We at Pirate Parties International (PPI) observe the recent escalation between Israel and Iran with profound concern. Israel claims to have launched preemptive strikes targeting Iranian nuclear and military facilities. However, the Netanyahu regime is already engaged in a devastating war in Gaza, and its military actions in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, and now Iran appear driven more by the political survival and legacy of his leadership. The international community deserves clear evidence and transparency regarding these attacks.

On the other hand, the Iranian regime under Khamenei has also ruled atrociously. Iran continues to launch indiscriminate strikes on civilian centers, intentionally far from legitimate military targets. The Iranian regime’s persistent pursuit of nuclear weapons, support for terrorism targeting Jewish communities, and supplying military equipment to violent groups such as the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon must cease immediately.

Pirate Parties International emphasizes that diplomatic solutions must take precedence over military aggression. We are deeply worried by a conflict that threatens millions of innocent lives, risks severe nuclear incidents, and grows increasingly unpredictable. The public is rightly fearful that nuclear stockpiles may already be compromised, endangering civilians on all sides who cannot rely solely on missile defenses and shelters for safety.

We call unequivocally for an immediate ceasefire.

Our movement comprises members globally, including Pirate Party affiliates in Israel, sympathizers in Iran, and many individuals of Iranian descent living in exile. It is truly heartening that our Israeli and Iranian colleagues are communicating constructively about this crisis, openly exploring paths toward peace. We only wish the political leaders entrenched in both governments would exhibit similar wisdom and humanity.

We advocate greater freedom, transparency, and human rights for all affected populations. We strongly urge renewed grassroots dialogue and open communication channels between civilians in Israel and Iran, who share a common interest in peace and reconciliation. Past efforts to unite these communities remind us that solidarity and understanding are achievable.

We call on all parties to prioritize civilian life above all political ambitions. Pirate Parties International stands firmly for peace, transparency, and the power of people over regimes.

pp-international.net/2025/06/i…

We at Pirate Parties International (PPI) observe the recent escalation between Israel and Iran with profound concern. Israel claims to have launched preemptive strikes targeting Iranian nuclear and military facilities. However, the Netanyahu regime is already engaged in a devastating war in Gaza, and its military actions in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, and now Iran appear driven more by the political survival and legacy of his leadership. The international community deserves clear evidence and transparency regarding these attacks.

On the other hand, the Iranian regime under Khamenei has also ruled atrociously. Iran continues to launch indiscriminate strikes on civilian centers, intentionally far from legitimate military targets. The Iranian regime’s persistent pursuit of nuclear weapons, support for terrorism targeting Jewish communities, and supplying military equipment to violent groups such as the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon must cease immediately.

Pirate Parties International emphasizes that diplomatic solutions must take precedence over military aggression. We are deeply worried by a conflict that threatens millions of innocent lives, risks severe nuclear incidents, and grows increasingly unpredictable. The public is rightly fearful that nuclear stockpiles may already be compromised, endangering civilians on all sides who cannot rely solely on missile defenses and shelters for safety.

We call unequivocally for an immediate ceasefire.

Our movement comprises members globally, including Pirate Party affiliates in Israel, sympathizers in Iran, and many individuals of Iranian descent living in exile. It is truly heartening that our Israeli and Iranian colleagues are communicating constructively about this crisis, openly exploring paths toward peace. We only wish the political leaders entrenched in both governments would exhibit similar wisdom and humanity.

We advocate greater freedom, transparency, and human rights for all affected populations. We strongly urge renewed grassroots dialogue and open communication channels between civilians in Israel and Iran, who share a common interest in peace and reconciliation. Past efforts to unite these communities remind us that solidarity and understanding are achievable.

We call on all parties to prioritize civilian life above all political ambitions. Pirate Parties International stands firmly for peace, transparency, and the power of people over regimes.

pp-international.net/2025/06/e…

Balancing robots are always fun to see, as they often take forms we’re not used to, such as a box standing on its corner. This project, submitted by [Alexchunlin], showcases a cool single motor reaction cube, where he dives into many lessons learned during its creation.

