With both of the dominant display technologies today – LCD and OLED – being far from perfect, there is still plenty of room in the market for the Next Big Thing. One of the technologies being worked on is called PeLED, for Perovskite LED. As a semiconductor material, it can both be induced to emit photons as well as respond rather strongly to incoming photons. That is a trick that today’s displays haven’t managed without integrating additional sensors. This technology could be used to create e.g. touch screens without additional hardware, as recently demonstrated by [Chunxiong Bao] and colleagues at Linköping University in Sweden and Nanjing University in China.

Their paper in Nature Electronics describes the construction of photo-responsive metal halide perovskite pixels, covering the typical red (CsPbI3−xBrx), green (FAPbBr3), and blue (CsPbBr3−xClx) wavelengths. The article also describes the display’s photo-sensing ability to determine where a finger is placed on the display. In addition, it can work as an ambient light sensor, a scanner, and a solar cell to charge a capacitor. In related research by [Yun Gao] et al. in Nature Electronics, PeLEDs are demonstrated with 1 microsecond response time.

As usual with perovskites, their lack of stability remains their primary obstacle. In the article by [Chunxiong Bao] et al. the manufactured device with red pixels was reduced to 80% of initial brightness after 18.5 hours. While protecting the perovskites from oxygen, moisture, etc. helps, this inherent instability may prevent PeLEDs from ever becoming commercialized in display technology. Sounds like a great challenge for the next Hackaday Prize!

[Thomas Scherrer] likes to tear down old test equipment, and often, we remember the devices he opens up or — at least — we’ve heard of them. However, this time, he’s got a Hung Chang HC-F100 multifunction counter, which is a vintage 1986 instrument that can reach 100 MHz.

Inside, the product is clearly a child of its time period. There’s a transformer for the linear supply, through-hole components, and an Intersil frequency counter on a chip. Everything is easy to get to and large enough to see.

Powering it up, the display lit up readily. The counter seemed to work with no difficulties, which was a bit of a surprise.

The oscillator inside has a temperature regulator so that once warmed up, it should be more or less stable. Touching it disturbs it, but you really shouldn’t be making real measurements with the top off while you are poking around on the inside.

This would pair well with a period function generator. Compare it to a modern version.

youtube.com/embed/Zwmjk0Cpsig?…

Begun, the Spectrum Wars have. First, it was AM radio getting the shaft (last item) and being yanked out of cars for the supposed impossibility of peaceful coexistence with rolling broadband EMI generators EVs. That battle has gone back and forth for the last year or two here in the US, with lawmakers even getting involved at one point (first item) by threatening legislation to make terrestrial AM radio available in every car sold. We’re honestly not sure where it stands now in the US, but now the Swiss seem to be entering the fray a little up the dial by turning off all their analog FM broadcasts at the end of the year. This doesn’t seem to be related to interference — after all, no static at all — but more from the standpoint of reclaiming spectrum that’s no longer turning a profit. There are apparently very few analog FM receivers in use in Switzerland anymore, with everyone having switched to DAB+ or streaming to get their music fix, and keeping FM transmitters on the air isn’t cheap, so the numbers are just stacked against the analog stations. It’s hard to say if this is a portent of things to come in other parts of the world, but it certainly doesn’t bode well for the overall health of terrestrial broadcasting. “First they came for AM radio, and I did nothing because I’m not old enough to listen to AM radio. But then they came for analog FM radio, and when I lost my album-oriented classic rock station, I realized that I’m actually old enough for AM.”

Have you or a loved one been injured by falling space debris? You may be entitled to significant compensation. Call 1-800-SPACEJUNK for a free consultation with one of our attorney specialists. OK, maybe it hasn’t gotten to that point yet, but when SpaceX has set up a space debris hotline, you know the lawsuits are just around the corner. The move seems to be related to a piece of junk that fell on a campground in North Carolina earlier in the year which was identified as a section of a SpaceX Dragon that had brought astronauts to the ISS. The rather furry-looking piece of debris has apparently remained on the campground and is even being used to attract business, which seems a far better outcome than the Florida family whose roof caught a chunk of an ISS battery pack. No word on what happens if you call the SpaceX hotline to report something, but if black-suited goons don’t rush to the scene in a Cybertruck, we’ll be disappointed.

