If you want to keep eggs warm to hatch, you’ll need an incubator. You could buy one off the shelf, but they’re not so complex — just a nicely-controlled warm box you could easily whip up yourself. As it turns out, that’s precisely what [RCLifeOn] did.

The incubator is built out of wooden panels screwed together to make a simple box. The frame of the front door is also wood, but it features 3D printed hinges and handles, because that’s the easiest way to make hardware when you’re a printing wizard like [RCLifeOn].

The box is fitted with controls for humidity and temperature to ensure the best possible conditions for hatching chicken eggs inside. As you might have guessed, a heated bed from a 3D printer was used to control the temperature inside. As for humidity, a sensor tracks the conditions in the box, and triggers an ultrasonic mister to increase the level as necessary. There’s also a little motion introduced via a moving platform run by a motor and some step-down gearing, which apparently aids in the hatching process.

[RCLifeOn] calls it “a machine that creates life,” and that honestly sounds about fair. We’ve seen similar projects along these lines before, too.

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[Thanks to Chris Muncy for the tip!]

hackaday.com/2025/05/06/buildi…

We often think of analog computing as a relic of the past, room-sized monstrosities filled with vacuum tubes doing their best to calculate Monte Carlo simulations or orbital velocities. Analog isn’t as dead as it might seem though, and analog mix signal design engineer [Nanik Adnani] gave us a crash course on analog circuits at Supercon 2024.

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For those of us less familiar with analog circuits, [Adnani] helpfully offered a definition of analog circuit design as “the design of electronics that create or manipulate continuously variable signals.” It turns out, that even our nice, clean digital signals are actually more analog by the time they interact with the real world. This comes down to various factors like substrate losses, conductors, impedance, and even capacitance. Given the difference in scale between a logic gate and the actual pins the signal comes out of from an integrated circuit, it becomes clear that the amount of current the pin can handle versus the logic gate inside the chip is quite different. In order to bridge the gap, chips use a physical interface, or PHY, which happens to be an analog interface which allows the logic on the chip to communicate off the chip.

[Adnani] explained how every digital protocol in common usage requires some degree of analog circuits including LoRa, USB, CAN, etc. Most chips handling these protocols have a separate analog team designing the analog circuit which requires slightly different metal layer design, so while determining the exact function of an analog circuit can be difficult to determine from an X-ray of the chip, finding where they are compared to the digital components is quite simple.

Like with most things we hackers delve into, the best way to learn is by doing after picking up a few basics, and [Adnani] reiterates this throughout his talk. One of the more unexpected examples was his grandmother’s tricked-out walker. It has RGB lighting, a water gun, and a car horn. The car horn required a PHY to step things up from the 40 mA from the microcontroller to the 8 A required to drive the horn.

Some other examples from the talk are this PHY for storing data on a cassette by [Zack Nelson], a guitar pedal [Adnani] designed himself for tape out, and analog bird circuits by [Kelly Heaton]. Analog still has a well-known place in music for various components as well.

The last piece of course, is how do you learn analog circuits when everyone around you lives in the digital realm? [Adnani] recommends starting by hitting the books as internet posts can often be a game of telephone, and getting the values wrong on capacitors or the like is a lot more problematic in an analog circuit. Some of his suggestions are as follows (~13 min into the video):

• Design of Analog CMOS Circuits – start here
• Sedra and Smith – if you like math
• The Art of Electronics – board level design
• CMOS Circuit Design, Layout, and Simulation – trying to tapeout a chip
• Analog Integrated Circuit Design – advanced concepts

[Adnani] says, “I had one professor tell me that all you really need is the first four or five chapters of Design of Analog CMOS Integrated Circuits by Behzad Rezavi and then you can start building things.” If videos work better for you better, then [Adnani] recommends checking out [Moritz Klein], [Carsten Wulff], and [Ali Hajimiri] who all have robust offerings on the subject.

