricevevano aggiornamenti regolari. Tra questi rientrano l‘iPhone 6s, l’iPhone 7, l’SE di prima generazione, l’iPad Air 2, l’iPad mini di quarta generazione e persino l’iPod touch di settima generazione. Anche gli iPhone 8, 8 Plus, X, diversi modelli di iPad Pro e gli iPad di quinta e sesta generazione hanno ricevuto aggiornamenti.

Contemporaneamente, Apple ha introdotto importanti aggiornamenti ai suoi sistemi principali. iOS 18.4 e iPadOS 18.4 includono correzioni per 62 vulnerabilità, macOS Sequoia 15.4 ne include 131, tvOS 18.4 ne include 36, visionOS 2.4 ne include 38 e Safari 18.4 ne include 14. Sebbene nessuna di queste vulnerabilità sia stata ancora sfruttata dagli aggressori, l’azienda consiglia di installare gli aggiornamenti il ​​prima possibile.

Il rilascio di aggiornamenti come questi dimostra che anche i dispositivi da tempo fuori supporto continuano a essere sotto l’attenzione di Apple, soprattutto quando si tratta di problemi di sicurezza critici. Ciò evidenzia anche l’importanza di aggiornare regolarmente il software, anche se il dispositivo sembra obsoleto: negli attacchi nel mondo reale, sono proprio questi i modelli a diventare gli obiettivi prioritari.

L'articolo Tre Zeroday critici sfruttati attivamente minacciano i device Apple proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

While there’s still a vaguely robot-shaped hole in our heart from the loss of the New York World Maker Faire, we do take comfort in the fact that smaller Maker Faire events are still happening all over the world, and some of them have managed to gain quite a bit of momentum over the last few years.

If you’re in the Northeast US, the Philadelphia Maker Faire is your best bet to scratch that peculiar itch that only seems to respond to a healthy blend of art, technology, and the occasional flamethrower. It will be returning to the Cherry Street Pier this Sunday, April 6th, and pay-what-you-can tickets are on sale now. The organizers encourage each attendee to only pay what they are able to afford, with several options ranging from zero to the $25 supporter level.

A look through the exhibits shows the sort of eclectic mix one would expect from a Maker Faire. Where else could you practice picking locks, learn how biodiesel is made, see a display of kinetic sculptures, and stitch together a felt plush monster, all under one roof?

There’s even a few projects on the list that regular Hackaday readers may recognize, such as the ultra-portable Positron 3D printer and the DirectTV dish turned backyard radio telescope built by Professor James Aguirre.

We’ve made the trip to the Philadelphia Maker Faire several times since its inception in 2019, and although it had the misfortune of starting right before COVID-19 came along and screwed up all of our carefully laid plans, the event has managed to find a foothold and continues to grow each year.

hackaday.com/2025/04/01/philad…

Il 18 marzo il parlamento ungherese ha approvato un emendamento alla legge sul diritto di assemblea, che di fatto vieta l'organizzazione pubblica del Pride.

In caso di trasgressione gli eventuali partecipanti potranno essere sanzionati con multe fino a 500 euro. La loro identificazione potrà avvenire tramite registrazione delle immagini e utilizzo di software di riconoscimento facciale.

Nel mio servizio uscito su Valigia Blu, parto da questa storia di straordinario restringimento delle libertà civili per raccontarvi il momento storico che sta vivendo l'Ungheria. Mentre Orbán lancia cupe dichiarazioni, il suo partito si trova per la prima volta in difficoltà nei sondaggi. A un anno dalle elezioni la partita è aperta.

Per capire dove siamo e come siamo arrivati fin qui è utile riavvolgere il nastro degli ultimi 15 anni.

Buona lettura.

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Ungheria: storia di una democrazia sempre più illiberale (e della sua possibile fine) - Valigia Blu

La decisione del governo ungherese di vietare il Pride si inserisce in un contesto di crescente repressione da parte di Orbán. Le elezioni del 2026 saranno una sfida cruciale per il futuro democratico dell’Ungheria.

^{Fabio Turco (Valigia Blu)}

History is rather dull and unexciting to most people, which naturally invites exciting flights of fancy that can range from the innocent to outright conspiracies. Nobody truly believes that the astounding finds and (fully functioning) ancient mechanisms in the Indiana Jones & Uncharted franchises are real, with mostly intact ancient cities waiting for intrepid explorers along with whatever mystical sources of power, wealth or influence formed the civilization’s foundations before its tragic demise. Yet somehow Plato’s fictive Atlantis has taken on a life of its own, along with many other ‘lost’ civilizations, whether real or imagined.

