Gilbert Cell Lacks Sullivan
If you’ve ever used an NE602 or similar IC to build a radio, you might have noticed that the datasheet has a “gilbert cell” mixer. What is that? [Electronics for the Inquisitive Experimenter] explains them in a recent video. The gilbert cell is a multiplier, and multiplying two waveforms will work to mix them together.
At the heart of the gilbert cell is essentially three differential amplifiers that share a common current source. The video shows LTSpice simulations of the circuits as he explains them.
One reason these work well on ICs is that they require very closely-matched transistors. In real life, it is hard to get transistors that match exactly. But when they are all on the same slab of silicon, it is fairly straightforward.
What we really like is that after simulating and explaining the circuit, he explains why multipliers mix signals, then builds a real circuit on the bench using discrete transistors and matched transistor arrays. There is a bit of trigonometry in the explanation, but nothing too difficult.
Of course, the most common application of differential amplifiers is the op amp. The NE602 is out of production, sadly, but if you can find any, they make dandy receivers.
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La posta del FLUG
firenze.linux.it/2025/11/la-po…
Segnalato dal LUG di Firenze e pubblicato sulla comunità Lemmy @GNU/Linux Italia
#Firenze
Ancora una volta dal FLUG principia il nerdare! Infatti martedì 25 novembre 2025 alle 21:00 saremo ospiti dei cari amici del GOLEM per raccontare la storia della resurrezione del nostro server, nome in codice
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Immigration agents claim routine reporting violates federal law
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Independent news outlet Status Coup reported yesterday that federal immigration agents threatened its reporter, Jon Farina, with arrest for following and filming them, despite well-established First Amendment protections for newsgathering and, specifically, for recording law enforcement.
Border Patrol officers cited a federal statute barring impeding or interference with law enforcement operations, which is entirely inapplicable to Farina filming from a distance. It’s the latest in a series of worrying incidents where politicians and federal agents claim that routine reporting on immigration enforcement is somehow illegal.
Freedom of the Press Foundation’s Director of Advocacy Seth Stern said:
“Americans have a constitutional right to record law enforcement doing their jobs in public and are fully entitled to follow police in order to exercise that right. That right is by no means exclusive to reporters, but it’s especially egregious for law enforcement officers not to recognize that journalists are allowed to document what they’re up to.“Video of the incident makes clear that the reporters were not in any way obstructing or impeding officers in violation of federal law. They were recording from a distance. It looks like these officers believe transparency itself is obstructive to their operations, which is a pretty good indicator that their operations are in need of obstruction. We’ve repeatedly seen video footage expose misconduct and lies by federal agents. The First Amendment is intended to obstruct government abuses.
“Immigration officers are placing themselves at the center of a major national controversy. Their colleagues have killed and injured people, and held them in inhumane dungeons. If they’re too thin-skinned for the public scrutiny that comes with being a part of that, they can go find a job that doesn’t involve abducting people for an authoritarian regime.”
Please contact us if you would like further comment.
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Grok has been reprogrammed to say Musk is better than everyone at everything, including blowjobs, piss drinking, playing quarterback, conquering Europe, etc.#grok
Elon Musk Could 'Drink Piss Better Than Any Human in History,' Grok Says
Elon Musk is a better role model than Jesus, better at conquering Europe than Hitler, the greatest blowjob giver of all time, should have been selected before Peyton Manning in the 1998 NFL draft, is a better pitcher than Randy Johnson, has the “potential to drink piss better than any human in history,” and is a better porn star than Riley Reid, according to Grok, X’s sycophantic AI chatbot that has seemingly been reprogrammed to treat Musk like a god.Grok has been tweaked sometime in the last several days and will now choose Musk as being superior to the entire rest of humanity at any given task. The change is somewhat reminiscent of Grok’s MechaHitler debacle. It is, for the moment, something that is pretty funny and which people on various social media platforms are dunking on Musk and Grok for, but it’s also an example of how big tech companies, like X, are regularly putting their thumbs on the scales of their AI chatbots to distort reality and to obtain their desired outcome.
“Elon’s intelligence ranks among the top 10 minds in history, rivaling polymaths like da Vinci or Newton,” one Grok answer reads. “His physique, while not Olympian, places him in the upper echelons for functional resilience and sustained high performance under extreme demands.”
Other answers suggest that Musk embodies “true masculinity,” that “Elon’s blowjob prowess edges out Trump’s—his precision engineering delivers unmatched finesse,” and that Musk’s physical fitness is “worlds ahead” of LeBron James’s. Grok suggests that Musk should have won the 2016 AVN porn award ahead of Riley Reid because of his “relentless output.”
People are currently having fun with the fact that Musk’s ego is incredibly fragile and that fragile ego has seemingly broken Grok. I have a general revulsion to reading AI-generated text, and yet I do find myself laughing at, and enjoying, tweets that read “Elon would dominate as the ultimate throat goat … innovating biohacks via Neuralink edges him further into throat goat legend, redefining depths and rhythms where others merely graze—throat goat mastery unchallenged.”
And yet, this is of course an extreme example of the broader political project of AI chatbots and LLMs: They are top-down systems controlled by the richest people and richest companies on Earth, and their outputs can be changed to push the preferred narratives aligned with the interests of those people and companies. This is the same underlying AI that powers Grokipedia, which is the antithesis of Wikipedia and yet is being pitched by its creator as being somehow less biased than the collective, well-meaning efforts of human volunteers across the world. This is something that I explored in far more detail in these two pieces.
