[Project Farm] has a video in which a wide variety of AA cells are analyzed and compared in terms of capacity, internal resistance, ability to deliver voltage under load, and ability to perform in sub-freezing temperatures. Alkaline, lithium, and even some mature rechargeable cells with a couple thousand cycles under their belt were all compared. There are a few interesting results that will can help you get the most from your money the next time you’re battery shopping.

The video embedded below demonstrates a set of tests that we recommend you check out, but the short version is that more expensive (non-rechargeable) lithium cells outperform their alkaline peers, especially when it comes to overall longevity, ability to perform under high-drain conditions, and low temperatures. Lithium cells also cost more, but they’re the right choice for some applications.
Some brands performed better and others worse, but outside of a couple stinkers most were more or less comparable. Price however, was not.
As for how different brands stack up against one another, many of them are more or less in the same ballpark when it comes to performance. Certainly there are better and worse performers, but outside of a couple of stinkers the rest measure up reasonably well. Another interesting finding was that among rechargeable cells that were all several years (and roughly 2,200 charge-discharge cycles) old, a good number of them still performed like new.

Probably the single most striking difference among the different cells is cost — and we’re not just talking about whether lithium versus alkaline AAs are more cost-effective in the long run. Some brands simply cost twice as much (or more!) than others with comparable performance. If you’re in a hurry, jump to [Project Farm] presenting the final ranked results at 19:45 in.

Relying on brand recognition may save you from buying complete junk, but it’s clearly not the most cost-effective way to go about buying batteries. These findings are similar to an earlier effort at wide-scale battery testing which also determined that factoring in price-per-cell was too significant to ignore.

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According to [Joanna Goodrich] in IEEE Spectrum, prior to World War II, soldiers who wanted to find land mines, simply poked at the ground with pointed sticks or bayonets. As you might expect, this wasn’t very safe or reliable. In 1941, a Polish signals officer, [Józef Stanislaw Kosacki], escaped to Britain and created an effective portable mine detector.

[Kosaci] was an electrical engineer trained at the Warsaw University of Technology. He had worked as a manager for the Polish National Telecommunication Institute. In 1937, the government tasked him with developing a machine that could detect unexploded grenades and shells. The machine was never deployed.

When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, [Kosacki] returned to military service (he had done a year of compulsory service earlier). He was captured and kept in a prison camp in Hungary. But he managed to escape in late 1939 and joined the Polish Army Corps in Britain, teaching Morse code to soldiers.

Britain buried landmines along their coastline to thwart any invasion. Unfortunately, they failed to notify allied forces about it and several Polish soldiers were killed. In response, the British Army set a challenge to develop a mine detector and, as a test, the device had to locate some coins on a beach.

There were seven devices entered, and [Kosacki’s] won. As a military secret, there isn’t much detail, but it sounds like it was the (now) usual BFO metal detector affair with two coils at the end of a bamboo pool. With the tech of the day, the whole affair came in at around 30 pounds. We’d bet a lot of that was in batteries.

By 1942 during the second battle of El Alamein, the new detectors allowed mine clearing operations to happen twice as fast as before. Our engineer didn’t get much recognition. Just a letter from King George. Part of that was due to fear that his family in Poland would suffer.

While land mines aren’t as common for most people as FM radios, we love to meet inventors. Even when it isn’t a very happy story.

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You never know when inspiration is going to strike, and for [Ekaggrat Singh Kalsi], it struck while he was playing with one of his daughter’s hair ties. The result is a clock called “Bezicron” and it’s a fascinating study in mechanical ingenuity.

The hair ties in question are simple objects, just a loose polymer coil spring formed into a loop that can be wrapped around ponytails and the like. In Bezicron, though, each digit is formed by one of these loops fixed to the ends of five pairs of arms. Each pair moves horizontally thanks to a cam rotating between them, changing the spacing between them and moving the hair tie. This forms each loop into an approximation of each numeral, some a little more ragged than others but all quite readable. The cams move thanks to a geared stepper motor on the rightmost digit of the hours and minutes section of the clock, with a gear train carrying over to the left digit. In between is the colon, also made from springy things pulsing back and forth to indicate seconds. The video below shows the clock going through its serpentine motions.

