Il lavoro sporco. Il complice silenzio su Gaza
@Giornalismo e disordine informativo
articolo21.org/2025/06/il-lavo…
Straordinaria l’efficienza del Mossad nell’attacco all’Iran. Sapere in quale stanza dorme un obbiettivo e colpire con droni introdotti in una dittatura militarizzata è una missione inaudita. Ecco che resta molto sospetta “l’inerzia”
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Venezuela, a Urrutia il Premio Einaudi 2025. L’appello a Meloni della Fondazione Einaudi: “Riportiamo a casa Alberto Trentini”
@Politica interna, europea e internazionale
“Questo premio incarna i valori più profondi dell’Occidente, fondati sul principio della libertà individuale, ed è il riconoscimento della lotta instancabile
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Split Keyboard Uses No PCB
When [daniely101] wanted a split keyboard, he decided to build his own. It wound up costing $25 to create a wireless board with no custom PCB required. Each half has its own microcontroller, and the whole thing connects via Bluetooth. While we don’t mind making a PCB, we can appreciate that you could change your mind easily with this wiring scheme.
The 3D printed case holds the keys, and then it is just a matter of carefully soldering the keys to the microcontrollers. Of course, each side also has to have its own battery. The ZMK firmware is split in half, one part for each side of the keyboard. The nRF52840 CPUs have plenty of wireless connectivity. The keys are set in rows and columns, so the amount of soldering back to the controller is manageable.
While we applaud the wireless design, it does seem odd that you have to charge both halves and turn them on and off separately. But that’s the nice thing about a design like this — you could modify the design to not have a split. Or, you could allow one flexible wire pair to run across for power. Of course, you could modify the layout, including adding or deleting keys.
You might consider adding a pointing device. At least you don’t have to pull out a saw.
youtube.com/embed/VS1WQ7kv4qA?…
La guerra come scopo
@Giornalismo e disordine informativo
articolo21.org/2025/06/la-guer…
Non è una considerazione originale. Esistono plurisecolari filoni di pensiero che considerano la guerra come ineluttabile: un dato naturale che “serve” alla dinamica del progresso umano. Questo concetto era stato scalfito dopo la fine della seconda guerra mondiale con la presa d’atto della forza distruttrice
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Premio Luigi Einaudi 2025
@Politica interna, europea e internazionale
18 giugno 2025, ore 18:00 – Fondazione Luigi Einaudi, Via della Conciliazione, 10 – Roma La Fondazione Luigi Einaudi è lieta di annunciare la consegna del PREMIO LUIGI EINAUDI 2025 a Edmundo González Urrutia, Presidente eletto del Venezuela costretto all’esilio dalla giunta Maduro
L'articolo Premio Luigi Einaudi 2025 proviene da Fondazione Luigi
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ZPUI Could Be Your Tiny Embedded GUI
One of the most frustrating things to me is looking at a freshly-flashed and just powered up single board computer. My goal with them is always getting to a shell – installing packages, driving GPIOs, testing my proof of concept code, adjusting the device tree to load peripheral drivers. Before I can do any of that, I need shell access, and getting there can be a real hassle.
Time after time, I’ve struggled trying to get to a shell on an SBC. For best results, you’d want to get yourself a keyboard, monitor, and an Ethernet cable. Don’t have those, or there’s no space to place them? Maybe a UART connection will work for you – unless it’s broken or misconfigured. Check your pinouts twice. Sure, nowadays you can put WiFi credentials into a text file in /boot/
– but good luck figuring out the IP address, or debugging any mistakes you might make formatting the file. Nowadays, Pi 4 and 5 expose a USB gadget connection on the USB-C port, and that helps… unless you’re already powering the Pi from that port. There’s really no shortage of failure modes here.
If you put a Pi on your network and it goes offline, you generally just don’t know what happened unless you reboot it, which can make debugging into a living hell. I’ve dealt with single-board computers mounted above fiberglass lifted ceilings, fleets of Pi boards at workshops I organized, pocket-carried Pi boards, and at some point, I got tired of it all. A hacker-aimed computer is meant to be accessible, not painful.
Server-Grade Interfaces For All
That’s why, for years now, I’ve been working on a cheap and accessible embedded UI, called ZPUI (Zippy UI) – with its help, a cheap I2C screen and a few buttons is all it takes to keep track of your Pi or other Linux device.
