Few electronic ICs can claim to be as famous as the 555 timer. Maybe part of the reason is that the IC doesn’t have a specific function. It has a lot of building blocks that you can use to create timers and many other kinds of circuits. Now [Stoppi] has decided to make a 555 out of discrete components. The resulting IC, as you can see in the video below, won’t win any prizes for diminutive size. But it is fun to see all the circuitry laid bare at the macro level.

The reality is that the chip doesn’t have much inside. There’s a transistor to discharge the external capacitor, a current source, two comparators, and an RS flip flop. All the hundreds of circuits you can build with those rely on how they are wired together along with a few external components.

Even on [stoppi]’s page, you can find how to wire the device to be monostable, stable, or generate tones. You can also find circuits to do several time delays. A versatile chip now blown up as big as you are likely to ever need it.

Practical? Probably not, unless you need a 555 with some kind of custom modification. But for understanding the 555, there’s not much like it.

We’ve seen macro 555s before. It is amazing how many things you can do with a 555. Seriously.

youtube.com/embed/pK1dVKZuLpk?…

hackaday.com/2025/07/12/the-55…

I noti esperti di sicurezza informatica e cacciatori di bug Sam Curry e Ian Carroll hanno scoperto che il chatbot Olivia, utilizzato da McDonald’s per assumere dipendenti, rivelava i dati dei candidati. In totale, il database conteneva oltre 64 milioni di record.

I ricercatori hanno iniziato a interessarsi a quanto stava accadendo dopo aver letto numerose lamentele da parte degli utenti di Reddit riguardo alle risposte “inadeguate” di Olivia. Olivia è un’applicazione di Paradox.ai, un’azienda che sviluppa software di intelligenza artificiale. Il bot viene utilizzato da McDonald’s per selezionare i candidati, richiedere le loro informazioni di contatto e i loro curriculum e indirizzarli ai test.

A volte l’intelligenza artificiale fraintende anche le domande più semplici, ed è per questo che è diventata “famosa” sui social media. “Ho pensato che fosse piuttosto unico e distopico rispetto al tipico processo di assunzione, quindi ho voluto approfondire l’argomento”, racconta Carroll. “Ho iniziato a candidarmi per un lavoro e nel giro di 30 minuti avevamo accesso completo a quasi tutte le candidature inviate a McDonald’s nel corso degli anni”.

Inizialmente, gli esperti volevano testare Olivia per verificarne la vulnerabilità alle iniezioni di prompt, ma non hanno trovato nulla di interessante. Hanno quindi deciso di verificare cosa sarebbe successo se si fossero registrati come affiliati McDonald’s, tentando di accedere al backend del sito. Invece, gli esperti hanno trovato un curioso link di accesso per i dipendenti di Paradox.ai su McHire.com.

Carroll scrive di aver provato inizialmente due delle combinazioni di credenziali più comuni: prima “admin/admin” e poi “123456/123456”. La seconda di queste due combinazioni ha funzionato. “Questo è più comune di quanto si possa pensare”, osserva il ricercatore. “Si scopre anche che la pagina di login di Paradox.ai non supporta l’autenticazione a più fattori.”

Utilizzando queste credenziali, Carroll e Curry hanno ottenuto l’accesso amministrativo a un ristorante di prova McDonald’s su McHire e hanno scoperto che tutti i dipendenti lì elencati erano sviluppatori Paradox.ai provenienti dal Vietnam. Trovarono anche un link a presunte offerte di lavoro di prova per questo McDonald’s inesistente, cliccarono su una di queste, si candidarono e visualizzarono la propria candidatura nel sistema back-end, a cui ora avevano accesso. Poi Carroll e Curry hanno scoperto la seconda vulnerabilità critica in McHire. Dopo aver provato a modificare l’ID della loro candidatura (un numero che superava i 64 milioni), si resero conto che avrebbero potuto semplicemente ridurlo e ottenere l’accesso ai dati e alle informazioni di contatto di altri candidati (inclusi nomi, indirizzi email e numeri di telefono).

I ricercatori erano titubanti nel presentare una richiesta di accesso di massa ai registri, temendo violazioni della privacy e accuse di hacking. Tuttavia, hanno controllato diversi documenti d’identità e ottenuto dati reali da persone reali. Gli esperti osservano che le informazioni personali esposte a seguito di questi problemi non erano tra le più sensibili. Tuttavia, i rischi per i candidati erano aumentati dal fatto che i dati erano direttamente correlati a informazioni sul loro lavoro presso McDonald’s o sulla loro intenzione di lavorare lì.

“Se qualcuno dovesse usare questa cosa, i rischi di phishing sarebbero molto alti”, spiega Curry. “Non si tratta solo di informazioni personali e curriculum. Si tratta di informazioni su persone che cercano lavoro da McDonald’s o che ci lavorano, persone che attendono con ansia le email. Ad esempio, se si cercasse di mettere in atto una sorta di frode sulle buste paga, questa sarebbe un’ottima opzione”.

