There are probably at least as many ways to construct a robotic arm as there are uses for them. In the case of [Thomas Sanladerer] his primary requirement for the robotic arm was to support a digital camera, which apparently has to be capable of looking vaguely menacing in a completely casual manner. Meet Caroline, whose styling and color scheme is completely coincidental and does not promise yummy moist cake for anyone who is still alive after all experiments have been run.

Unlike typical robotic arms where each joint in the arm is directly driven by a stepper motor or similar, [Thomas] opted to use a linear rail that pushes or pulls the next section of the arm in a manner that’s reminiscent of the action by the opposing muscles in our mammalian appendages. This 3D printer-inspired design is pretty sturdy, but the steppers like to skip steps, so he is considering replacing them with brushless motors.

Beyond this, the rest of the robotic arm uses aluminium hollow stock, a lot of 3D printed sections and for the head a bunch of Waveshare ST3215 servos with internal magnetic encoder for angle control. One of these ~€35 ST3215s did cook itself during testing, which is somewhat worrying. Overall, total costs was a few hundred Euro, which for a nine-degree robotic arm like this isn’t too terrible.

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Check (or cheques) have long been a standard way for moving money from one bank account to another. They’re essentially little more than a codified document that puts the necessary information in a standard format to ease processing by all parties involved in a given transaction.

The check was once a routine, if tedious, way for the average person to pay for things like bills, rent, or even groceries. As their relevance continues to wane in the face of newer technology, though, the Australian government is making a plan to phase them out for good.

Put Some Respect On My Check

Check use has been in heavy decline in recent decades. Credit: Treasury.gov.au
The pending demise of the checks was first floated in June 2023, with the release of the government’s Strategic Plan for Australia’s Payments System. With the rise of credit and debit cards, digital payments via smartphones, and Osko instant bank transfers, checks had diminished to a lower level of importance than ever.

Government statistics indicated that checks were used for less than 0.1% of retail payments within Australia. In 2004, over 10,000,000 personal checks were used every month. Fast forward to 2024, and that number had dwindled to somewhere below 300,000. As volumes have fallen, the price of processing individual checks has effectively increased. In an era where digital payments happen instantly for near-zero cost, a check can take 3 to 7 days to clear, with government statistics stating processing costs for a single check now exceed $5.

Ultimately, the check is now seen as a slow and unwieldy way to make payments, and one no longer worthy of being maintained into the future. Companies have even been questioned openly in the media for the rationale of still using checks to issue refunds in this day and age. The rationale is that winding down the check system for good will lead users to prioritize cheaper, faster methods of transferring money. The aim is to reduce transaction costs, improve productivity in the financial system, and just generally grease the wheels of commerce across the country.
The Australian Payments Network issued design specifications for Australian checks, last updated in 2017, but these will soon be defunct. Credit: Australian Payments Network
The current transition plan has two major milestones. By 30 June 2028, Australian banks will cease issuing personal, commercial, government, and bank checks. Any check written after this date will not be accepted and effectively deemed invalid, with no payment made. By 30 September 2029, financial institutions will cease accepting personal, commercial, government and bank cheques entirely. Any remaining checks, whenever created, will effectively be void.

These dates were chosen specifically because personal, commercial, and government checks go “stale” 15 months after they are first drawn. Thus, checks of these types that are written on the very last valid day will still be able to be cashed in the usual period of validity before the system is shut down for good. The intention is that there will be no checks that would otherwise still be valid to cash past 30 September 2029 had the system not been closed. Bank checks do not technically go “stale,” so there is still an open question as to whether there will be a need to honor unpresented bank checks after this date.

There are still a few years left until the big shut down. This gives the government and financial institutions time to ensure they have alternative payment methods in place for the handful of remaining check use cases. There are some concerns that various banks may attempt to leave the checking system prior to the government shut down date, burdening other financial institutions with the costs of keeping the system afloat until the end. The government has stated its expectations that banks will work together to ensure a smooth transition.

