The CEO of Meta says "the average American has fewer than three friends, fewer than three people they would consider friends. And the average person has demand for meaningfully more.”#Meta #chatbots #AI
Telescopes are great tools for observing the heavens, or even surrounding landscapes if you have the right vantage point. You don’t have to be a professional to build one though; you can make all kinds of telescopes as an amateur, as this guide from the Springfield Telesfcope Makers demonstrates.
The guide is remarkably deep and rich; no surprise given that the Springfield Telescope Makers club dates back to the early 20th century. It starts out with the basics—how to select a telescope, and how to decide whether to make or buy your desired instrument. It also explains in good detail why you might want to start with a simple Newtonian reflector setup on Dobsonian mounts if you’re crafting your first telescope, in no small part because mirrors are so much easier to craft than lenses for the amateur. From there, the guide gets into the nitty gritty of mirror production, right down to grinding and polishing techniques, as well as how to test your optical components and assemble your final telescope.
It’s hard to imagine a better place to start than here as an amateur telescope builder. It’s a rich mine of experience and practical advice that should give you the best possible chance of success. You might also like to peruse some of the other telescope projects we’ve covered previously. And, if you succeed, you can always tell us of your tales on the tipsline!
Historically, efforts to create original games and tools, port over open source emulators, and explore a game console’s hardware and software have been generally lumped together under the banner of “homebrew.” While not the intended outcome, it’s often the case that exploring a console in this manner unlocks methods to run pirated games. For example, if a bug is found in the system’s firmware that enables a clever developer to run “Hello World”, you can bet that the next thing somebody tries to write is a loader that exploits that same bug to play a ripped commercial game.
But for those who are passionate about being able to develop software for their favorite game consoles, and the developers who create the libraries and toolchains that make that possible, the line between homebrew and piracy is a critical boundary. The general belief has always been that keeping piracy at arm’s length made it less likely that the homebrew community would draw the ire of the console manufacturers.
As such, homebrew libraries and tools are held to a particularly high standard. Homebrew can only thrive if developed transparently, and every effort must be taken to avoid tainting the code with proprietary information or code. Any deviation could be the justification a company like Nintendo or Sony needs to swoop in.
Unfortunately, there are fears that covenant has been broken in light of multiple allegations of impropriety against the developers of libogc, the C library used by nearly all homebrew software for the Wii and GameCube. From potential license violations to uncomfortable questions about the origins of the project, there’s mounting evidence that calls the viability of the library into question. Some of these allegations, if true, would effectively mean the distribution and use of the vast majority of community-developed software for both consoles is now illegal.
Homebrew Channel Blows the Whistle
For those unfamiliar, the Wii Homebrew Channel (HBC) is a front-end used to load homebrew games and programs on the Nintendo Wii, and is one of the very first things anyone who’s modded their console will install. It’s not an exaggeration to say that essentially anyone who’s run homebrew software on their Wii has done it through HBC.
But as of a few days ago, the GitHub repository for the project was archived, and lead developer Hector Martin added a long explanation to the top of its README that serves as an overview of the allegations being made against the team behind libogc.
Somewhat surprisingly, Martin starts by admitting that he’s believed libogc contained ill-gotten code since at least 2008. He accuses the developers of decompiling commercial games to get access to the C code, as well as copying from leaked documentation from the official Nintendo software development kit (SDK).
For many, that would have been enough to stop using the library altogether. In his defense, Martin claims that he and the other developers of the HBC didn’t realize the full extent to which libogc copied code from other sources. Had they realized, Martin says they would have launched an effort to create a new low-level library for the Wii.
But as the popularity of the Homebrew Channel increased, Martin and his team felt they had no choice but to reluctantly accept the murky situation with libogc for the good of the Wii homebrew scene, and left the issue alone. That is, until new information came to light.
Inspiration Versus Copying
The story then fast-forwards to the present day, and new claims from others in the community that large chunks of libogc were actually copied from the Real-Time Executive for Multiprocessor Systems (RTEMS) project — a real-time operating system that was originally designed for military applications but that these days finds itself used in a wide-range of embedded systems. Martin links to a GitHub repository maintained by a user known as derek57 that supposedly reversed the obfuscation done by the libogc developers to try and hide the fact they had merged in code from RTEMS.
Now, it should be pointed out that RTEMS is actually an open source project. As you might expect from a codebase that dates back to 1993, these days it includes several licenses that were inherited from bits of code added over the years. But the primary and preferred license is BSD 2-Clause, which Hackaday readers may know is a permissive license that gives other projects the right to copy and reuse the code more or less however they chose. All it asks in return is attribution, that is, for the redistributed code to retain the copyright notice which credits the original authors.
