Repairing vintage computers is bread-and-butter for many of us around here. The machines themselves tend to be fairly fixable, assuming spare parts are available and there hasn’t been too much physical damage. Peripherals can be another matter, though. Since they interface with the real world they can have more esoteric problems that aren’t always solvable. [joekutz] was handed just such a device in the form of a CE-150 docking station for a Sharp PC1500 Pocket Computer, which has a plotter built in. Here’s his “tip” for getting plotters like these working again.

The first step here is to disassemble the original, dried out pens to scavenge a few of the parts. The outer case needs to be kept so that it can be put back into the plotter, and a small O-ring is saved as well. To replace the dried-out tips [joekutz] discards the original tips and replaces them with tips from a common ink pen, using shrink wrap tubing to help fit the pen’s tip into the original plotter cylinder. He also takes the ink from the pen to fill the plotter’s cartridge, completing the surgery on the multi-colored plotter and bringing it back to life.

Of course this build goes well beyond the plotter, including bringing the PC1500 back to life as well. There are a few other videos about this project covering that original restoration as well as demonstrating some of the quirks of how this computer is meant to be programmed. But we mostly focused on the plotter here since that is a little bit out of the ordinary, and we’re also sure that refilling ink cartridges of any sort gets under the skin of everyone at HP.

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hackaday.com/2025/09/22/restor…

Seyyed Ali Aghamiri , Yasar Balaghi e Masoud Jalili sono ricercati per la loro presunta partecipazione ad attività informatiche dannose associate ad attori di minacce persistenti avanzate (APT) affiliati al Corpo delle Guardie della Rivoluzione Islamica (IRGC) del governo iraniano.

Il programma Rewards For Justice del Dipartimento di Stato degli Stati Uniti offre una ricompensa fino a 10 milioni di dollari per informazioni su questi individui.

La presunta attività informatica dell’IRGC ha preso di mira vari individui associati alle campagne presidenziali degli Stati Uniti del 2024, nonché personale con legami con gli affari iraniani e mediorientali, come attuali o ex alti funzionari governativi, alti funzionari di think tank, giornalisti, attivisti e lobbisti dal 2019 a oggi.

I mandati di arresto federali sono stati emessi per ciascuno degli uomini presso la Corte Distrettuale degli Stati Uniti, Distretto di Columbia, Washington, DC, il 27 settembre 2024, dopo essere stati accusati di molteplici reati informatici.

Questi casi si inseriscono in un contesto sempre più complesso, in cui gli attori statali e i gruppi affiliati sfruttano il cyberspazio come strumento di pressione geopolitica e destabilizzazione. Le campagne attribuite all’IRGC dimostrano come la cyberwarfare sia ormai una componente fondamentale delle strategie di sicurezza nazionale di diversi Paesi.

L’inserimento di figure come Aghamiri, Balaghi e Jalili nella lista dei ricercati internazionali rafforza il messaggio che le attività di cyber spionaggio e di influenza non restano senza conseguenze. Gli Stati Uniti intendono così inviare un segnale chiaro, sottolineando l’importanza della cooperazione globale nel contrasto alle minacce informatiche.

Per governi, istituzioni e organizzazioni private, questi episodi rappresentano un ulteriore monito a rafforzare i propri sistemi di difesa. La consapevolezza dei rischi, unita a investimenti in tecnologia e formazione, diventa cruciale per prevenire intrusioni e salvaguardare la sicurezza delle informazioni in un contesto digitale sempre più ostile.

L'articolo Gli USA a caccia di 3 hacker iraniani. 10 milioni di dollari la ricompensa per gli APT proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

Il 20 settembre 2025 alle 23:52 è comparso su DarkForums un thread dal titolo “FRESH FTP LEAK”, pubblicato dall’utente Hackfut. Il materiale esporrebbe accessi a server FTP distribuiti in diversi Paesi, tra cui Italia, Paesi Bassi, Filippine, Perù, Cile, Australia e Lettonia. I target comprendono aziende, scuole, strutture ricettive, siti di eventi, e-commerce e media.

Il contenuto del dump consiste in hostname/FTP domains, username e password in chiaro. Purtroppo la cosa che risulta critica per il nostro paese è il numero importante di domini italiani presenti all’interno della collection, resa disponibile in forma gratuita agli utenti del forum underground.

L’impatto per l’Italia

Dall’analisi del sample offerto da Hackfut emerge che su un totale di 250 record, 196 sono attribuibili a domini italiani. Molti di questi appartengono a istituti scolastici, PMI e strutture turistiche, evidenziando ancora una volta la superficie di attacco fragile del nostro Paese.

