TinkerCAD had its first release all the way back in 2011 and it has come a long way since then. The latest release has introduced a raft of new, interesting features, and [HL ModTech] has been nice enough to sum them up in a recent video.

He starts out by explaining some of the basics before quickly jumping into the new gear. There are two headline features: intersect groups and smooth curves. Where the old union group tool simply merged two pieces of geometry, intersect group allows you to create a shape only featuring the geometry where two individual blocks intersect. It’s a neat addition that allows the creation of complex geometry more quickly. [HL ModTech] demonstrates it with a sphere and a pyramid and his enthusiasm is contagious.

As for smooth curves, it’s an addition to the existing straight line and Bézier curve sketch tools. If you’ve ever struggled making decent curves with Bézier techniques, you might appreciate the ease of working with the smooth curve tool, which avoids any nasty jagged points as a matter of course.

While it’s been gaining new features at an impressive rate, ultimately TinkerCAD is still a pretty basic tool — it’s not the sort of thing you’d expect to see in the aerospace world or anything. ut it’s a great way to start whipping up custom stuff on your 3D printer.

youtube.com/embed/nMDNAysi5EE?…

hackaday.com/2025/11/18/a-quic…

I’m sitting in front of an old Sayno Plasma TV as I write this on my media PC. It’s not a productivity machine, by any means, but the screen has the resolution to do it so I started this document to prove a point. That point? Plasma TVs are awesome.

Always the Bridesmaid, Never the Bride

An Egyptian god might see pixels on an 8K panel, but we puny mortals won’t. Image “Horus Eye 2” by [Jeff Dahl]The full-colour plasma screens that were used as TVs in the 2000s are an awkward technological cul-de-sac. Everyone knows and loves CRTs for the obvious benefits they offer– bright colours, low latency, and scanlines to properly blur pixel art. Modern OLEDs have more resolution than the Eye of Horus, never mind your puny human orbs, and barely sip power compared to their forbearers. Plasma, though? Not old enough to be retro-cool, not new enough to be high-tech, plasma displays are sadly forgotten.

It’s funny, because I firmly believe that without plasma displays, CRTs would have never gone away. Perhaps for that I should hate them, but it’s for the very reasons that Plasma won out over HD-CRTs in the market place that I love them.

What You Get When You Get a Plasma TV

I didn’t used to love Plasma TVs. Until a few years ago, I thought of them like you probably do: clunky, heavy, power-hungry, first-gen flatscreens that were properly consigned to the dustbin of history. Then I bought a house.

The house came with a free TV– a big plasma display in the basement. It was left there for two reasons: it was worthless on the open market and it weighed a tonne. I could take it off the wall by myself, but I could feel the ghost of OSHA past frowning at me when I did. Hauling it up the stairs? Yeah, I’d need a buddy for that… and it was 2020. By the time I was organizing the basement, we’d just gone into lockdown, and buddies were hard to come by. So I put it back on the wall, plugged in my laptop, and turned it on.

I was gobsmacked. It looked exactly like a CRT– a giant, totally flat CRT in glorious 1080p. When I stepped to the side, it struck me again: like a CRT, the viewing angle is “yes”.

How it Works

None of this should have come as a surprise, because I know how a Plasma TV works. I’d just forgotten how good they are. See, a Plasma TV really was an attempt to get all that CRT goodness in a flat screen, and the engineers at Fujitsu, and later elsewhere, really pulled it off.

Like CRTs, you’ve got phosphors excited to produce points of light to create an image– and only when excited, so the blacks are as black as they get. The phosphors are chemically different from those in CRTs but they come in similar colours, so colours on old games and cartoons look right in a way they don’t even on my MacBook’s retina display.

Unlike a CRT, there’s no electron beam scanning the screen, and no shadow mask. Instead, the screen is subdivided into individual pixels inside the flat vacuum panel. The pixels are individually addressed and zapped on and off by an electric current. Unlike a CRT or SED, the voltage here isn’t high enough to generate an electron beam to excite the phosphors; instead the gas discharge inside the display emits enough UV light to do the same job.

Each phosphor-filled pixel glows with its own glorious light thanks to the UV from gas discharge in the cell.
Image based on “Plasma-Display-Composition.svg” by [Jari Laamanen].Still, if it feels like a CRT, and that’s because the subpixels are individual blobs of phosphors, excited from behind, and generating their own glorious light.