A separate lightweight control interface isn’t a new concept. Back in the glorious era of character LCDs and non-standard mounting boxy cute servers, you could get a 16×2 display and five arrow keys on a Sun machine, and with help of a little bespoke software, you could do basic management actions on your server without having to break out a KVM.
One of my first semi-serious projects, way back in 2014, was a HD44780 library for Raspberry Pi use, universal and lightweight, supporting both direct GPIO access and I2C backpacks with ease. People have had used those for IP address display for a while by then, but it wasn’t enough for me. I wanted to easily power off my boards to avoid SD card corruption (which was way worse back in the day), figure out my boards’ IP addresses without Nmap scans, and connect to WiFi networks without SD card machinations. All throughout, it felt like a piece of software someone should’ve had written years ago. It’s a simple concept – if I have physical access to my SBC, I should be able to take control of it.
So, with a HD44780, a USB numpad, and a heap of Python code, I’ve built the first version of the software I called pyLCI – for Linux Control Interface. I gave it app loading support, then wrote code to parse commands like ip addr
, wpa_cli
for WiFi connection management, tvservice
for HDMI monitor connection debug, reboot
and poweroff
, as well as an ability to run arbitrary pre-defined scripts from a menu. I made sure it’d only require 5 buttons at all times – up, down, left, right, and enter, and that it’d work with character LCDs from as small as 16×2 to as big as 20×4.
pyLCI quickly became a useful tool in my SBC forays, and I’ve built it into a number of my portable devices, most of them Pi-powered. I’ve added it to a portable hardware hacking workbench I built for SPI flash and general hardware tinkering, home automation Pi boards I’d run, and even a desktop/pocket Pi 2 that served as only computer for almost half a year. When I ran Raspberry Pi workshops in our hackerspace, I bought a few character-LCD-and-button HATs and used them to determine IP addresses of student-issued Pi boards, so that I wouldn’t need to drag a monitor around or do USB-UART interventions.
Entering WiFi passwords with arrow keys wasn’t ideal, but it was miles ahead of the frustration I used to routinely experience before it, every time I brought a Pi somewhere for a project – only to get effectively locked out of a computer I own.
Bigger Screens, Bigger Ambitions
When I worked on ZeroPhone, an open-source Raspberry Pi Zero-based numpad phone, naturally, I forked pyLCI into a base for the UI, called it ZPUI (for ZeroPhone UI), and decided to target the super common 128×64 screens. Initially, I made the color screen imitate a character screen – it worked kind of well as a stopgap but resulted in tiny text. It took a good while to make the screen readable, make apps work passably well and write new better-working ones, implement numpad input in addition to arrow keys input, and I’ve ended up learning a ton from building an UI framework where none was intended to be.
Recently, I’ve reignited my portable platform building ambitions, and as part of a hacker collective, I’ve been working on a Beepy derivative device – a QWERTY PDA-like Pi Zero-based pocket Linux terminal. Just like many portable Linux devices in this form-factor, it’s badly missing a low-frills graphical UI, with three or four people having attempted to write one, and one in particular getting pretty far. I ported ZPUI to a larger screen, borrowed a UI layout mockup from one of the more successful Beepy UI projects, and I’m now porting ZPUI to larger screens. My goal with ZPUI is making your Linux devices accessible and friendly, and the Beepy community could definitely benefit from a software boost like that.
My goal is creating a UI that you can use to make any of your Linux devices accessible – no matter if you’re building a home automation panel with a Pi at its heart, or an OpenWRT-powered pocket router, putting together an overpowered Meshtastic node you want to adjust on the fly, or a PWN4Pi device that you want to manually pick RubberDucky scripts for, designing failsafes for a robot with computer vision, or simply organizing workshops where seeing your Pi’s IP address is important, in circumstances of twenty students who all want your attention during setup. This year, I’ve started working on ZPUI again, bringing it up to speed with modern software realities, and I invite you to try it out in your projects.
