Often, we face tedious tasks with no way around them. Sometimes, you just have to grit your teeth and push through. But small tweaks can make the onerous task a bit easier to handle. [James Bowman] sent in his latest quick project that helps him fold small boxes more efficiently.

To fulfill orders on his previously covered TermDriver2, [James Bowman] is faced with folding thousands of small boxes. To aid in this daunting task, he had the idea of making a tool to streamline the process — every second saved adds up when you’re repeating a task thousands of times. He designed a 3D printed mandrel that pops the flat box blank open as it’s slid over the tapered top, shaping it into a perfect rectangle for easy folding of the top flaps.

The nice thing about 3D printng is how easy it is to iterate on a design. Once James had the first version printed and verified it worked as hoped, he had ideas to improve it, such as adding a second mandrel to twist the box from both the inside and outside and adding a guide on one side to enhance rigidity.

While we often think of 3D printers producing ready-to-use parts, but printed tooling holds great potential for repetitive tasks, and is a huge cost saver compared to traditional methods.

hackaday.com/2025/09/21/mandre…

[Too Many Wires] has a custom computer he’s building. He wanted a mouse, but USB is a bit of a stretch for the fledgling computer. We might have opted for PS/2, but he went for something even older: a serial mouse connected with a DE-9 (colloquially, a DB-9). Check it out in his recent video update on the project below.

Don’t remember serial mice? They were very common many years ago, and apparently, you can still buy new ones, which makes you wonder what people are doing with them. If you are an old hand at serial, you’ll immediately know why he couldn’t get it to work at first. If you haven’t worked with RS-232 gear before, you’ll learn a lot.

The protocol is simple enough, and you can read the code or find plenty of old documents. He’s using a UART chip, which offloads the CPU. However, the PS/2 mice are very easy to work with directly, and you could skip the +/- 12V RS-232 and other issues.

Either way, however, using an RS-232 or PS/2 mouse in a project is relatively straightforward. You might not think you need a mouse, but don’t forget, they are really accurate two-axis sensors. An optical mouse on a motion table, for example, could be worth something.

The computer is based on [Ben Eater]’s design, if you want more details on that. Can’t decide between RS-232 and PS/2? You don’t have to.

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Ok, we’ll admit it. If you asked us what the first transistorized computer was, we would have guessed it was the TC from the University of Manchester. After all, Dr. Wilkes and company were at the forefront and had built Baby and EDSAC, which, of course, didn’t use transistors. To be clear, we would have been guessing, but what we didn’t know at all was that the TC, with its magnetic drums and transistors in 1955, had a second life as a commercial product from Metropolitan-Vickers, called the Metrovick 950. [Nina Kalinina] has a simulator inspired by the old machine.

The code is in Python, and you can find several programs to run on the faux machine, including the venerable lunar lander. If you haven’t heard of the Metrovick, don’t feel bad. Oral histories say that only six or seven were ever built, and they were used internally within the company.

It seems hard to imagine now, but in the 1950s, transistors for computing were actually a disadvantage. The devices were slow. The TC, for example, used old point-contact transistors (200 of them) and 1,300 point diodes. The Metrovick 950, mercifully, used more modern junction devices. You might think that transistors would be more robust, but the early devices often failed.

The Metrovick wasn’t totally transistor-based. Like the somewhat newer TRADIC from Bell Labs, it used a vacuum tube to produce a clock signal with enough oomph to feed the whole machine. The first fully transistorized machine is a bit of a moving target, but is probably either the Harwell CADET, the IBM 604, or an ICBM guidance computer from Burroughs. Want to know more? You can read the original engineering report (which included the title picture).

We have long been fascinated with the EDSAC and often wonder if we’d have been as smart as David Wheeler and invented the subroutine.

hackaday.com/2025/09/21/first-…

Remember AOL? For a lot of folks, America Online was their first ISP, the place where they got their first exposure to the Internet, or at least a highly curated version of it. Remembered by the cool kids mainly as the place that the normies used as their ISP and for the mark of shame an “@aol.com” email address bore, the company nevertheless became a media juggernaut, to the point that “AOL Time Warner” was a thing in the early 2000s. We’d have thought the company was long gone by now, but it turns out it’s still around and powerful enough of a brand that it’s being shopped around for $1.5 billion. We’d imagine a large part of that value comes from Yahoo!, which previous owner Verizon merged with AOL before selling most of the combined entity off in 2021, but either way, it’s not chump change.

