Eccoci qui. Dopo aver trascorso gli ultimi anni leggendo tra il fediverso e il web alternativo, ho deciso di creare il mio posto dove le persone orientate alla libertà possano discutere di libertà nell'informatica e nella società. Lo scopo generale è ricreare le vibrazioni familiari dell'era BBS mettendo insieme strumenti vecchi e moderni, da IRC a Mastodon. Ecco dove spiego tutto:

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Benvenuti a casa... vostra!

Questo è il primo articolo di questo sito, dove vengono introdotti gli scopi del sito stesso. In sintesi, il sito ha lo scopo di ricreare il feeling familiare e comunitario delle BBS degli anni '80 e '90 aggregando insieme più strumenti, vecchi e mod…

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Throughout history, clean and potable water has been one of the most prized possessions, without which no human civilization could have ever sustained itself. Not only is water crucial for drinking and food preparation, but also for agriculture, cleaning and the production of countless materials, chemicals and much more. And this isn’t a modern problem: good water supplies and the most successful ancient cultures go hand in hand.

For instance, the retention and management of fresh water in reservoirs played a major role in the Khmer Empire, with many of its reservoirs (baray) surviving to today. Similarly, the Anuradhapure Kingdom in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) featured massive reservoirs like Kala Wewa that was constructed in 460 CE with a capacity of 123 million m3. In the New World, the Maya civilization similarly created reservoirs with intricate canals to capture rainwater before the dry season started, as due to the karst landscape wells were not possible.

Keeping this water fresh and free from contaminants and pollution was a major problem for especially the Maya, with a recent perspective by Lisa J. Lucera in PNAS Anthropology suggesting that they used an approach similar to modern day constructed wetlands to keep disease and illness at bay, while earlier discoveries also suggest the use of filtration including the use of zeolite.

Resource Management

In climates where rainfall is plentiful, and where wells can fill in gaps, extensive water management is not a major concern. This is where the civilizations of Mesoamerica provide good illustrations of the effects this can have on societies, with the Aztec and Inca using aqueducts to bring mountain spring water to their cities, while the Maya in their region with a karst topography had to capture every drop of rainwater before it would vanish within the hollowed-out structures that are a distinctive feature of these soluble carbonate rock landscapes.

This meant that the only time when the Maya could refill their reservoirs was when it rained, which also placed significant restrictions on how much water would be available to any population. It is postulated that it was a drought and reservoir pollution led to the eventual abandonment of the Mayan city of Tikal (ti ak’al in Yucatac Maya, but Yax Mutal (‘First Mutal’) according to inscriptions within the city) after the Late Classic Period (~900 CE). This preceded the Terminal Classic period, during which much of the lowlands were abandoned.

There is strong palaeoclimatological evidence for a sustained drought between 800 – 1000 CE (likely related to the Medieval Warm Period) in and around the Yucatán Peninsula, coinciding when archeological evidence shows a reduced human presence in these lowlands by the Maya. It’s thought that these droughts coincided with epidemic diseases in combination with dense populations and intensification of agriculture with associated ecological destruction. The post-classical Maya period featured far less dense cities, and despite the often used term of ‘Classic Maya Collapse’, Mayan society was only regionally affected and persists to this day, despite efforts by European invaders and associated occupation over the centuries.

Filtration

Hypothetical scheme of the ancient water purification system at Tikal. Macro-crystalline quartz crystal sand and zeolite filtration system positioned just upstream of, or within the reservoir ingress. (Credit: Kenneth Barnett Tankersley et al, 2020, Scientific Reports)
Water filtration is something that happens not just with man-made structures and mechanisms, as anyone who uses water from springs and wells uses knows. The granular structure of soil serves to filter out larger and smaller contaminants as well as bacteria and other potential disease carriers. This same principle can be applied with artificial water filtration systems, with the Corriental water reservoir at the city of Tikal providing evidence that the Mayans even used the zeolite mineral for its water purification properties.

