Years ago there was a sharp divide in desktop computing between the mundane PC-type machines, and the so-called workstations which were the UNIX powerhouses of the day. A lot of familiar names produced these high-end systems, including the king of the minicomputer world, DEC. The late-80s version of their DECstation line had a MIPS processor, and ran ULTRIX and DECWindows, their versions of UNIX and X respectively. When we used one back in the day it was a very high-end machine, but now as [rscott2049] shows us, it can be emulated on an RP2040 microcontroller.

On the business card sized board is an RP2040, 32 MB of PSRAM, an Ethernet interface, and a VGA socket. The keyboard and mouse are USB. It drives a monochrome screen at 1024 x 864 pixels, which would have been quite something over three decades ago.

It’s difficult to communicate how powerful a machine like this felt back in the very early 1990s, when by today’s standards it seems laughably low-spec. It’s worth remembering though that the software of the day was much less demanding and lacking in bloat. We’d be interested to see whether this could be used as an X server to display a more up-to-date application on another machine, for at least an illusion of a modern web browser loading Hackaday on DECWindows.

Full details of the project can be found in its GitHub repository.

Spain's government announced a crackdown on Wednesday (3 July) on short-term and seasonal holiday lettings amid rising anger from locals who feel priced out of the housing market.

euractiv.com/section/platforms…

Like many of us, [MIKROWAVE1] had a lot of electronic toys growing up. In a video you can watch below, he asks the question: “Did electronic toys influence your path?” Certainly, for us, the answer was yes.

The CB “base station” looked familiar although ours was marked “General Electric.” Some of us certainly had things similar to the 150-in-one kit and versions of the REMCO broadcast system. There were many versions of crystal radio kits, although a kit for that always seemed a little like cheating.

Shortwave radios were fun in those days, too. We miss the days when you could find interesting stations on shortwave. We were also happy to see the P-box kits. If you weren’t interested in radio, there were also digital logic kits including a “computer” that was really a giant multi-pole switch that could create logic gates.

It made us wonder what toys are launching the next generation of engineers. We are not convinced that video games, Tik Tok, and ChatGPT are going to serve the same purpose these toys did for many of us. What do you think? What were your favorite toys and what do think will serve that purpose for the next generation?

youtube.com/embed/jKgUQNV37G0?…

When you buy a cheap ham radio handy-talkie, you usually get a little “rubber ducky” antenna with it. You can also buy many replacement ones that are at least longer. But how good are they? [Learnelectronics] wanted to know, too, so he broke out his NanoVNA and found out that they were all bad, although some were worse than others. You can see the results in the — sometimes fuzzy — video below.

Of course, bad is in the eye of the beholder and you probably suspected that most of them weren’t super great, but they do seem especially bad. So much so, that, at first, he suspected he was doing something wrong. The SWR was high all across the bands the antennas targeted.

It won’t come as a surprise to find that making an antenna work at 2 meters and 70 centimeters probably isn’t that easy. In addition, it is hard to imagine the little stubby antenna the size of your thumb could work well no matter what. Still, you’d think at least the longer antennas would be a little better.

Hams have had SWR meters for years, of course. But it sure is handy to be able to connect an antenna and see its performance over a wide band of frequencies. Some of the antennas weren’t bad on the UHF band. That makes sense because the antenna is physically larger but at VHF the size didn’t seem a big difference.

He even showed up a little real-world testing and, as you might predict, the test results did not lie. However, only the smallest antenna was totally unable to hit the local repeater.

Of course, you can always make your own antenna. It doesn’t have to take much.

youtube.com/embed/3aE8Q8kgkGk?…

LCD televisions are a technological miracle, but if they have an annoying side it’s that some of them are a bit lacklustre when it comes to displaying black. [Mousa] has a solution, involving a small LCD and a bit of lateral thinking.