At the end of the day, you won’t really learn it until you try to build something, so get a box of components and start tinkering. Simulation can also be beneficial, so [Adnani] recommends trying out your circuits in LTspice for discrete simulations and Ngspice if you want to tape out. While taping out a design for a few hundred bucks seems pricey, it’s a lot cheaper than a university course in many regions of the world. [Adnani] ends with an exhortation that if a humble undergraduate can do analog work, then any hacker can too, so maybe give it a whirl on your next project!

hackaday.com/2025/05/06/superc…

Cloudflare afferma di aver prevenuto un numero record di attacchi DDoS da record nel 2024. Il numero di incidenti è aumentato del 358% rispetto all’anno precedente e del 198% rispetto al trimestre precedente.

Nel suo report del primo trimestre del 2025, l’azienda ha dichiarato di aver neutralizzato un totale di 21,3 milioni di attacchi DDoS nel 2024. Allo stesso tempo, gli esperti avvertono che il 2025 si preannuncia ancora più difficile: solo nel primo trimestre, Cloudflare ha già risposto a 20,5 milioni di attacchi DDoS.

Tra gli obiettivi di questi attacchi c’era anche la stessa Cloudflare, la cui infrastruttura è stata sottoposta a 6,6 milioni di attacchi durante una campagna multi-vettore durata 18 giorni.

“Dei 20,5 milioni di attacchi DDoS, 16,8 milioni erano attacchi a livello di rete e di questi, 6,6 milioni erano diretti direttamente all’infrastruttura di rete di Cloudflare“, afferma il rapporto. Questi attacchi facevano parte di una campagna DDoS multi-vettore durata 18 giorni che includeva SYN flood, attacchi DDoS generati da Mirai, attacchi di amplificazione SSDP e altro ancora.

Il principale fattore che ha determinato l’aumento degli incidenti DDoS sono stati gli attacchi a livello di rete, che hanno registrato un forte incremento negli ultimi mesi, con un incremento del 509% rispetto all’anno precedente.

Continua senza sosta anche il trend degli attacchi ipervolume: l’azienda ha registrato oltre 700 attacchi con una capacità superiore a 1 Tbps (terabit al secondo) e 1 miliardo di pacchetti al secondo. Pertanto, nel primo trimestre del 2025, il numero di tali attacchi ipervolume era in media di otto al giorno e, rispetto al trimestre precedente, il loro numero è raddoppiato.

Uno degli attacchi più potenti segnalati nel rapporto di Cloudflare si è verificato nel primo trimestre del 2025 e ha preso di mira un provider di hosting statunitense non identificato che ospita i server di gioco per Counter-Strike GO, Team Fortress 2 e Half-Life 2: Deathmatch.

L’attacco ha preso di mira la porta 27015, comunemente utilizzata nei giochi e che si consiglia di lasciare aperta sia per UDP che per TCP. Ciò significa che l’attacco era chiaramente mirato a interrompere il funzionamento dei servizi di gioco. L’attacco è stato un attacco ipervolume, che ha raggiunto 1,5 miliardi di pacchetti al secondo, sebbene Cloudflare affermi di averlo mitigato.

Vale anche la pena notare che il CEO dell’azienda, Matthew Prince, ha recentemente riferito su X che Cloudflare è riuscita a prevenire l’attacco più grande fino ad oggi, un attacco da 5,8 Tbps durato circa 45 secondi. Prince scrive che lo stesso giorno è stato effettuato un altro attacco DDoS, ancora più grande, e promette di condividere presto i dettagli.

Ricordiamo che il record precedente era stato stabilito all’inizio del 2025, quando Cloudflare aveva segnalato un attacco DDoS con una potenza fino a 5,6 Tbps. L’attacco è stato effettuato utilizzando la botnet Mirai, che comprendeva 13.000 dispositivi hackerati.

L'articolo +358% di attacchi DDoS: l’inferno digitale si è scatenato nel 2024 proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

While most of us won’t ever play Wimbledon, we can play Pong. But it isn’t the same without the thrill of the sportscaster’s commentary during the game. Thanks to [Parth Parikh] and an LLM, you can now watch Pong matches with commentary during the game. You can see the very cool result in the video below — the game itself starts around the 2:50 mark. Sadly, you don’t get to play. It seems like it wouldn’t be that hard to wire yourself in with a little programming.