It’s Not the Same, Though

It’s not a CRT, of course. The biggest difference is that it’s a fixed-pixel display, with all that comes with that. This particular TV has all the ports on the back to make it great for retrogaming, but the NES, or what have you, signal still has to be digitally upscaled to match the resolution. Pixel art goes unblurred by scanlines unless I add it in via emulation, so despite the colour and contrast, it’s not quite the authentic experience.

For some things, like the Atari 2600, the scanline blur really doesn’t matter. Image: “Atari 2600 on my 42 inch plasma TV” by [Jeffisageek] The built-in upscaling doesn’t introduce enough latency for a filthy casual like me to notice, but I’ll never be able to play Duck Hunt on the big screen unless I fake it with a Wii. Apparently some Plasma TVs are awesome for latency on the analog inputs, and others are not much better than an equivalent-era LCD. There’s a reason serious retro gamers pay serious money for big CRTs.

Those big CRTs don’t have to worry about burn in, either, something I have been very careful in the five years I’ve owned this second-hand plasma display to avoid. I can’t remember thinking much about burn-in with CRTs since we retired the amber-phosphor monitor plugged into the Hercules Graphics card on our family’s 286 PC.

The dreaded specter of burn-in is plasma’s Achilles heel – more than the weight and thickness, which were getting much better before LG pulled the plug as the last company to exit this space, or the Energy Star ratings, which weren’t going to catch up to LED-backlit LCDs, but had improved as well. The fear of burn-in made you skip the plasma, especially for console gaming.

This screen is haunted by the ghost of CNN’s old logo. Burning in game graphics was less common but more fun. Ironically, it’s an LCD. Image: “logo of CNN burnt on a screen” by [Nate]Early plasma displays could permanently damage the delicate phosphors in only a handful of hours. That damage burnt the unmoving parts of an image permanently into the phosphors in the form of “ghosting”, and unless you caught it early, it was generally not repairable. The ghosting issue got better over time, but the technology never escaped the stigma, and the problem never entirely went away. If that meant that after a marathon Call-of-Duty session the rest of the family had to stare at your HUD on every movie night, Dad wasn’t going to buy another plasma display.

By the end, the phosphors improved and various tricks like jiggling the image pixel-by-pixel were found to avoid burn-in, and it seems to have worked: there’s absolutely no ghosting on my model, and you can sometimes find late-model Plasma TVs for the low, low cost of “get this thing off my wall and up the stairs” that are equally un-haunted. I may grab another, even if I have to pay for it. It’s a lot easier to hide a spare flatscreen than an extra CRT, another advantage to the plasma TVs, and in no case do phosphors last forever.

But Where’s the Hack?

Is “grab an old flat screen instead of hunting around for an impossible CRT” a hack? Maybe it’s not, but it’s worth considering, though, because Plasma TVs don’t get the love they deserve. (And seriously, you’re not going to find the mythical 43-inch CRT, even if it technically existed. And you’ll never find a tube that could match the 152” monster Panasonic put out to claim the record back in the day.)

In the mean time, I’m going to enjoy the contrast ratio, refresh rate, and the bonus space heater. I’m in Canada, and winter is coming, so it’s hard to get too overworked about waste heat when there’s frost on your windowpanes.

Featured image: “IFA 2010 Internationale Funkausstellung Berlin 124” by [Bin im Garten].

hackaday.com/2025/11/18/in-pra…

You’ve probably seen the inflatable frogs, the dance parties, the naked bike ride. Maybe you’ve also seen the darker images: a federal officer aiming a weapon at protesters, or federal agents hurling tear gas and flash bangs into peaceful demonstrations at a Portland, Oregon, immigration facility.

Local journalists have been attacked for bringing images like these to the world. They’re being tear-gassed and shot with crowd-control munitions by federal agents simply for doing their jobs.

Photojournalist John Rudoff is among them. He’s been covering these protests since June, photographing both peaceful marches and violent responses from federal officers that often follow.

On Oct. 11, while documenting a protest, Rudoff was struck by a stinger grenade, even though he was clearly identifiable as press. He was bruised, but not deterred.

“If you cover protests, you’re going to have discomfort and hazard. Period. That’s just the way it is,” Rudoff told us. “They shoot 20-year-old girls, and they shoot 70-year-old men, and they shoot people in wheelchairs, and they shoot blind people,” he added, referring to federal agents using crowd-control munitions. “The word impunity seems to be coined for them.”