This was discovered by Kenneth Barnett Tankersley and colleagues, and published in 2020 in the journal Scientific Reports. They discovered that the water in this reservoir was filtered through a mixture of zeolite and coarse crystalline quartz. Zeolite is interesting, as it has adsorbent and ion-exchange properties which make it a popular choice even today for water purification to the point where most zeolite is synthesized for this and other purposes.

As for whether this extensive filtration in Mayan reservoirs was common is unknown, as the authors succinctly point out that the number of excavations of these reservoirs is quite limited. The presence of zeolite would have significantly helped with filtering out contamination from microbial sources like cyanobacteria and toxins such as cinnabar. The latter is both a historically common brilliant red pigment as well as a good source of toxic mercury due to its mercury sulfide composition. Unfortunately this kind of filter does not help against mercury from volcanic sources due to its very small particle size, meaning that this type of contamination would have built up over the years in reservoirs.

Circle Of Life

LiDAR map of Tikal highlighting some of its reservoirs. LiDAR-derived hillshade image created by Francisco Estrada-Belli of the PAQUNAM LiDAR Initiative with additions by Christopher Carr and Nicholas Dunning.
The term ‘constructed wetland‘ pretty much gives away the concept: these create an artificial wetland ecosystem where plant and often also animal life work to treat sewage, greywater, stormwater runoff, and wastewater in general. They provide both a filtration function and a remediation one, with the vegetation along with microbial life serving to break down and process excess elements, while maintaining a healthy pH and nutrient levels.

In the mostly stagnant water reservoirs which the Maya maintained, preventing the build-up of organisms and harmful pollutants was essential, leading to likely extensive use of aquatic plants in these reservoirs. This is reflected in the headdresses, architecture and other elements of Mayan culture where the clean water-loving water lily (nymphaea ampla) is prominently displayed and associated with prosperity and the leadership.

Likely many different aquatic plants were used in combination with water lilies, along with various types of fish. This would have helped to deal with pests like mosquitoes and their aquatic offspring, reduce evaporation and creating a self-sustaining cycle where the waste from the fish would have provided nutrients for the plants, who themselves would have provided shade and food for these fish. Settlement maps show that the Maya did not generally build residences near the reservoirs, likely keeping human waste run-off to a minimum.

This healthy system did however begin to break down during the Late and Terminal Classic period, with the sediment record showing a gradual increase in contamination from cyanobacteria and human waste. This gives a sobering insight into the final years of the city of Tikal and areas like it that got hit worst by the drought.

Lessons For Today

Although we often like to regard droughts and access to potable water as historical problems, even today one in four humans does not have access to safe drinking water, with unsafe water being responsible for about a million deaths each year. Unsafe water can include water that is contaminated with infectious diseases such as cholera, with much of Africa and Asian countries like India heavily affected in this manner, but even wealthy countries like the US seeing its share of drinking water contamination incidents, with that of Flint, Michigan, being just one of many.

Such forms of contamination and lack of access to safe drinking water are obviously issues that ought to be resolved and prevented as well as possible once the cause has been determined. These days we don’t necessarily have to rely on constructed wetlands courtesy of modern technology, but they could be very beneficial as a self-sustaining water purification system.

As the US Geological Survey (USGS) points out, we are dealing with increasing drought since 2000 as well. This doesn’t merely translate into less rain, but also the rain and melting patterns, not to mention the availability of groundwater. This becomes apparent in periods of extreme drought interrupted by extreme rain accompanied with floods. As this makes water availability less predictable for drinking water and agriculture, the creation of reservoirs may be advisable, both to reduce the impact of floods and as buffers for dry periods.

Today we have many reservoirs that were formed due to dams blocking the course of rivers, but something similar could be done for rainwater, not unlike historical cisterns that once used to be extensively used throughout the world, like the famous Basilica Cistern below the city of Istanbul. It’s perhaps ironic that many of such cisterns were abandoned over the years, even as the need for them becomes more apparent today.

How do you talk USB Power Delivery (PD)? Grab a PHY? Use a MCU with one built-in? Well, if you’re hardcore enough, you can do it with just a few resistors and GPIOs. [eeucalyptus] shows you their implementation of USB-PD on a CH32V003, which has no PD peripheral, building a PD trigger, everything is open source, and they walk you through the entire thing including low-level PD basics, too!