To that end, there are exit conditions expected to be adhered to for banks that are shutting down checking. Tier 1 banks are expected to maintain operations until the end date to support smaller institutions that rely on them for check clearing services. Additionally, banks which cease checking operations must still remain members of the Australian Paper Clearing System and fund the system. Banks will also need to provide 6 month warnings to customers ahead of any decision to shut down their checking operations.

While the domestic Australian checking system will shut down, this will not impact foreign checks coming into the country. Since these checks are processed outside the existing Australian checking system, this will not be an issue—financial institutions that process foreign checks will continue to do so.

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Any serious journalist would tell you that it’d be journalistic malpractice for a local journalist not to report that a prominent public official listed a boarded-up house as his official residence in order to claim eligibility for his position. But that’s not how John Sarcone III, acting U.S. attorney for the Northern District of New York, sees it.

He was reportedly “incensed” by reporting from the Times Union of Albany and ordered his subordinates to remove it from his office’s media list. In response, Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), Demand Progress Education Fund, and Reinvent Albany have filed a complaint against Sarcone with New York’s Attorney Grievance Committee.

As the complaint explains, “Sarcone is the chief legal officer charged with enforcing federal law in a district that covers over 30,000 square miles and is home to 3.4 million people. And yet he either does not know or does not care about the ‘practically universal agreement that a major purpose of [the First] Amendment was to protect the free discussion of governmental affairs.’”

The complaint requests that the Committee open an investigation to determine whether Sarcone's conduct violates New York’s Rules of Professional Conduct, and exercise its power to impose sanctions, which can include disbarment.

FPF’s Director of Advocacy Seth Stern said: “All licensed attorneys — but especially top prosecutors entrusted to protect the public, not just their clients — should know better than to retaliate against newspapers for basic public-interest journalism. Sarcone has repeatedly abused his office in his brief tenure. The committee should ensure he can no longer undermine the Constitution and embarrass the legal profession.”

Demand Progress Education Fund Special Advisor Kate Oh stated: “A prosecutor who so flagrantly disregards his ethical and professional obligations and tramples over the First Amendment rights of the press should not be empowered to enforce the laws of our nation. Sarcone’s professional history is littered with red flags and must be investigated. No less than the public’s faith in the rule of law is at stake.”

Reinvent Albany Executive Director John Kaehny said: “With great power comes great responsibility, and U.S. Attorneys like John Sarcone are among the most powerful people in America. Unfortunately, Mr. Sarcone has grossly abused his authority and betrayed the public trust. Mr. Sarcone's flagrant misuse of his authority to retaliate against the Albany Times-Union and his repeated, well-documented dishonesty are completely unacceptable, unethical, and violate basic democratic norms and rules of professional conduct. The Times Union is one of the most respected newspapers and civic institutions in New York, and it's chilling to see it attacked by an unethical U.S. Attorney with a personal grievance.”

You can read the complaint here or below. If you’d like further comment, please contact media@freedom.press or eric@demandprogress.org ,or info@reinventalbany.org.

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Heating things up is one of the biggest sources of cost and emissions for many industrial processes we take for granted. Most of these factories are running around the clock so they don’t have to waste energy cooling off and heating things back up, so how can you match this 24/7 cycle to the intermittent energy provided by renewables? This MIT spin-off thinks one solution is thermal storage refractory bricks.

Electrified Thermal Solutions takes the relatively simple technology of refractory brick to the next level. For the uninitiated, refractory bricks are typically ceramics with a huge amount of porosity to give them a combination of high thermal tolerance and very good insulating properties. A number of materials processes use them to maximize the use of the available heat energy.

While the exact composition is likely proprietary, the founder’s Ph.D. thesis tells us the bricks are likely a doped chromia (chrome oxide) composition that creates heat in the brick when electrical energy is applied. Stacked bricks can conduct enough current for the whole stack to heat up without need for additional connections. Since these bricks are thermally insulating, they can time shift the energy from solar or wind energy and even out the load. This will reduce emissions and cost as well. If factories need to pipe additional grid power, it would happen at off-peak hours instead of relying on the fluctuating and increasing costs associated with fossil fuels.