Despite the danger, Rudoff refuses to stop documenting. “The entire media ecosystem has been covered with the administration’s rantings about the war-ravaged hellscape of Portland, and the city is burning down, and ICE officers are being attacked, and on and on and on,” he said. “I feel some obligation to try and counter this frankly preposterous narrative that the city’s burning down. It isn’t.”

Independent journalist Kevin Foster, who has also been covering the Portland protests, shares that sense of duty and outrage. “It’s clear the Trump administration wants to paint Portland as a war zone to seize more control, but it’s a lot harder to do that when I’m showing you all the dancing inflatable frogs,” he told us. “At the end of the day, someone needs to be there to document abuses of power.”

Foster has felt the danger up close while reporting from protests. “I’ve seen other press members shot with pepper balls, I’ve had flash bangs go off at my feet, and tear gas canisters explode above my head,” he said. But he continues to work to keep the public informed, reporting on federal agents’ heavy use of force and escalatory tactics at the protests.

For Foster, the concerns go beyond federal agents at protests. “Right-wing influencers and agitators have reportedly doxxed people,” Foster said. “With the state of the presidency and the history of authoritarianism, I do sometimes worry about persecution as well, especially given that a lot of my coverage subverts the narrative produced by right-wing media.”

The incident in Portland that got the most attention involved Katie Daviscourt, a reporter for the conservative news site The Post Millennial. She reported being hit in the face by someone swinging a flagpole at a protest, blackening her eye. Police let the suspect go, prompting feigned outrage from the White House.

Holding federal agents accountable

Violence against the press, from any direction, is an attack on the First Amendment itself, especially when enabled by law enforcement. Unfortunately, those purportedly appalled by the Daviscourt incident have not shown similar concern over federal law enforcement attacks on journalists who don’t further their preferred political narratives.

Since the Portland protests began in June, for instance, photojournalist Mason Lake has been struck by crowd-control munitions twice, pepper-sprayed, and had a rifle aimed at him. Yet federal officials haven’t condemned these attacks, or the attack on Rudoff.

“It’s very disconcerting to see how free press has been trampled,” Lake told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, a project of Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF). “The best we can do is push back and make sure the truth isn’t run over.”

In other cities, like Chicago, Illinois, and Los Angeles, California, federal court orders protect journalists from such assaults. But Portland currently has no such order. Legal precedent from 2020 protests in Portland recognized reporters’ First Amendment right to cover protests and shielded them from dispersal orders. But it has done little to rein in federal agents today.

“They have to be sued, and they have to be enjoined, and they have to be criminally prosecuted until they stop doing it,” suggested Rudoff.

Until that happens, however, journalists must keep speaking up, not just about what they see, but also for being attacked for witnessing it. “Most attacks on journalists aren’t reported,” explained Rudoff. But, he added, “I don’t know a single journalist out there who hasn’t been shot or hit or knocked over or tear-gassed or pepper-sprayed. It’s everybody.”

Foster put it even more bluntly: “Many Americans seem to have this impression that brutalizing protesters and targeting the press only happens in other countries. If that notion hasn’t shattered for you yet, wait until your ears are ringing from flash bangs and you’re enveloped in a cloud of tear gas so thick you can’t see 15 feet.”

This isn’t some distant dictatorship. It’s the city of Portland. And the First Amendment is under siege.

freedom.press/issues/journalis…

Following a major public outcry, a clarification in the EU’s controversial “Chat Control” law appeared to secure a victory for privacy advocates. However, a group of 18 of Europe’s top cybersecurity and privacy academics has now issued a stark warning that the latest proposal still contains “high risks to society without clear benefits for children.”

Their open letter arrives just before the EU Council’s ambassadors are set to endorse the proposal on November 19. An endorsement would lock in the EU governments’ position, likely leading to a formal adoption in December and setting the stage for tense negotiations with the European Parliament in the new year.

The controversy centers on the Child Sexual Abuse Regulation (CSAR). After widespread protests, mandatory scanning of private communications was removed from the EU Council’s draft. A further clarification on November 13 confirmed that “Nothing in this Regulation should be understood as imposing any detection obligations on providers.”

This led privacy advocates like former Pirate Party MEP Patrick Breyer to declare a partial victory: “We’ve prevented mandatory Chat Control through the back door. But anonymity-breaking age checks and ‘voluntary’ mass scanning are still planned. The fight continues next year!”