How ZPUI Can Help You
Cheap enough to order a dozen, for $5, only needs an OLED and buttons, and it’s very JLC-compatible
At minimum, you only need a small 128×64 OLED screen and give buttons – for instance, if you have a Waveshare Pi Zero hat, it will do just fine. In case you’re ordering PCBs anytime soon, I’ve also designed a businesscard form-factor Pi shield, which fits on any Pi and even works over QWIIC if you want – throw the board into your next JLC order, solder an OLED and a few jellybean buttons to it, follow the install instructions, and enjoy the extra point of control over your Linux install.
As-is, ZPUI can do most of the basic tasks for you – show network info, connect to WiFi networks (and even display known network passwords), manage system services with help of a systemctl API, poweroff
/reboot
, unmount partitions so you don’t have to SSH in to unplug that one flash drive, list USB devices so you know if your favourite device fell off the bus, and do a number of other things (there’s even an AVRDUDE app!). It will even let you input console commands through arrow keys in a pinch.Example ZPUI apps, complete with instructions, coming soon!
Currently, apart from UI improvements, I’m working on a heap of mechanisms to make third-party app designs easier. You already can develop ZPUI apps, and you can even distribute ZPUI apps as Python packages, but there’s still work to do. If you want to help contribute and tackle goals like, say, a raspi-config
app or a Bluetooth config interface, you’re most welcome to join in and help – there’s even a ZPUI emulator for app development purposes!
ZPUI is a project aimed to make your other projects easier. I invite you to try it out, especially if you’ve faced the kind of problems I’ve told about in the article intro. If it were up to me, SBCs like Raspberry Pi would come with these kinds of interfaces out of the box, simply because of the insanely large amount of problems I’ve had it solve and figure out.
Unexpectedly Cyberpunk
Here’s a cool demo! I’ve assembled a ZPUI businesscard into a palm-sized shield, with a QWIIC cable connected to it. On my SBCs, I have QWIIC sockets exposed, with ZPUI installed and configured to expect such a shield. When I plug it in, ZPUI detects it on the I2C bus and shows up on the screen. This palm-sized shield feels surprisingly cyberpunk to use, akin to having a cable in your wrist that lets you tap into any device of your choice. For a while now, all my devices come with QWIIC connectors, because of just how much ZPUI helps me in bringup and development.
If you have any questions, ask away, and I hope ZPUI can help you. If not – let me know! This year, I’m aiming to seriously upgrade it, building it into a fully-featured UI it is meant to be, and if there’s a feature you’re looking for, it could very well get implemented alongside.
Journalists are being attacked at protests again. Here’s how you can help
The immigration raid protests that began on June 6, 2025, in Los Angeles and spread to other cities across the U.S. have shown, once again, that protests are one of the most dangerous places for journalists in America.
As of today, the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker has documented more than 20 press freedom incidents involving journalists covering protests in California, most of them instigated by law enforcement, and is investigating numerous others in California and other states.
Demonstrations have lessened recently, but they’re likely to resume as the Trump administration continues to push unpopular immigration raids in Democratic cities. Journalists — as well as protesters — remain vulnerable.
When the police detain, assault, and attack journalists covering protests, it can prevent them from reporting the news and the public from learning about newsworthy events. That’s why we all must condemn police attacks on the press and take action to stop them in the future.
If you don’t want to see the authorities abuse journalists and the First Amendment during protests, here are five things you can do to help.
1. Support local journalism.
Many of the journalists covering recent protests have been freelancers or reporters for smaller, local outlets. They could undoubtedly use your financial support. In recent years, many local news sources have struggled or even shuttered completely because they simply can’t make enough money to support themselves.
Your monetary support is what keeps the lights on and pays for the journalists who report from protests. Consider buying a subscription to news outlets that are sending journalists to cover protests in your community, or subscribing or donating to freelance journalists.
In Los Angeles, journalists for the small news outlets L.A. Taco and The Southlander have faced press freedom aggressions while covering recent protests, as have freelancers like Joey Scott. Journalists at commercial broadcasters like KTLA, KVEA, and KNBC, and larger outlets like the Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, CNN, and the New York Post have also experienced press freedom incidents.
If you can’t support local outlets monetarily, you can also contribute to them through letters to the editor and op-eds making clear that you value their work and want them to be able to report safely. Even social media posts and reposts help.
2. Support injured journalists and journalists’ legal defense funds.
In addition to providing financial support to news outlets, individual journalists injured by law enforcement could use your help, as could the legal defense services that assist them.