At the outset, [Alexchunlin] thought this would be a quick, fun weekend project, and while he achieved that, it took longer than a weekend in the end. The cube’s frame was a simple 3D print with provisions to mount his MotorGo AXIS motor controller. This motor controller was initially designed for another project, but it’s great to see him reuse it in this build.

Once the parts were printed and assembled, the real work began: figuring out the best way to keep the cube balanced on its corner. This process involved several steps. The initial control code was very coarse, simply turning the motor on and off, but this didn’t provide the fine control needed for delicate balancing. The next step was implementing a PID control loop, which yielded much better results and allowed the cube to balance on a static surface for a good amount of time. The big breakthrough came when moving from a single PID loop to two control loops. In this configuration, the PID loop made smaller adjustments, while another control loop focused on the system’s total energy, making the cube much more stable.

By the end of the build, [Alexchunlin] had a cube capable of balancing in his hand, but more importantly, it was a great learning experience in controls. Be sure to visit the project page for more details on this build and check out his video below, which shows the steps he took along the way. If you find this project interesting, be sure to explore some of our other featured reaction wheel projects.

youtube.com/embed/OeoIK913tRk?…

hackaday.com/2025/06/16/cube-t…

It is a well-known reality of rescuing certain older electronic devices that, at some point, you’re likely going to have to replace a busted capacitor. This is the stage [Kevin] is at in the 3rd installment in his saga of reviving a 50-year-old Military Tektronix oscilloscope.

[Kevin] recently discovered a failed capacitor in the power supply for this vintage analog scope. Having identified and removed the culprit, it was time to find a way to replace the faulty component with a modern equivalent. The original capacitor is out of fashion to the degree that a perfect replacement would be impractical and likely not desirable. This job would call for a bit of adaptation.

Starting with the recently desoldered pads on the power supply board as a template, [Kevin] walks us through his process of transferring his meticulously acquired measurements to KiCAD for the purpose of creating an adapter PCB. Once the original pads are mapped, he then draws in pads matching the leads of the new component, referencing the manufacturer’s schematic of the replacement part.

With everything drawn in place and design rule checks satisfied, it’s a quick turnaround from the PCB fabricator before this Tektronix scope moves one step closer to happy tracing again.

While the end product of this kludge is about as simple of a PCB as you might imagine, [Kevin’s] documentation is a thorough tutorial on the process for retrofitting components via adapter boards, covering some of the subtleties that you might miss if you’ve never been through it before.

youtube.com/embed/u-VB3HTjkvM?…

We are looking forward to the next installment of Kevin’s undertaking. In the meantime, you can delve into other oscilloscope repair projects, here, here and here, or go deep on why capacitors fail as in the capacitor plague of the early 2000s (though these are not the same vintage or necessarily the same reason for failure as in [ Kevin’s ] device).

hackaday.com/2025/06/16/kludge…

Predicting the future is a dangerous occupation. Few people can claim as much success as Arthur C. Clarke, the famous science and science fiction author. Thanks to the BBC and the Australian Broadcasting Company, we can see what Sir Arthur thought about the future in 1964 and then ten years later in 1974.

Perhaps his best-known prediction was that of communication satellites, but he called quite a few other things, too. Like all prognosticators, he didn’t bat a thousand, and he missed a wrinkle or two, but overall, he has a very impressive track record.

Horizon

In the 1964 BBC show, Horizon: The Knowledge Explosion, Clarke himself talked about how hard it is to predict the future. He then goes on to describe ultra-modern cities prior to the year 2000. However, he thought that after the year 2000, we won’t care about cities. We’ll communicate with each other without regard to location. Shades of the Internet and cell phone!

He clearly saw the work-from-home revolution. However, he also thought that we’d enslave other animals, which–mercifully–didn’t come to pass. His thoughts on computers were much more on point, although we still don’t quite have what he thought we would.

Direct information dumps to your brain are probably not happening anytime soon. Suspended animation isn’t very popular, either. Of course, all of this could still happen, and it would be totally spooky if he’d been 100% right.

