Sound! It’s a thing you hear, moreso than something you see with your eyes. And yet, it is possible to visualize sound with various techniques. [PlasmatronX] demonstrates this well, using a special scanning technique to visually capture the sound field inside an acoustic levitation device.

If you’re unfamiliar, acoustic levitation devices like this use ultrasound to create standing waves that can hold small, lightweight particles in mid-air. The various nodes of the standing wave are where particles will end up hovering. [PlasmatronX] was trying to calibrate such a device, but it proved difficult without being able to see what was going on with the sound field. Hence, the desire to image it!

Imaging the sound field was achieved with a Schlieren optical setup, which can capture variations in air density as changes in brightness in an image. Normally, Schlieren imaging only works in a two-dimensional slice. However, [PlasmatronX] was able to lean on computed tomography techniques to create a volumetric representation of the sound field in 3D. He refers to this as “computerized acoustical tomography.” Images were captured of the acoustic levitation rig from different angles using the Schlieren optics rig, and then the images were processed in Python to recreate a 3D image of the sound field.

We’ve seen some other entertaining applications of computed tomography techniques before, like inspecting packets of Pokemon cards. Video after the break.

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The early history of colour TV had several false starts, of which perhaps one of the most interesting might-have-beens was the CBS field-sequential system. This was a rival to the nascent system which would become NTSC, which instead of encoding red, green, and blue all at once for each pixel, made sequential frames carry them.

The Korean war stopped colour TV development for its duration in the early 1950s, and by the end of hostilities NTSC had matured into what we know today, so field-sequential colour became a historical footnote. But what if it had survived? [Nicole Express] takes into this alternative history, with a look at how a field-sequential 8-bit home computer might have worked.

The CBS system had a much higher line frequency in order to squeeze in those extra frames without lowering the overall frame rate, so given the clock speeds of the 8-bit era it rapidly becomes obvious that a field-sequential computer would be restricted to a lower pixel resolution than its NTSC cousin. The fantasy computer discussed leans heavily on the Apple II, and we explore in depth the clock scheme of that machine.

While it would have been possible with the faster memory chips of the day to achieve a higher resolution, the conclusion is that the processor itself wasn’t up to matching the required speed. So the field-sequential computer would end up with wide pixels. After a look at a Breakout clone and how a field-sequential Atari 2600 might have worked, there’s a conclusion that field-sequential 8-bit machines would not be as practical as their NTSC cousins. From where we’re sitting we’d expect them to have used dedicated field-sequential CRT controller chips to take away some of the heartache, but such fantasy silicon really is pushing the boundaries.

Meanwhile, while field-sequential broadcast TV never made it, we do have field-sequential TV here in 2026, in the form of DLP projectors. We’ve seen their spinning filter disks in a project or two.

1950 CBS color logo: Archive.org, CC0.

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Classic Mac OS was prized for its clean, accessible GUI when it first hit the scene in the 1980s. Back then, developers hadn’t even conceived of all the weird gewgaws that would eventually be shoehorned into modern operating systems, least of all AI agents that seem to be permeating everything these days. And yet! [SeanFDZ] found a way to cram Claude or other AI agents into the vintage Mac world.

The result of [Sean]’s work is AgentBridge, a tool for interfacing modern AI agents with vintage Mac OS (7-9). AgentBridge itself runs as an application within Mac OS. It works by reading and writing text files in a shared folder which can also be accessed by Claude or whichever AI agent is in use. AgentBridge takes commands from its “inbox”, executes them via the Mac Toolbox, and then writes outputs to its “outbox” where they can be picked up and processed by the AI agent. The specifics of how the shared folder work are up to you—you can use a network share, a shared folder in an emulation environment, or just about any other setup that lets the AI agent and AgentBridge access the same folder.

It’s hard to imagine any mainstream use cases for having a fleet of AI-controlled Macintosh SE/30s. Still, that doesn’t mean we don’t find the concept hilarious. Meanwhile, have you considered the prospect of artificial intelligence running on the Commodore 64?

hackaday.com/2026/03/12/contro…

Released in 2016, Pokemon Go quickly became a worldwide phenomenon. Even folks who weren’t traditionally interested in the monster-taming franchise were wandering around with their smartphones out, on the hunt for virtual creatures that would appear via augmented reality. Although the number of active users has dropped over the years, it’s estimated that more than 50 million users currently log in and play every month.