For our part, the most memorable aspect of AOL was the endless number of CDs they stuffed into mailboxes in the 90s. There was barely a day that went by that one of those things didn’t cross your path, either through the mail or in free bins at store checkouts, or even inside magazines. They were everywhere, and unless you were tempted by the whole “You’ve got mail!” kitsch, they were utterly useless; they didn’t even make good coasters thanks to the hole in the middle. So most of the estimated 2 billion CDs just ended up in the trash, which got us thinking: How much plastic was that? A bit of poking around indicates that a CD contains about 15 grams of polycarbonate, so that’s something like 30,000 metric tonnes! To put that into perspective, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is said to contain “only” around 80,000 metric tonnes of plastic. Clearly the patch isn’t 37% AOL CDs, but it still gives one pause to consider how many resources AOL put into marketing.

You want lice? Because hacking a network of smart washing machines on a college campus is how you get lice. Or at least that’s the somewhat overwrought fear after someone broke into the smart washing machines at a housing complex serving Amsterdam college students earlier in the year. The hack, which disabled the electronic payment system on the washers, was discovered in July, which seems like a strange time of year for students to be doing laundry, but whatever. The company that owns the machines finally disabled them, leaving 1,250 residents with only a couple of old coin-op machines, most of which they report are chronically out of order. That fits well with our college laundry experience, which more often than not was a waste of time and quarters, enough so that it was worth the drive home to use Mom’s machines. But what about the lice? It seems that some students are complaining that their unclean clothes are leaving them itchy and in fear of an outbreak of lice unless the laundry situation improves. So much for the hacker’s attempt to become a folk

Being an amateur radio operator, we’re always on the lookout for ham-adjacent stories, especially the increasing number where amateur allocations are being infringed upon or worse, privileges are being outright revoked. That’s why we were alarmed to see a story about amateur radio licenses being suspended in Equatorial Guinea, but it turns out that there’s a little more to the story than just anti-ham sentiment. All existing amateur licenses in the African nation were temporarily suspended thanks to the discovery of a foreign citizen who apparently illegally purchased a license and then accessed “sensitive areas” of the country. It sounds like Equatorial Guinea is pretty strict, requiring inspection of equipment and proper licensing prior to allowing radios into the country. The suspension of all licenses seems like overkill to us, especially since no apparent timeline for restoring privileges has been communicated. Separately, we’d also like to call out the article’s graphic designer for one of the worst examples of map gore we’ve ever seen.

If you write a column like this and you see a story with a title like “Jay Leno 3D prints toilet seat for Harrison Ford,” it’s really hard to resist writing it up. But as it turns out, there’s not a lot to the story, at least to those of us used to printing unobtanium parts. Jay Leno, famed for his amazing collection of antique and rare motor vehicles, has gotten into additive manufacturing in a big way, often printing parts for his restorations. Harrison Ford, on the other hand, isn’t much into 3D printing, but he does have a toilet he’s especially fond of — we can absolutely relate to this — but whose seat has seen better days. Being out of production, he couldn’t source a replacement until he remembered a visit to Jay’s garage, where he was first introduced to 3D printing. So Harrison sent the seat to Jay (eww) for reverse engineering and printing. We’d love to know a few details, such as what plastic was deemed fit for Indiana Jones’ tush. We’d also like to know which printing modality was used; we hope it wasn’t FDM, because layer lines would be pretty gross on a toilet seat.

And finally, clear your viewing calendar for this four-part series on custom bookbinding. We know, we know; bookbinding isn’t really the kind of tech we usually feature around here. But watching Dennis over at Four Keys Book Arts take a cheap book-club edition of Frank Herbert’s classic Dune and turn it into a work of art is absolutely mesmerizing. From disassembly and restoration of the original to tooling the new leather cover and applying gold leaf, every step along the way is absolute craftsmanship. Check it out; we doubt you’ll be disappointed. Enjoy!

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By virtue of its triple bond, acetylene burns hotter than any other common hydrocarbon when mixed with oxygen, but it isn’t the only flame hot enough for welding. With the assistance of a homemade oxygen concentrator, [Hyperspace Pirate] was able to make a natural gas torch that melts steel, even if welding with the torch remains difficult.