Of course, if these aforementioned movies and video games were realistic, they would center around a big archaeological dig and thrilling finds like pot shards and cuneiform clay tablets, not ways to smite enemies and gain immortality. Nor would it involve solving complex mechanical puzzles to gain access to the big secret chamber, prior to walking out of the readily accessible backdoor. Reality is boring like that, which is why there’s a major temptation to spruce things up. With the Egyptian pyramids as well as similar structures around the world speaking to the human imagination, this has led to centuries of half-baked ideas and outright conspiracies.

Most recently, a questionable 2022 paper hinting at structures underneath the Pyramid of Khafre in Egypt was used for a fresh boost to old ideas involving pyramid power stations, underground cities and other fanciful conspiracies. Although we can all agree that the ancient pyramids in Egypt are true marvels of engineering, are we really on the cusp of discovering that the ancient Egyptians were actually provided with Forerunner technology by extraterrestrials?

The Science of Being Tragically Wrong

A section of the ‘runes’ at Runamo. (Credit: Entheta, Wikimedia)
In defense of fanciful theories regarding the Actual Truth about Ancient Egypt and kin, archaeology as we know it today didn’t really develop until the latter half of the 20th century, with the field being mostly a hobbyist thing that people did out of curiosity as well as a desire for riches. Along the way many comical blunders were made, such as the Runamo runes in Sweden that turned out to be just random cracks in dolerite.

Less funny were attempts by colonists to erase Great Zimbabwe (11th – ~17th century CE) and the Kingdom of Zimbabwe after the ruins of the abandoned capital were discovered by European colonists and explored in earnest by the 19th century. Much like the wanton destruction of local cultures in the Americas by European colonists and explorers who considered their own culture, religion and technology to be clearly superior, the history of Great Zimbabwe was initially rewritten so that no thriving African society ever formed on its own, but was the result of outside influences.

In this regard it’s interesting how many harebrained ideas about archaeological sites have now effectively flipped, with mystical and mythical properties being assigned and these ‘Ancients’ being almost worshipped. Clearly, aliens visited Earth and that led to pyramids being constructed all around the globe. These would also have been the same aliens or lost civilizations that had technology far beyond today’s cutting edge, putting Europe’s fledgling civilization to shame.

Hence people keep dogpiling on especially the pyramids of Giza and its surrounding complex, assigning mystical properties to their ventilation shafts and expecting hidden chambers with technology and treasures interspersed throughout and below the structures.

Lost Technology

The Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland. (Credit: code poet, Wikimedia)
The idea of ‘lost technology’ is a pervasive one, mostly buoyed by the axiom that you cannot disprove something, only find evidence for its absence. Much like the possibility of a teapot being in orbit around the Sun right now, you cannot disprove that the Ancient Egyptians did not have hyper-advanced power plants using zero point energy back around 3,600 BCE. This ties in with the idea of ‘lost civilizations‘, which really caught on around the Victorian era.

Such romanticism for a non-existent past led to the idea of Atlantis being a real, lost civilization becoming pervasive, with the 1960s seeing significant hype around the Bimini Road. This undersea rock formation in the Bahamas was said to have been part of Atlantis, but is actually a perfectly cromulent geological formation. More recently a couple of German tourists got into legal trouble while trying to prove a connection between Egypt’s pyramids to Atlantis, which is a theory that refuses to die along with the notion that Atlantis was some kind of hyper-advanced civilization and not just a fictional society that Plato concocted to illustrate the folly of man.

Admittedly there is a lot of poetry in all of this when you consider it from that angle.
Welcome to Shangri-La… or rather Shambhala as portrayed in Uncharted 3.
People have spent decades of their life and countless sums of money on trying to find Atlantis, Shangri-La (possibly inspired by Shambhala), El Dorado and similar fictional locations. The Iram of the Pillars which featured in Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception is one of the lost cities mentioned in the Qur’an, and is incidentally another great civilization that saw itself meet a grim end through divine punishment. Iram is often said to be Ubar, which is commonly known as Atlantis of the Sands.

All of this is reminiscent of the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland, and corresponding area at Fingal’s Cave on the Scottish isle of Staffa, where eons ago molten basalt cooled and contracted into basalt columns in a way that is similar to how drying mud will crack in semi-regular patterns. This particular natural formation did lead to many local myths, including how a giant built a causeway across the North Channel, hence the name.

Fortunately for this location, no ‘lost civilization’ tag became attached, and thus it remains a curious demonstration of how purely natural formations can create structures that one might assume to have required intelligence, thus providing fuel for conspiracies. So far only ‘Young Earth’ conspiracy folk have put a claim on this particular site.

