[Stoppi] always has interesting blog posts and videos, even when we don’t understand all the German in them. The latest? Computer simulation of wave propagation (Google Translate link), which, if nothing else, makes pretty pictures that work in any language. Check out the video below.

Luckily, most browsers will translate for you these days, or you can use a website. We’ve seen waves modeled with springs before, but between the explanations and the accompanying Turbo Pascal source code, this is worth checking out.

We can’t explain it better than [Stoppi] who writes:

The model consists of individual atoms with the mass m, which are connected to each other by springs with the spring constant k. To start, I deflect the first atom sinusoidally. According to this, the individual atoms obey Newton’s equation of motion F = m·a, whereby Hook’s spring law F = k·Δl is used for the force F. I solved these differential equations iteratively using the Euler method. The movement of the atoms is restricted in the y-direction. At the beginning, the number of atoms, their mass m and the spring constant k must be entered. In addition, you can choose between transverse or longitudinal deflection and whether you want the reflection at the free or fixed end.

Can you get better simulations? Of course. But will this help you develop more intuitive understanding? Maybe. If you are interested in simulating the physical world, don’t forget TinkerCad has added that capability.

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hackaday.com/2025/07/28/models…

Although firmly entrenched in the cultural zeitgeist now, the skateboard wasn’t always a staple of popular culture. It had a pretty rocky start as surfers jankily attached roller skating hardware to wooden planks searching for wave-riding experiences on land. From those rough beginnings it still took decades of innovation until Rodney Mullen adapted the ollie for flatground skating before the sport really took off. Skateboard hardware is quite elegant now too; the way leaning turns the board due to the shape of the trucks is immediately intuitive for even the most beginner riders, and bearing technology is so high-quality and inexpensive now that skateboard hardware is a go-to parts bin grab for plenty of other projects like this plasma cutter modification.

[The Fabrication Series]’s plasma cutter is mounted to a CNC machine, allowing for many complex cuts in much less time than it would take to do by hand. But cutting tubes is a more complicated endeavor for a machine like this. This is where the skateboard hardware comes in: by fabricating two custom pivoting arms each with two skateboard wheels that push down on a tube to hold it in place, the CNC machine can roll the tube along the table in a precise way as the plasma cutter works through it.

Of course, cutting a moving part is a little more complicated for the CNC machine than cutting a fixed piece of sheet metal, so [The Fabrication Series] walks us through a few ways of cutting pipe for various purposes, including miters and notches. The first step is to build a model of the pipes, in this case using Onshape, and then converting the 3D model of the pipes into a sheet metal model that the CNC machine can use. It does take a few cuts on the machine to fine-tune the cuts, but in no time the machine is effortlessly cutting complex shapes into the pipe. Don’t have a plasma cutter at all? You can always build your own from scratch.

Thanks to [JohnU] and [paulvdh] for the tip!

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PAHT-CF part printed at 45 degrees, with reinforcing bolt, post-failure. (Credit: Functional Print Friday, YouTube)
The good part about FDM 3D printing is that there are so many different filament types and parameters to choose from. This is also the bad part, as it can often be hard to tell what impact a change has. Fortunately we got destructive testing to provide us with some information here. Case in point [Functional Print Friday] on YouTube recently testing out a few iterations of a replacement part for a car.

The original part was in ABS, printed horizontally in a Bambu Lab FDM printer, which had a protruding element snapped off while in use. In addition to printing a replacement in carbon fiber-reinforced nylon (PAHT-CF, i.e. PA12 instead of the typical PA6), the part was now also printed at a 45° angle. To compare it with the original ABS filament in a more favorable way, the same part was reprinted at the same angle in ABS.

Another change was to add a machine screw to the stop element of the part, which turned out to make a massive difference. Whereas the original horizontal ABS print failed early and cleanly on layer lines, the angled versions put up much more of a fight, with the machine screw-reinforced stop combined with the PA12 CF filament maxing out the first meter.

The take-away here appears to be that not only angles are good, but that adding a few strategic metal screws can do wonders, even if you’re not using a more exotic filament type.