[Hyperspace Pirate] built his oxygen concentrator around a pressure-swing adsorption system, which uses two tanks of a molecular sieve to selectively adsorb and purge nitrogen, leaving behind mostly oxygen. [Hyperspace Pirate] used reverse-osmosis membrane casings as the tanks, solenoid valves to control gas flow, and an Arduino with some MOSFETs to control the timing. For fuel, he used a convenient source of natural gas, already installed in his garage: the water heater’s gas supply. Since the house’s meter regulates the gas down to a fairly low pressure, and the oxygen concentrator doesn’t produce high pressures, the torch didn’t need any inline regulators.

Inline check valves, on the other hand, were very much necessary, a mixture of oxygen and natural gas propagating back along the lines being undesirable for obvious reasons, and flashback arrestors would have been a good addition. [Hyperspace Pirate] built the torch itself out of copper tubing and needle valves, with a 0.9 mm MIG welder tip as the nozzle. Adjusting the gas mixture was mostly a matter of trial and error. With an oxygen-rich flame, it could cut thin metal decently well, but it tended to melt thick pieces more than it cut. On the other hand, even with a neutral flame, the water vapor in the exhaust oxidized steel, which made welding quite difficult, but not impossible.

The oxygen supply by itself was an entertaining tool, turning smoldering pieces of charcoal or steel wool violently incandescent. With the assistance of some steel wool, [Hyperspace Pirate] set a steel tube on fire. With a bit more oxygen, it would probably make an effective thermic lance. If you still want to do your welding with acetylene, he’s also made that before.

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hackaday.com/2025/09/21/weldin…

The Czech Pirates Launch a 100-Day Plan

The Czech Pirate Party has entered the hot phase of their national election campaign with a bold and concrete plan for the first 100 days in government. Their program is built on affordable housing, fair taxation, transparency, and modernization of the state – with the clear message that “We have more in common than you think.”

The Czech Pirates’ 10 Key Proposals

1. More Homes for Citizens – faster construction, fewer regulations, CZK 20 billion annually for housing, end of speculation on the housing market.
2. Tax Relief for Families – higher tax allowances, stronger child support, parental allowance of CZK 420,000.
3. Cheaper Food and Essentials – lower VAT on basic goods, action against cartels, transparent online price monitoring.
4. Fair Subsidies – more funds for small and medium-sized enterprises, no subsidies or contracts for cabinet members.
5. Better Healthcare and Education – audit to cut waste, more doctors and dentists, stronger teachers and school leadership.
6. Anti-Corruption Clean-Up – anti-mafia law, property declarations, confiscation of criminal proceeds, tougher penalties.
7. A Functional Parliament – rules reform to end endless filibusters and make MPs work for citizens.
8. Marriage Equality – equal rights for same-sex couples.
9. Less Bureaucracy, More Digitalization – cut red tape, remove duplicate inspections, expand digital public services.
10. Regulated Cannabis Market – up to CZK 3 billion in state revenue, end of criminalization of users, tougher sanctions for dealers targeting minors.

The European Pirates strongly welcome the Czech Pirates’ ambitious and people-focused program. Their proposals show how Pirate policies deliver practical solutions: fighting corruption, protecting families, building a fairer economy, and ensuring a modern digital state.

We believe the Czech Pirates are setting an inspiring example for Pirate movements across Europe. Their vision proves that with courage, transparency, and citizen engagement, politics can serve the people – not the oligarchs.

“As European Pirates, we stand together with our Czech colleagues as they bring Pirate values to the heart of government. Change is possible, and it starts with us.”
The post Czech Pirate Party in the run-up to the elections! first appeared on European Pirate Party.

The European Commission is set to reform Frontex’s mandate again in 2026. Frontex is the European Border and Coast Guard agency. Responding to the consultation call, the ProtectNotSurveil coalition highlights how reckless the expansion of Frontex’s surveillance capacities would be and how the Commission’s foreseen plans go in the opposite direction of what migrants and affected communities are calling for.

The post ProtectNotSurveil coalition raises alarm about EU’s Frontex expansion plans appeared first on European Digital Rights (EDRi).

The European Commission launched a call for evidence to gather views on the reform of Europol’s mandate. Europol is the EU law enforcement cooperation agency. EDRi along with Resist Europol coalition members submitted a response to the consultation, sharing their concerns about this renewed expansion of powers, despite Europol’s numerous issues around opacity and lack of accountability.

