One of the delights in Bash, zsh, or whichever shell tickles your fancy in your OSS distribution of choice, is the ease of which you can use scripts. These can be shell scripts, or use the Perl, Python or another interpreter, as defined by the shebang (#!) at the beginning of the script. This signature is followed by the path to the interpret, which can be /bin/sh for maximum compatibility across OSes, but how does this actually work? As [Bruno Croci] found while digging into this question, it is not the shell that interprets the shebang, but the kernel.

It’s easy enough to find out the basic execution sequence using strace after you run an executable shell script with said shebang in place. The first point is in execve, a syscall that gets one straight into the Linux kernel (fs/exec.c). Here the ‘binary program’ is analyzed for its executable format, which for the shell script gets us to binfmt_script.c. Incidentally the binfmt_misc.c source file provides an interesting detour as it concerns magic byte sequences to do something similar as a shebang.

As a bonus [Bruno] also digs into the difference between executing a script with shebang or running it in a shell (e.g. sh script.sh), before wrapping up with a look at where the execute permission on a shebang-ed shell script is checked.

hackaday.com/2025/04/11/tracin…

Human biology is very much like that of other mammals, and yet so very different in areas where it matters. One of these being human neurology, with aspects like the human brain and the somatosensory pathways (i.e. touch etc.) being not only hard to study in non-human animal analogs, but also (genetically) different enough that a human test subject is required. Over the past years the use of human organoids have come into use, which are (parts of) organs grown from human pluripotent stem cells and thus allow for ethical human experimentation.

For studying aspects like the somatosensory pathways, multiple of such organoids must be combined, with recently [Ji-il Kim] et al. as published in Nature demonstrating the creation of a so-called assembloid. This four-part assembloid contains somatosensory, spinal, thalamic and cortical organoids, covering the entirety of such a pathway from e.g. one’s skin to the brain’s cortex where the sensory information is received.

Such assembloids are – much like organoids – extremely useful for not only studying biological and biochemical processes, but also to research diseases and disorders, including tactile deficits as previously studied in mouse models by e.g. [Lauren L. Orefice] et al. caused by certain genetic mutations in Mecp2 and other genes, as well as genes like SCN9A that can cause clinical absence of pain perception.

Using these assembloids the development of these pathways can be studied in great detail and therapies developed and tested.

hackaday.com/2025/04/11/creati…

Over on the Google blog [Joel Meares] explains how Google built the new family of Gemini Robotics models.

The bi-arm ALOHA robot equipped with Gemini 2.0 software can take general instructions and then respond dynamically to its environment as it carries out its tasks. This family of robots aims to be highly dexterous, interactive, and general-purpose by applying the sort of non-task-specific training methods that have worked so well with LLMs, and applying them to robot tasks.

There are two things we here at Hackaday are wondering. Is there anything a robot will never do? And just how cherry-picked are these examples in the slick video? Let us know what you think in the comments!

youtube.com/embed/4MvGnmmP3c0?…

hackaday.com/2025/04/11/gemini…

There are some ideas which someone somewhere has to try. Take [Uri Tuchman]’s foot mouse. It’s a computer mouse for foot operation, but it’s not just a functional block. Instead it’s an ornate inlaid-wood-and-brass affair in the style of a very fancy piece of antique footwear.

The innards of an ordinary USB mouse are placed in something best described as a wooden platform heel, upon which is placed a brass sole with a couple of sections at the front to activate the buttons with the user’s toes. The standout feature is the decoration. With engraving on the brass and inlaid marquetry on the wood, it definitely doesn’t look like any computer peripheral we’ve seen.

The build video is below the break, and we’re treated to all the processes sped up. At the end he uses it in a basic art package and in a piloting game, with varying degrees of succes. We’re guessing it would take a lot of practice to gain a level of dexterity with this thing, but we salute him for being the one who tries it.

