IT'S MONDAY, AND THIS IS DIGITAL POLITICS. I'm Mark Scott, and I'm writing this newsletter on a Eurostar train to Brussels with patchy internet. Bear with me.

If you're interested in understanding what digital policymaking trends will likely dominate the agenda next year, please join me for a dinner in Brussels — in cooperation with YouGov and Microsoft — on Dec 10. Sign up is here, and invites will go out by the end of the week.

— Fears are growing that the artificial intelligence boom is about to pop. There are significant policy implications if that happens.

— Brussels is readying itself for a major revamp of the European Union's digital rulebook. Here's what you need to know.

— A look inside which publishers' content is served up when people use ChatGPT.

Let's get started:

digitalpolitics.co/newsletter0…

As humans, we tend to consider our emotional states as a direct response to the experiences of our lives. Traffic may make us frustrated, betrayal may make us angry, or the ever-grinding wear of modern life might make us depressed.

Dig into the science of the brain, though, and one must realize that our emotional states are really just electrical signals zinging around our neurons. And as such, they can even be influenced by direct electrical stimulation.

One group of researchers found this out when they inadvertently discovered a “switch” that induced massive depression in a patient in mere seconds. For all the complexities of the human psyche, a little electricity proved more than capable of swaying it in an instant.

Electric Feel

Deep brain stimulation has, in recent decades, become a well-established treatment for multiple conditions, including Parkinson’s disease. The treatment regime involves using precisely placed electrodes to deliver high-frequency pulses of electricity that help quell undesirable symptoms, such as tremors and muscle rigidity. When implanting electrodes deep in the brain tissue, surgeons aim for an area called the subthalamic nucleus. It’s a small region deep in the brain where electrical stimulation can dramatically improve motor control in Parkinson’s patients. In turn, this can reduce a patient’s reliance on medications, allowing them to treat their condition with fewer undesirable side effects.
Images captured from the patient during stimulation testing show the effect in action. The first panel shows the patient’s usual expression, while the second shows a drop in facial expression within 17 seconds after stimulation of contact zero. the third photograph shows the patient crying and expressing despair 4 minutes after engaging electrical stimulation. Finally, the last photograph shows the patient laughing just over a minute after the stimulation was disengaged. Credit: research paper
In 1999, a team of surgeons carrying out this routine work discovered something unexpected. Move the point of electrical stimulation just two millimeters lower, and you don’t treat Parkinson’s at all. Instead, you can accidentally trigger profound, immediate depression.

The patient was a sixty-five-year-old woman who had suffered from Parkinson’s disease for three decades. Despite treatment with high doses of contemporary Parkinson’s medications, she suffered tremors and other serious motor control symptoms. With the pharmaceutical treatment having limited effect, the decision was made to pursue therapy via brain stimulation. During the implantation of four electrodes in the patient’s subthalamic region, surgeons followed the then-standard protocol. Stimulation was tested through four different contact points on each of the four electrodes, intending to find the sweet spot that best alleviated the patient’s symptoms without causing side effects to speech, movement, or posture. Typically, electrical stimulation through some of the contacts would lead to therapeutic benefits, while others would have no effect or negative effects.

After the surgical implantation, contact zero of the leftmost electrode sat in the substantia nigra. When researchers applied a stimulation of 2.4 volts at 130 Hz through this contact, a reaction was noticed within mere seconds. As seen in images captured during the test, the patient’s face rapidly transformed into an expression of profound sadness.

The patient leaned over, cried, and verbalized strong negative feelings of hopelessness and worthlessness. “I’m falling down in my head, I no longer wish to live, to see anything, hear anything, feel anything…” the patient was recorded as saying in the research paper. “Everything is useless, always feeling worthless, I’m scared in this world.” No feelings of physical pain were reported; the symptoms seemed strictly limited to intense emotional distress.