The post Consultation response to the European Commission’s call for evidence on a new Europol regulation appeared first on European Digital Rights (EDRi).

We are proud to sponsor The Abolition and Alternatives Conference (AAC) on October 3–5. The conference is organized and hosted by The Black Response at their offices at 245 Main Street, Cambridge, MA, 02142. We encourage all Pirates to attend and support this conference, especially, but not exclusively, the ShotSpotter and Police Surveillance track. If you can not attend, or even if you can, please consider giving a donation to The Black Response or print out their poster and put it up in your neighborhood. See you in less than two weeks!

Details on the conference are reproduced below. Edits are only for clarity:

This free, in-person event will bring together community members, organizers, and advocates for a weekend of in-depth learning and discussion focused on alternative public safety and community care, housing justice, and the impacts of surveillance technologies like ShotSpotter. It will include keynote addresses from Fatema Ahmad (Muslim Justice League), Stephanie Guirand (The Black Response), and Spencer Piston (Boston University).

Food will be provided, childcare will be available, and we encourage attendees to share any additional access needs via the conference interest form. TBR will be reaching out to invite participation as speakers and facilitators. For questions, please contact Stephanie at general@theblackresponsecambridge.com.

Throughout the conference, participants will have the opportunity to choose from panels in four tracks:

Housing Justice

This track features panels led by the Cambridge Housing Justice Coalition (CHJC). CHJC is a coalition of activist groups and concerned Cambridge residents who believe housing is a basic human right. The panels and workshops on this track will focus on housing justice and its intersections with the prison industrial complex.

ShotSpotter and Police Surveillance

This track will be led by the #StopShotSpotter Coalition Camberville. In this track, coalition members will provide an introduction to ShotSpotter, the audio-surveillance technology. We will examine its impact in Cambridge, the national landscape, and broader conversations about surveillance tech.

Alternatives and Community Care

This track will be led by members of the Massachusetts Community Care Network (MCCN). This track will include panels of responders, program directors, and organizers working to make alternatives to policing real. It includes a panel on the movement with Daanika Gordon, Spencer Piston, and Minali Aggarwal.

Community Concerns (Anti-Racism, Immigration Justice, Justice for Palestine, and Black Lives Matter)

This track will discuss concerns that come directly from the communities we serve and work with. These concerns also intersect with the movement for abolition and alternatives. They include Justice for Palestine, Immigration Justice, and Anti-Racism. In this tract we intend to learn from organizers leading these movements in Massachusetts.

masspirates.org/blog/2025/09/2…

A Quito una missione dei carabinieri forestali guidata dal Colonnello Cristina Avanzo, Comandante del Centro di Eccellenza per la Tutela Ambientale (#CoEEP) di Sabaudia. La missione è stata organizzata dall'Ambasciata attraverso la sede dell'Agenzia Italiana di Cooperazione allo Sviluppo (Aics, nell'ambito del programma #AMAZONIA+ che è finanziato dal #GlobalGateway dell' #UnioneEuropea.
Nel 2024, anno di particolare siccità, quasi 40mila ettari di territorio sono bruciati in #Ecuador a causa di incendi causati dall'uomo. Dopo una prima missione del Comandante dei #Carabinieriforestali, generale Andrea Rispoli, sono state prese ulteriori iniziative di solidarietà del nostro Paese.
A una riunione con il sottosegretario al Ministero dell'ambiente e il Capo della Protezione Civile, è seguito un incontro con i pompieri di Quito con i quali i #carabinieri hanno partecipato ad una esercitazione anti-incendio e ad un'informativa sull'incendio che ha colpito la città un anno fa, domato anche grazie al contributo dell'ambasciata d'Italia che mise a disposizione un elicottero. La delegazione si è recata anche presso la Procura Generale dello Stato per uno scambio di opinioni sulle normative e sui metodi investigativi per reprimere e punire gli incendi e ha infine ha avuto un incontro con rappresentanti della Polizia Nazionale.