The game features multiple AI players and two announcers. There are 15 years of tournaments, including four majors, for a total of 60 events. In the 16th year, the two top players face off in the World Championship Final.

There are several interesting techniques here. For one, each action is logged as an event that generates metrics and is prioritized. If an important game event occurs, commentary pauses to announce that event and then picks back up where it left off.

We really want to see a one- or two-player human version of this. Please tell us if you take on that challenge. Even if you don’t write it, maybe the AI can write it for you.

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Dai dati relativi al 2024 a seguito della Giornata nazionale contro la pedofilia e la pedopornografia, pubblicati dalla Polizia di Stato, emerge un aumento degli arresti e delle denunce per reati legati alla pedopornografia online, con oltre 2.800 casi trattati, 1.000 perquisizioni e 147 arresti. Nel primo trimestre 2025 si registra un ulteriore incremento significativo. La Polizia Postale e per la Sicurezza Cibernetica svolge un'intensa attività di prevenzione e contrasto, anche attraverso campagne di sensibilizzazione rivolte a studenti, genitori e insegnanti. Inoltre, viene evidenziato l'impegno nella cooperazione internazionale e il partenariato con enti e organizzazioni non governative per tutelare i minori dai rischi del web.

I dati relativi al contrasto alla pedopornografia nel 2024 mostrano:

• Oltre 2.800 casi trattati dalla Polizia Postale
• Circa 1.000 perquisizioni effettuate
• 147 individui arrestati
• 1.037 persone denunciate.

Alcune delle iniziative di prevenzione della Polizia Postale includono:
Campagne di prevenzione e formazione che nei primi mesi del 2025 hanno coinvolto oltre 164.000 studenti, 2.900 genitori e più di 10.000 insegnanti.
L'allestimento della mostra itinerante fotografica "SuperEroi" che racconta il lavoro degli operatori impegnati nel contrasto alla pedopornografia online, già visitata da oltre 16.000 persone, di cui 4.200 studenti.

Nel 2024, sono state svolte circa 1.000 perquisizioni, che hanno portato all'arresto di 147 individui e alla denuncia di 1.037 persone. Nel primo trimestre del 2025, si è registrato un significativo incremento con l'arresto di 118 persone (+293%) e la denuncia di 427 soggetti (+53%), oltre a oltre 370 perquisizioni delegate (+28%). L'attività preventiva ha portato all'oscuramento di oltre 2.800 siti web pedopornografici tramite l'inserimento nella Black List gestita dal Centro Nazionale per il Contrasto alla Pedopornografia Online (CNCPO).

#Giornatanazionalecontrolapedofiliaelapedopornografia #CNCPO #poliziadistato #poliziapostale
@Notizie dall'Italia e dal mondo

If you take two objects with fairly smooth surfaces, and put these together, you would not expect them to stick together. At least not without a liberal amount of adhesive, water or some other substance to facilitate a temporary or more permanent bond. This assumption gets tossed out of the window when it comes to optical contact bonding, which is a process whereby two surfaces are joined together without glue.

The fascinating aspect of this process is that it uses the intermolecular forces in each surface, which normally don’t play a major role, due to the relatively rough surfaces. Before intermolecular forces like Van der Waals forces and hydrogen bonds become relevant, the two surfaces should not have imperfections or contaminants on the order of more than a few nanometers. Assuming that this is the case, both surfaces will bond together in a way that is permanent enough that breaking it is likely to cause damage.

Although more labor-intensive than using adhesives, the advantages are massive when considering that it creates an effectively uninterrupted optical interface. This makes it a perfect choice for especially high-precision optics, but with absolutely zero room for error.

Intermolecular Forces

Thirty-six gauges wrung together and held horizontally. (Credit: Goodrich & Stanley, 1907)
As creatures of the macro world, we are largely only aware of the macro effects of the various forces at play around us. We mostly understand gravity, and how the friction of our hand against a glass prevents it from sliding out of our hand before shattering into many pieces on the floor. Yet add some water on the skin of our hands, and suddenly there’s not enough friction, leading to unfortunate glass slippage, or a lid on a jar of pickles that stubbornly refuses to open because we cannot generate enough friction until we manage to dry our hands sufficiently.

