Current Source Mixes Old School and New
At first glance, [RobBest]’s constant current source looks old school. The box is somewhat old-fashioned, featuring switches and binding posts. Most importantly, there’s a large analog meter dominating the front panel. Then you notice the OLED display, and you know something’s up.
The device can source or sink a constant current. In addition, it features a timer that calculates milliamp-hours and automatically turns off when not in use. The brain is a PIC 16F1765, which controls the screen, the buttons, and a few relays. While that might seem an odd choice for the processor, it is actually smart. The device has both a DAC and an ADC, plus an internal op amp. The analog output and a single pass transistor control the current flow, while the two relays flip it between a source and a sink.
Without that op amp, the DAC can’t produce much current. However, by passing it through the onboard amplifier, the output can drive about 100 mA, which is sufficient for this project.
This is a classic circuit, but the addition of a CPU and a display gives it capabilities that would have been very difficult to build back in the day. Want to dive into the theory behind constant current sources? Or just the practical use of a voltage regulator to make one?
youtube.com/embed/ICQmpqh1azU?…
Malware nascosto nelle immagini SVG nei siti per adulti: il nuovo schema per nascondere Trojan
Un nuovo schema per distribuire codice dannoso camuffato da immagini .svg è stato scoperto su decine di siti di contenuti per adulti stranieri. Come hanno scoperto gli esperti di Malwarebytes, gli aggressori incorporano codice JavaScript offuscato in tali file che, una volta cliccati, avviano una catena nascosta di script che termina con il download di Trojan.JS.Likejack.
Questo malware clicca silenziosamente sul pulsante “Mi piace” su un post predefinito di Facebook se la vittima ha un account aperto sul social network in quel momento. In questo modo, le pagine con contenuti espliciti ottengono maggiore visibilità e visibilità grazie ai browser compromessi.
SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) si differenzia dai consueti .jpg e .png in quanto memorizza i dati come testo XML. Questo consente di ridimensionare l’immagine senza perdere qualità, ma consente anche di incorporare HTML e JavaScript al suo interno. Questa funzionalità ha da tempo attirato gli aggressori, poiché apre la strada ad attacchi XSS , HTML injection e attacchi DoS. In questo caso, gli autori dei file dannosi hanno utilizzato una tecnica JSFuck modificata, che codifica JavaScript in un set di caratteri, rendendo difficile l’analisi.
Dopo la decodifica iniziale, lo script carica nuovi frammenti di codice, anch’essi nascosti all’analisi. La fase finale dell’attacco è l’interazione forzata con gli elementi di Facebook, che viola le regole della piattaforma. Facebook blocca tali account, ma gli autori dello schema tornano rapidamente con nuovi profili.
Tecniche simili sono già state osservate in precedenza. Nel 2023, gli hacker hanno utilizzato il tag .svg per sfruttare una vulnerabilità XSS nel client web Roundcube e, nel giugno 2025, i ricercatori hanno registrato attacchi di phishing con una falsa finestra di accesso Microsoft, aperta anch’essa da un file SVG.
Malwarebytes ora collega i casi identificati a decine di siti WordPress che distribuiscono contenuti dannosi in modo simile.
L'articolo Malware nascosto nelle immagini SVG nei siti per adulti: il nuovo schema per nascondere Trojan proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.
Physical Aimbot Shoots For Success In Valorant
Modern competitive games have a great deal of anti-cheat software working to make sure you can’t hack the games to get a competitive advantage. [Kamal Carter] decided to work around this by building a physical aimbot for popular FPS Valorant.
The concept is straightforward enough. [Kamal] decided to hardmount an optical mouse to a frame, while moving a mousepad around beneath it with an off-the-shelf Cartesian CNC platform, but modified to be driven by DC motors for quick response. This gave him direct control over the cursor position which is largely undistinguishable from a human being moving the mouse. Clicking the mouse is achieved with a relay. As for detecting enemies and aiming at them, [Kamal] used an object detection system called YOLO. He manually trained the classifier to detect typical Valorant enemies and determine their position on the screen. The motors are then driven to guide the aim point towards the enemy, and the fire command is then given.
The system has some limitations—it’s really only capable of completing the shooting range challenges in Valorant. The vision model isn’t trained on the full range of player characters in Valorant, and it would prove difficult to use such a system in a competitive match. Still, it’s a neat way to demonstrate how games can be roboticized and beaten outside of just the software realm. Video after the break.
youtube.com/embed/fr02fxc-5jo?…
Calipers: Do You Get What You Pay For?
Generally, you think that if you pay more for something, it must be better, right? But that’s not always true. Even if it is true at the lower end, sometimes premium brands are just barely better than the midrange. [Project Farm] looks at a bunch of different calipers — a constant fixture around the shop if you do any machining, 3D printing, or PCB layout. The price range spans from less than $10 for some Harbor Freight specials to brands like Mitutoyo, which cost well over $100. Where’s the sweet spot? See the video below to find out.
The first part of the video covers how much the units weigh, how smooth the action is, and how much force it takes to push it down. However, those are not what you probably care most about. The real questions are how accurate and repeatable they are.
If you just want a summary of the first part of the video, skip to the ten minute mark. The table there shows that the three instruments that have the most consistent force on the slide range in price from $27 to $72. The $454 pair (which, to be fair, included a micrometer) was number six by that measure. The smoothness factor, which is somewhat subjective, came in favor of the most expensive pair, but there was a $25 caliper that was nearly as good in the number two slot.
Using a calibration block and some special techniques, he attempts to see how accurate they all are. We wish he’d used millimeters instead of inches, but in the inch range, none of them are bad. Only one set had a real problem of not making consistent readings.
If you want to jump right to the tables again, jump to the 17:20 mark. With two exceptions, they were all mostly accurate and fell into three groups. We wondered if there are three different chipsets involved. The cheapest caliper in the first group cost $27 and was as good as the expensive Mitutoyo. The second group ranged from $18 to as much as $40 and were only 0.000675 inches (only 0.017145 mm) off from the higher group.
Which was the best? That table is at about the 18:00 minute mark. In all fairness, the best, by his estimation, did cost $144, so it was the second most expensive set in the review. But that’s still cheaper than the Mitutoyo, which placed third. The fourth-place set was good, too, and came in at $27. For a few bucks less, the sixth-place caliper was also good.
Do you know how to do all the measurements your calipers are capable of? Ever wonder what’s inside those things? We did too.
youtube.com/embed/z5KtKAee0jw?…
Compliant Contacts: Hacking Door Locks with Pen Springs
As you may have guessed given our name, we do love hacks around here, and this one is a great example of making some common, everyday things work in uncommon ways. [Nathan] sent in his hack to detect the door lock position in his basement.
Having a house that dates back to the 1890s, much of it was not very conducive to using off-the-shelf home automation devices. [Nathan] wanted a way to check the status of the basement deadbolt. He went about putting together a custom sensor using some spare parts, including a spare BeagleBone Black, and some springs from a ballpoint pen. Going full MacGyver, [Nathan] used springs from a ballpoint pen to craft a compliant contact for his sensor.
The pair of springs sat in the door frame and came in contact with the deadbolt; given they are springs, the exact position of the sensor was not very sensitive, as if too close it would just compress the springs slightly more. The springs were wired to the BeagleBone Black’s GPIO, acting as a switch to sense when there was conductivity between the springs through the deadbolt.
This wasn’t just a plug-it-in-and-it-works type of project, mind you; the BeagleBone Black was over 15 ft away from the sensors, lending plenty of opportunity for noise to be introduced into the lines. To combat this, [Nathan] created an RC filter to filter out all the high-frequency noise picked up by his sensor. Following the RC filter, he added in some code to handle the debounce of the sensor, as the springs have some inherent noise in them. Thanks [Nathan] for sending in your resourceful hack; we love seeing the resourcefulness of reusing things already on hand for other purposes. Be sure to check out some of the other repurposed components we’ve featured.
Building A Trash Can Reverb
These days, if you want a reverb effect, you just dial up whatever software plugin most appeals to you and turn the dials to taste. However, [Something Physical] specialises in… physical things… and thus built a reverb the old fashioned way. Using a trashcan, of course.
