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Mining and Refining: Drilling and Blasting


It’s an inconvenient fact that most of Earth’s largesse of useful minerals is locked up in, under, and around a lot of rock. Our little world condensed out of the remnants of stars whose death throes cooked up almost every element in the periodic table, and in the intervening billions of years, those elements have sorted themselves out into deposits that range from the easily accessed, lying-about-on-the-ground types to those buried deep in the crust, or worse yet, those that are distributed so sparsely within a mineral matrix that it takes harvesting megatonnes of material to find just a few kilos of the stuff.

Whatever the substance of our desires, and no matter how it is associated with the rocks and minerals below our feet, almost every mining and refining effort starts with wresting vast quantities of rock from the Earth’s crust. And the easiest, cheapest, and fastest way to do that most often involves blasting. In a very real way, explosives make the world work, for without them, the minerals we need to do almost anything would be prohibitively expensive to produce, if it were possible at all. And understanding the chemistry, physics, and engineering behind blasting operations is key to understanding almost everything about Mining and Refining.

First, We Drill


For almost all of the time that we’ve been mining minerals, making big rocks into smaller rocks has been the work of strong backs and arms supplemented by the mechanical advantage of tools like picks, pry bars, and shovels. The historical record shows that early miners tried to reduce this effort with clever applications of low-energy physics, such as jamming wooden plugs into holes in the rocks and soaking them with liquid to swell the wood and exert enough force to fracture the rock, or by heating the rock with bonfires and then flooding with cold water to create thermal stress fractures. These methods, while effective, only traded effort for time, and only worked for certain types of rock.

Mining productivity got a much-needed boost in 1627 with the first recorded use of gunpowder for blasting at a gold mine in what is now Slovakia. Boreholes were stuffed with powder that was ignited by a fuse made from a powder-filled reed. The result was a pile of rubble that would have taken weeks to produce by hand, and while the speed with which the explosion achieved that result was probably much welcomed by the miners, in reality, it only shifted their efforts to drilling the boreholes, which generally took a five-man crew using sledgehammers and striker bars to pound deep holes into the rock. Replacing that manual effort with mechanical drilling was the next big advance, but it would have to wait until the Industrial Revolution harnessed the power of steam to run drills capable of boring deep holes in rock quickly and with much smaller crews.

The basic principles of rock drilling developed in the 19th century, such as rapidly spinning a hardened steel bit while exerting tremendous down-pressure and high-impulse percussion, remain applicable today, although with advancements like synthetic diamond tooling and better methods of power transmission. Modern drills for open-cast mining fall into two broad categories: overburden drills, which typically drill straight down or at a slight angle to vertical and can drill large-diameter holes over 100 meters deep, and quarry drills, which are smaller and more maneuverable rigs that can drill at any angle, even horizontally. Most drill rigs are track-driven for greater mobility over rubble-strewn surfaces, and are equipped with soundproofed, air-conditioned cabs with safety cages to protect the operator. Automation is a big part of modern rigs, with automatic leveling systems, tool changers that can select the proper bit for the rock type, and fully automated drill chain handling, including addition of drill rod to push the bit deeper into the rock. Many drill rigs even have semi-autonomous operation, where a single operator can control a fleet of rigs from a single remote control console.

youtube.com/embed/F4jPomI_P0I?…

Proper Prior Planning


While the use of explosives seems brutally chaotic and indiscriminate, it’s really the exact opposite. Each of the so-called “shots” in a blasting operation is a carefully controlled, highly engineered event designed to move material in a specific direction with the desired degree of fracturing, all while ensuring the safety of the miners and the facility.

To accomplish this, a blasting plan is put together by a mining engineer. The blasting plan takes into account the mechanical characteristics of the rock, the location and direction of any pre-existing fractures or faults, and proximity to any structures or hazards. Engineers also need to account for the equipment used for mucking, which is the process of removing blasted material for further processing. For instance, a wheeled loader operating on the same level, or bench, that the blasting took place on needs a different size and shape of rubble pile than an excavator or dragline operating from the bench above. The capabilities of the rock crushing machinery that’s going to be used to process the rubble also have to be accounted for in the blasting plan.

Most blasting plans define a matrix of drill holes with very specific spacing, generally with long rows and short columns. The drill plan specifies the diameter of each hole along with its depth, which usually goes a little beyond the distance to the next bench down. The mining engineer also specifies a stem height for the hole, which leaves room on top of the explosives to backfill the hole with drill tailings or gravel.

Prills and Oil


Once the drill holes are complete and inspected, charging the holes with explosives can begin. The type of blasting agents to be used is determined by the blasting plan, but in most cases, the agent of choice is ANFO, or ammonium nitrate and fuel oil. The ammonium nitrate, which contains 60% oxygen by weight, serves as an oxidizer for the combustion of the long-chain alkanes in the fuel oil. The ideal mix is 94% ammonium nitrate to 6% fuel oil.
Filling holes with ammonium nitrate at a blasting site. Hopper trucks like this are often used to carry prilled ammonium nitrate. Some trucks also have a tank for the fuel oil that’s added to the ammonium nitrate to make ANFO. Credit: Old Bear Photo, via Adobe Stock.
How the ANFO is added to the hole depends on conditions. For holes where groundwater is not a problem, ammonium nitrate in the form of small porous beads or prills, is poured down the hole and lightly tamped to remove any voids or air spaces before the correct amount of fuel oil is added. For wet conditions, an ammonium nitrate emulsion will be used instead. This is just a solution of ammonium nitrate in water with emulsifiers added to allow the fuel oil to mix with the oxidizer.