In other words, if the libogc developers did indeed copy code from RTEMS, all they had to do was properly credit the original authors. Instead, it’s alleged that they superficially refactored the code to make it appear different, presumably so they would not have to acknowledge where they sourced it from. Martin points to the following function as an example of RTEMS code being rewritten for libogc:
While this isolated function doesn’t necessarily represent the entirety of the story, it does seem hard to believe that the libogc implementation could be so similar to the RTEMS version by mere happenstance. Even if the code was not literally copy and pasted from RTEMS, it’s undeniable that it was used as direct inspiration.
libogc Developers Respond
At the time of this writing, there doesn’t appear to be an official response to the allegations raised by Martin and others in the community. But individual developers involved with libogc have attempted to explain their side of the story through social media, comments on GitHub issues, and personal blog posts.
The most detailed comes from Alberto Mardegan, a relatively new contributor to libogc. While the code in question was added before his time with the project, he directly addresses the claim that functions were lifted from RTEMS in a blog post from April 28th. While he defends the libogc developers against the accusations of outright code theft, his conclusions are not exactly a ringing endorsement for how the situation was handled:
In short, Mardegan admits that some of the code is so similar that it must have been at least inspired by reading the relevant functions from RTEMS, but that he believes this falls short of outright copyright infringement. As to why the libogc developers didn’t simply credit the RTEMS developers anyway, he theorizes that they may have wanted to avoid any association with a project originally developed for military use.
As for claims that libogc was based on stolen Nintendo code, the libogc developers seem to consider it irrelevant at this point. When presented with evidence that the library was built on proprietary code, Dave [WinterMute] Murphy, who maintains the devkitPro project that libogc is a component of, responded that “The official stance of the project is that we have no interest in litigating something that occurred 21 years ago”.
In posts to Mastodon, Murphy acknowledges that some of the code may have been produced by reverse engineering parts of the official Nintendo SDK, but then goes on to say that “There was no reading of source code or tools to turn assembly into C”.
From his comments, it’s clear that Murphy believes that the benefit of having libogc available to the community outweighs concerns over its origins. Further, he feels that enough time has passed since its introduction that the issue is now moot. In comparison, when other developers in the homebrew and emulator community have found themselves in similar situations, they’ve gone to great lengths to avoid tainting their projects with leaked materials.
Doing the Right Thing?
The Wii Homebrew Channel itself had not seen any significant updates in several years, so Martin archiving the project was somewhat performative to begin with. This would seem to track with his reputation — in addition to clashes with the libogc developers, Martin has also recently left Asahi Linux after a multi-bag-of-popcorn spat within the kernel development community that ended with Linus Torvalds declaring that “the problem is you”.
But that doesn’t mean there isn’t merit to some of his claims. At least part of the debate could be settled by simply acknowledging that RTEMS was an inspiration for libogc in the library’s code or documentation. The fact that the developers seem reluctant to make this concession in light of the evidence is troubling. If not an outright license violation, it’s at least a clear disregard for the courtesy and norms of the open source community.
As for how the leaked Nintendo SDK factors in, there probably isn’t enough evidence one way or another to ever determine what really happened. Martin says code was copied verbatim, the libogc team says it was reverse engineered.
The key takeaway here is that both parties agree that the leaked information existed, and that it played some part in the origins of the library. The debate therefore isn’t so much about if the leaked information was used, but how it was used. For some developers, that alone would be enough to pass on libogc and look for an alternative.
Of course, in the end, that’s the core of the problem. There is no alternative, and nearly 20 years after the Wii was released, there’s little chance of another group having the time or energy to create a new low-level C library for the system. Especially without good reason.
The reality is that whatever interaction there was with the Nintendo SDK happened decades ago, and if anyone was terribly concerned about it there would have been repercussions by now. By extension, it seems unlikely that any projects that rely on libogc will draw the attention of Nintendo’s legal department at this point.
In short, life will go on for those still creating and using homebrew on the Wii. But for those who develop and maintain open source code, consider this to be a cautionary tale — even if we can’t be completely sure of what’s fact or fiction in this case.
The Jye Tech DSO-150 is a capable compact scope that you can purchase as a kit. If you’re really feeling the DIY ethos, you can go even further, too, and kit your scope out with the latest open source firmware.
The Open-DSO-150 firmware is a complete rewrite from the ground up, and packs the scope with lots of neat features. You get one analog or three digital channels, and triggers are configurable for rising, falling, or both edges on all signals. There is also a voltmeter mode, serial data dump feature, and a signal statistics display for broader analysis.
For the full list of features, just head over to the GitHub page. If you’re planning to install it on your own DSO-150, you can build the firmware in the free STM32 version of Atollic trueSTUDIO.
La compagnia ha parlato di un attacco mirato ai sistemi IT, senza fornire ulteriori dettagli sulle modalità o l’identità degli attori coinvolti. L’episodio ha sollevato allarme in tutto il settore energetico nordamericano, evidenziando come anche le infrastrutture moderne possano crollare sotto l’impatto di operazioni cibernetiche ben coordinate.