From a gameplay standpoint, Go is brilliant. Although the Pokemon that players seek out obviously aren’t real, searching for them closely approximates the in-game experience that the franchise has been known for since its introduction on the Game Boy back in 1996.

But now, instead of moving a character through a virtual landscape in search of the elusive “pocket monsters”, players find them dotted throughout the real world. To be successful, players need to leave their homes and travel to where the Pokemon are physically located — which often happens to be a high-traffic area or other point of interest.

As a game, it’s hard to imagine Pokemon Go being a bigger success. At the peak of its popularity, throngs of players were literally causing traffic jams as they roamed the streets in search of invisible creatures. But what players may not have realized as they scanned the world around them through the game was that they were helping developer Niantic build something even more valuable.

The Imaginary Gig Economy

The game has used augmented reality (AR) to bring the world of Pokemon to life since day one, but it wasn’t until the fall of 2020 that Niantic introduced AR Mapping. With this new feature, players could scan real-world locations and objects by walking around them while the software captured images from their smartphone’s camera. This was presented to the player as “Field Research”, and once completed, it would unlock various rewards in the game.

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For those with a technical mindset, the implications of this are immediately obvious. Through the Research system, Niantic could direct Pokemon Go players anywhere they wished. Once the imagery from these Research scans were uploaded, they could be used to create detailed 3D models through the use of photogrammetry. The more players that perform Field Research on a particular location, the more accurate the results.

If Niantic wanted to create a 3D model of a statue in a park or the front of a building, they simply needed to assign it a Field Research task and the players would rush out to collect the data. Forget Google’s Street View — rather than sending a camera-laden car out once every year or so to grab new images, Niantic could sit back while millions of players uploaded high resolution pictures of the world around them in exchange for in-game trinkets that have no physical value.

No Such Thing as a Free Pokemon

In the tech world there’s a common saying: “If something is free, you’re the product.”

The idea being that if you’re using some service without paying for it, there’s an excellent chance that the company providing said service is somehow making money off of the situation. So for example when a user looks up a particular topic with a search engine, they can be presented with contextually appropriate advertisements. By selling this ad space to companies, the search engine provider generates a profit for each “free” search performed by its users. The personal relevancy offered by such bespoke advertisements can be more effective than traditional TV or print ads, which in turn means the search engine provider can charge a premium for them.

Just as in our hypothetical search engine example, Pokemon Go is offered up to players on Android and iOS free of charge. To date, it’s been downloaded by over a billion total users. To make the game financially viable, Niantic eventually needed to find a way to turn all those free downloads into a revenue stream.

The answer is Niantic Spatial. This spin-off company was announced in March of 2025, and offers a Visual Positioning System (VPS) created in part using the photogrammetry data collected by Pokemon Go. Through this service Niantic Spatial offers centimeter-scale positioning for millions of high-traffic locations all over the globe, even in areas where GPS may be inaccurate.

Earlier this week, Niantic Spatial announced they had entered into an agreement with Coco Robotics to provide VPS for their fleet of delivery robots. Images captured by the robot’s onboard cameras can be fed into the VPS to provide a more accurate position than is possible with GPS, even in the best of conditions. This is particularly important for a robot that not only needs to navigate an ever-changing urban landscape, but must arrive at a precise location to successfully complete its delivery.

Always Read the Fine Print

At this point, you may be thinking to yourself that this all seems a bit shady. Can Niantic really take the data that was provided to them by Pokemon Go players and spin that off into a commercial venture that monetizes it? Of course they can, because that’s precisely what players agreed to when they installed the game.

Section 5.2 of the Niantic Terms of Service, titled “Rights Granted by You – AR Content”, states that the company retains wide-ranging rights over anything that users upload through the AR functions of their products:

In short, not only can Niantic do anything they want with player submitted data, but they can pass that freedom on to other entities as they see fit. So while Coco Robotics didn’t even exist when the AR Mapping feature was added to Pokemon Go, all of the imagery that players captured since that time — plus any images that they continue to capture — is fair game.

In the end, it’s unlikely that many players will lose any sleep over the fact that they have unwittingly been collecting training data to help robots more effectively deliver pizzas. But it’s also not hard to imagine a scenario in which that data ends up getting licensed out for some purpose they aren’t comfortable with.