I termini dell'accordo

Ecuador e Italia hanno concordato di rafforzare la loro collaborazione nella prevenzione e nel controllo degli incendi boschivi, a seguito della visita della Missione Esplorativa dei Carabinieri Forestali, rinomati a livello mondiale per la loro competenza nella protezione delle risorse naturali. Tra i risultati raggiunti, è stato presentato l'innovativo Dispositivo Integrato di Gestione degli Incendi nelle Aree Protette, implementato nella Riserva Geobotanica di Pululahua, che fungerà da modello per l'intero Paese.
Inoltre, oltre 400 guardie forestali sono stati formati in materia di monitoraggio ambientale, controllo forestale e risposta alle emergenze. L'accordo prevede l'istituzionalizzazione di un programma di formazione continua, la partecipazione di delegazioni ecuadoriane a corsi di formazione in Italia nel biennio 2025-2026 e la promozione di una legislazione specifica sugli incendi boschivi, oggi considerati un reato ambientale. Dal 2017, attraverso il programma Amazonía Sin Fuego Ecuador e con il supporto del governo italiano e dell'Unione Europea, oltre 1.200 brigadisti sono stati formati in materia di politiche pubbliche, monitoraggio satellitare e alternative all'uso del fuoco. Questi sforzi proseguiranno fino al 2027 con il programma Ukumary Forest Partnership. "Questa missione dimostra che la cooperazione internazionale è uno strumento potente per costruire un Ecuador più verde, più equo e più resiliente", ha sottolineato Byron Lagla, sottosegretario al Patrimonio Naturale presso il Ministero dell'Ambiente e dell'Energia (MAE). Il MAE ha ribadito il suo impegno a collaborare con alleati internazionali, comunità e organizzazioni nazionali per proteggere le foreste e rafforzare la gestione ambientale nel Paese.

Che cos'è il Centro di Eccellenza di Sabaudia?

Il Centro di Eccellenza per la Tutela Ambientale (CoEEP) di Sabaudia è un'istituzione internazionale situata all'interno del Parco Nazionale del Circeo, che opera come punto di riferimento per la formazione e la promozione della governance ambientale. Il centro, gestito dall'Arma dei Carabinieri, è nato dalla riqualificazione del Centro di Addestramento Forestale di Sabaudia e rappresenta un polo di eccellenza per l'ambiente, la biodiversità e la gestione delle aree naturali. Il suo obiettivo principale è fornire competenze teoriche e pratiche a funzionari e ufficiali provenienti da paesi in via di sviluppo, al fine di sostenere uno sviluppo economico sostenibile dal punto di vista ecologico.
Il CoEEP ospita corsi e attività formative rivolte a partecipanti da tutto il mondo, con un'attenzione particolare ai paesi africani e a quelli dell'Unione Europea. Recentemente, il centro ha accolto una delegazione della Macedonia del Nord nell'ambito di un progetto dell'Unione Europea. Inoltre, il centro è stato oggetto di una visita da parte della prefetta Vittoria Ciaramella, che ha potuto apprezzare le sue strutture ammodernate, che includono aule didattiche multimediali, una sala conferenze con servizio di interpretariato e camere per gli ospiti.
Il CoEEP è anche sede della scuola di formazione europea per il progetto LIFE Train2K, un'iniziativa finanziata con 1,5 milioni di euro e coordinata dal Raggruppamento Carabinieri Biodiversità. Questo progetto mira a migliorare la gestione della Rete Natura 2000 attraverso l'istituzione di un master universitario e la creazione di nuovi profili professionali come i "Natura 2000 Coach", gli "Eco-Restorer" e i "Ranger Natura 2000". Le attività formative si svolgono in modalità teorica e pratica, con esercitazioni dimostrative presso siti Natura 2000 nazionali ed europei.
Il centro ha ricevuto un forte interesse internazionale, testimoniato da missioni di presentazione in paesi come l'Etiopia, dove una delegazione dell'Arma dei Carabinieri ha presentato le potenzialità del CoEEP ai rappresentanti dell'Unione Africana. L'idea fondante del centro è quella di instaurare partnership istituzionali con le agenzie ONU impegnate in questioni ambientali per promuovere piani di formazione a favore dei paesi in via di sviluppo. L'Arma dei Carabinieri si è inoltre impegnata a promuovere la sua expertise in materia ambientale anche a livello europeo, essendo stata designata come Drivership per il settore crimini ambientali per il periodo 2022-2025.

#lifetrain2k

@Attualità, Geopolitica e Satira