When we think of assistive prostheses or braces, we often think of hard and rigid contraptions. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that prosthetic limbs were still being made out of wood. Even devices made of more modern materials tend to have a robotic quality that inevitably limits their dexterity. However, advancements in soft robotics could allow for assistive devices that more closely mimic their organic counterparts.

At Supercon 2023, Benedetta Lia Mandelli and Emilio Sordi presented their work in developing soft actuator orthosis — specifically, a brace that can help tetraplegics with limited finger and thumb control. Individuals with certain spinal cord injuries can move their arms and wrists but are unable to grasp objects.
A traditional flexor hinge brace
Existing braces can help restore this ability, but they are heavy and limited by the fact that the wearer needs to hold their wrist in a specific position to keep pressure on the mechanism. By replacing the rigid linkage used in the traditional orthosis, the experience of using the device is improved in many ways.

Not only is it lighter and more comfortable to wear, but the grip strength can also be more easily adjusted. The most important advancement however is how the user operates the device.

Like the more traditional designs, the wearer controls the grip through the position of their wrist. But the key difference with the soft actuator version is that the user doesn’t need to maintain that wrist position to keep the grip engaged. Once the inertial measurement units (IMUs) have detected the user has put their wrist into the proper position, the electronics maintain the pressure inside the actuator until commanded otherwise. This means that the user can freely move their wrist after gripping an object without inadvertently dropping it.

From Concept to Production

While much of the talk covers the advantages of their brace, the team also goes over how their design was improved from their original proof of concept work — which featured an earlier version of the soft actuator literally zip tied to the wearer’s fingers.

While the brace itself was modified, the biggest changes came to the actuator itself. The first version used two chambers, but this was eventually simplified to just one. In addition, they switched from using a pneumatic system to hydraulic. Originally, an air pump was used to pressurize the actuator, but they found a syringe pushing liquid into the actuator provided better control.

Soft Actuator Design

Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of their talk was the discussion of the soft actuator itself. In a series of slides, they described not only how the mechanism works, but how they produce them in-house using a surprisingly simple process.

Essentially, the actuator is a strip of silicone with a series of hollow chambers molded into it. When the actuator is pressurized with air or liquid, these chambers expand. Normally, this would just make the structure blow up like a balloon, but by integrating a non-elastic layer onto the bottom of the actuator, it instead causes it to curve around. Once the system releases pressure, the silicone naturally returns to its original size and shape.

Creating the actuator is as simple as pouring silicone into a custom-made mold, and then attaching a strip of cotton to one side with a bit more liquid silicone. Once cured, they cut cotton to size and the actuator is ready to go. While the team tested several shapes for the actuator, the final version is a simple rectangle, as this was determined to be the easiest to produce.

Looking Ahead

While the design is already impressive, it’s still essentially a prototype. The electronics still live on scraps of protoboard, and the team continues to research potential improvements to their actuator design — from changes to the silicone mold to different motor and gearbox options for driving the syringe. Benedetta and Emilio also want to look into different ways of controlling the actuator outside of their current IMU solution.

Ultimately, they hope to put the brace into production as a semi-assembled kit that can be put together and fitted to the wearer by a medical professional in the field. The hope is that by bringing the cost of the brace down and making it easy to customize for the individual, they can bring this assistive technology to traditionally underserved areas.

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There are some that enjoy the human element of a musical performance, delighting in the unique way an artist teases the desired sound from their instruments. Then there are those of us who listen to random bleeps, bloops, and buzzes tortured out of some crusty sound chip pulled from an 8-bit computer. It’s all very subjective.

It seems to us that the Jangle Box, created by [Rich Bernett], lands somewhere in the middle. A human is still playing the instrument, but they aren’t directly touching the strings. Instead, buttons and a potentiometer on the front of the device are used to control four small hobby motors that slap their respective strings with what appears to be the remnants of plastic propellers — we’d guess these motors were pulled from cheap personal fans. Standard guitar tuner knobs can be used to adjust the tension of each string, providing further control over the sounds produced by the device.