Now, cybersecurity experts from institutions including ETH Zurich, KU Leuven, and the Max Planck Institute are amplifying that warning, arguing that two core elements of the revised Council proposal create new, unacceptable dangers.

Key Concerns Raised by Experts:

1. Flawed ‘voluntary’ AI Chat Control Creates Dangerous False Positives
The experts warn that unlike the previous Council’s proposal, the new text expands scanning of private communications to include automated text analysis, using AI to identify ambiguous “grooming” behaviours. They argue this will create a dragnet that ensnares innocent people. “Current AI technology is far from being precise enough to undertake these tasks with guarantees for the necessary level of accuracy.”

The letter states that this expanded scope “only opens the door to surveil and examine a larger part of conversations, without any guarantee of better protection.” It warns of a “high risk of diminishing overall protection by flooding investigators with false accusations that prevent them from investigating the real cases.”

2. Mandatory Age Verification Systems That Discriminate and Invade Privacy
The Council’s proposal would mandate age verification and assessment for app stores and private messaging services, promising that such measures “should preserve privacy”. The academics describe this as dangerous and unworkable: “Age assessment cannot be performed in a privacy-preserving way with current technology due to reliance on biometric, behavioural or contextual information… In fact, it incentivizes (children’s) data collection and exploitation. We conclude that age assessment presents an inherent disproportionate risk of serious privacy violation and discrimination, without guarantees of effectiveness.”

The alternative approach of requiring official documents for age verification would cut off a “substantial fraction of the population” from essential online services, including vulnerable individuals who may not have easy access to digital IDs.

Perhaps most concerning, the experts warn that age verification measures are easily circumvented and could push children toward more dangerous platforms: “Age verification controls can be easily evaded, by using providers outside the EU or VPNs to avoid geolocation checks… Both cases can result in higher risks for children because these alternate services are likely to present security risks (weak or absent encryption) and extensive tracking practices, sometimes for malicious purposes.”

Outlook:

If the Council does not heed the academics’ warnings, age checks and ‘voluntary’ mass scanning are set to become a central battleground in next year’s negotiations with the European Parliament, whose mandate seeks to remove mandatory age checks and limit scanning to the communications of criminal suspects only.

According to a leaked government memo, Italy also raised concerns last week, questioning whether voluntary chat surveillance can adequately safeguard user privacy. The Italian government fears the tool could be expanded to cover other crimes, which makes it difficult for them to support the proposal. Poland, too, reserved further examination.

About the Signatories:
The letter is signed by 18 distinguished professors and researchers in cybersecurity, cryptography, and data privacy from leading universities and research centers across Europe, including Aarhus University (Denmark), École Polytechnique (France), CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security (Germany), ETH Zurich (Switzerland), and KU Leuven (Belgium).

Read the scientists’ open letter: csa-scientist-open-letter.org/…

See also Patrick Breyer’s assessment

patrick-breyer.de/en/eu-chat-c…

noblogo.org/transit/perche-non…

Transit

2025-11-18 15:39:36

Perché non posso scrivere di tutto (anche se mi sta a cuore.)

(181)

Spesso sui social capita che, se parli sempre e solo di una certa causa (per esempio la #Palestina) qualcuno ti accusi di non interessarti ad altri drammi, come quelli che succedono in #Sudan o in altri luoghi del mondo.Questa è una questione che merita un po’ di chiarezza, perché il punto vero è un altro: nessuno di noi è un’agenzia di stampa, e non parlare di una cosa non significa affatto fregarsene. La verità è che tutti noi abbiamo dei limiti: di tempo, di energie, ma anche di capacità emotiva.

Non possiamo essere costantemente presenti su ogni emergenza, su ogni ingiustizia, su ogni tragedia che si presenta nel mondo. E, sinceramente, provarci significherebbe anche rischiare di annullare noi stessi, perdendo quella sensibilità che ci spinge a interessarci davvero di alcune questioni.

La partecipazione emotiva è inevitabilmente selettiva: ci sentiamo più vicini e coinvolti in certe storie perché le conosciamo meglio, le capiamo, o semplicemente perché in quel momento sentiamo di poter fare qualcosa di più concreto.

Non è una questione di indifferenza verso le altre cause, ma una scelta, consapevole o meno, di dove concentrare le nostre forze, anche per proteggere la nostra salute mentale. E poi, diciamolo: sui #socialmedia la pressione è fortissima. Se non ti vedi parlare di tutto, c’è chi pensa che non ti importi. Ma questa è una falsa aspettativa.