This has to be the fanciest peripheral we’ve ever seen, but surprisingly it’s not the first foot mouse we’ve brought you.

youtube.com/embed/Lqgbl6JoYoQ?…

hackaday.com/2025/04/11/a-mous…

Un uomo di 39 anni è stato condannato a 6 anni e 8 mesi di reclusione per pornografia minorile aggravata e violenza sessuale su minori. Decisive per la sentenza sono state le immagini degli abusi, che lui stesso aveva ripreso e conservato sul proprio computer.

Le violenze si sono consumate tra il 2021 e il 2022, all’interno delle mura domestiche, approfittando dell’assenza della madre delle bambine. Gli inquirenti hanno ricostruito un quadro drammatico, basato su documentazione e testimonianze che hanno confermato la gravità degli atti compiuti dall’uomo.

Le indagini sono scattate dopo la denuncia di una ragazza, che aveva accusato il trentanovenne di abusi subiti quando era minorenne. In quel caso, il procedimento si era concluso con un’assoluzione per insufficienza di prove. Tuttavia, il materiale trovato successivamente sul suo computer ha permesso di riaprire l’inchiesta, portando alla scoperta delle violenze sulle figlie.

Con la condanna, l’uomo ha perso la responsabilità genitoriale ed è stato colpito dall’interdizione perpetua da qualsiasi incarico che comporti contatti con minori. Una misura necessaria per tutelare le vittime e prevenire il rischio di ulteriori crimini.

Questa tragica vicenda riporta al centro l’urgenza di proteggere e sorvegliare i minori da abusi spesso consumati nell’ambiente familiare, dimostrando quanto il male possa annidarsi proprio dove dovrebbe esserci amore e sicurezza.

L'articolo Il Mostro è stato Arrestato! Violentava e filmava le proprie figlie di 3 e 6 anni mentre la Mamma era fuori proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

GPS and similar satellite navigation systems revolutionized how you keep track of where you are and what time it is. However, it isn’t without its problems. For one, it generally doesn’t work very well indoors or in certain geographic or weather scenarios. It can be spoofed. Presumably, a real or virtual attack could take the whole system down.

Addressing these problems is a new system called Broadcast Positioning System (BPS). It uses upgraded ATSC 3.0 digital TV transmitters to send exact time information from commercial broadcast stations. With one signal, you can tell what time it is within 100 ns 95% of the time. If you can hear four towers, you can not only tell the time, but also estimate your position within about 100 m.

The whole thing is new — we’ve read that there are only six transmitters currently sending such data. However, you can get a good overview from these slides from the National Association of Broadcasters. They point out that the system works well indoors and can work with GPS, help detect if GPS is wrong, and stand in for GPS if it were to go down suddenly.

If all digital TV stations adopt this, the presentation mentions that there would be 516 VHF stations operating with up to 10 kW over two widely separated bands. That adds to 1,526 UHF stations running between 100 kW to 1000 kW. So lots of power and very diverse in terms of frequencies. Coverage is spotty in some parts of the country, though. A large part of the western United States would lack visibility of the four stations required for a position fix. Of course, currently there are only five or six stations, so this is theoretical at this point.

The Real Story

If you read the slide deck, the real story is at the end in the backup slides. That shows the ATSC standard frame and how the preamble changes. The math is fairly standard stuff. You know where the stations are, you know what time they think they sent the signal, and you can estimate the range to each station. With three or four stations, you can get a good idea of where you must be based on the relative receive times.

The stations diversify their time sources, which helps guard against spoofing. For example, they may get time information from GPS, the network, a local atomic clock, and even neighboring stations, and use that to create an accurate local time that they send out with their signal.

Learn More

Most of the slides come from more detailed white papers you can find on the NAB website. A lot of the site is dedicated to explaining why you can’t live without GPS, but you can’t depend on it, either. The bottom right part of the page has the technical papers you’ll probably be more interested in.

GPS is an impressive system, but we know it needs some help. BPS reminded us a bit of LORAN.

hackaday.com/2025/04/11/gps-br…

With the Trump administration throwing its abductees in shady jails and prisons from Louisiana to El Salvador, it’s essential that incarcerated journalists and whistleblowers are able to expose the conditions they’re dealing with. That is unless you trust Donald Trump’s cronies to admit to abuses.