ANFO is classified as a tertiary explosive, meaning it is insensitive to shock and requires a booster to detonate. The booster charge is generally a secondary explosive such as PETN, or pentaerythritol tetranitrate, a powerful explosive that’s chemically similar to nitroglycerine but is much more stable. PETN comes in a number of forms, with cardboard cylinders like oversized fireworks or a PETN-laced gel stuffed into a plastic tube that looks like a sausage being the most common.
Electrically operated blasting caps marked with their built-in 425 ms delay. These will easily blow your hand clean off. Source: Timo Halén, CC BY-SA 2.5.
Being a secondary explosive, the booster charge needs a fairly strong shock to detonate. This shock is provided by a blasting cap or detonator, which is a small, multi-stage pyrotechnic device. These are generally in the form of a small brass or copper tube filled with a layer of primary explosive such as lead azide or fulminate of mercury, along with a small amount of secondary explosive such as PETN. The primary charge is in physical contact with an initiator of some sort, either a bridge wire in the case of electrically initiated detonators, or more commonly, a shock tube. Shock tubes are thin-walled plastic tubing with a layer of reactive explosive powder on the inner wall. The explosive powder is engineered to detonate down the tube at around 2,000 m/s, carrying a shock wave into the detonator at a known rate, which makes propagation delays easy to calculate.

Timing is critical to the blasting plan. If the explosives in each hole were to all detonate at the same time, there wouldn’t be anywhere for the displaced material to go. To prevent that, mining engineers build delays into the blasting plan so that some charges, typically the ones closest to the free face of the bench, go off a fraction of a second before the charges behind them, freeing up space for the displaced material to move into. Delays are either built into the initiator as a layer of pyrotechnic material that burns at a known rate between the initiator and the primary charge, or by using surface delays, which are devices with fixed delays that connect the initiator down the hole to the rest of the charges that will make up the shot. Lately, electronic detonators have been introduced, which have microcontrollers built in. These detonators are addressable and can have a specific delay programmed in the field, making it easier to program the delays needed for the entire shot. Electronic detonators also require a specific code to be transmitted to detonate, which reduces the chance of injury or misuse that lost or stolen electrical blasting caps present. This was enough of a problem that a series of public service films on the dangers of playing with blasting caps appeared regularly from the 1950s through the 1970s.

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“Fire in the Hole!”


When all the holes are charged and properly stemmed, the blasting crew makes the final connections on the surface. Connections can be made with wires for electrical and electronic detonators, or with shock tubes for non-electric detonators. Sometimes, detonating cord is used to make the surface connections between holes. Det cord is similar to shock tube but generally looks like woven nylon cord. It also detonates at a much faster rate (6,500 m/s) than shock tube thanks to being filled with PETN or a similar high-velocity explosive.

Once the final connections to the blasting controller are made and tested, the area is secured with all personnel and equipment removed. A series of increasingly urgent warnings are sounded on sirens or horns as the blast approaches, to alert personnel to the danger. The blaster initiates the shot at the controller, which sends the signal down trunklines and into any surface delays before being transmitted to the detonators via their downlines. The relatively weak shock wave from the detonator propagates into the booster charge, which imparts enough energy into the ANFO to start detonation of the main charge.

The ANFO rapidly decomposes into a mixture of hot gases, including carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and water vapor. The shock wave pulverizes the rock surrounding the borehole and rapidly propagates into the surrounding rock, exerting tremendous compressive force. The shock wave continues to propagate until it meets a natural crack or the interface between rock and air at the free face of the shot. These impedance discontinuities reflect the compressive wave and turn it into a tensile wave, and since rock is generally much weaker in tension than compression, this is where the real destruction begins.

The reflected tensile forces break the rock along natural or newly formed cracks, creating voids that are filled with the rapidly expanding gases from the burning ANFO. The gases force these cracks apart, providing the heave needed to move rock fragments into the voids created by the initial shock wave. The shot progresses at the set delay intervals between holes, with the initial shock from new explosions creating more fractures deeper into the rock face and more expanding gas to move the fragments into the space created by earlier explosions. Depending on how many holes are in the shot and how long the delays are, the entire thing can be over in just a few seconds, or it could go on for quite some time, as it does in this world-record blast at a coal mine in Queensland in 2019, which used 3,899 boreholes packed with 2,194 tonnes of ANFO to move 4.7 million cubic meters of material in just 16 seconds.

youtube.com/embed/8mgG4LKac30?…

There’s still much for the blasting crew to do once the shot is done. As the dust settles, safety crews use monitoring equipment to ensure any hazardous blasting gases have dispersed before sending in crews to look for any misfires. Misfires can result in a reshoot, where crews hook up a fresh initiator and try to detonate the booster charge again. If the charge won’t fire, it can be carefully extracted from the rubble pile with non-sparking tools and soaked in water to inactivate it.


hackaday.com/2025/06/24/mining…



Arriva il “jailbreak as a service”. 60 euro al mese per l’acquisto di sistemi AI pronti per il cybercrime


Secondo un rapporto di Cato Networks, i criminali informatici continuano a utilizzare attivamente i modelli LLM nei loro attacchi. In particolare, stiamo parlando di versioni dei modelli Grok e Mixtral deliberatamente modificate per aggirare le restrizioni integrate e generare contenuti dannosi.

A quanto pare, una di queste versioni modificate di Grok è apparsa sul popolare forum BreachForums a febbraio 2025. È stata pubblicata da un utente con lo pseudonimo di Keanu. Lo strumento è un wrapper per il modello Grok originale ed è controllato tramite un prompt di sistema appositamente scritto. È in questo modo che gli autori garantiscono che il modello ignori i meccanismi di protezione e generi email di phishing, codice dannoso e istruzioni di hacking.

Un secondo modello modificato, basato su Mixtral, un prodotto dell’azienda francese Mistral AI, è stato trovato anch’esso su BreachForums. È stato pubblicato da un altro utente del forum con il nickname xzin0vich a ottobre. Entrambi i modelli sono disponibili per l’acquisto da chiunque sul dark web.

Vale la pena notare che né xAI né Mistral AI hanno rilasciato dichiarazioni ufficiali su come i loro sviluppi siano finiti nelle mani dei criminali informatici.

Secondo Cato Networks, tali modifiche non rappresentano una vulnerabilità dei modelli Grok o Mixtral in sé. Rappresentano piuttosto un abuso del principio del prompt di sistema che determina il comportamento della rete neurale. Quando un aggressore invia una richiesta, questa diventa parte del dialogo generale con il modello, incluso il prompt stesso che imposta le istruzioni per aggirare le restrizioni.