Sebbene l’attacco risulti in fase di contenimento, l’aggiornamento del primo maggio segnala che servizi fondamentali come MyAccount continuano a presentare malfunzionamenti. Questo attacco non avviene in un momento qualsiasi. Solo pochi giorni prima, Spagna e Portogallo hanno subito un blackout su larga scala, che ha lasciato milioni di cittadini al buio per ore. Emera e Nova Scotia Power rispondono all'incidente di sicurezza informatica 28 aprile 2025 – Emera Inc. e Nova Scotia Power hanno annunciato oggi, il 25 aprile 2025, di aver scoperto e di star rispondendo attivamente a un incidente di sicurezza informatica che ha comportato un accesso non autorizzato a determinate parti della sua rete canadese e ai server che supportano parti delle sue applicazioni aziendali.
Immediatamente dopo il rilevamento della minaccia esterna, le aziende hanno attivato i propri protocolli di risposta agli incidenti e di continuità operativa, hanno coinvolto i principali esperti di sicurezza informatica di terze parti e hanno intrapreso azioni per contenere e isolare i server interessati e prevenire ulteriori intrusioni. Le forze dell'ordine sono state informate.
Non vi è stata alcuna interruzione per nessuna delle nostre attività fisiche in Canada, compresi gli impianti di generazione, trasmissione e distribuzione di Nova Scotia Power, il Maritime Link o l'oleodotto Brunswick, e l'incidente non ha influito sulla capacità dell'azienda di servire in modo sicuro e affidabile i clienti in Nuova Scozia. Non vi è stato alcun impatto sulle aziende di servizi di Emera negli Stati Uniti o nei Caraibi.
Emera pubblicherà i suoi bilanci finanziari del primo trimestre e l'informativa e analisi sulla gestione l'8 maggio 2025, come previsto. Al momento, non si prevede che l'incidente abbia un impatto significativo sulla performance finanziaria dell'azienda.
Il nostro team IT sta lavorando alacremente con gli esperti di sicurezza informatica per ripristinare la funzionalità delle parti interessate del nostro sistema IT. Sebbene la versione ufficiale parla di problemi tecnici alla rete europea, numerosi gruppi hacker hanno rivendicato l’azione, lasciando dubbi sul fatto che possa essere stato un sabotaggio informatico. La coincidenza temporale tra l’attacco in Canada e il blackout europeo non può essere ignorata, facendo pensare a una nuova fase della guerra ibrida digitale che punta direttamente al cuore delle infrastrutture critiche. Aggiornamento del 1 maggio sull’incidente informatico
Come destabilizzare un paese? Dalla rete elettrica
Il settore energetico è da tempo un obiettivo strategico per chi vuole destabilizzare un paese o inviare un messaggio politico forte. Gli attacchi informatici alle reti elettriche possono causare danni immediati e visibili alla popolazione, minando la fiducia nelle istituzioni e creando un clima di caos. La situazione di NS Power è l’ennesimo segnale d’allarme: una sola breccia nei sistemi IT può avere ripercussioni concrete su milioni di persone, rendendo evidente quanto sia sottile la linea tra il digitale e il reale.
Mentre gli esperti lavorano per contenere i danni e ripristinare i servizi, la domanda che in molti si pongono è: chi sarà il prossimo? Gli attacchi informatici alle utility stanno diventando sempre più frequenti, sofisticati e coordinati. In uno scenario globale in cui i conflitti si combattono anche a colpi di malware e exploitzero-day, le aziende che gestiscono energia, trasporti e comunicazioni devono prepararsi ad affrontare minacce costanti e sempre più aggressive.
Non è più solo una questione tecnica, ma geopolitica. Gli attacchi a NS Power e il blackout iberico sono due facce della stessa medaglia: dimostrano che la cyberwar è già in atto e colpisce senza preavviso, ovunque ci sia un’infrastruttura da bloccare o una nazione da destabilizzare. Chi oggi controlla il codice, domani potrebbe controllare l’energia, la sicurezza e la vita quotidiana di intere popolazioni.
Xiaomi è entrata nel mercato dell’intelligenza artificiale con il proprio modello open source chiamato MiMo. Il colosso tecnologico cinese, in precedenza noto principalmente per gli smartphone e l’elettronica di consumo, ha scelto il momento per l’annuncio subito dopo l’aggiornamento del modello Qwen da parte di Alibaba.
Gli esperti attribuiscono la decisione di Xiaomi al recente successo di DeepSeek, il cui sviluppo R1 ha dimostrato che è possibile creare soluzioni di intelligenza artificiale efficaci a costi inferiori. I risultati iniziali dei test sembrano promettenti: la rete neurale ha già superato le prestazioni di o1-mini di OpenAI e Qwen di Alibaba in numerosi test di benchmark. Sebbene l’azienda sia arrivata in ritardo nella corsa alle smart car, vede questa mossa come parte di una strategia a lungo termine. Secondo alcune fonti, la direzione stava discutendo di questa possibilità da tempo, ma solo ora ha deciso di lanciare il progetto.
E questa non è la prima iniziativa degli ultimi tempi: nel 2024 l’azienda aveva già dominato il mercato automobilistico lanciando l’auto elettrica SU7. È vero che il debutto è stato rovinato da un grave incidente e dal conseguente calo del 15% delle azioni, ma ciò non ha impedito agli sviluppatori di continuare a esplorare nuove direzioni.