What we can conclude is that much like the Victorian age that spawned countless works of fiction on the topic, many of these modern-day stories appear to be rooted in a kind of romanticism for a past that never existed, with those affected interpreting natural patterns as something more in a sure sign of confirmation bias.

Tourist Traps

Tomb of the First Emperor Qin Shi Huang Di, Xi’an, China (Credit: Aaron Zhu)
One can roughly map the number of tourist visits with the likelihood of wild theories being dreamed up. These include the Egyptian pyramids, but also similar structures in what used to be the sites of the Aztec and Maya civilizations. Similarly the absolutely massive mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang in China with its world-famous Terracotta Army has led to incredible speculation on what might still be hidden inside the unexcavated tomb mound, such as entire seas and rivers of mercury that moved mechanically to simulate real bodies of water, a simulated starry sky, crossbows set to take out trespassers and incredible riches.

Many of these features were described by Sima Qian in the first century BCE, who may or may not have been truthful in his biography of Qin Shi Huang. Meanwhile, China’s authorities have wisely put further excavations on hold, as they have found that many of the recovered artefacts degrade very quickly once exposed to air. The paint on the terracotta figures began to flake off rapidly after excavation, for example, reducing them to the plain figures which we are familiar with.

Tourism can be as damaging as careless excavation. As popular as the pyramids at Giza are, centuries of tourism have taken their toll, with vandalism, graffiti and theft increasing rapidly since the 20th century. The Great Pyramid of Khufu had already been pilfered for building materials over the course of millennia by the local population, but due to tourism part of its remaining top stones were unceremoniously tipped over the side to make a larger platform where tourists could have some tea while gazing out over the the Giza Plateau, as detailed in a recent video on the History for Granite channel:

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The recycling of building materials from antique structures was also the cause of the demise of the Labyrinth at the foot of the pyramid of Amenemhat III at Hawara. Once an architectural marvel, with reportedly twelve roofed courts and spanning a total of 28,000 m², today only fragments remain of its existence. This sadly is how most marvels of the Ancient World end up: looted ruins, ashes and shards, left in the sand, mud, or reclaimed by nature, from which we can piece together with a lot of patience and the occasional stroke of fortune a picture what it once may have looked like.

Pyramid Power

Cover of The Giza Power Plant book. (Credit: Christopher Dunn)
When in light of all this we look at the claims made about the Pyramid of Khafre and the persistent conspiracies regarding this and other pyramids hiding great secrets, we can begin to see something of a pattern. Some people have really bought into these fantasies, while for others it’s just another way to embellish a location, to attract more rubes tourists and sell more copies of their latest book on the extraterrestrial nature of pyramids and how they are actually amazing lost technologies. This latter category is called pseudoarcheology.

Pyramids, of course, have always held magical powers, but the idea that they are literal power plants seems to have been coined by one Christopher Dunn, with the publication of his pseudo-archeological book The Giza Power Plant in 1998. That there would be more structures underneath the Pyramid of Khafre is a more recent invention, however. Feeding this particular flight of fancy appears to be a 2022 paper by Filippo Biondi and Corrado Malanga, in which synthetic aperture radar (SAR) was used to examine said pyramid interior and subsurface features.

Somehow this got turned into claims about multiple deep vertical wells descending 648 meters along with other structures. Shared mostly via conspiracy channels, it widely extrapolates from claims made in the paper by Biondi et al., with said SAR-based claims never having been peer-reviewed or independently corroborated. On the Rational Wiki entry for these and other claims related to the Giza pyramids are savagely tossed under the category of ‘pyramidiots’.
The art that conspiracy nuts produce when provided with generative AI tools. (Source: Twitter)
Back in the real world, archaeologists have found a curious L-shaped area underneath a royal graveyard near Khufu’s pyramid that was apparently later filled in, but which seems to lead to a deeper structure. This is likely to be part of the graveyard, but may also have been a feature that was abandoned during construction. Currently this area is being excavated, so we’re likely to figure out more details after archaeologists have finished gently sifting through tons of sand and gravel.

There is also the ScanPyramids project, which uses non-destructive and non-invasive techniques to scan Old Kingdom-era pyramids, such as muon tomography and infrared thermography. This way the internal structure of these pyramids can be examined in-depth. One finding was that of a number of ‘voids’, which could mean any of a number of things, but most likely do not contain world-changing secrets.