Many of these macro-level interactions are the result of molecular-level interactions, which range from the glass staying in one piece instead of drifting off as a cloud of atoms, to the system property that we refer to as ‘friction‘, which itself is also subdivided into static stiction and dynamic friction. The system of friction can be considered to be analogous to contact binding when we consider two plates with one placed on top of the other. If we proceed to change the angle of these stacked plates, at some point the top plate will slide off the bottom plate. This is the point where the binding forces can no longer compensate for the gravitational pull, with material type and surface finish affecting the final angle.

An interesting example of how much surface smoothness matters can be found in gauge blocks. These are precision ground and lapped blocks of metal or ceramic which match a specific thickness. Used for mainly calibration purposes, they posses the fascinating property due to their smooth surfaces that you can make multiple of them adhere together in a near-permanent manner in what is called wringing. This way you can combine multiple lengths to create a single gauge block with sub-millimeter accuracy.

Enabling all this are intermolecular forces, in particular the Van der Waals forces, including dipole-dipole electrostatic interactions. These do not rely on chemical or similar properties as they depend only on aspects like the mutual repulsion between the electron clouds of the atoms that make up the materials involved. Although these forces are very weak and drop off rapidly with distance, they are generally independent of aspects like temperature.

Hydrogen bonds can also occur if present, with each type of force having its own set of characteristics in terms of strength and effective distance.

Make It Smooth

Surface roughnesses of a SiO2 wafer (left, ≈1.01 nm RMS) and an ULE wafer (right, ≈1.03 nm RMS) (Credit: Kalkowski et al., 2011)
One does not simply polish a surface to a nanometer-perfect sheen, though as computer cooling enthusiasts and kin are aware, you can get pretty far with a smooth surface and various grits of sandpaper all the way up to ridiculously high levels. Giving enough effort and time, you can match the surface finish of something like gauge blocks and shave off another degree or two on that CPU at load.

Achieving even smoother surfaces is essentially taking this to the extreme, though it can be done without 40,000 grit sandpaper as well. The easiest way is probably found in glass and optics production, the latter of which has benefited immensely from the semiconductor industry. A good demonstration of this can be found in a 2011 paper (full PDF) by Fraunhofer researchers G. Kalkowski et al. as published in Optical Manufacturing and Testing.

They describe the use of optical contact bonding in the context of glass-glass for optical and precision engineering, specifically low-expansion fused silica (SiO₂) and ultra-low expansion materials. There is significant overlap between semiconductor wafers and the wafers used here, with the same nanometer level precision, <1 nm RMS surface roughness, a given. Before joining, the surfaces are extensively cleaned of any contaminants in a vacuum environment.

Worse Than Superglue

Once the surfaces are prepared, there comes the tricky part of making both sides join together. Unlike with the gauge blocks, these super smooth surfaces will not come apart again without a fight, and there’s no opportunity to shimmy them around to get that perfect fit like when using adhesive. With the demonstrated method by Kalkowski et al., the wafers were joined followed by heating to 250 ℃ to create permanent Si-O-Si bonds between the two surfaces. In addition bonding pressure was applied for two hours at 2 MPa using either N₂ or O₂ gas.

This also shows another aspect of optical contact binding: although it’s not technically permanent, the bond is still just using intermolecular forces, and, as shown in this study, can be pried apart with a razorblade and some effort. By heating and applying pressure, the two surfaces can be annealed, forming molecular bonds and effectively turning the two parts into one.

Of course, there are many more considerations, such as the low-expansion materials used in the referenced study. If both sides use too dissimilar materials, the bond will be significantly more tenuous than if the materials with the same expansion properties are used. It’s also possible to use chemically activated direct bonding with a chemical activation process, all of which relies on the used materials.