The concept is simple enough—the method of operation is exactly the same as any old plate reverb. Audio is played through a speaker connected to the plate (or trashcan), causing it to vibrate. The sound is then picked up at another point on the plate (or trashcan) with some kind of microphonic pickups, amplified, and there you have your reverb signal.
Given it’s built around a piece of street furniture, [Something Physical] has dubbed this the Street-Verb. It uses a class D amp to drive a speaker with a bolt stuck to it. The bolt is then put in contact with the trashcan itself to transfer the vibration. A pair of piezo elements are used as the pickups, run through a preamps built with a humble BC109C transistor. Since there are two pickups, the Street-Verb is effectively a stereo reverb unit, though the input is only mono. [Something Physical] set up the speaker driver and pickups to be easily movable, and was able to test the device with all kinds of street furniture, like gates and street signs, but the trashcan ‘verb setup is by far the most compelling.
We’ve featured other plate reverb builds before, too, albeit less garbage-themed. Video after the break.
youtube.com/embed/J2e8JIxW1g4?…
Neon Bulbs? They’re a Gas!
When you think of neon, you might think of neon signs or the tenth element, a noble gas. But there was a time when neon bulbs like the venerable NE-2 were the 555 of their day, with a seemingly endless number of clever circuits. What made this little device so versatile? And why do we see so few of them today?
Neon’s brilliant glow was noted when William Ramsay and Morris Travers discovered it in 1898. It would be 1910 before a practical lighting device using neon appeared. It was 1915 when the developer, Georges Claude, of Air Liquide fame, received a patent on the unique electrodes suitable for lighting and, thus, had a monopoly on the technology he sold through his company Claude Neon Lights.
However, Daniel Moore in 1917 developed a different kind of neon bulb while working for General Electric. These bulbs used coronal discharge to produce a red glow or, with argon, a blue glow. This was different enough to earn another patent, and neon bulbs found use primarily as indicator lamps before the advent of the LED. However, it would also find many other uses.
How It Worked
There are two electrodes within, an anode and a cathode. When a DC voltage excites the bulb sufficiently, a glow forms around one electrode. AC makes both electrodes glow alternately. The striking voltage changes based on ambient light or radioactive exposure, as well as the bulb’s gas mix and pressure.
Until the strike voltage occurs, the bulb is effectively an open circuit. When it does strike, however, the resistance goes down and will sustain even at a lower voltage. Like an LED, current limiting is essential, or the bulb will burn out. The NE-2, arguably the most common neon bulb, triggers at 90 V, nominally, and will conduct until the voltage drops to about 60 V.
So It Lights Up?
The lighting up is good, but you do need a lot of voltage to get it going. The bulb will easily light up from 120 V line voltage, for example. But the really interesting property is that the bulbs, when glowing, exhibit negative resistance. That is, as current increases, voltage decreases.
You can also make the bulbs operate in a bistable mode, where they can work in logic circuits. They weren’t common, but some bulbs had special features for logic use. These bulbs were not made to glow necessarily, and sometimes had a third wire used as a control electrode.
Since the gas inside the tube can ionize, neon bulbs can also detect things like light, microwaves, or heavy electrostatic fields. They can even pick up audio.
What Could You Do?
Of course, the normal application was to use the devices as a lamp, like you’d use an LED today. Power pilot lights were common. Special neon lights looking like digits form the basis of nixie tubes.
Another neat display trick was the “blown fuse” indicator. Fuse holders often had neon bulbs in them that connected across the fuse terminals. In normal operation, the voltage across the fuse was practically zero, so the bulb stayed dark. But if the fuse blew, you’d have 120 V across the bulb, which would then light up. A high-value resistor prevented any significant current from flowing.
By far the most common non-lighting use was as a part of a relaxation oscillator. Consider a circuit with a resistor and a capacitor, but the capacitor has a neon bulb across it. The capacitor will charge until it hits the neon bulb’s trigger voltage. The bulb will light and discharge the capacitor until it drops below the holding voltage for the bulb. Then the process starts over. You could use neons to make a clock.
Long History
[E. Norbert Smith] wrote about the “1001” uses for the NE-2 — probably not an exaggeration, but [Smith] didn’t get that many in the article — in a 1965 Elementary Electronics magazine article.
The circuits he shows include a 50 V regulated power supply. (Regulators weren’t held to the same standard in those days as we would expect now.) Need 150 V? Use three of them. Or put them in parallel to improve regulation performance.
Some of the circuits are probably not useful if you aren’t building with tubes. And, of course, if you aren’t building with tubes, you are less likely to have the high voltages you need, so there is that.
He also covers the classic self-indicating fuse and the relaxation oscillator. Of course, if you can make one neon bulb blink, you can also make two blink alternately. Blink it fast enough and you can make a code practice oscillator with just a few parts and a 90 V battery.
If you wondered how neon bulbs could handle logic, that same article will answer that question, too. Just be aware that a logic 1 is 10 V — not a problem — but a logic 0 is -10 V. The nice thing about demonstrating logic circuits with neon bulbs is that you don’t need a logic probe or scope to see the state of the machine.
There were many other ways to use these bulbs. Since the trigger voltage was stable, you could use it as a voltage indicator if you coupled it with a voltage divider. In fact, many cheap AC socket testers still work this way. A typical circuit for a capacitor checker could be found in “36 Time Tested Circuits,” a book from Popular Electronics.
The capacitor is hooked up to the AC line via some 470 kΩ resistors. If you connect a capacitor to it, the neon bulb should light up. If not, it is open. When you push the button, you switch to DC, and you should be able to see one side of the neon bulb dim. If it doesn’t dim or doesn’t go all the way off, the capacitor is shorted or leaky. Supposedly, you could get a feel for the value of the capacitor by how long it took half of the bulb to go out. Makes you appreciate your digital capacitance meter, right?
Why Gone?
Why do you so rarely see neon bulbs today? They are still around, but the number of circuits you have where you have the requisite 100 V or so to drive them is not what it used to be. On top of that, as an indicator, an LED is usually a far better choice.
If you want negative resistance, your choices are less obvious. Some special diodes present a negative resistance in certain operating regimes, and you can coax the behavior from some transistors. However, as a matter of practicality, today, you’d probably just use an active switch and be done with it, especially for an oscillator circuit. Then again, if you really want an oscillator, as we are always reminded, you can do it with a 555, among other methods.
We have no doubt that [Smith] was right. There are probably at least 1,001 different uses, but you get the idea. Did you use an NE-2 for something interesting? Let us know about it in the comments. Still want more neon bulb circuits? We’ve seen plenty.
Linus Torvalds: “Questa è Spazzatura”! Critico per la patch RISC-V per Linux 6.17
Linus Torvalds ha duramente criticato il primo lotto di patch RISC-V proposte per l’inclusione in Linux 6.17, affermando che le modifiche sono arrivate troppo tardi e contenevano quella che lui ha definito “spazzatura” non correlata a RISC-V e che interessava gli header comuni del kernel.
Era particolarmente infastidito dalla nuova macro helper make_u32_from_two_u16(), che secondo Torvalds rendeva il codice meno chiaro e peggiorava le cose. Notò che la semplice scrittura del form (a mostrava immediatamente cosa stava succedendo, mentre l’uso dell'”helper” oscurava l’ordine delle parole e introduceva ambiguità.
No, questa è spazzatura ed è arrivata troppo tardi. Ho chiesto un ritiro anticipato.richieste perché sono in viaggio, e se non riesci a seguire questa regola, almeno rendi le richieste di pull *buone*.Ciò aggiunge vari elementi indesiderati che non sono specifici di RISC-V ai file di intestazione generici.E con "spazzatura" intendo davvero. Questa è roba che nessuno dovrebbe inviami, figuriamoci in ritardo in una finestra di unione.Come questo folle e inutile "helper" make_u32_from_two_u16().Quella cosa rende il mondo un posto peggiore in cui vivere. È spazzatura inutile che rende incomprensibile qualsiasi utente, e attivamente *PEGGIO* che non usare quello stupido "aiutante".