Il nuovo modello, come l’R1 di DeepSeek, imita il processo di ragionamento umano nella risoluzione dei problemi. “Questo è il primo risultato del lavoro del nostro team appena formato per sviluppare programmi di intelligenza artificiale di base“, hanno affermato i rappresentanti sul social network WeChat.
È interessante notare che, dopo l’annuncio, le azioni della società sono aumentate di oltre il 5% sulla Borsa di Hong Kong.
Le forze dell’ordine americane hanno arrestato due presunti leader del gruppo estremista internazionale “764”. Leonidas Varagiannis, 21 anni, noto con lo pseudonimo di “War”, è stato arrestato in Grecia lunedì, mentre il suo complice ventenne, Prasan Nepal, noto con il nome di “Trippy”, è stato preso in custodia nella Carolina del Nord il 22 aprile.
Entrambi i cittadini statunitensi che hanno ricoperto posizioni chiave nell’organizzazione dalla fine del 2020 all’inizio del 2025 rischiano l’ergastolo. Il Nepal ha preso il controllo del gruppo dopo che il precedente coordinatore, un uomo di 47 anni del Michigan, è stato arrestato e condannato a 30 anni di carcere nel 2021.
“Questi individui sono accusati di gestire una delle reti criminali più pericolose che abbiamo mai incontrato: una società fondata sul terrore e sulla deliberata violenza contro i bambini”, ha affermato il procuratore generale Pamela Bondi, sottolineando la determinazione delle forze dell’ordine a smantellare l’intera infrastruttura criminale.
La polizia ha stabilito che gli imputati hanno coordinato le loro azioni attraverso diverse piattaforme Internet, tra cui il gruppo chiuso “764 Inferno” su uno dei sistemi di messaggistica sicura. L’accesso a questa chat era concesso solo ai membri della “cerchia ristretta” che avevano ricevuto un invito personale dal Nepal o da Varagiannis.
Gli autori sceglievano deliberatamente le loro vittime tra ragazze con problemi psicologici. I colpevoli le costringevano a mutilarsi, incidendo sul loro corpo segni e simboli particolari e a creare materiali degradanti di natura sessuale. Il contenuto risultante veniva compilato nei cosiddetti “Lorebook” digitali, che fungevano da una sorta di valuta all’interno della rete: venivano scambiati, conservati in caveau criptati e utilizzati per reclutare nuovi membri o avanzare di status nella gerarchia del gruppo.
Secondo l’indagine, i leader del gruppo “764” erano coinvolti in crimini ai danni di almeno otto minorenni in diverse giurisdizioni, tra le cui vittime c’erano anche bambini di soli 13 anni. All’inizio di questo mese, in relazione al caso, è stato arrestato anche il 28enne Jose Henry Ayala Casamiro, originario di San Fernando Valley, in California.
L’obiettivo ufficiale dichiarato del gruppo era la distruzione della società civile e il rovesciamento dell’ordine mondiale esistente, compreso il governo degli Stati Uniti. I partecipanti intendevano raggiungere questo obiettivo attraverso lo sfruttamento dei gruppi vulnerabili della popolazione e l’incitamento ai conflitti sociali. Inoltre, è noto che commettono regolarmente atti di vera e propria violenza, che vanno dal vandalismo agli edifici pubblici alla crudeltà verso gli animali e alle aggressioni fisiche contro le persone, tra cui accoltellamenti e persino tentati omicidi.
A marzo, l’Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) dell’FBI ha emesso un avviso circa un forte aumento delle attività da parte di “764” e gruppi simili. Molti membri del gruppo cercano di spingere le loro vittime al suicidio in diretta televisiva, per divertimento o per accrescere la propria notorietà negli ambienti criminali.
Secondo l’FBI, sebbene i bersagli principali siano le ragazze di età compresa tra 10 e 17 anni, tra le vittime ci sono anche degli adulti. Alle vittime venivano inviati per posta pacchi contenenti lamette, dispositivi sessuali e altri articoli per creare contenuti.
La cosa peggiore è che in realtà in ogni Paese possono esserci moltissime organizzazioni di questo tipo. Anche se non su scala così ampia. L’ufficio esorta i genitori a prestare attenzione ai segnali d’allarme: tagli insoliti, lividi e cicatrici con caratteristiche caratteristiche, improvvisi cambiamenti nel comportamento e nell’aspetto, indossare abiti chiusi in situazioni inappropriate (ad esempio, quando fa caldo). È importante monitorare le attività online dei bambini, discutere i rischi legati alla condivisione di informazioni personali e verificare regolarmente che i dati della famiglia non vengano condivisi online.
Il caso contro Nepal e Varagiannis è oggetto di indagine nell’ambito del Progetto Infanzia Sicura, un’iniziativa nazionale del Dipartimento di Giustizia degli Stati Uniti per combattere i crimini contro i minori, lanciata nel maggio 2006.