If that happens, their options may be limited. A reading of Niantic’s Privacy Policy would seem to indicate that uploaded AR imagery is anonymized during processing, and as such doesn’t need to be treated in the same way that personally identifiable information would be. As such, players have the right to opt-out of uploading additional data going forward, but can’t remove what’s already been pushed into the system.

Regardless of whether or not this situation impacts you directly, it’s an important cautionary tale in an interconnected world where more and more of what users do online is tracked, filtered, processed, and sold off to the highest bidder. Perhaps something to keep in mind before clicking “I Agree.”

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While working on a project that involved super-thin prints, [Julius Curt] came up with selective ironing, a way to put designs on the top surface of a print without adding any height.

For those unfamiliar, ironing is a technique in filament-based 3D printing that uses the extruder to smooth out top surfaces after printing them. The hot nozzle makes additional passes across a top surface, extruding a tiny amount in the process, which smooths out imperfections and leaves a much cleaner surface. Selective ironing is nearly the same process, but applied only in a certain pattern instead of across an entire surface.
Selective Ironing can create patterns by defining the design in CAD, and using a post-processing script.
While conceptually simple, actually making it work was harder than expected. [Julius] settled on using a mixture of computer-aided design (CAD) work to define the pattern, combined with a post-processing script. More specifically, one models the desired pattern into the object in CAD as a one-layer-tall feature. The script then removes that layer from the model while applying the modified ironing pattern in its place. In this way, one can define the pattern in CAD without actually adding any height to the printed object. You can see it in action in the video, embedded below.

We’ve seen some interesting experiments in ironing 3D prints, including non-planar ironing and doing away with the ironing setting altogether by carefully tuning slicer settings so it is not needed. Selective Ironing is another creative angle, and we can imagine it being used to embed a logo or part number as easily as a pattern.

Selective Ironing is still experimental, but if you find yourself intrigued and would like to give it a try head over to the GitHub repository where you’ll find the script as well as examples to try out.

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hackaday.com/2026/03/12/select…

Phased-array radars are great for all sorts of things, whether you’re doing advanced radio research or piloting a fifth-generation combat aircraft. They’re also typically very expensive. [Nawfal] hopes to make the technology more affordable with an open-source radar design of their own.

The design is called the AERIS-10, and is available in two versions. Operating at 10.5 GHz, it can be built to operate at ranges between 3 or 20 kilometers depending on the desired spec. The former uses an 8 x 16 patch antenna array, while the latter extends this to a 32 x 16 array. Either way, each design is capable of fully-electronic beam steering in azimuth and can be hacked to enable elevation too—one of the most attractive features of phased array radars. The hardware is based around an STM32 microcontroller, an FPGA, and a bunch of specialist clock generators, frequency synthesizers, phase shifters, and ADCs to do all the heavy lifting involved in radar.

Radar is something you probably don’t spend a lot of time thinking about unless you’re involved in maritime, air defence, or weather fields. All of which seem to be very much in the news lately! Still, we feature a good few projects on the topic around these parts. If you’ve got your own radar hacks brewing up in the lab, don’t hesitate to let us know.

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When building a radio transmitter, unless it’s a very small one indeed, there’s a need for an amplifier before the antenna. This is usually referred to as the power amplifier, or PA. How big your PA is depends on your idea of power, but at the lower end of the power scale a PA can be quite modest. QRP, as lowe power radio is referred to, has a transmit power in the miliwatts or single figure watts. [Guido] is here with a QRP PA that delivers about a watt from 1 to 30 MHz, is made from readily available parts, and costs very little.

Inspired by a circuit from [Harry Lythall], the prototype is built on a piece of stripboard. It’s getting away with using those cheap transistors without heatsinking because it’s a class C design. In other words, it’s in no way linear; instead it’s efficient, but creates harmonics and can’t be used for all modes of transmission. This PA will need a low-pass filter to avoid spraying the airwaves with spurious emissions, and on the bands it’s designed for, is for CW, or Morse, only.

We like it though, as it’s proof that building radios can still be done without a large bank balance. Meanwhile if the world of QRP interests you, it’s something we have explored in the past.

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Ever since 3D printing has become a popular tool, the question of waste has been looming in the background. The sad reality of rapid prototyping is that you’re going to generate a lot of prints that just don’t aren’t fit for purpose, even if your printer runs them off perfectly every time. Creality has some products on the way aimed at solving that problem, and [Embrace Making] on YouTube has got his hands on a pre-production prototype of the Creality M1 Filament Maker to give the community a first look.