Torvalds ha sottolineato che tali modifiche non dovrebbero comparire nelle intestazioni generali, né tantomeno essere apportate alla fine della finestra di merge. Ha avvertito che non accetterà più richieste di pull tardive né consentirà la creazione di “spazzatura” al di fuori dell’albero dell’architettura RISC-V.
Secondo lui, gli autori potranno riprovare queste modifiche solo nella versione 6.18 e solo all’inizio della finestra di unione, senza modifiche controverse e inutili.
La vicenda dimostra che, anche in un ecosistema aperto e collaborativo come quello di Linux, l’inclusività non significa accettare qualsiasi contributo senza filtro. L’open source nasce per essere accessibile, ma richiede disciplina, coerenza e qualità tecnica. Come ha dimostrato Torvalds, le regole di integrazione e revisione servono a preservare la stabilità e la chiarezza del codice, evitando l’introduzione di modifiche inutili o dannose.
Ma l’open source non doveva essere inclusivo? Sì, ma inclusivo non vuol dire indulgente con la “spazzatura”: vuol dire garantire che ogni contributo sia valido, utile e ben integrato nell’interesse di tutta la comunità.
L'articolo Linus Torvalds: “Questa è Spazzatura”! Critico per la patch RISC-V per Linux 6.17 proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.
End Of The Eternal September, As AOL Discontinues Dial-Up
If you used the internet at home a couple of decades or more ago, you’ll know the characteristic sound of a modem connecting to its dial-up server. That noise is a thing of the past, as we long ago moved to fibre, DSL, or wireless providers that are always on. It’s a surprise then to read that AOL are discontinuing their dial-up service at the end of September this year, in part for the reminder that AOL are still a thing, and for the surprise that in 2025 they still operate a dial-up service.
There was a brief period in which instead of going online via the internet itself, the masses were offered online services through walled gardens of corporate content. Companies such as AOL and Compuserve bombarded consumers with floppies and CD-ROMs containing their software, and even Microsoft dipped a toe in the market with the original MSN service before famously pivoting the whole organisation in favour of the internet in mid 1995. Compuserve was absorbed by AOL, which morphed into the most popular consumer dial-up ISP over the rest of that decade. The dotcom boom saw them snapped up for an exorbitant price by Time Warner, only for the expected bonanza to never arrive, and by 2023 the AOL name was dropped from the parent company’s letterhead. Over the next decade it dwindled into something of an irrelevance, and is now owned by Yahoo! as a content and email portal. This dial-up service seems to have been the last gasp of its role as an ISP.
So the eternal September, so-called because the arrival of AOL users on Usenet felt like an everlasting version of the moment a fresh cadre of undergrads arrived in September, may at least in an AOL sense, finally be over. If you’re one of the estimated 0.2% of Americans still using a dial-up connection don’t despair, because there are a few other ISPs still (just) serving your needs.
Smartphone Hackability, or, A Pocket Computer That Isn’t
Smartphones boggle my mind a whole lot – they’re pocket computers, with heaps of power to spare, and yet they feel like the furthest from it. As far as personal computers go, smartphones are surprisingly user-hostile.
In the last year’s time, even my YouTube recommendations are full of people, mostly millennials, talking about technology these days being uninspiring. In many of those videos, people will talk about phones and the ecosystems that they create, and even if they mostly talk about the symptoms rather than root causes, the overall mood is pretty clear – tech got bland, even the kinds of pocket tech you’d consider marvellous in abstract. It goes deeper than cell phones all looking alike, though. They all behave alike, to our detriment.
A thought-provoking exercise is to try to compare smartphone development timelines to those of home PCs, and see just in which ways the timelines diverged, which forces acted upon which aspect of the tech at what points, and how that impacted the alienation people feel when interacting with either of these devices long-term. You’ll see some major trends – lack of standardization through proprietary technology calling the shots, stifling of innovation both knowingly and unknowingly, and finance-first development as opposed to long-term investments.
Let’s start with a fun aspect, and that is hackability. It’s not perceived to be a significant driver of change, but I do believe it to be severely decreasing chances of regular people tinkering with their phones to any amount of success. In other words, if you can’t hack it in small ways, you can’t really make it yours.
Can’t Tinker, Don’t Own
In order to tinker with your personal computer, you need just that, the computer itself. Generally, you need a whole another computer to hack on your smartphone; sometimes you even need a custom cable, and it’s not rare you can’t do it at all. Phone tinkering is a path you explicitly set out to do, whereas computer-based hacking is something you can do idly.
There’s good reasons for this, of course – first, a phone was generally always a “subservient” device not meant or able to be used as a development bench unto itself. Then – phones started really growing in an age and an environment where proprietary technology reigned supreme, with NDAs and utter secrecy (particularly for GSM modems with their inordinate amount of IP) being an especially prominent fixture in the industries surrounding phones. Even Android’s open-source technology was mostly for manufacturers’ benefit rather than a design advantage for users, as demonstrated by the ever-worsening non-open-source driver situation.
Only a few phones ever bucked these trends, and those that did, developed pretty devoted followings if the hardware was worthwhile. Just look at the Nokia N900 with its hardware capability and alt OS support combo, Pixel phones with their mainline kernel support letting alternative OSes flourish, or old keypad Motorolas with leaked baseband+OS source code. They’re remembered pretty fondly, and it’s because they facilitated hacking, on-device or even off-device.
Hacking starts by probing at a device’s inner workings, deducing how things work, and testing the boundaries, but it doesn’t happen when boundaries are well-protected and hidden away from your eyes. A typical app, even on Android, is surprisingly non-explorable, and unlike with PCs, again, if you want to explore it, you need a whole another device. Does it benefit app developers? For sure. I also have a strong hunch it doesn’t benefit users that we could otherwise see become developers.
Part of it is the need to provide a polished user experience, a respectable standard to have, especially so for producing pocket computers to be used by millions of people at once. However, I’d argue that modern phones are suffocating, and that the lack of transparency is more akin to encasing an already reliable device in epoxy for no reason. A device designed to never ever challenge you, is a device that can’t help you grow, and it’s not really a device you can grow attached to, either.
Of course, complaints are one thing, and actionable suggestions is another.
What Do?
In other words, let people easily program phones to flash the screen every time an SMS from a specific person is received, or start audio recording when the user taps the touchscreen three times as the phone’s locked, or send accelerometer movements into a network socket as fast as the OS can receive them. Then, let them wrap those programs into apps, share apps easily with each other, and, since the trend of fast obsolescence requires regular collectie infusions of cash, transfer them from phone to phone quickly.
By the way, if days of Bluetooth and IrDA transfers evaded you, you missed out. We used to stand next to each other and transfer things from one phone to another, a field previously handled, but nowadays these things are somehow relegated to proprietary technologies like Airdrop. This isn’t a problem for personal computers, in fact, they somehow keep getting better and better at it; just recently, I transferred some movies between two laptops using a Thunderbolt cable during a flight, and somehow, this was one of the few “wow” moments that I’ve had recently with consumer-grade tech.
The idea is pretty simple on its own – if phones are to be personal computers, they should be very easy to program.
The Doohickey Port
What about a bonus suggestion, for hardware customization? USB-C ports are really cool and powerful, but they’re relatively bespoke, and you only ever get one, to be unplugged every time you need to charge or sync. Plus, even if you have OTG, all that 5V step-up action isn’t great for the battery, and neither are USB hardware/firmware stacks.
What else? Keeping up with the times, these days, you can manufacture flex PCBs decently quickly, with stiffener at no extra cost, and for dirt cheap, too. On a physical level, phones tend to come with cases, overwhelmingly so. In a way, there’s suddenly plenty of free space on the back of a phone, for those with the eyes to see, and that’s after accounting for the ever-increasing camera bump, too.
My bonus idea to make phones more customizable at low entry level, would be an I2C accessory port. In effect, a latch-less FFC socket with exposed I2C, and some 3.3V at non-negligible power. Of course, protect all lines electrically, current-limit the 3.3V and make its power switchable. With modern tech, you don’t need to compromise waterproofing, either, and you can add a whole bunch of protection to such a port.