Le password appaiono in gran parte attuali, non semplici residui di vecchie compromissioni. Alcune password contengono la stringa 2024, questo ci consente di comprendere che tale collection potrebbe essere attuale oppure leggermente datata.

Ciò implica che gli accessi pubblicati sono potenzialmente ancora validi e immediatamente sfruttabili da attori malevoli.

Rischi concreti

• Defacement di siti web istituzionali.
• Distribuzione di malware tramite upload di file dannosi.
• Esfiltrazione di dati conservati sui server FTP.
• Phishing e abuso reputazionale, sfruttando domini legittimi compromessi.

Il post non include la lista integrale: per ottenerla l’attore invita a un contatto privato su Telegram, pratica comune nei circuiti underground per distribuire i dati in modo controllato. È verosimile che Hackfut disponga in realtà di un dataset molto più esteso, potenzialmente contenente migliaia di credenziali riconducibili a target italiani.

Conclusione

Il dump pubblicato da Hackfut non rappresenta solo un insieme di credenziali esposte, ma un ulteriore segnale della persistente esposizione di asset italiani a pratiche di sicurezza obsolete. La disponibilità di accessi FTP attivi in ambienti scolastici, aziendali e turistici può generare conseguenze concrete, dall’abuso reputazionale all’infrastruttura di phishing.

Questo nuovo leak conferma come i dati di accesso agli FTP siano ancora oggi merce ricercata nei circuiti cybercriminali, poiché permettono un controllo diretto e immediato dell’infrastruttura di un sito. Le aziende coinvolte sono chiamate ad agire tempestivamente con il reset delle credenziali, l’adozione di autenticazione a due fattori (2FA) ove possibile e una revisione completa delle misure di sicurezza per mitigare i rischi derivanti da questa compromissione.

Chi desidera verificare se il proprio dominio rientra nella lista può contattare la redazione, che fornirà i dettagli in modo controllato e riservato. Il disservizio derivante da un attacco di questo tipo non si limiterebbe al danno di immagine per le aziende coinvolte, ma potrebbe avere ripercussioni economiche rilevanti, specialmente per i portali che gestiscono transazioni online.

L'articolo Maxi leak su DarkForums: 196 siti italiani esposti con credenziali FTP in chiaro proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

La cinese Huawei ha compiuto un passo importante nello sviluppo della propria infrastruttura di intelligenza artificiale. L’azienda ha presentato soluzioni progettate per aumentare la potenza di calcolo e ridurre la dipendenza dalle tecnologie straniere. Questa mossa è particolarmente rilevante dopo che le autorità di regolamentazione cinesi hanno imposto restrizioni all’acquisto di acceleratori AI Nvidia da parte delle aziende locali. Huawei si sta ora concentrando sui propri sviluppi e su nuove tecniche di fusione dei chip.

L’annuncio chiave è stata la tecnologia SuperPoD Interconnect, che consente l’integrazione di un massimo di 15.000 acceleratori, inclusi i chip proprietari Ascend di Huawei. Questa soluzione ricorda il sistema NVLink di Nvidia, che consente la comunicazione ad alta velocità tra chip di intelligenza artificiale. In sostanza, si creano cluster scalabili in grado di operare come un unico centro di elaborazione.

Questa capacità è fondamentale per l’azienda cinese. Sebbene le prestazioni dei singoli chip Ascend siano inferiori a quelle delle soluzioni Nvidia, il loro clustering consente di compensare questa carenza e di fornire ai clienti la potenza necessaria per addestrare i moderni modelli di intelligenza artificiale.

Dal guinzaglio all’autonomia

Come spesso abbiamo riportato su queste pagine, l’effetto delle sanzioni statunitensi sta alimentando una corsa alla tecnologia proprietaria sia in Russia che in Cina, portando le due superpotenze ad una loro autonomia nel mondo tecnologico.

La Cyber-politica e la sicurezza nazionale oggi è un elemento imprescindibile per ogni regione dello scacchiere geopolitico moderno. Solo il tempo potrà fornirci una chiara indicazione se la politica statunitense basata sulle “sanzioni”, avviata ormai da anni era errata. Infatti per le superpotenze, tali sanzioni hanno fornito traino a stimolare le industrie interne e generare nuove opportunità e l’intelligenza artificiale non era da meno.

Va da se che ad oggi, l'”autonomia tecnologica” e le “tecnologie domestiche” sono diventati un argomento di importante discussione a livello politico sia in Cina che in Russia, quando altri paesi non sanno neppure l’esistenza del concetto.