For our money, the best part of this build is the cams. Coming up with the proper shape for those had to be incredibly tedious, although we suspect 3D printing and rapid iterative design were a big help here. Practice with cam design from his earlier Eptaora clock probably helped too.

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Thanks to [Hari Wiguna] for the tip.

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Google ha recentemente annunciato che a partire dal 16 febbraio 2025, le aziende che utilizzano i prodotti pubblicitari dell’azienda potranno utilizzare il rilevamento delle impronte digitali. Questa tecnologia consente di identificare il dispositivo dell’utente in base a dati software e hardware. L’autorità di regolamentazione britannica ICO ha espresso preoccupazione per questa decisione, poiché ritiene che il rilevamento delle impronte digitali limiti il ​​diritto alla privacy degli utenti.

Il rilevamento delle impronte digitali può sostituire la funzionalità dei cookie di terze parti utilizzati per tracciare le attività online degli utenti. Tuttavia, l’ICO sottolinea che ciò impedisce alle persone di scegliere come raccogliere e utilizzare i propri dati. Nel 2019, Google ha sostenuto che il rilevamento delle impronte digitali viola i diritti di scelta e di trasparenza. Ora la società ha cambiato posizione.

L’ICO ha pubblicato una bozza di linee guida sull’uso delle impronte digitali ai sensi della legislazione sulla protezione dei dati. Queste linee guida delineano requisiti come garantire la trasparenza, ottenere il consenso volontario, garantire un trattamento corretto dei dati e dare agli utenti il ​​controllo sui propri dati. Si prevede che una consultazione sulla bozza si aprirà il 20 dicembre in modo che le aziende possano fornire i loro commenti. Secondo l’ICO, soddisfare questi requisiti non sarà facile.

Le impronte digitali sono più difficili da controllare rispetto ai cookie. Anche se un utente cancella i dati del browser, il dispositivo potrebbe essere riconosciuto nuovamente, indebolendo le protezioni della privacy, anche per coloro che cercano attivamente di evitare il tracciamento.

L’ICO continua a collaborare con Google e si prepara a svelare la sua strategia per la protezione dei dati degli utenti all’inizio del prossimo anno. L’obiettivo è restituire alle persone il controllo su come le loro informazioni vengono utilizzate per la pubblicità personalizzata.

L'articolo Tracciamento Invisibile: La Nuova Mossa di Google Che Minaccia la Tua Privacy proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

For one-off projects, adding a few integrated circuits to a PCB is not too big of a deal. The price of transistors is extremely low thanks to Moore and his laws, so we’re fairly free to throw chips around like peanuts. But for extremely space-constrained projects, huge production runs, or for engineering challenges, every bit of PCB real estate counts. [g3gg0] falls into the latter group, and this project aims to remove the dedicated USB-PD module from a lighting project and instead bit-bang the protocol with the ESP32 already on the board.

The modern USB power delivery (PD) protocol isn’t quite as simple as older USB ports that simply present a 5V source to whatever plugs itself into the port. But with the added complexity we get a lot more capability including different voltages and greater power handling capabilities. The first step with the PD protocol is to communicate with a power source, which requires a 1.2V 600kHz signal. Just generating the signal is challenging enough, but the data encoding for USB requires level changes to encode bits rather than voltage levels directly. With that handled, the program can then move on to encoding packets and sending them out over the bus.

After everything is said and done, [g3gg0] has a piece of software that lets the ESP32 request voltages from a power supply, sniff and log PD communication, and inject commands with vendor defined messages (VDM), all without needing to use something like a CH224K chip which would normally offload the USB-PD tasks. For anyone looking to save PCB space for whatever reason, this could be a valuable starting point. To see some more capabilities of the protocol, check out this USB-PD power supply that can deliver 2 kW.

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Dear Friend of Press Freedom,

If you enjoy reading this newsletter, please support our work. Our impact in 2024 was made possible by supporters like you. If someone has forwarded you this newsletter, please subscribe here.

Covering the prison system

With all the talk about threats to U.S. journalists over the next four years, it’s easy to forget that nearly two million Americans are already living in a system rife with censorship, secrecy, and retaliation.

Despite its size and scope, the incarceration system is in many ways invisible. Its facilities operate outside the public eye and with less oversight than other governmental entities. And information about carceral institutions is closely guarded by corrections agencies that have a range of ways to restrict public access and block reporting efforts.