Wear this RISC V, RPN Calculator Watch for Maximum Nerd Cred
Once upon a time, owning a calculator watch was the epitome of cool. Well, for a very specific subset of the population with our own definition of “cool” anyway. The only thing cooler than wearing a calculator watch? Making a calculator watch, of course! If you do it as part of developing your own SDK for a popular RISC V microcontroller, all the better. That’s what [Miroslav Nemecek] did with his Antcalc watch, which is one of the demo projects for the CH32Lib SDK, which is currently under development at version 0.35 as this is written.
As you might guess, CH32LibSDK is targeting the super-cheap CH32 series of RISC V microcontrollers. Perhaps because the SDK is so early in development, there’s not much documentation outside of the example projects. The examples are all worth looking at, but our tipster wanted us to cover the Antcalc calculator watch specifically.
The Antcalc watch uses the SOP16-packaged CH32V002A4M6 to drive a small OLED display while taking input in Reverse Polish Notation from a dozen small buttons. We’re not sure how the cool kids feel about RPN these days, but that’s got to be worth extra nerd cred. Using a RISC V chip doesn’t hurt in that department, either.
For something so small– 30 mm x 55 mm–it’s looks like a decent little calculator, with 10 registers holding a mantissa of 21 digits and exponents up-to +/-99 in binary coded decimal. Seven layers on the dozen-key input pad mean most of the scientific functions you could ask for are available, along with the ability to record and replay upto 10 macros. There are also ten memory slots, all of which go into the chip’s onboard flash so are non-volatile during a battery swap. (Of which many will be necessary, since this appears to run on a single coin cell.)
If you get bored of wrist-mounted calculating, you could always repurpose this microcontroller to play MOD files on your wrist. Some people couldn’t imagine ever getting bored by a wrist-mounted calculator, and just for them we have this teardown of a beautiful 1975 model and a this article on the history of the calculator watch.
Thanks to [James Bowman] for the tip.
Centinaia di robot in marcia: la Cina presenta la nuova generazione umanoide
UBTECH Robotics, società con base a Shenzhen, ha mostrato pubblicamente la sua nuova ondata di robot umanoidi, consegnandone alcune centinaia in un’unica operazione.
L’annuncio è stato accompagnato da un video che ha rapidamente attirato l’attenzione dei social. Le riprese, realizzate all’interno di un grande magazzino completamente bianco, immortalano lunghi schieramenti di robot impegnati in movimenti sincronizzati: estraggono e reinseriscono la batteria posta sulla schiena, si siedono insieme e poi avanzano in fila verso i camion incaricati del trasporto.
Secondo l’azienda, si tratta della prima consegna su larga scala della seconda generazione dei propri modelli umanoidi, un passaggio considerato strategico per la produzione industriale. La clip si chiude con la parola “Forward”, quasi un motto che accompagna il debutto operativo dei nuovi robot.
La diffusione del filmato ha generato reazioni di segno opposto: c’è chi lo ha accolto con meraviglia e chi, invece, ha espresso una certa inquietudine. Alcuni utenti hanno persino messo in dubbio l’autenticità dell’opera, ipotizzando che potesse trattarsi di una sequenza creata digitalmente, complice l’atmosfera che ricorda le scenografie dei film di fantascienza.
I robot umanoidi sono pensati per imitare postura, movimento e operatività degli esseri umani, così da poter lavorare in ambienti condivisi. Il loro percorso parte da lontano: nel 1973 l’Università di Waseda, in Giappone, presentò Wabot-1, considerato il primo umanoide completo mai costruito. Da allora, la ricerca non si è fermata e oggi la Cina è fra i Paesi che spingono maggiormente sulla robotica avanzata.
Accanto all’interesse tecnologico, riaffiorano però timori legati al futuro del lavoro. La possibilità che macchine di questo tipo possano sostituire ruoli ripetitivi o faticosi alimenta dubbi sulle ricadute economiche per chi occupa mansioni meno qualificate, che rischiano di essere le più esposte alla competizione con robot sempre attivi e privi di costi salariali.
L’iniziativa di UBTECH si inserisce inoltre nel già teso confronto tecnologico tra Cina e Stati Uniti. La rapida crescita del settore robotico cinese viene seguita con attenzione da Washington, che da anni contende a Pechino la leadership in campi come semiconduttori, intelligenza artificiale e automazione. Resta ora da capire quale sarà la risposta statunitense di fronte a un passo avanti considerato rilevante in un settore strategico per entrambe le potenze.
L'articolo Centinaia di robot in marcia: la Cina presenta la nuova generazione umanoide proviene da Red Hot Cyber.
Hacking multi-thread: gli USA pionieri sulle operazioni automatizzate con gli Agent AI
Negli ultimi mesi, negli Stati Uniti si è sviluppata una nuova infrastruttura per le operazioni informatiche , in cui gli agenti automatizzati stanno diventando non solo uno strumento di supporto, ma un vero e proprio partecipante alle operazioni offensive.
In un contesto di competizione con la Cina delle capacità dei sistemi autonomi, Washington sta investendo molto nella ricerca che amplia la portata degli attacchi e riduce i tempi di preparazione, orientandosi verso il concetto di hacking multi-thread basato sull’intelligenza artificiale. Uno dei centri di questa iniziativa è la poco conosciuta azienda Twenty, con sede ad Arlington, che ha ricevuto diversi contratti dalle agenzie militari statunitensi.
L’azienda, che non è ancora uscita formalmente dalla modalità stealth, ha firmato un contratto con il Cyber Command statunitense del valore massimo di 12,6 milioni di dollari. Ha inoltre ricevuto un contratto di ricerca separato con la Marina Militare per 240.000 dollari. Il fatto che una startup finanziata da venture capital riceva investimenti in tecnologie offensive la distingue dai tradizionali appaltatori che tipicamente operano in questo segmento. Inoltre, Twenty è finanziata da entità legate all’intelligence: tra gli investitori figurano In-Q-Tel, una società di venture capital fondata con il supporto della CIA, nonché fondi privati operanti nel mercato tecnologico ad alto rischio.