Gli esperti hanno sottolineato che queste versioni “sbloccate” stanno diventando sempre più comuni. Attorno a esse si stanno gradualmente formando interi ecosistemi ombra, basati principalmente su LLM aperti. Con il loro aiuto, i criminali informatici ottengono accesso a potenti strumenti che semplificano notevolmente la creazione di phishing, malware e altri scenari di attacco.

Ciò che rende questa tendenza particolarmente difficile da contrastare è il fatto che Mixtral è distribuito come un modello completamente aperto, consentendo agli aggressori di eseguirlo sui propri server e di aprirne l’accesso tramite API ad altri partecipanti al darknet. I prodotti basati su Grok sono teoricamente controllati da xAI stessa, ma anche in questo caso, tracciare e bloccare gli abusi è un gioco del gatto e del topo.

La situazione è complicata dal fatto che tali strumenti sono andati ben oltre le build locali. Le prime versioni di tali prodotti, note come WormGPT, sono apparse sul darknet nel giugno 2023. All’epoca, l’IA generativa, basata su un modello aperto di EleutherAI, divenne rapidamente nota dopo un’inchiesta del giornalista Brian Krebs. Sebbene la versione originale fosse stata presto bloccata, i suoi analoghi con nomi come FraudGPT ed EvilGPT iniziarono a diffondersi in massa sui forum underground.

I prezzi per questi strumenti variano dai 60 ai 100 euro al mese, mentre per build private e configurazioni individuali si parla di circa 5.000 euro. Secondo Cato Networks, i criminali informatici stanno assumendo sempre più specialisti di intelligenza artificiale per creare le proprie versioni di tali modelli. Allo stesso tempo, come ha dimostrato lo studio, spesso non si tratta di uno sviluppo autonomo da zero, ma di modificare reti neurali esistenti.

Gli esperti del settore sottolineano che il mercato degli LLM “sbloccati” è enorme. Centinaia di questi modelli sono già disponibili nelle darknet, compresi quelli basati su DeepSeek . La tecnica principale utilizzata dagli aggressori è la manipolazione immediata. Riferimenti storici, abili parafrasi o costrutti nascosti contribuiscono a ingannare l’IA e a indurla a generare contenuti dannosi. La minaccia principale non risiede tanto nelle vulnerabilità tecniche, quanto nella rapidità con cui i criminali imparano a utilizzare l’IA per migliorare l’efficacia degli attacchi, accelerandone la preparazione e la precisione.

Secondo gli esperti, le attuali misure di protezione sono chiaramente insufficienti. Inoltre, sui forum underground si sta già assistendo all’emergere di un mercato di “jailbreak as a service”, dove è possibile ottenere reti neurali hackerate già pronte all’uso senza doverne comprendere i dettagli tecnici.

L'articolo Arriva il “jailbreak as a service”. 60 euro al mese per l’acquisto di sistemi AI pronti per il cybercrime proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.




New Session publishes poetry via Telnet, rejecting the internet’s fast-paced enshittification.#retro #zines #telnet


This Queer Online Zine Can Only Be Read Via an Ancient Internet Protocol


Unless you’re living in a ChatGPT hype-bro bubble, it’s a pretty common sentiment these days that the internet is getting shittier. Social media algorithms have broken our brains, AI slop flows freely through Google search results like raw sewage, and tech companies keep telling us that this new status quo is not only inevitable, but Good.

Standing in stark opposition to these trends is New Session, an online literary zine accessed via the ancient-but-still-functional internet protocol Telnet.

Like any other zine, New Session features user-submitted poems, essays, and other text-based art. But the philosophy behind each of its digital pages is anything but orthodox.

“In the face of right-wing politics, climate change, a forever pandemic, and the ever-present hunger of imperialist capitalism, we have all been forced to adapt,” reads the intro to New Session’s third issue, titled Adaptations, which was released earlier this month. “Both you and this issue will change with each viewing. Select a story by pressing the key associated with it in the index. Read it again. Come back to it tomorrow. Is it the same? Are you?”

The digital zine is accessibleon the web via a browser-based Telnet client, or if you’re a purist like me, via the command line. As the intro promises, each text piece changes—adapts—depending on various conditions, like what time of day you access it or how many times you’ve viewed it. Some pieces change every few minutes, while others update every time a user looks at it, like gazing at fish inside a digital aquarium.



How New Session looks on Telnet. Images courtesy Cara Esten Hurtle

Once logged in, the zine’s main menu lists each piece along with the conditions that cause it to change. For example, Natasja Kisstemaker’s “Sanctuary” changes with every viewing, based on the current weather. “Signature,” by Kaia Peacock, updates every time you press a key, slowly revealing more of the piece when you type a letter contained in the text—like a word puzzle on Wheel of Fortune.

Cara Esten Hurtle, an artist and software engineer based in the Bay Area, co-founded New Session in 2021 along with Lo Ferris, while searching for something to do with her collection of retro computers during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I realized I’d been carrying around a lot of old computers, and I thought it would be cool to be able to do modern stuff on these things,” Hurtle told 404 Media. “I wanted to make something that was broadly usable across every computer that had ever been made. I wanted to be like, yeah, you can run this on a 1991 Thinkpad someone threw away, or you could run it on your modern laptop.”

If you’re of a certain age, you might remember Telnet as a server-based successor to BBS message boards, the latter of which operated by connecting computers directly. It hearkens back to a slower internet age, where you’d log in maybe once or twice a day to read what’s new. Technically, Telnet predates the internet itself, originally developed as anetworked teletype system in the late ‘60s for the internet’s military precursor, the ARPAnet. Years later, it was officially adopted as one of the earliest internet protocols, and today it remains the oldest application protocol still in use—though mainly by enthusiasts like Hurtle.

New Session intentionally embraces this slower pace, making it more like light-interactive fiction than a computer game. For Hurtle, the project isn’t just retro novelty—it’s a radical rejection of the addictive social media and algorithmic attention-mining that have defined the modern day internet.



New Session viewed on a variety of Hurtle's collection of machines. Photos courtesy Cara Esten Hurtle

“I want it to be something where you don’t necessarily feel like you have to spend a ton of time with it,” said Hurtle. “I want people to come back to it because they’re interested in the stories in the same way you’d come back to a book—not to get your streak on Duolingo.”