To wrap up, he talks about a replicator when K. Eric Drexler was not even ten years old. We won’t say he called out the 3D printer, exactly, but he was on the track.

youtube.com/embed/YwELr8ir9qM?…

The Home Computer

Fast forward to 1974. A science reporter brought his son with him to an old-school mainframe room and pointed out to Clarke that in the year 2001, the boy would be an adult. Clarke predicted that the boy would have a computer in his house that would connect to other computers to get all the information he needed.

Once again, Clarke was really interested in being able to work from anywhere in the world. Of course, he moved to Sri Lanka and still managed to work, so maybe he just thought we should all enjoy the same privilege.

youtube.com/embed/sTdWQAKzESA?…

Two Years Later

In 1976, Clarke spoke with an AT&T interviewer about the future. He clearly saw the Internet for news and communications with — you guessed it — working from home.

He also brought up the smart watch, another invention to add to his yes column. About the only thing in that interview that we haven’t had luck with yet is contact with extraterrestrials.

youtube.com/embed/D1vQ_cB0f4w?…

Our Guess

We try not to make too many predictions. But we are going to guess that at least some of Clarke’s predictions are yet to come. There is one thing we are pretty sure of, though. When anyone predicts the future — even Clarke — they rarely see the gritty details. Sure, he saw the cell phone, but not the cell phone plan. Or malware. Or a host of other modern problems that would perplex anyone back in the 1960s.

Clarke has a better track record than most. We love looking at what people thought we’d be doing here in the future.

hackaday.com/2025/06/16/retrot…

If you’re a mechanical engineering wonk, you might appreciate this latest video from [Henry Segerman] wherein he demonstrates his various expanding racks.

[Henry] explains how the basic “double-rack” unit can be combined to make more complex structures. These structures are similar in spirit to the Hoberman sphere, which is a compact structure that can be expanded to fill a large space.

The double-rack units get a lot more interesting when you combine two or more of them. They each have rails that accommodate additional double-racks, holding the double-racks together. Because of how the gears from each double-rack are connected to the teeth of the others, expanding two double-racks causes all connected units to also expand.

Through the rest of the video, [Henry] shows you the marvelous myriad ways the basic structures can be combined to make remarkable expanding racks. He also explains some of the missteps and gotchas that his latest designs avoid based on his experience.

If you’re interested in such things, you might also like to check out Lathe Gears Make A Clock or Gear Up: A 15-Minute Intro On Involute Gears.

Do you have your own mechanical engineering hacks? Let us know on the tips line!

youtube.com/embed/iWknov3Xpts?…

hackaday.com/2025/06/16/expand…

Secondo una nota interna ottenuta dalla CNN , degli hacker hanno tentato di violare gli account email dei giornalisti del Washington Post . Il potenziale attacco mirato è stato scoperto giovedì, spingendo il giornale ad avviare un cambio password di emergenza per tutti i dipendenti venerdì.

Un portavoce del Washington Post ha dichiarato che l’indagine è in corso, ma un’analisi preliminare suggerisce che l’attacco abbia interessato solo un numero limitato di account di posta elettronica. Coloro i cui account sono stati effettivamente compromessi sono stati avvisati separatamente. Nessun altro sistema della redazione è stato interessato e non ci sono prove di una fuga di dati di lettori o clienti.

Non è ancora stato determinato chi sia esattamente dietro il tentativo di hacking. Tuttavia, i giornalisti rimangono tradizionalmente un bersaglio prioritario sia per le spie informatiche statali che cercano di intercettare i materiali prima che vengano pubblicati, sia per i gruppi criminali a caccia di opportunità per ricattare ed estorcere denaro. Allo stesso tempo, il quotidiano stesso si è rifiutato di commentare le ipotesi sui possibili organizzatori dell’attacco.

Il Wall Street Journal ha segnalato il primo tentativo di attacco , e in particolare non si tratta del primo incidente nel settore. Nel 2022, è stata segnalata una campagna di hacking su larga scala e a più livelli contro il Journal stesso, sospettata di essere stata condotta da strutture informatiche cinesi. All’epoca, l’obiettivo erano giornalisti che lavoravano su materiale relativo alla Cina. Il precedente è diventato uno degli attacchi più eclatanti al settore dei media degli ultimi anni.