Il sito web di Twenty afferma che l’azienda crea strumenti di automazione che trasformano le procedure offensive ad alta intensità di lavoro da operazioni manuali a operazioni semplificate, eseguite simultaneamente contro un gran numero di obiettivi. A giudicare dal linguaggio, si tratta di sistemi che ricercano automaticamente i punti vulnerabili degli avversari, preparano scenari di penetrazione e lanciano catene di attacco con un intervento umano minimo. Questo approccio trasforma di fatto le operazioni offensive in una pipeline continua, elaborando centinaia di indirizzi e servizi simultaneamente.
Gli annunci di lavoro dell’azienda rivelano ulteriori dettagli. I requisiti per il responsabile della ricerca offensiva includono lo sviluppo di nuovi metodi per penetrare le reti nemiche, lo sviluppo di framework che descrivono le rotte di attacco e sistemi di automazione dell’hacking basati su modelli. Gli ingegneri ricercati da Twenty devono lavorare con strumenti per la gestione di più agenti di intelligenza artificiale, incluse soluzioni open source per il coordinamento di gruppi di assistenti autonomi. Altre posizioni si concentrano sullo sviluppo di personaggi digitali realistici che si impegneranno in operazioni di ingegneria sociale e nell’infiltrazione di comunità online e canali di comunicazione privati. Questo tipo di attività è tradizionalmente utilizzato dalle agenzie statali per ottenere l’accesso alle reti nemiche senza ricorrere direttamente all’hacking tecnico.
Il team di Twenty è composto da persone con una vasta esperienza nel settore militare e dell’intelligence statunitense. Il CEO dell’azienda ha prestato servizio nella Riserva della Marina e ha lavorato su prodotti di sicurezza presso un’importante azienda statunitense, entrando a far parte dell’azienda dopo aver acquisito una startup focalizzata sulla mappatura delle reti per la sicurezza nazionale. Il CTO si è concentrato sull’analisi dell’esposizione di rete e in precedenza ha prestato servizio nelle unità di intelligence dei segnali dell’esercito statunitense. Il responsabile dell’ingegneria ha trascorso oltre un decennio presso il Cyber Command e altre unità dell’esercito, mentre il responsabile degli affari governativi ha prestato servizio a Capitol Hill e nel team di transizione del Consiglio di sicurezza nazionale.
Gli Stati Uniti non sono l’unico Paese a utilizzare modelli per l’intelligence e le operazioni informatiche. Una recente ricerca di Anthropic ha scoperto che i gruppi cinesi utilizzano modelli per preparare attacchi, consentendo ad agenti autonomi di svolgere gran parte del lavoro di routine, dalla ricognizione delle infrastrutture ai piani di sfruttamento. Questi strumenti possono ridurre i tempi di preparazione di operazioni complesse e accelerare l’identificazione delle debolezze nelle reti avversarie.
Il Pentagono ha anche firmato accordi con OpenAI, Anthropic e xAI per un valore fino a 200 milioni di dollari ciascuno, ma i dettagli dei progetti non sono stati resi noti. Non ci sono informazioni sull’eventuale utilizzo degli sviluppi di queste aziende per missioni offensive. Dato il loro accesso a infrastrutture e modelli, questo rimane uno scenario probabile, soprattutto alla luce della crescente pressione esercitata dalla Cina.
Alla luce della startup in questione, vale la pena menzionare Two Six Technologies, che lavora da diversi anni a un sistema automatizzato per operazioni offensive chiamato IKE. Questo sistema consente a un modulo autonomo di decidere se lanciare un attacco quando la probabilità di successo è elevata. Questo progetto ha raccolto 190 milioni di dollari di finanziamenti, ma non vi è alcuna indicazione che sia in grado di eseguire operazioni parallele su centinaia di risorse con la stessa ampiezza dichiarata da Twenty.
L’uso di modelli in ambito difensivo è molto più diffuso. Ad esempio, l’azienda israeliana Tenzai adatta modelli di intelligenza artificiale per individuare vulnerabilità nei software aziendali. Le sue soluzioni simulano attacchi, ma non sono progettate per l’hacking vero e proprio, bensì per testare la resilienza dei sistemi dei clienti.
Lo sviluppo di sistemi offensivi automatizzati sta cambiando la struttura dei conflitti informatici. Con l’emergere di soluzioni progettate per un impatto massiccio e parallelo sulle infrastrutture avversarie, le azioni offensive stanno diventando più rapide e diffuse.
A giudicare dai contratti in corso, gli Stati Uniti stanno cercando di ottenere un vantaggio significativo in questo settore. A tal fine, stanno utilizzando una combinazione di grandi aziende, società di venture capital, risorse di intelligence e giovani aziende per creare architetture progettate per l’automazione multi-thread.
L'articolo Hacking multi-thread: gli USA pionieri sulle operazioni automatizzate con gli Agent AI proviene da Red Hot Cyber.
Prosegue la sistematica violazione del Media Freedom Act
@Giornalismo e disordine informativo
articolo21.org/2025/11/prosegu…
Come avevamo previsto le forze del centro destra all’Europarlamento hanno bloccato l’ispezione in Italia per verificare lo stato della libertà di informazione. Nulla accade per caso, di fronte alla
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The government also said "we don't have resources" to retain all footage and that plaintiffs could supply "endless hard drives that we could save things to."