The M1 is actually only half of the system; Creality is also working on an R1 shredder to reduce your prints into re-usable shreds. [Embrace Making] hasn’t gotten his hands on that, but shredding prints isn’t the hard part. We’ve featured plenty of DIY shredders in the past. Extruding filament reliably at home has traditionally proven much more difficult, which is why we mostly outsource it to professionals.

Lacking the matching shredder, and wanting to give the M1 the fairest possible shake, [Embrace] tests the machine out first using Creality-supplied PLA pellets. The filament diameter isn’t as stable as we’ve gotten used to, and the spool rolling setup needs a bit more work.

Again, this is an early prototype. Creality says they’re working on it and claims they’ll get to ±0.05 mm precision in the production models. Doubtless they’ll also fix the errors that led to [Embrace]’s messy spool. That’s probably just software given that the winding mechanism did a pretty good job on the Creality-supplied spool.

Most importantly, the M1-produced filament does print. The prints aren’t perfect due to the variation in diameter, but they turn out surprisingly well for home-made filament. [Embrace] also shows off the ability to mix custom colors and gradients, but, again, using raw PLA rather than shredded material. Hopefully Creality lets him test drive the R1 shredder once its design is further along.

This is hardly the first time we’ve seen a filament extruder. The goal of this product is to pair with a shredder and use it for recycling, but if you’re going to stick with raw plastic pellets, you may as well print them directly.

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Old-school diving helmets are deceivingly simple, even if they are – as [Hyperspace Pirate] puts it in a recent video – essentially the equivalent of an upside-down bucket with an air hose supplying air into it. While working on a 3D-printed diving helmet, he therefore made sure to run through all the requisite calculations prior to testing out said diving helmet in his pool.

The 3D model for the diving helmet can be found over at Thingiverse if you too feel like getting wet, just make sure that you size it to fit your own head. In the video CAD (cardboard-aided design) was used to determine the rough bounding box for the head, but everyone’s head is of course different. The helmet was printed in ABS, with the sections glued together before being covered in fiberglass and epoxy resin. Note that polyester resin dissolves ABS, so don’t use that.

On the helmet is a 1/4″ SAE fitting for the air hose, with the air provided from an oil-less compressor that in the final iteration is strapped to a floatation device along with an inverter and batteries. Of note is that you do not want to use a gas-powered compressor, as it’ll happily use any CO2 and CO it exhausts to send down the air hose to your lungs. This would be bad, much as having vaporized oil ending up in your lungs would be bad.

Although in the video the system is only tested in a backyard pool, it should be able to handle depths of up to ten meters, assuming the compressor can supply at least 41 L/minute. With some compressor-side miniaturization and waterproofing, [Hyperspace Pirate] reckons it would work fine for some actual ocean exploration, which while we’re sure everyone is dying to see. Perhaps don’t try this one at home, kids.

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Cycloidal drives are a type of speed reducer that are significantly more compact than gearboxes, but they still come with a fair number of components. In comparison, the harmonic pin-ring drive that [Raph] recently came across as used in some TQ electric bicycles manages to significantly reduce the number of parts to just two discs. Naturally he had to 3D model his own version for printing a physical model to play with.

How exactly this pin-ring cycloidal drive works is explained well in the referenced [Pinkbike] article. Traditional cycloidal drives use load pins that help deal with the rather wobbly rotation from the eccentric input, but this makes for bulkier package that’s harder to shrink down. The change here is that the input force is transferred via two teethed discs that are 180° out of sync, thus not only cancelling out the wobble, but also being much more compact.

It appears to be a kind of strain wave gearing, which was first patented in 1957 by C.W. Musser and became famous under the Harmonic Drive name, seeing use by NASA in the Lunar Rover and beyond. Although not new technology by any means, having it get some more well-deserved attention is always worth it. If you want to play with the 3D model yourself, files are available both on GitHub and on MakerWorld.

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There was an ideal of convergence, a long time ago, when one device would be all you need, digitally speaking. [ETA Prime] on YouTube seems to think we’ve reached that point, and his recent video about the Samsung S26 Ultra makes a good case for it. Part of that is software: Samsung’s DeX is a huge enabler for this use case. Part of that his hardware: the S26 Ultra, as the upcoming latest-and-greatest flagship phone, has absurd stats and a price tag to match.