To this day the most credible view is still that the pyramids of the Old Kingdom were used as tombs, though unlike the mastabas and similar tombs, there is a credible argument to be made that rather than being designed to be hidden away, these pyramids would be eternal monuments to the pharaoh. They would be open for worship of the pharaoh, hence the ease of getting inside them. Ironically this would make them more secure from graverobbers, which was a great idea until the demise of the Ancient Egyptian civilization.

This is a point that’s made succinctly on the History for Granite channel, with the conclusion being that this goal of ‘inspiring awe’ to worshippers is still effective today, simply judging by the millions of tourists each year to these monuments, and the tall tales that they’ve inspired.

hackaday.com/2025/04/01/on-egy…

Apple ha rilasciato inaspettatamente e prima del previsto un importante aggiornamento iOS 18.4 per iPhone, affermando che ora il sistema è ancora più comodo e sicuro da usare. L’aggiornamento è ora disponibile per tutti i modelli di iPhone Xs dal 2018 in poi, inclusi iPhone SE di seconda e terza generazione, nonché la serie iPhone 16 fino al 16e. Sull’iPhone 16 Pro Max pesa circa 3,76 GB e l’intero processo richiede circa 10 minuti.

Le principali novità di iOS 18.4 riguardano le nuove funzionalità di Apple Intelligence. Le notifiche prioritarie ora trovano automaticamente le notifiche importanti e le portano in primo piano, aiutandoti a non perdere informazioni davvero preziose. Image Playground ha aggiunto lo stile Sketch oltre ad Animazione e Illustrazione, e il supporto di Apple Intelligence è stato esteso ad altre otto lingue, tra cui francese, tedesco, italiano, giapponese, coreano, portoghese, spagnolo e inglese per gli utenti in India e Singapore.

Sono stati aggiunti anche nuovi emoji, il più noto dei quali, secondo molti, è la faccina sorridente con le borse sotto gli occhi, poiché riflette ironicamente il ritmo di vita moderno. Apparivano anche un’impronta digitale, uno schizzo, una radice vegetale, un albero senza foglie, un’arpa, una vanga e la bandiera dell’isola di Sark. Vale la pena sottolineare l’installazione automatica dell’app complementare per Apple Vision Pro, che aiuta a trovare contenuti aggiuntivi per il visore e ne semplifica l’utilizzo.

Molti sono soddisfatti dell’aggiornamento dell’app Foto, che ora offre ancora più modi per ordinare e filtrare le foto; inoltre, le foto nascoste con protezione Face ID abilitata non vengono più trasferite automaticamente al computer. Gli abbonati ad Apple News+ troveranno più contenuti sulla cucina e Safari semplifica la consultazione delle ricerche precedenti. I genitori apprezzeranno la nuova e più chiara procedura per la configurazione di un account per bambini e le migliori restrizioni relative al tempo trascorso davanti allo schermo. Ora i bambini non potranno più aggirare i limiti eliminando e reinstallando le applicazioni. È diventata utile anche la funzione di mettere in pausa un download sull’App Store, con la possibilità di riprenderlo in un secondo momento senza perdere i progressi. Ora è possibile accedere alla musica ambientale per iPhone direttamente dal Centro di controllo e gli aspirapolvere robot compatibili con Matter possono essere aggiunti alla Home e integrati in scene e automazioni.

È importante sottolineare che con iOS 18.4 Apple anche corretto un elenco completo di 62 vulnerabilità, invitando gli utenti a installare l’aggiornamento il prima possibile. L’azienda cerca di non divulgare i dettagli di ogni bug risolto, in modo da dare agli utenti il ​​tempo di aggiornare i propri dispositivi prima che gli aggressori trovino delle falle. Tra l’altro, diversi sono chiusi problemi critici in WebKit, che è alla base di Safari e del kernel stesso dell’iPhone. Quindi, la patch lo risolve vulnerabilità CVE-2025-30432, che consente a un’applicazione dannosa di indovinare una password su un dispositivo bloccato e di estendere artificialmente il tempo di blocco in caso di tentativi non riusciti. È stata chiusa anche la vulnerabilità di cross-site scripting CVE-2025-24208, che consente agli aggressori di iniettare codice dannoso in un sito attendibile utilizzando un iframe dannoso.

Tutto ciò sottolinea che l’aggiornamento iOS 18.4 non solo introduce nuove funzionalità, ma rafforza anche significativamente la sicurezza del sistema. La data di rilascio anticipata è stata una piacevole sorpresa per molti, poiché ora i dispositivi degli utenti sono ancora più sicuri e possono vantare funzionalità aggiuntive.

L'articolo Apple rilascia iOS 18.4 a sorpresa: novità e sicurezza al top! proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.