The patient’s distress is readily visible in images taken during the stimulation procedure. The research paper notes that on a clinical basis, the patient’s self-described feelings fulfilled most of the diagnostic criteria for major depressive disorder. As quickly as the negative feelings arrived, though, they would soon disappear. The depressive state vanished for the patient within ninety seconds of switching off the stimulation to the contact in question. Soon enough, for several minutes after, the patient was reported as being in a “hypomanic” state, more positive and making jokes with the test examiners. Notably, the patient was aware of the adverse event and able to recall it clearly.
In later tests, PET scans were used to map blood flow in the brain during stimulation of contact zero, as researchers tried to map out the causative effect at play. Credit: research paper
The researchers would later verify the phenomenon was reproducible by repeating the stimulation in tests on a later date. During these tests, the patient was unaware whether stimulation was real or simulated. The same response was noted—stimulation through the contact in question zero produced immediate, severe depression that resolved within a minute of cessation.

Crucially, simulating the stimulation had no effect whatsoever, and the same depression-causing effect was noted whether the patient was or wasn’t taking the typical levodopa medication. Meanwhile, outside of this strange effect, the stimulation implant was otherwise doing its job. Stimulation through contacts one and two of the left electrode, positioned just two millimeters higher in the subthalamic nucleus proper, dramatically improved the patient’s motor symptoms without affecting mood. Medical imaging would later confirm that contact zero sat in the central substantia nigra, while the therapeutically-beneficial contacts were clearly within the subthalamic nucleus above.
Similar results were published in 2008 with a 62-year old male patient. The patient noted a “fantastic” sense of joy when the negative stimulation was ceased. Credit: research paper
The startling results led to a research paper. Beyond that, further work was limited, likely for multiple reasons. For one, there’s not a whole lot of utility in making patients feel deep despair, and furthermore, there are grand ethical reasons why that generally isn’t allowed.

Nevertheless, a similar effect was later apparent in another patient. A paper published in 2008 reported the case of a 62-year-old man with Parkinson’s disease. Similarly to the original patient, stimulation to the substantia nigra caused an “acute depressive state” in which “the patient was crying and expressing that he did not want to live.” In much the same way, cessation of stimulation led to the feelings ceasing in mere seconds. Ultimately, n=2 is a small number, but it served as more evidence to suggest that this was a reliable and repeatable effect that could be generated with electrical brain stimulation.

This accidental discovery provides a somewhat stark example of how emotions work in the brain. The fact that major depression can be switched on and off within seconds by stimulating a few cubic millimeters of brain tissue suggests that for all our thoughts and experiences, what we feel can potentially be manipulated with mere electricity. Ultimately, the sheer complexity of the brain makes it hard for us to glean greater insight, but regardless, it reminds us that we are perhaps little more than very complicated machines.

hackaday.com/2025/11/10/the-st…

Have you ever looked at a small development board like an Arduino or an ESP8266 board and thought you’d like one with just a few different features? Well, [Kai] has put out a fantastic guide on how to make an RP2040 dev board that’s all your own.

Development boards are super useful for prototyping a project, and some are quite simple, but there’s often some hidden complexity that needs to be considered before making your own. The RP2040 is a great chip to start your dev-board development journey, thanks to its excellent documentation and affordable components. [Kai] started this project using KiCad, which has all the features needed to go from schematics to final PCB Gerber files. In the write-up, [Kai] goes over how to implement USB-C in your design and how to add flash memory to your board, providing a place for your program to live. Once the crystal oscillator circuit is defined, decoupling capacitors added, and the GPIO pins you want to use are defined, it’s time to move to the PCB layout.

In the PCB design, it starts with an outside-in approach, first defining the board size, then adding the pins that sit along the edges of that board, followed by the USB connector, and then moving on to the internal components. Some components, such as the crystal oscillator, need to be placed near the RP2040 chip, and the same goes for some of the decoupling capacitors. There is a list of good practices around routing traces that [Kai] included for best results, which are useful to keep in mind once you have this many connections in a tight space. Not all traces are the same; for instance, the USB-C signal lines are a differential pair where it’s important that D+ and D- are close to the same length.