In the video below, [Rich] briefly explains the operation of the Jangle Box, and then launches into a performance of sorts. The goal here really isn’t to “play” the instrument in the traditional sense. Rather, he records the various noises it produces, normalizes them, and sorts them into a full octave of notes so he can use them in future compositions. The last few minutes of the video contain some electronic beats made up of the samples created from the Jangle Box.

If you’re one of his Patreon supporters you can download the sample pack yourself, otherwise, you’ll have to make your own version of the instrument to get your hands on that electro-tangy sound.

This isn’t the first original [Rich Bernett] musical creation to grace these pages, back in 2020 we covered his Cassettone synth.

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Thanks to [Stephen] for the tip.

La svolta della Francia su cyber e infowar prosegue e ha al centro Corexalys, un'azienda strategica e decisamente da osservare.

The post Controllo e manipolo, quindi sono. La svolta della Francia sulla infowar appeared first on InsideOver.

If you’re like us, you’ve studied the mathematician [Euler], but all you really remember is that you pronounce his name like “oiler” and not much else. [Welch Labs], on the other hand, not only remembers what he learned about logarithms and imaginary numbers but also has a beautiful video with helpful 3D graphics to explain the concepts.

This post, however, isn’t about that video. If you are interested in math, definitely watch it. It’s great. But it also got us thinking. What would it be like to be a high school math student today? In our day, we were lucky to have some simple 2D graph to explain concepts. Then it hit us: it probably is exactly the same.

Changing the Subject

Well, maybe not exactly, but the problem is, we are guessing that your math teacher — no offense to him or her — wasn’t the same kind of person [Welch Labs] is. To be fair, we couldn’t have produced that video either. So, the way we see it, you have a few choices.

First, maybe you get lucky and you happen to get a teacher (about math or any other subject) who is just awesome. We are lucky enough to know a few of these people, but you have to admit world-class teachers are rare, and even rarer outside of colleges and universities.

Second, maybe you have a teacher who is greatly engaged and goes out and finds material like this to share. We suspect that goes on a lot, but maybe not as much as it could. There is a whole industry, too, set up to provide teachers with materials for profit, but it often isn’t at the same quality level as something like this. That’s unsurprising. If you are a movie studio, not every movie wins the Oscar.

Third, if a student is motivated, you have an extraordinary research library at your fingertips. Individuals create amazing articles, videos, and even courses. Major universities have their course material online for anyone to use, in many cases. You just have to find it.

A Mixed Bag

This, too, is a mixed bag. While you have access to more information, you have to critically evaluate if it is correct or not. You could presume anything you found in a traditional library was probably not patently false. Not that everything in a library is true, but, statistically, the way books used to be produced and library collections created, it was far less likely than finding false information on the Internet. On the other hand, how motivated were you as a kid to do things like that? Well, being a Hackaday reader, you probably were. Maybe a better question is how many of your classmates were in the library while you were reading about computers?

In a way, it is like tech support. Sure, AI might not be the best of all possible tech support. But it might be better than what you probably will get. Realistically, every teacher can’t be the greatest, and even if they were, they probably don’t have the time to produce huge amounts of high-quality material for their classes.

The Answer? (Or, at Least, the Question)

So what’s the answer? That’s where you come in. How could we make sure that all students get access to high quality resources from everywhere? I frequently hear of kids using Khan Academy, for example, to explain things they aren’t getting from their teachers. But that’s just one resource. Are there curated lists of resources for each subject out there somewhere? If not, why not? What other ways could we get the serious educational material produced on the Web every day into the classroom? I’m sure there are lists, but we’re thinking about something with the go-to recognition of, say Wikipedia. Not just a random blog posting. Let us know what you think and what’s already out there.