For example, independent photojournalist Nick Stern suffered a severe injury at the recent LA protests. Stern is recovering from emergency surgery after being shot in the leg with a crowd-control munition. His friends started a GoFundMe campaign to help cover his medical bills.
In addition, The Intercept, in partnership with CalMatters and the National Press Photographers Association, has launched a rapid response fund to provide financial help for emergency medical support, among other costs, for journalists covering protests in LA.
Other journalists will need legal help to respond to unjustified arrests. The Intercept’s rapid response fund can be applied to legal expenses, as can the Society of Professional Journalists’ Legal Defense Fund. Both groups accept donations.
Another organization you may want to support is the Los Angeles Press Club, which, with help from another group worthy of your donations, the First Amendment Coalition, is suing local law enforcement for violating journalists’ First Amendment rights.
3. Film or record attacks and arrests of journalists, if it’s safe to do so.
Of course, financial support isn’t the only way you can help. If you witness law enforcement arresting or attacking journalists covering a protest and it is safe for you to do so, you should consider recording the incident.
Creating a record of journalists’ arrests and assaults can help hold police accountable. Publishing videos or photographs deters misconduct by bringing negative attention to police. Recordings, pictures, and witness statements can also be useful in future lawsuits. So, if possible, you should give copies of your recordings and contact information directly to the journalist or their news outlets.
Even if you see others recording, your recording may capture a useful angle that rebuts false narratives. For example, in this video an officer adamantly accuses ABC’s Matt Guttman of having provoked an altercation by “touching” him, but this video shows that it was the officer who pushed Guttman, who, at most, reflexively grabbed the officer’s arm to steady himself after being assaulted.
The public has a First Amendment right to record police in the performance of their official duties in public, including at protests. Of course, the existence of that right doesn’t necessarily mean it’s safe to exercise it. Police have been known to attack or arrest people who film them or take their pictures, and other laws may allow police to require non-journalists to disperse or move back. You should assess your personal risk and the laws in your jurisdiction before deciding to take pictures or videos of police arresting or attacking journalists.
4. Submit requests for public records and bodycam footage.
Even if you can’t document police action against journalists at protests while they’re underway, you may be able to unearth valuable documentation after the fact using public records requests.
If your state classifies bodycam footage as a public record, requests for police body-worn camera footage from protests could be particularly useful. (Even if your state does not consider bodycam footage a public record, you may be able to request it under a specific provision in state law governing such footage.) In the past, bodycam footage has shown police targeting journalists at demonstrations or ignoring reporter’s statements that they are press.
You don’t have to be a journalist to submit a records request. Organizations like MuckRock have easy-to-follow tools and guidance for submitting and tracking requests, and examples of requests from others that you can crib from.
5. Call on lawmakers to end qualified immunity.
Finally, one of the reasons that police feel emboldened to violate First Amendment rights of both protesters and journalists is because they know they can get away with it. A legal doctrine known as qualified immunity often protects police and other government officials from civil claims that they’ve violated a person’s constitutional rights. Police have invoked qualified immunity in cases brought by journalists alleging violations of their First Amendment rights, sometimes successfully and sometimes not.
After the police murder of George Floyd in 2020 and the subsequent Black Lives Matter protests, many called for an end to qualified immunity. Unfortunately, that reform effort has largely stalled.
Today, a few states ban or limit the ability of the police to invoke qualified immunity. Congress has introduced, but not passed, a bill to end qualified immunity. If you don’t want police to be able to attack protesters and journalists with impunity, contact your state and federal representatives and tell them to end qualified immunity.
What all five of these ideas have in common is that they call on you to exercise your First Amendment rights to protect journalists who are using theirs. Whether you’re supporting journalists’ work, documenting abuses, or contacting your representatives, your voice matters. With your help, journalists can and will continue to report the truth.
