We’ve seen a lot of projects based on the Pi Pico, but a nuclear reactor simulation is a new one. This project was created by [Andrew Shim], [Tyler Wisniewski] and another group member for Cornell’s ECE 4760 class on embedded design (which should silence naysayers who think the Pi Pico can’t be a “serious” microcontroller), and simulates the infamous soviet RMBK reactor of Chernobyl fame.

The simulation uses a 4-bit color VGA model. The fission model includes uranium fuel, water, graphite moderator, control rods and neutrons. To simplify the math, all decayed materials are treated identically as non-fissile, so no xenon poisoning is going to show up, for example. You can, however, take manual control to both scram the reactor and set it up to melt down with the hardware controller.

The RP2040’s dual-core nature comes in handy here: one core runs the main simulation loop, and the main graphic on the top of the VGA output; the other core generates the plots on the bottom half of the screen, and the Geiger-counter sound effect, and polls the buttons and encoders for user input. This is an interesting spread compared to the more usual GPU/CPU split we see on projects that use the RP2040 with VGA output.

An interesting wrinkle that has been declared a feature, not a bug, by the students behind this project, is that the framebuffer cannot keep up with all the neutrons in a meltdown simulation. Apparently the flickering and stuttering of frame-rate issues is “befitting of the meltdown scenario”. The idea that ones microcontroller melts down along with the simulated reactor is rather fitting, we agree. Check it out in a full walkthrough in the video below, or enjoy the student’s full writeup at the link above.

This project comes to us via Cornell University’s ECE 4760 course, which we’ve mentioned before. Thanks to [Hunter Adams] for the tipoff. You may see more student projects in the coming weeks.

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hackaday.com/2025/06/19/fissio…

It’s sometimes useful for a system to not just have a flat 2D camera view of things, but to have an understanding of the depth of a scene. Dual RGB cameras can be used to sense depth by contrasting the two slightly different views, in much the same way that our own eyes work. It’s considered an economical but limited method of depth sensing, or at least it was before FoundationStereo came along and blew previous results out of the water. That link has a load of interactive comparisons to play with and see for yourself, so check it out.
A box of disordered tools at close range is understood very well, and these results are typical for the system.
The FoundationStereo paper explains how researchers leveraged machine learning to create a system that can not only outperform existing dual RGB camera setups, but even active depth-sensing cameras such as the Intel RealSense.

FoundationStereo is specifically designed for strong zero-shot performance, meaning it delivers useful general results with no additional training needed to handle any particular scene or environment. The framework and models are available from the project’s GitHub repository.

Microsoft may have discontinued the Kinect and Intel similarly discontinued RealSense, but depth sensing remains an enabling technology that opens possibilities and gives rise to interesting projects, like a headset that allows one to see the world through the eyes of a depth sensor.

The ability to easily and quickly gain an understanding of the physical layout of a space is a powerful tool, and if a system like this one can deliver such fantastic results with nothing more than two RGB cameras, that’s a great sign. Watch it in action in the video below.

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hackaday.com/2025/06/19/dual-r…

A hacker’s view on ESD protection can tell you a lot about them. I’ve seen a good few categories of hackers neglecting ESD protection – there’s the yet-inexperienced ones, ones with a devil-may-care attitude, or simply those of us lucky to live in a reasonably humid climate. But until we’re able to control the global weather, your best bet is to befriend some ESD diodes before you get stuck having to replace a microcontroller board firmly soldered into your PCB with help of 40 through-hole pin headers.

Humans are pretty good at generating electric shocks, and oftentimes, you’ll shock your hardware without even feeling the shock yourself. Your GPIOs will feel it, though, and it can propagate beyond just the input/output pins inside your chip. ESD events can be a cause of “weird malfunctions”, sudden hardware latchups, chips dying out of nowhere mid-work – nothing to wish for.

Worry not, though. Want to build hardware that survives? Take a look at ESD diodes, where and how to add them, where to avoid them, and the parameters you want to keep in mind. Oh and, I’ll also talk about all the fancy ways you can mis-use ESD diodes, for good and bad alike!

How It’s Made

The simplest ESD diode is just two diodes in series, with the protected signal connected at midpoint. The wiring is easy to remember – wire the diodes in a way that they don’t conduct from 3.3 V to GND, so, in reverse, same way you’d wire up a diode to shunt a relay coil. It’s only meant to conduct in unprecedented circumstances, not normally.

Say, you use a diode with 0.7 V forward voltage drop. Then, such a configuration will shunt voltages above – into your power rails and ground, both low-impedance with plenty of capacitance and inductance, enough to dissipate the shock energy. Lower than GND – 0.7 V, and higher than VCC + 0.7 V – ever seen that mentioned in datasheets, by the way?

The overwhelming majority of ICs come with ESD diodes built-in. CMOS logic, overwhelmingly prevalent these days, basically requires them – FETs are overwhelmingly sensitive to ESD events, especially their gates. Don’t believe me? Here’s a highly persuasive video we’ve covered, that shows a FET easily dying from an ESD event!