Il breve incidente al Washington Post non si è ancora trasformato in una crisi grave, ma il fatto che una violazione così mirata si sia verificata nel contesto di noti attacchi su larga scala evidenzia il rischio continuo per i lavoratori delle redazioni di tutto il mondo, in particolare per coloro che si occupano di giornalismo investigativo delicato.

L'articolo Hacker contro il Washington Post: giornalisti sempre più nel mirino del cyberspionaggio proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

For a world covered in oceans, getting a drink of water on Planet Earth can be surprisingly tricky. Fresh water is hard to come by even on our water world, so much so that most sources are better measured in parts per million than percentages; add together every freshwater lake, river, and stream in the world, and you’d be looking at a mere 0.0066% of all the water on Earth.

Of course, what that really says is that our endowment of saltwater is truly staggering. We have over 1.3 billion cubic kilometers of the stuff, most of it easily accessible to the billion or so people who live within 10 kilometers of a coastline. Untreated, though, saltwater isn’t of much direct use to humans, since we, our domestic animals, and pretty much all our crops thirst only for water a hundred times less saline than seawater.

While nature solved the problem of desalination a long time ago, the natural water cycle turns seawater into freshwater at too slow a pace or in the wrong locations for our needs. While there are simple methods for getting the salt out of seawater, such as distillation, processing seawater on a scale that can provide even a medium-sized city with a steady source of potable water is definitely a job for Big Chemistry.

Biology Backwards

Understanding an industrial chemistry process often starts with a look at the feedstock, so what exactly is seawater? It seems pretty obvious, but seawater is actually a fairly complex solution that varies widely in composition. Seawater averages about 3.5% salinity, which means there are 35 grams of dissolved salts in every liter. The primary salt is sodium chloride, with potassium, magnesium, and calcium salts each making a tiny contribution to the overall salinity. But for purposes of acting as a feedstock for desalination, seawater can be considered a simple sodium chloride solution where sodium anions and chloride cations are almost completely dissociated. The goal of desalination is to remove those ions, leaving nothing but water behind.

While thermal desalination methods, such as distillation, are possible, they tend not to scale well to industrial levels. Thermal methods have their place, though, especially for shipboard potable water production and in cases where fuel is abundant or solar energy can be employed to heat the seawater directly. However, in most cases, industrial desalination is typically accomplished through reverse osmosis RO, which is the focus of this discussion.

In biological systems, osmosis is the process by which cells maintain equilibrium in terms of concentration of solutes relative to the environment. The classic example is red blood cells, which if placed in distilled water will quickly burst. That’s because water from the environment, which has a low concentration of solutes, rushes across the semi-permeable cell membrane in an attempt to dilute the solutes inside the cell. All that water rushing into the cell swells it until the membrane can’t take the pressure, resulting in hemolysis. Conversely, a blood cell dropped into a concentrated salt solution will shrink and wrinkle, or crenellate, as the water inside rushes out to dilute the outside environment.
Water rushes in, water rushes out. Either way, osmosis is bad news for red blood cells. Reversing the natural osmotic flow of a solution like seawater is the key to desalination by reverse osmosis. Source: Emekadecatalyst, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Reverse osmosis is the opposite process. Rather than water naturally following a concentration gradient to equilibrium, reverse osmosis applies energy in the form of pressure to force the water molecules in a saline solution through a semipermeable membrane, leaving behind as many of the salts as possible. What exactly happens at the membrane to sort out the salt from the water is really the story, and as it turns out, we’re still not completely clear how reverse osmosis works, even though we’ve been using it to process seawater since the 1950s.

Battling Models

Up until the early 2020s, the predominant model for how reverse osmosis (RO) worked was called the “solution-diffusion” model. The SD model treated RO membranes as effectively solid barriers through which water molecules could only pass by first diffusing into the membrane from the side with the higher solute concentration. Once inside the membrane, water molecules would continue through to the other side, the permeate side, driven by a concentration gradient within the membrane. This model had several problems, but the math worked well enough to allow the construction of large-scale seawater RO plants.