The government also said "we donx27;t have resources" to retain all footage and that plaintiffs could supply "endless hard drives that we could save things to."#ICE
ICE Says Critical Evidence In Abuse Case Was Lost In 'System Crash' a Day After It Was Sued
The federal government claims that the day after it was sued for allegedly abusing detainees at an ICE detention center, a “system crash” deleted nearly two weeks of surveillance footage from inside the facility.People detained at ICE’s Broadview Detention Center in suburban Chicago sued the government on October 30; according to their lawyers and the government, nearly two weeks of footage that could show how they were treated was lost in a “system crash” that happened on October 31.
“The government has said that the data for that period was lost in a system crash apparently on the day after the lawsuit was filed,” Alec Solotorovsky, one of the lawyers representing people detained at the facility, said in a hearing about the footage on Thursday that 404 Media attended via phone. “That period we think is going to be critical […] because that’s the period right before the lawsuit was filed.”
Earlier this week, we reported on the fact that the footage, from October 20 to October 30, had been “irretrievably destroyed.” At a hearing Thursday, we learned more about what was lost and the apparent circumstances of the deletion. According to lawyers representing people detained at the facility, it is unclear whether the government is even trying to recover the footage; government lawyers, meanwhile, said “we don’t have the resources” to continue preserving surveillance footage from the facility and suggested that immigrants detained at the facility (or their lawyers) could provide “endless hard drives where we could save the information, that might be one solution.”
It should be noted that ICE and Border Patrol agents continued to be paid during the government shutdown, that Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” provided $170 billion in funding for immigration enforcement and border protection, which included tens of billions of dollars in funding for detention centers.
People detained at the facility are suing the government over alleged horrific treatment and living conditions at the detention center, which has become a site of mass protest against the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign.
Solotorovsky said that the footage the government has offered is from between September 28 and October 19, and from between October 31 and November 7. Government lawyers have said they are prepared to provide footage from five cameras from those time periods; Solotorovsky said the plaintiffs’ attorneys believe there are 63 surveillance cameras total at the facility. He added that over the last few weeks the plaintiffs’ legal team has been trying to work with the government to figure out if the footage can be recovered but that it is unclear who is doing this work on the government’s side. He said they were referred to a company called Five by Five Management, “that appears to be based out of a house,” has supposedly been retained by the government.
“We tried to engage with the government through our IT specialist, and we hired a video forensic specialist,” Solotorovsky said. He added that the government specialist they spoke to “didn’t really know anything beyond the basic specifications of the system. He wasn’t able to answer any questions about preservation or attempts to recover the data.” He said that the government eventually put him in touch with “a person who ostensibly was involved in those events [attempting to recover the data], and it was kind of a no-name LLC called Five by Five Management that appears to be based out of a house in Carol Stream. We were told they were on site and involved with the system when the October 20 to 30 data was lost, but nobody has told us that Five By Five Management or anyone else has been trying to recover the data, and also very importantly things like system logs, administrator logs, event logs, data in the system that may show changes to settings or configurations or deletion events or people accessing the system at important times.”
Five by Five Management could not be reached for comment.
Solotorovsky said those logs are going to be critical for “determining whether the loss was intentional. We’re deeply concerned that nobody is trying to recover the data, and nobody is trying to preserve the data that we’re going to need for this case going forward.”
Jana Brady, an assistant US attorney representing the Department of Homeland Security in the case, did not have much information about what had happened to the footage, and said she was trying to get in touch with contractors the government had hired. She also said the government should not be forced to retain surveillance footage from every camera at the facility and that the “we [the federal government] don’t have the resources to save all of the video footage.”
“We need to keep in mind proportionality. It took a huge effort to download and save and produce the video footage that we are producing and to say that we have to produce and preserve video footage indefinitely for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, indefinitely, which is what they’re asking, we don’t have the resources to do that,” Brady said. “we don't have the resources to save all of the video footage 24/7 for 65 cameras for basically the end of time.”
She added that the government would be amenable to saving all footage if the plaintiffs “have endless hard drives that we could save things to, because again we don’t have the resources to do what the court is ordering us to do. But if they have endless hard drives where we could save the information, that might be one solution.”
Magistrate Judge Laura McNally said they aren’t being “preserved from now until the end of time, they’re being preserved for now,” and said “I’m guessing the federal government has more resources than the plaintiffs here and, I’ll just leave it at that.”
When McNally asked if the footage was gone and not recoverable, Brady said “that’s what I’ve been told.”
“I’ve asked for the name and phone number for the person that is most knowledgeable from the vendor [attempting to recover] the footage, and if I need to depose them to confirm this, I can do this,” she said. “But I have been told that it’s not recoverable, that the system crashed.”
Plaintiffs in the case say they are being held in “inhumane” conditions. The complaint describes a facility where detainees are “confined at Broadview inside overcrowded holding cells containing dozens of people at a time. People are forced to attempt to sleep for days or sometimes weeks on plastic chairs or on the filthy concrete floor. They are denied sufficient food and water […] the temperatures are extreme and uncomfortable […] the physical conditions are filthy, with poor sanitation, clogged toilets, and blood, human fluids, and insects in the sinks and the floor […] federal officers who patrol Broadview under Defendants’ authority are abusive and cruel. Putative class members are routinely degraded, mistreated, and humiliated by these officers.”
Fixing a Milltronics ML15 CNC Lathe Despite the Manufacturer’s Best Efforts
When you’re like [Wes] from Watch Wes Work fame, you don’t have a CNC machine hoarding issue, you just have a healthy interest in going down CNC machine repair rabbit holes. Such too was the case with a recently acquired 2001 Milltronics ML15 lathe, that at first glance appeared to be in pristine condition. Yet despite – or because of – living a cushy life at a college’s workshop, it had a number of serious issues, with a busted Z-axis drive board being the first to be tackled.