I rappresentanti di Paradox.ai hanno pubblicato una dichiarazione ufficiale sul loro blog, affermando che l’account di prova con la password “123456” a cui gli esperti hanno avuto accesso non era stato utilizzato dal 2019 e avrebbe dovuto essere disattivato molto tempo fa. Si sottolinea che nessuno, a parte Curry e Carroll, ha sfruttato questa vulnerabilità e non ha ottenuto l’accesso ai dati dei candidati. I ricercatori hanno inoltre avuto accesso solo a sette record, cinque dei quali contenevano effettivamente informazioni personali di persone che interagivano con il sito di McHire.

L’azienda ha aggiunto che lancerà un programma bug bounty per identificare meglio le vulnerabilità nei suoi sistemi in futuro. A loro volta, i rappresentanti di McDonald’s hanno dichiarato a Wired che la colpa di quanto accaduto ricade interamente su Paradox.ai.

L'articolo Il chatbot di McDonald’s ha portato a 64 milioni di record esposti per una password “123456” proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

Il presidente Donald Trump ha lasciato Maria Bartiromo brevemente senza parole durante un’intervista quando ha insinuato che gli Stati Uniti stanno hackerando i sistemi cinesi. Il presidente ha sottolineato il “grande deficit commerciale con la Cina” e ha affermato che il Paese “pagheranno molti dazi”. Tuttavia, ha affermato di avere un “ottimo rapporto” con il presidente cinese Xi Jinping.

Tutto questo è avvenuto in una intervista dove il presidente degli Stati Uniti Donald Trump ha minimizzato l’importanza delle azioni aggressive legate a Pechino, tra cui i recenti arresti di due cittadini cinesi accusati di aver introdotto illegalmente un pericoloso agente patogeno negli Stati Uniti.

Trump ha dichiarato a Fox News riguardo alle aggressioni nel cyberspace che Washington si comporta in modo simile. “Lo facciamo, facciamo un sacco di cose”, all’interno del programma Sunday Morning Futures con Maria Bartiromo che è rimasta sbalordita dalle sue parole.

“È così che funziona il mondo. È un mondo schifoso.”.

Ha aggiunto: “Penso che andare d’accordo con la Cina sia un’ottima cosa, ma loro stanno pagando tariffe doganali sostanziali”. E’ anche vero che la Casa Bianca ha segnalato progressi negli scambi commerciali con la Cina, con un funzionario che ha affermato che entrambe le parti hanno raggiunto un’intesa su questioni quali l’accelerazione delle spedizioni di terre rare negli Stati Uniti.

Yunqing Jian, 33 anni, e Zunyong Liu, 34 anni, sono accusati di cospirazione, contrabbando, false dichiarazioni e frode sui visti. Il Dipartimento di Giustizia degli Stati Uniti ha affermato che i due hanno cospirato per introdurre di nascosto negli Stati Uniti un fungo chiamato Fusarium graminearum, che causa la “carcinoma della spiga”, una malattia che colpisce grano, orzo, mais e riso.

Trump ha minimizzato la cosa, dicendo: “Non si sa da dove venga, però. Voglio dire, viene dal paese o sono tre pazzi che per caso portavano qualcosa?” Riferendosi alla guerra commerciale tra Stati Uniti e Cina , Trump è sembrato dichiarare di essere soddisfatto, affermando: “Stiamo andando d’accordo con la Cina”.

Dopo i colloqui svoltisi a Ginevra a maggio, Washington e Pechino hanno concordato di ridurre temporaneamente i dazi doganali sui rispettivi prodotti.

L'articolo Donald Trump ammette che gli Stati Uniti Stanno hackerando la Cina: “E’ così che va il mondo” proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

La criminalità informatica, secondo l’Interpol, rappresenta ormai oltre il 30% dei reati denunciati in Africa occidentale e orientale, e il suo aumento è particolarmente significativo nel resto del continente.

Ha citato dati relativi al 2024 affermando che:

• Le notifiche di sospette truffe sono aumentate del 3000% in alcuni paesi africani (Kaspersky)
• Secondo Trend Micro, i rilevamenti di ransomware sono stati più elevati in Sud Africa (17.849), Egitto (12.281), Nigeria (3.459) e Kenya (3.030).
• 11 paesi africani rappresentano la maggior parte delle attività BEC, con gruppi di minaccia nell’Africa occidentale particolarmente sofisticati e ben finanziati
• Il 60% dei paesi africani membri ha segnalato un aumento delle segnalazioni di sextortion digitale

Per avere una comprensione più approfondita della criminalità informatica in Africa, bisogna analizzare il modo in cui gli hacker utilizzano strumenti open source offensivi per eseguire attacchi informatici contro le società finanziarie del continente. Tra le principali sfide che le forze dell’ordine africane devono affrontare, vi sono la mancanza di cooperazione tra le nazioni, l’inadeguatezza dei quadri giuridici e la carenza di infrastrutture per la sicurezza informatica.

Secondo le statistiche più recenti riferite al 2024, si è registrato un aumento considerevole delle segnalazioni di possibili frodi in varie nazioni africane, che ha raggiunto la percentuale del 3000%. I dati, resi noti da Kaspersky, mettono in evidenza l’incremento della minaccia rappresentata dalla criminalità informatica nell’ambito del continente.