The new model is called the “solution-friction” model, and it better describes what’s going on inside the membrane. Rather than seeing the membrane as a solid barrier, the SF model considers the concentrate and permeate surfaces of the membrane to communicate through a series of interconnected pores. Water is driven across the membrane not by concentration but by a pressure gradient, which drives clusters of water molecules through the pores. The friction of these clusters against the walls of the pores results in a linear pressure drop across the membrane, an effect that can be measured in the lab and for which the older SD model has no explanation.

As for the solutes in a saline solution, the SF model accounts for their exclusion from the permeate by a combination of steric hindrance (the solutes just can’t fit through the pores), the Donnan effect (which says that ions with the opposite charge of the membrane will get stuck inside it), and dielectric exclusion (the membrane presents an energy barrier that makes it hard for ions to enter it). The net result of these effects is that ions tend to get left on one side of the membrane, while water molecules can squeeze through more easily to the permeate side.

Turning these models into a practical industrial process takes a great deal of engineering. A seawater reverse osmosis or SWRO, plant obviously needs to be located close to the shore, but also needs to be close to supporting infrastructure such as a municipal water system to accept the finished product. SWRO plants also use a lot of energy, so ready access to the electrical grid is a must, as is access to shipping for the chemicals needed for pre- and post-treatment.

Pores and Pressure

Seawater processing starts with water intake. Some SWRO plants use open intakes located some distance out from the shoreline, well below the lowest possible tides and far from any potential source of contamination or damage, such a ship anchorages. Open intakes generally have grates over them to exclude large marine life and debris from entering the system. Other SWRO plants use beach well intakes, with shafts dug into the beach that extend below the water table. Seawater filters through the sand and fills the well; from there, the water is pumped into the plant. Beach wells have the advantage of using the beach sand as a natural filter for particulates and smaller sea critters, but do tend to have a lower capacity than open intakes.

Aside from the salts, seawater has plenty of other unwanted bits, all of which need to come out prior to reverse osmosis. Trash racks remove any shells, sea life, or litter that manage to get through the intakes, and sand bed filters are often used to remove smaller particulates. Ultrafiltration can be used to further clarify the seawater, and chemicals such as mild acids or bases are often used to dissolve inorganic scale and biofilms. Surfactants are often added to the feedstock, too, to break up heavy organic materials.

By the time pretreatment is complete, the seawater is remarkably free from suspended particulates and silt. Pretreatment aims to reduce the turbidity of the feedstock to less than 0.5 NTUs, or nephelometric turbidity units. For context, the US Environmental Protection Agency standard for drinking water is 0.3 NTUs for 95% of the samples taken in a month. So the pretreated seawater is almost as clear as drinking water before it goes to reverse osmosis.
SWRO cartridges have membranes wound into spirals and housed in pressure vessels. Seawater under high pressure enters the membrane spiral; water molecules migrate across the membrane to a center permeate tube, leaving a reject brine that’s about twice as saline as the feedstock. Source: DuPont Water Solutions.
The heart of reverse osmosis is the membrane, and a lot of engineering goes into it. Modern RO membranes are triple-layer thin-film composites that start with a non-woven polyester support, a felt-like material that provides the mechanical strength to withstand the extreme pressures of reverse osmosis. Next comes a porous support layer, a 50 μm-thick layer of polysulfone cast directly onto the backing layer. This layer adds to the physical strength of the backing and provides a strong yet porous foundation for the active layer, a cross-linked polyamide layer about 100 to 200 nm thick. This layer is formed by interfacial polymerization, where a thin layer of liquid monomer and initiators is poured onto the polysulfone to polymerize in place.
An RO rack in a modern SWRO desalination plant. Each of the white tubes is a pressure vessel containing seven or eight RO membrane cartridges. The vessels are plumbed in parallel to increase flow through the system. Credit: Elvis Santana, via Adobe Stock.
Modern membranes can flow about 35 liters per square meter every hour, which means an SWRO plant needs to cram a lot of surface area into a little space. This is accomplished by rolling the membrane up into a spiral and inserting it into a fiberglass pressure vessel, which holds seven or eight cartridges. Seawater pumped into the vessel soaks into the backing layer to the active layer, where only the water molecules pass through and into a collection pipe at the center of the roll. The desalinated water, or permeate, exits the cartridge through the center pipe while rejected brine exits at the other end of the pressure vessel.