But incarcerated journalists nationwide face relentless retaliation for speaking truth to power, and they’re systemically obstructed from seeking recourse from the courts.

After I reported on Texas prison officials’ inadequate response to the COVID-19 pandemic, I was charged in bogus disciplinary cases, repeatedly transferred to different prison facilities, tossed into solitary confinement, assaulted with chemical agents, and held in a cell for weeks without basic necessities, like soap, toothpaste, deodorant, a mattress, and writing supplies.

When all my administrative complaints failed to stop the infringement upon my constitutional rights by rogue prison officials, I turned to my only other option — the federal courts.

Being a layman of the law, I failed to realize that my decision to file a civil rights lawsuit against prison officials came with insurmountable judicial hurdles and dire consequences. It was an awkward and untimely introduction to the Prison Litigation Reform Act.

Signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996, the PLRA placed extreme restrictions on incarcerated individuals’ ability to file, win, or settle civil rights lawsuits. Lawmakers argued that there were too many frivolous lawsuits against the government.

But the law severely obstructed the pathways for all incarcerated individuals to obtain justice and crippled incarcerated journalists’ ability to make human rights violations known to the public.

The Prison Litigation Reform Act severely obstructed the pathways for all incarcerated individuals to obtain justice and crippled incarcerated journalists’ ability to make human rights violations known to the public.

Jeremy Busby

Historically, the federal courts were a major source of oversight for prisons and jails. In my home state of Texas, civil rights lawsuits filed by a handful of prisoners led to the class action litigation, Ruiz v. Estelle, that completely transformed the deplorable conditions inside Texas prisons and restored incarcerated constitutional rights.

Judge William Wayne Justice presided over one of the longest periods of federal judicial oversight of a prison in U.S. history, issuing a consent decree that spanned over three decades.

The Ruiz litigation, despite being credited as one of the glaring examples of judicial checks on violations of constitutional rights, would not have stood a chance today.

The PLRA imposes strict challenges on incarcerated litigants that are oftentimes impossible to meet. These limits force the court to dismiss the vast majority of legitimate complaints from incarcerated individuals over the smallest technical issues.

For incarcerated journalists, the unavailability of recourse when they’re retaliated against — as they so often are — exponentially increases the “chilling effect” of potential retaliation. The message is, if you criticize us in your writing, we can do whatever we want to punish you and, with the PLRA, there won’t be anything you can do about it.

Struggling with the ‘exhaustion doctrine’

The exhaustion doctrine mandates that all incarcerated individuals first present each of their grievances to prison administrators through the internal grievance system before suing. If they don’t, the courts are required to dismiss the lawsuit immediately.

This rule fails to consider how prison internal grievance systems are littered with indirect and direct obstructions. Accessing the approved grievance form, meeting deadlines, understanding the grievance process’s convoluted rules, and getting the grievance to the proper prison official are easier said than done.

For example, after I was transferred to three different prisons in five days and tossed into a solitary confinement cell without any personal property, I was a drowning man without a life preserver.

First, I knew none of the staff or incarcerated individuals to enlist them to provide me with an approved grievance form and a pen so I could fill it out.

Secondly, if I was successful in obtaining the form and a pen, the grievance rules only permit me to raise "one issue" per grievance, and one grievance per week, so I have to make the unfair decision of which constitution violations to seek redress for and which ones to overlook. If I cite two violations in one grievance I violate restrictions placed by the PLRA. Texas prison grievance rules allow only 15 days to file grievances about any violation.

Finally, after overcoming those hurdles, I would have to rely on the same guards who were responsible for the violations to process my grievance form, since I was locked in solitary confinement, prohibiting my access to the grievance staff or the designated filing box. There is no system set up to confirm if a grievance has been processed or not. The smallest misstep in this process renders your lawsuit moot by PLRA.

Insurmountable obstacles for legal layman

While I was a staff reporter at the prison newspaper, I was instructed to write all my articles on an eighth grade level. That was the level at which prison officials felt that an average incarcerated individual reads. I have a degree from the University of Houston-Clear Lake, and yet when I made the decision to file my civil rights complaints I could barely make sense of all the rules and statutory language of the courts.