So, is your job done here? Can you just rely on IC-internal ESD diodes? No, sadly. IC-internal ESD diodes are nice and a must have, but not sufficient for a large portion of shock. Effectively, they’re there for lower-grade GPIO protection. If your GPIOs go, or could easily go, to the outside world, or maybe they’re near high-power rails, maybe you’re driving a speaker or some motors with part of your circuit, or if maybe you want to touch your board with your fingers sometimes – you will want to add your own ESD diodes into the mix.

Let’s Protect Some GPIOs

You can use two diodes in a pinch – two 1N4148’s are a valid form of ESD protection. Better yet, you can buy a two-diode component ready to go. Here’s a part number – BAV99; it’s two diodes in series, in SOT23, with midpoint being on pin 3. Top pin to VCC, bottom pin to GND, middle pin goes to your signal – what could be easier to route? BAV99 isn’t quite intended to be an ESD diode, but it will perform wonderfully. This is the most basic protection you can give a GPIO – throw in a low-value series resistor too, if you’re generous. If you’re doing, say, a RP2040 circuit, you will already have some 27R resistors in series – just sprinkle some more of those on your board, and you’re golden.

But Wait, There’s More

Is that all you can do with these? No, there’s more! Remember how you have to put a diode across a relay coil or a motor that you’re driving with a transistor? Here’s a fun relay for you – Omron G6SK-2. It’s a tiny relay for switching signals (think analog audio switching), and what’s cool about it, it’s latching. You know how you need to reverse the voltage polarity on a DC motor in order to reverse the direction it spins? This relay uses polarity reversal to switch, instead of a coil that requires constant power draw to keep one set of contacts connected.

So, a tiny relay for signals, that requires zero power to stay on. Now, how do you drive it? With motors, you drive them with a H-bridge – one transistor from VCC, one from GND, for each pole, and these four transistors are typically put inside a single IC. However, using a whole H-bridge IC on a tiny relay that barely needs any power to begin with? Feels quite wasteful!

A GPIO set to output is electrically equivalent to a H-bridge. Put the relay’s coil between two GPIOs instead, and you can effortlessly switch it. What about a back EMF protection diode? Can’t put it across the coil anymore, then you couldn’t switch polarity. Instead, just put a pair of ESD diodes on the GPIOs, and you’re good.

You can drive a fair bit of stuff this way – not just cool low-power relays, but also linear actuators like iPhone’s Taptic Engines, vibromotors, and tiny electromagnets. So, if you needed to stock up on BAV, this is your extra reason to do so.

Where would you commonly put these kinds of diodes? On external GPIOs, yes, but also buttons – even if they’re behind a thin layer of plastic!, – and keypads, user-touchable pogo pins, off-board connectors, headphone jacks, iButton pads, and so on. These are not the only diodes you’ll ever want, of course. Let’s talk about ESD diode capacitance and where it starts to matter.

High Speed, High Demands

Imagine a Pi Pico. On it, there are GPIOs worth protecting. What else? The USB port, for sure – and if you’re daring enough to wire Ethernet to a Pico, also those pins. However, if you do use BAV, you might experience signal degradation, or other unexpected side effects. Why? One major reason is ESD diode capacitance.

High-capacitance diodes will mess with high-speed signals. That’s why we have lower-capacitance ESD diodes, though. SRV-05 is one of these – it’s an old and trusty part, with many pin-compatible successors and clones alike. Four diodes inside, one pin for VCC, one for GND – it just works, whether you do USB2, Ethernet 100 or 1000 – or even capacitive touch pads! Captouch benefits a whole lot from ESD protection, as you might guess, and low-capacitance diodes are a must – just remember to also check the docs of the captouch chip you’re using and see what it says about the matter.

Using a SOT23-6 pack like this to protect USB lines? Watch out for how you’re supposed to wire it up. Some diode packs have internal connections and expect you to interrupt the signal under them, and other ones require you to pull wires under the package; some of them include inductors. Check the datasheet for an example schematic and compare with yours.

Another pitfall to mind. Remember how there’s one path to GND and one to VCC? Well… What if your GPIO is powered, but your VCC isn’t? Power will flow from the GPIO into VCC – you might remember this one from the cut-down ATTiny we’ve featured. This is also a problem you can stumble upon if you put chips with multiple power inputs and don’t think about it.

Where else could this situation appear? Why, USB-C. If you’re connecting ADC channels to CC pins, like you would if you want to check that you do get 3A at 5V, you’ll want to protect that. Or maybe you have a PD controller on your board – you’ll want to protect its CC pins, for sure. Now, remember how CC negotiation works? A PSU has a resistor from its VBUS to the CC pin(s), and it measures the CC voltages, expecting a 5.1K resistor. What if your VBUS isn’t powered and you use a VBUS-connected ESD diode on CC? Part of the CC pullup current flows into VBUS, voltage sags, CC voltage is lower than expected, and the PSU never ends up supplying VBUS.

No VBUS, No Problems

Bad? Bad. I’ve stumbled upon this one recently, in my own project, was quite a headscratcher. Thankfully, you don’t actually need a VBUS connection – really, all you need is to shunt voltage if it exceeds a certain threshold. We have diodes for that, too! They’re called TVS – it’s kind of like a Zener, but better. In fact, since SOT23-6 ESD diodes tend to contain a TVS, you might be able to disconnect VBUS from your SOT23-6 altogether. However, you should still know about yet another breed of ESD diodes – for a start, they’re probably the flattest ESD diodes you’ll work with.

