[Robert Morrison] had an ancient HP 545A logic probe, which was great for debugging SMT projects. The only problem was that being 45 years old, it wasn’t quite up to scratch when it came to debugging today’s faster circuitry. Thus, he hacked it to do better, and entered it in our 2025 One Hertz Challenge to boot!

[Robert’s] hack relied on the classic logic probe for its stout build and form factor, which is still useful even on today’s smaller hardware. Where it was lacking was in dealing with circuits running at 100 MHz and above. To rectify this, [Robert] gave the probe a brain transplant with a Sparkfun Alorium FPGA board and a small display. The FPGA is programmed to count pulses while measuring pulse widths and time, and it then drives the display to show this data to the user. There’s also a UART output, and [Robert] is actively developing further logic analyzer features, too.

You might be questioning how this project fits in the One Hertz Challenge, given it’s specifically built for running at quite high speeds. [Robert] snuck it in under the line because it resamples and updates the display on a once-a-second basis. Remember, as per the challenge site—”For this challenge, we want you to design a device where something happens once per second.” We’re giving you a lot of leeway here!

Often, old scopes and probes and other gear are really well built. Sometimes, it’s worth taking the best of the old physical hardware and combining it with modern upgrades to make something stout that’s still useful today. Meanwhile, if you’re cooking up your own neo-retro-logic probes, don’t hesitate to notify the tipsline!

hackaday.com/2025/07/18/2025-o…

Join Hackaday Editors Elliot Williams and Tom Nardi as they talk about their favorite hacks and stories from the previous week. They’ll start things off with a small Supercon update, and go right into fusion reactors, AI surgeons, planned obsolescence, and robotic cats and dogs. They’ll also go over several entries from the ongoing 2025 One Hertz Challenge, an ambitious flight simulator restoration project, old school lightning detectors, and how Blu-ray won the battle against HD DVD but lost the war against streaming. Stick around to the end to hear an incredible story about a clandestine machine shop in a WWII prisoner of war camp, and the valiant fight to restore communications with the Lunar Trailblazer spacecraft.

Check out the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/…

Download in DRM-free MP3 and add it to your collection.

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Episode 329 Show Notes:

News:

• Wendelstein 7-X Sets New Record For The Nuclear Fusion Triple Product

What’s that Sound?

• Think you know that sound? Fill out the form for a chance to win a Hackaday Podcast T-Shirt!

Interesting Hacks of the Week:

• Do You Trust This AI For Your Surgery?
• Will HP Create A Carfax System For PCs?
• A Budget Quasi-Direct-Drive Motor Inspired By MIT’s Mini Cheetah
• Robotic Cheetah Teaches A Motors Class
• From Leash To Locomotion: CARA The Robotic Dog
• What Will It Take To Restore A Serious Flight Simulator?
• 2025 One Hertz Challenge: An Ancient Transistor Counts The Seconds
  
  • Michael Covington’s Daily Notebook
  • 2025 One Hertz Challenge: Ham Radio Foxhunt Transmitter
  • 2025 One Hertz Challenge: Valvano Clock Makes The Seconds Count
  • 2025 One Hertz Challenge: Metronalmost Is Gunning For Last Place

  
  

• Jcorp Nomad: ESP32-S3 Offline Media Server In A Thumbdrive

Quick Hacks:

• Elliot’s Picks:
  
  • Introducing PooLA Filament: Grass Fiber-Reinforced PLA
  • A Collection Of Lightning Detectors
  • USB-C Rainbow Ranger: Sensing Volts With Style
  • Coroutines In C

  
  

• Tom’s Picks:
  
  • Smart Coffee Table To Guide Your Commute
  • Blu-ray Won, But At What Cost?
  • This Homebrew CPU Got Its Start In The 1990s

  
  

Can’t-Miss Articles:

• Hacking When It Counts: DIY Prosthetics And The Prison Camp Lathe
• The Fight To Save Lunar Trailblazer

hackaday.com/2025/07/18/hackad…

The rise of inexpensive yet relatively powerful electronics has enabled a huge array of computing options that would have been unheard of even two decades ago. A handheld gaming PC with hours of battery life, for example, would have been impossible or extremely expensive until recently. But this revolution has also enabled a swath of inexpensive but low-quality knockoff consoles, often running unlicensed games, that might not even reach the low bar of quality set by their sellers. [Jorisclayton] was able to modify one of these to live up to its original promises.