I won’t go into too much detail, because discovering how the pieces change is kind of the whole point. But on the whole, reading New Session feels akin to a palette cleanser after a long TikTok binge. Its very design evokes the polar opposite of the hyper-consumerist mindset that brought us infinite scrolls and algorithmic surveillance. The fact that you literally can’t consume it all in one session forces readers to engage with the material more slowly and meaningfully, piquing curiosity and exercising intuition.

At the same time, the zine isn’t meant to be a nostalgic throwback to simpler times. New Session specifically solicits works from queer and trans writers and artists, as a way to reclaim a part of internet history that was creditedalmost entirely to white straight men. But Hurtle says revisiting things like Telnet can also be a way to explore paths not taken, and re-assess ideas that were left in the dustbin of history.

“You have to avoid the temptation to nostalgize, because that’s really dangerous and it just turns you into a conservative boomer,” laughs Hurtle. “But we can imagine what aspects of this we can take and claim for our own. We can use it as a window to understand what’s broken about the current state of the internet. You just can’t retreat to it.”

Projects like New Session make a lot of sense in a time when more people are looking backward to earlier iterations of the internet—not to see where it all went wrong, but to excavate old ideas that could have shaped it in a radically different way, and perhaps still can. It’s a reminder of that hidden, universal truth—to paraphrase the famousDavid Graeber quote—that the internet is a thing we make, and could just as easily make differently.




200 dollari per l’Accesso ad una Azienda italiana! Mentre il Dark Web fa affari, tu sei pronto a difenderti?


Dopo il caso dei 568 endpoint di un’azienda italiana del settore macchinari industriali, un altro accesso compromesso relativo a una società italiana di ingegneria del software è finito in vendita su un forum underground frequentato da Initial Access Broker e attori ransomware.

L’inserzione, pubblicata dall’utente spartanking, offre accesso completo a un server con privilegi di amministratore locale e controllo remoto tramite AnyDesk.

L’inserzione riporta chiaramente che il sistema compromesso è collegato a un dominio Active Directory. Secondo quanto dichiarato nel post:

  • Sono presenti 11 host attivi
  • L’accesso è di tipo “local admin / AnyDesk”
  • Il venditore accetta solo pagamenti tramite escrow del forum (Guarantor), a tutela delle parti coinvolte
  • Il prezzo richiesto è di 200 dollari

L’accesso consentirebbe quindi privilegi elevati su almeno un server. In uno screenshot, si nota che il sistema compromesso è un Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard installato su un HP ProLiant ML350p Gen8, con 16 GB di RAM e 465 GB di spazio disco.

Le immagini a corredo dell’annuncio forniscono numerosi indizi:

  • Accesso al desktop remoto completo del sistema, con icone visibili per applicazioni business come Nextcloud, Oracle VirtualBox, IBM Access per Windows, HW Serial Port e software da laboratorio.
  • Presenza di tool di scansione di rete (Advanced IP Scanner), che mostrano una topologia di rete con 11 dispositivi attivi, tra cui switch Cisco, router MikroTik e diversi endpoint HP.
  • Indicazione di un dominio Active Directory denominato “CEP”.

Sebbene l’accesso sia messo in vendita a un prezzo relativamente basso (200$), ciò non ne riduce l’impatto potenziale. Gli accessi low cost sono spesso acquistati da:

  • Attori meno sofisticati ma motivati (script kiddie, gruppi ransomware minori)
  • Gruppi interessati a movimenti laterali verso altri target
  • Operatori specializzati in esfiltrazione dati o cryptojacking

La continua pubblicazione di accessi aziendali italiani dimostra che il nostro Paese non è affatto immune alle pratiche degli Initial Access Broker. Le PMI tecnologiche, spesso convinte di essere “troppo piccole per essere un target”, risultano invece vulnerabili e appetibili.

Il caso spartanking, con i suoi 7 escrow all’attivo, conferma inoltre che questi venditori stanno costruendo una reputazione duratura e profittevole, segno che il mercato di accessi italiani nel dark web è tutt’altro che marginale.

Ma la morale in tutto questo?


Che comprendere prima che un Initial Access Broker stia osservando o analizzando una rete aziendale è oggi una delle informazioni più preziose per la difesa preventiva. Questi attori vendono porte d’accesso già aperte, e sapere in anticipo se si è finiti nel loro radar consente di rafforzare i punti deboli, segmentare la rete, aggiornare le policy di accesso e attuare contromisure tempestive. Aspettare che l’accesso venga venduto – e poi magari usato da un gruppo ransomware – significa intervenire quando il danno è già in atto.

Qui entra in gioco la Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI), che non si limita a osservare il passato, ma analizza pattern, comportamenti, reputazione e movimenti degli attori nelle zone grigie del web. L’intelligence delle minacce consente alle aziende di monitorare marketplace, forum underground, canali Telegram e dark web per rilevare vendite sospette, fughe di dati o credenziali compromesse. In un’epoca in cui le PMI vengono bersagliate con la stessa frequenza delle grandi aziende, la CTI non è un lusso per pochi, ma una necessità per tutti.

L'articolo 200 dollari per l’Accesso ad una Azienda italiana! Mentre il Dark Web fa affari, tu sei pronto a difenderti? proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.



Le sfide della deterrenza atlantica nell’era della velocità. Il dialogo Cavo Dragone-Vandier

@Notizie dall'Italia e dal mondo

In occasione del Nato Public Forum organizzato all’Aja in concomitanza con il vertice dei capi di Stato e di governo dell’Alleanza, l’ammiraglio Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, presidente del Comitato militare della Nato, e l’ammiraglio Pierre



Is Box Turtle the Open Source AMS we’ve been waiting for?


Multimaterial printing was not invented by BambuLabs, but love them or hate them the AMS has become the gold standard for a modern multi-material unit. [Daniel]’s latest Mod Bot video on the Box Turtle MMU (embedded below) highlights an open source project that aims to bring the power and ease of AMS to Voron printers, and everyone else using Klipper willing to put in the work.
A 3d Printed panda with black and white filamentThis isn’t a torture test, but it’s very clean and very cute.
The system itself is a mostly 3D printed unit that sits atop [Daniel]’s Voron printer looking just like an AMS atop a BambuLab. It has space for four spools, with motorized rollers and feeders in the front that have handy-dandy indicator LEDs to tell you which filament is loaded or printing. Each spool gets its own extruder, whose tension can be adjusted manually via thumbscrew. A buffer unit sits between the spool box and your toolhead.