The pressure needed for SWRO is enormous. The natural osmotic pressure of seawater is about 27 bar (27,000 kPa), which is the pressure needed to halt the natural flow of water across a semipermeable membrane. SWRO systems must pressurize the water to at least that much plus a net driving pressure (NPD) to overcome mechanical resistance to flow through the membrane, which amounts to an additional 30 to 40 bar.

Energy Recovery

To achieve these tremendous pressures, SWRO plants use multistage centrifugal pumps driven by large, powerful electric motors, often 300 horsepower or more for large systems. The electricity needed to run those motors accounts for 60 to 80 percent of the energy costs of the typical SWRO plant, so a lot of effort is put into recovering that energy, most of which is still locked up in the high-pressure rejected brine as hydraulic energy. This energy used to be extracted by Pelton-style turbines connected to the shaft of the main pressure pump; the high-pressure brine would spin the pump shaft and reduce the mechanical load on the pump, which would reduce the electrical load. Later, the brine’s energy would be recovered by a separate turbo pump, which would boost the pressure of the feed water before it entered the main pump.

While both of these methods were capable of recovering a large percentage of the input energy, they were mechanically complex. Modern SWRO plants have mostly moved to isobaric energy recovery devices, which are mechanically simpler and require much less maintenance. Isobaric ERDs have a single moving part, a cylindrical ceramic rotor. The rotor has a series of axial holes, a little like the cylinder of an old six-shooter revolver. The rotor is inside a cylindrical housing with endcaps on each end, each with an inlet and an outlet fitting. High-pressure reject brine enters the ERD on one side while low-pressure seawater enters on the other side. The slugs of water fill the same bore in the rotor and equalize at the same pressure without much mixing thanks to the different densities of the fluids. The rotor rotates thanks to the momentum carried by the incoming water streams and inlet fittings that are slightly angled relative to the axis of the bore. When the rotor lines up with the outlet fittings in each end cap, the feed water and the brine both exit the rotor, with the feed water at a higher pressure thanks to the energy of the reject brine.

For something with only one moving part, isobaric ERDs are remarkably effective. They can extract about 98% of the energy in the reject brine, pressuring the feed water about 60% of the total needed. An SWRO plant with ERDs typically uses 5 to 6 kWh to produce a cubic meter of desalinated water; ERDs can slash that to just 2 to 3 kWh.
Isobaric energy recovery devices can recover half of the electricity used by the typical SWRO plant by using the pressure of the reject brine to pressurize the feed water. Source: Flowserve.

Finishing Up

Once the rejected brine’s energy has been recovered, it needs to be disposed of properly. This is generally done by pumping it back out into the ocean through a pipe buried in the seafloor. The outlet is located a considerable distance from the inlet and away from any ecologically sensitive areas. The brine outlet is also generally fitted with a venturi induction head, which entrains seawater from around the outlet to partially dilute the brine.

As for the permeate that comes off the RO racks, while it is almost completely desalinated and very clean, it’s still not suitable for distribution into the drinking water system. Water this clean is highly corrosive to plumbing fixtures and has an unpleasantly flat taste. To correct this, RO water is post-processed by passing it over beds of limestone chips. The RO water tends to be slightly acidic thanks to dissolved CO₂, so it partially dissolves the calcium carbonate in the limestone. This raises the pH closer to neutral and adds calcium ions to the water, which increases its hardness a bit. The water also gets a final disinfection with chlorine before being released to the distribution network.

hackaday.com/2025/06/16/big-ch…

Nacque a Livorno il 16 giugno 1901 con il nome di Federazione Italiana Operai Metallurgici.[2] Nel 1906 partecipò alla fondazione della Confederazione Generale del Lavoro (CGdL, oggi CGIL).

