It is a well-known reality of rescuing certain older electronic devices that, at some point, you’re likely going to have to replace a busted capacitor. This is the stage [Kevin] is at in the 3rd installment in his saga of reviving a 50-year-old Military Tektronix oscilloscope.

[Kevin] recently discovered a failed capacitor in the power supply for this vintage analog scope. Having identified and removed the culprit, it was time to find a way to replace the faulty component with a modern equivalent. The original capacitor is out of fashion to the degree that a perfect replacement would be impractical and likely not desirable. This job would call for a bit of adaptation.

Starting with the recently desoldered pads on the power supply board as a template, [Kevin] walks us through his process of transferring his meticulously acquired measurements to KiCAD for the purpose of creating an adapter PCB. Once the original pads are mapped, he then draws in pads matching the leads of the new component, referencing the manufacturer’s schematic of the replacement part.

With everything drawn in place and design rule checks satisfied, it’s a quick turnaround from the PCB fabricator before this Tektronix scope moves one step closer to happy tracing again.

While the end product of this kludge is about as simple of a PCB as you might imagine, [Kevin’s] documentation is a thorough tutorial on the process for retrofitting components via adapter boards, covering some of the subtleties that you might miss if you’ve never been through it before.

youtube.com/embed/u-VB3HTjkvM?…

We are looking forward to the next installment of Kevin’s undertaking. In the meantime, you can delve into other oscilloscope repair projects, here, here and here, or go deep on why capacitors fail as in the capacitor plague of the early 2000s (though these are not the same vintage or necessarily the same reason for failure as in [ Kevin’s ] device).

hackaday.com/2025/06/16/kludge…

Predicting the future is a dangerous occupation. Few people can claim as much success as Arthur C. Clarke, the famous science and science fiction author. Thanks to the BBC and the Australian Broadcasting Company, we can see what Sir Arthur thought about the future in 1964 and then ten years later in 1974.

Perhaps his best-known prediction was that of communication satellites, but he called quite a few other things, too. Like all prognosticators, he didn’t bat a thousand, and he missed a wrinkle or two, but overall, he has a very impressive track record.

Horizon

In the 1964 BBC show, Horizon: The Knowledge Explosion, Clarke himself talked about how hard it is to predict the future. He then goes on to describe ultra-modern cities prior to the year 2000. However, he thought that after the year 2000, we won’t care about cities. We’ll communicate with each other without regard to location. Shades of the Internet and cell phone!

He clearly saw the work-from-home revolution. However, he also thought that we’d enslave other animals, which–mercifully–didn’t come to pass. His thoughts on computers were much more on point, although we still don’t quite have what he thought we would.

Direct information dumps to your brain are probably not happening anytime soon. Suspended animation isn’t very popular, either. Of course, all of this could still happen, and it would be totally spooky if he’d been 100% right.

To wrap up, he talks about a replicator when K. Eric Drexler was not even ten years old. We won’t say he called out the 3D printer, exactly, but he was on the track.

youtube.com/embed/YwELr8ir9qM?…

The Home Computer

Fast forward to 1974. A science reporter brought his son with him to an old-school mainframe room and pointed out to Clarke that in the year 2001, the boy would be an adult. Clarke predicted that the boy would have a computer in his house that would connect to other computers to get all the information he needed.

Once again, Clarke was really interested in being able to work from anywhere in the world. Of course, he moved to Sri Lanka and still managed to work, so maybe he just thought we should all enjoy the same privilege.

youtube.com/embed/sTdWQAKzESA?…

Two Years Later

In 1976, Clarke spoke with an AT&T interviewer about the future. He clearly saw the Internet for news and communications with — you guessed it — working from home.

He also brought up the smart watch, another invention to add to his yes column. About the only thing in that interview that we haven’t had luck with yet is contact with extraterrestrials.

youtube.com/embed/D1vQ_cB0f4w?…

Our Guess

We try not to make too many predictions. But we are going to guess that at least some of Clarke’s predictions are yet to come. There is one thing we are pretty sure of, though. When anyone predicts the future — even Clarke — they rarely see the gritty details. Sure, he saw the cell phone, but not the cell phone plan. Or malware. Or a host of other modern problems that would perplex anyone back in the 1960s.