Prison law libraries are stocked with complex and outdated legal books. Simplified DIY books are not available. There is no road map for where to begin. The PLRA requires that specific procedures are followed, which include very tight deadlines. Not understanding and following all of these procedures will result in the dismissal of an incarcerated individual’s lawsuit.

Very few incarcerated individuals, including educated journalists like myself, have the legal aptitude to navigate the complexities of the PLRA.

Very few incarcerated individuals, including educated journalists like myself, have the legal aptitude to navigate the complexities of the Prison Litigation Reform Act.

Jeremy Busby

My lawsuit listed multiple prison officials from four different facilities as defendants. As a result of rules implemented following the passage of PLRA, the federal judge broke my lawsuit up into four separate proceedings and reassigned each of them to four different federal courts.

This process — the opposite of the Ruiz case, where multiple claims were joined together in a class action — completely overwhelmed my already disadvantaged ability to meet all the rigorous rules of the courts.

Despite all of the documented evidence of prison officials violating my constitutional rights by denying me freedom of speech and due process, discriminating against me, and subjecting me to cruel and unusual punishment, my lawsuit was dismissed over a procedural error before the merits were ever considered.

Disincentivizing lawyers from taking cases

Finally, because of restrictions imposed by the PLRA, attorneys are discouraged from taking cases on behalf of incarcerated individuals.

For example, the PLRA dramatically restricts financial compensation incarcerated individuals can be awarded for injuries resulting from constitutional violations, and the legislation places a cap on attorney’s fees incarcerated plaintiffs can recover at 150% of any financial damages awarded.

As the Prison Policy Initiative has explained, that cap is highly restrictive because damages awarded to incarcerated people, in the rare event that their cases get that far, are usually nominal at best.

That results in a mere 7.6% of incarcerated litigants being represented by attorneys in civil rights lawsuits as of 2020, compared to 89.8% of nonincarcerated litigants.

PLRA should be repealed

The PLRA has served no real societal interest since its passage. It has done nothing but stop incarcerated individuals from advocating for their inalienable human rights.

The outrageous abuses inside America’s prisons that have been exposed in recent years should motivate lawmakers to provide incarcerated people with more, not less, access to the legal system. Maybe some incarcerated people file frivolous lawsuits, but so do people on the outside — it’s not a reason to deprive everyone else of legal recourse.

The PLRA’s unreasonable restrictions have bound the hands of federal judges to consider legitimate complaints from incarcerated individuals, hold rogue prison officials accountable, enforce court orders, and compel policy change.

Simultaneously, it unleashed prison officials’ ability to violate incarcerated individuals’ basic constitutional freedoms — including the rights of incarcerated journalists.

It has also restricted the basic function of journalists outside prison, and the taxpayers who read the news, to monitor how public funds are spent.

Outside journalists’ access to incarcerated sources and prison records is severely limited. Trials and court files are among the few places they can find the truth about what goes on on the inside. But when cases are dismissed on technicalities before a judge or jury considers the merits, journalists can’t discern which allegations are true.

Repealing the PLRA is a step toward justice for all. Incarcerated journalists are routinely targeted and subjected to all types of cruelty. Like journalists on the outside who run into oppressive government officials, we depend on recourse from the federal courts to serve as our last line of defense, as our news reporting often does for the incarcerated population and the American public.

freedom.press/issues/unjust-la…

Join Hackaday Editors Elliot Williams and Tom Nardi as they talk about the best stories and hacks of the week. This episode starts off with a discussion of the Vintage Computer Festival East and Philadelphia Maker Faire — two incredible events that just so happened to be scheduled for the same weekend. From there the discussion moves on to the latest developments in DIY soft robotics, the challenge of running Linux on 8-pin ICs, hardware mods to improve WiFi reception on cheap ESP32 development boards, and what’s keeping old smartphones from being reused as general purpose computers.

You’ll also hear about Command and Conquer: Red Alert running on the Pi Pico 2, highly suspect USB-C splitters, and producing professional looking PCBs at home with a fiber laser. Stick around to the end to hear about the current state of non-Google web browsers, and a unique new machine that can engrave circuit boards with remarkable accuracy.