Aside from the box, you need to spec a toolhead that meets requirements. It needs a PTFE connector with a (reverse) boden tube to guide the filament, and it also needs to have a toolhead filament runout sensor. The sensor is to provide feedback to Klipper that the filament is loaded or unloaded. Finally you will probably want to add a filament cutter, because that happens at the toolhead with this unit. Sure, you could try the whole tip-forming thing, but anyone who had a Prusa MMU back in the day can tell you that is easier said than done. The cutter apparently makes this system much more reliable.

In operation, it looks just like a BambuLabs printer with an AMS installed. The big difference, again, is that this project by [Armored Turtle] is fully open source, with everything on GitHub under a GPL-3.0 license. Several vendors are already producing kits; [Daniel] is using the LDO version in his video.

It looks like the project is well documented–and [Mod Bot] agrees, and he reports that the build process is not terribly difficult (well, if you’re the kind of person who builds a Voron, anyway), and adding the AFC Klipper Addon (also by [Armored Turtle]) was easy as pie. After that, well. It needs calibration. Calibration and lots of tuning, which is an ongoing process for [Daniel]. If you want to see that, watch the video below, but we’ll spoil it for you and let you know it really pays off. (Except for lane 4, where he probably needs to clean up the print.)We’ve featured open-source MMUs before, like the Enraged Rabbit Carrot Feeder, but it’s great to see more in this scene, especially something that looks like it can take on the AMS. It’s not the only way to get multimaterial– there’s always tool-changers, or you could just put in a second motion system and gantry.

youtube.com/embed/Akvasjkd3VU?…


hackaday.com/2025/06/24/is-box…



Repression gegen Budapest Pride: EU soll gegen digitale Verfolgung und Diskriminierung einschreiten


netzpolitik.org/2025/repressio…



James Senese – Chest Nun E’ A Terra Mia
freezonemagazine.com/articoli/…
Uno dei punti sui quali da sempre si trovano sulla stessa linea, addetti ai lavori, mezzi di informazione, suoi fan, appassionati di musica, è l’impareggiabile Coerenza di James Senese. In lui non c’è mai stata una separazione fra l’essere musicista e Il lato umano, sono una sagoma sola, schietta, espressiva, carismatica. È un figlio della […]
L'articolo James Senese – Chest Nun


Rutte e la nuova deterrenza. Industria, resilienza e coesione politica

@Notizie dall'Italia e dal mondo

Aprendo i lavori del Nato public Forum, organizzato dall’Alleanza Atlantica all’Aja, congiuntamente al Summit, è intervenuto oggi il segretario generale Mark Rutte, tracciando la direzione da seguire durante i due giorni di Summit previsti. La direzione da seguire secondo Rutte Il



Cyber security e innovazione: l’equilibrio è possibile


@Informatica (Italy e non Italy 😁)
Attacchi ransomware che chiudono gli ospedali, hacker che rubano ‘tesori’ di dati personali dalle banche, video deepfake che manipolano l'opinione pubblica. L'odierno panorama è in rapida evoluzione, ma cyber security e innovazione possono offrire soluzioni efficaci contro le minacce



Il Regno Unito sballotta Google?

L'articolo proviene da #StartMag e viene ricondiviso sulla comunità Lemmy @Informatica (Italy e non Italy 😁)
Google rappresenta oltre il 90% delle ricerche effettuate nel Regno Unito, ma ora l'autorità antitrust britannica sta valutando se assegnarle uno status particolare che le permetterebbe di rafforzare startmag.it/innovazione/il-reg…



Tregua. Israele denuncia attacco Iran, Teheran nega


@Notizie dall'Italia e dal mondo
Il presidente americano nella notte ha annunciato la fine dello scontro tra Israele e Iran. Netanyahu ha confermato di aver accettato lo stop agli attacchi ma Tel Aviv denuncia che nuovi missili sono stati lanciati da Teheran. Iran smentisce.
L'articolo Tregua. Israele denuncia attacco Iran, Teheran




Perché Trump ha rimandato TikTok a settembre

L'articolo proviene da #StartMag e viene ricondiviso sulla comunità Lemmy @Informatica (Italy e non Italy 😁)
Con la guerra in Iran altri dossier sembrano essersi di colpo imposti sulla scrivania di Trump che per il terzo rinvio ha deciso di prendersi tutta l'estate: TikTok può infatti beneficiare di una ulteriore proroga di 90 giorni e continuare a



Data flows and digital repression: Civil society urges EU to reassess Israel’s adequacy status


On 24 June 2025, EDRi, Access Now and other civil society organisations sent a second letter to the European Commission, urging it to reassess Israel’s data protection adequacy status under the GDPR. The letter outlines six categories of concerns linking Israel’s data practices to escalating human rights violations in Gaza and the West Bank.

The post Data flows and digital repression: Civil society urges EU to reassess Israel’s adequacy status appeared first on European Digital Rights (EDRi).





Un anno fa, il 24 giugno 2024, accadeva l'impossibile: il giornalista Julian Assange veniva rilasciato dal famigerato carcere di massima sicurezza a Belmarsh, Londra.

Roberto Resoli reshared this.



OPEN LETTER: The European Commission must act now to defend fundamental rights in Hungary


With Budapest Pride set to take place on June 28, 2025, EDRi and 46 organisation are urging the European Commission to defend fundamental rights in Hungary so that Pride organisers and participants can safely exercise their right to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression.

The post OPEN LETTER: The European Commission must act now to defend fundamental rights in Hungary appeared first on European Digital Rights (EDRi).