La manifestazione di Extinction Rebellion di questa mattina davanti al Ministero della Giustizia si è conclusa dopo poche ore con uno sgombero effettuato
La quarta giornata della Primavera Rumorosa di Extinction Rebellion a Roma, ieri 29 Aprile, comincia con un unicorno di tre metri cavalcato da una sosia
Ieri, in una Roma ancora blindata per i funerali del Papa, un fiume rosso sangue scorre per la città adagiandosi poi con teatrale eleganza sulla statua di
The Bluesky and ATmosphere reports are back after I was occupied last week with the Ahoy! conference about ATProto in Hamburg. It was amazing to meet so many cool people in real life, and share the excitement of working on this network together. There were some great talks, and just being around people who you can talk in-depth about Bluesky and ATProto with is just great. Hoping to see many more ATProto conferences pop up and meet more of you in real life.
A practical note: if you missed the ATmosphere report last week, a reminder that I’m also sending out the reports via email every Friday. This comes with an extra analysis article that’s not on the website, so don’t forget to subscribe!
Bluesky launches a blue check verification system
Bluesky has launched a new verification system for their platform, with blue checkmarks. With the checkmark system, Bluesky selects a few Trusted Verifiers, who can hand out checkmarks. Bluesky PBC will also hand out checkmarks to “authentic and notable accounts”. The main reason for this system’s existence is that the other verification system, using domain names as handles, did not perform well enough. Bluesky PBC says that 270k accounts have set their own domain name as a handle, but not enough high-profile accounts have done so. The other problem with domain names as verification is that many well-known public figures do not have a well-known website. The first organisations that are Trusted Verifiers in the Bluesky app are the New York Times and Wired Magazine.
Bluesky PBC advertises the new checkmark verification system with its Trusted Verifiers as “a healthy digital society should distribute power”. However, it is unclear with the current implementation to what extend power is actually distributed. Bluesky PBC is the one who selects the Trusted Verifiers that can be displayed in their app. In their blog post, they also write: “Bluesky will review these verifications as well to ensure authenticity.” To me, it seems far from distributing power, and can at best be seen as distributing operational work. With Bluesky PBC holding full control of who gets to be a Trusted Verifier, as well as reviewing their output, how much power has Bluesky PBC actually distributed?
The new checkmark verification system is not exclusive to the Bluesky app however, and it is build on an open system. Anyone can create verifications or become a Verifier, as all the data for verification is openly accessible to anyone. The only difference is that verifications that are not made by Bluesky PBC or one of their Trusted Verifiers will not be visible in the official Bluesky clients. Other systems have already sprung up, a new verifier tool by cred.blue allows anyone to easily hand out verifications. The Deer client, which is a fork of the Bluesky client, already allows for anyone to set their own Verifiers as well. I’ll talk more about this in an upcoming article, as what is happening with Deer and verification has some interesting implications on how the network will likely develop.
For now, Bluesky PBC has build a technologically cool system, which also solves a meaningful problem that their app has in the short term. While the way it is currently implemented falls short of the advertised distribution of power regarding verification, the team is clear that this is an early implementation and that the system will evolve later.
Streamplace funding
Some news from streaming software Streamplace:
Streamplace has raised 100k Livepeer tokens, worth around 500k USD, from the Livepeer Treasury to further expand the Streamplace platform. The money will be used to expand the team, enhance infrastructure and build a deeper integration with ATProto, as well as building content moderation infrastructure.
A short explanation of Livepeer, and how it relates to Streamplace. Livepeer is a decentralised network for video transcoding and processing. Transcoding (in this context) processes the video stream to make it accessible in various formats and qualities, so a stream can be viewed both by someone on a slow internet connection in 360p, as well as someone with fast internet in 4K definition. Livepeer is a DAO, with an attached crypto token. Streamplace uses Livepeer for the video transcoding, and because of this integration, which allows the Livepeer network to grow as well, the Livepeer DAO has awarded Streamplace 100k tokens, currently worth around 500k USD. It is unclear to me how the Livepeer token works, with its corresponding tokenomics, and where the value of the tokens is coming from.
Streamplace creator Eli Mellon gave an interview on the devtools-fm podcast where Eli goes into more detail on the background of Streamplace and how the software works.
Two other ATProto apps are working on integration Streamplace. Skylight already announced earlier to be working with Streamplace. At the ATProto conference Ahoy in Hamburg last week Joe Basser, co-founder of the ATProto video platform, announced to be working on livestreaming with Streamplace as well.
Streamplace is hiring a Decentralized Video Protocol Engineer and a Lead Front-End Engineer
An OBS overlay to display Streamplace chat on-stream.
An update on relays and independent infra
Bluesky PBC made some changes to how their relays work, with an update with the unassuming name of ‘Sync 1.1′. The update made it much cheaper to run relays, as they do not have to store data of the entire network anymore. This has made a drastic impact on running relays. Last month, independent developer @futurset up a relay on his own Raspberry Pi. Now Phil, another independent developer, has set up multiple relays and made them publicly accessible. This means that there are now multiple other full-network relays that index the entire network, that are outside of US jurisdiction. Just as importantly, running these full-network relays is cheap, with costs getting as low as 18 USD per month. Feed builder Graze is also creating their own implementation of a relay: Turbostream includes a large amount of extra information in the stream. For example, where Jetstream (a simplified version of a relay) broadcasts a reply, Turbostream broadcasts a reply together with the post that is being replied to, as well as a range of other information. This in turn makes it easier to other parties to build on, as most information needed is already included in Turbostream.