I dati resi noti da Kaspersky indicano che la minaccia della criminalità informatica nel continente è in crescita. Di conseguenza, urge una collaborazione tra le forze dell’ordine e le organizzazioni finanziarie africane, mediante la condivisione di informazioni e l’elaborazione di strategie efficaci per contrastare tale fenomeno.

È inoltre essenziale che le istituzioni finanziarie africane assegnino una priorità alla sicurezza informatica, mediante investimenti in tecnologie e soluzioni d’avanguardia, al fine di proteggere i propri sistemi e clienti dalle minacce informatiche. A tal proposito, potrebbero valutare l’implementazione di sistemi per il rilevamento e la prevenzione degli attacchi, nonché fornire formazione in materia di sicurezza informatica al loro personale.

Le istituzioni finanziarie africane devono riconoscere l’importanza cruciale della sicurezza informatica nel panorama digitale attuale. Con l’aumento delle minacce informatiche, è fondamentale che queste istituzioni adottino misure proattive per proteggere i propri sistemi e clienti.

Investire in tecnologie e soluzioni d’avanguardia è essenziale per garantire la sicurezza dei sistemi finanziari. Ciò include l’implementazione di sistemi per il rilevamento e la prevenzione degli attacchi, che possono aiutare a identificare e bloccare le minacce in tempo reale.

La formazione in materia di sicurezza informatica è un altro aspetto fondamentale per la protezione delle istituzioni finanziarie africane. È importante che i dipendenti siano consapevoli delle minacce informatiche e sappiano come affrontarle, al fine di prevenire gli attacchi.

Le istituzioni finanziarie africane devono inoltre considerare l’implementazione di soluzioni di sicurezza avanzate, come l’autenticazione a due fattori e la crittografia dei dati. Queste soluzioni possono aiutare a proteggere i dati sensibili e a prevenire l’accesso non autorizzato.

La collaborazione tra le istituzioni finanziarie africane e le autorità di regolamentazione è fondamentale per affrontare le minacce informatiche. È importante che le autorità di regolamentazione forniscano linee guida e standard per la sicurezza informatica, al fine di aiutare le istituzioni finanziarie a implementare misure di sicurezza efficaci.

In conclusione, la sicurezza informatica è una priorità assoluta per le istituzioni finanziarie africane. Investendo in tecnologie e soluzioni d’avanguardia, implementando sistemi di rilevamento e prevenzione degli attacchi, fornendo formazione in materia di sicurezza informatica e collaborando con le autorità di regolamentazione, le istituzioni finanziarie africane possono proteggere i propri sistemi e clienti dalle minacce informatiche e garantire la stabilità del sistema finanziario.

L'articolo Crescita della criminalità informatica in Africa: sfide e soluzioni proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

Nel corso di un’intervista al podcast Manifold, Omar Shams, responsabile del progetto Google Agents, ha sottolineato che oltre ai chip, l’altro grande limite allo sviluppo dell’IA è energetico. Spesso si pensa che l’innovazione passi solo da hardware più potenti, ma senza un’adeguata capacità di alimentazione, qualsiasi algoritmo avanzato rimane sulla carta.

Shams ha confrontato la crescita dell’energia elettrica tra Cina e Stati Uniti, evidenziando come la prima aumenti ogni anno quanto la produzione cumulata di paesi come Regno Unito e Francia. Negli USA, invece, le infrastrutture tendono a ristagnare a causa dei vincoli normativi. Un’assenza di potenza sufficiente significa che gli investimenti in IA potrebbero restare inespresso sul piano operativo .

Per superare questo vincolo, il manager ha proposto soluzioni che sembrano fantascientifiche: centrali solaris spaziali posizionate su orbita lunare o in punti di Lagrange, capaci di generare e trasmettere energia senza i limiti terrestri. Pur riconoscendo la difficoltà e i costi astronomici di una tale impresa, ritiene che sia una strada valida nel lungo termine.

Shams ha raccontato le sue esperienze in Mutable, startup pionieristica nel campo degli strumenti di programmazione assistita da IA, nata quasi contemporaneamente a GitHub Copilot. Tra i progetti chiave c’era “Auto Wiki”, un sistema che analizza il codice per generare documentazione automatica in stile wiki: un modo per semplificare la comprensione e sfruttare meglio i modelli linguistici .

Parlando di impatto sul lavoro, Shams ha spiegato che gli “smart agent” stanno rivoluzionando il settore software: i task ripetitivi e di base vengono delegati all’IA e l’incidenza dei programmatori junior diminuisce, lasciando spazio a figure più senior che possiedono esperienza tecnica e capacità di leadership per integrare e gestire questi agenti.

Infine, Shams ha ricordato che il successo dei progetti IA dipenderà sempre più da quel “sapere tacito” acquisito con anni di pratica, intuizione e capacità di giudizio, elementi che nessun algoritmo può sostituire. Per i giovani che investono sul loro futuro nel settore, il consiglio è chiaro: oltre a studiare, serve fare tanta esperienza “sul campo” e imparare a valutare contesti reali .

