There’s a tactile joy to the humble 3.5″ floppy that no USB stick will ever match. It’s not just the way they thunk into place in a well-made drive, the eject button, too, is a tactile experience not to be missed. If you were a child in disk-drive days, you may have popped a disk in-and-out repeatedly just for the fun of it — and if you weren’t a child, and did it anyway, we’re not going to judge. [igor] has come up with a physical game called “Floppy Flopper” that provides an excuse to do just that en masse, and it looks like lots of fun.

It consists of nine working floppy drives in a 3×3 grid, all mounted on a hefty welded-steel frame. Each drive has an RGB LED above it. The name of the game is to swap floppies as quickly as possible so that the color of the floppy in the drive matches the color flashing above it. Each successful insertion is worth thirteen points, tracked on a lovely matrix display. Each round is faster than the last, until you miss the window or mix up colors in haste. That might make more sense if you watch the demo video below.

[igor] could have easily faked this with NFC tags, as we’ve seen floppy-like interfaces do, or perhaps just use a color sensor. But no, those nine drives are all in working order. In the interest of speed — this is a timed challenge, after all, and we don’t need a PC slowing it down — each floppy is given its own microcontroller. Rather than reading data off the disk, only the disk’s write-protect and density holes are checked. He’s only using R, G, and B for floppy colors, so those four bits are enough. Unfortunately [igor]’s collection of floppies is very professional — lots of black and grey — so he needed to use colored stickers instead of technicolor plastic.

The project is open source, if you happen to have a stack of floppy drives of your own. If you don’t, but still want to play, the area, the Floppy Flopper is being exhibited at RADIONA in Rijeka, Croatia until December 5th 2025. If you happen to be in the neighborhood, it might be worth a trip.

If we had a nickle for every physical game that used a floppy drive, we’d have two nickles just this year. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s kind of neat to see so long after the last diskettes came off the production lines.

youtube.com/embed/wWfkXNIbJLw?…

hackaday.com/2025/11/20/disket…

Questo il commento delle avvocate Francesca Re e Filomena Gallo nella Giornata mondiale dei diritti dell’infanzia

Oggi è la Giornata mondiale per i diritti dell’infanzia, che sono violati in tanta parte del mondo a causa di guerre, sfruttamento e violenze, anche all’interno della famiglia. Come se tutto ciò non bastasse, in Italia lo Stato aggiunge l’ottusità burocratica di negare a decine di bambini nati all’estero, grazie alla gravidanza per altri all’estero, in paesi in cui è perfettamente legale, la trascrizione del certificato di nascita. Così facendo, li si discrimina e mette a repentaglio la loro sicurezza affettiva e giuridica. Questo non è più accettabile. La trascrizione di un certificato di nascita nel paese in cui si vive non è solo una formalità ma un atto che rende pubblico e certo un fatto, ovvero il rapporto di genitorialità da cui derivano diritti fondamentali irrinunciabili.
Esistono bambini invisibili alle istituzioni solo perché nati con tecniche di fecondazione assistita non gradite al governo italiano, come la gravidanza per altri.

Impedire le trascrizioni, in assenza di una legge che lo preveda, bensì solo sulla base di una decisione degli ufficiali di stato civile, è oggi una forma subdola di punizione delle coppie o delle persone che vanno all’estero dove alcune tecniche di fecondazione assistita sono consentite, ma che di fatto determina una grave lesione dei diritti dei minori nati da queste tecniche. La legge 40 del 2004 al contrario, prevede che tutti i nati da tecniche di fecondazione assistita devono essere riconosciuti dai genitori, biologici o intenzionali, che hanno fatto ricorso a quelle tecniche.

In questa giornata, nata proprio per riconoscere diritti civili, sociali e politici a tutti i bambini e le bambine chiediamo al Governo, ai comuni, alle istituzioni di assumersi la responsabilità di garantire a ogni bambino e bambina il pieno riconoscimento giuridico e affettivo della propria famiglia, senza discriminazioni basate sulle modalità di nascita o sull’orientamento dei genitori, anche alla luce degli obblighi e le prospettive derivanti dal diritto europeo.

L'articolo “In Italia, decine di bambini e bambine sono discriminati e invisibili alle istituzioni perché nati con tecniche di fecondazione non gradite al Governo” proviene da Associazione Luca Coscioni.

In 2022, we published our research examining how IT specialists look for work on the dark web. Since then, the job market has shifted, along with the expectations and requirements placed on professionals. However, recruitment and headhunting on the dark web remain active.

So, what does this job market look like today? This report examines how employment and recruitment function on the dark web, drawing on 2,225 job-related posts collected from shadow forums between January 2023 and June 2025. Our analysis shows that the dark web continues to serve as a parallel labor market with its own norms, recruitment practices and salary expectations, while also reflecting broader global economic shifts. Notably, job seekers increasingly describe prior work experience within the shadow economy, suggesting that for many, this environment is familiar and long-standing.

The majority of job seekers do not specify a professional field, with 69% expressing willingness to take any available work. At the same time, a wide range of roles are represented, particularly in IT. Developers, penetration testers and money launderers remain the most in-demand specialists, with reverse engineers commanding the highest average salaries. We also observe a significant presence of teenagers in the market, many seeking small, fast earnings and often already familiar with fraudulent schemes.

While the shadow market contrasts with legal employment in areas such as contract formality and hiring speed, there are clear parallels between the two. Both markets increasingly prioritize practical skills over formal education, conduct background checks and show synchronized fluctuations in supply and demand.

Looking ahead, we expect the average age and qualifications of dark web job seekers to rise, driven in part by global layoffs. Ultimately, the dark web job market is not isolated — it evolves alongside the legitimate labor market, influenced by the same global economic forces.

In this report, you’ll find:

• Demographics of the dark web job seekers
• Their job preferences
• Top specializations on the dark web
• Job salaries
• Comparison between legal and shadow job markets

Read the full report (English, PDF)

securelist.com/dark-web-job-ma…