Sviluppo della linea di prodotti

Huawei ha presentato due nuovi sistemi: Atlas 950 SuperCluster e Atlas 960 SuperCluster. Il primo utilizza oltre 500.000 unità di elaborazione neurale (NPU) Ascend, mentre il secondo ne utilizza oltre 1 milione. Il lancio dell’Atlas 950 è previsto per il prossimo anno. Secondo l’azienda, la sua potenza di calcolo sarà 1,3 volte superiore a quella del supercomputer Colossus di Elon Musk.

Un’altra importante affermazione riguarda il nodo Atlas 950, che include 8.192 acceleratori Ascend. Huawei afferma che le sue prestazioni sono 6,7 volte superiori a quelle dell’NVL144 di Nvidia. Ciò significa che l’azienda punta su un’enorme scalabilità: anche se un singolo chip è più debole, il sistema combinato può superare le prestazioni dei concorrenti.

Progetti per il futuro

Huawei intende sviluppare la linea Ascend e prevede di rilasciare tre nuove generazioni di questi chip entro il 2028. Si prevede che ogni aggiornamento raddoppierà la potenza di calcolo. Allo stesso tempo, l’azienda sta lavorando sui processori server Kunpeng per offrire una gamma completa di soluzioni di elaborazione basate sull’intelligenza artificiale.

È interessante notare che Huawei ha già presentato un’alternativa all’Nvidia GB200, l’NVL72. Il suo sistema CloudMatrix 384, alimentato da 384 acceleratori Ascend 910C, offre 300 petaflop di potenza di calcolo, rispetto ai 180 petaflop del concorrente. Per i clienti cinesi, questo rappresenta un argomento significativo a favore del passaggio alle tecnologie nazionali.

Confronto delle soluzioni

Suggerimenti passo dopo passo

1. Quando si sceglie un’infrastruttura di intelligenza artificiale, è importante valutare non solo le prestazioni di un singolo chip, ma anche le capacità di clustering;
2. Per attività su larga scala è preferibile scegliere soluzioni con elevata connettività;
3. Quando ci si rivolge al mercato cinese, vale la pena considerare la compatibilità con Ascend e Kunpeng, poiché il supporto Nvidia è limitato;
4. Per i progetti a lungo termine, vale la pena tenere d’occhio i piani di rilasci di NVIDIA e di Huawei: raddoppiare le prestazioni con ogni rilascio promette guadagni significativi;
5. Per esigenze di potenza massime, prendi in considerazione sistemi pre-assemblati invece di creare cluster personalizzati.

Cosa succede se…

E se Huawei riuscisse a realizzare i suoi piani per la terza generazione di Ascend entro il 2028? La Cina potrebbe dotarsi di una propria infrastruttura di intelligenza artificiale su larga scala, indipendente da Nvidia e TSMC. Ciò non solo ridurrebbe la dipendenza dalle tecnologie importate, ma creerebbe anche concorrenza nel mercato globale.

Contesto storico

• 2019: Gli Stati Uniti impongono restrizioni alle forniture Huawei.
• 2022: Nvidia limita l’esportazione di chip ad alte prestazioni in Cina.
• 2025: Huawei presenta i supercomputer SuperPoD Interconnect e Atlas, entrando in diretta competizione con Nvidia.

L'articolo Dal guinzaglio all’autonomia: Ban, blocco Nvidia e soluzioni cluster AI di Huawei proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

Often, we face tedious tasks with no way around them. Sometimes, you just have to grit your teeth and push through. But small tweaks can make the onerous task a bit easier to handle. [James Bowman] sent in his latest quick project that helps him fold small boxes more efficiently.

To fulfill orders on his previously covered TermDriver2, [James Bowman] is faced with folding thousands of small boxes. To aid in this daunting task, he had the idea of making a tool to streamline the process — every second saved adds up when you’re repeating a task thousands of times. He designed a 3D printed mandrel that pops the flat box blank open as it’s slid over the tapered top, shaping it into a perfect rectangle for easy folding of the top flaps.

The nice thing about 3D printng is how easy it is to iterate on a design. Once James had the first version printed and verified it worked as hoped, he had ideas to improve it, such as adding a second mandrel to twist the box from both the inside and outside and adding a guide on one side to enhance rigidity.