First, it’s got 12 GB of that unobtanium once called “RAM”. It’s got an 8-core ARM processor in its Snapdragon Elite SOC, with the two performance cores clocked at 4.74 GHz — which isn’t a world record, but it’s pretty snappy. The other six cores aren’t just doddling along at 3.62 GHz. Except for the very youngest of our readers, you probably remember a time when the world’s greatest supercomputers had as much computing power as this phone.

So it should be no suprise that when [ETA Prime] plugs it into a monitor (using USB-C, natch) he’s able to do all the usual computational tasks without trouble. A big part of that is the desktop mode Samsung phones have had for a while now; we’ve seen hackers make use of it in years gone by. It’s still Android, but Android with a desktop-and-windows interface.

What are the hard tasks? Well, there’s photo and video editing, which the hardware can handle. Though [ETA] notes that it’s held back a bit because Adobe doesn’t offer their full suite on Android. But what’s really taxing for most of us is gaming. Android gaming? Well, obviously a flagship phone can handle anything in the play store.

It’s PC gaming that’s pretty impressive, considering the daisy chain of compatibility needed last time we looked at gaming on ARM. Cyberpunk 2077 gets frame rates near 60, but he needs to drop down to “low” graphics and 720p to do it. You may find that ample, or you may find it unplayable; there’s really no accounting for taste.

We might not always like carrying an everything device with us at all times, but there’s something to be said in not duplicating that functionality on your desk. Give it a couple of years when these things hit the used market at decent prices, and unless PC parts drop in price, convergence might start to seem like a great idea to those of us who aren’t big gamers and don’t need floppy drives.

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There’s a meme which may have a basis in truth, of a teenager left clueless when presented with a rotary telephone. The dial, in reality a mechanical pulse chain generator, was once ubiquitous enough that having one in your parts bin was anything but unusual. If you’re curious about their inner workings in 2026 though, you may be out of luck. Never fear though, because [Moeya 3D Designs] is here with a fully 3D printed version. It’s not as compact as the original, but it’s all there.

If you’re not put off by the anime-style Japanese voice over on the video below the break and you can enable subtitles for your language, you get the full explanation. There’s a ratchet and spring on the dial, which when released drives a gear train that ends in a cam that would operate a switch for the pulses. Another set of gears drives a very neatly designed centrifugal speed governor, and we see the effect immediately when it is removed. We’re not sure who will go for this project, but we surely like it.

There are two videos below the break, with the dial shown off in the first and the design process in the second. Meanwhile we’ve talked in the past about the networks behind the dials.

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Thanks [Jan] for the tip.

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Sunday night, around 7:00 PM local time, a bright fireball streaked across the western German sky, exploded, and rained chunks of space rock down on the region around Koblenz. One of the largest known chunks put a soccer-ball-sized hole in someone’s roof, landing in their bedroom. Fortunately, nobody was hurt. But given the apparent size of the explosion, there must be many more pieces out there for the finding, and a wave of hopeful meteorite hunters has descended upon the region.

But if you wanted a piece of the action, where exactly would you start looking? How do scientists find meteorites anyway? And what should you do if you happen to see a similar fireball in the night sky?

Citizen Science

Meteorite video-bombs a boring parking lot in Heerlen, NL.
In the age of always-on dashboard cameras, ubiquitous smartphones, and other video recording devices, it’s hard for a shy meteorite to find a quiet spot out of the public eye. That makes them a lot easier to find than they were in the past. Indeed, the International Meteor Organization, which aggregates amateur meteor observations, received more than 3,200 reports of this one, including several with video documentation. Some are stunning, and others may not even be of the event at all.

By collecting reports from many locations, they can hope to piece together the meteorite’s trajectory. However, if you look at the individual reports, it’s clear that this is a difficult task. Nobody is expecting a bright fireball to streak across the night sky, so many of the reports are reasonably vague on the details and heavy on the awe.

This report from [Sophie Z], for instance, is typical. She records where she was and roughly the location in the night sky where the meteorite passed, along with the comment “I’ve never seen anything so amazing and large before in my life.” Other amateur observers are more precise. [David C] (“I have a Ph.D in physics”) managed to record the start and the end heading of the meteorite to a couple of decimal places. He must have had a camera.