L'articolo L’IA bloccata dai limiti energetici, servono soluzioni spaziali innovative proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

Magnetic Core memory was the RAM at the heart of many computer systems through the 1970s, and is undergoing something of a resurgence today since it is easiest form of memory for an enterprising hacker to DIY. [Han] has anexcellent writeup that goes deep in the best-practices of how to wire up core memory, that pairs with his512-bit MagneticCoreMemoryController on GitHub.

Magnetic core memory works by storing data inside the magnetic flux of a ferrite ‘core’. Magnetize it in one direction, you have a 1; the other is a 0. Sensing is current-based, and erases the existing value, requiring a read-rewrite circuit. You want the gory details? Check out [Han]’s writeup; he explains it better than we can, complete with how to wire the ferrites and oscilloscope traces to explain why you want to wiring them that way. It may be the most complete design brief to be written about magnetic core memory to be written this decade.

This little memory pack [Han] built with this information is rock-solid: it ran for 24 hours straight, undergoing multiple continuous memory tests — a total of several gigabytes of information, with zero errors. That was always the strength of ferrite memory, though, along with the fact you can lose power and keep your data. In in the retrocomputer world, 512 bits doesn’t seem like much, but it’s enough to play with. We’ve even featured smaller magnetic core modules, likethe Core 64. (No prize if you guess how many bits that is.) One could be excused for considering them toys; in the old days,you’d have had cabinets full of these sorts of hand-wound memory cards.

Magnetic core memory should not be confused withcore-rope memory, which was a ROM solution of similar vintage. The legendaryApollo Guidance Computer used both.

We’d love to see a hack that makes real use of these pre-modern memory modality– if you know of one, send in a tip.

hackaday.com/2025/07/11/get-ro…

Recently AI risk and benefit evaluation company METR ran a randomized control test (RCT) on a gaggle of experienced open source developers to gain objective data on how the use of LLMs affects their productivity. Their findings were that using LLM-based tools like Cursor Pro with Claude 3.5/3.7 Sonnet reduced productivity by about 19%, with the full study by [Joel Becker] et al. available as PDF.

This study was also intended to establish a methodology to assess the impact from introducing LLM-based tools in software development. In the RCT, 16 experienced open source software developers were given 246 tasks, after which their effective performance was evaluated.

A large focus of the methodology was on creating realistic scenarios instead of using canned benchmarks. This included adding features to code, bug fixes and refactoring, much as they would do in the work on their respective open source projects. The observed increase in the time it took to complete tasks with the LLM’s assistance was found to be likely due to a range of factors, including over-optimism about the LLM tool capabilities, LLMs interfering with existing knowledge on the codebase, poor LLM performance on large codebases, low reliability of the generated code and the LLM doing very poorly on using tactic knowledge and context.

Although METR suggests that this poor showing may improve over time, it seems fair to argue whether LLM coding tools are at all a useful coding partner.

hackaday.com/2025/07/11/measur…

Who doesn’t want an X-ray machine? But you need a special tube and super high voltage, right? [Project 326] says no, and produces a USB-powered device that uses a tube you can pick up two for a dollar. You might guess the machine doesn’t generate X-rays with a lot of energy, and you’d be right. But you can make up for it with long exposure times. Check out the video below, with host [Posh Arthur].

The video admits there are limitations, of course. We were somewhat sad that [Project 326] elected not to share the exact parts list and 3D printed files because in the unlikely event someone managed to hurt themselves with it, there could be a hysterical reaction. We agreed, though, that if you are smart enough to handle this, you’ll be smart enough to figure out how to duplicate it — it doesn’t look that hard, and there are plenty of not-so-subtle clues in the video.

The video points out that you can buy used X-ray tube for about $100, but then you need a 70kV power supply. A 1Z11 tube diode has the same basic internal structure, but isn’t optimized for the purpose. But it does emit X-rays as a natural byproduct of its operation, especially with filament voltage.

The high voltage supply needs to supply at least 1mA at about 20 kV. Part of the problem is that with low X-ray emission, you’ll need long exposure times and, thus, a power supply needs to be able to operate for an extended period. We wondered if you could reduce the duty cycle, which might make the exposure time even longer, but should be easier on the power supply.

The device features a wired remote, allowing for a slight distance between the user and the hot tube. USB power is supplied through a USB-C PD device, which provides a higher voltage. In this case, the project utilizes 20V, which is distributed to two DC-DC converters: one to supply the high-voltage anode and another to drive the filament.

To get the image, he’s using self-developing X-ray film made for dental use. It is relatively sensitive and inexpensive (about a dollar a shot). There are also some lead blocks to reduce stray X-ray emission. Many commercial machines are completely enclosed and we think you could do that with this one, if you wanted to.

You need something that will lie flat on the film. How long did it take? A leaf image needed a 50-minute exposure. Some small ICs took 16 hours! Good thing the film is cheap because you have to experiment to get the exposure correct.