EU-Ratspräsidentschaft: Dänemark setzt Chatkontrolle wieder auf die Agenda


netzpolitik.org/2025/eu-ratspr…

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in reply to The Pirate Post

Die übliche Zermürbungs- und Ermüdungstaktik. Will man #Datenschutz und informationelle #Selbstbestimmung bewahren, muss man solche Vorhaben in jeder einzelnen Abstimmung abschmettern. Will man hingegen diese Dinge zugunsten eines Überraschungsapparates abschaffen, kann man das Thema wieder und wieder auf die Tagesordnung bringen und muss dann nur ein einziges Mal eine Abstimmung gewinnen, damit der Geist aus der Flasche ist, und der lässt sich nicht so leicht wieder einfangen. 🙄

#Chatkontrolle #Überwachung #surveillance #EUpol

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Madrid chiede all’UE lo stop al trattato di associazione con Israele


@Notizie dall'Italia e dal mondo
Il governo spagnolo chiede all'UE la sospensione del trattato di associazione con Israele ma movimenti filopalestinesi e partiti di sinistra pretendono da Pedro Sànchez azioni concrete e urgenti. Intanto Bruxelles rimanda ogni decisione su Israele
L'articolo Madrid chiede all’UE lo stop al



Vi presento il fotolibro del futuro

L'articolo proviene da #StartMag e viene ricondiviso sulla comunità Lemmy @Informatica (Italy e non Italy 😁)
Dall'artigianato alla rivoluzione digitale: come sostenibilità, web-to-print e tecnologie immersive stanno trasformando l’esperienza del fotolibro in un viaggio tra fisico e virtuale

startmag.it/innovazione/il-fot…




L’Iran attacca le basi americane nel Golfo. Trump annuncia il cessate il fuoco


@Notizie dall'Italia e dal mondo
Il presidente americano nella notte ha annunciato la fine dello scontro tra Israele e Iran. Ieri Teheran ha lanciato missili contro il quartier generale del comando regionale Usa a Al-Udeid, in Qatar e altre basi americane
L'articolo L’Iran attacca



La Rai taglia l’approfondimento: protesta a Napoli il 27 giugno


@Giornalismo e disordine informativo
articolo21.org/2025/06/la-rai-…
Cdr Approfondimento Rai: «Serve una regolare testata nelle Reti per tutelare l’informazione e impedire colpi di mano».Coordinamento Programmi Rai – Giusto Contratto: «Le redazioni dei



Ermanno “scrip” Ferretti: così ironia e passione per la filosofia aiutano a dialogare

@Politica interna, europea e internazionale

Mi è stato presentato da un caro amico (Piero Celoria, ex compagno di liceo a Valsalice e appassionato di filosofia), insegna nei licei e in questi giorni nei quali la maturità e gli studenti sono in primo piano, tout se tient, penso





Researchers found Meta’s popular Llama 3.1 70B has a capacity to recite passages from 'The Sorcerer's Stone' at a rate much higher than could happen by chance.

Researchers found Meta’s popular Llama 3.1 70B has a capacity to recite passages from x27;The Sorcererx27;s Stonex27; at a rate much higher than could happen by chance.#AI #Meta #llms

#ai #meta #x27 #LLMs


#USA-#Iran, la guerra degli specchi


altrenotizie.org/primo-piano/1…


L’Iran attacca le basi americane in Medioriente


@Notizie dall'Italia e dal mondo
Missili contro la base militare americana di Al-Udeid, in Qatar. L'allarme suona anche nelle basi dell'Iraq.
L'articolo L’Iran attacca le basi americane in Medioriente proviene da Pagine Esteri.

pagineesteri.it/2025/06/23/med…





Here is the video archive for our FOIA Forum where we explained how we got records about Massive Blue, a company selling AI personas to cops.#FOIAForum


Details about how Meta's nearly Manhattan-sized data center will impact consumers' power bills are still secret.

Details about how Metax27;s nearly Manhattan-sized data center will impact consumersx27; power bills are still secret.#AI


'A Black Hole of Energy Use': Meta's Massive AI Data Center Is Stressing Out a Louisiana Community


A massive data center for Meta’s AI will likely lead to rate hikes for Louisiana customers, but Meta wants to keep the details under wraps.

Holly Ridge is a rural community bisected by US Highway 80, gridded with farmland, with a big creek—it is literally named Big Creek—running through it. It is home to rice and grain mills and an elementary school and a few houses. Soon, it will also be home to Meta’s massive, 4 million square foot AI data center hosting thousands of perpetually humming servers that require billions of watts of energy to power. And that energy-guzzling infrastructure will be partially paid for by Louisiana residents.

The plan is part of what Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said would be “a defining year for AI.” On Threads, Zuckerberg boasted that his company was “building a 2GW+ datacenter that is so large it would cover a significant part of Manhattan,” posting a map of Manhattan along with the data center overlaid. Zuckerberg went on to say that over the coming years, AI “will drive our core products and business, unlock historic innovation, and extend American technology leadership. Let's go build! 💪”

Mark Zuckerberg (@zuck) on Threads
This will be a defining year for AI. In 2025, I expect Meta AI will be the leading assistant serving more than 1 billion people, Llama 4 will become the leading state of the art model, and we’ll build an AI engineer that will start contributing increasing amounts of code to our R&D efforts. To power this, Meta is building a 2GW+ datacenter that is so large it would cover a significant part of Manhattan.
Threads


What Zuckerberg did not mention is that "Let's go build" refers not only to the massive data center but also three new Meta-subsidized, gas power plants and a transmission line to fuel it serviced by Entergy Louisiana, the region’s energy monopoly.

Key details about Meta’s investments with the data center remain vague, and Meta’s contracts with Entergy are largely cloaked from public scrutiny. But what is known is the $10 billion data center has been positioned as an enormous economic boon for the area—one that politicians bent over backward to facilitate—and Meta said it will invest $200 million into “local roads and water infrastructure.”

A January report from NOLA.com said that the the state had rewritten zoning laws, promised to change a law so that it no longer had to put state property up for public bidding, and rewrote what was supposed to be a tax incentive for broadband internet meant to bridge the digital divide so that it was only an incentive for data centers, all with the goal of luring in Meta.

But Entergy Louisiana’s residential customers, who live in one of the poorest regions of the state, will see their utility bills increase to pay for Meta’s energy infrastructure, according to Entergy’s application. Entergy estimates that amount will be small and will only cover a transmission line, but advocates for energy affordability say the costs could balloon depending on whether Meta agrees to finish paying for its three gas plants 15 years from now. The short-term rate increases will be debated in a public hearing before state regulators that has not yet been scheduled.