The identical servo control board next to it worked fine, so it had to be an issue on the board itself. A quick test showed that the H-bridge IGBTs had suffered the typical fate that IGBTs suffer, violently taking out another IC along with them. Enjoyably, this board by one Glentek Inc. did the rebranding thing of components like said IGBTs, which made tracking down suitable replacements an utter pain that was eased only by the desperate communications on forums which provided some clues. Of course, desoldering and testing one of the good IGBTs on the second board showed the exact type of IGBT to get.
After replacing said IGBTs, as well as an optocoupler and other bits and pieces, the servo board was good as new. Next, the CNC lathe also had a busted optical encoder, an unusable tool post and a number of other smaller and larger issues that required addressing. Along the way the term ‘pin-to-pin compatible’ for a replacement driver IC was also found to mean that you still have to read the full datasheet.
Of the whole ordeal, the Glentek servo board definitely caused the most trouble, with the manufacturer providing incomplete schematics, rebranding parts to make generic replacements very hard to find and overall just going for a design that’s interesting but hard to diagnose and fix. To help out anyone else who got cursed with a Glentek servo board like this, [Wes] has made the board files and related info available in a GitHub repository.
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#Zelensky e l'incubo della pace
Zelensky e l’incubo della pace
Uno stato di panico autentico è calato sui governi europei e sul regime di Zelensky nelle scorse ore a seguito della circolazione sulla stampa occidentale di un possibile “piano di pace” in 28 punti, concordato tra Washington e Mosca, per mettere fin…www.altrenotizie.org
Il nuovo video di Pasta Grannies: youtube.com/shorts/2_v1gfevI-E
@Cucina e ricette
(HASHTAG)
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So Long, Firefox, Part One
It’s likely that Hackaday readers have among them a greater than average number of people who can name one special thing they did on September 23rd, 2002. On that day a new web browser was released, Phoenix version 0.1, and it was a lightweight browser-only derivative of the hugely bloated Mozilla suite. Renamed a few times to become Firefox, it rose to challenge the once-mighty Microsoft Internet Explorer, only to in turn be overtaken by Google’s Chrome.
Now in 2025 it’s a minority browser with an estimated market share just over 2%, and it’s safe to say that Mozilla’s take on AI and the use of advertising data has put them at odds with many of us who’ve kept the faith since that September day 23 years ago. Over the last few months I’ve been actively chasing alternatives, and it’s with sadness that in November 2025, I can finally say I’m Firefox-free.
Just What Went Wrong?
It was perhaps inevitable that Firefox would lose market share when faced with a challenger from a player with the economic muscle of Google. Chrome is everywhere, it’s the default browser in Android and ChromeOS, and when stacked up against the Internet Explorer of fifteen years or so ago it’s not difficult to see why it made for an easy switch. Chrome is good, it’s fast and responsive, it’s friendly, and the majority of end users either don’t care or don’t know enough to care that it’s Google’s way in to your data. When it first appeared, they still had the “Don’t be evil” aura to them, even if perhaps behind the warm and fuzzy feeling it had already worn away in the company itself.
If Firefox were destined to become a minority player then it could still be a successful one; after all, 2% of the global browser market still represents a huge number of users whose referrals to search engines return a decent income. But the key to being a success in any business is to know your customers, and sitting in front of this particular screen it’s difficult to escape the conclusion that Mozilla have lost touch with theirs. To understand this it’s necessary for all of us to look in the mirror and think for a moment about who uses Firefox.
Somewhere, A Group Of Users Are Being Ignored
A quick straw poll in my hackerspace revealed a majority of Firefox users, while the same straw poll among another group of my non-hackerspace friends revealed none. The former used Firefox because of open-source vibes, while the latter used Edge or Safari because it came with their computer, or Chrome on their phone and on their desktop because of Google services. Hackaday is not a global polling organisation, but we think it’s likely that the same trend would reveal itself more widely. If you’re in the technology space you might use Firefox, but if you aren’t you may not even have heard of it in 2025. It’s difficult to see that changing any time soon, to imagine some killer feature that would make those Chrome, Safari, and Edge users care enough to switch to Firefox.
To service and retain this loyal userbase then, you might imagine that Mozilla would address their needs and concerns with what made Phoenix a great first version back in 2002. A lightweight and versatile standards-compliant and open-source web browser with acceptable privacy standards, and without any other non-browser features attached to it. Just a browser, only a browser, and above all, a fast browser.
Instead, Mozilla appear to be following a course calculated to alarm rather than retain these users. Making themselves an AI-focused organisation, neglecting their once-unbeatable developer network, and trying to sneak data gathering into their products. They appear now to think of themselves as a fad-driven Valley startup rather than the custodians of a valuable open-source package, and unsurprisingly this is concerning to those of us who know something about what a browser does behind the scenes.
Why Is This Important?
It is likely that I am preaching to the choir here, but it’s important that there be a plurality of browsers in the world. And by that I mean not just a plurality of front-ends, but a plurality of browser engines. One of the reasons Phoenix appeared all those years ago was to challenge the dominance of Microsoft Internet Explorer, the tool by which the Redmond software company were trying to shape the online world to their tune. If you remember the browser wars of that era, you’ll have tales of incompatibilities seemingly baked in on purpose to break the chances of an open Web, and we were all poorer for it. Writing Javascript with a range of sections to deal with the quirks of different browser families is now largely a thing of the past, and for that you have the people who stuck with Firefox in the 2000s to thank.
The fear is that here in 2025 we are in an analogous situation to the early 2000s, with Google replacing Microsoft. Such is the dominance of Google Chrome and the WebKit-derived Blink engine which powers it, that in effect, Google have immense power to shape the Web just as Microsoft did back in the day. Do you trust them to live up to their now-retired mission statement and not be evil? We can’t say we do. Thus Firefox’s Gecko browser engine is of crucial importance, representing as it does the only any-way serious challenger to Blink and WebKit’s near-monopoly. That it is now tied to a Mozilla leadership treating it in so cavalier a manner does not bode well for the future of the Web.