This really makes us want to puzzle out the design and build one, too. If you do, please be careful. This project has a lot to not recommend it: high voltage, X-rays, and lead. If you laugh at danger and want a proper machine, you can build one of those, too.

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hackaday.com/2025/07/11/diy-x-…

Dear Friend of Press Freedom,

It’s the 107th day that Rümeysa Öztürk is facing deportation by the United States government for writing an op-ed it didn’t like, and the 27th day that Mario Guevara has spent behind bars for covering a protest. Read on for news on more recent affronts by the government on the free press.

LA journalists reflect on protest attacks

Journalists covering recent demonstrations in California have been assaulted, detained, shot with crowd-control munitions, and had their equipment searched — simply for doing their jobs.

Independent journalists from Los Angeles talk to FPF about the attacks from law enforcement they endured while covering recent demonstrations.

Screenshot.

Independent reporters are especially vulnerable. We hosted an online discussion with some of them — Ben Camacho, Sean Beckner-Carmitchel and Tina-Desiree Berg — to hear their firsthand accounts of their efforts to uphold the public’s right to know. We were also joined by Adam Rose, press rights chair at the Los Angeles Press Club, which, along with others, has sued law enforcement agencies for violating freedom of the press at the recent protests. Since our discussion, the judge in one of those lawsuits has ordered the Los Angeles Police Department to stop violating the First Amendment rights of journalists covering protests.

Listen to the conversation here.

New Jersey prosecutors ignore Constitution

Prosecutors are pursuing blatantly unconstitutional criminal charges against two Red Bank, New Jersey, journalists for declining to remove a police blotter entry about an arrest from a news website after the arrest was expunged, as FPF’s U.S. Press Freedom Tracker first reported.

They’re alleged to have engaged in disorderly conduct by revealing the existence of an arrest, knowing that the arrest record has been expunged or sealed, in violation of New Jersey Revised Statutes Section 2C:52-30.

We said in a press release that “prosecuting journalists for declining to censor themselves is alarming and blatantly unconstitutional … Any prosecutors who would even think to bring such charges either don’t know the first thing about the Constitution they’re sworn to uphold, or don’t care.” Read more here.

The rise and fall of FOIA Gras

Tom Hayden never intended to become a journalist. But in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Hayden decided to look into how his local school district in Evanston, Illinois, was making decisions about when to send kids back to school.

That led to his Substack newsletter, FOIA Gras. As the name implies, it focused on Freedom of Information Act-based reporting. He broke important stories about local schools and more, and FOIA Gras became an invaluable resource for Evanstonians.

But earlier this year, he decided to shut it down after growing tired of the personal toll of being an unpaid citizen journalist covering politically charged news. Read more here.

Secrecy surrounds ICE’s for-profit detention network

President Donald Trump’s signature budget legislation allocates Immigration and Customs Enforcement a staggering $45 billion to expand immigrant detention efforts. Much of this money will go towards tripling ICE’s for-profit detention facility network.

Even though these private facilities hold human beings in federal custody under federal law, they are not subject to FOIA, the federal transparency law. This must change. Read more here.

Speaking of secret police…

Louisiana is the latest state to ignore the First Amendment to restrict journalists and others from recording police up close. Countless important news stories have come from footage of police abuses — which is exactly why we keep seeing laws like these.

We joined a legal brief led by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and National Press Photographers Association. If you’re able, NPPA is definitely an organization you should support. They do an incredible job protecting the rights of photojournalists and all journalists, but they’re in financial trouble and need your help. Read the brief here.

What we’re reading

SPJ urges caution on anti-doxing laws, warns of threat to press freedom (Society of Professional Journalists). Anti-doxing laws, if not drafted carefully, could become tools to punish journalism. Read the letter we signed urging the Uniform Law Commission to pause potential legislation.

‘I am being persecuted’ | Atlanta journalist held in ICE custody releases letter (WALB News). “I am being persecuted for having carried out my journalistic work ... I need to get out in order to continue with my life, return to my work, and support my family,” wrote imprisoned journalist Mario Guevara.

Immigration officials used shadowy pro-Israel group to target student activists (The New York Times). Students exercising their First Amendment rights shouldn’t concern the government. And officials should base decisions on real intelligence, not “research” by amateur internet trolls.

Trump officials want to prosecute over the ICEBlock app. Lawyers say that’s unconstitutional (Wired). “ICE and the Trump administration are under the misimpression that law enforcement in the United States is entitled to operate in secret,” we told Wired.

I chaired the FCC. The ‘60 Minutes’ settlement shows Trump has weaponized the agency (The Guardian). “What was once an independent, policy-based agency is now using its leverage to further the Maga message,” writes former Federal Communications Commission Chair Tom Wheeler.

Gabbard’s team has sought spy agency data to enforce Trump’s agenda (The Washington Post). This retaliation could chill FOIA releases across the government. We are filing FOIA requests to learn how Gabbard’s agency is trying to stifle lawful disclosures.