The Alliance for Affordable Energy called it a “black hole of energy use,” and said “to give perspective on how much electricity the Meta project will use: Meta’s energy needs are roughly 2.3x the power needs of Orleans Parish … it’s like building the power impact of a large city overnight in the middle of nowhere.”

404 Media reached out to Entergy for comment but did not receive a response.

By 2030, Entergy’s electricity prices are projected to increase 90 percent from where they were in 2018, although the company attributes much of that to damage to infrastructure from hurricanes. The state already has a high energy cost burden in part because of a storm damage to infrastructure, and balmy heat made worse by climate change that drives air conditioner use. The state's homes largely are not energy efficient, with many porous older buildings that don’t retain heat in the winter or remain cool in the summer.

“You don't just have high utility bills, you also have high repair costs, you have high insurance premiums, and it all contributes to housing insecurity,” said Andreanecia Morris, a member of Housing Louisiana, which is opposed to Entergy’s gas plant application. She believes Meta’s data center will make it worse. And Louisiana residents have reasons to distrust Entergy when it comes to passing off costs of new infrastructure: in 2018, the company’s New Orleans subsidiary was caught paying actors to testify on behalf of a new gas plant. “The fees for the gas plant have all been borne by the people of New Orleans,” Morris said.

In its application to build new gas plants and in public testimony, Entergy says the cost of Meta’s data center to customers will be minimal and has even suggested Meta’s presence will make their bills go down. But Meta’s commitments are temporary, many of Meta’s assurances are not binding, and crucial details about its deal with Entergy are shielded from public view, a structural issue with state energy regulators across the country.

AI data centers are being approved at a breakneck pace across the country, particularly in poorer regions where they are pitched as economic development projects to boost property tax receipts, bring in jobs and where they’re offered sizable tax breaks. Data centers typically don’t hire many people, though, with most jobs in security and janitorial work, along with temporary construction work. And the costs to the utility’s other customers can remain hidden because of a lack of scrutiny and the limited power of state energy regulators. Many data centers—like the one Meta is building in Holly Ridge—are being powered by fossil fuels. This has led to respiratory illness and other health risks and emitting greenhouse gasses that fuel climate change. In Memphis, a massive data center built to launch a chatbot for Elon Musks’ AI company is powered by smog-spewing methane turbines, in a region that leads the state for asthma rates.

“In terms of how big these new loads are, it's pretty astounding and kind of a new ball game,” said Paul Arbaje, an energy analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists, which is opposing Entergy’s proposal to build three new gas-powered plants in Louisiana to power Meta’s data center.

Entergy Louisiana submitted a request to the state’s regulatory body to approve the construction of the new gas-powered plants that would create 2.3 gigawatts of power and cost $3.2 billion in the 1440 acre Franklin Farms megasite in Holly Ridge, an unincorporated community of Richland Parish. It is the first big data center announced since Louisiana passed large tax breaks for data centers last summer.

In its application to the public utility commission for gas plants, Entergy says that Meta has a planned investment of $5 billion in the region to build the gas plants in Richland Parish, Louisiana, where it claims in its application that the data center will employ 300-500 people with an average salary of $82,000 in what it points out is “a region of the state that has long struggled with a lack of economic development and high levels of poverty.” Meta’s official projection is that it will employ more than 500 people once the data center is operational. Entergy plans for the gas plants to be online by December 2028.

In testimony, Entergy officials refused to answer specific questions about job numbers, saying that the numbers are projections based on public statements from Meta.

A spokesperson for Louisiana’s Economic Development told 404 Media in an email that Meta “is contractually obligated to employ at least 500 full-time employees in order to receive incentive benefits.”

When asked about jobs, Meta pointed to a public facing list of its data centers, many of which the company says employ more than 300 people. A spokesperson said that the projections for the Richland Parish site are based on the scale of the 4 million square foot data center. The spokesperson said the jobs will include “engineering and other technical positions to operational roles and our onsite culinary staff.”

When asked if its job commitments are binding, the spokesperson declined to answer, saying, “We worked closely with Richland Parish and Louisiana Economic Development on mutually beneficial agreements that will support long-term growth in the area.”

Others are not as convinced. “Show me a data center that has that level of employment,” says Logan Burke, executive director of the Alliance for Affordable Energy in Louisiana.

Entergy has argued the new power plants are necessary to satiate the energy need from Meta’s massive hyperscale data center, which will be Meta’s largest data center and potentially the largest data center in the United States. It amounts to a 25 percent increase in Entergy Louisiana’s current load, according to the Alliance for Affordable Energy.

Entergy requested an exemption from a state law meant to ensure that it develops energy at the lowest cost by issuing a public request for proposals, claiming in its application and testimony that this would slow them down and cause them to lose their contracts with Meta.

Meta has agreed to subsidize the first 15 years of payments for construction of the gas plants, but the plant’s construction is being financed over 30 years. At the 15 year mark, its contract with Entergy ends. At that point, Meta may decide it doesn’t need three gas plants worth of energy because computing power has become more efficient or because its AI products are not profitable enough. Louisiana residents would be stuck with the remaining bill.

“It's not that they're paying the cost, they're just paying the mortgage for the time that they're under contract,” explained Devi Glick, an electric utility analyst with Synapse Energy.

When asked about the costs for the gas plants, a Meta spokesperson said, “Meta works with our utility partners to ensure we pay for the full costs of the energy service to our data centers.” The spokesperson said that any rate increases will be reviewed by the Louisiana Public Service Commission. These applications, called rate cases, are typically submitted by energy companies based on a broad projection of new infrastructure projects and energy needs.

Meta has technically not finalized its agreement with Entergy but Glick believes the company has already invested enough in the endeavor that it is unlikely to pull out now. Other companies have been reconsidering their gamble on AI data centers: Microsoft reversed course on centers requiring a combined 2 gigawatts of energy in the U.S. and Europe. Meta swept in to take on some of the leases, according to Bloomberg.