La responsabilità di dare voce a ogni singola emergenza non spetta a noi singoli individui, ma a un sistema di informazione ben più complesso.Noi partecipiamo con ciò che possiamo, con quello che sappiamo, con quello che ci muove davvero.

Quando vedi qualcuno che si concentra spesso su una sola causa, non darla per scontata: può significare un impegno profondo, non una mancanza di interesse per il resto. E chi ti conosce sa che dietro quel silenzio ci sono comunque solidarietà, preoccupazione e rispetto. Non serve parlare di tutto per esserci davvero.

In fondo, la vera indifferenza è un’altra cosa: è non provarci nemmeno, è non farsi toccare da niente, è voltare le spalle senza nemmeno chiedersi come si potrebbe fare la differenza. La partecipazione selettiva, invece, è umana, corretta e spesso necessaria. Insomma, non siamo agenzie di stampa, ma persone. E va bene così.

#Blog #SocialMedia #Opinioni #EmpatiaSelettiva #PartecipazioneEmotiva

Mastodon: @alda7069@mastodon.unoTelegram: t.me/transitblogFriendica: @danmatt@poliverso.orgBlue Sky: bsky.app/profile/mattiolidanie…Bio Site (tutto in un posto solo, diamine): bio.site/danielemattioli

Gli scritti sono tutelati da “Creative Commons” (qui)

Tutte le opinioni qui riportate sono da considerarsi personali. Per eventuali problemi riscontrati con i testi, si prega di scrivere a: corubomatt@gmail.com

Transit

Il blog di Alessandra Corubolo & Daniele Mattioli. On line -in varie forme- dal 2005.

^Telegram

Massimo Rossi a Pavia – “Diritto di scegliere: dialogo sull’eutanasia negata”

Aula Disegno, Università di Pavia – Piazza Leonardo Da Vinci 5
17 novembre 2025
Ore 18:00

In occasione dell’incontro “Diritto di scegliere: dialogo sull’eutanasia negata”, il Coordinamento UDU Pavia, in collaborazione con l’Università di Pavia, ospita Massimo Rossi, avvocato, membro dell’Associazione Luca Coscioni e difensore di Marco Cappato nei noti casi di DJ Fabo e Davide Trentini.

L’incontro sarà dedicato ai più recenti sviluppi politici e giuridici in materia di eutanasia e suicidio medicalmente assistito. Dalla strada aperta dalle sentenze della Corte costituzionale, alle proposte di legge oggi in discussione fino alle leggi regionali approvate in Toscana e Sardegna.

Un momento di riflessione e confronto sullo stato del diritto all’autodeterminazione in Italia e sulle battaglie ancora aperte per la libertà di scelta alla fine della vita.

L'articolo Avv. Massimo Rossi a Pavia – “Diritto di scegliere: dialogo sull’eutanasia negata” proviene da Associazione Luca Coscioni.

In case you didn’t hear — on October 22, 2025, the Internet Archive, who host the Wayback Machine at archive.org, celebrated a milestone: one trillion web pages archived, for posterity.

Founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle the organization and its facilities grew through the late nineties; in 2001 access to their archive was greatly improved by the introduction of the Wayback Machine. From their own website on Oct 21 2009 they explained their mission and purpose:

Most societies place importance on preserving artifacts of their culture and heritage. Without such artifacts, civilization has no memory and no mechanism to learn from its successes and failures. Our culture now produces more and more artifacts in digital form. The Archive’s mission is to help preserve those artifacts and create an Internet library for researchers, historians, and scholars.

We were curious about the Internet Archive technology. Storing a copy (in fact two copies!) of the internet is no mean feat, so we did some digging to find out how it’s done. The best information available is in this article from 2016: 20,000 Hard Drives on a Mission. They keep two copies of every “item”, which are stored in Linux directories. In 2016 they had over 30 petabytes of content and were ingesting at a rate of 13 to 15 terabytes per day, web, and television being the most voluminous.

In 2016 they had around 20,000 individual disk drives, each housed in specialized computers called “datanodes”. The datanodes have 36 data drives plus two operating system drives per machine. Datanodes are organized into racks of 10 machines, having 360 data drives per rack. These racks are interconnected via high-speed Ethernet to form a storage cluster.