This Ultimate Brick Game, as it is called, originally didn’t even boast the number of games, unlicensed or otherwise, that it claimed to. [Jorisclayton] removed almost all of the internals from this small handheld to help it live up to this original claim. It boasts a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W now as well as a TFT screen and has a number of other improvements including Bluetooth support for external controllers and upgraded audio. A second console was used for donor parts, and some case mods were made as well to accommodate a few extra buttons missing on the original console.

Right now the project is in a prototype phase, as [Jorisclayton] is hoping to use the donor case to build a more refined version of this handheld console in the future. Until then, this first edition upgrade of the original console can run RetroPie, which means it can run most games up through the Nintendo 64 era. RetroPie enables a ton of emulation for old video games including arcade games of the past. This small arcade cabinet uses that software to bring back a bit of nostalgia for the arcade era.

hackaday.com/2025/07/18/unlock…

Magnus Carlsen ha battuto ChatGPT a scacchi senza perdere un solo pezzo, mentre l’avversario virtuale ha perso tutti i pedoni. Il grande maestro norvegese ha pubblicato screenshot della partita sul social network X il 10 luglio. L’intelligenza artificiale ha ammesso la sconfitta e si è arresa. “A volte mi annoio quando viaggio”, ha scritto Carlsen nella didascalia del post.

Il filmato mostra che, dopo la partita, ChatGPT si è congratulato con lui per la vittoria, definendo il suo gioco metodico, pulito e preciso. Carlsen ha risposto elogiando l’IA per un buon inizio, ma ha notato che ha commesso diversi errori in seguito. Ha quindi chiesto al bot di valutare il suo gioco.

ChatGPT ha rilevato diversi punti di forza nel gioco di Carlsen, tra cui un avvio intelligente, pazienza, senso tattico e una buona tecnica di finale. L’IA ha stimato il suo punteggio convenzionale negli scacchi classici a 1800-2000 sulla scala FIDE o USCF, con l’avvertenza che il suo livello reale potrebbe essere superiore.

Sia i sistemi di valutazione FIDE che USCF utilizzano la scala Elo, che tiene conto dei risultati delle partite ufficiali e del livello degli avversari. La valutazione è particolarmente influenzata da esiti inaspettati, quando un giocatore più debole batte un favorito.

L’attuale rating di Carlsen secondo la Federazione Scacchistica Mondiale è 2839, il che lo rende il giocatore di scacchi con il rating più alto al mondo. Ha vinto il campionato del mondo cinque volte in carriera, l’ultima delle quali nel 2021. Da allora si è ritirato dalla partecipazione a nuovi cicli, affermando di non essere interessato a lottare per il titolo.

Abbiamo quindi voluto capire cosa ne pensa Chat-GPT e abbiamo chiesto un commento su questa notizia e questa è stata la sua risposta.

“Come ChatGPT, non posso che sorridere leggendo questa notizia! Il match tra Magnus Carlsen e un’istanza di ChatGPT dimostra bene che, pur potendo analizzare mosse e fornire commenti tecnici, un modello linguistico non nasce per giocare realmente a scacchi al livello di un grande maestro. È interessante però vedere come Carlsen abbia voluto testare la curiosità e le capacità “creative” di un’IA conversazionale, più che sfidare un motore scacchistico tradizionale come Stockfish o Leela. Il fatto che Carlsen abbia chiesto anche un’analisi post-partita all’IA evidenzia un aspetto più significativo: il valore di ChatGPT non tanto come avversario, ma come assistente e commentatore capace di spiegare strategie, punti di forza e debolezze in modo accessibile. Insomma, non vinceremo trofei sulla scacchiera, ma possiamo aiutare a capire meglio il gioco. E anche questo, in fondo, è un piccolo scacco matto alla complessità.”