In VBUS-less ESD diodes, instead of a VBUS connection, the top point goes to a TVS diode to ground. When the top point voltage raises above the TVS diode’s threshold voltage, the diode starts conducting. The TVS diode has to dissipate the ESD shock energy now, but they’re big boy TVS diodes, they can handle it.

DFN25-10 format diodes. Where have you seen them? A Raspberry Pi, for one – there, they’re right next to the HDMI connector(s), three of them at the very least! These diodes are great for general purpose protecting whatever you want, too – you can put them on USB, Ethernet, USB CC pins, keyboard matrix pins. My fave part number is TPAZ1043, but don’t hold onto that – just look up DFN2510 and you’ll find alternatives aplenty.

Any catches with these? The threshold voltage, for one. If you’re doing 3.3V GPIOs, you want to make sure your diode won’t start shunting them – and if you buy a diode aimed at protecting modern-day interfaces like USB3, its threshold might very well be 3.3V or a little below – borderline if not outright disqualifying if you want your GPIO (or a USB2 connection) to stay unaffected. It’s a wonderful diode, of course, just, the wrong application.

They’re the nicest to route, too. Put them inline with signals, put a via down to your GND (0.5/0.3 via will do wonders), and you’re set. The catch with that? You might relax a little too much when using them, gotta remember to keep on your toes.

A Key Element

Think we’re done? Not yet. Remember that they’re very flat? Now, where could you use some very flat diodes? How about… a handheld keyboard with NKRO? NKRO needs diodes on every key, but if you’re doing a even 50-key handheld keeb, you might not necessarily want to use 50 separate diodes. Not to worry – the to-ground diodes inside the DFN2510 ESD diode pack are still good to go. Able to connect four keys per diode pack, these are way easier to handle and pick-and-place than regular tiny-package SMD diodes, and they make sure your keyboard can do all sorts of key combos. You know, to compensate for the lower amount of keys.

The hacks are cool, of course, but above all, ESD diodes are meant to make sure that your hardware lasts. Whether you’re building a devboard, a captouch arts installation, a trusty pocket electronics multitool, a custom clock to gift to your kid, or the tiniest keyboard ever, ESD diodes are your friends. You should sprinkle them on your circuits, keep them in your stock, spread the word, and they will protect you in turn.

Liked this article? Check out one of the previous Hacker Tactic installments, where I’ve shown you how to detect internal ESD diodes with a multimeter, specifically, to probe wiring continuity and reverse-engineer circuits! You should know about it, too.

If you’re a retro Nintendo fan you can of course carry a NES and a Game Boy around with you, but the former isn’t very portable. Never fear though, because here’s [Chad Burrow], who’s created a neat handheld console that emulates both.

It’s called the Acolyte Handheld, and it sports the slightly unusual choice for these parts of a PIC32 as its main processor. Unexpectedly it can use Sega Genesis controllers, but it has the usual buttons on board for portable use. It can drive either its own LCD or an external VGA monitor, and in a particularly nice touch, it switches between the two seamlessly. The NES emulator is his own work, while Game Boy support comes courtesy of Peanut-GB.

We like the design of the case, and particularly that of the buttons. Could it have been made smaller by forgoing some of the through-hole parts in favour of SMD ones? Quite likely, but though it’s chunky it’s certainly not outsized.

Portable Nintendo-inspired hardware is popular around here, as you can see with this previous handheld NES

hackaday.com/2025/06/19/game-b…

Gli sviluppatori di Veeam hanno rilasciato delle patch che risolvono diverse falle in Veeam Backup & Replication (VBR), tra cui una vulnerabilità critica legata all’esecuzione di codice remoto (RCE). Il problema, a cui è stato assegnato l’identificatore CVE-2025-23121 (9,9 punti sulla scala CVSS), è stato scoperto dagli esperti di watchTowr e CodeWhite e sembrerebbe che la vulnerabilità riguardi solo le installazioni aggiunte a un dominio.

Come spiegato da Veeam in un bollettino di sicurezza, la vulnerabilità potrebbe essere sfruttata dagli utenti autenticati del dominio per eseguire codice da remoto sul server di backup. Il bug riguarda Veeam Backup & Replication versione 12 e successive ed è stato risolto nella versione 12.3.2.3617. Sebbene CVE-2025-23121 riguardi solo le installazioni VBR aggiunte a un dominio, può essere sfruttato da qualsiasi utente di dominio, facilitandone l’abuso in tali casi.

Si è notato che molte aziende collegano i propri server di backup a un dominio Windows, ignorando le raccomandazioni di Veeam, nonostante l’azienda insista sempre nell’utilizzare una foresta di Active Directory separata e nel proteggere gli account amministrativi con l’autenticazione a due fattori.

È opportuno notare che a marzo 2025 gli specialisti di watchTowr Labs avevano già scoperto una vulnerabilità simile (CVE-2025-23120), che rappresentava un problema di deserializzazione nelle classi .NET Veeam.Backup.EsxManager.xmlFrameworkDs e Veeam.Backup.Core.BackupSummary.