Even though content storage tripled over 2012 to 2016, the count of disk drives stayed about the same; this is because of disk drive technology improvements. Datanodes that were once populated with 36 individual 2 terabyte drives are today filled with 8 terabyte drives, moving single node capacity from 72 terabytes (64.8 T formatted) to 288 terabytes (259.2 T formatted) in the same physical space. The evolution of disk density did not happen in a single step, so there are populations of 2, 3, 4, and 8 T drives in the storage clusters.

We will leave you with the visual styling of Hackaday Beta in 2004, and what an early google.com or amazon.com looked like back in the day. Super big shout out to the Internet Archive, thanks for providing such an invaluable service to our community, and congratulations on this excellent achievement.

hackaday.com/2025/11/18/intern…

The Micro:bit is a fun microcontroller development platform, designed specifically for educational use. Out of the box, it’s got a pretty basic sound output feature that can play a single note at a time. However, if you’re willing to get a bit tricky, you can do some pseudo-polyphonic stuff as [microbit-noob] explains.

The trick to polyphony in a monophonic world? Rapidly alternating between the different notes you want to be playing at the same time. Do this fast enough and it feels like they’re playing together rather than seperately. [microbit-noob] demonstrates how to implement this with a simple function coded for the Micro:bit. Otherwise, it uses the completely stock sound hardware. However, the IR receiver is added to the device in order to allow a simple remote control to be used to command the notes desired, along with some extra tactile buttons to add further control.

Is it chiptune? Well, it’s a chip, playing a tune, so yes. Even if it is through a tiny speaker stuck to the PCB. In any case, if you’re trying to get some better bleeps and bloops out of the Micro:bit, this is a great place to start. If you’ve got other hacks for Britain’s educational little board, let us know on the tipsline!

hackaday.com/2025/11/18/microb…

Over on YouTube [DENKI OTAKU] runs us through how a 4-pin MOSFET works and what the extra Kelvin source pin does.

A typical MOSFET might come in a 3-pin TO-247 package, but there are 4-pin variants which include an extra pin for the Kelvin source, also known as source sense. These 4-pin packages are known as TO-247-4. The fourth pin provides an additional source for gate current return which can in turn lessen the effect of parasitic inductance on the gate-source when switching current, particularly at high speed.

In the video [DENKI OTAKU] uses his custom made testing board to investigate the performance characteristics of some 4-pin TO-247-4 MOSFETs versus their 3-pin TO-247 equivalents. Spoiler alert: the TO-247-4 MOSFETs have better performance characteristics. The video takes a close look at the results on the oscilloscope. The downside is that as the switching speed increases the ringing in the V_ds waveform increases, too. If you’re switching to a 4-pin MOSFET from a 3-pin MOSFET in your design you will need to be aware of this V_ds overshoot and make accommodations for it.

If you’d like to go deeper with MOSFET technology check out Introduction To MOSFET Switching Losses and MOSFETs — The Hidden Gate.

youtube.com/embed/gsPN982hmD8?…

hackaday.com/2025/11/17/explor…

La mattinata del 18 novembre 2025 sarà ricordata come uno dei blackout più anomali e diffusi della rete Cloudflare degli ultimi mesi. La CDN – cuore pulsante di milioni di siti web, applicazioni e servizi API – ha iniziato a mostrare malfunzionamenti a catena in diverse aree geografiche, con impatti significativi anche sul nostro sito, Red Hot Cyber, che utilizza l’infrastruttura Cloudflare per CDN, caching e protezione DDoS.

Sul portale Cloudflare System Status è stato pubblicato il seguente avviso:

11:48 UTC: “Cloudflare is aware of, and investigating an issue which potentially impacts multiple customers.”
12:03 UTC: “We are continuing to investigate this issue.”

Anche Downdetector in tilt

Uno degli elementi più insoliti è il fatto che Downdetector, piattaforma utilizzata per verificare interruzioni e anomalie sui grandi servizi, risulta anch’esso irraggiungibile o con caricamenti estremamente lenti.
Questo ha reso più difficile monitorare il picco di segnalazioni da parte degli utenti, creando un effetto domino informativo: molti utenti non riescono neppure a verificare quali servizi siano effettivamente offline, aumentando la percezione di un blackout generalizzato.