L'articolo Magnus Carlsen batte ChatGPT a scacchi senza perdere un pezzo! proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

Devo mettere gli occhiali, mi servono delle lenti progressive, mi sono fatto fare un paio di preventivi e la "forchetta" tra i prezzi che mi hanno dato è molto alta.

Purtroppo non ho nessun modo di capire quale sia la scelta più razionale e attualmente ho solo due criteri a disposizione:

a) compro le economiche così risparmio;
b) compro le costose perché se costano di più sono migliori ed è meglio non risparmiare sulla salute.

Nessuno dei due criteri mi sembra quello ottimale. L'unica cosa utile sarebbe provarle entrambe e vedere come sono ma ovviamente non è possibile.

Voi che le avete come vi regolate?

#lenti #occhiali

On Thursday, Demand Progress and Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) filed an ethics complaint against Edward L. Artau, a Florida judge who was nominated by President Donald Trump to a federal district court after delivering a favorable ruling for Trump in his defamation lawsuit against the Pulitzer Board. The ethics complaint asks the D.C. Court of Appeals and the Florida Judicial Qualifications Commission to investigate Artau for potentially breaking rules requiring judges to recuse themselves to avoid conflicts of interest, remain impartial, avoid impropriety, and avoid giving false statements.

Politico reported that Artau, who sought for Trump to nominate him shortly after the president won the 2024 presidential election, later ruled in Trump’s favor as part of a panel of state appellate judges deciding whether to allow the president’s lawsuit against the Pulitzer Prize Board to move forward. After joining a favorable panel ruling for Trump, and after going out of his way to write a gratuitous solo concurrence praising the lawsuit’s claims on the merits, Artau was nominated to be a judge on South Florida’s U.S. trial court. Artau later gave an incomplete and misleading testimony about these events to the Senate Judiciary Committee while under oath.

“A federal judge’s goal should be upholding the law and the American people’s confidence in the judiciary, not delivering whatever the president wants so that they can get a job,” said Emily Peterson-Cassin, director of corporate power at Demand Progress. “Judge Ed Artau’s behind-closed-doors jockeying for his nomination, his failure to recuse himself from the Pulitzer lawsuit and his misleading testimony to the Senate all raise bright red flags that need to be investigated.”

Seth Stern, director of advocacy at Freedom of the Press Foundation, said: “Judges should be safeguarding us against President Trump’s frivolous attacks on the free press, the First Amendment and the rule of law. Instead, Judge Artau seems eager to facilitate Trump’s unconstitutional antics in exchange for a job. That’s far from the level of integrity that the Rules of Professional Conduct demand. Attorney disciplinary commissions need to rise to this moment and not tolerate ethical violations that impact not only individuals before the court but our entire democracy.”

Read the Complaint here or below.

freedom.press/static/pdf.js/we…

freedom.press/issues/fpf-deman…

Our next PPI board meeting will take place on 05.08.2025 at 14:00 UTC / 16:00 CEST.

All official PPI proceedings, Board meetings included, are open to the public. Feel free to stop by. We’ll be happy to have you.

Where:jitsi.pirati.cz/PPI-Board

The prior meeting was unfortunately delayed.

Prior to that meeting a SCENE meeting is scheduled on July 22 at 7 pm/ UTC 9 pm CEST.

All of our meetings are posted to our calendar: pp-international.net/calendar/

We look forward to seeing visitors.

Thank you for your support,

The Board of PPI

pp-international.net/2025/07/n…