From there, you can get GPIOs, you can get PWM, and so much more. You could have a reasonably simple GPIO expansion, but also a fully-fledged board with DACs and ADCs bolted on, or a servo control board, or an extra display of the kind phone designers like to add once in a generation, only to find it never be used by third-party apps as sales numbers never really reach the point of wider adoption. Experimental chording keyboards, touch surfaces, thermal pixel sensors,
Does it feel like you’ve seen that implemented? Of course, this resembles the PinePhone addon scheme, with FPCs wedged between the back cover and a set of pogo pins. Notably though, this kind of standard is about having compatibility between models and even manufacturers. You also shed a lot of Bluetooth cruft generally required when developing accessories for modern phones. It requires a flex PCB, sure, but so do pogopin schemes, and there’s barely any mechanics compared to a pogopin array. Is it more fragile than a pogopin array? Yes, but it’s fragile addon-side, not as much phone-side, whereas pogopin arrays tend to be the opposite.
A Sketch And A Dream
Of course, this also relies on the aforementioned Python interpreter, and a decent exposed I2C API. If the only way to tinker with yours and others’ accessories is through bespoke intransparent apps you need a whole different device to make (or modify, if you’re lucky), the hackability aspect wanes quick. In essence, what I’m proposing is a phone-contained sandbox, not in a security sense, but in an educational sense. Personal computers have been serving as sandboxes for decades now, and yet, phones could never really fulfill such a niche.
I think one of the big problems with modern phones is that a phone is barely ever a sandbox, all for mostly historic reasons. Now, if that’s the case, we should make it one. If it’s a sandbox, then it can be molded to your needs through hacking and tinkering. If it can be molded to your needs, then it belongs to you in a whole different way. Will this happen? Quite unlikely, though, I do feel like making some prototypes. Instead, it’s about highlighting a significant aspect that contributes to tech alienation, and imagining how we could solve it given enough market buy-in.
The AI summit bandwagon heads to India
IT'S MONDAY, AND THIS IS DIGITAL POLITICS. I'm Mark Scott, and I'm having some serious FOMO about missing out on the Oasis reunion concerts touring the United Kingdom. In honor of that, I give you this banger.
— Everything you need to know about the upcoming AI Impact Summit to be hosted by India early next year.
— Ahead of Donald Trump's meeting with Vladimir Putin on Aug. 15, Russia's state-based media is in a full-court propaganda press.
— Who's who in the recent shake-up in the European Commission's Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology.
Let's get started:
Don’t say this DIY Diskette was a Flop
Sometimes, you build a thing because you need a thing. Sometimes, you do it just to see if you can. This project is in category two: [polymatt] didn’t need to create a floppy disk from scratch-– plenty of old disks still exist– but we’re glad he made the attempt because it makes for a fascinating video that’s embedded below.
Some of you are going to quibble with the terminology [polymatt] uses in this video: first of all, he didn’t begin by creating the universe, so is he really starting “from scratch”? Secondly, the “floppy” format he’s attempting to copy is a 3½” diskette, which does not flop at all. Alas, the vernacular has decided that “stiffy” means something totally different that you ought not to hand a co-worker, and “floppy” is the word in use now.
Choosing newer stiff-walled medium does allow him to practice his CNC skills and make the coolest-looking floppy enclosure we’ve ever seen. (It turns out brushed aluminum is even cooler-looking than the translucent neon ones.) On the other hand, we can’t help but wonder if a lower-density format 5¼” disk might have been an easier hurdle to jump. The diskette that was built does magnetize, but it can’t read or write actual files. We wonder if the older format might have been more forgiving of grain size and composition of his ferrite coating. Even more forgiving still would be to use these techniques to make magnetic tape which is a perfectly viable way to store data.
Instead of storing data, you could make your own cleaning floppy. It’s not like data storage was really the point here, anyway– its not the destination, but the journey. So whatever you call this DIY diskette, please don’t call it a flop.
Thanks to [Anonymous] for the stiff tip! If you want to slip us your tip, rest assured we will grab on and milk it for all it is worth to our readers.
youtube.com/embed/TBiFGhnXsh8?…
The Trials Of Trying To Build An Automatic Filament Changer
Running out of filament mid-print is a surefire way to ruin your parts and waste a lot of time. [LayerLab] was sick of having this problem, and so sought to find a proper solution. Unfortunately, between off-the-shelf solutions and homebrew attempts, he was unable to solve the problem to his satisfaction.
[LayerLab] had a simple desire. He wanted his printer to swap to a second spool of filament when the first one runs out, without ruining or otherwise marring the print. It sounds simple, but the reality is more complicated. As an Australian, he couldn’t access anything from InfinityFlow, so he first attempted to use the “auto refill” features included on the Bambu Labs AMS 2. However, it would routinely make filament changes in outside wall areas of a print, leaving unsightly marks and producing poorer quality parts.
His next effort was to use the Wisepro Auto Refill Filament Buffer. It’s a feeder device that takes filament from two spools, and starts feeding the backup spool in to your printer when the primary spool runs out. Unfortunately, [LayerLab] had a cavalcade of issues with the device. It would routinely feed from the secondary spool when there was still primary filament available, jamming the device, and it didn’t come with a proper mounting solution to work with consumer printers. It also had bearings popping out the top of the housing. Attempts to rework the device into a larger twin-spool rig helped somewhat, but ultimately the unreliability of the Wisepro when changing from one spool to another meant it wasn’t fit for purpose. Its feeder motors were also to trigger the filament snag cutters that [LayerLab] had included in his design.
Ultimately, the problem remains unsolved for [LayerLab]. They learned a lot along the way, mostly about what not to do, but they’re still hunting for a viable automatic filament changer solution that suits their needs. Filament sensors help, but can only do so much. If you reckon you know the answer, or a good way forward, share your thoughts in the comments. Video after the break.
youtube.com/embed/zvCZANVXaKw?…
Verso la Meta! Pamir Highway: il Cyberpandino a 5000 metri sul tetto del mondo
Il Cyberpandino non è solo una Panda trasformata in laboratorio hi-tech, ma un simbolo di resistenza e avventura senza confini. Dopo aver attraversato canyon, deserti e steppe, ora si trova sulle vette eteree dell’Himalaya, a ben 5000 metri di altezza: un traguardo che pochi veicoli possono immaginare. La sfida non si ferma, e il motore ronza tra aria rarefatta e cieli immensi, alimentato dall’entusiasmo instancabile del suo equipaggio .
In quel silenzio ovattato sulle strade senza tempo del Pamir, il Cyberpandino assomiglia a un essere vivente che sfida la gravità e l’oblio. Tra curve mozzafiato e valli sospese sopra il mondo, ogni colpo di gas diventa una dichiarazione: “Non si molla, non si ferma”. Il team affronta la fatica, la mancanza d’ossigeno e le condizioni più estreme con saldatori in una mano e script in un’altra, mantenendo viva la scintilla di creatività hacker e innovazione maker .
Lungo il percorso del Mongol Rally, questa Panda del 2003 ha già dimostrato di sapersi reinventare: fari LED stampati in 3D, interfaccia touchscreen “Panda OS”, sensori OBD2, GPS, IMU, persino misuratori di qualità dell’aria. Ora, mentre si arrampica verso le cime dell’Himalaya, questi strumenti diventano ancora più preziosi, pronti a raccontare ogni respiro, ogni tremito del motore, ogni sublime vertigine del viaggio .
In questa metà dell’avventura, immersi tra nuvole e vette, il Cyberpandino diventa metafora: un mix perfetto di incoscienza visionaria e resilienza pura. È la cultura hacker che prende forma su quattro ruote, sfidando la logica del comfort e della praticità per abbracciare il caos, l’imprevisto e il fascino dell’ignoto. Ed è proprio lì, in mezzo al nulla cosmico, che si sente più vivo che mai .