Maybe the best scenario is when great teachers share their materials with the world. We just need to get the word out. Another good scenario is when great teachers let their students take the lead. If you want to see how not to produce educational videos, have a look at this series of parodies of 1970-era science videos.

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Negli ultimi anni, il panorama delle minacce informatiche è stato dominato dall’uso di malware modulari, apprezzati per la loro flessibilità e adattabilità. Tuttavia, una recente scoperta ha rivelato un cambio di paradigma nella strategia di APT42, un gruppo di hacker iraniani legato al Corpo delle Guardie Rivoluzionarie Islamiche (IRGC). In una delle loro ultime campagne, gli hacker hanno sviluppato un Trojan monolitico, consolidando diversi moduli di malware in un unico script PowerShell. Questa scelta rappresenta un ritorno a una tecnica più tradizionale, ma con implicazioni significative per la sicurezza informatica globale, suggerendo un continuo adattamento delle tattiche di guerra cibernetica iraniana alle sfide attuali. Nell’articolo che segue, esploreremo le motivazioni dietro questa mossa e le sue potenziali conseguenze.

L’Analisi del Malware Monolitico: Un Ritorno al Passato?
Tradizionalmente, i gruppi di hacker come APT42 hanno fatto largo uso di malware modulari, che permettono una configurazione flessibile delle funzionalità in base all’obiettivo. Questo approccio ha offerto un vantaggio notevole, consentendo di aggiungere o rimuovere componenti anche dopo che l’infezione era già avvenuta, adattandosi dinamicamente alle esigenze operative. Tuttavia, la recente scoperta di un Trojan monolitico, in cui tutti i moduli sono consolidati in un unico file, segna una svolta interessante nelle tattiche di APT42.

L’impiego di un Trojan monolitico presenta diversi vantaggi, come la riduzione della probabilità che il malware venga rilevato durante la sua trasmissione. Inoltre, un singolo file è più facile da distribuire e può essere meno vulnerabile a tecniche di difesa che mirano a individuare e bloccare specifici moduli del malware. Questo Trojan monolitico, scritto in PowerShell, è stato utilizzato in attacchi recenti contro obiettivi israeliani, evidenziando la portata internazionale delle operazioni di APT42​ (IFMAT)​ (OODA Loop).

Tattiche di Attacco e Impersonificazione
APT42 non si limita a sviluppare malware sofisticato; il gruppo è anche noto per le sue avanzate tecniche di phishing, che spesso coinvolgono l’impersonificazione di figure autorevoli o organizzazioni di rilievo. In diverse operazioni, i membri di APT42 si sono finti giornalisti di testate internazionali, organizzatori di eventi o rappresentanti di ONG per guadagnare la fiducia delle loro vittime. Questo tipo di inganno è stato utilizzato per distribuire malware a obiettivi situati principalmente in Medio Oriente, Stati Uniti ed Europa, con l’obiettivo di raccogliere informazioni sensibili e supportare gli interessi strategici iraniani​ (TechRadar).

Conclusione:
Il passaggio di APT42 a un Trojan monolitico rappresenta una mossa strategica che evidenzia l’adattabilità e l’evoluzione delle tattiche di attacco utilizzate dai gruppi di hacker sponsorizzati dallo Stato iraniano. Questo cambiamento, sebbene possa sembrare un ritorno a metodologie più tradizionali, potrebbe effettivamente rappresentare una risposta alle contromisure moderne adottate dalle difese informatiche globali. Per le organizzazioni e i professionisti della sicurezza informatica, questa evoluzione sottolinea l’importanza di rimanere vigili e di aggiornare continuamente le proprie strategie di difesa. In un contesto in cui le minacce sono in costante evoluzione, l’approccio proattivo e l’innovazione nella sicurezza sono fondamentali per contrastare efficacemente attacchi sempre più sofisticati.

L'articolo L’Evoluzione del Malware Iraniano: APT42 Passa dal Modulare al Monolitico proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

due testi di Luca Zanini

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