Wishing for a world where corporate motives didn’t clash with the sacred trust of journalism (Poynter). “The ethics of the professional and the business can bump into each other. When they do, it is imperative that the ethics of the profession take precedence.”

freedom.press/issues/la-journa…

Building a simple 8-bit computer is a great way to understand computing fundamentals, but there’s only so much you can learn by building a system around an existing processor. If you want to learn more, you’ll have to go further and build the CPU yourself, as [MINT] demonstrated with his EPROMINT project (video in Polish, but with English subtitles).

The CPU began when [MINT] began experimenting with uses for his collection of old memory chips, and quickly realized that they could do quite a bit more than store data. After building a development board for single-chip based programmable logic, he decided to build a full CPU out of (E)EPROMs. The resulting circuit spans four large pieces of perfboard, weighs in at over half a kilogram, and took several weeks of soldering to create.

The star of the system is the ALU, which runs an instruction set inspired by the Z80, but with some optimizations and added features. In particular, it has new operations for multiplication, division, bitstream operations, more advanced bit shifting, and a wide range of mathematical functions, including exponents, roots, and trigonometric functions. [MINT] documented all of this in a nicely-formatted offline booklet, available under the project’s GitHub repository. It’s currently only possible to program for the CPU using opcodes or a custom flavor of assembly, but there are plans to write a C compiler for it.

Even without being able to write in a higher-level language than assembly, [MINT] was able to drive a VFD screen with the EPROMINT, which he used to display some clips from The Matrix. This provided an opportunity to demonstrate basic debugging methods, which involved dumping and analyzing the memory contents after a failed program execution.

Using memory chips as programmable logic gates is an interesting hack, and we’ve seen Lisp programs written to make this easier. Of course, this isn’t the first CPU we’ve seen built without any chips intended for logic operations.

youtube.com/embed/xBB1nAUvuqU?…

Thanks to [Piotr] for the tip!

hackaday.com/2025/07/11/design…

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Prosecutors are pursuing baseless criminal charges against two Red Bank, New Jersey, journalists for refusing to remove a police blotter entry from a news website, as the Freedom of the Press Foundation’s U.S. Press Freedom Tracker first reported.

The defendants are Redbankgreen publisher Kenny Katzgrau and reporter Brian Donohue. They’re alleged to have engaged in disorderly conduct by revealing the existence of an arrest, knowing that the arrest record has been expunged or sealed, in violation of New Jersey Revised Statutes Section 2C:52-30. They’re represented by Pashman Stein Walder Hayden P.C., who have moved to dismiss the ridiculous charges. (Read their motion to dismiss below.)

On Sept. 18, 2024, Redbankgreen published the August 2024 blotter provided by the Red Bank Police Department, which contained information about the arrest. The arrest was later expunged on March 27, 2025. The blotter published by the Redbankgreen includes an update that the arrest was expunged, as well as a note that arrests in general are not determinations of guilt.

Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) Advocacy Director Seth Stern said:

Prosecuting journalists for declining to censor themselves is alarming and blatantly unconstitutional, as is ordering the press to unpublish news reports. Any prosecutors who would even think to bring such charges either don’t know the first thing about the Constitution they’re sworn to uphold, or don’t care. Failure to immediately correct and apologize for this inexplicable error would put prosecutors’ competence in doubt and warrant investigation of whether they should keep their law licenses.

The Supreme Court has held over and over that journalists are entitled to publish truthful information they lawfully obtain, in cases dealing with matters as sensitive as closed juvenile court proceedings and identities of rape victims. The Supreme Court of New Jersey has also upheld the right to publish expunged information. There is no exception for expunged arrest records and any state law that says otherwise violates the First Amendment. Any first-year law student should know that.

Journalists don’t work for the government and can’t be compelled to do its bidding. In the rare instances where the government is allowed to keep records from public view, it is the government’s responsibility, not the media’s, to ensure that they aren’t disclosed.

This is the latest in a string of egregious press freedom violations by local police and prosecutors across the country. Virtually all of them have failed and left taxpayers on the hook for needless legal fees, settlement payments, or both.

Earlier this year, Clarksdale, Mississippi, officials got a judge to order a newspaper to take down an editorial critical of the mayor. After national headlines about their frivolous antics led to public ridicule, they dropped the case.

Last year, the city of Los Angeles was forced to pay a settlement to journalist Ben Camacho after it sued him for publishing public records. Authorities in LA are also facing a lawsuit over an unconstitutional investigation of a journalist who obtained police disciplinary records.

In 2023, prosecutors in Atmore, Alabama, charged a journalist and news publisher for reporting on grand jury proceedings. The case was thrown out after becoming a national embarrassment, and a lawsuit is pending.

And most famously, the same year, authorities in Marion, Kansas, raided the newsroom of the Marion County Record as part of an investigation premised on the absurd notion that reporters violated computer crime laws by accessing a public website to confirm a news tip. The ordeal has led to multiple settlements and lawsuits, and even criminal charges against the ex-police chief who orchestrated it.

This is also, unfortunately, not the first recent instance of authorities harassing journalists over lawful reporting on arrests. Last year, San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu threatened civil penalties against a journalist, Jack Poulson, who reported on a sealed report of tech executive Maury Blackman’s arrest for domestic violence. A judge held that the California law that Chiu referenced to threaten Poulson was unconstitutional and, in a separate proceeding, a lawsuit brought by Blackman against Poulson was dismissed.