These screens work by the LCD panel being placed in front of a bright backlight, and only letting light through at bright parts of the picture. Since LCD isn’t a perfect attenuator, some of the light can make its way through, resulting in those less than perfect blacks. More recent screens replace the bright white backlight with an array of LEDs that light up with the image, but the electronics to make that happen are not exactly trivial.

The solution? Find a small LCD panel and feed it from the same HDMI source as a big panel. Then place an array of LDRs on the front of the small LCD, driving an array of white LEDs through transistor drivers to make a new responsive backlight. We’re not sure we’d go to all this trouble, but it certainly looks quite cool as you can see below the break.

This may be the first responsive backlight we’ve brought you, but more than one Ambilight clone has graced these pages.

youtube.com/embed/VY57LZGHuSw?…

@Notizie dall'Italia e dal mondo

In Abruzzo di un’organizzazione criminale (svincolata da contesti di criminalità organizzata di tipo mafioso) formata da cittadini italiani, spagnoli, argentini e colombiani, era dedita al traffico, anche internazionale, di sostanze stupefacenti del tipo hashish e cocaina.

Le sostanze stupefacenti, approvvigionate in Spagna da alcuni indagati residenti nel Paese iberico, venivano trasportate, via gomma, in Italia da corrieri che lo occultavano all’interno di autotreni nella disponibilità dell’organizzazione, per poi essere stoccati in Abruzzo a favore delle piazze di spaccio abruzzesi e marchigiane.

Il sodalizio criminale con vertice, uomini di fiducia e sodali sul territorio nazionale ed estero, poteva contare su punti di riferimento in Spagna e Germania.
Gli inquirenti, durante il lungo periodo d’indagine, hanno posto in essere diversi sequestri, per un totale di circa 100 chili di hashish e 1 chilo di cocaina, riuscendo a ricostruire i vari ruoli degli associati.

Oltre 12 arresti e 2 ulteriori misure cautelari, sono state eseguite diverse perquisizioni nei confronti di altri indagati, residenti in Spagna.

Ad operare sono stati i I Carabinieri del #ROS, che hanno avuto la collaborazione dei militari dei Comandi provinciali di Teramo, Pescara, Fermo, Ascoli Piceno, Brescia e Perugia, e in coordinamento con il #Landeskriminalamt del Nord Reno – Westfalia (Germania), l’Udyco Central della #PoliciaNacional (Spagna), la Police Judiciaire Fédérale di Mons (Belgio) e il Dipartimento Anti-Narcotici della Polizia Nazionale dell’Ucraina, hanno eseguito 14 misure cautelari (10 in carcere, 2 agli arresti domiciliari e 2 obblighi di presentazione alla Polizia Giudiziaria) – emesse dai GIP dei Tribunale de L’Aquila e Teramo, su richiesta rispettivamente della Direzione Distettuale Antimafia de L’Aquila e della Procura Ordinaria di Teramo.

Tutte le persone interessate dal provvedimento sono ritenute responsabili, a vario titolo, di associazione finalizzata al traffico illecito di sostanze stupefacenti o psicotrope e alla produzione, traffico e detenzione illeciti di sostanze stupefacenti o psicotrope (artt. 74 e 73 D.P.R. 309/1990).

L’attività investigativa, avviata nel dicembre 2021 dalla Sezione del ROS de L’Aquila e condotta con numerose e impegnative attività tecniche e dinamiche, è stata sviluppata in coordinamento con la #DCSA (Direzione Centrale per I Servizi Antidroga) anche attraverso la collaborazione di #EUROJUST e #EUROPOL, nonché col supporto della Rete @ON, a guida italiana della #DIA (Direzione Investigativa Antimafia), finanziata dalla Commissione UE.

#rete@ON #PoliceJudiciaireFédérale #НаціональнаполіціяУкраїни

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:

- [ENG] dmi.unict.it/nfarceri/articles…
- [ITA] dmi.unict.it/nfarceri/articles…

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…

^{www.dmi.unict.it}

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…