La vetta non è mai un punto d’arrivo, ma un invito a continuare. Anche a 5000 metri, tra rocce cromate dal gelo e strade che sembrano sospese tra passato e futuro, il Cyberpandino non arretra. In quel “tetto del mondo”, tra l’Himalaya e il cuore pulsante dell’Asia centrale, il viaggio continua — tra freddo penetrante, panorami surreali e la promessa che, anche dove tutto sembra fermo, l’avventura non si ferma mai.
L'articolo Verso la Meta! Pamir Highway: il Cyberpandino a 5000 metri sul tetto del mondo proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.
Amiga Programming in 2025 with AmiBlitz
Having owned an Amiga microcomputer is apparently a little bit like having shaken hands with Shoggoth: no one can escape unchanged from the experience. Thirty-two years on, [Neil] at The Retro Collective remains haunted by the memories — specifically, the memory of BlitzBasic 2, an Amiga-specific programming language he never found the time to use. What better time to make a game for the Amiga than the year 2025 of the common era?
[Neil] takes us on a long journey, with more than a little reminiscing along the way. BlitzBasic may not have been the main programming language for the Amiga, but it was by no means the least, with a good pedigree that included the best-selling 1993 game Skidmarks. Obviously BlitzBasic was not a slow, interpreted language as one might think hearing “BASIC”. Not only is it a compiled language, it was fast enough to be billed as the next best thing to C for the Amiga, according to [Neil].
[Neil] wasn’t the only one whose dreams have been haunted by the rugose touch of the Amiga and its scquomose BlitzBasic language– you’ll find a version on GitHub called AmiBlitz3 that is maintained by [Sven] aka [honitas] to this day, complete with an improved IDE. The video includes a history lesson on the open-source AmiBlitz, and enough information to get you started.
For the vibe-coders amongst you, [Neil] has an excellent tip that you can use LLMs like ChatGPT to help you learn niche languages like this not by asking for code (which isn’t likely to give you anything useful, unless you’ve given it special training) but by requesting techniques and psudocode you can then implement to make your game. The LLM also proved a useful assistent for [Neil]’s excel-based pixel art workflow.
If you’re wondering why bother, well, why not? As [Neil] says, writing Amiga games is his version of a crossword puzzle. It may also be the only way to keep the dreams at bay. Others have taken to writing new operating systems or reproducing PCBs to keep vintage Amiga hardware alive. If some gather under the light of the full moon to chant “Ia! Ia! Commodore f’thagan”– well, perhaps we can thank them for Commodore for rising from the sunless depths of bankruptcy once again.
youtube.com/embed/DES1oyCOSYs?…
IO E CHATGPT E11: La creatività, le immagini e i video
In questo episodio ci dedichiamo sempre alla creatività, ma con particolare attenzione ai video e alle immagini.
zerodays.podbean.com/e/io-e-ch…
Hackaday Links: August 10, 2025
We lost a true legend this week with the passing of NASA astronaut Jim Lovell at the ripe old age of 97. Lovell commanded the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission back in 1970, and along with crewmates Jack Swigert and Fred Haise — along with just about every person working at or for NASA — he managed to guide the mortally wounded Odyssey command module safely back home. While he’s rightly remembered for the heroics on 13, it was far from his first space rodeo. Lovell already had two Gemini missions under his belt before Apollo came along, including the grueling Gemini 7, where he and Frank Borman undertook the first long-duration space mission, proving that two men stuffed into a Volkswagen-sized cockpit could avoid killing each other for at least two weeks.
Lovell also served as Command Module Pilot on Apollo 8, the first crewed mission to lunar orbit. Apollo 8 was notable for its many technical and scientific accomplishments, but it’s perhaps best known as the mission where Lunar Module Pilot Bill Anders, who died only last year in a plane crash, proved his photography chops by capturing the iconic Earthrise image, as well as (probably) the first full-disk image of Earth from space. Along with Gemini 12, Lovell racked up four flights, making him the first person to reach that number, and spent nearly a solid month in space. He was also the only person to make it to lunar orbit twice without having landed on the surface, which we’d have found int½olerable, but which he always seemed to take in stride.
youtube.com/embed/7EP0qaBo-tc?…
We harp on about the Apollo era all the time not only because we’re rapidly losing its alumni — with the passing of Jim Lovell, only five astronauts from the program are left, and every one of them is in their 90s — but because the achievements from that program were so definitional and formative to many of us who went into STEM. Magazines such as Popular Mechanics played a similar role, too, which is why we were excited to find out about this massive online trove of PM issues stretching all the way back to 1902. The digitized volumes are maintained by a variety of archives, including The Internet Archive and Google Books, and it looks like every issue through the end of 2005 is included and free of charge to browse. We were charmed to learn that the classic “Written so that you can understand it” tagline made its first appearance on the masthead way back on issue 6. In a lot of ways, Hackaday is the spiritual successor to PM and other magazines like it, but with 123 years of publication under its belt, we’ve got a ways to go to catch up.
It looks like the speaker schedule for HOPE_16 is filling up fast, as you’d expect since the conference is next weekend. The lineup looks fantastic; our early unofficial award for best talk title goes to Kody Kinzie’s Meshtastic talk “Spooky Action at a Discount.” If you’re planning to attend the conference, we’d love to get a heads-up on talks we should cover once the videos are published, so hit us up at tips@hackaday.com.
And finally, we’d have sworn the era of building dams was long gone in the United States, but it seems we were mistaken. A massive dam project, the Chimney Hollow Reservoir Project, is nearing completion in Colorado, and Aaron Witt got to take a second look at the project after first checking it out in 2023. The earthen dam, which will be 350 feet tall and over 1,000 feet wide at completion, is somewhat unique in that it doesn’t impound an existing stream, but rather will collect water from the Colorado River via a tunnel through the mountain that abuts the dam. Also unique is the asphalt core of the dam. Most earthen dams use a layer of packed clay to prevent the flow of water, but since clay was hard to come by locally, they used an extra gooey wall of asphalt two feet thick. As is typical for Aaron, he geeks out on the heavy equipment, which we can’t complain about at all, but it’s the civil engineering that really caught our fancy. Enjoy!
youtube.com/embed/0eFTrOpueYE?…
hackaday.com/2025/08/10/hackad…
2025 One Hertz Challenge: Using Industrial Relays to Make a Flasher
These days, if you want to flash some LEDs, you’d probably grab a microcontroller. Maybe you’d go a little more old-school, and grab a 555. However, [Jacob] is even more hardcore than that, as evidenced by this chunky electromechanical flasher build.
[Jacob] goes into great detail on his ancillary write-up, describing how the simple building blocks used by industrial control engineers can be used to make a flasher circuit that cycles once per second. Basically, two relays are paired with two 0.5-second delay timers. The two relays tag each other on and off on delay as their timers start and expire, with the lamp turned on and off in turn.
We’ve had lots of other great entries to our One Hertz Challenge, too — from clocks to not-clocks. There’s still time to get an entry in — the deadline for submission is Tuesday, August 19 at 9:00AM Pacific time. Good luck out there!
Coping with Disappearing Capacitance in a Buck Converter
Designing a circuit is a lot easier on paper, where components have well-defined values, or lacking that, at least well-defined tolerances. Unfortunately, even keeping percentage tolerances in mind isn’t always enough to make sure that circuits work correctly in the real world, as [Tahmid] demonstrates by diagnosing a buck converter with an oddly strong voltage ripple in the output.
Some voltage ripple is an inherent feature of the buck converter design, but it’s inversely proportional to output capacitance, so most designs include a few smoothing capacitors on the output side. However, at 10 V and a 50% duty cycle, [Tahmit]’s converter had a ripple of 0.75 V, significantly above the predicted variation of 0.45 V. The discrepancy was even greater at 20 V.
The culprit was the effect of higher voltages on the ceramic smoothing capacitors: as the voltage increases, the dielectric barrier in the capacitors becomes less permittive, reducing their capacitance. Fortunately, unlike in the case of electrolytic capacitors, the degradation of ceramic capacitors performance with increasing voltage is usually described in specification sheets, and doesn’t have to be manually measured. After finding the reduced capacitance of his capacitors at 10 V, [Tahmid] calculated a new voltage ripple that was only 14.5% off from the true value.