Una falla globale senza spiegazione

Al momento la causa dell’incidente rimane completamente sconosciuta. Cloudflare non ha ancora diffuso dettagli tecnici, e l’assenza di indicazioni precise apre a diverse ipotesi operative:

• Possibile instabilità del backbone globale, ma senza conferme.
• Anomalia nei sistemi di routing interni (es. BGP), che in passato ha causato effetti simili.
• Errore di configurazione su un cluster core, un’ipotesi frequente nei grandi provider.
• Attacco mirato, sebbene non ci siano segnali evidenti, e Cloudflare non lo ha indicato come causa probabile.
• Malfunzionamento su larga scala delle edge locations, che avrebbe un impatto immediato sui siti statici e sulle API protette.

La simultaneità con il tilt di Downdetector, inoltre, suggerisce che il problema potrebbe aver colpito non solo i contenuti serviti via Cloudflare, ma anche altri nodi critici dell’ecosistema di monitoraggio pubblico.

L'articolo Cloudflare down: siti web e servizi offline il 18 novembre 2025 proviene da Red Hot Cyber.

La scorsa settimana, Anthropic ha pubblicato un rapporto in cui si afferma che il gruppo di hacker cinese GTG-1002 ha condotto un’operazione di cyberspionaggio su larga scala, automatizzando fino al 90% dei suoi attacchi utilizzando il modello di intelligenza artificiale Claude Code.

Le affermazioni dell’azienda hanno suscitato un’ondata di scetticismo tra gli esperti di sicurezza.

Il rapporto di Anthropic

Secondo il rapporto di Anthropic, nel settembre 2025 l’azienda ha rilevato e bloccato la prima campagna informatica su larga scala in assoluto che ha coinvolto un’intelligenza artificiale operante in modo praticamente autonomo. Gli hacker hanno preso di mira 30 organizzazioni (aziende tecnologiche, istituti finanziari, produttori chimici ed enti governativi), e alcuni di questi attacchi hanno avuto successo.

Nel rapporto, i rappresentanti di Anthropic hanno sottolineato il livello senza precedenti di automazione degli attacchi: “L’IA ha rilevato autonomamente le vulnerabilità, le ha sfruttate nelle operazioni e ha eseguito un’ampia gamma di azioni post-sfruttamento.”

Secondo le stime dell’azienda, l’intervento umano è avvenuto solo nel 10-20% dei casi, per prendere decisioni critiche e verificare i dati prima del furto. Il framework sviluppato dagli aggressori avrebbe utilizzato Claude per orchestrare attacchi in più fasi, che sono stati poi eseguiti da diversi subagenti sempre di Claude, ciascuno con i propri compiti: mappatura degli attacchi, scansione dell’infrastruttura bersaglio, ricerca di vulnerabilità e ricerca di tecniche di exploit.

Dopo che i subagenti avevano sviluppato catene di exploit e creato payload personalizzati, un operatore umano impiegava dai due ai dieci minuti per esaminare il lavoro dell’IA e approvare le azioni successive.

Lo scetticismo della community cyber

Tuttavia, la comunità di sicurezza informatica ha accolto il rapporto di Anthropic con notevole scetticismo. Le principali preoccupazioni degli esperti erano le seguenti.

Mancanza di dettagli tecnici

Nel suo rapporto, Anthropic non sono stati forniti indicatori di compromissione (IOC), dettagli tecnici degli attacchi o alcuna prova delle azioni di GTG-1002.

“L’impatto operativo dovrebbe essere pari a zero: molto probabilmente, i rilevamenti esistenti funzioneranno anche per gli strumenti open source. La totale assenza di IoC suggerisce ancora una volta che non vogliono essere chiamati in causa per questo.”, afferma il rinomato specialista in sicurezza informatica Kevin Beaumont.

Doppi standard nell’intelligenza artificiale

I ricercatori si chiedono perché gli aggressori ottengano risultati incredibili dai modelli, mentre gli utenti comuni riscontrano limitazioni e “allucinazioni“.

“Continuo a rifiutarmi di credere che gli aggressori riescano in qualche modo a far sì che questi modelli superino ostacoli che nessun altro riesce a superare.”, afferma Dan Tentler di Phobos Group. “Perché i modelli ci riescono nel 90% dei casi, mentre noi dobbiamo fare i conti con sabotaggi e allucinazioni?”

Bassa efficacia

Delle 30 organizzazioni attaccate, solo “poche” sono state compromesse con successo. I ricercatori non vedono alcun senso in un’automazione così complessa se il tasso di successo dell’attacco è così basso.

