I rifiuti elettronici rappresentano uno dei problemi ambientali che crescono più velocemente sulla Terra. Ogni giorno, miliardi di dispositivi di piccole dimensioni, come ad esempio i fitness tracker, i cerotti medicali e gli impianti temporanei, vengono gettati via dopo un breve periodo di utilizzo. Questi dispositivi sono difficili da riciclare e, se smaltiti attraverso l’incenerimento o la sepoltura, rilasciano nell’ambiente metalli pesanti e composti tossici a causa delle emissioni.

Con l’elettronica sempre più integrata nella nostra vita quotidiana, è chiaro che abbiamo bisogno di trovare soluzioni più sostenibili ed ecocompatibili. E un team di scienziati del Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) potrebbe aver trovato la soluzione perfetta.

I ricercatori guidati dal Dott. Sangho Cho e dal Dott. Yeonho Chu hanno sviluppato un tipo di archiviazione fondamentalmente nuovo, completamente idrosolubile. Non si tratta di un fragile prototipo per una dimostrazione da conferenza, ma di una tecnologia completa che combina un’elevata affidabilità nell’archiviazione delle informazioni con la completa biodegradabilità.

La chiave di questo risultato è l’innovativo polimero PCL-TEMPO. Combina il poli(ε-caprolattone) (PCL), un materiale sicuro per l’organismo e biodegradabile, e la molecola organica TEMPO, responsabile della registrazione affidabile dei segnali elettrici.

La maggior parte dei tentativi precedenti di creare componenti elettronici solubili ha incontrato gravi limitazioni: fragilità, scarsa conservazione dei dati, scarsa resistenza agli urti fisici. La nuova composizione risolve tutti i problemi. Distingue in modo affidabile tra segnali accesi e spenti per oltre un milione di cicli di funzionamento, conserva le informazioni registrate per oltre 10.000 secondi e resiste ad almeno 250 operazioni di scrittura e cancellazione.

Ciò significa che la soluzione è pronta per l’uso pratico, non solo in laboratorio, ma anche in prodotti reali, compresi quelli la cui durata è inizialmente limitata dalla progettazione degli ingegneri.

La biocompatibilità dell’innovazione merita un’attenzione particolare. Può essere impiantato nel corpo umano in tutta sicurezza. Inoltre, gli scienziati hanno trovato un modo per controllare con precisione il momento in cui la struttura inizia a dissolversi. Lo spessore e la composizione chimica dello strato esterno sono regolati in modo tale che il processo di degradazione venga avviato rigorosamente secondo uno scenario prestabilito.

Dopo aver completato la protezione, la base del microcircuito si dissolve completamente in acqua in circa tre giorni, senza lasciare tracce. Questo approccio è particolarmente prezioso in ambito medico. Gli impianti creati con PCL-TEMPO saranno in grado di autodistruggersi nell’organismo una volta completata la loro funzione, eliminando la necessità di ripetuti interventi chirurgici e riducendo i costi sanitari.

I test hanno inoltre dimostrato che il materiale mantiene la sua integrità e funzionalità anche dopo 3.000 cicli di piegatura, rendendolo adatto a sistemi indossabili monouso, sensori medici e persino ad applicazioni militari.

Il team di ricerca sta già lavorando alla fase successiva del progetto. Secondo Cho, intendono creare quelli che chiamano dispositivi elettronici intelligenti transitori: sistemi che non solo si dissolvono quando necessario, ma hanno anche la capacità di autoripararsi ed essere sensibili alla luce.

I recenti progressi nel settore favoriscono l’introduzione sul mercato di dispositivi elettronici biodegradabili avanzati, che rispondono a standard sempre più elevati di sostenibilità ambientale nella tecnologia di consumo. Nonostante ciò, come hanno evidenziato le esperienze con gli impianti RFID e i dispositivi Bio-IoT, nella creazione di nuove soluzioni biocompatibili è fondamentale tenere in considerazione anche gli aspetti legati alla sicurezza. Inoltre, non ci sono garanzie che piccoli dispositivi di archiviazione in grado di memorizzare qualsiasi tipo di informazione non possano finire in mano a malintenzionati.