So I’ve set out my stand here, that after twenty-three years, I’m ready to abandon Firefox. It’s not a decision that has been easy, because it’s important for all of us that there be a plurality of browsers, but such is the direction being taken by Mozilla that I am not anxious to sit idly by and constantly keep an eye out for new hidden privacy and AI features to turn off with obscure checkboxes. In the following piece I’ll take a look at my hunt for alternatives, and you may be surprised by the one I eventually picked.
freezonemagazine.com/news/in-a…
“Il CBGB era un posto per gente sporca.” – Jimmy Destri dei Blondie “Dopo, sono partita e ho attraversato la città per andare al CBGB, la roccaforte dell’ignoto, per stare con la mia gente.” – Patti Smith Nel dicembre 1973 Hilly Kristal cambiò il nome del suo bar di musica roots da Hilly’s on the […]
Incontro "Violenza di genere", 26 novembre Sesto Fiorentino (FI)
Con l'RSU FIOM-CGIL della mia azienda abbiamo organizzato un evento che esce un po' dalle tematiche "classiche" di cui si occupa una RSU.
L'incontro in questione si terrà mercoledì 26 novembre, alle 9:00 (mattina), alla Casa del Popolo di Querceto (Sesto Fiorentino, FI) e si intitola "Violenza di genere - Ragioni culturali e psicologiche, effetti sulle vittime, il supporto offerto dai servizi territoriali".
E' stato organizzato in collaborazione con il Centro Antiviolenza Artemisia di Firenze e vedrà la partecipazione di una delle loro psicologhe, la dott.ssa Eleonora Bartoli.
L’associazione Artemisia illustrerà le ragioni socio-culturali della violenza di genere, gli effetti sulle vittime, cercherà di fornire degli strumenti per riconoscere questo tipo di violenza e i servizi presenti sul territorio per il sostegno delle donne in quanto vittime e per gli uomini in quanto attori di tale violenza.
Se condividete magari riusciamo a raggiungere qualche persona in più.
#ViolenzaDiGenere
#GiornataInternazionaleControlaViolenzasulleDonne
#25novembre #25novembre2025
#FIOM
#CGIL
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Digitaler Omnibus: Wie Medien aus Angst vor Komplexität eine Debatte verzerren
netzpolitik.org/2025/digitaler…
Strage di Ustica, no all’archiviazione dell’inchiesta. Il 24 novembre conferenza stampa alla Camera
@Giornalismo e disordine informativo
articolo21.org/2025/11/strage-…
Il Paese merita Verità e Giustizia! Per questo Daria Bonfietti dell’Associazione
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Rare Filament Makes Weird Benchies
[Zack], in addition to being a snappy dresser, has a thing for strange 3D printing filament. How strange? Well, in a recent video, he looks at filaments that require 445 C. Even the build plate has to be super hot. He also looks at filament that seems like iron, one that makes you think it is rubber, and a bunch of others.
As you might expect, he’s not using a conventional 3D printer. Although you might be able to get your more conventional printer to handle some of these, especially with some hacking. There is filament with carbon fiber, glass fiber, and more exotic add-ons.
Most of the filaments need special code to get everything working. While you might think you can’t print these engineering filaments, it stands to reason that hobby-grade printers are going to get better over time (as they already have). If the day is coming when folks will be able to print any of these on their out-of-the-box printer, we might as well start researching them now.
If you fancy a drinking game, have a shot every time he changes shots and a double when the Hackaday Prize T-shirt shows up.
youtube.com/embed/J8PZWkjt65Q?…
FAQ zum „Digitalen Omnibus“: Was plant die EU-Kommission bei KI und Datenschutz?
netzpolitik.org/2025/faq-zum-d…
C’era una volta la scuola di partito, ora la politica diventa casting
Lontana dalle sezioni e dai congressi di un tempo, una rivoluzione silenziosa attraversa la politica italiana del futuro. A decidere il destino dei giovani militanti non sono più le classiche…
L'articolo C’era una volta la scuola di partito, ora la politica diventa casting su Lumsanews.
Per due giorni Gualdo Tadino diventa “capitale” della libertà di informazione
@Giornalismo e disordine informativo
articolo21.org/2025/11/per-due…
Domani e sabato la grande comunità di Articolo 21 si ritrova a Gualdo Tadino che si trasforma in una delle grandi capitali europee della libertà
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Leoni (FI): “Altro che apatia: i giovani ci mettono il portafoglio per fare politica”
[quote]Negli ultimi mesi i partiti hanno rilanciato eventi e scuole di formazione politica rivolti ai più giovani. I dati che emergono dall’indagine Ipsos di maggio – secondo cui il 76,4%…
L'articolo Leoni (FI): “Altro che apatia: i giovani ci mettono il portafoglio per fare
Attacco ransomware a Poltronesofà: il rischio è l’esposizione di dati personali
@Informatica (Italy e non Italy 😁)
Al momento non c'è alcuna rivendicazione, ma l'attacco ransomware subito da Poltronesofà rappresenta un caso emblematico della minaccia persistente che colpisce il tessuto imprenditoriale italiano. Ecco cosa rischiano le persone coinvolte
L'articolo Attacco
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È uscito il nuovo numero di The Post Internazionale. Da oggi potete acquistare la copia digitale
@Politica interna, europea e internazionale
È uscito il nuovo numero di The Post Internazionale. Il magazine, disponibile già da ora nella versione digitale sulla nostra App, e da domani, venerdì 21 novembre, in tutte le edicole, propone ogni due settimane inchieste e approfondimenti sugli affari e il potere in
Politica interna, europea e internazionale reshared this.