If you want to implement thermal storage on a smaller scale, we’ve seen sand batteries and storing heat from wind with water or other fluids.

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Dagli eventi che hanno portato all’arresto di Ross Ulbricht, manager di Silk Road, comincia il saggio Algoritmo Criminale. Come Mafia, cyber e AI riscrivono le regole del gioco, pubblicato a ottobre 2024 per i tipi del Sole24ore da Pierguido Iezzi e Ranieri Razzante. La tesi centrale è che l’attività illecita delle grandi organizzazioni criminali non sia più distinguibile dal cybercrime.

Dall’operazione della Polizia Italiana contro il clan Bonavota al Pig butcherin’ delle mafie asiatiche, dalle truffe romantiche del clan nigeriano Black Axe, fino alle ransomware gangs russe, il racconto si snoda lungo varie direttrici per provare a dimostrare questa tesi.

Non tutti i riferimenti sono recenti e alcune esempi meriterebbero una esplicita bibliografia, visto che anche i due autori parlano della complessità dell’attribuzione dei crimini agli attori del cyberspace, e tuttavia il discorso complessivo risulta convincente come nella parte in cui si descrivono i tipi di IA oggi disponibili sul mercato e che consentono una serie nuova di truffe, frodi e crimini informatici.
Scritto in maniera semplice e chiara è il contributo nella descrizione dei singoli crimini informatici e di quello che si può trovare nel DarkWeb: eroina, cocaina, barbiturici, carte di credito rubate. A spacciare droghe e informazioni ci pensano i blackmarket del web oscuro, secondo gli autori il vero luogo d’incontro tra criminalità organizzata e cybercrime (anche se non viene fatto cenno ai suoi usi positivi da parte di giornalisti d’inchiesta, dissidenti politici e credenti di religioni fuorilegge).

Interessanti sono gli esempi sull’uso che le mafie, nigeriana e albanese, e il cybercrime russo, fanno della tecnologia per sfruttare vulnerabilità umane e tecnologiche e condurre i loro affari: estorsioni e riciclaggio, soprattutto, come avevano ben spiegato Nicola Gratteri e Antonio Nicaso nel libro Il Grifone. Molto azzeccata pare la riflessione sul panorama criminale russo verso il quale il regime di Putin chiude un occhio nel caso in cui i suoi attori siano utili agli scopi statuali, sempre governati dalle agenzie di intelligence della Federazione russa.

Un capitolo utile è quello sull’hacking cerebrale, altro campo d’interesse non solo per le mafie ma soprattutto per i militari. I due autori, infatti, argomentano di come con l’avvento di chip e innesti cerebrali (tipo il Neuralink di Musk) e delle interfacce cervello-computer, già in uso nelle scuole cinesi per il controllo dell’attenzione degli studenti, si apra una nuova era per la manipolazione diretta delle percezioni, del pensiero e del comportamento umani.

Interessante, è infine, ancorché di tipo giuridico, la parte che riguarda l’uso illecito delle IA. Sì, proprio quelle a cui affidiamo le nostre informazioni più segrete e più intime. Anche lo sviluppo di questo settore è strettamente monitorato dalla criminalità che cerca sempre nuovi modi per aggirare le leggi e sfuggire gli interventi repressivi dei governi.

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La mia personale selezione

LIBRI per l’Estate:

1. Roberto Baldoni, Sovranità digitale. Cos’è e quali sono le principali minacce al cyberspazio nazionale (Il Mulino, 2025)

Gli attacchi cibernetici, la disinformazione globale, l’uso letale dell’intelligenza artificiale, sono le diverse espressioni in cui si declina oggi la guerra algoritmica e rappresentano la maggiore minaccia alla sovranità digitale. Roberto Baldoni disegna un manuale di sopravvivenza di fronte ai rischi della perdita del controllo dl cyberspace.

• David Colon, La Guerra dell’Informazione. Gli Stati alla conquista delle nostre menti (Piccola Biblioteca Einaudi, 2025).