L'articolo Rifiuti elettronici? Arriva la soluzione biodegradabile da un team Coreano proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

The world of custom mechanical keyboards is vibrant, with new designs emerging weekly. However, keyboards are just one way we interact with computers. Ploopy, an open-source hardware company, focuses on innovative user interface devices. Recently, [Colin] from Ploopy introduced their latest creation: the Ploopy Knob, a compact and thoughtfully designed control device.

At first glance, the Ploopy Knob’s low-profile design may seem unassuming. Housed in a 3D-printed enclosure roughly the size of a large wristwatch, it contains a custom PCB powered by a USB-C connection. At its core, an RP2040 chip runs QMK firmware, enabling users to easily customize the knob’s functions.

The knob’s smooth rotation is achieved through a 6705ZZ bearing, which connects the top and bottom halves and spans nearly the device’s full width to eliminate wobble. Unlike traditional designs, the Ploopy Knob uses no mechanical encoder or potentiometer shaft. Instead, an AS5600 magnetic encoder detects movement with remarkable precision. This 12-bit rotary encoder can sense rotations as fine as 0.088 degrees, offering 4096 distinct positions for highly accurate control.

True to Ploopy’s philosophy, the Knob is fully open-source. On its GitHub Page, you’ll find everything from 3D-printed case files to RP2040 firmware, along with detailed guides for assembly and programming. This transparency empowers users to modify and build their own versions. Thanks to [Colin] for sharing this innovative device—we’re excited to see more open-source hardware from Ploopy. For those curious about other unique human-machine interfaces, check out our coverage of similar projects. Ploopy also has designs for trackballs (jump up a level on GitHub and you’ll see they have many interesting designs).

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For over a decade, most passports have contained an NFC chip that holds a set of electronically readable data about the document and its holder. This has resulted in a much quicker passage through some borders as automatic barriers can replace human officials, but at the same time, it adds an opaque layer to the process. Just what data is on your passport, and can you read it for yourself? [Terence Eden] wanted to find out.

The write-up explains what’s on the passport and how to access it. Surprisingly, it’s a straightforward process, unlike, for example, the NFC on a bank card. Security against drive-by scanning is provided by the key being printed on the passport, requiring the passport to be physically opened.

He notes that it’s not impossible to brute force this key, though doing so reveals little that’s not printed on the document. The write-up reveals a piece of general-purpose technical knowledge we should all know. However, there’s a question we’re left with that it doesn’t answer. If we can read the data on a passport chip, could a passport forger thus create a counterfeit one? If any readers are in the know, we’d be interested to hear more in the comments. If you are into NFC hacking, maybe you need a handy multitool.

Header: [Tony Webster], CC BY-SA 4.0.

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Old hardware tends to get less support as the years go by, from both manufacturers and the open-source community alike. And yet, every now and then, we hear about fresh attention for an ancient device. Consider the ancient SoundBlaster sound card that first hit the market 31 years ago. [Mark] noticed that a recent update squashed a new bug on an old piece of gear.

Jump over to the Linux kernel archive, and you’ll find a pull request for v6.16-rc3 from [Takashi Iwai]. The update featured fixes for a number of sound devices, but one stands out amongst the rest. It’s the SoundBlaster AWE32 ISA sound card, with [Iwai] noting “we still got a bug report after 25 years.” The bug in question appears to have been reported in 2023 by a user running Fedora 39 on a 120 MHz Pentium-based machine.

The fixes themselves are not particularly interesting. They merely concern minutiae about the DMA modes used with the old hardware. The new updates ensure that DMA modes cannot be changed while the AWE32 is playing a PCM audio stream, and that DMA setups are disabled when changing modes. This helps avoid system lockups and/or ugly noises emanating from the output of the soundcard.

It’s incredibly unlikely this update will affect you, unless you’re one of a handful of users still using an ISA soundcard in 2025. Still, if you are — and good on you — you’ll be pleased someone still cares about your user experience. Meanwhile, if you’re aware of any other obscure old-school driver updates going on out there, don’t hesitate to let us know on the tips line. Want to relive your ISA card’s glory days? Plug it into USB.