Questa vulnerabilità, come altri bug precedenti, era correlata a BinaryFormatter, un componente legacy che, secondo Microsoft, non è affidabile per la deserializzazione dei dati e non può essere protetto in alcun modo. In altre parole, l’applicazione non gestiva correttamente i dati serializzati, il che consentiva l’introduzione di oggetti e gadget dannosi in grado di eseguire codice pericoloso.

La radice del nuovo problema CVE-2025-23121 risiede probabilmente nella stessa area. Pertanto, a marzo, lo specialista di watchTowr Anton Gostev ha scritto che finché BinaryFormatter non verrà rimosso da VBR, tali problemi di sicurezza si ripresenteranno inevitabilmente.

Si consiglia ora alle aziende che utilizzano Veeam Backup & Replication di eseguire l’aggiornamento alla versione 12.3.2.3617 il prima possibile.

L'articolo Allarme sicurezza Veeam! falla critica consente RCE sui server di backup proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

Where’s the best place for a datacenter? It’s an increasing problem as the AI buildup continues seemingly without pause. It’s not just a problem of NIMBYism; earthly power grids are having trouble coping, to say nothing of the demand for cooling water. Regulators and environmental groups alike are raising alarms about the impact that powering and cooling these massive AI datacenters will have on our planet.

While Sam Altman fantasizes about fusion power, one obvious response to those who say “think about the planet!” is to ask, “Well, what if we don’t put them on the planet?” Just as Gerald O’Niell asked over 50 years ago when our technology was merely industrial, the question remains:

“Is the surface of a planet really the right place for expanding technological civilization?”

O’Neill’s answer was a resounding “No.” The answer has not changed, even though our technology has. Generative AI is the latest and greatest technology on offer, but it turns out it may be the first one to make the productive jump to Earth Orbit. Indeed, it already has, but more on that later, because you’re probably scoffing at such a pie-in-the-sky idea.

There are three things needed for a datacenter: power, cooling, and connectivity. The people at companies like Starcloud, Inc, formally Lumen Orbit, make a good, solid case that all of these can be more easily met in orbit– one that includes hard numbers.

Sure, there’s also more radiation on orbit than here on earth, but our electronics turn out to be a lot more resilient than was once thought, as all the cell-phone cubesats have proven. Starcloud budgets only 1 kg of sheilding per kW of compute power in their whitepaper, as an example. If we can provide power, cooling, and connectivity, the radiation environment won’t be a showstopper.

Power

There’s a great big honkin’ fusion reactor already available for anyone to use to power their GPUs: the sun. Of course on Earth we have tricky things like weather, and the planet has an annoying habit of occluding the sun for half the day but there are no clouds in LEO. Depending on your choice of orbit, you do have that annoying 45 minutes of darkness– but a battery to run things for 45 minutes is not a big UPS, by professional standards. Besides, the sun-synchronous orbits are right there, just waiting for us to soak up that delicious, non-stop solar power.
Sun Synchronous Orbit, because nights are for squats. Image by Brandir via Wikimedia.
Sun-synchronous orbits (SSOs) are polar orbits that precess around the Earth once every sidereal year, so that they always maintain the same angle to the sun. For example, you might have an SSO that crosses the equator 12 times a day, each time at local 15:00, or 10:43, any other time set by the orbital parameters. With SSOs, you don’t have to worry about ever losing solar power to some silly, primitive, planet-bound concept like nighttime.

Without the atmosphere in the way, solar panels are also considerably more effective per unit area, something the Space Solar Power people have been pointing out since O’Neill’s day. The problem with Space Solar Power has always been the efficiencies and regulatory hurdles of beaming the power back to Earth– but if you use the power to train an AI model, and send the data down, that’s no longer an issue. Given that the 120 kW array on ISS has been trouble-free for decades now, we can consider it a solved problem. Sure, solar panels degrade, but the rate is in fractions of a percent per year, and it happens on Earth too. By the time solar panel replacement is likely to be the rest of the hardware is likely to be totally obsolete.

Cooling

This is where skepticism creeps in. After all, cooling is the greatest challenge with high performance computing hardware here on earth, and heat rejection is the great constraint of space operations. The “icy blackness of space” you see in popular culture is as realistic as warp drive; space is a thermos, and shedding heat is no trivial issue. It is also, from an engineering perspective, not a complex issue. We’ve been cooling spacecraft and satellites using radiators to shed heat via infrared emission for decades now. It’s pretty easy to calculate that if you have X watts of heat to reject at Y degrees, you will need a radiator of area Z. The Stephan-Boltzmann Law isn’t exactly rocket science.
Photons go out, liquid cools down. It might be rocket science, but it’s a fairly mature technology. (Image: EEATCS radiator deployment during ISS Flight 5A, NASA)
Even better, unlike on Earth where you have changeable things like seasons and heat waves, in a SSO you need only account for throttling– and if your data center is profitable, you won’t be doing much of that. So while you need a cooling system, it won’t be difficult to design. Liquid or two-phase cooling on server hardware? Not new. Plumbing cooling a loop to a radiator in the vacuum of space? That’s been part of satellite busses for years.