La Gestapo del presidente
La Gestapo del presidente
All’elenco degli arresti di oppositori dell’amministrazione Trump si è aggiunto questa settimana un altro nome eccellente dopo i casi documentati nelle scorse settimane in varie parti degli Stati Uniti.www.altrenotizie.org
Dopo Maxar, anche Anduril sbarca in Europa. Ecco l’intesa con Rheinmetall
@Notizie dall'Italia e dal mondo
L’integrazione dell’Intelligenza Artificiale nelle operazioni militari è divenuta una priorità strategica per le forze armate a livello globale, che ripongono nella disponibilità di sistemi autonomi ed a pilotaggio remoto e nell’IA due vantaggi competitivi cruciali per il
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Filomena Gallo, Marco Perduca e Angela Scaglione partecipano al dibattito “Diritti scomodi: le leggi sul Fine vita e sulla Cannabis in Toscana”
Filomena Gallo, Segretaria nazionale dell’Associazione Luca Coscioni partecipa assieme a Marco Perduca, responsabile delle attività internazionali dell’Associazione Luca Coscioni, e all’avvocata Angela Scaglione, attivista dell’Associazione, al dibattito Diritti scomodi: le leggi sul Fine vita e sulla Cannabis in Toscana, organizzato dal Partito Democratico della Toscana in collaborazione con i Giovani Democratici di Firenze.
L’appuntamento è per lunedì 23 giugno 2025, alle ore 18:30 presso il SMS di Rifredi in via Vittorio Emanuele II 303 a Firenze.
Sono previsti anche gli interventi di Iacopo Melio, consigliere regionale della Toscana, Enzo Brogi, responsabile Diritti Toscana PD e Andrea Raglianti, attivista dei Giovani Democratici di Firenze. Modera la giornalista de La Nazione, Sarah Esposito. Sono previsti, inoltre, i saluti iniziali dell’onorevole Marco Furfaro
L'articolo Filomena Gallo, Marco Perduca e Angela Scaglione partecipano al dibattito “Diritti scomodi: le leggi sul Fine vita e sulla Cannabis in Toscana” proviene da Associazione Luca Coscioni.
ESP32 Dashboard is a Great Way to Stay Informed
The original ESP32 may be a little long in the tooth by now, but it remains a potent tool for connected devices. We were drawn to [Max Pflaum]’s ESP32 Dashboard as a great example, it’s an ESP32 hooked up to an e-paper display. The hardware is simple enough, but the software is what makes it interesting.
This is deigned as a configurable notification tool, so to make it bend to the user’s will a series of widgets can be loaded onto it. The device runs MicroPython, making it easy enough to write more than the ones already on place. The screen is divided into four zones, allowing for a range of widgets to be used at once. All the details can be found in a GitHub repository.
We like it for its configurability and ease of programming, and because it delivers well on the promise of a useful device. An ESP32 and e-ink combination with MicroPython apps is something we’ve seen before in the world of badges.
Le Bourget 2025, l’Italia dello spazio e della difesa gioca in attacco
@Notizie dall'Italia e dal mondo
A Le Bourget, l’Italia mette in scena non solo le sue capacità industriali, ma una visione strategica integrata che lega politica spaziale, cooperazione europea e innovazione tecnologica. La visione dei player e delle istituzioni italiane è chiara, planare dal Salone per disegnare
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Bug di Chrome sfruttato per prendere il controllo dei nostri sistemi: come difendersi
@Informatica (Italy e non Italy 😁)
Il gruppo criminale TaxOff sta sfruttando in rete la vulnerabilità zero-day CVE-2025-2783 di Chrome per distribuire il backdoor Trinper: l’obiettivo degli aggressori e prendere il controllo dei sistemi esposti e rubare informazioni
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Daniel Ek arma l’Europa. 600 milioni per i droni di Helsing
@Notizie dall'Italia e dal mondo
Quello dei droni non è un fenomeno che sta impattando nel profondo solo la dimensione bellica, ma anche quella economica. Infatti in funzione della crescita di domanda registrata negli scorsi anni, che non sembra affatto destinata a rallentare nel breve periodo, esso rappresenta anche un’occasione di
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I valutatori sono solo un generatore di burocrazia e quando vengono valutati, non fanno mai una bella figura. Il caso dell’HCERES, l’organismo francese di valutazione universitaria appena abolito
"L’Assemblea Nazionale ha votato giovedì scorso per abolire l’Alto Consiglio responsabile della valutazione del lavoro accademico, un organismo a lungo criticato da parte della comunità scientifica. La ricercatrice Clémentine Gozlan spiega la situazione."
roars.it/perche-e-stato-abolit…
Grazie a @Maria Chiara Pievatolo per la segnalazione
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Maturità 2025: pubblicate le tracce della prima prova sul sito del Ministero
Sul sito del Ministero dell’Istruzione e del Merito sono state pubblicate le tracce della prima prova scritta dell’Esame di Stato del secondo ciclo di istruzione.