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Wall clocks! Are they very accurate? Well, sometimes they are, and sometimes they lose minutes a day. If you’ve got one that needs calibrating, you might like this device from [Lauri Pirttiaho].

Most cheap wall clocks use very similar mechanisms based around the Lavet-type stepper motor. These are usually driven by a chip-on-board oscillator that may or may not be particularly accurate.

[Lauri] desired a way to tune up these cheap clocks by using GPS-level timing accuracy. Thus began a project based around a CY8KIT evaluation board from Cypress. The microcontroller is paired with a small character LCD as a user interface, and hooked up to a cheap GPS module with an accurate 1-pulse-per-second (1PPS) timing output. The concept is simple enough. Clock drift is measured by using counters in the microcontroller to compare the timing of the GPS 1PPS output and the pulses driving the Lavet-type stepper motor. The difference between the two can be read off the device, and used to determine if the wall clock is fast or slow. Then one need only use a trimmer capacitor to tweak the wall clock’s pulse rate in order to make it more accurate.

Few of us spend much time calibrating low-cost wall clocks to high levels of accuracy. If that sounds like a fun hobby to you, or your name is Garrus, you would probably find [Lauri]’s device remarkably useful. Believe it or not, this isn’t the first clock calibrator we’ve seen, either. Meanwhile, if you’ve brewed up your own high-accuracy timing hardware, feel free to let us know on the tipsline.

hackaday.com/2025/07/28/2025-o…

La 55enne, completamente paralizzata a causa della sclerosi multipla aggiunge: “Ogni giorno per me è una tortura”

Filomena Gallo commenta: “ll tempo non è una semplice variabile: diventa parte integrante del diritto stesso”

A seguito della recente sentenza della Corte costituzionale 132/2025, “Libera”, 55enne toscana completamente paralizzata a causa della sclerosi multipla, non potrà, per ora, essere aiutata da un medico nella somministrazione del farmaco letale, come aveva chiesto. Il giudice dovrà, infatti, verificare a livello nazionale l’esistenza di strumentazioni per l’autosomministrazione. Nel frattempo le condizioni di “Libera” sono peggiorate, non riesce quasi più a parlare.

Assistita dal collegio legale coordinato dall’avvocata Filomena Gallo, Segretaria nazionale dell’Associazione Luca Coscioni, la donna al momento non può procedere autonomamente con l’assunzione del farmaco per il fine vita: non può autosomministrarsi il farmaco letale a causa delle sue condizioni fisiche ma neanche ottenere la somministrazione del farmaco letale da parte del medico.

Queste le parole di “Libera”, affidate all’Associazione Luca Coscioni, a seguito della sentenza:

Capisco che sia difficile comprendere davvero cosa significhi per me continuare ad aspettare. Ma è proprio questo il punto: i miei tempi non sono quelli della politica. I parlamentari hanno rinviato la discussione sul fine vita a settembre, come se la mia malattia potesse prendersi una pausa estiva.

I miei tempi non sono neanche quelli della giustizia. I giudici chiedono altra documentazione, altri approfondimenti. Ma ogni giorno in più, per me, è sofferenza. Ogni giorno in più è tortura, è umiliazione. Vi chiedo una sola cosa: fate presto.

“La Corte costituzionale non entra nel merito della questione di legittimità costituzionale esaminando l’articolo 579 codice penale, non chiude la porta, anzi ribadisce e rilancia alcuni principi fondamentali del diritto costituzionale: il diritto all’autodeterminazione e il ruolo attivo del Servizio sanitario nazionale nel fine vita.

Ora il procedimento su ‘Libera’ torna al tribunale di Firenze, che dovrà effettuare delle verifiche su scala nazionale, coinvolgendo anche il Ministero della Salute e l’Istituto Superiore di Sanità.