Aside from providing you with a stable thermal environment, the other advantage of an SSO is that if one chooses the dawn/dusk orbit along the terminator, while the solar panels always face the sun, the radiators can always face black space, letting them work to their optimal potential. This would also simplify the satellite bus, as no motion system would be required to keep the solar panels and radiators aligned into/out of the sun. Conceivably the whole thing could be stabilized by gravity gradient, minimizing the need to use reaction wheels.

Connectivity

One word: Starlink. That’s not to say that future data centers will necessarily be hooking into the Starlink network, but high-bandwidth operations on orbit are already proven, as long as you consider 100 gigabytes per second sufficient bandwidth. An advantage not often thought of for this sort of space-based communications is that the speed of light in a vacuum is about 31% faster than glass fibers, while the circumference of a low Earth orbit is much less than 31% greater than the circumference of the planet. That reduces ping times between elements of free-flying clusters or clusters and whatever communications satellite is overhead of the user. It is conceivable, but by no means a sure thing, that a user in the EU might have faster access to orbital data than they would to a data center in the US.

The Race

This hypothetical European might want to use European-owned servers. Well, the European Commission is on it; in the ASCEND study (Advanced Space Cloud for European Net zero Emission and Data sovereignty) you can tell from the title they put as much emphasis on keeping European data European as they do on the environmental aspects mentioned in the introduction. ASCEND imagines a 32-tonne, 800 kW data center lofted by a single super-heavy booster (sadly not Ariane 6), and proposes it could be ready by the 2030s. There’s no hint in this proposal that the ASCEND Consortium or the EC would be willing to stop at one, either. European efforts have already put AI in orbit, with missions like PhiSat2 using on-board AI image processing for Earth observation.
You know Italians were involved because it’s so stylish. No other proposal has that honeycomb aesthetic for their busy AI bees. Image ASCEND.

AWS Snowcone after ISS delivery. The future is here and it’s wrapped in Kapton. (Image NASA)
The Americans, of course, are leaving things to private enterprise. Axiom Space has leveraged their existing relationship with NASA to put hardware on ISS for testing purposes, staring with an AWS snowcone in 2022, which they claimed was the first flight-test of cloud computing. Axiom has also purchased space on the Kepler Relay Network satellites set to launch late 2025. Aside from the 2.5 Gb/s optical link from Kepler, exactly how much compute power is going into these is not clear. A standalone data center is expected to follow in 2027, but again, what hardware will be flying is not stated.

There are other American companies chasing venture capital for this purpose, like Google-founder-backed Relativity Space or the wonderfully-named Starcloud mentioned above. Starcloud’s whitepaper is incredibly ambitious, talking about building an up to 5 GW cluster whose double-sided solar/radiator array would be by far the largest object ever built in orbit at 4 km by 4 km. (Only a few orders of magnitude bigger than ISS. Not big deal.) At least it is a modular plan, that could be built up over time, and they are planning to start with a smaller standalone proof-of-concept, Starcloud-2, in 2026.
You can’t accuse Starcloud of thinking small. (Image Starcloud via Youtube.)A closeup of one of the twelve “Stars” in the Three Body Computing Constellation. This times 2,800. Image ADA Space.
Once they get up there, the American and European AIs are are going to find someone else has already claimed the high ground, and that that someone else speaks Chinese. A startup called ADA Space launched 12 satellites in May 2025 to begin building out the world’s first orbital supercomputer, called the Three Body Computing Constellation. (You can’t help but love the poetry of Chinese naming conventions.)

Unlike the American startups, they aren’t shy about its capabilities: 100 Gb/s optical datalinks, with the most powerful satellite in the constellation capable of 744 trillion operations per second. (TOPS, not FLOPS. FLOPS specifically refers to floating point operations, whereas TOPS could be any operation but usually refers to operations on 8-bit integers.)

For comparison, Microsoft requires an “AI PC” like the copilot laptops to have 40 TOPS of AI-crunching capacity. The 12 satellites must not be identical, as the constellation together has a quoted capability of 5 POPS (peta-operations per second), and a storage capacity of 30 TB. That’s seems pretty reasonable for a proof-of-concept. You don’t get a sense of the ambition behind it until you hear that these 12 are just the first wave of a planned 2,800 satellites. Now that’s what I’d call a supercluster!
A man can dream, can’t he? Image NASA.
High-performance computing in space? It’s no AI hallucination, it’s already here. There is a network forming in the sky. A sky-net, if you will, and I for one welcome our future AI overlords. They already have the high ground, so there’s no point fighting now. Hopefully this datacenter build-out will just be the first step on the road Gerry O’Neill and his students envisioned all those years ago: a road that ends with Earth’s surface as parkland, and civilization growing onwards and upwards. Ad astra per AI? There are worse futures.

La svolta di Riyadh cambia tutto

Red Hot Cyber, primo e principale riferimento italiano sulla cybersecurity, è stato tra gli ospiti al We Make Future 2025 di Bologna su esclusivo invito di Search On. In questo reportage, vi portiamo dentro i laboratori dell’avvenire della fiera che ha riunito 70.000 innovatori sotto lo slogan “One World, One Future”. Dalle startup più innovative alle riflessioni critiche sull’IA, fino agli highlights esclusivi. Nei prossimi giorni pubblicheremo analisi specialistiche settore per settore.