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Lancio della campagna “Aborto senza ricovero” e proiezione del film “Mai raramente a volte sempre”
La Cellula Coscioni di Catania, in collaborazione con l’Unione degli Atei e Agnostici Razionalisti, Rivolta Pagina, il Centro antiviolenza Galatea, Sham Officine e le federazioni locali del Partito Democratico, Alleanza Verdi e Sinistra, Rifondazione Comunista e Potere al Popolo! promuovono il lancio della campagna Aborto senza ricovero.
L’appuntamento è per mercoledì 25 giugno 2025 alle ore 18:30 presso il Cinema King, in via Antonio De Curtis 14 a Catania.
Interverranno Walter Venti, ginecologo consultoriale, e Giorgia Landolfo, scrittrice e giornalista. Contestualmente avverrà la proiezione del film Mai raramente a volte sempre di Eliza Hittman. L’ingresso è di 5 euro.
L'articolo Lancio della campagna “Aborto senza ricovero” e proiezione del film “Mai raramente a volte sempre” proviene da Associazione Luca Coscioni.
Just for Laughs: Charlie Douglass and the Laugh Track
I ran into an old episode of Hogan’s Heroes the other day that stuck me as odd. It didn’t have a laugh track. Ironically, the show was one where two pilots were shown, one with and one without a laugh track. The resulting data ensured future shows would have fake laughter. This wasn’t the pilot, though, so I think it was just an error on the part of the streaming service.
However, it was very odd. Many of the jokes didn’t come off as funny without the laugh track. Many of them came off as cruel. That got me to thinking about how they had to put laughter in these shows to begin with. I had my suspicions, but was I way off!
Well, to be honest, my suspicions were well-founded if you go back far enough. Bing Crosby was tired of running two live broadcasts, one for each coast, so he invested in tape recording, using German recorders Jack Mullin had brought back after World War II. Apparently, one week, Crosby’s guest was a comic named Bob Burns. He told some off-color stories, and the audience was howling. Of course, none of that would make it on the air in those days. But they saved the recording.
A few weeks later, either a bit of the show wasn’t as funny or the audience was in a bad mood. So they spliced in some of the laughs from the Burns performance. You could guess that would happen, and that’s the apparent birth of the laugh track. But that method didn’t last long before someone — Charley Douglass — came up with something better.
Sweetening
The problem with a studio audience is that they might not laugh at the right times. Or at all. Or they might laugh too much, too loudly, or too long. Charley Douglass developed techniques for sweetening an audio track — adding laughter, or desweetening by muting or cutting live laughter. At first, this was laborious, but Douglass had a plan.
He built a prototype machine that was a 28-inch wooden wheel with tape glued to its perimeter. The tape had laughter recordings and a mechanical detent system to control how much it played back.
Douglass decided to leave CBS, but the prototype belonged to them. However, the machine didn’t last very long without his attention. In 1953, he built his own derivative version and populated it with laughter from the Red Skelton Show, where Red did pantomime, and, thus, there was no audio but the laughter and applause.
Do You Really Need It?
There is a lot of debate regarding fake laughter. On the one hand, it does seem to help. On the other hand, shouldn’t people just — you know — laugh when something’s funny?
There was concern, for example, that the Munsters would be scary without a laugh track. Like I mentioned earlier, some of the gags on Hogan’s Heroes are fine with laughter, but seem mean-spirited without.
Consider the Big Bang theory. If you watch a clip (below) with no laugh track, you’ll notice two things. First, it does seem a bit mean (as a commenter said: “…like a bunch of people who really hate each other…” The other thing you’ll notice is that they pause for the laugh track insertion, which, when there is no laughter, comes off as really weird.
youtube.com/embed/jKS3MGriZcs?…
Laugh Monopoly
Laugh tracks became very common with most single-camera shows. These were hard to do in front of an audience because they weren’t filmed in sequence. Even so, some directors didn’t approve of “mechanical tricks” and refused to use fake laughter.
Even multiple-camera shows would sometimes want to augment a weak audience reaction or even just replace laughter to make editing less noticeable. Soon, producers realized that they could do away with the audience and just use canned laughter. Douglass was essentially the only game in town, at least in the United States.