Finally, there is a walk-through on the steps needed to have your boards not only made at a board house but also assembled there if you choose to do so. Thanks [Kai] for taking the time to lay out the entire process for others to learn from; we look forward to seeing future dev-board designs. Be sure to check out some of our other awesome RP2040 projects.

hackaday.com/2025/11/10/rp2040…

One of the fun things about writing for Hackaday is that it takes you to the places where our community hang out. I was in a hackerspace in a university town the other evening, busily chasing my end of month deadline as no doubt were my colleagues at the time too. In there were a couple of others, a member who’s an electronic engineering student at one of the local universities, and one of their friends from the same course. They were working on the hardware side of a group project, a web-connected device which with a team of several other students, and they were creating from sensor to server to screen.

I have a lot of respect for my friend’s engineering abilities, I won’t name them but they’ve done a bunch of really accomplished projects, and some of them have even been featured here by my colleagues. They are already a very competent engineer indeed, and when in time they receive the bit of paper to prove it, they will go far. The other student was immediately apparent as being cut from the same cloth, as people say in hackerspaces, “one of us”.

They were making great progress with the hardware and low-level software while they were there, but I was saddened at their lament over their colleagues. In particular it seemed they had a real problem with vibe coding: they estimated that only a small percentage of their classmates could code by hand as they did, and the result was a lot of impenetrable code that looked good, but often simply didn’t work.

I came away wondering not how AI could be used to generate such poor quality work, but how on earth this could be viewed as acceptable in a university.

There’s A Difference Between Knowledge, and Skill

The poles and zeroes part of my first year undergraduate course was forever damaged by awful practical scheduling. Brews ohare, CC BY-SA 4.0
I’m going to admit something here for the first time in over three decades, I cheated at university. We all did, because the way our course was structured meant it was the only thing you could do. It went something like this: a British university has a ten week term, which meant we had a set of ten practicals to complete in sequence. Each practical related to a set of lectures, so if you landed one in week two which related to a lecture in week eight, you were in trouble.

The solution was simple, everyone borrowed a set of write-ups from a member of the year above who had got them from the year above them, and so on. We all turned in well written reports, which for around half the term we had little clue about because we’d not been taught what they did. I’m sure this was common knowledge at all levels but it was extremely damaging, because without understanding the practical to back up the lectures, whatever the subject was slipped past unlearned.

For some reason I always think of poles and zeroes in filters when I think of this, because that was an early practical in my first year when I had no clue because the lecture series was six weeks in the future. I also wonder sometimes about the unfortunate primordial electronic engineering class who didn’t have a year above to crib from, and how they managed.

As a result of this copying, however, our understanding of half a term’s practicals was pretty low. But there’s a difference between understanding, or knowledge, and skill, or the ability to do something. When many years later I needed to use poles and zeroes I was equipped with the skill as a researcher to go back and read up on it.

That’s a piece of knowledge, while programming is a skill. Perhaps my generation were lucky in that all of us had used BASIC and many of us had used machine code on our 8-bit home computers, so we came to university with some of that skill already in place, but still, we all had to learn the skill programming in a room full of terminals and DOS PCs. If a student can get by in 2025 by vibe coding I have to ask whether they have acquired any programming skill at all.

Would You Like Fries With Your Degree?

I get it that university is difficult and as I’ve admitted above, I and my cohort had to cheat to get through some of it, but when it affects a fundamental skill rather than a few bits of knowledge, is that bit of paper at the end of it worth anything at all?

I’m curious here, I know that Hackaday has readers who work in the sector and I know that universities put a lot of resources into detecting plagiarism, so I have to ask: I’m sure they’ll know students are using AI to code, is this something the universities themselves view as acceptable? And how could it be detected if not? As always the comment section lies below.