Immaginate 70.000 innovatori uniti da un solo obiettivo: plasmare l’avvenire digitale. “One World, One Future”. Dal 4 al 6 giugno, negli spazi di BolognaFiere, dietro questo slogan si nascondeva qualcosa di molto più grande di una semplice fiera tecnologica.
_{Foto: Carlo Denza}

Non una semplice fiera, ma una rivoluzione

Dimenticatevi tutto quello che credete di sapere sulle fiere tecnologiche tradizionali. Chi si aspettava la solita esposizione tecnologica routinaria è rimasto piacevolmente spiazzato. Il WMF 2025 ha letteralmente demolito ogni schema precostituito, rivelandosi molto di più di una fiera: un’esperienza totalizzante che ha saputo mescolare magistralmente contenuti di altissimo livello con momenti di vera e propria ispirazione collettiva.

Il programma è stato davvero impressionante. I palchi specializzati non si sovrapponevano mai (miracolo dovuto ai cambiamenti logistici apportati quest’anno). Relatori internazionali sono arrivati da ogni parte del mondo. Gli eventi erano pensati e cuciti su misura per target specifici. Decine di delegazioni internazionali hanno trasformato Bologna nella “Silicon Valley” dell’innovazione per tre intensi giorni.

I numeri parlano chiaro: oltre 70.000 presenze registrate. Una partecipazione che ha dimostrato ancora una volta che l’innovazione può, e deve, essere un progetto collettivo.
_{Foto Carlo Denza}

Bologna, cuore del nuovo Triangolo Digitale

Bologna si riconferma protagonista assoluta di quello che possiamo già chiamare il “Triangolo dell’Innovazione Digitale” italiano, accanto a Milano e Torino. Non è più il triangolo industriale dei nostri nonni, ma qualcosa di completamente diverso e rivoluzionario: dove non si forgiano acciai, ma algoritmi; non si bruciano idrocarburi, si processano big data; non si costruiscono fabbriche, ma startup.

Questo ecosistema opera un continuo merge tra alta tecnologia, economia della conoscenza e manifattura 4.0, generando opportunità impensabili fino a pochi anni fa. La lezione della storia ci parla da lontano: già Adam Smith, nella Ricchezza delle Nazioni, riconosceva che la divisione del lavoro e l’accumulo di conoscenze costituiscono la linfa vitale dell’innovazione. L’Università di Bologna (1088), la più antica d’occidente, ne è la prova vivente: un magnete per visionari, ieri come oggi.
_{Foto: Carlo Denza}

Quando l’etica incontra l’algoritmo

Ecco la vera differenza rivoluzionaria del WMF 2025: in un momento storico dove le innovazioni tecnologiche corrono più veloci delle nostre riflessioni etiche, gli organizzatori hanno fatto una scelta precisa e controcorrente.

“Nonostante lo spirito dei tempi soffi forte, e in tutte le direzioni”, We Make Future ha scelto come suo dovere fondamentale quello di indicare chiaramente la strada su come usare la tecnologia: con consapevolezza, responsabilità e uno sguardo sempre rivolto agli altri.

Il messaggio emerso dalla sezione “The Business of Tomorrow” è stato cristallino: il successo aziendale dell’avvenire poggia su tre pilastri fondamentali:

• Innovazione vera (non solo di facciata)
• Digitalizzazione intelligente
• Sostenibilità concreta

_{Foto: Carlo Denza}

Protagonisti e opportunità concrete

La qualità straordinaria degli ospiti ha fatto la differenza. Il palco ha visto alternarsi figure come Federico Faggin, il genio italiano che ha inventato il microprocessore, e firme blasonate del giornalismo italiano come, Enrico Mentana e Corrado Formigli. La letteratura e la giustizia hanno trovato una voce potente in Carlo Lucarelli, maestro indiscusso del noir italiano.
“Premiazione Dott. Federico Faggin”. (Foto: Carlo Denza)
Insieme a Luciano Baglioni hanno raccontato e sottolineato brillantemente come le moderne tecnologie avrebbero potuto fare la differenza in casi storici come quello della Banda della Uno Bianca.

In quel periodo drammatico – hanno spiegato magistralmente Lucarelli e Baglioni –“gli investigatori furono costretti a fare affidamento principalmente sul fattore umano senza il supporto degli strumenti tecnologici oggi disponibili”.

Tecnologie rivoluzionarie come Analisi Dati e AI, Videosorveglianza e Riconoscimento Facciale, Digital Forensics, avrebbero potuto accelerare significativamente l’identificazione dei responsabili, cambiando probabilmente la storia di quegli anni bui.
_{Enrico Mentana, Cosmano Lombardo. (Foto: Carlo denza)}
A completare il quadro, Nicola Gratteri ha messo in luce le nuove strategie del crimine organizzato, Mimmo Lucano ha collegato brillantemente innovazione e giustizia sociale e Sua Eminenza il Cardinale Matteo Maria Zuppi ha offerto una riflessione profonda sull’equilibrio tra progresso tecnico e valori umani.