If you’ve been around Hackaday for a while, the name Anool Mahidharia will probably be familiar to you. Aside from writing over 300 articles for us, Anool has been a driving force behind The Maker’s Asylum hackspace in Mumbai, where among a ton of other achievements he managed to spearhead the development of an affordable open-source oxygen concentrator during the darkest days of the Covid-19 pandemic. All that was side action on his main gig running test and measurement company Lumetronics. Anool has decided to shut the business down and sell off all the contents of the shop, which contains some really cool machines and equipment. If you’re handy to Mumbai you’ll definitely want to check this out. Anool, we’re not sure what the future holds for you, and we certainly hope you’re not hanging things up for good, but if you are, “So long, and thanks for all the hacks.”

The entire point of a submarine is to be invisible, to dip beneath the waves and imitate a patch of perfectly normal seawater as convincingly as possible. So we mere mortals have very few opportunities to see submarines at all, let alone see one maneuver. But if you’re anywhere near the Heidelberg area, you just might get a chance to see U17, a Type 206 diesel-electric sub that served in the Bundesmarine until 2010, as it’s being moved to its new home at the Technik Museen Sinsheim. A lot of the journey is on barges along the Rhine and Neckar rivers, at least until it arrives in Haßmersheim, whereupon the 90-meter boat will take to the road in a circuitous route to its new home. Can’t get to Germany to watch it in person? No worries — there’s a live stream for that.

Speaking of old tube-shaped objects, we know that compressed gas cylinders are built to last, but one was recently found that’s been in continuous service for over a century. Gas cylinders are subject to periodic inspection, for obvious reasons, and get a date stamped into their neck once they pass. The stalwart cylinder, currently holding carbon dioxide gas, has date stamps going back to 1921, and may even have older stamps lying beneath labels with fancy new-fangled 2D barcodes. Quite a contrast to a date stamped into the steel with a hammer and die, and it only emphasizes how old this thing is and how much of our technological history it has witnessed — so far.

And finally, if you think your job sucks, you’re probably right. But even so, it’s not worth ending it all, as a “civil service robot” apparently did by casting itself down a stairwell. The bot, apparently despondent thanks to a zero-wage, dead-end job that entailed shuffling documents around a municipal office in Gumi, South Korea, was seen rolling about in circles on a landing before taking the fatal plunge, which witnesses seemed to think was deliberate. The robot’s remains were collected and a post-mortem examination is being conducted to see what went wrong. The suicidal robot, built by California start-up Bear Robotics, which disappointingly does not appear to build robotic bears, seemed to have been the only one of its peers with the ability to call elevators and move between floors of its own volition. So maybe it wasn’t so much a suicide but a case of workplace jealousy and murder most foul.

Gli sviluppatori di YouTube stanno sperimentando l’incorporamento di annunci direttamente nel flusso video per rendere più difficile il blocco degli annunci da parte degli ad blocker.

Questa innovazione è stata notata per la prima volta dai creatori dell’estensione del browser open source SponsorBlock, che raccoglie informazioni su quali frammenti video contengono contenuti sponsorizzati per saltarli.

Gli autori di SponsorBlock hanno avvertito che l’introduzione della pubblicità lato server interrompe la funzionalità dell’estensione e sono già in corso i lavori per risolvere questo problema. Inoltre, incorporare annunci nel flusso video influisce sull’efficacia di altri blocchi utilizzati dalle persone su YouTube.

Il fatto è che YouTube attualmente utilizza l’implementazione della pubblicità lato client, quando gli script JavaScript e il lettore video caricano e visualizzano la pubblicità sul dispositivo dell’utente. Cioè, il flusso video e la pubblicità sono separati e il lettore è programmato per mettere in pausa i contenuti e riprodurre la pubblicità in punti specifici.

La maggior parte dei AD Blocker disabilita la pubblicità su YouTube bloccando gli script JavaScript utilizzati per inserire pubblicità nel flusso video. SponsorBlock funziona in modo leggermente diverso: raccoglie informazioni su diversi segmenti video e consente agli utenti di saltare le integrazioni degli sponsor.

La pubblicità sul lato server consente di incorporarla direttamente nel flusso video, cioè anche prima che il contenuto venga consegnato allo spettatore. Di conseguenza, gli utenti ricevono un flusso continuo in cui la pubblicità è già integrata.