Clarke has a better track record than most. We love looking at what people thought we’d be doing here in the future.

hackaday.com/2025/06/16/retrot…

If you’re a mechanical engineering wonk, you might appreciate this latest video from [Henry Segerman] wherein he demonstrates his various expanding racks.

[Henry] explains how the basic “double-rack” unit can be combined to make more complex structures. These structures are similar in spirit to the Hoberman sphere, which is a compact structure that can be expanded to fill a large space.

The double-rack units get a lot more interesting when you combine two or more of them. They each have rails that accommodate additional double-racks, holding the double-racks together. Because of how the gears from each double-rack are connected to the teeth of the others, expanding two double-racks causes all connected units to also expand.

Through the rest of the video, [Henry] shows you the marvelous myriad ways the basic structures can be combined to make remarkable expanding racks. He also explains some of the missteps and gotchas that his latest designs avoid based on his experience.

If you’re interested in such things, you might also like to check out Lathe Gears Make A Clock or Gear Up: A 15-Minute Intro On Involute Gears.

Do you have your own mechanical engineering hacks? Let us know on the tips line!

youtube.com/embed/iWknov3Xpts?…

hackaday.com/2025/06/16/expand…

Nacque a Livorno il 16 giugno 1901 con il nome di Federazione Italiana Operai Metallurgici.[2] Nel 1906 partecipò alla fondazione della Confederazione Generale del Lavoro (CGdL, oggi CGIL).

Dopo il fascismo fu rifondata, nell'ambito della nuova CGIL unitaria, con il IX Congresso che si tenne a Torino nel 1946, presieduto da Giovanni Roveda, e durante il quale cambiò il proprio nome in Federazione Impiegati Operai Metallurgici, lasciando invariata la sigla ma allargando la propria rappresentanza.

it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federazi…

sindacato di categoria affiliato alla CGIL

^{Contributori ai progetti Wikimedia (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)}

Così mi dice il sito di Poste Italiane dopo aver inserito il mio indirizzo di posta elettronica in risposta a questo invito.

Inserendo il tuo numero di cellulare e/o indirizzo di posta elettronica, Poste Italiane, titolare del trattamento dei dati, potrà informarti sulla consegna della tua spedizione.

Ho controllato, l'indirizzo è giusto e non ci sono spazi né prima né dopo.

Errore semantico...

EDRi’s position paper addresses the challenges posed by state use of spyware in the EU. It also tackles how spyware should be legally defined in a way that shields us from future harms, as well as the dangers of the proliferation of commercial spyware in Europe. After conducting a values-based analysis into spyware, the paper concludes that the only human-rights compliant approach is a full ban.

The post Spyware and state abuse: The case for an EU-wide ban appeared first on European Digital Rights (EDRi).

Unisciti a noi per un emozionante itinerario nel cuore del Parco Naturale Regionale del Velino Sirente, nella suggestiva località di Colletto di Pezza.

Inizieremo la nostra avventura dalla piana di Campo Felice e saliremo verso la storica miniera di bauxite, per poi addentrarci nei meravigliosi boschi di faggio della Valle Leona.

Proseguiremo quindi alla volta della spettacolare Valle del Puzzillo: un anfiteatro naturale, contornato da alte formazioni rocciose e scoscesi pendii, al confine tra Lazio e Abruzzo.

Arrivati a destinazione, avrai la possibilità di ristorarti e godere dell’ospitalità del rifugio.

Da questo piccolo angolo di paradiso, a cavallo tra due valli, potrai goderti un panorama fantastico in mezzo alle nuvole.

L’escursione al Rifugio Vincenzo Sebastiani sarà un’esperienza fantastica per tutti, esperto o principiante che tu sia!

Un trekking perfetto per immergersi nella natura e condividere momenti speciali in compagnia.

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