Anyone who’s had much experience with electronics will have already learned that passive components – particularly capacitors – aren’t as simple as the diagrams make them seem. On the bright side, they are constantly improving.
A Solar-Only, Battery-Free Device That Harvests Energy from a BPW34 Photodiode
Normally when you think solar projects, you think of big photovoltaic cells. But a photodiode is just an inefficient, and usually much smaller, PV cell. Since [Pocket Concepts]’s Solar_nRF has such a low power budget, it can get away with using BPW34 photodiodes in place of batteries. (Video, embedded below.)
The BPW34 silicon PIN photodiode feeds a small voltage into a BQ25504 ultra-low-power boost converter energy harvester which stores power in a capacitor. When the capacitor is fully charged the battery-good pin is toggled which drives a MOSFET that powers everything downstream.
When it’s powered on, the Nordic nRF initializes, reads the current temperature from an attached I2C thermometer, and then sends out a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) advertising packet containing the temperature data. When the capacitor runs out of energy, the battery-good pin is turned off and downstream electronics become unpowered and the cycle begins again.
[Pocket Concepts] uses a Nordic Semiconductors Power Profiler Kit II to help determine charge requirements. He calculates that 37 uF would be enough power for a single cycle, then uses 100 uF to get between one and three transmissions done using a single charge.
[Pocket Concepts] finishes his video with a request for project ideas. Is this a soil moisture meter? Earrings that monitor your biometrics? Something else? If you have some ideas of your own please sound off in the comments!
[Pocket Concepts] said he was inspired by Ultra low power energy harvester from BPW34 over on Hackaday.io, be sure to check that out for some interesting low-power project ideas. If you’re interested in other applications for Nordic nRF chips check out ESP32 Turned Handy SWD Flasher For NRF52 Chips and Ground Off Part Number Leads To Chip Detective Work for some examples.
youtube.com/embed/TGbtzlWb-Kc?…
Building a 7-Segment Shadow Clock
There are plenty of conventional timepieces out there in the world; we’ve also featured a great many that are aesthetically beautiful while being unreadably esoteric. This neat “shadow clock” from [Smart Solutions for Home] is not conventional, but it’s still a clock you could use every day.
The display is made of four seven-segment digits, which have a subtle appearance. Each segment uses a solenoid to extend it forward out of the display, or to retract it flush with the faceplate. This creates a numerical display in all one color, with the physical protrusion doing the job of making the numbers visible. This is perhaps where the “shadow clock” name comes from, though you notice the protruding segments moreso than the shadows they cast on the faceplate.
Running the show is an ESP32, paired with H-bridges to drive the solenoids that make up the 7-segment displays. The H-bridges are driven via shift registers to reduce the number of GPIO pins needed. Unlike many other ESP32 clock builds, this one uses a DS3231 real-time clock module to keep accurate time, rather than solely relying on Internet-based NTP time servers. Configuring the clock can be done via a web interface. Design files are available online.
If you think you’ve seen this recently, maybe you’re thinkig of this prototype for a very similar display by [indoorgeek]. And that’s not the only way to make shadow clocks either. After all, the term is not enforced or defined by any global horological organization. Maybe that’s a good thing! Video after the break.
youtube.com/embed/RE5ekVYQp3A?…
150 estensioni dannose Firefox hanno rubato criptovalute per 1 milione di dollari
Gli analisti di Koi Security hanno scoperto la campagna malware GreedyBear attiva nello store dei componenti aggiuntivi di Mozilla. 150 estensioni dannose per Firefox hanno rubato agli utenti criptovalute per un valore di oltre 1 milione di dollari. I componenti aggiuntivi fraudolenti si spacciavano per estensioni di popolari portafogli di criptovalute di piattaforme note, tra cui MetaMask, TronLink, Exodus e Rabby Wallet. Inizialmente, venivano caricati sullo store senza codice dannoso per superare i controlli e venivano lasciati inattivi per un certo periodo, accumulando false recensioni positive.
L’estensione non è ancora diventata dannosa.
In una fase successiva dell’attacco, gli editori dell’estensione hanno rimosso il marchio originale e lo hanno sostituito con nuovi nomi e loghi, e hanno anche incorporato malware nel codice progettato per rubare i dati del portafoglio e gli indirizzi IP degli utenti (probabilmente a scopo di tracciamento o targeting). Il codice dannoso agiva come un keylogger, intercettando i dati immessi nei campi dei moduli e nelle finestre pop-up e inviandoli al server degli aggressori.
Gli specialisti di Koi Security hanno informato gli sviluppatori di Mozilla delle loro scoperte e le estensioni dannose sono state rimosse dallo store dei componenti aggiuntivi di Firefox. Tuttavia, oltre alle estensioni di Firefox, l’operazione coinvolge anche decine di siti di software pirata che aiutano a distribuire 500 diversi eseguibili di malware, nonché una rete di siti che si spacciano per risorse ufficiali di Trezor e Jupiter Wallet e falsi servizi di riparazione di portafogli hardware, riferiscono i ricercatori.
Sito web di portafoglio Jupiter falso
Tutti questi siti sono collegati a un singolo indirizzo IP (185.208.156[.]66), che funge da server di controllo per GreedyBear. In questi casi, vari trojan, infostealer(come Lumma) o persino ransomware possono essere utilizzati come payload dannosi. Il rapporto afferma inoltre che l’analisi della campagna ha rivelato chiari artefatti che indicano che gli aggressori stavano utilizzando l’intelligenza artificiale.
“Ciò consente agli aggressori di ampliare le proprie operazioni, diversificare i payload ed eludere il rilevamento in modo più rapido e semplice che mai”, scrivono gli esperti. L’azienda ha inoltre avvertito che gli operatori di GreedyBear stanno chiaramente valutando la possibilità di distribuire il malware anche tramite il Chrome Web Store. I ricercatori hanno trovato un’estensione dannosa di Chrome chiamata Filecoin Wallet che utilizzava la stessa logica per rubare dati ed era collegata all’indirizzo IP sopra menzionato.È importante sottolineare che a giugno 2025, gli sviluppatori di Mozilla hanno introdotto un nuovo sistema per il rilevamento precoce di componenti aggiuntivi correlati alle frodi con criptovalute. Il sistema crea profili di rischio per ogni estensione wallet presente nello store e avvisa automaticamente dei rischi al raggiungimento di una soglia specificata.
Questi avvisi dovrebbero incoraggiare le persone che esaminano i componenti aggiuntivi a esaminare più attentamente le estensioni specifiche per rimuovere il malware dallo store prima che venga utilizzato per svuotare i portafogli degli utenti.
L'articolo 150 estensioni dannose Firefox hanno rubato criptovalute per 1 milione di dollari proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.
Cheap Thermal Camera Fits the Bill
If you want to save a little money on a thermal camera, or if you just enjoy making your own, you should have a look at [Evan Yu’s] GitHub repository, which has a well thought out project built around the MLX90640 and an ESP32. The cost is well under $100. You can watch it do its thing in the video below.
There’s a PCB layout, a 3D-printed case, and — of course — all the firmware files. The code uses the Arduino IDE and libraries. It leverages off-the-shelf libraries for the display and the image sensor.
The image sensor isn’t going to wow you. It has a resolution of 24 x 32, although that’s better than some cheap cameras, and it can still honestly be good for “what part is heating up” explorations. There is probably room for some clever smoothing in software as well. For only three or four times the price, you can find cameras with resolutions around 256×192, which is good for a thermal camera, even though it isn’t the megapixels we expect from our optical cameras or our phones.
The bill of materials is relatively short. The bulk of the circuit and effort is in the circuit to charge the battery, regulate it, and protect it against bad behavior.
Can’t decide if you need a camera at all? You aren’t alone. Or you can cheap out, but you might get what you pay for.
youtube.com/embed/hk5CXilCE_w?…
SparcStation 1+ Finally Gets Attention
We can’t throw stones. [Leaded Solder] picked up a SparcStation 1+ in 2018 and found it only produced illegal instruction errors. We’re sure he’s like us and meant to get back to it, and, instead, it sat on the bench, taking up space. You eventually have to move it, though, so seven years later, it was time for another go at it.