In summary, optical contact bonding is a very useful technique, though you may want to have a well-equipped home lab if you want to give it a spin yourself.

hackaday.com/2025/05/06/optica…

Il gigante delle telecomunicazioni sudcoreano SK Telecom ha sospeso le sottoscrizioni di nuovi abbonati in tutto il paese, concentrandosi sulla sostituzione delle schede SIM di 25 milioni di clienti esistenti. L’azienda ha preso questa decisione a seguito di un grave attacco informatico avvenuto ad aprile, che ha provocato un’infezione da malware su larga scala e la fuga di dati degli utenti.

Dal 5 maggio è sospesa la registrazione di nuovi contratti nei 2.600 punti vendita T World sia tramite i canali online. La priorità è data esclusivamente alla collaborazione con gli abbonati interessati. A tutti i clienti viene offerta la sostituzione gratuita delle schede SIM, per eliminare il rischio di clonazione, una delle conseguenze più pericolose di questo tipo di attacco. La sostituzione è iniziata il 28 aprile e verrà effettuata sia nei normali negozi che nei centri di assistenza degli aeroporti.

L’azienda ha anche lanciato uno speciale sistema online attraverso il quale è possibile fissare un appuntamento per la sostituzione della propria scheda SIM. SK Telecom ha promesso di rimborsare i costi a coloro che decideranno di effettuare autonomamente la sostituzione. Tuttavia, la sostituzione di massa si scontra con difficoltà logistiche: a fronte di una domanda elevata, in alcune regioni si registra una carenza delle carte necessarie.

Un rapporto interno di SK Telecom ha confermato che la fuga di dati è stata causata da un malware che ha infettato i sistemi dell’azienda. Dopo la scoperta dell’attacco ad aprile, le azioni di SK Telecom sono scese dell’8,5%, raggiungendo il livello più basso da agosto dell’anno scorso.

SK Telecom è il più grande operatore di telefonia mobile della Corea del Sud e copre circa il 50% del mercato nazionale. Oltre al suo core business, l’azienda possiede una piattaforma musicale, investe nello sport e ha recentemente inaugurato il più grande stabilimento di produzione di chip per l’intelligenza artificiale del Paese. Attraverso la sua divisione americana SKT Americas, la holding investe attivamente nelle startup tecnologiche della Silicon Valley.

SK Telecom fa parte del secondo conglomerato più grande della Corea del Sud, SK Group. In totale, il gruppo riunisce più di 175 aziende in tutto il mondo, operanti in settori quali ICT, biofarmaceutica, mobilità, semiconduttori, batterie per veicoli elettrici e scienze della vita.

L'articolo 25 Milioni di SIM da Sostituire dopo l’Attacco Cyber! Il Disastro di SK Telecom Sconvolge la Corea del Sud proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

With the ability to independently adjust the thrust of each of their four motors, quadcopters are exceptionally agile compared to more traditional aircraft. But in an effort to create an even more maneuverable drone platform, a group of South Korean researchers have studied adding flying squirrel tech to quadcopters. Combined with machine learning, this is said to significantly increase the prototype’s agility in an obstacle course.

Flying squirrels (tribe Pteromyini)) have large skin flaps (patagium) between their wrists and ankles which they use to control their flight when they glide from tree to tree, along with their fluffy squirrel tail. With flights covering up to 90 meters, they also manage to use said tail and patagium to air brake, which prevents them from smacking with bone jarring velocities into a tree trunk.

By taking these principles and adding a similar mechanism to a quadcopter for extending a patagium-like membrane between its rotors, the researchers could develop a new controller (thrust-wing coordination control, TWCC), which manages the extending of the membranes in coordination with thrust from the brushless motors. Rather than relying on trial-and-error to develop the controller algorithms, the researchers trained a recurrent neural network (RNN) which was pre-trained prior to first flights using simulation data followed by supervised learning to refine the model.

During experiments with obstacle avoidance on a test-track, the RNN-based controller worked quite well compared to a regular quadcopter. A disadvantage is of course that the range of these flying squirrel drones is less due to the extra weight and drag, but if one were to make flying drones that will perch on surfaces between dizzying feats of agility in the air, this type of drone tech might just be the ticket.

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