SponsorBlock spiega che YouTube trasmette video attraverso una serie di piccoli pezzi che vengono “cuciti” insieme per creare un flusso video continuo. L’ordine in cui vengono riprodotti questi snippet è determinato dal file manifest e quando un utente apre un video, il server YouTube gli trasmette una playlist che include sia il contenuto che gli snippet dell’annuncio.

Questo approccio complica il lavoro di SponsorBlocks perché sposta i timestamp per i contenuti sponsorizzati e, a seconda della lunghezza dell’annuncio, questo spostamento cambia. Inoltre, ciò crea difficoltà ad altri AD Blocker, che sono meno in grado di riconoscere gli annunci pubblicitari che fanno parte del flusso video (a differenza delle iniezioni lato client facilmente rilevabili).

Gli sviluppatori di SponsorBlocks scrivono che per ora sono costretti a bloccare i messaggi dai browser in cui viene introdotta la pubblicità lato server per evitare la corruzione dei dati. Tuttavia, se YouTube decidesse di implementare la pubblicità lato server su scala più ampia, questo approccio diventerà inefficace.

L'articolo YouTube Cambia le Regole del Gioco: Addio Ad Blocker? proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

Conventional batteries have anodes and cathodes, but a new design from the University of Chicago and the University of California San Diego lacks an anode. While this has been done before, according to the University, this is the first time a solid-state sodium battery has successfully used this architecture.

Sodium is abundant compared to lithium, so batteries that use sodium are attractive. According to the University of Chicago’s news release:

Anode-free batteries remove the anode and store the ions on an electrochemical deposition of alkali metal directly on the current collector. This approach enables higher cell voltage, lower cell cost, and increased energy density…

Of course, there are also downsides. In particular, making anodeless batteries with liquid electrolytes can be easier to build, but the liquid forms solids that impede the battery’s performance over time.

The new battery uses an aluminum powder as a current collector. Interestingly, while this is a solid, it flows more like a liquid. Combined with a solid electrolyte, the battery flips the usual idea of a solid cathode and a liquid electrolyte.

We are always interested in new battery tech. However, we rarely see them out in the wild. Maybe AI will have better luck.

@Notizie dall'Italia e dal mondo

Anche la #PoliziadiStato italiana (a mezzo del Servizio Polizia Postale e per la Sicurezza Cibernetica) ha partecipato al Referral Action Day di #Europol mirato ad identificare e combattere i contenuti antisemiti online (a sua volta mediante l'Unità europea per le segnalazioni su Internet denominata EU IRU - Internet Referral Unit - che rileva e indaga sui contenuti dannosi presenti su Internet e nei social media).

Si è trattato di una operazione coordinata, guidata dalle autorità di Svizzera e Regno Unito, svoltasi il 27 giugno scorso, che ha coinvolto le forze dell'ordine di 18 paesi (leggi nora a conclusione), che hanno lavorato in tandem come cennato all'Unità EU IRU di Europol e i principali fornitori di servizi online.

Il Referral Action Day ha preso di mira un'ampia gamma di contenuti antisemiti, tra cui incitamento all'odio, negazione dell'Olocausto e glorificazione della violenza contro la comunità ebraica. L'obiettivo principale era rimuovere i contenuti illegali e garantire che le piattaforme online aderissero alle normative europee in materia di incitamento all'odio e discriminazione.

In totale, sono stati identificati e segnalati circa 2.000 contenuti antisemiti ai fornitori di servizi online per la rimozione.

Il focus del Referral Action Day nasce dall'aumento di un antisemitismo diffuso, giustificato e coltivato nelle sfere jihadiste e nei gruppi estremisti di destra e di sinistra online. Questo contenuto antisemita viene diffuso anche da individui non affiliati su varie piattaforme online. A quanto è risultato la ondata di discorsi d'odio è stata innescata dall'attacco del 7 ottobre dell'organizzazione terroristica Hamas contro Israele e dalla successiva risposta militare israeliana.

Le National Internet Referral Unit e le unità di polizia specializzate dei seguenti paesi hanno preso parte a questo Referral Action Day: Albania, Austria, Bosnia-Erzegovina, Danimarca, Francia, Germania, Ungheria, Irlanda,Italia, Lituania, Malta, Portogallo, Romania, Spagna, Svezia, Svizzera, Ucraina e Regno Unito.
#EUIRU