The first pass back in 2018 revealed that the machine had an interesting life. The full-sized hard drive was salvaged from an Apple computer. Removing the drive resolved the illegal instruction error. The drive seemed to work, but there was still nothing that suggested the machine would fully boot up. The next step was to try booting from a floppy, but that didn’t work either. The floppy cable had been surgically altered, again hinting this machine had seen some tough love.
Fast forward to 2025. This time, a Pi Pico-based SCSI emulator would stand in for the aging and suspect hard drive. Unfortunately, as noted, this machine has undergone some extensive and strange surgery. The power cable feeding the emulator had been rewired backwards, exposing the poor Pi Pico to 12 V, with predictable results. Luckily, it didn’t seem to phase the SparcStation.
The machine has some hard-to find micro fuses and one that powers the SCSI bus was blown. You could wonder if the SCSI emulator blew the fuse, but it appears it didn’t. Pulling the Ethernet fuse and placing it in the SCSI slot improved the machine’s behavior. But the termination power was still a problem. A USB cable temporarily solved that and, in fact, got the machine a little bit further.
That’s as far as he got this time. We’d imagine if you know a lot about this computer and have ideas on how to solve some of the remaining problems [Leaded Solder] would be glad to hear from you. But take your time. We estimate you have at least a few years.
There was a time when every geek wanted a Sun computer. Of course, if this is too much work for you, there’s always emulation.
Hacking Printed Circuit Board to Create Casing and Instrument Panels
Over on Hackaday.io our hackers [Angelo] and [Oscarv] are making a replica of the PDP-1. That is interesting in and of itself but the particularly remarkable feature of this project is its novel use of printed circuit boards for casing and instrument panels.
What does that mean in practice? It means creating a KiCad file with a PCB for each side of the case/panel. These pieces can then be ordered from a board house and assembled. In the video below the break you will see an example of putting such a case together. They use sticky tape for scaffolding and then finish things off by soldering the solder joints on each edge together.
We cover so many PCB hacks over here at Hackaday that we have an entire category dedicated to them: PCB Hacks. If you’re interested in PCBs you might like to read about their history, as before they were everywhere they were nowhere.
Thanks to [Oscarv] for writing in to let us know about this one.
youtube.com/embed/B4p0aQRA0CI?…
Desk Top Peltier-Powered Cloud Chamber Uses Desktop Parts
There was a time when making a cloud chamber with dry ice and alcohol was one of those ‘rite of passage’ type science projects every nerdy child did. That time may or may not be passed, but we doubt many children are making cloud chambers quite like [Curious Scientist]’s 20 cm x 20 cm Peltier-powered desktop unit.
The dimensions were dictated by the size of the off-the-shelf display case which serves as the chamber, but conveniently enough also allows emplacement of four TEC2-19006 Peltier cooling modules. These are actually “stacked” modules, containing two thermoelectric elements in series — a good thing, since the heat delta required to make a cloud chamber is too great for a single element. Using a single-piece two stage module simplifies the build considerably compared to stacking elements manually.
To carry away all that heat, [Curious Scientist] first tried heatpipe-based CPU coolers, but moved on to CPU water blocks for a quieter, more efficient solution. Using desktop coolers means almost every part here is off the shelf, and it all combines to work as well as we remember the dry-ice version. Like that childhood experiment, there doesn’t seem to be any provision for recycling the condensed alcohol, so eventually the machine will peter out after enough vapor is condensed.
This style of detector isn’t terribly sensitive and so needs to be “seeded” with spicy rocks to see anything interesting, unless an external electric field is applied to encourage nucleation around weaker ion trails. Right now [Curious Scientist] is doing that by rubbing the glass with microfiber to add some static electricity, but if there’s another version, it will have a more hands-off solution.
We’ve seen Peltier-Powered cloud chambers before (albeit without PC parts), but the “dry ice and alcohol” hack is still a going concern. If even that’s too much effort, you could just go make a cup of tea, and watch very, very carefully.
youtube.com/embed/cNRNSzmCOCE?…
2025 One Hertz Challenge: Estimating Pi With An Arduino Nano R4
Humanity pretty much has Pi figured out at this point. We’ve calculated it many times over and are confident about what it is down to many, many decimal places. However, if you fancy estimating it with some electronic assistance, you might find this project from [Roni Bandini] interesting.
[Roni] programmed an Arduino Nano R4 to estimate Pi using the Monte Carlo method. For this specific case, it involves drawing a circle inscribed inside a square. Points are then randomly scattered inside the square, and checked to see if they lie inside or outside the circle based on their position and distance of the circle’s outline from the center point of the square. By taking the ratio of the points inside the circle to the total number of points, you get an approximation of the ratio of the square and circle’s areas, which is equal to Pi/4. Thus, multiply the ratio by 4, and you’ve got your approximation of Pi.
[Roni] coded a program to run the Monte Carlo simulation on the Arduino Nano R4, taking advantage of the mathematical benefits of its onboard Floating Point Unit. It generates 100 new samples for the Monte Carlo approximation every second, improving the estimation of pi as it goes. It then displays the result on a 7-segment display, and beeps as it goes. [Roni] readily admits the project is a little too close in appearance to a classic Hollywood bomb.
We’ve seen some other neat Pi-calculating projects before, too.
youtube.com/embed/sdlGrY9Nj2A?…
The Kilopixel Display
Despite the availability of ready-made displays never being better, there are still some hardy experimenters who take on the challenge of making their own. In [Ben Holmen]’s case the display he built is somewhat unusual and not the most practical, but for us a giant-sized wooden kilopixel display is exactly what the world needs.
It’s a kilopixel display because it has a resolution of 40 by 25 pixels, and it takes the form of a rack of wooden cubes, each of which can be turned by a tool on a gantry to expose either a black or a white side. It’s very slow indeed — he has an over nine hour long video of it in operation — but it is an effective device.
His write-up goes into great detail about the steps taken in its design, starting with spherical pixels rotated by a LEGO wheel and progressing to cubes poked at their corner to rotate. The pusher in this case is a hot glue stick, for the required flexibility. For practicality we’re reminded of this serial oil-and-water display.
The whole thing is online, and if you want you can submit your own images for it to draw. Whether a Wrencher in 25 pixel resolution has enough detail, we’ll leave to you.
A Love Letter to Prototype Zero
An old friend of mine at my hackerspace introduced me to the concept of Prototype Zero: The Version that Even Your Own Sweet Mother Isn’t Allowed to See. The idea is that when you’re building something truly new, or even just new to you, your first take will almost always be ugly, and nothing will work the way it will by the time you make your second one. But it’s also important to the exercise that you see it all the way through to the end if you can.
I’m reminded of this after seeing a marvelous video by [Japhy Riddle] where he discusses his Prototype Zero of the Tape-Speed Keyboard. About halfway through the video he says that he would have done it totally differently if he knew then what he knows now: the hallmark of Prototype Zero. Yet he finishes it up, warts and all, documents it, and plays around with all of its possibilities. (Documenting it publicly isn’t part of the Prototype Zero method.)
I don’t think that [Japhy] is going to make a Prototype 1.0 out of this project, but I could be wrong; he seems to be content with having scratched the variable-speed tape itch. But if he did want to, he’s learned all of the gotchas on the engineering side, and found out exactly what such an instrument is capable of. And this loops back to the importance of getting Prototype Zero finished. You may have learned all of the tricks necessary to build the thing even before you’ve put the last screw in, but it’s when you actually have the thing in your hands to explore that you get the ideas for refinement that you simply can’t think up when it’s still just a concept.
Don’t be afraid to make your prototype quick and dirty, because if it ends up too dirty, you can just call it Prototype Zero. But don’t be tempted by the siren’s song of the 80% finished prototype either. Exploring putting Prototype Zero into use is its real purpose.
This article is part of the Hackaday.com newsletter, delivered every seven days for each of the last 200+ weeks. It also includes our favorite articles from the last seven days that you can see on the web version of the newsletter. Want this type of article to hit your inbox every Friday morning? You should sign up!