Check out the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/…

As always, the Hackaday Podcast is available as a DRM-free MP3 download.

Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast

Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:

• iTunes
• Spotify
• Stitcher
• RSS
• YouTube
• Check out our Libsyn landing page

Episode 316 Show Notes:

News:

• Celebrating 30 Years Of Windows 95 At VCF
• In 2025, The Philly Maker Faire Finds Its Groove

What’s that Sound?

• Congratulations to [laserkiwi] for winning a Hackaday Podcast t-shirt!

Interesting Hacks of the Week:

• Salamander Robot Is Squishy
  
  • The Future of Robots is Soft (and Squishy!) – YouTube
  • These Electronics-free Robots Can Walk Right Off the 3D-Printer
  • FlowIO Platform

  
  

• 8 Pins For Linux
  
  • Building The Worst Linux PC Ever

  
  

• Simple Antenna Makes For Better ESP32-C3 WiFi
  
  • ESP32 Range Extender / Antenna Modification

  
  

• LayerLapse Simplifies 3D Printer Time-lapse Shots
• Turning Old Cellphones Into SBCs
  
  • IOIO – Wikipedia

  
  

• Ben Eater Vs. Microsoft BASIC
  
  • A Very Trippy Look At Microsoft’s Beginnings

  
  

Quick Hacks:

• Elliot’s Picks:
  
  • A Tiny Tape Synth
  • If You’re 3D Scanning, You’ll Want A Way To Work With Point Clouds
  • Why USB-C Splitters Can Cause Magic Smoke Release

  
  

• Tom’s Picks:
  
  • Tracking The ISS Made Easy
  • Command And Conquer Ported To The Pi Pico 2
  • Fiber Laser Gives DIY PCBs A Professional Finish

  
  

Can’t-Miss Articles:

• Which Browser Should I Use In 2025?
  
  • qutebrowser

  
  

• Supercon 2024: Quick High-Feature Boards With The Circuit Graver

hackaday.com/2025/04/11/hackad…

Dear Friend of Press Freedom,

Protecting press freedom is protecting democracy — here are the latest issues to know about.

Deportation hearings must be transparent

Nearly 600 people tried to watch an immigration hearing in the case of detained activist and U.S. legal permanent resident Mahmoud Khalil on April 8, only to find themselves shut out of the virtual room.

We led a letter from press freedom organizations to the judge explaining that in-person access in rural Louisiana is not sufficient for a case of major national and international significance like Khalil’s. Interest in the case is only heightened now that the government has filed a memorandum conceding that its only “evidence” against Khalil is of his involvement in protesting the Israel-Gaza war.

The government is likely to assert a similar theory in the case of Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University graduate student who was also abducted by federal agents and brought to Louisiana, in her case apparently over an op-ed she co-authored criticizing the war.

Attacks on law firms are attacks on the press

The Trump administration’s strong-arming of lawyers the president doesn’t like could have significant consequences for those he calls “the enemy of the people”: the press.

That is why 61 media organizations and press freedom advocates, led by The Intercept’s Press Freedom Defense Fund and Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), filed a legal brief urging a court to strike down an executive order sanctioning a law firm for representing President Donald Trump’s political opponents.

“Newsrooms are broke and FOIA is broken. Journalists face the threat of SLAPP suits, subpoenas, arrest, and, these days, even deportation, just for doing their jobs,” said Seth Stern, FPF’s advocacy director. “Now more than ever, reporters need access to quality pro bono representation to overcome these obstacles and hold the government accountable. If an anti-free speech president can shake down law firms that represent clients he doesn’t like, press freedom will suffer immeasurably, and the American public will be less informed.”

Read more here. And thanks to the attorneys at Albert Sellars LLP for their great work on the brief and for responding to Trump’s bullying the right way.

Signalgate shows chilling effect of Assange prosecution

There’s been plenty of speculation over how journalist Jeffrey Goldberg found himself on a Signal thread with top-level administration officials. But people don’t seem as curious about an arguably more consequential question: Why did Goldberg leave a chat that could have generated countless important scoops?