Dopo il fascismo fu rifondata, nell'ambito della nuova CGIL unitaria, con il IX Congresso che si tenne a Torino nel 1946, presieduto da Giovanni Roveda, e durante il quale cambiò il proprio nome in Federazione Impiegati Operai Metallurgici, lasciando invariata la sigla ma allargando la propria rappresentanza.

it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federazi…

sindacato di categoria affiliato alla CGIL

^{Contributori ai progetti Wikimedia (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)}

Da gennaio 2025, i social network Meta sono diventati meno sicuri: questa è la conclusione a cui sono giunti gli autori di un sondaggio su larga scala che ha coinvolto 7.000 utenti di Facebook, Instagram e Threads. Lo studio è stato condotto tra i rappresentanti dei cosiddetti “gruppi protetti”, ovvero persone discriminate per razza, etnia, disabilità, religione, casta, orientamento sessuale, genere, identità di genere o gravi malattie. L’età media degli intervistati è di 50 anni.

Il sondaggio, condotto da tre organizzazioni indipendenti: UltraViolet, All Out e GLAAD, ha chiesto agli utenti se si sentissero al sicuro da contenuti dannosi sulle piattaforme Meta a seguito delle modifiche alla politica di moderazione entrate in vigore all’inizio di quest’anno e se avessero subito personalmente molestie o abusi. I risultati sono stati allarmanti.

Un intervistato su sei ha ammesso di essere stato bersaglio di attacchi basati sul genere o sull’orientamento sessuale dall’inizio dell’anno. Due terzi hanno visto contenuti d’odio rivolti ad altri. Con contenuto “dannoso”, i ricercatori intendevano i post che attaccavano direttamente una persona sulla base di una delle caratteristiche protette, che si tratti di sessismo, razzismo, transfobia o altre forme di discriminazione.

Oltre il 90% degli intervistati ha dichiarato di essere preoccupato e di sentirsi meno sicuro a causa dell’indebolimento delle politiche di Meta contro i contenuti dannosi. Uno dei partecipanti al sondaggio ha descritto la situazione in questo modo: Da gennaio 2025, ho assistito a un’enorme impennata di incitamenti all’odio rivolti a diversi gruppi vulnerabili. Inoltre, sono apparse numerose pagine false che diffondevano storie inventate per far arrabbiare chi è già contrario alle comunità emarginate.

Un altro utente si lamenta non solo dell’atmosfera, ma anche di come sia cambiata l’esperienza utente stessa: Vedo a malapena i post dei miei amici. Mi ritrovo con immagini sessuali finte direttamente nel mio feed, e pubblicità di ogni genere di spazzatura in cima. Sto già passando a Bluesky e Substack, almeno lì non è così disgustoso.

404 Media, che si occupa dei cambiamenti nelle piattaforme di intelligenza artificiale, ha precedentemente riportato che Meta sta sempre più permettendo allo spam generato da reti neurali di soppiantare contenuti di qualità generati da esseri umani. Gli utenti lamentano che i loro feed siano disseminati di assurdità aggressive di cui nessuno è ritenuto responsabile.

La situazione si è aggravata a gennaio, quando Mark Zuckerberg, CEO di Meta, ha annunciato l’abrogazione di diverse regole di moderazione. In email interne trapelate, i dipendenti hanno espresso indignazione. Un esperto di policy ha scritto in una chat aziendale che la modifica ha consentito, tra le altre cose, di etichettare gli omosessuali come “malati mentali” e gli immigrati come “spazzatura”. L’obiettivo, ha affermato, era “fermare la deriva della missione” e “tornare al principio fondamentale della libertà di parola”.

Le nostre piattaforme ora consentono la discussione e la controreazione su argomenti difficili. Certo, questo potrebbe risultare offensivo per alcuni, ma permette a tutte le parti di esprimersi. In pratica, tuttavia, questo ha portato a un notevole aumento dei discorsi ostili. Un intervistato scrive:

Un utente ha detto che le donne dovrebbero sapere qual è il loro posto se si suppone che sostengano l’America. Ricevo messaggi in cui le persone commentano il mio aspetto e si offrono di incontrarmi. Ho iniziato a essere molestata a causa delle mie opinioni politiche. Come sottolinea il rapporto, numerosi studi confermano che la crescita della retorica aggressiva sui social network è direttamente collegata alla violenza fisica offline. Non si tratta solo di parole sgradevoli, ma della coltivazione di un odio che prima o poi travalica gli schermi.