It helps that CH32V003 is a 32-bit MCU with a good few resources and peripherals, for instance, an internal comparator. Other than that, you don’t need much in terms of hardware resources, but you do need a steady hand — parts of the firmware had to be written in assembly to keep up with PD timing. Want to tinker with the fruit of this research, perhaps, further build upon the code? There’s an example board on GitHub, too!

Want to try your own luck with this method? There’s a schematic, and logic analyzer captures, and a board to refer to. Again, more than enough information on every single low-level detail! Otherwise, grab an MCU pre-programmed to talk PD, maybe a trigger board chip, or maybe even a PD PHY and implement PD communications with it directly – it’s pretty easy!

We thank [Julianna] for sharing this with us!

The EU is falling short of meeting its 2030 digital targets, particularly in connectivity and digital skills, states the European Commission's latest report on the State of the Digital Decade, released Tuesday (2 July).

euractiv.com/section/digital-i…

Image by [MakerM0] via Hackaday.IO[MakerM0]’s LangCard is an entry into our 2024 Business Card Challenge that just so happens to fit the Keebin’ bill as well.

You might label this a pocket cyberdeck, and that’s just fine with me. The idea here is to have a full-keyboard development board for learning programming languages like CircuitPython, MicroPython, C++, and so on, wherever [MakerM0] happens to be at a given moment.

Open up the LangCard and you’ll find an RP2040 and a slim LiPo battery. I’m not sure what display that is, but there are probably a few that would work just fine were you to make one of these fun learning devices for yourself.

Calling All Tiny Keyboard Makers!

Image by [sporewoh] via KBDIt seems that [sporewoh], who has been featured here before for building magnificent tiny keyboards, is holding a tiny keyboard design contest, which is being sponsored by PCBWay.

All the rules and such are available over on GitHub. Basically, you need to create a new design, publish the open-source design somewhere along with the source files, and, ideally, build a functional prototype. Entries are made official by sharing in the appropriate channel of [sporewoh]’s Discord.

Entries will be scored on novelty and innovation, size/portability, viability, reproducibility, and presentation. Submissions aren’t due until September 10th, so you have a bit of time to really think about what you’re going to do. The prizes include PCBWay credits as well as kits designed by [sporewoh]. How small can you go and still be able to type at least 20 WPM? That’s a requirement, by the way.

The Centerfold: It’s a Tasty Snacks Board

That’s right; we’ve got a gallery this time. I simply couldn’t decide which picture best conveyed the deliciousness of this thing. I mean, the first shot is a good thought, but you really don’t get right away that it’s a Ring Pop knob, and that’s vitally important information.

Anyway, this is a Le Chiffre that has been quite smoothly 3D-printed in marble filament. [CattiDaddi] says they got that by using a matte print bed. I wish I knew what keycaps those are, because that is a sneaky typeface they have going.

Do you rock a sweet set of peripherals on a screamin’ desk pad? Send me a picture along with your handle and all the gory details, and you could be featured here!

Historical Clackers: the Forgotten History of Chinese Keyboards

The IPX keyboard. Image via IEEE Spectrum
Here is quite an interesting bit of history as it relates to China’s ability to survive the ravages of time, which pivots on their use of character-based script.

The story begins with a talk that took place decades ago, and follows the path of one audience member who came to change the course of Chinese keyboard history — a Taiwanese cadet named Chan-hui Yeh.

After graduating with a B.S. in electrical engineering, Yeh went on to earn an M.S. in nuclear engineering and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering. He then joined IBM, although it wasn’t to revolutionize Chinese text technologies; he was helping to develop computational simulations for large-scale manufacturing plants. But the talk stuck with him.

Yeh eventually quit his job and developed the IPX keyboard, which had 160 main keys with 15 characters each. A daughter keyboard was used to choose the character on a given key, and there were nearly 120 levels of “Shift” to change all the 160 keys’ character assignments.

See that picture with the spiral-bound book? The 160 keys are underneath the book, and the user presses the pages to access the pressure pads beneath. The booklets had up to eight pages, each with 2,400 characters. The total number of potential symbols was just under 20,000.