I may be a hardware engineer by training and spend most of my time writing for Hackaday, but for one of my side gigs I write documentation for a software company whose product has a demanding application that handles very high values indeed. I know that the coding standards for consistency and quality are very high for them and companies like them, so I expect the real reckoning will come when the students my friends were complaining about find themselves in the workplace. They’ll get a job alright, but when they talk to those two engineers will the question on their lips be “Would you like fries with that?”

hackaday.com/2025/11/10/ai-mak…

Have you ever imagined what the Nintendo Switch would look like if Nintendo had produced it in the mid-1990s? [Joel Creates] evidently did, because that’s exactly what this retro CRT-toting Switch 2 dock looks like.

Yes, it is portable, thanks to a 100W power bank torn apart and built into the 3D printed case. The full-color CRT comes from a portable TV, so it’s got portability in its heritage. Fitting all that chunky CRT goodness into a hand-held was, of course, a challenge. [Joel] credits AI slop with inspiring the 45-degree angle he eventually settled on. However, the idea of recessing handles inside the case so it could be thick enough but still comfortable to hold was all base-model H.Sap brainpower. There are shoulder controls hidden in those recesses, too, for the games that can use them.

We particularly like the cartridge-like way the Switch 2 slides into place with a satisfying click as its USB-C port connects. It’s plugging into an extension cable that leads to the guts of an official Nintendo dock, buried deeply (and conveniently) inside the 3D-printed box, stacked neatly with the HDMI-to-VGA and VGA-to-Composite converters [Joel] needed to get a nice 4:3 image on the CRT. No word on if he blows on the Switch 2 before plugging it in, but we certainly would.

We’ve featured plenty of portable game systems over the years, and some have been very well done, like this exquisitely done PS2 conversion — but very few have brought CRTs to the party. This retrofitted Game Boy is about the only exception, and [Joel] calls it out in his video as inspiration.

It looks like this is the first Switch 2 hack we’ve featured (with the exception of a teardown or two), so if you know of more, please let us know.

youtube.com/embed/wcym2tHiWT4?…

hackaday.com/2025/11/10/switch…

As part of our ongoing effort to connect the international Pirate community, we are reviewing and translating recent news from various Pirate Parties into English. This week, we highlight important reports from the Pirate Party of Slovenia, covering issues of corruption in green energy projects, technological sovereignty, and energy policy in Europe. As will be noted, much of their news is not country specific but reflects wider European issues. We look forward to sharing more news from PPSI and all of the Pirate parties around the world.

New suspicion of abuse and corruption related to wind farms

Following a report from a civil initiative, law enforcement agencies began to investigate whether funds from a state-owned company were used for unlawful influence on local decision-makers and whether donations from the investor constituted a form of bribery.

Just as during the epidemic millions of taxpayer euros were spent under the guise of necessity, today something similar is happening in the field of green energy, which has become a major source of abuse of public funds due to poor legislation.

Instead of the Ministry of Energy increasing oversight of the use of public funds, with ever new legislative proposals the sector is being even more deregulated, expanding opportunities for corruption and manipulation.

Unfortunately, what we are witnessing is not a green transition, but a diversion of millions of euros of public money into the accounts of a select few.]Here is the English translation of the requested article:

Following a report from a civil initiative, law enforcement agencies began to investigate whether funds from a state-owned company were used for unlawful influence on local decision-makers and whether donations from the investor constituted a form of bribery.

Just as during the epidemic millions of taxpayer euros were spent under the guise of necessity, today something similar is happening in the field of green energy, which has become a major source of abuse of public funds due to poor legislation.

Instead of the Ministry of Energy increasing oversight of the use of public funds, with ever new legislative proposals the sector is being even more deregulated, expanding opportunities for corruption and manipulation.

Unfortunately, what we are witnessing is not a green transition, but a diversion of millions of euros of public money into the accounts of a select few.]

piratskastranka.si/nov-sum-zlo…

In Norway, it was discovered that a manufacturer could remotely shut down 850 buses

Although Norwegian taxpayers paid for these buses, they are not completely under their control.