The Douglass device was used on all the shows from the 1950s through the 1970s. Andy Griffith? Yep. Betwitched? Sure. The Brady Bunch? Of course. Even the Munster had Douglass or one of his family members creating their laugh tracks.
One reason he stayed a monopoly is that he was extremely secretive about how he did his work. In 1960, he formed Northridge Electronics out of a garage. When called upon, he’d wheel his invention into a studio’s editing room and add laughs for them. No one was allowed to watch.
You can see the original “laff box” in the videos below.
youtube.com/embed/tpY0Muy_1qI?…
youtube.com/embed/yCUCBkVG-Dw?…
The device was securely locked, but inside, we now know that the machine had 32 tape loops, each with ten laugh tracks. Typewriter-like keys allowed you to select various laughs and control their duration and intensity,
In the background, there was always a titter track of people mildly laughing that could be made more or less prominent. There were also some other sound effects like clapping or people moving in seats.
Building a laugh track involved mixing samples from different tracks and modulating their amplitude. You can imagine it was like playing a musical instrument that emits laughter.
Before you tell us, yes, there seems to be some kind of modern interface board on the top in the second video. No, we don’t know what it is for, but we’re sure it isn’t part of the original machine.
The original laff box wound up appearing on Antiques Roadshow where someone had bought it at a storage locker auction.
End of an Era
Of course, all things end. As technology got better and tastes changed, some companies — notably animation companies — made their own laugh tracks. One of Douglass’ protégés started a company, Sound One, that used better technology to create laughter, including stereo recordings and cassette tapes.
Today, laugh tracks are not everywhere, but you can still find them and, of course, they are prevalent in reruns. The next time you hear one, you’ll know the history behind that giggle.
If you want to build a more modern version of the laff box, [smogdog] has just the video for you, below.
youtube.com/embed/hsSoumV7Ucw?…
Digitale Dekade: EU-Kommission kritisiert schleppende Digitalisierung
Mattias Bjärnemalm new Secretary General for the European Pirates
The European Pirates have appointed Mattias ” Mab” Bjärnemalm as the first Secretary General for the organisation. Mattias Bjärnemalm, a senior member of the first Pirate Party in Sweden, has until recently been working as a Policy Advisor and Pirate Network Officer for the Pirate Delegation in the European Parliament. He was instrumental in negotiating the agreement between the Pirates and the Greens/EFA Group that lays out the details of the collaboration between the two political families. Previously, he worked as Head of Office for two Pirate Members of Parliament. He is the founder of the Young Pirates in Sweden, and was involved in the founding of both the European Pirate Party and the Young Pirates of Europe.
– We are very lucky to have appointed Mab for this role. His organisational skills and his long experience within the movement will be central to building up the office of the European Pirates and defining the role of the Secretary General, says Florian Roussel, Chairperson of the European Pirates.
The position of Secretary General was created this year to develop the office of the European Pirates into a thriving and inclusive volunteer-led organisation, and to respond to the results of the 2024 European elections.
– I am thrilled for this chance to build something new in the pirate movement! We are still a young political movement, with a lot of potential. It will be exciting to see how we best utilise all that potential, together with the board and all our activists. says Mattias Bjärnemalm.
The Secretary General will be responsible for the day-to-day running of the office of the European Pirates. The position is appointed annually, and reports directly to the board.
For more information please contact Mab:
by email: secretary.general@european-pirateparty.eu
phone: +46704385046
The post Mattias Bjärnemalm new Secretary General for the European Pirates first appeared on European Pirate Party.
I rischi nascosti dell’intelligenza artificiale per le Pmi: la sfida è culturale
@Informatica (Italy e non Italy 😁)
L'intelligenza artificiale fa ingresso nei processi di digitalizzazione anche delle piccole e medie imprese. Molte Pmi si considerano un improbabile bersaglio di attacchi cyber evoluti, ma la realtà dimostra il contrario. Ecco i rischi
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Clusit Healthcare Security Summit, la NIS2 un’occasione per il cambio di passo
@Informatica (Italy e non Italy 😁)
Il mondo della sanità è costantemente tra le mire dei criminal hacker. Healthcare Security Summit guarda al futuro facendo anche affidamento sulle normative e, tra queste, in particolare modo la NIS2. C’è la consapevolezza dei problemi e c’è la volontà di risolverli. A fare difetto,
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Fortuna
Trump invece ha manie di grandezza, è convinto di poter fare tutto e che tutto gli sia dovuto, temo soffra un pochino di megalomania, ma si sa, gli americani fanno tutto in grande anche le stronzate.