Secondo il professore francese, docente di Storia della comunicazione, media e propaganda presso lo Sciences Po Centre d’Histoire di Parigi, nell’era dell’intelligenza artificiale e della guerra cognitiva, i mezzi di comunicazione tradizionali prima e i social media dopo sono il teatro di un conflitto senza esclusione di colpi, che ha come posta in gioco le nostre menti.

• Francesco Filippi, Cinquecento anni di rabbia. Rivolte e mezzi di comunicazione da Gutenberg a Capitol Hill (Bollati Boringhieri, 2024)

L’invenzione della stampa a caratteri mobili e la capillare diffusione di fogli stampati favorì non solo alla fine del monopolio nell’interpretazione della parola di Dio ma l’organizzazione delle rivolte contadine del ‘600. I social media che favoriscono la polarizzazione delle opinioni hanno portato la fine dell’illusione delle democrazia americana favorendo l’assalto al Congresso degli Stati Uniti, a Capitol Hill, Il 6 gennaio 2021 da parte di una folla inferocita. Filippi racconta lo stretto rapporto che intercorre tra le rivolte e i mezzi di comunicazione dal Cinquecento a oggi. Con un messaggio centrale: chi controlla i mezzi di informazione domina il racconto pubblico e controlla il potere.

• Chris Miller, ChipWar. La sfida tra Cina e Usa per la tecnologia che deciderà il nostro futuro (Garzanti, 2024).

L’autore nel saggio ricostruisce in modo approfondito il complesso scontro geopolitico in atto tra Usa e Cina per il controllo dello sviluppo e della produzione dei microprocessori.

• Antony Loewenstein, Laboratorio Palestina. Come Israele esporta la tecnologia dell’occupazione in tutto il mondo (Fazi Editore, 2024).

Il miracolo economico e cibernetico israeliano è frutto della logica di sopraffazione ai danni del popolo palestinese che, stretto nei territori occupati, è il bersaglio perfetto delle sue tecnologie della sorveglianza e di repressione, le cui qualità possono essere appunto osservate, anche dai compratori, sul campo.

• Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus. Breve storia delle reti di informazione dall’età della pietra all’IA (Bompiani, 2024).

Lo studioso ripercorre la storia della comunicazione dagli albori ad oggi per raccontare come la disinformazione sia un potente strumento di controllo usato da ogni istituzione totale in senso foucaultiano. Con una tesi peculiare: la sovrabbondanza di notizie nel libero mercato dell’informazione non ci salverà.

• Davide Bennato, La società del XXI secolo. Persone dati e tecnologie, (Laterza, 2024)

Nel suo libro Davide Bennato si chiede se noi siamo il nostro profilo Facebook, se è possibile che il Bitcoin abbia prodotto una crisi in Kazakstan, se le IA siano agenti sociali oppure no. Racconta perché esistono e a cosa servono i Big-Data, cos’è il Dataismo (la religione dei dati), come i dati diventano il carburante dell’intelligenza artificiale e come accelerino le mutazioni antropologiche che stiamo vivendo.

• Matteo Pasquinelli, The Eye of the Master. A social history of Artificial Intelligence (Verso Books 2023).

La tesi dell’autore, non proprio originale, ma molto documentata e rigorosamente descritta nel libro, è che l’IA rappresenti solo un altro passaggio dell’automazione del lavoro umano che porta inevitabilmente all’alienazione del lavoratore separandolo dal prodotto della sua fatica. Prima accadeva con l’operaio specializzato, oggi accade ai turchi meccanici che annotano i dati di addestramento dell’IA e si occupano dell’allineamento di ChatGPT.

• Sam Kean, La Brigata dei bastardi. La vera storia degli scienziati e delle spie che sabotarono la bomba atomica nazista (Adelphi, 2022).

Sam Kean racconta la storia dell’impresa degli uomini straordinari che cercarono in tutti i modi di impedire alla Germania di costruire la bomba atomica. La bomba, ne erano convinti, avrebbe cambiato le sorti della guerra, e del mondo. E chi ci lavorava andava fermato.

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