Image credit: Gona.eu, CC BY-SA 3.0

[Thanks to Meek Mark for the tip!]

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The Ceran discs, freshly cut from the old stovetop and awaiting polishing. (Credit: Huygens Optics)
Ceran is a name brand for a type of glass ceramic that has a very low coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE). This is useful for stovetops, but it is also a highly desirable property for optical glass. The natural question: Can an old ceramic stovetop be upcycled into something visually striking? This is the topic of the most recent video in [Huygens Optics]’s series on glass ceramics.

Interestingly, by baking sections of the Ceran glass ceramic for 10 minutes at 961 °C, the CTE can be lowered by another five times, from 0.5 ppm / °C to a mere 0.1 ppm / °C. Following baking, you need a lot of grinding and polishing to remove any warping, existing textures, and printing. After polishing with 220 grit by hand for a few minutes, most of these issues were fixed, but for subsequent polishing, you want to use a machine to get the required nanometer-level precision, as well as to survive the six to eight hours of polishing.

Following this final polishing, the discs were ground into mirrors for a Newtonian telescope. This raised a small issue of the Ceran being only 4 mm thick, which requires doubling up two of the discs using a very thin layer of epoxy. After careful drilling, dodging cracked glass, and more polishing, this produced the world’s first ceramic stovetop upcycled into a telescope. We think it was the first, anyway. All that’s left is to coat the discs with a more reflective coating and install them into a telescope frame, but even in their raw state, they show the potential of this kind of material.

If you decide to try this, and you’ve already cut up your stove, you might as well attack some kitchen bowls, too.

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hackaday.com/2025/06/28/making…

Un titolo che mi ha toccato nel profondo.
I personaggi sono ben costruiti, mai banali, e la storia scorre con naturalezza.
Mostra che, anche tra le difficoltà, è possibile raggiungere ciò che si desidera.

🌔 Da leggere almeno una volta nella vita.

Beste allemaal, Ik ben Kirsten Zimmerman, sinds 2022 met veel plezier stadsdeelcommissielid in Amsterdam-Noord voor De Groenen Basis Piraten. Mijn speerpunten zijn behoud van het groen, directe democratie, (online) privacy en sociale verbinding. Ik help de Noorderlingen graag en probeer bewoners in hun kracht te zetten om zelf met oplossingen voor maatschappelijke problemen aan de […]

Het bericht Kirsten stelt zich voor verscheen eerst op Piratenpartij.

Comincio col dire che non considero la pirateria una necessità.
Tuttavia, da appassionata di generi come lo Yuri e lo Shoujo-ai, mi chiedo spesso: come si fa a trovare materiale da leggere, considerando che in Italia queste opere arrivano col contagocce?
Un altro pensiero che continua a girarmi in testa è: perché nel nostro Paese arrivano pochissimi Yuri e Shoujo-ai, mentre invece c'è un’abbondanza di Yaoi?

Earlier this month, Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) and the Society of Professional Journalists led a letter to Steve Catalano, chair of the Greene County Board of Supervisors, objecting to a policy that reportedly prohibited county employees from speaking to the press and required them to label anything they provide to the press as “opinion.”

In response, the county claimed that the policy does not exist, despite several county employees reportedly telling local newspaper The Daily Progress that they could not speak to the media about public records requests they’d denied due to the policy.

We don’t know why county employees would be “confused” by a nonexistent gag policy if such a policy had not been communicated to them but, to resolve any confusion, here is the email chain that includes the denial of the policy’s existence.

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We hope any reporters whose requests for information are denied underthe supposed policy will show their sources this email, and that any Greene County employees who are confronted for not abiding by the policy will show it to their supervisors.

We note that even the above email denying the existence of the policy acknowledged that it is the county’s position that “When staff are asked about the County’s official position on policy matters, they are to represent the majority position of the Board or defer the question to the Chairman.”