While we often think of 3D printers producing ready-to-use parts, but printed tooling holds great potential for repetitive tasks, and is a huge cost saver compared to traditional methods.

hackaday.com/2025/09/21/mandre…

[Too Many Wires] has a custom computer he’s building. He wanted a mouse, but USB is a bit of a stretch for the fledgling computer. We might have opted for PS/2, but he went for something even older: a serial mouse connected with a DE-9 (colloquially, a DB-9). Check it out in his recent video update on the project below.

Don’t remember serial mice? They were very common many years ago, and apparently, you can still buy new ones, which makes you wonder what people are doing with them. If you are an old hand at serial, you’ll immediately know why he couldn’t get it to work at first. If you haven’t worked with RS-232 gear before, you’ll learn a lot.

The protocol is simple enough, and you can read the code or find plenty of old documents. He’s using a UART chip, which offloads the CPU. However, the PS/2 mice are very easy to work with directly, and you could skip the +/- 12V RS-232 and other issues.

Either way, however, using an RS-232 or PS/2 mouse in a project is relatively straightforward. You might not think you need a mouse, but don’t forget, they are really accurate two-axis sensors. An optical mouse on a motion table, for example, could be worth something.

The computer is based on [Ben Eater]’s design, if you want more details on that. Can’t decide between RS-232 and PS/2? You don’t have to.

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Ok, we’ll admit it. If you asked us what the first transistorized computer was, we would have guessed it was the TC from the University of Manchester. After all, Dr. Wilkes and company were at the forefront and had built Baby and EDSAC, which, of course, didn’t use transistors. To be clear, we would have been guessing, but what we didn’t know at all was that the TC, with its magnetic drums and transistors in 1955, had a second life as a commercial product from Metropolitan-Vickers, called the Metrovick 950. [Nina Kalinina] has a simulator inspired by the old machine.

The code is in Python, and you can find several programs to run on the faux machine, including the venerable lunar lander. If you haven’t heard of the Metrovick, don’t feel bad. Oral histories say that only six or seven were ever built, and they were used internally within the company.

It seems hard to imagine now, but in the 1950s, transistors for computing were actually a disadvantage. The devices were slow. The TC, for example, used old point-contact transistors (200 of them) and 1,300 point diodes. The Metrovick 950, mercifully, used more modern junction devices. You might think that transistors would be more robust, but the early devices often failed.

The Metrovick wasn’t totally transistor-based. Like the somewhat newer TRADIC from Bell Labs, it used a vacuum tube to produce a clock signal with enough oomph to feed the whole machine. The first fully transistorized machine is a bit of a moving target, but is probably either the Harwell CADET, the IBM 604, or an ICBM guidance computer from Burroughs. Want to know more? You can read the original engineering report (which included the title picture).

We have long been fascinated with the EDSAC and often wonder if we’d have been as smart as David Wheeler and invented the subroutine.

hackaday.com/2025/09/21/first-…

Remember AOL? For a lot of folks, America Online was their first ISP, the place where they got their first exposure to the Internet, or at least a highly curated version of it. Remembered by the cool kids mainly as the place that the normies used as their ISP and for the mark of shame an “@aol.com” email address bore, the company nevertheless became a media juggernaut, to the point that “AOL Time Warner” was a thing in the early 2000s. We’d have thought the company was long gone by now, but it turns out it’s still around and powerful enough of a brand that it’s being shopped around for $1.5 billion. We’d imagine a large part of that value comes from Yahoo!, which previous owner Verizon merged with AOL before selling most of the combined entity off in 2021, but either way, it’s not chump change.

For our part, the most memorable aspect of AOL was the endless number of CDs they stuffed into mailboxes in the 90s. There was barely a day that went by that one of those things didn’t cross your path, either through the mail or in free bins at store checkouts, or even inside magazines. They were everywhere, and unless you were tempted by the whole “You’ve got mail!” kitsch, they were utterly useless; they didn’t even make good coasters thanks to the hole in the middle. So most of the estimated 2 billion CDs just ended up in the trash, which got us thinking: How much plastic was that? A bit of poking around indicates that a CD contains about 15 grams of polycarbonate, so that’s something like 30,000 metric tonnes! To put that into perspective, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is said to contain “only” around 80,000 metric tonnes of plastic. Clearly the patch isn’t 37% AOL CDs, but it still gives one pause to consider how many resources AOL put into marketing.