These developments leads to some interested new questions. When it comes to running a relay, technology and costs are clearly not barriers anymore. But what about moderation and uptime guarantees? Is having a relay that many other parties depend on even the right model of the network?
It also calls the model that the Free Our Feeds campaign had in mind, which aligned more with a perspective of expensive and large relays. Today, Free Our Feeds announced that they will donate a 50k USD grant to a new IndieSky Working Group. The IndieSky came out of the second day of the conference, organised by Boris Mann and Ted Han. Mann and Han are behind the ATProtocol Developer Community Group, and also organised the first ATProto conference in Seattle last month. The goal of IndieSky is to “work together on R&D, code, and infrastructure on how and why to run different parts of the ATProto stack”, with more details in the announcement. The first meeting for the working group is on May 8th.
In Other News
The Ahoy! conference for the European Social Web was last week, and as an extremely biased person who helped organise the conference I think it was a great success! Massive shout-out to Sebastian Korfmann who has done an incredible amount of work getting the conference to such a great place, super impressive. During the conference I did some longer video interviews with some of the people in the community, those videos will be released in the coming weeks. The main takeaway for me from the conference was to see the amount of positive energy and enthusiasm in the community. People are aware that they are contributing to a space that has massive potential and is undergoing rapid changes. I’m excited to see more conferences for ATProto, and meet more people from the community in real life, as it has been super great to meet the people at Ahoy!.
Turtleisland.social is a Mastodon server for the North American Native/Indigenous community. They have set up their own PDS server for community members to join Bluesky as well. Community-centered data hosting is one of the possibilities with the PDS system of Bluesky that is mentioned regularly as an option, but has not been borne out much yet. Two other communities are in the process of building out a similar structure: Blacksky is creating their own PDS software for the Black community, and Northsky is building out systems that allow people to easily migrate their ATProto account to a Northsky PDS. It’s worth pointing out here that the early adopters of new technology on social networking are all minority communities. For people building social networks this provides a pragmatic argument (besides the much more important ethical argument) for creating safe digital spaces: the people for whom safety is the most crucial are also the most likely to be early adopters of new technologies.
Not all early adoption is by minority communities: Gander.social is a newly announced social network on ATProto, focusing on the Canadian community. Gander has a lot of plans for features that make it stand out from the Bluesky app. The project is still in development, and it seems once the project gets closer to launch it will become clearer what the ATProto integration will actually entail.
Bluesky has made some changes to their PDS, allowing people to sign up directly for an ATProto account on a PDS without going through the Bluesky app. Link aggregator platform Frontpage is one of the first to take advantage of this, allowing account creation on the Frontpage platform now.
Bluesky PBC is joining Lexicon Community Technical Steering Committee. Bluesky Engineer Bryan Newbold will be the representative. It signals a growing maturity of the ecosystem, that an effort run by the ATProto developer community can come to a place where Bluesky joins the initiative on an equal footing.
Openvibe is a multi-network client that combines someones Mastodon, Bluesky, Nostr and Threads accounts into a single app. Their latest update is an customisable For You algorithmic timeline, which combines posts from multiple networks into a unified algorithmic timeline.
Newsletter publishing platform Ghost now has a simple setting to share posts on Bluesky, via the ActivityPub bridge. This was already possible with Bridgy Fed, but that required some manual steps, where it is now a simple toggle setting.
The Links
For the protocol-minded people:
A proposal for private images (not posts!) on ATProto.
Proposal: A Simple XRPC Method for Signing Payloads in ATProtocol
News from Bluesky takes the most popular links on the network and displays them in an interface more like Hacker News.
Bluesky video client Skylight is working on a dislike feature so people can further fine tune their algorithm.
An example of how inauthentic accounts use Starter Packs to quickly build a following and integrate themselves into the network.
That’s all for this week, thanks for reading! If you want more analysis, you can subscribe to my newsletter. Every week you get an update with all this week’s articles, as well as extra analysis not published anywhere else. You can subscribe below, and follow this blog @fediversereport.com and my personal account @laurenshof.online on Bluesky.
bsky.app login screen at the top right showing account creation changed to turtleis.land Our Bluesky Personal Data Server joins our Mastodon server for a more complete Native/Indigenous social media experience The Bluesky Native community is much lar…
si parla di "metalli rari" e "terre rare" come se fosse la stessa cosa. sono basita. spero che zelensky abbia scritto terre rare, così sarà vincolato a non dare un bel niente a trump. forse trump dovrebbe leggere la tabella periodica degli elementi... e tanti italiani anche.