We’d love to know the exact algorithm used for combining the reports. It’s worth noting that reporters get an experience score, and the system presumably takes this into account when producing the average track. However, the system works, though, with 3,200 reports of a once-in-a-lifetime meteorite, it’s bound to come up with a pretty good estimate. But for smaller meteorites, like this one that flew by on Monday night, there are fewer observers, and deducing the actual track is a lot more difficult.

Everyday meteorites are better tracked by taking a more systematic approach. We’ve covered a few of these networks before, because the equipment needed to contribute meaningfully isn’t all that much more complicated than a single-board computer with a network connection, a camera module, and a weatherproof housing to keep it working all year round. We’ve covered the French meteorite-hunting network, Fripon, before, and have featured other amateur sky-camera builds to boot. But we’re not amateur astronomers, so we’re not in the loop on what the current state of the art is. If you know about coordinated citizen-science meteorite tracking efforts, let us know in the comments.

Geologists Get Into The Astronomy Game

This meteorite was big enough and loud enough when it exploded that participation in tracking wasn’t limited to those who are looking up. Geologists at the Karlsruhe Institute for Technology (KIT) found that the explosion registered on their seismometers. (Via Heise Online.) These have the advantage that they are in very well-known locations with extremely precise timestamps. After all, that’s what they’re used for every day, although the medium that the pressure waves travel through is usually the earth rather than the air.

This was also a particularly lucky event for the KIT team because it happened over a particularly dense network of seismological stations in the Eifel mountains, allowing for greater resolution. And as they point out, using the sound of the explosion has the additional advantage of not being hindered by light conditions during the day or clouds at night. This makes us think of how easy it would be to set up a distributed system of microphones to do something similar.

The KIT track estimate lines up fairly well with the aggregated estimate from amateur observers, but it’s not exactly the same. Who is right? We’ll see where more of the meteorites are found on the ground, presumably, in the next few weeks.

Meteorite Hunting

If the meteorite fell through our roof and chunks were scattered all around our bedroom, we’d count ourselves lucky. But would we get to keep it? Of course, it depends on the local laws, and in Germany, you can keep the meteorites in most cases, unless the state decides that it’s of special value for whatever reason, and then they get first dibs.

Apparently, the going rate for meteorites is between 1€ and 5,000€ per gram, so we’re not entirely sure that it will cover the damage. Maybe our homeowners’ insurance would? We’ll have to go dig out our policy to be sure, but however that plays out, we’d just be stoked to have the meteorite chunks and a good story.

While very big fireballs like this are rare, NASA estimates that around 44,000 kg of meteoritic material falls on the Earth every day. (Whoah!) Most of this burns up in the atmosphere, but some falls to the ground. Most of that fraction is in the form of micrometeorites, which are sand-grain-sized bits that are very likely raining down on us every day. Indeed, if you’re interested, you can try to collect them, and all you need is a tarp on the roof or a magnet in your downspout, a good microscope, and a bit of knowledge. So if all you want is some extraterrestrial rock, and you’re not worried so much about the size, maybe micrometeorite hunting is the path to success.

Have you gone looking for meteorites? Know of any up-to-date amateur fireball-hunting networks? Sound off in the comments!

hackaday.com/2026/03/11/german…

Most people love arcade games, but putting a full-sized arcade cabinet in the living room can lead to certain unpleasant complications. Ergo the market for fun-sized cabinets has exploded alongside the availability of cheap SBCs and MCUs that can run classical arcade titles. Microcontrollers like the ESP32 with its dual 240 MHz cores can run circles around the CPU grunt of 1980s arcade hardware. Cue [Till Harbaum]’s Galagino ESP32-based arcade emulator project, that recently saw some community versions and cabinet takes.

There was a port to the PlatformIO framework by [speckhoiler] which also added a few more arcade titles and repurposed the enclosure of an off-the-shelf ‘My Arcade’ by stuffing in an ESP32-based ‘Cheap Yellow Display‘ (CYD) board instead. These boards include the ESP32 module, a touch display, micro SD card slot, sound output, and more; making it an interesting all-in-one solution for this purpose.

Most recently [Davide Gatti] and friends ported the Galagino software to the Arduino platform and added a 3D printed enclosure, though you will still need to source a stack of parts which are listed in the bill of materials. What you do get is a top display that displays the current game title in addition to the display of the usual CYD core, along with an enclosure that can be printed both in single- or multi-color.