You want lice? Because hacking a network of smart washing machines on a college campus is how you get lice. Or at least that’s the somewhat overwrought fear after someone broke into the smart washing machines at a housing complex serving Amsterdam college students earlier in the year. The hack, which disabled the electronic payment system on the washers, was discovered in July, which seems like a strange time of year for students to be doing laundry, but whatever. The company that owns the machines finally disabled them, leaving 1,250 residents with only a couple of old coin-op machines, most of which they report are chronically out of order. That fits well with our college laundry experience, which more often than not was a waste of time and quarters, enough so that it was worth the drive home to use Mom’s machines. But what about the lice? It seems that some students are complaining that their unclean clothes are leaving them itchy and in fear of an outbreak of lice unless the laundry situation improves. So much for the hacker’s attempt to become a folk

Being an amateur radio operator, we’re always on the lookout for ham-adjacent stories, especially the increasing number where amateur allocations are being infringed upon or worse, privileges are being outright revoked. That’s why we were alarmed to see a story about amateur radio licenses being suspended in Equatorial Guinea, but it turns out that there’s a little more to the story than just anti-ham sentiment. All existing amateur licenses in the African nation were temporarily suspended thanks to the discovery of a foreign citizen who apparently illegally purchased a license and then accessed “sensitive areas” of the country. It sounds like Equatorial Guinea is pretty strict, requiring inspection of equipment and proper licensing prior to allowing radios into the country. The suspension of all licenses seems like overkill to us, especially since no apparent timeline for restoring privileges has been communicated. Separately, we’d also like to call out the article’s graphic designer for one of the worst examples of map gore we’ve ever seen.

If you write a column like this and you see a story with a title like “Jay Leno 3D prints toilet seat for Harrison Ford,” it’s really hard to resist writing it up. But as it turns out, there’s not a lot to the story, at least to those of us used to printing unobtanium parts. Jay Leno, famed for his amazing collection of antique and rare motor vehicles, has gotten into additive manufacturing in a big way, often printing parts for his restorations. Harrison Ford, on the other hand, isn’t much into 3D printing, but he does have a toilet he’s especially fond of — we can absolutely relate to this — but whose seat has seen better days. Being out of production, he couldn’t source a replacement until he remembered a visit to Jay’s garage, where he was first introduced to 3D printing. So Harrison sent the seat to Jay (eww) for reverse engineering and printing. We’d love to know a few details, such as what plastic was deemed fit for Indiana Jones’ tush. We’d also like to know which printing modality was used; we hope it wasn’t FDM, because layer lines would be pretty gross on a toilet seat.

And finally, clear your viewing calendar for this four-part series on custom bookbinding. We know, we know; bookbinding isn’t really the kind of tech we usually feature around here. But watching Dennis over at Four Keys Book Arts take a cheap book-club edition of Frank Herbert’s classic Dune and turn it into a work of art is absolutely mesmerizing. From disassembly and restoration of the original to tooling the new leather cover and applying gold leaf, every step along the way is absolute craftsmanship. Check it out; we doubt you’ll be disappointed. Enjoy!

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By virtue of its triple bond, acetylene burns hotter than any other common hydrocarbon when mixed with oxygen, but it isn’t the only flame hot enough for welding. With the assistance of a homemade oxygen concentrator, [Hyperspace Pirate] was able to make a natural gas torch that melts steel, even if welding with the torch remains difficult.

[Hyperspace Pirate] built his oxygen concentrator around a pressure-swing adsorption system, which uses two tanks of a molecular sieve to selectively adsorb and purge nitrogen, leaving behind mostly oxygen. [Hyperspace Pirate] used reverse-osmosis membrane casings as the tanks, solenoid valves to control gas flow, and an Arduino with some MOSFETs to control the timing. For fuel, he used a convenient source of natural gas, already installed in his garage: the water heater’s gas supply. Since the house’s meter regulates the gas down to a fairly low pressure, and the oxygen concentrator doesn’t produce high pressures, the torch didn’t need any inline regulators.

Inline check valves, on the other hand, were very much necessary, a mixture of oxygen and natural gas propagating back along the lines being undesirable for obvious reasons, and flashback arrestors would have been a good addition. [Hyperspace Pirate] built the torch itself out of copper tubing and needle valves, with a 0.9 mm MIG welder tip as the nozzle. Adjusting the gas mixture was mostly a matter of trial and error. With an oxygen-rich flame, it could cut thin metal decently well, but it tended to melt thick pieces more than it cut. On the other hand, even with a neutral flame, the water vapor in the exhaust oxidized steel, which made welding quite difficult, but not impossible.

The oxygen supply by itself was an entertaining tool, turning smoldering pieces of charcoal or steel wool violently incandescent. With the assistance of some steel wool, [Hyperspace Pirate] set a steel tube on fire. With a bit more oxygen, it would probably make an effective thermic lance. If you still want to do your welding with acetylene, he’s also made that before.

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