La Corte non elude il nucleo del problema: chiarisce che, una volta verificate tutte le condizioni stabilite dalla sentenza n. 242/2019 (caso Cappato/Dj Fabo) e ribadite nelle n. 135/2024 e 66/2025 — ovvero patologia irreversibile, sofferenze intollerabili, capacità di autodeterminazione e decisione libera e consapevole — la persona interessata si trova in una situazione soggettiva tutelata costituzionalmente.

L’urgenza è evidente: le condizioni cliniche di ‘Libera’ stanno peggiorando e ogni ulteriore rinvio rischia di trasformarsi in una concreta negazione del diritto che le è stato già riconosciuto. In questi casi, il tempo non è una semplice variabile: diventa parte integrante del diritto stesso”, ha dichiarato l’avvocata Filomena Gallo, Segretaria nazionale dell’Associazione Luca Coscioni e legale di “Libera” di cui coordina anche il collegio di studio e difesa.

L'articolo Dopo la sentenza della Consulta parla “Libera”: “I miei tempi non sono quelli della politica e della giustizia” proviene da Associazione Luca Coscioni.

Forse sarebbe il caso di arricchire la Netiquette, in modo da estendere la sua ala protettrice anche sopra il Fediverso.

Serve, secondo me, un capitolo "Fediquette".

Per cominciare aggiungerei alla Fediquette questa regola:

- non si possono pubblicare link ad articoli, post o contenuti che per essere fruiti richiedono il pagamento di un abbonamento o l'obbligo ad accettare cookies che non siano tecnicamente necessari al funzionamento del sito.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Today, Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), represented by nonpartisan watchdog American Oversight, filed a Freedom of Information Act suit against the Department of Justice in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia for failing to release a legal memorandum that reportedly justified the Trump administration’s acceptance of a $400 million jet gifted by the Qatari government in May.

The luxury aircraft — set to be retrofitted for use as Air Force One to the tune of hundreds of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars and later transferred to President Donald Trump’s private foundation — has raised serious legal and ethical concerns. Multiple experts and lawmakers from both parties have raised questions about whether accepting such a gift from a foreign government violates the Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause and federal ethics rules. Additionally, while Trump claims Qatar reached out and offered the jet as a “gift” to him, media reports the opposite is true — his administration approached Qatar.

“It shouldn’t take 620 days to release a single, time-sensitive document,” said Lauren Harper, Freedom of the Press Foundation’s Daniel Ellsberg chair on government secrecy. “How many flights could Trump have taken on his new plane in the same amount of time it would have taken the DOJ to release this one document? The government’s inability to administer FOIA makes it too easy for agencies to keep secrets, and nonexistent disclosure rules around donations to presidential libraries provide easy cover for bad actors and potential corruption.”

“President Trump’s deal to take a $400 million luxury jet from a foreign government deserves full public scrutiny — not a stiff-arm from the Department of Justice,” said Chioma Chukwu, executive director of American Oversight, which is representing FPF in its litigation. “This is precisely the kind of corrupt arrangement that public records laws are designed to expose. The DOJ cannot sit on its hands and expect the American people to wait years for the truth while serious questions about corruption, self-dealing, and foreign influence go unanswered.”

The May 2025 memorandum, reportedly signed by Attorney General Pam Bondi, who previously lobbied on behalf of the Qatari government, purportedly concluded that the Trump administration’s acceptance of the jet was legally permissible. The administration accepted the jet just days later. The circumstances surrounding the jet deal, including reports that the transaction may have been initiated by the Trump administration and that it followed a lucrative Trump private business arrangement in Qatar, have only heightened calls for transparency.

News that the luxury jet will be donated to Trump’s private presidential library foundation after he is no longer in office follows reports that ABC News and Paramount, which was seeking government approval for a merger with Skydance, resolved litigation with President Trump by agreeing to multimillion-dollar payouts to the foundation.

FPF submitted its FOIA request for the Bondi memo on May 15. Although the DOJ granted expedited processing, the department informed FPF that the estimated time for fulfilling the request was more than 600 days. As of today, the DOJ has failed to release any responsive records or provide a further timeline for production.

Please contact us if you would like further comment.

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