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Sixteen Israeli experts in international law warned in a public letter that the plans presented by Israel's defense minister to concentrate Gaza's population in a "humanitarian city" constitute a manifestly illegal order and a war crime.

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Over on YouTube, [Technology Connections] has a new video: Induction lamps: fluorescent lighting’s final form.

This video is about a wireless fluorescent light which uses induction to transfer power from the electrical system into the lamp. As this lamp doesn’t require wiring it is not prone to “sputtering” as typical fluorescent lights are, thus improving the working life by an order of magnitude. As explained in the video sputtering is the process where the electrodes in a typical fluorescent lamp lose their material over time until they lose their ability to emit electrons at all.

This particular lamp has a power rating of 200 W and light output of 16,000 lumens, which is quite good. But the truly remarkable thing about this type of lighting is its service life. As the lamp is simply a phosphor-coated tube filled with argon gas and a pellet of mercury amalgam it has a theoretically unlimited lifespan. Or let’s call it 23 years.

Given that the service life is so good, why don’t we see induction lamps everywhere? The answer is that the electronics to support them are very expensive, and these days LED lighting has trounced every lighting technology that we’ve ever made in terms of energy efficiency, quality of light, and so on. So induction lamps are obsolete before they ever had their day. Still pretty interesting technology though!

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Thanks to [Keith Olson] for writing in about this one.

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My first encounter with C++ was way back in the 1990s, when it was one of the Real Programming Languages that I sometimes heard about as I was still splashing about in the kiddie pool with Visual Basic, PHP and JavaScript. The first formally standardized version of C++ is the ISO 1998 standard, but it had been making headways as a ‘better C’ for decades at that point since Bjarne Stroustrup added that increment operator to C in 1979 and released C++ to the public in 1985.

Why did I pick C++ as my primary programming language? Mainly because it was well supported and with free tooling: a free Borland compiler or g++ on the GCC side. Alternatives like VB, Java, and D felt far too niche compared to established languages, while C++ gave you access to the lingua franca of C while adding many modern features like OOP and a more streamlined syntax in addition to the Standard Template Library (STL) with gobs of useful building blocks.

Years later, as a grizzled senior C++ developer, I have come to embrace the notion that being good at a programming language also means having strong opinions on all that is wrong with the language. True to form, while C++ has many good points, there are still major warts and many heavily neglected aspects that get me and other C++ developers riled up.

Why We Fell In Love

Cover of the third edition of The C++ Programming Language by Bjarne Stroustrup.
What frightened me about C++ initially was just how big and scary it seemed, with gargantuan IDEs like Microsoft’s Visual Studio, complex build systems, and graphical user interface that seemed to require black magic far beyond my tiny brain’s comprehension. Although using the pure C-based Win32 API does indeed require ritual virgin sacrifices, and Windows developers only talk about MFC when put under extreme duress, the truth is that C++ itself is rather simple, and writing complex applications is easy once you break it down into steps. For me the breakthrough came after buying a copy of Stroustrup’s The C++ Programming Language, specifically the third edition that covered the C++98 standard.

More than just a reference, it laid out clearly for me not only how to write basic C++ programs, but also how to structure my code and projects, as well as the reasonings behind each of these aspects. For many years this book was my go-to resource, as I developed my rudimentary, scripting language-afflicted skills into something more robust.

Probably the best part about C++ is its flexibility. It never limits you to a single programming paradigm, while it gives you the freedom to pick the desire path of your choice. Although an astounding number of poor choices can be made here, with a modicum of care and research you do not have to end up hoisted with your own petard. Straying into the C-compatibility part of C++ is especially fraught with hazards, but that’s why we have the C++ bits so that we don’t have to touch those.

Reflecting With C++11

It would take until 2011 for the first major update to the C++ standard, by which time I had been using C++ mostly for increasingly more elaborate hobby projects. But then I got tossed into a number of commercial C and C++ projects that would put my burgeoning skills to the test. Around this time I found the first major items in C++ that are truly vexing.

Common issues like header-include order and link order, which can lead to circular dependencies, are some of such truly delightful aspects. The former is mostly caused by the rather simplistic way that header files are just slapped straight into the source code by the preprocessor. Like in C, the preprocessor simply looks at your #include "widget/foo.h" and replaces it with the contents of foo.h with absolutely no consideration for side effects and cases of spontaneous combustion.

Along the way, further preprocessor statements further mangle the code in happy-fun ways, which is why the GCC g++ and compatible compilers like Clang have the -E flag to only run the preprocessor so that you can inspect the preprocessed barf that was going to be sent to the compiler prior to it violently exploding. The trauma suffered here is why I heartily agree with Mr. Stroustrup that the preprocessor is basically evil and should only be used for the most basic stuff like includes, very simple constants and selective compilation. Never try to be cute or smart with the preprocessor or whoever inherits your codebase will find you.