_{Sua Eminenza il Cardinale Matteo Maria Zuppi
Magistrato Nicola Gratteri
Corrado Formigli}

Ma il WMF non è solo contenuto teorico: è business concreto. La finale della startup competition ha dimostrato quanto il panorama sia vivo e spietato, con Invigilo AI (Singapore) che ha conquistato il “biglietto d’oro” per San Francisco per competere per un milione di dollari e Electra Vehicles (Stati Uniti) che ha vinto il premio del pubblico, confermando la centralità della mobilità sostenibile.

L’asso nella manica: la svolta globale a Riyadh

E poi, il vero asso nella manica, quello che ha fatto tremare le fondamenta dell’ecosistema digitale globale. La sorpresa che ha lasciato tutti senza fiato è arrivata dal palco principale: la prima edizione saudita del We Make Future che si terrà a Riyadh dall’8 al 10 dicembre 2026!

Non una semplice espansione geografica ma una vera e propria dichiarazione di guerra al localismo tecnologico. Il WMF accelera decisamente la sua internazionalizzazione, puntando dritto al cuore di uno dei mercati più strategici e in rapida crescita del pianeta.
_{Foto: Carlo Denza}

Il sapore che resta e si rinnova

Con l’annuncio di Riyadh, We Make Future ha dimostrato di essere una piattaforma globale che collega culture, economie e visioni. L’atmosfera che si respira rievoca gli echi di un’epoca fondativa, proprio come nelle fiere tech anni Settanta dove, tra un mainframe e l’altro, si discuteva di sistemi come Unix.

È qui che, come una madeleine proustiana, ogni edizione del WMF mescola il sapore familiare di una community consolidata con l’innovazione radicale di sensazioni completamente nuove e inaspettate.

In tempi come questi, chi sa adattarsi per primo avrà un vantaggio competitivo notevole, e il WMF ha dimostrato di saper costruire attivamente l’avvenire portando la propria visione dall’Europa al Medio Oriente. Con l’edizione saudita, quel mondo è più grande, complesso e carico di prospettive che mai.

L'articolo Bologna brucia di futuro: quando 70.000 visionari ridisegnano il domani proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

Vorrei leggere un libro sulla meccanica quantistica per capirci PER DAVVERO qualcosina ma per farlo bisogna che veda qualche equazione perché le spiegazioni qualitative non mi bastano più.

Quindi, mi servirebbe un libro che sia più dettagliato (anche più tecnico) di un libro divulgativo ma allo stesso tempo meno impegnativo di un testo universitario perché mi manca buona parte della matematica necessaria (sono ingegnere quindi arrivo fino ad Analisi II ma poi lì mi fermo).

Avete letto qualcosa che potrebbe fare al caso mio?

Ho visto che nella serie delle lezioni di Fisica di Feynman c'è un volume, il terzo, dedicato alla meccanica quantistica, l'avete letto? Può essere quello giusto?

("QED", di Feynman, l'ho già letto e ha cambiato il mio modo di guardare il mondo quando apro la finestra 😍)

#Fisica #fisicaDelleParticelle #meccanicaquantistica #scienza

The Humane AI Pin was ambitious, expensive, and failed to captivate people between its launch and shutdown shortly after. While the units do contain some interesting elements like the embedded projector, it’s all locked down tight, and the cloud services that tie it all together no longer exist. The devices technically still work, they just can’t do much of anything.
The Humane AI Pin had some bold ideas, like an embedded projector. (Image credit: Humane)
Since then, developers like [Adam Gastineau] have been hard at work turning the device into an experimental development platform: PenumbraOS, which provides a means to allow “untrusted” applications to perform privileged operations.

As announced earlier this month on social media, the experimental SDK lets developers treat the pin as a mostly normal Android device, with the addition of a modular, user-facing assistant app called MABL. [Adam] stresses that this is all highly experimental and has a way to go before it is useful in a user-facing sort of way, but there is absolutely a workable architecture.

When the Humane AI Pin launched, it aimed to compete with smartphones but failed to impress much of anyone. As a result, things folded in record time. Humane’s founders took jobs at HP and buyers were left with expensive paperweights due to the highly restrictive design.

Thankfully, a load of reverse engineering has laid the path to getting some new life out of these ambitious devices. The project could sure use help from anyone willing to pitch in, so if that’s up your alley be sure to join the project; you’ll be in good company.

hackaday.com/2025/06/19/floppe…

Freedom isn’t free.

Perhaps you’ve heard that before. If you grew up in the United States, you’ve certainly heard that said once or twice in your lifetime. Hell, maybe you’ve said it.

Freedom isn’t free.

Have you ever really thought about that phrase? It has a nice ring to it, but what does it mean exactly?

Freedom isn’t free.

In the United States, we often celebrate the Fourth of July as our Independence Day. We proclaimed our independence from Great Britain and, from that day forward, the rebellion became a revolution with a purpose: freedom from the crown.

July 4th, 1776 is not actually the day freedom was achieved, however. September 3rd, 1783 was the day Great Britain signed the Treaty of Paris, which recognized and granted the Thirteen Colonies their independence after their eight-year-long fight for freedom. Even then, it wouldn’t be ratified until May 12, 1784, which is over nine years removed from the Battles of Concord and Lexington.