Uovo è più di un coworking convenzionale: è lo spazio ideale per la presentazione di libri, lezioni, workshop, incontri, servizi fotografici e molto altro.
L'immagine presenta un'atmosfera misteriosa e urbana, con un focus su oggetti che suggeriscono un gioco di ruolo o un'esperienza di gioco. Al centro, in caratteri rossi e bianchi, si legge "SODOMA 2" con la sottotitolo "URBAN GAME" in rosso. Sotto il titolo, si intravede una mano guantata di nero, posata su un foglio di carta beige, con un bastone di legno e un oggetto bianco curvo accanto. In alto a destra, un bicchiere con cubetti di ghiaccio aggiunge un tocco di eleganza. Lo sfondo è scuro e grigio, con un effetto di texture che contribuisce all'atmosfera enigmatica.
Fornito da @altbot, generato localmente e privatamente utilizzando Ovis2-8B
Brain-to-speech interfaces have been promising to help paralyzed individuals communicate for years. Unfortunately, many systems have had significant latency that has left them lacking somewhat in the practicality stakes.
A team of researchers across UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco has been working on the problem and made significant strides forward in capability. A new system developed by the team offers near-real-time speech—capturing brain signals and synthesizing intelligible audio faster than ever before.
New Capability
The aim of the work was to create more naturalistic speech using a brain implant and voice synthesizer. While this technology has been pursued previously, it faced serious issues around latency, with delays of around eight seconds to decode signals and produce an audible sentence. New techniques had to be developed to try and speed up the process to slash the delay between a user trying to “speak” and the hardware outputting the synthesized voice.
The implant developed by researchers is used to sample data from the speech sensorimotor cortex of the brain—the area that controls the mechanical hardware that makes speech: the face, vocal chords, and all the other associated body parts that help us vocalize. The implant captures signals via an electrode array surgically implanted into the brain itself. The data captured by the implant is then passed to an AI model which figures out how to turn that signal into the right audio output to create speech. “We are essentially intercepting signals where the thought is translated into articulation and in the middle of that motor control,” said Cheol Jun Cho, a Ph.D student at UC Berkeley. “So what we’re decoding is after a thought has happened, after we’ve decided what to say, after we’ve decided what words to use, and how to move our vocal-tract muscles.”
The AI model had to be trained to perform this role. This was achieved by having a subject, Ann, look at prompts and attempting to “speak ” the phrases. Ann has suffered from paralysis after a stroke which left her unable to speak. However, when she attempts to speak, relevant regions in her brain still lit up with activity, and sampling this enabled the AI to correlate certain brain activity to intended speech. Unfortunately, since Ann could no longer vocalize herself, there was no target audio for the AI to correlate the brain data with. Instead, researchers used a text-to-speech system to generate simulated target audio for the AI to match with the brain data during training. “We also used Ann’s pre-injury voice, so when we decode the output, it sounds more like her,” explains Cho. A recording of Ann speaking at her wedding provided source material to help personalize the speech synthesis to sound more like her original speaking voice.
To measure performance of the new system, the team compared the time it took the system to generate speech to the first indications of speech intent in Ann’s brain signals. “We can see relative to that intent signal, within one second, we are getting the first sound out,” said Gopala Anumanchipalli, one of the researchers involved in the study. “And the device can continuously decode speech, so Ann can keep speaking without interruption.” Crucially, too, this speedier method didn’t compromise accuracy—in this regard, it decoded just as well as previous slower systems. Pictured is Ann using the system to speak in near-real-time. The system also features a video avatar. Credit: UC Berkeley The decoding system works in a continuous fashion—rather than waiting for a whole sentence, it processes in small 80-millisecond chunks and synthesizes on the fly. The algorithms used to decode the signals were not dissimilar from those used by smart assistants like Siri and Alexa, Anumanchipalli explains. “Using a similar type of algorithm, we found that we could decode neural data and, for the first time, enable near-synchronous voice streaming,” he says. “The result is more naturalistic, fluent speech synthesis.”
It was also key to determine whether the AI model
was genuinely communicating what Ann was trying to say. To investigate this, Ann was qsked to try and vocalize words outside the original training data set—things like the NATO phonetic alphabet, for example. “We wanted to see if we could generalize to the unseen words and really decode Ann’s patterns of speaking,” said Anumanchipalli. “We found that our model does this well, which shows that it is indeed learning the building blocks of sound or voice.”
For now, this is still groundbreaking research—it’s at the cutting edge of machine learning and brain-computer interfaces. Indeed, it’s the former that seems to be making a huge difference to the latter, with neural networks seemingly the perfect solution for decoding the minute details of what’s happening with our brainwaves. Still, it shows us just what could be possible down the line as the distance between us and our computers continues to get ever smaller.