If you got your code’s architectural issues and header includes sorted out, you’ll find that C++’s linker is just as dumb as that of C. After being handed the compiled object files and looking at the needed symbols, it’ll waddle into the list of libraries, look at each one in order and happily ignore previously seen symbols if they’re needed later. You’ll suffer for this with tools like ldd and readelf as you try to determine whether you are just dense, the linker is dense or both are having buoyancy issues.

These points alone are pretty traumatic, but you learn to cope with them like you cope with a gaggle of definitely teething babies a few rows behind you on that transatlantic flight. The worst part is probably that neither C++11 nor subsequent standards have addressed either to any noticeable degree, with a shift from C-style compile units to Ada-like modules probably never going to happen.

The ‘modules at home‘ feature introduced with C++20 are effectively just limited C-style headers without the preprocessor baggage, without the dependency analysis and other features that make languages like Ada such a joy to build code with.

Non-Deterministic Initialization

Although C++ and C++11 in particular removes a lot of undefined behavior that C is infamous for, there are still many parts where expected behavior is effectively random or at least platform-specific. One such example is that of static initialization, officially known as the Static initialization order fiasco. Essentially what it means is that you cannot count on a variable declared static to be initialized during general initialization between different compile units.

This also affects the same compile units when you are initializing a static std::map instance with data during initialization, as I learned the hard way during a project when I saw random segmentation faults on start-up related to the static data structure instance. The executive summary here is that you should not assume that anything has been implicitly initialized during application startup, and instead you should do explicit initialization for such static structures.

An example of this can be found in my NymphRPC project, in which I used this same solution to prevent initialization crashes. This involves explicitly creating the static map rather than praying that it gets created in time:
static map<UInt32, NymphMethod*> &methodsIdsStatic = NymphRemoteClient::methodsIds();
With the methodsIds() function:
map<UInt32, NymphMethod*>& NymphRemoteClient::methodsIds() {
static map<UInt32, NymphMethod*>* methodsIdsStatic = new map<UInt32, NymphMethod*>();
return *methodsIdsStatic;
}
It are these kind of niggles along with the earlier covered build-time issues that tend to sap a lot of time during development until you learn to recognize them in advance along with fixes.

Fading Love

Don’t get me wrong, I still think that C++ is a good programming language at its core, it is just that it has those rough spots and sharp edges that you wish weren’t there. There is also the lack of improvements to some rather fundamental aspects in the STL, such as the unloved C++ string library. Compared to Ada standard library strings, the C++ STL string API is very barebones, with a lot of string manipulation requiring writing the same tedious code over and over as convenience functions are apparently on nobody’s wish list.

One good thing that C++11 brought to the STL was multi-tasking support, with threads, mutexes and so on finally natively available. It’s just a shame that its condition variables are plagued by spurious wake-ups and a more complicated syntax than necessary. This gets even worse with the Filesystem library that got added in C++17. Although it’s nice to have more than just basic file I/O in C++ by default, it is based on the library in Boost, which uses a coding style, type encapsulation obsession, and abuse of namespaces that you apparently either love or hate.

I personally have found the POCO C++ libraries to be infinitely easier to use, with a relatively easy to follow implementation. I even used the POCO libraries for the NPoco project, which adapts the code to microcontroller use and adds FreeRTOS support.

Finally, there are some core language changes that I fundamentally disagree with, such as the addition of type inference with the auto keyword outside of templates, which is a weakly typed feature. As if it wasn’t bad enough to have the chaos of mixed explicit and implicit type casting, now we fully put our faith into the compiler, pray nobody updates code elsewhere that may cause explosions later on, and remove any type-related cues that could be useful to a developer reading the code.

But at least we got [url=https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/constexpr.html]constexpr[/url], which is probably incredibly useful to people who use C++ for academic dissertations rather than actual programming.

Hope For The Future

I’ll probably keep using C++ for the foreseeable future, while grumbling about all of ’em whippersnappers adding useless things that nobody was asking for. Since the general take on adding new features to C++ is that you need to do all the legwork yourself – like getting into the C++ working groups to promote your feature(s) – it’s very likely that few actually needed features will make it into new C++ standards, as those of us who are actually using the language are too busy doing things like writing production code in it, while simultaneously being completely disinterested in working group politics.

Fortunately there is excellent backward compatibility in C++, so those of us in the trenches can keep using the language any way we like along with all the patches we wrote to ease the pains. It’s just sad that there’s now such a split forming between C++ developers and C++ academics.

It’s one of the reasons why I have felt increasingly motivated over the past years to seek out other languages, with Ada being one of my favorites. Unlike C++, it doesn’t have the aforementioned build-time issues, and while its super-strong type system makes getting started with writing the business logic slower, it prevents so many issues later on, along with its universal runtime bounds checking. It’s not often that using a programming language makes me feel something approaching joy.

Giving up on a programming language with which you quite literally grew up is hard, but as in any relationship you have to be honest about any issues, no matter whether it’s you or the programming language. That said, maybe some relationship counseling will patch things up again in the future, with us developers are once again involved in the language’s development.

hackaday.com/2025/07/11/deares…