Non c’è nulla di nuovo nei metodi utilizzati

Secondo il rapporto, gli hacker hanno utilizzato strumenti open source comuni, in circolazione da anni e facilmente individuabili. Inoltre, la stessa Anthropic ha riconosciuto che Claude spesso aveva “allucinazioni”, esagerando e falsificando i risultati durante l’esecuzione autonoma.

Ad esempio, Claude ha affermato di aver trovato credenziali (che non hanno funzionato) o ha segnalato la scoperta di informazioni critiche che si sono rivelate di pubblico dominio.

Inoltre, molti hanno percepito il rapporto di Anthropic come una semplice trovata di marketing.

“Di cosa diavolo sta parlando questo tizio. Questa storia di Anthropic è una bufala di marketing. L’intelligenza artificiale è una grande spinta, ma non è Skynet, non pensa, non è una vera intelligenza artificiale (è una trovata del marketing). Per ogni attacco c’è una difesa. Per ogni cosa che non accelera, sbaglia e rende lento qualcos’altro. La sporcizia è reale“, scrive il ricercatore Daniel Card.

Concludendo

Nei loro commenti, gli esperti paragonano l’uso dell’intelligenza artificiale negli attacchi informatici a strumenti come Metasploit e SEToolkit, presenti da decenni. Sebbene siano indubbiamente utili e pratici, la loro diffusione non ha portato a un miglioramento qualitativo delle capacità degli hacker.

La maggior parte degli esperti concorda sul fatto che l’intelligenza artificiale contribuisca effettivamente ad accelerare e semplificare determinate attività (come l’ordinamento e l’analisi dei registri o il reverse engineering).

Tuttavia, eseguire autonomamente sequenze di azioni complesse con un intervento umano minimo rimane un obiettivo difficile da raggiungere per l’intelligenza artificiale.

L'articolo Gli esperti cyber non ci stanno! L’hacking autonomo di Anthropic Claude è una bufala? proviene da Red Hot Cyber.

La vicenda dell’attacco hacker globale a Twitter dell’estate del 2020 ha avuto un seguito: i procuratori britannici hanno ottenuto la confisca della criptovaluta estratta da un partecipante chiave all’attacco.

Il tribunale ha ordinato al ventiseienne Joseph James O’Connor di restituire beni per un valore pari a 4,1 milioni di sterline (circa 5,4 milioni di dollari). Ciò significa che lo Stato ha ottenuto l’accesso a 42 Bitcoin e asset digitali correlati scoperti durante l’indagine pluriennale.

La catena di eventi è iniziata con un attacco insolitamente sfacciato, in cui un criminale è riuscito a ottenere il controllo dei conti di leader mondiali e imprenditori per truffare gli utenti di criptovalute e intimidire le celebrità.

La sentenza del tribunale è stata il risultato di procedimenti paralleli in più giurisdizioni. O’Connor è stato arrestato in Spagna nel 2021e successivamente estradato negli Stati Uniti, dove si trovavano le principali prove e le vittime.

Nel 2023, un tribunale statunitense ha dichiarato O’Connor colpevole di accuse relative ad accesso non autorizzato a sistemi, frode ed estorsione, condannandolo a cinque anni di carcere. La parte britannica ha continuato a perseguire i beni, ottenendo il congelamento della criptovaluta durante il processo di estradizione e successivamente un ordine di confisca civile.

Il Crown Prosecution Service del Regno Unito ha osservato che, anche se l’imputato non è stato condannato nel Paese, i meccanismi esistenti consentono il sequestro di fondi relativi ad attività criminali.

L’agenzia ha sottolineato che la gamma di strumenti disponibili ha contribuito a restituire una quantità significativa di asset digitali al controllo dello Stato. I fondi saranno ora trasferiti a un curatore nominato dal tribunale, che ne gestirà lo smaltimento.

L’attacco hacker del luglio 2020 è diventato uno degli incidenti più eclatanti nella storia del social network. Gli aggressori hanno ottenuto l’accesso agli account di Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Barack Obama, nonché di Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Kim Kardashian e altre figure di spicco.

Prendendo il controllo dei loro profili, gli aggressori hanno pubblicato messaggi che incoraggiavano gli utenti a inviare criptovalute, apparentemente nell’ambito di un’iniziativa benefica.

L'articolo Attacco hacker a Twitter: Confiscati 4,1 milioni al ventiseienne Joseph James O’Connor proviene da Red Hot Cyber.