There’s also a build video that [Davide Gatti] made, but it’s only in Italian, so a bit of a crash course in this language may be required for some finer details.

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Thanks to [ZT] for the tip.

hackaday.com/2026/03/11/mini-m…

“Manualetto di sicurezza digitale per giornalisti e attivisti”

scritto e pubblicato da Guerre di Rete

lo presenta
Sonia Montegiove

ne discutono

Stefano Chiccarelli, Arturo Di Corinto, Fabio Pietrosanti

coordina

Giulio De Petra

A questo indirizzo si può trovare la descrizione dell’incontro:

centroriformastato.it/iniziati…

‘incontro si svolgerà a Roma, mercoledì 18 marzo, in via della Dogana Vecchia 5, a partire dalle 17,30.

Sarà possibile partecipare anche a distanza, collegandosi tramite il link

us02web.zoom.us/j/86313951005

Il nostro rapporto con le tecnologie è inevitabilmente contraddittorio. Mai come ora siamo circondati da strumenti abilitanti, che ci consentono di allargare le nostre capacità, ridurre sforzi e tempi di vecchie attività, dotarci di una somma di poteri da cui ormai siamo dipendenti. Eppure questi stessi strumenti, in maniera spesso invisibile e inattesa, possono aprire dei varchi sulle nostre vite, il nostro lavoro, le nostre relazioni. E quando succede, proprio la loro potenza, insieme alla capacità di archiviazione, l’ubiquità, la granularità con cui estraggono informazioni che prima non sarebbero mai state raccolte, diventano un’arma a doppio taglio. Questo vale per tutti, ma soprattutto per giornalisti e attivisti, che fanno dello scambio di informazioni (anche delicate, riservate, sensibili) una delle loro ragion d’essere. Il problema è che la macchina, intesa come l’assemblaggio caotico e strabordante di dispositivi, account, servizi digitali che ognuno di noi gestisce alla bell’e meglio mentre è intento a vivere e a lavorare, funziona splendidamente (o dà l’idea di funzionare in tal modo) senza disfunzioni, senza avvertimenti, senza preavvisi, fino al giorno in cui non funziona più. Fino al giorno in cui si riceve una strana notifica di Apple o Meta di essere stati oggetto di un attacco statale; fino a quando ritroviamo i nostri dati più privati online; o non riusciamo a entrare nel nostro account Instagram, che ha iniziato nel frattempo a delirare; o veniamo informati che qualcuno è entrato nella nostra casella di posta; o veniamo respinti alla frontiera senza nemmeno sapere perché; o la nostra fonte passa dei guai, e ci resta il sospetto che sia a causa delle comunicazioni avute con noi.

È con questa consapevolezza che Guerre di Rete ha deciso di scrivere e pubblicare un “Manualetto di sicurezza digitale per giornalisti e attivisti”

Il Manualetto segue un percorso che va dal facile al difficile, da quello che va messo subito in sicurezza, e con poca fatica, a quello che richiede più lavoro. Si inizia inquadrando alcuni aspetti generali – i diversi piani della sicurezza, l’analisi delle minacce – e poi si va nel pratico. Siamo partiti dalla mail perché sappiamo che è ancora l’hub centrale delle nostre vite, e quindi un fortino da difendere. Passiamo poi ai social media che, nel bene e nel male, restano un luogo fondamentale per giornalisti e attivisti, sottovalutato dal punto di vista della sicurezza. Eppure una revisione attenta delle impostazioni di visibilità e di privacy dei nostri account potrebbe far emergere informazioni che non siamo consapevoli di “pubblicizzare”. Poi parliamo di come si comunica con una fonte, o con qualcuno che necessiti di non essere esposto: il problema del primo contatto, quali app (e perché) possono essere utili, quali sistemi adottare per ricevere soffiate. Sistemate la mail, i social, e le comunicazioni, è tempo di pensare ai dispositivi. Sono cifrati? Abbiamo backup? Come li gestiamo? È il caso di compartimentare? Successivamente, ci addentriamo nell’aspetto della cybersicurezza più noto e forse temuto: phishing, malware, spyware.

Senza fare miracoli un lettore consapevole di questo Manualetto può però alzare di molto l’asticella della sua protezione.

dicorinto.it/formazione/manual…