We informed the County of the ambiguity of that position and the need to put its rules in writing, so that there won’t be further confusion if they’re constitutional, and so those impacted can challenge them if they’re not. As you can see, they said they would — we’ll hold them to it and will keep you posted.

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Dear Friend of Press Freedom,

It’s the 94th day that Rümeysa Öztürk is facing deportation by the United States government for writing an op-ed it didn’t like. More press freedom news below.

Paramount should abandon mediation with Trump. So should the mediator

Earlier this week, CBS News filed a strong brief outlining why President Donald Trump’s lawsuit over the editing of its 2024 interview with Kamala Harris is completely frivolous and an affront to the First Amendment.

But just days later, The Wall Street Journal reported that a mediator had proposed CBS owner Paramount Global settle the suit for $20 million. It’s been reported that Paramount — believing the Trump administration will block its merger with Skydance Media if it doesn’t settle – had previously offered $15 million, which Trump declined, demanding at least $25 million.

We wrote about why the unnamed mediator needs to consider their ethical obligations to not facilitate what may amount to an illegal bribe. Read more here.

Stop prosecuting journalist who exposed antisemitism

The Trump administration loves to position itself as an enemy of antisemitism. But it has continued its predecessor’s legally dubious prosecution of journalist Tim Burke, who found outtakes of a 2022 antisemitic rant by Ye, formerly Kanye West, that Fox News cut from a Tucker Carlson interview.

We’ve written before about why the government’s legal theories are nonsense, but there’s also the issue of why two presidential administrations thought it was a wise use of prosecutorial discretion to go after someone who clearly did a public good.

Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) Advocacy Director Seth Stern, along with Bobby Block of the Florida First Amendment Foundation, urged the administration to drop the case in USA Today. Read more here.

Putting public records to use

Federal agencies are closing their Freedom of Information Act offices, disappearing information from their websites, no longer creating records, and possibly even inappropriately destroying them. At the local level, we’re seeing legislation introduced across various states that would make it easier for local governments to ignore requests they don’t like.

To discuss how the public can use public records requests to fight back against mounting secrecy, we hosted a webinar June 24 with Washington Post FOIA Director Nate Jones, MuckRock CEO Michael Morisy, investigative journalist and author Miranda Spivack, and FPF’s Daniel Ellsberg Chair on Government Secrecy Lauren Harper. Watch it here.

What’s going on in Greene County?

Earlier this month, FPF and the Society of Professional Journalists led a letter to Steve Catalano, chair of the Greene County Board of Supervisors, objecting to a policy that reportedly prohibited county employees from speaking to the press and required them to label anything they provide to the press as “opinion.”

In response, the county claimed that the policy does not exist, despite several county employees reportedly telling local newspaper The Daily Progress that they could not speak to the media about public records requests they’d denied due to the policy.

To resolve any confusion among reporters and county employees under the impression that there’s a gag order, we posted the exchange on our website. Read more here.

What we’re reading

‘They’re not breathing’: Inside the chaos of ICE detention center 911 calls (Wired). This important story is available to read for free, thanks to Wired’s partnership with FPF to unpaywall FOIA-based reporting. Other outlets should follow suit.

DeKalb solicitor-general dismisses charges against journalist Mario Guevara (Atlanta Civic Circle). Dropping charges is nice, but too little, too late after they handed the journalist (who has a legal work authorization) over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

‘Giving information to the enemy’: Israel’s ban on Al Jazeera extends to foreign broadcasters (The Dissenter). It was obvious from the outset that Israel’s Al Jazeera ban was a pretext for further censorship. The same goes for U.S. efforts to crack down on foreign media.

The Paramount risk in settling Trump’s lawsuit: ‘Bribery’? (The Wall Street Journal). The Journal’s editorial board writes that, instead of caving to Trump, Paramount should “win the legal case [and] vindicate its CBS journalists and the First Amendment.”

White House to limit intelligence sharing, skip Gabbard at Senate Iran briefing (The Washington Post). The public should know if the Trump administration is lying about its Iran strike. Leaks undermining the administration’s claims aren’t an excuse for secrecy — they are a reason to declassify the underlying records.

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