Gli autori del rapporto hanno chiesto a Meta di nominare un ente indipendente per analizzare l’impatto delle modifiche alle policy sulla diffusione di contenuti dannosi e ripristinare i vecchi standard di moderazione. Sottolineano che il vecchio sistema era imperfetto, ma almeno frenava la diffusione della crudeltà. Ora, affermano, Zuckerberg “non si limita a tollerare ciò che peggiora le piattaforme: ignora il problema e spende miliardi in una ‘superintelligenza’ che peggiora ulteriormente la situazione”.

L'articolo Zuckerberg elimina le regole: esplosione di odio e molestie su Meta. Il Sondaggio proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.

Così mi dice il sito di Poste Italiane dopo aver inserito il mio indirizzo di posta elettronica in risposta a questo invito.

Inserendo il tuo numero di cellulare e/o indirizzo di posta elettronica, Poste Italiane, titolare del trattamento dei dati, potrà informarti sulla consegna della tua spedizione.

Ho controllato, l'indirizzo è giusto e non ci sono spazi né prima né dopo.

Errore semantico...

IT'S MONDAY, AND THIS IS DIGITAL POLITICS. I'm Mark Scott, and you find me juggling the completion of a 6-month project ahead of a planned vacation in early July. Current scenes, no joke.

— As leaders of the G7 countries gather in Western Canada for their annual summit, the group's track record on tech is patchy, at best.

— Here's an acronym you should get used to hearing: DPI, or digital public infrastructure that represents the latest battle in "technological sovereignty."

— The United Kingdom started nine investigations into how potential child sexual abuse imagery was shared online.

Let's get started:

digitalpolitics.co/newsletter0…

It’s never a bad time to look at a clock, and one could certainly do worse than this delightful Paper Sunshine Clock by [anneosaur]. The sun-ray display is an interesting take on the analog clock, and its method of operation is not one we see every day, either.

Reading the clock is straightforward: there are twelve rays divided into two segments. Once you figure out that this artful object is a clock, it’s easy enough to guess that the rays give the hours, and half-rays are half-hours. In the photo above, it’s sometime between nine o’clock and nine thirty. Our Swiss readers might not be terribly impressed, but a “fuzzy” clock like this is quite good enough much of the time for many people.
Even the flex PCB holding the resistors looks like a work of art.
The title gives away its method of operation: it’s thermochromic paint! The paint is printed onto a piece of Japanese awagami paper, which is pressed against a flexible PCB holding an array of resistors. Large copper pads act as heat spreaders for the resistors. For timekeeping and control, an Atmega328PB is paired with a DS3231MZ RTC, with a coin cell for backup power when the unit is unplugged. (When plugged in, the unit uses USB-C, as all things should.) That’s probably overkill for a +/-30 minute display, but we’re not complaining.

The Atmega328PB does not have quite enough outputs to drive all those resistors, so a multiplexing circuit is used to let the 10 available GIPO control current to 24 rays. Everything is fused for safety, and [anneosaur] even includes a temperature sensor on the control board. The resistors are driven by a temperature-compensated PWM signal to keep them from overheating or warming up too slowly, regardless of room temperature. The attention to detail here is as impressive as the aesthetics.

[annenosaur] has even thought of those poor people for whom such a fuzzy clock would never do (be they Swiss or otherwise) — the Paper Sunshine Clock has a lovely “sparkle mode” that turns the rays on and off at random, turning the clock into an art piece. A demo video of that is below. If you find this clock to be a ray of sunshine, everything you need to reproduce it is on GitHub under an MIT or CC4.0 license.

This is not the first thermochromic clock we’ve featured, though the last one was numeric. If you must have minute accuracy in a thermochromic analog clock, we’ve got you covered there, too.

Special thanks to [anneosaur] for submitting the hack. If you’ve seen (or made) a neat clock, let us know! You won’t catch us at a bad time; it’s always clock time at Hackaday.

youtube.com/embed/p_eX9BhE4EM?…

hackaday.com/2025/06/16/this-t…