We published a two-part guide by journalist Daniel Moritz-Rabson on ways to navigate the challenges journalists face in covering incarceration facilities and incarcerated people. While the obstacles are daunting, we hope the guide serves as a reminder that facing these challenges is worthwhile.

TikTok isn’t the radio

In addition to making baseless national security arguments, people from opinion columnists to appellate judges have argued that banning TikTok is somehow consistent with existing governmental authority to regulate certain broadcasters.

Before today’s Supreme Court argument, Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) Senior Advisor Caitlin Vogus explained why they're wrong, both as a legal matter and a policy one, in Tech Policy Press.

“TikTok isn’t a radio station. If the Supreme Court treats it like one, it will open the floodgates to government control of other social media apps and the internet as a whole,” she wrote. Read the op-ed here.

Archivist can still fight secrecy

President-elect Donald Trump said this week he will replace the archivist of the United States, Colleen Shogan. Threatening to fire Shogan over the National Archives and Records Administration’s work (under a predecessor) to recover the records Trump wrongly took to Mar-a-Lago raises genuine concerns about retaliation and future compliance with the Presidential Records Act.

But the threat could have a silver lining if it prompts Shogan to spend her remaining time in the post being candid with the public about what NARA needs to survive. This will help supporters more effectively advocate for NARA during the next Congress. If NARA is undermined or neglected, expect even more overclassification from the federal government.

Read more about how Shogan can fight secrecy in The Classifieds, our new project dedicated to reforming overclassification and government secrecy.

What we’re reading

U.S. Press Freedom Tracker’s Stephanie Sugars on protests, police and the press (First Amendment Watch). Check out this interview with our U.S. Press Freedom Tracker Senior Reporter Stephanie Sugars about the Tracker’s annual arrest report and threats journalists — particularly those covering protests relating to the Israel-Gaza war — faced in 2024.

GOP senator reveals one condition that will get Tulsi Gabbard confirmed (Daily Beast). There are some legitimate reasons why Tulsi Gabbard is a controversial nominee for director of national intelligence. But her support for reforming surveillance programs used to spy on Americans shouldn’t be one of them. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for Gabbard to change her stance.

Over and out? Emergency medical crews denied NYPD radios in move that unions say endangers the public (amNY). Who could’ve guessed that encrypting NYPD radio wouldn’t go well? To be fair, we didn’t see the first responders part coming.

Meta to end fact-checking program in shift ahead of Trump term (The New York Times). More free expression and more news on social media is, of course, a good thing. But based on Meta’s track record and the kind of speech it appears to be prioritizing, this looks like a political move, not a principled one.

Why I’m quitting the Washington Post (Ann Telnaes, Substack). The editorial cartoonist explained why she left the paper after 15 years when one of her cartoons was killed: “We’re talking about news organizations that have public obligations and who are obliged to nurture a free press in a democracy. Owners of such press organizations are responsible for safeguarding that free press.”

Ohio puts police bodycam footage behind a paywall (The Intercept). Some better ways to reduce costs of producing police footage: Put video online proactively, hold police accountable for misconduct before the press starts probing, or maybe even hire better cops.

Check out our other newsletters

If you haven’t yet, subscribe to FPF’s other newsletters, including The Classifieds, our new newsletter on overclassification and more from Lauren Harper, our Daniel Ellsberg Chair on Government Secrecy.

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Medienmitteilung
Piratenpartei ergreift das Referendum gegen das E-ID-Gesetz

Das Gesetz für den digitalen Schweizerpass (E-ID-Gesetz) befördert die missbräuchliche Nutzung von sensiblen Personendaten: Es schützt ungenügend gegen die zunehmende Zahl von Cyberangriffen. Und es gibt die Daten der Bürgerinnen und Bürger an private Unternehmen preis, die sie mit Hilfe von KI analysieren und Profit daraus schlagen. Damit unterläuft das Gesetz die Privatsphäre der Menschen und gefährdet ihre demokratischen Freiheiten.

Wir ergreifen das Referendum gegen das E-ID-Gesetz, damit die notwendigen Schutzvorkehrungen getroffen werden.
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Presseanfragen an Jonas Sulzer / Kampagnenleitung / jonas.sulzer@piratenpartei.ch
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Webseite: E-ID-Gesetz-NEIN.ch

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