Such practices are not limited only to China. Many Western manufacturers, with the notorious American company John Deere being a prime example, have for years implemented similar mechanisms for remote vehicle control.

Farmers can have their tractors disabled remotely, for instance, if they are late with a leasing payment or try to repair the machine themselves without official service.

We increasingly encounter products that we physically purchase, yet manufacturers, through pre-installed software, protections, and remote control, take away real control over what we have bought.

If we buy a product, we must have full control over it. We must have the right to use, repair, and modify the product without restrictions from the manufacturer.

Such cases should be understood as a warning that Europe needs to strengthen technological sovereignty and protect the right to repair.]

piratskastranka.si/na-norveske…

Germans demolish nuclear power plant that could operate for another 30 years

German policy has decided to shut down all nuclear power plants in the country, and Grafenrheinfeld was closed as part of this plan in 2015.

The plant operated for only 33 years, although it could have easily operated for another 30 years or even longer.

During its operation, it prevented emissions of more than 300 million tons of CO2 through clean energy production.

Germany’s Green Party forced the early closure of nuclear power plants by manipulating data and reports.

Just as they rushed to shut down nuclear power plants, they are now hastily dismantling them.

This will deprive future German governments of the option to simply restore and restart the shut-down nuclear reactors.

It is a waste of the future—a climatic, economic, and energy crime.]

piratskastranka.si/nemci-rusij…

pp-international.net/2025/11/p…

Credo che la separazione delle carriere sia un po' come i centri migranti in Albania: non servono a nulla ma sono utilissimi ai partiti di destra per eccitare il loro elettorato.

Detto questo...

La separazione delle carriere è una proposta di cui si era discusso anche nella bicamerale tra Berlusconi e D'Alema, e la sinistra mi sembra di poter dire fosse fondamentalmente d'accordo (gli interventi finali dei vari membri della Commissione Bicamerale sono qui: documenti.camera.it/leg16/doss…).

Del resto, l'utilità di evitare che chi ha lavorato anni a cercare indizi e prove di colpevolezza (il pubblico ministero) possa cambiare casacca e diventare quello che deve dare un giudizio terzo e imparziale su una persona rinviata a giudizio (il giudice) è una cosa talmente logica che non mi meraviglia si siano trovati d'accordo persino D'Alema e Berlusconi.

Poi le cose sono cambiate, Berlusconi ha iniziato la sua battaglia contro la magistratura, la riforma della giustizia (separazione delle carriere compresa) è diventato il suo randello politico, e il PD (allora PDS) ha dovuto fare marcia indietro e diventare contrario (questo per l'aurea regola che se piove e un fascista dice che piove, anche se sei bagnato fradicio tu devi dire che c'è il sole altrimenti stai dando ragione a un fascista).

Entrando nel merito, la critica secondo cui la separazione delle carriere porterebbe i PM sotto il controllo del governo a me sembra infondata. Non ho mai trovato nessuno che mi spiegasse COME potrebbe succedere nei fatti che evitando ad un PM di diventare giudice, e a un giudice di diventare PM, il PM passerebbe sotto il controllo dell'esecutivo. E nessuno riesce neanche a spiegarmi perché questa paura c'è solo per il PM; il provvedimento è perfettamente simmetrico, si vieta al giudice di diventare PM e al PM di diventare giudice, ma nella valutazione del rischio c'è una rottura di questa simmetria e l'unico rischio di cui si parla è la perdita di imparzialità del PM, il giudice ne sarebbe immune.

Altro elemento importante: la separazione delle carriere esiste già, è qui tra noi. La legge attuale prevede che un magistrato (PM o giudice) possa cambiare strada UNA VOLTA SOLA nella sua carriera e SOLO nei primi nove anni. Prima la legge era molto più permissiva ma poi Mario Draghi (anche qui... in un governo sostenuto dalla sinistra) ha ristretto le possibilità di questi cambi di carriera e da allora è possibile cambiare solo una volta e solo nei primi nove anni.