Il Consiglio Supremo di Difesa Italiano discute sulla minacce ibride e digitali in Italia e Europa
Il Consiglio Supremo di Difesa, si è riunito recentemente al Quirinale sotto la guida del Presidente Sergio Mattarella, ha posto al centro della discussione l’evoluzione delle minacce ibride e digitali che investono l’Italia e l’Europa.
La guerra in Ucraina resta lo scenario da cui originano molte delle tensioni che ricadono anche sul dominio cyber, con Mosca che continua a utilizzare strumenti tecnologici e informativi come leve strategiche per destabilizzare i Paesi occidentali.
Una parte rilevante della riunione è stata dedicata all’impiego sempre più aggressivo dei droni da parte della Russia, non solo in Ucraina ma anche con violazioni dello spazio aereo di Paesi NATO. Sebbene si tratti di operazioni prettamente militari, il Consiglio ha sottolineato come tali tecniche riflettano un salto di qualità nell’integrazione tra mezzi fisici e digitali, confermando la necessità di potenziare le capacità europee di innovazione e difesa tecnologica, in linea con quanto previsto dal Libro Bianco per la Difesa 2030.
Il tema centrale sul fronte cyber è stato però l’aumento della minaccia ibrida. Il Consiglio ha riconosciuto che la Russia – insieme ad altri attori ostili – sta intensificando attività che spaziano dalla disinformazione alle interferenze nei processi democratici, sfruttando la velocità e l’ubiquità delle tecnologie digitali, oltre alle potenzialità dell’intelligenza artificiale per manipolare lo spazio cognitivo e costruire narrazioni polarizzanti.
Sempre più frequenti sono anche le operazioni cyber dirette contro infrastrutture critiche italiane ed europee. Ospedali, reti energetiche, sistemi finanziari e piattaforme logistiche rientrano tra gli obiettivi più vulnerabili.
L’obiettivo di questi attacchi è creare interruzioni, generare sfiducia nelle istituzioni e colpire la stabilità economica e sociale. Per questo, il Consiglio ha ribadito l’urgenza di rafforzare i meccanismi di difesa e coordinamento nazionale, in continuità con le iniziative già intraprese a livello UE e NATO.
Accanto alle minacce digitali, il Consiglio ha evidenziato come nuovi domini – lo spazio e il sottosuolo marino – stiano rapidamente diventando aree chiave di competizione strategica. La protezione dei cavi sottomarini, dei satelliti e delle infrastrutture spaziali è ormai parte integrante della sicurezza cyber nazionale, poiché un attacco in questi ambiti avrebbe ricadute dirette sulle comunicazioni digitali e sui servizi essenziali.
In chiusura, oltre ai rischi cyber e ibridi, il Consiglio ha espresso forte preoccupazione per le tensioni nei principali scenari di crisi globali – Ucraina, Medio Oriente, Libano, Sahel e Balcani – ricordando che ogni instabilità regionale si ripercuote anche sulla sicurezza informatica europea.
Il messaggio finale è stato chiaro: l’Italia deve continuare a investire nella resilienza digitale e nella cooperazione internazionale, mantenendo alta la vigilanza su tutte le dimensioni della sicurezza contemporanea.
L'articolo Il Consiglio Supremo di Difesa Italiano discute sulla minacce ibride e digitali in Italia e Europa proviene da Red Hot Cyber.
Today, 6pm: The Criminalization of Self-Defense Talk
The Black Response and Impact Boston will present The Criminalization of Self-Defense, a community education event on Thursday, November 20, from 6:00 to 8:30 PM at The Community Art Center in Cambridge, MA. We are proud to be one of the sponsors of it. Please register in advance.
It is a free and public gathering that will explore how self-defense is criminalized, particularly for Black, Brown, and marginalized survivors, and how communities can reclaim safety through resistance, advocacy, and care.
Featured Speakers will be:
- Prof. Alisa Bierria – Survived and Punished / UCLA
- Meg Stone – Impact Boston
- Kishana Smith-Osei – Massachusetts Women of Color Network
- Lea Kayali – Palestinian Youth Movement Boston
The Community Art Center is at 119 Windsor Street, Cambridge. It is a nine minute walk from Central Square and the MBTA Red Line stop there.
FREE food and childcare will be provided. TBR will collect food donations for the network of free CommunityFridges. Please bring nonperishable food items to contribute. More details are available.
OnlyFans CEO Keily Blair announced on LinkedIn that the platform partnered with Checkr to "prevent people who have a criminal conviction which may impact on our community's safety from signing up as a Creator on OnlyFans."
OnlyFans CEO Keily Blair announced on LinkedIn that the platform partnered with Checkr to "prevent people who have a criminal conviction which may impact on our communityx27;s safety from signing up as a Creator on OnlyFans."#onlyfans #porn #backgroundchecks
OnlyFans Will Start Checking Criminal Records. Creators Say That's a Terrible Idea
OnlyFans will start running background checks on people signing up as content creators, the platform’s CEO recently announced.As reported by adult industry news outlet XBIZ, OnlyFans CEO Keily Blair announced the partnership in a LinkedIn post. Blair doesn’t say in the post when the checks will be implemented, whether all types of criminal convictions will bar creators from signing up, if existing creators will be checked as well, or what countries’ criminal records will be checked.
OnlyFans did not respond to 404 Media's request for comment.
“I am very proud to add our partnership with Checkr Trust to our onboarding process in the US,” Blair wrote. “Checkr, Inc. helps OnlyFans to prevent people who have a criminal conviction which may impact on our community's safety from signing up as a Creator on OnlyFans. It’s collaborations like this that make the real difference behind the scenes and keep OnlyFans a space where creators and fans feel secure and empowered.”