Airlines selling detailed flight data to DHS; how AI scrapers are hammering open archives; and the casual surveillance relationship between ICE and local cops.#Podcast
Un grave bug nel software Asus Armoury Crate minaccia milioni di utenti
Questa settimana, Asus ha annunciato una correzione per una vulnerabilità di bypass dell’autenticazione in Armoury Crate. Il problema avrebbe potuto compromettere completamente il sistema interessato, consentendo a un aggressore di elevare i propri privilegi a SYSTEM.
Armoury Crate è il software ufficiale Asus che fornisce un’interfaccia centralizzata per il controllo dell’illuminazione RGB (Aura Sync), la configurazione delle impostazioni delle ventole, la gestione dei profili delle prestazioni e delle periferiche Asus, nonché il download di driver e aggiornamenti del firmware.
Per eseguire tutte queste funzioni e il monitoraggio di basso livello del sistema, viene utilizzato un driver del kernel.
Il nuovo bug è tracciato con l’identificatore CVE-2025-3464 (punteggio CVSS 8,8) è descritto come un bypass di autorizzazione correlato al problema TOCTOU (Time-of-check Time-of-use).
Secondo Cisco Talos , il team che ha scoperto il bug, lo sfruttamento della vulnerabilità consiste nel creare un hard link da un’applicazione di test innocua a un file eseguibile fittizio. L’aggressore avvia l’applicazione, la sospende e quindi modifica l’hard link in modo che punti ad AsusCertService.exe.
Di conseguenza, quando il driver controlla l’hash SHA-256 del file, legge il binario attendibile associato, consentendo all’applicazione di test di aggirare l’autorizzazione e ottenere l’accesso al driver.
Ciò fornisce all’attaccante privilegi di sistema di basso livello, consentendo l’accesso diretto alla memoria fisica, alle porte I/O e all’MSR (Model-Specific Register), esponendo il sistema alla possibilità di compromettere completamente il sistema operativo.
Sebbene un aggressore debba essere presente nel sistema per sfruttare il CVE-2025-3464, data la diffusione di Asus Armoury Crate sui computer di tutto il mondo, la vulnerabilità potrebbe rappresentare una seria minaccia.
Cisco Talos segnala che CVE-2025-3464 riguarda Armoury Crate versione 5.9.13.0, ma il bollettino di sicurezza di Asus sottolinea che la vulnerabilità riguarda tutte le versioni comprese tra 5.9.9.0 e 6.1.18.0.
Gli sviluppatori di Asus consigliano vivamente agli utenti di aggiornare l’installazione di Armoury Crate alla versione più recente.
L'articolo Un grave bug nel software Asus Armoury Crate minaccia milioni di utenti proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.
Povero futuro.
La povertà aumenta, in Italia, in Europa.
Ovunque.
Togliere la dignità alle persone sembra l'idea di molti Governi.
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Meta introduce la pubblicità su WhatsApp, ma la Commissione europea sottolinea che questa decisione non è conforme con il Digital Markets Act (DMA) né con il GDPR. Ecco cosa implica l'annuncio della società per la privacy degli utenti e per le
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Vi spiego la strada da percorrere per fronteggiare i rivali della Nato. Parla Cavo Dragone
@Notizie dall'Italia e dal mondo
La Nato si prepara al summit dell’Aia, tra nuove sfide e obiettivi ambiziosi. L’ammiraglio Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, presidente del Comitato militare della Nato, ha spiegato ad Airpress cosa aspettarsi da questo vertice. Ammiraglio, quello
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Non in mio nome: il lavoro sporco di Netanyahu
@Giornalismo e disordine informativo
articolo21.org/2025/06/bombard…
Bombardare un’Università di Teheran è parte di quel lavoro sporco che Israele sta facendo per noi occidentali come ha affermato ieri il cancelliere tedesco Metz? Se colpire un luogo di studio è un pezzo di quel lavoro sporco,
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