Infine, quanti magistrati ci sono ogni anno che fanno questo cambio di carriera? Una ventina su circa 10.000, ovvero circa un paio ogni mille magistrati.

Quindi in sostanza, abbiamo una parte politica che è partita lancia in resta per spostare la realtà di mezzo millimetro più in là, raccontando di chissà quali vantaggi, e una parte politica che è partita lancia in resta in direzione opposta per non fargliela spostare di mezzo millimetro più in là, paventando chissà quali disastri per la tenuta democratica del Paese.

Mi sembra tutto un po' surreale.

noblogo.org/transit/salari-da-…

Transit

2025-11-10 09:45:32

Salari da fame e propaganda: il governo Meloni ignora milioni di poveri.

(178)

La recente affermazione del ministro Giancarlo Giorgetti secondo cui”...chi guadagna duemila euro al mese non è ricco” segna un punto di non ritorno nella distanza crescente tra la retorica economica del governo Meloni e la realtà materiale del Paese.

È una frase che, lungi dal voler interpretare la complessità sociale italiana, rivela una visione distorta e verticalista della società, nella quale la normalità economica viene definita dall’alto e mai dal vissuto reale dei cittadini. Gli indicatori ufficiali delineano un quadro desolante. L’ISTAT ha certificato nel 2024 un record di povertà assoluta che coinvolge oltre 9,8 per cento delle famiglie, un dato che traduce in cifre concrete il fallimento delle politiche redistributive degli ultimi anni.

La Banca d’Italia, nel suo più recente rapporto, evidenzia come la quota di reddito detenuta dal 10 per cento più ricco continui a crescere, mentre i salari medi, corretti per l’inflazione, hanno perso potere d’acquisto ininterrottamente dal 1990. L’OCSE conferma: l’Italia è uno dei pochi Paesi dell’area euro in cui i salari reali non solo ristagnano, ma arretrano.

La comunicazione dell’esecutivo continua a insistere su un racconto trionfalistico, in cui i lievi aumenti lordi ottenuti grazie a misure temporanee vengono presentati come conquiste epocali. È una narrativa costruita più per compiacere gli elettori che per affrontare la sostanza del problema. Il lavoratore povero, colui che guadagna meno di mille euro al mese, rimane il simbolo di un’Italia abbandonata, priva di un salario minimo, sacrificata sull’altare dell’austerità e dell’ortodossia liberista.

A questa cecità strutturale si aggiunge l’opposizione ideologica alla patrimoniale, ribadita più volte dalla presidente Meloni: “Finché governerà la Destra, non ci sarà una tassa sui patrimoni.” Questa posizione, sotto le mentite spoglie della difesa del ceto medio, protegge in realtà la ricchezza accumulata e perpetua un modello fiscale regressivo, che spreme chi lavora e tutela chi possiede.

In nome di un’idea di libertà economica, si legittima l’ingiustizia.

Così il governo esibisce propagandisticamente successi inesistenti, mentre l’Italia reale affonda in una spirale di insicurezza, bassi redditi e disuguaglianze crescenti. La distanza tra la narrazione ufficiale e le condizioni concrete del Paese non è più un disallineamento etico, ma una frattura politica e morale profonda. Continuare a negarla significa non solo sbagliare analisi economica: significa schierarsi contro la dignità di chi lavora.

#Blog #Italia #Economia #GovernoMeloni #Diseguaglianze #Opinioni

Mastodon: @alda7069@mastodon.unoTelegram: t.me/transitblogFriendica: @danmatt@poliverso.orgBio Site (tutto in un posto solo, diamine): bio.site/danielemattioli

Gli scritti sono tutelati da “Creative Commons” (qui)

Tutte le opinioni qui riportate sono da considerarsi personali. Per eventuali problemi riscontrati con i testi, si prega di scrivere a: corubomatt@gmail.com

Transit

Il blog di Alessandra Corubolo & Daniele Mattioli. On line -in varie forme- dal 2005.

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