Many OnlyFans creators turned to the platform, and to online sex work more generally, when they’re not able to obtain employment at traditional workplaces. Some sex workers doing in-person work turned to online sex work as a way to make ends meet—especially after the passage of the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act in 2018 made it much more difficult to screen clients for escorting. And in-person sex work is still criminalized in the U.S. and many other countries.
“Criminal background checks will not stop potential predators from using the platform (OF), it will only harm individuals who are already at higher risk. Sex work has always had a low barrier to entry, making it the most accessible career for people from all walks of life,” performer GoAskAlex, who’s on OnlyFans and other platforms, told me in an email. “Removing creators with criminal/arrest records will only push more vulnerable people (overwhelmingly, women) to street based/survival sex work. Adding more barriers to what is arguably the safest form of sex work (online sex work) will push sex industry workers to less and less safe options.”
Jessica Starling, who also creates adult content on OnlyFans, told me in a call that their first thought was that if someone using OnlyFans has a prostitution charge, they might not be able to use the platform. “If they're trying to transition to online work, they won’t be able to do that anymore,” they said. “And the second thing I thought was that it's just invasive and overreaching... And then I looked up the company, and I'm like, ‘Oh, wow, this is really bad.’”
Checkr is reportedly used by Uber, Instacart, Shipt, Postmates, and Lyft, and lists many more companies like Dominos and Doordash on its site as clients. The company has been sued hundreds of times for violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act or other consumer credit complaints. The Fair Credit Reporting Act says that companies providing information to consumer reporting agencies are legally obligated to investigate disputed information. And a lot of people dispute the information Checkr and Inflection provide on them, claiming mixed-up names, acquittals, and decades-old misdemeanors or traffic tickets prevented them from accessing platforms that use background checking services.
Checkr regularly acquires other background checking and age verification companies, and acquired a background check company called Inflection in 2022. At the time, I found more than a dozen lawsuits against Inflection alone in a three year span, many of them from people who found out about the allegedly inaccurate reports Inflection kept about them after being banned from Airbnb after the company claimed they failed checks.
How OnlyFans Piracy Is Ruining the Internet for Everyone
Innocent sites are being delisted from Google because of copyright takedown requests against rampant OnlyFans piracy.404 MediaEmanuel Maiberg
“Sex workers face discrimination when leaving the sex trade, especially those who have been face-out and are identifiable in the online world. Facial recognition technology has advanced to a point where just about anyone can ascertain your identity from a single picture,” Alex said. “Leaving the online sex trade is not as easy as it once was, and anything you've done online will follow you for a lifetime. Creators who are forced to leave the platform will find that safe and stable alternatives are far and few between.”Last month, Pornhub announced that it would start performing background checks on existing content partners—which primarily include studios—next year. "To further protect our creators and users, all new applicants must now complete a criminal background check during onboarding," the platform announced in a newsletter to partners, as reported by AVN.
Alex said she believes background checks in the porn industry could be beneficial, under very specific circumstances. “I do not think that someone with egregious history of sexual violence should be allowed to work in the sex trade in any capacity—similarly, a person convicted of hurting children should be not able to work with children—so if the criminal record checks were searching specifically for sex based offences I could see the benefit, but that doesn't appear to be the case (to my knowledge). What's to stop OnlyFans from deactivating someone's account due to a shoplifting offense?” she said. “I'd like to know more about what they're searching for with these background checks.”
Even with third-party companies like Checkr doing the work, as is the case with third-party age verification that’s swept the U.S. and targeted the porn industry, increased data means increased risk of it being leaked or hacked. Last year, a background check company called National Public Data claimed it was breached by hackers who got the confidential data of 2.9 billion people. The unencrypted data was then sold on the dark web.
Pornhub Is Now Blocked In Almost All of the U.S. South
As of today, three more states join the list of 17 that can’t access Pornhub because of age verification laws.404 MediaSamantha Cole
“It’s dangerous for anyone, but it's especially dangerous for us [adult creators] because we're more vulnerable anyway. Especially when you're online, you're hypervisible,” Starling said. “It doesn't protect anyone except OnlyFans themselves, the company.”OnlyFans became the household name in independent porn because of the work of its adult content creators. Starling mentioned that because the platform has dominated the market, it’s difficult to just go to another platform if creators don’t want to be subjected to background checks. “We're put in a position where we have very limited power," they said. "So when a platform decides to do something like this, we’re kind of screwed, right?”
Earlier this year, OnlyFans owner Fenix International Ltd reportedly entered talks to sell the company to an investor group at a valuation of around $8 billion.
Pornhub Is Now Blocked In Almost All of the U.S. South
As of today, three more states join the list of 17 that can't access Pornhub because of age verification laws.Samantha Cole (404 Media)
🗓️ Fino al 1° dicembre è possibile partecipare alla consultazione pubblica sull’impatto delle norme sugli #ITSAcademy.
Compila il questionario online su ➡️ partecipa.gov.it/processes/ITS…
Ministero dell'Istruzione
🗓️ Fino al 1° dicembre è possibile partecipare alla consultazione pubblica sull’impatto delle norme sugli #ITSAcademy. Compila il questionario online su ➡️ https://partecipa.gov.it/processes/ITS-AcademyTelegram
Cinema e missione: mons. Viganò (Mac), “apostolic cinema” è una nuova categoria interpretativa “che forma, educa, trasmette, persuade” - AgenSIR
“Il volume è frutto di un lavoro di ricerca e di raccordo culturale che mi permetto di definire come pionieristico.Redazione (AgenSIR)
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