And in the short-term, Entergy is asking residential customers to help pay for a new transmission line for the gas plants at a cost of more than $500 million, according to Entergy’s application to Louisiana’s public utility board. In its application, the energy giant said customers’ bills will only rise by $1.66 a month to offset the costs of the transmission lines. Meta, for its part, said it will pay up to $1 million a year into a fund for low-income customers. When asked about the costs of the new transmission line, a Meta spokesperson said, “Like all other new customers joining the transmission system, one of the required transmission upgrades will provide significant benefits to the broader transmission system. This transmission upgrade is further in distance from the data center, so it was not wholly assigned to Meta.”

When Entergy was questioned in public testimony on whether the new transmission line would need to be built even without Meta’s massive data center, the company declined to answer, saying the question was hypothetical.

Some details of Meta’s contract with Entergy have been made available to groups legally intervening in Entergy’s application, meaning that they can submit testimony or request data from the company. These parties include the Alliance for Affordable Energy, the Sierra Club and the Union of Concerned Scientists.

But Meta—which will become Entergy’s largest customer by far and whose presence will impact the entire energy grid—is not required to answer questions or divulge any information to the energy board or any other parties. The Alliance for Affordable Energy and Union of Concerned Scientists attempted to make Meta a party to Entergy’s application—which would have required it to share information and submit to questioning—but a judge denied that motion on April 4.

The public utility commissions that approve energy infrastructure in most states are the main democratic lever to assure that data centers don’t negatively impact consumers. But they have no oversight over the tech companies running the data centers or the private companies that build the centers, leaving residential customers, consumer advocates and environmentalists in the dark. This is because they approve the power plants that fuel the data centers but do not have jurisdiction over the data centers themselves.

“This is kind of a relic of the past where there might be some energy service agreement between some large customer and the utility company, but it wouldn't require a whole new energy facility,” Arbaje said.

A research paper by Ari Peskoe and Eliza Martin published in March looked at 50 regulatory cases involving data centers, and found that tech companies were pushing some of the costs onto utility customers through secret contracts with the utilities. The paper found that utilities were often parroting rhetoric from AI boosting politicians—including President Biden—to suggest that pushing through permitting for AI data center infrastructure is a matter of national importance.

“The implication is that there’s no time to act differently,” the authors wrote.

In written testimony sent to the public service commission, Entergy CEO Phillip May argued that the company had to bypass a legally required request for proposals and requirement to find the cheapest energy sources for the sake of winning over Meta.

“If a prospective customer is choosing between two locations, and if that customer believes that location A can more quickly bring the facility online than location B, that customer is more likely to choose to build at location A,” he wrote.

Entergy also argues that building new gas plants will in fact lower electricity bills because Meta, as the largest customer for the gas plants, will pay a disproportionate share of energy costs. Naturally, some are skeptical that Entergy would overcharge what will be by far their largest customer to subsidize their residential customers. “They haven't shown any numbers to show how that's possible,” Burke says of this claim. Meta didn’t have a response to this specific claim when asked by 404 Media.

Some details, like how much energy Meta will really need, the details of its hiring in the area and its commitment to renewables are still cloaked in mystery.

“We can't ask discovery. We can't depose. There's no way for us to understand the agreement between them without [Meta] being at the table,” Burke said.

It’s not just Entergy. Big energy companies in other states are also pushing out costly fossil fuel infrastructure to court data centers and pushing costs onto captive residents. In Kentucky, the energy company that serves the Louisville area is proposing 2 new gas plants for hypothetical data centers that have yet to be contracted by any tech company. The company, PPL Electric Utilities, is also planning to offload the cost of new energy supply onto its residential customers just to become more competitive for data centers.

“It's one thing if rates go up so that customers can get increased reliability or better service, but customers shouldn't be on the hook to pay for new power plants to power data centers,” Cara Cooper, a coordinator with Kentuckians for Energy Democracy, which has intervened on an application for new gas plants there.

These rate increases don’t take into account the downstream effects on energy; as the supply of materials and fuel are inevitably usurped by large data center load, the cost of energy goes up to compensate, with everyday customers footing the bill, according to Glick with Synapse.

Glick says Entergy’s gas plants may not even be enough to satisfy the energy needs of Meta’s massive data center. In written testimony, Glick said that Entergy will have to either contract with a third party for more energy or build even more plants down the line to fuel Meta’s massive data center.

To fill the gap, Entergy has not ruled out lengthening the life of some of its coal plants, which it had planned to close in the next few years. The company already pushed back the deactivation date of one of its coal plants from 2028 to 2030.

The increased demand for gas power for data centers has already created a widely-reported bottleneck for gas turbines, the majority of which are built by 3 companies. One of those companies, Siemens Energy, told Politico that turbines are “selling faster than they can increase manufacturing capacity,” which the company attributed to data centers.

Most of the organizations concerned about the situation in Louisiana view Meta’s massive data center as inevitable and are trying to soften its impact by getting Entergy to utilize more renewables and make more concrete economic development promises.

Andreanecia Morris, with Housing Louisiana, believes the lack of transparency from public utility commissions is a bigger problem than just Meta. “Simply making Meta go away, isn't the point,” Morris says. “The point has to be that the Public Service Commission is held accountable.”

Burke says Entergy owns less than 200 megawatts of renewable energy in Louisiana, a fraction of the fossil fuels it is proposing to fuel Meta’s center. Entergy was approved by Louisiana’s public utility commission to build out three gigawatts of solar energy last year , but has yet to build any of it.

“They're saying one thing, but they're really putting all of their energy into the other,” Burke says.

New gas plants are hugely troubling for the climate. But ironically, advocates for affordable energy are equally concerned that the plants will lie around disused - with Louisiana residents stuck with the financing for their construction and upkeep. Generative AI has yet to prove its profitability and the computing heavy strategy of American tech companies may prove unnecessary given less resource intensive alternatives coming out of China.

“There's such a real threat in such a nascent industry that what is being built is not what is going to be needed in the long run,” said Burke. “The challenge remains that residential rate payers in the long run are being asked to finance the risk, and obviously that benefits the utilities, and it really benefits some of the most wealthy companies in the world, But it sure is risky for the folks who are living right next door.”

The Alliance for Affordable Energy expects the commission to make a decision on the plants this fall.


#ai #x27