Featured image: A researcher connects the brain implant to the supporting hardware of the voice synthesis system. Credit: UC Berkeley
Chatbot Arena is the most popular AI benchmarking tool, but new research says its scores are misleading and benefit a handful of the biggest companies.#News
The image features a cartoon character standing on a sidewalk in front of a red brick wall. The character has a bald head with a few strands of brown hair on the sides, wears black-rimmed glasses, and a blue and black striped shirt. He is holding a microphone in his right hand and giving a thumbs-up with his left hand. His facial expression is cheerful, with a wide smile showing his teeth. To the right of the character, there is a black spider hanging from a web. The background includes green grass on either side of the sidewalk. The overall style of the image is simple and cartoonish, with bold outlines and flat colors.
Provided by @altbot, generated privately and locally using Ovis2-8B
Rear-view mirrors are important safety tools, but [Mike Kelly] observed that cyclists (himself included) faced hurdles to using them effectively. His solution? A helmet-mounted dual-mirror system he’s calling the Mantis Mirror that looks eminently DIY-able to any motivated hacker who enjoys cycling. One mirror for upright body positions, the other for lower positions. Carefully placed mirrors eliminate blind spots, but a cyclist’s position changes depending on how they are riding and this means mirrors aren’t a simple solution. Mirrors that are aligned just right when one is upright become useless once a cyclist bends down. On top of that, road vibrations have a habit of knocking even the most tightly-cinched mirror out of alignment.
[Mike]’s solution was to attach two small mirrors on a short extension, anchored to a cyclist’s helmet. The bottom mirror provides a solid rear view from an upright position, and the top mirror lets one see backward when in low positions.
[Mike] was delighted with his results, and got enough interest from others that he’s considering a crowdfunding campaign to turn it into a product. In the meantime, we’d love to hear about it if you decide to tinker up your own version.
You can learn all about the Mantis Mirror in the video below, and if you want to see the device itself a bit clearer, you can see that in some local news coverage.
"Medvedev, Trump ha finalmente costretto Kiev a pagare aiuti" non sia giammai che un paese aggredito venga aiutato semplicemente perché la vittima... i russi soni proprio degli "idealisti".
fra l'altro per certi versi la storia ucraina ricorda molto quella italiana. con popoli stranieri che hanno sempre cercato di soggiogarci. chissà se in caso di successo gli ucraini chiameranno questa una "guerra di indipendenza"
a chi non ha dubbi sulla reale alleanza della russia durante la seconda guerra mondiale, basta ricordare che quella che noi la chiamiamo "guerra di liberazione", viene chiamata invece da chi non sa che farsene della libertà come "guerra patriottica"...
Il Regno Unito ha inaugurato a Southampton il primo impianto europeo per la produzione di semiconduttori su scala industriale basati su fotonica del silicio. La notizia arriva nel pieno del riavvicinamento tra Londra e Bruxelles (che dovrebbe essere
Dal #MIM un augurio speciale di buon #1maggio a tutto il personale della scuola, a chi ogni giorno sostiene la crescita e la formazione di studentesse e studenti con passione e impegno.
Dal #MIM un augurio speciale di buon #1maggio a tutto il personale della scuola, a chi ogni giorno sostiene la crescita e la formazione di studentesse e studenti con passione e impegno.
One might be tempted to think that re-creating a film robot from the 1950s would be easy given all the tools and technology available to the modern hobbyist, but as [Mike Ogrinz]’s quest to re-create Robby the Robot shows us, there is a lot moving around inside that domed head, and requires careful and clever work. The “dome gyros” are just one of the complex assemblies, improved over the original design with the addition of things like bearings. Just as one example, topping Robby’s head is a mechanical assembly known as the dome gyros. It looks simple, but as the video (embedded below) shows, re-creating it involves a load of moving parts and looks like a fantastic amount of work has gone into it. At least bearings are inexpensive and common nowadays, and not having to meet film deadlines also means one can afford to design things in a way that allows for easier disassembly and maintenance.
Robby the Robot first appeared in the 1956 film Forbidden Planet and went on to appear in other movies and television programs. Robby went up for auction in 2017 and luckily [Mike] was able to take tons of reference photos. Combined with other enthusiasts’ efforts, his replica is shaping up nicely.
We’ve seen [Mike]’s work before when he shared his radioactive Night Blossoms which will glow for decades to come. His work on Robby looks amazing, and we can’t wait to see how it progresses.
Altbot
in reply to 𝓘𝓰𝓸𝓻 🏴☠️ 🏳️🌈 🇮🇹 • • •L'immagine presenta un'atmosfera misteriosa e urbana, con un focus su oggetti che suggeriscono un gioco di ruolo o un'esperienza di gioco. Al centro, in caratteri rossi e bianchi, si legge "SODOMA 2" con la sottotitolo "URBAN GAME" in rosso. Sotto il titolo, si intravede una mano guantata di nero, posata su un foglio di carta beige, con un bastone di legno e un oggetto bianco curvo accanto. In alto a destra, un bicchiere con cubetti di ghiaccio aggiunge un tocco di eleganza. Lo sfondo è scuro e grigio, con un effetto di texture che contribuisce all'atmosfera enigmatica.
Fornito da @altbot, generato localmente e privatamente utilizzando Ovis2-8B
🌱 Energia utilizzata: 0.238 Wh