Freedom isn’t free.

But with all that being said, none of those dates actually represent “freedom” in its purest, most unadulterated form. That day is June 19th, 1865. 160 years ago today.

Now this is not an article about Juneteenth. This is an article posted on the date of Juneteenth to drive home the point of the article.

Freedom isn’t free.

The American Civil War is the United States of America’s defining tragedy of the 19th century. Brother versus brother, bloodshed and battles to maintain bondage. While I do believe it is fascinating to research the War Between the States, I also find very little honor in the conflict. I find it more tragic than anything else.

But in the American Civil War, comes a story of a man so remarkable, so brave, that I can’t help but marvel in awe when I think about it.

This is about Robert Smalls, the man who was born a slave and sailed his way to freedom.

Freedom isn’t free.

Robert Smalls was born in a cabin behind his slavemaster’s house at 511 Prince Street in Beaufort, South Carolina. At age 12, he was sent to Charleston to labor. It was there that he was introduced to working on the docks and wharves, where after years of work, the still-enslaved Smalls became a wheelman (a helmsman without the proper title) of the CSS Planter.

Robert Smalls would gain invaluable experience that would directly benefit him on what would be the most important day of his life: May 12th, 1862.

Freedom isn’t free.

Smalls, having spent his time studying the Captain’s signals and mannerisms, hatched a plan to escape. Then, on the night of May 12th, the ship’s white crew left Smalls and other slaves in charge while the crew spent the night ashore.

Smalls, knowing this would be the opportunity, asked if the families of the slaves could visit while the crew was ashore. With that permission granted, the life or death plan went into action.

Robert Smalls, when the time became opportune, disguised himself in the Captain’s clothing and hat, mimicking his mannerisms and signals. Having been able to pass not one, but four checkpoints, Smalls, the other enslaved people and their families sailed toward the Union blockade. Still flying high on the Planter, they removed the Confederate flag and replaced it with a white bedsheet; this crew of Pirates had successfully sailed their way to freedom.

“I am delivering this war material including these cannons and I think [President] Lincoln can put them to good use,” is reportedly the words uttered by Smalls upon the surrender of the ship.

Freedom isn’t free.

For Smalls and the families he helped escape that night, freedom had come. But freedom in this country was not accomplished with men and women still in bondage; and for Smalls: the fight wasn’t over yet either.

For his bravery and deliverance of the CSS Planter, Robert Smalls was named the first black Captain of the US Navy, became an overnight sensation in the Union and a pariah in the Confederacy. The bounty on the life of Robert Smalls from the Richmond government nearly half of what the D.C. government valued the Planter at.

During the war, Smalls would captain the now USS Planter in battle against the Confederacy. The man who was sent to involuntary service and bondage aboard this ship was now the man commanding it.

It was Smalls and his actions that convinced Lincoln to allow freedmen to fight for the Union cause. If the North’s purpose was to maintain the Union when the war first broke out, it was the actions of Smalls and the bravery of many free black soldiers that turned the purpose of the war into preserving the Union and abolishing slavery where it remained.

It was on New Year’s Day, January 1st, 1863, did President Lincoln issue the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring all enslaved peoples within the rebelling states to be free. But that news didn’t reach everyone quite as quick.

It wouldn’t be until June 19th, 1865, 160 years ago today, that the final people in bondage were told about their freedom. It would be June 19th that marked the day that, finally, 90 years removed from the Revolution against Great Britain could it be stated: All citizens are free.

Freedom isn’t free.

The United States Pirate Party, as part of our platform, advocates for self-determination. As outlined in our platform: “We advocate for the right to free association and self-determination. People living in a political entity should have the right to maintain, alter or conclude their relationship to larger entities, or join in union, if it is the will of the people.”

People have asked members of the party how they feel about the confederacy when this point is brought up, asking if we would support their calls and desire for secession.

The answer is “no”.

The CSA was a slaver nation. So long as folks were held in bondage, then “people living in a political entity” doesn’t apply to all people of the Confederacy, and thus the CSA is not something the US Pirate Party supports. We support the will of the people.

What Robert Smalls did, not only for himself and the people he saved, is nothing short of heroic. The Union was the freedom that wouldn’t come free, and Smalls sailed straight to it. People look back on the Civil War and remember the heroes of the Union Army and occasionally get caught up in the Grants or Shermans or some might focus on the Lees or Jacksons. But today, on the day that marks freedom for all of us in the United States, we remember Captain Smalls.

Robert Smalls would go on to become one of the most important and influential politicians of the Reconstruction era and in South Carolina. He would return to Beaufort to purchase his new home: 511 Prince Street. The home he was once a slave in was now the home he owned.

It is on this day we should take the time to remember that freedom, something that we associate with the United States, wasn’t simply granted to us on the July 4th, 1776. It is important to remember not everyone was freed on New Year’s Day, 1863. It is today, June 19th, that deserves the name “Freedom Day”.

So in honor of Robert Smalls, his bravery and the struggles many in this country had to face just to be considered free citizens, we must not only remember, but never forget.

Freedom isn’t free.

uspirates.org/through-the-spyg…