The IPX keyboard is just the first of three interesting inputs described within this history. You owe it to yourself to devote time to reading this one.

Thanks to [juju] for sending this in!

ICYMI: One-Handed Keyboard Does It Without Chording

Image by [Dylan Turner] via Hackaday.IOUsually when we talk about operating an entire keyboard with one hand and leaving the other free for mousing or holding a beer, chording — pressing multiple keys at once like on a piano — is very much on the table. Keyboards like the Infogrip BAT come to mind.

But that isn’t always the case. Take for example the one-handed PCD Maltron, which I think must have inspired [Dylan Turner]’s one-handed keyboard.

[Dylan]’s design puts 75 keys in close reach of one hand’s worth of fingers, and doesn’t let the thumb off easy like on a standard keyboard. All the Function keys are there, and the arrow keys are in a familiar layout. There is even an Insert/Delete cluster. Everything is up on GitHub if you want to make your own.

Got a hot tip that has like, anything to do with keyboards? Help me out by sending in a link or two. Don’t want all the Hackaday scribes to see it? Feel free to email me directly.

BreachForum continua ad essere prolifico con nuovi exploit in vendita al miglior offerente, questa volta parliamo di una vulnerabilità RCE (come root) su EntroLink VPN. Secondo il venditore “tikila”, tramite una ricera utilizzando ZoomEye il totale dei dispositivi vulnerabili ammonta a più di 35.000.

Come di consueto per l’acquistoè necessario contattare un middleman e fornire una prova di pagamento valida.

Al momento, non possiamo confermare la veridicità della notizia, poiché l’organizzazione non ha ancora rilasciato alcun comunicato stampa ufficiale sul proprio sito web riguardo l’incidente. Pertanto, questo articolo deve essere considerato come ‘fonte di intelligence’.

EntroLink è un dispositivo per permettere agli utenti di connetersi in modo sicuro alla rete aziendale, bersaglio perfetto per gli attacanti e una 0-da di questo tipo può mettere a rischio l’intera postura di sicurezza da remoto. Il dispositivo in question è stato sempre sotto la mira di threat actors, in particolare per attacchi ransomware.

Si consiglia fortemente di effettuare analisi attive e continue sulla rete e sui dispositivi in questione finchè non verrà rilasciata una disclosure ufficiale da enti competenti con seguente patch. La RCE permette esecuzione come root indicando una compromissione totale del dispositivo e questo richiede un controllo maggiore, monitoraggio di ogni attività eseguita al suo interno e del traffico in entrata.

L'articolo Allarme Sicurezza: Minaccia RCE su Decine di Migliaia di Dispositivi EntroLink VPN proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

At the request of Pirate Party MEP Patrick Breyer, EU Internal Market Commissioner Breton has commented on manufacturers who equip their products with “kill switches”. This question was prompted by a recent case in which the Polish train manufacturer NewAg was found to have installed “kill switches” in several electric multiple units, which switch off the train’s power supply and compressors under certain conditions (location or operating time). Among other things, the manufacturer implemented the switch-off function to prevent the trains from being repaired by competitors and also to prevent the train software from being analysed. In his response, EU Commissioner Breton admits that existing or planned EU rules on the right to repair are largely limited to the protection of consumers and do not apply to businesses.

Patrick Breyer comments:

“The practice by some manufacturers to prevent independent companies from repairing and servicing products is unacceptable. The EU should put clear rules in place to prevent such abuses and protect the rights of users, as well as the competitiveness of independent repair services. The right to repair should also apply to business customers.

However, a mere right to repair falls short of what is needed in the digital era. Users must be given full control over the technology they use in their daily lives. We need a right to modify, customise and improve our legally acquired devices. The fact that copyright law currently prohibits this is disempowering and invites abuse, as the Polish case shows.”

A similar problem is also observed with computer games, where manufacturers make popular games unusable at will. In collaboration with the gamer initiative “Stop killing games”, the pirate party is calling for cultural protection of video games.

patrick-breyer.de/en/stopkilli…