Our guess is The Atlantic’s lawyers warned about the Espionage Act — the law used to prosecute WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for obtaining and publishing government secrets. We should not have a purported “espionage” law on the books that is so vaguely drafted that it could conceivably give an experienced journalist pause when news falls in his lap. Stern has more here.

Firing FOIA officers is not ‘radical transparency’

“Hello, the FOIA office has been placed on admin leave and is unable to respond to any emails.”

This doesn’t sound like “radical transparency” to us.

Check out the latest edition of (and subscribe to) “The Classifieds,” a newsletter by our Daniel Ellsberg Chair on Government Secrecy Lauren Harper, to see which Freedom of Information Act offices have closed, and which might be next.

And read more from Harper about this week’s congressional hearing on FOIA, where no FOIA officers could testify in the midst of widespread closures and firings.

What we’re reading

Judge orders White House ban on AP lifted (The Washington Post). “The judge got it right,” Stern told the Post, “but it should never have taken this long.”

Open letter to chair and ranking member of House Committee on Energy and Commerce (Internet Society). We joined with other rights groups to ask Congress to protect encryption and the journalists who rely on it by fixing the Take It Down Act.

Lawyer for U-M protester detained at airport after spring break trip with family (Detroit Free Press). If this is happening to protesters’ lawyers now, there's no reason to think it won't happen to journalists or lawyers who represent them soon.

US student journalists go dark fearing Trump crusade against pro-Palestinian speech (The Guardian). It’s a sad day in America when student journalists must resign or write anonymously because they fear government reprisals.

D.C. Attorney nominee’s threats against critics of Elon Musk and DOGE mire him in disqualifying ethics scandal (Demand Progress). Ed Martin’s conduct as interim U.S. attorney “shows that he intends to convert the office into a taxpayer-funded law firm for Trump and his friends,” Stern said.

PSA from John Cusack

Democracy is under attack — and paywalls shouldn’t stand in the way of accessing vital public records. Our board member, activist and actor John Cusack, discussed why more news outlets need to follow the lead of Wired and 404 Media and give their public records reporting to the public.

How to share sensitive leaks with the press

freedom.press/issues/no-secret…

The Massachusetts legislature is considering thousands of bills. Some of them we should support and others we need to oppose. We already voted to oppose yet another bill to disenfranchise political designations and make it harder to create them and to support the Location Shield Act (H.86 / S.197). Here are others we are looking at:

• An Act relative to unregulated face recognition and emerging biometric surveillance technologies (H.1538)
• An Act establishing a moratorium on face recognition and other remote biometric surveillance systems (S.1385)
• An Act relative to unmanned aerial systems (H.3749 / S.2438)
• An Act relative to protecting Massachusetts residents against federal government surveillance (H.2687)
• Dignity Not Deportations Act (H.1588 / S.1122)
• Civil Asset Forfeiture reform (H.1953)
• Right to Repair Bills:
  
  • H.433 & S.189
  • H.398
  • H.1278

  
  

We setup an etherpad for you to suggest bills we should review. Please include the name of the bill, a link to it and what position you recommend and why.

masspirates.org/blog/2025/04/1…

If you are a visual thinker, you might enjoy [AIHVHIA’s] recent video, which shows the effect of applying audio processing to text displayed on an oscilloscope. The video is below.

Of course, this presupposes you have some way to display text on an oscilloscope. Audio driving the X and Y channels of the scope does all the work. We aren’t sure exactly how he’s doing that, but we suspect it is something like Osci-Render.

Does this have any value other than art? It’s hard to say. Perhaps the effect of panning audio on text might give you some insight into your next audio project. Incidentally, panning certainly did what you would expect it to do, as did the pass filters. But some of the effects were a bit surprising. We still want to figure out just what’s happening with the wave folder.

If text isn’t enough for you, try video. Filtering that would probably be pretty entertaining, too. If you want to try your own experiments, we bet you could do it all — wave generation and filtering — in GNU Radio.

youtube.com/embed/47jlny15IEc?…

hackaday.com/2025/04/11/audio-…