3D Printing a Giant Beyblade Arena
Beyblade spinning tops are pretty easy to find at toy shops, department stores, and even some supermarkets. However, the arenas in which the tops do battle? They’re much harder to come by, and the ones on sale in any given market often leave a lot to be desired. [LeftBurst] got around this problem by printing a grandiose Beyblade arena.
[LeftBurst]’s desire was to score a Beyblade stadium more similar to those featured in the anime, which are much larger than those sold as part of the official toy line. [Buddha] was enlisted to model the massive arena, but it then needed to be printed. Given its size, printing it in one piece wasn’t very practical. Instead, [LeftBurst] decided to print it in segments which would then have to be assembled. Super glue was used to put all the parts together, but there was more left to do. The surface finish and joins between the parts would cause issues for tops trying to move across the surface. Thus ensued a great deal of post-processing with primer, putty, and a power sander.
The final result is a massive stadium that plays well, and is ideal for larger multi-Beyblade battles that are more akin to what you’d see in the anime. If you’re playing at this scale, you might appreciate some upgraded launcher technology, too.
youtube.com/embed/oJp4mSX93kw?…
Learn C with a Lisp
One reason Forth remains popular is that it is very simple to create, but also very powerful. But there’s an even older language that can make the same claim: LISP. Sure, some people think that’s an acronym for “lots of irritating spurious parenthesis,” but if you can get past the strange syntax, the language is elegant and deceptively simple, at least at its core. Now, [Daniel Holden] challenges you to build your own Lisp as a way to learn C programming.
It shouldn’t be surprising that LISP is fairly simple. It was the second-oldest language, showing up in the late 1950s with implementations in the early 1960s. The old hardware couldn’t do much by today’s standards, so it is reasonable that LISP has to be somewhat economical.
With LISP, everything is a list, which means you can freely treat code as data and manipulate it. Lists can contain items like symbols, numbers, and other lists. This is somewhat annoying to C, which likes things to have particular types, so that’s one challenge to writing the code.
While we know a little LISP, we aren’t completely sold that building your own is a good way to learn C. But if you like LISP, it might be good motivation. We might be more inclined to suggest Jones on Forth as a good language project, but, then again, it is good to have choices. Of course, you could choose not to choose and try Forsp.
One File, Six Formats: Just Change The Extension
Normally, if you change a file’s extension in Windows, it doesn’t do anything positive. It just makes the file open in the wrong programs that can’t decode what’s inside. However, [PortalRunner] has crafted a file that can behave as six different filetypes, simply by swapping out the extension at the end of the filename.
The basic concept is simple enough. [PortalRunner] simply found a bunch of different file formats that could feasibly be crammed in together into a single file without corrupting each other or confusing software that loads these files.
It all comes down to how file formats work. File extensions are mostly meaningless to the content of a file—they’re just a shorthand guide so an operating system can figure out which program should load them. In fact, most files have headers inside that indicate to software what they are and how their content is formatted. For this reason, you can often rename a .PNG file to .JPEG and it will still load—because the operating system will still fire up an image viewer app, and that app will use headers to understand that it’s actually a PNG and not a JPEG at heart, and process it in the proper way.
[PortalRunner] found a way to merge the headers of various formats, creating a file that could be many different types. The single file contains data for a PNG image, an MP4 video, a PDF document, a ZIP archive, a Powerpoint presentation, and an HTML webpage. The data chunks for each format are lumped into one big file, with the combined headers at the very top. The hijinx required to pull this off put some limitations on what the file can contain, and the files won’t work with all software… but it’s still one file that has six formats inside.
This doesn’t work for every format. You can’t really combine GIF or PNG for example, as each format requires a different initial set of characters that have to be at the very beginning of the file. Other formats aren’t so persnickety, though, and you can combine their headers in a way that mostly works if you do it just right.
If you love diving into the binary specifics of how file formats work, this is a great project to dive into. We’ve seen similarly mind-bending antics from [PortalRunner] before, like when they turned Portal 2 into a webserver. Video after the break.
youtube.com/embed/o7qx-wgl3jo?…
Whispers From The Void, Transcribed With AI
‘Hearing voices’ doesn’t have to be worrisome, for instance when software-defined radio (SDR) happens to be your hobby. It can take quite some of your time and attention to pull voices from the ether and decode them. Therefore, [theckid] came up with a nifty solution: RadioTranscriptor. It’s a homebrew Python script that captures SDR audio and transcribes it using OpenAI’s Whisper model, running on your GPU if available. It’s lean and geeky, and helps you hear ‘the voice in the noise’ without actively listening to it yourself.
This tool goes beyond the basic listening and recording. RadioTranscriptor combines SDR, voice activity detection (VAD), and deep learning. It resamples 48kHz audio to 16kHz in real time. It keeps a rolling buffer, and only transcribes actual voice detected from the air. It continuously writes to a daily log, so you can comb through yesterday’s signal hauntings while new findings are being logged. It offers GPU support with CUDA, with fallback to CPU.
It sure has its quirks, too: ghost logs, duplicate words – but it’s dead useful and hackable to your liking. Want to change the model, tweak the threshold, add speaker detection: the code is here to fork and extend. And why not go the extra mile, and turn it into art?
Tearing Down A Mysteriously Cheap $5 Fiber Optic To Cable TV Adapter
In his regular browsing on AliExpress, [Ben Jeffrey] came across something he didn’t understand—a $5 fiber optic to RF cable TV adapter. It was excessively cheap, and even more mysteriously, this thing didn’t even need power. He had to know how it worked, so he bought one and got down to tinkering with it.
[Ben] needed some hardware to test the device with, so he spent $77 on a RF-to-fiber converter and a cheap composite-to-RF modulator so he could test the $5 fiber-to-RF part. A grand expenditure to explore a $5 device, but a necessary sacrifice for the investigation. Once [Ben] hooked up a fiber optic signal to the converter, he was amazed to see it doing its job properly. It was converting the incoming video stream to RF, and it could readily be tuned in on a TV, where the video appeared clean and true.
It was disassembly that showed how simple these devices really are. Because they’re one-way converters, they simply need to convert a changing light signal into an RF signal. Inside the adapter is a photodiode which picks up the incoming light, and with the aid of a few passives, the current it generates from that light becomes the RF signal fed into the TV. There’s no need for a separate power source—the photodiode effectively works like a solar panel, getting the power from the incoming light itself. The part is ultimately cheap for one reason—there just isn’t that much to it!
It’s a neat look at something you might suspect is complex, but is actually very simple. We’ve explored other weird TV tech before, too, like the way Rediffusion used telephone lines to deliver video content. Video after the break.
Clock of Clocks Expands, Goes Digital
Some people just want to have their cake and eat it too, but very few of us ever get to pull it off. [Erich Styger] has, though with V5 of his “MetaMetaClock”— a clock made of clocks, that uses the orientation of the hands to create digits.
We’ve seen previous versions of this clock. As before, the build is exquisitely detailed and all relevant files are on GitHub. This version keeps the acrylic light-pipe hands of version 4, but adds more of them: 60 clocks vs 24. Larger PCBs are used, grouping the dual-shaft steppers into groups of four, instead of the individual PCBs used before. Each PCB has an NXP LPC845 (a Cortex M0 microcontroller) that communicates on an RS-485 bus. Placing four steppers per microcontroller reduces parts count somewhat compared to previous versions (which had each ‘clock’ on its own modular PCB) albeit at the cost of some flexibility.
While the last version used veneers on its face, this version is cut by CNC by from a large slab of oak. It’s certainly the most attractive version yet, and while bigger isn’t always better, more clock faces means more potential effects. Date? Time? Block letters? Arbitrary text? Kaleidoscopic colours from the RGB LEDs? It’s all there, and since it’s open source, anyone who builds one can add more options. A BLE interface makes it quick and easy to wirelessly switch between them or set the time.
It’s nice sometimes to watch projects like this improve incrementally over time. [Erich] mentions that he plans to add Wifi and a web-based user interface for the next version. We look forward to it, and are grateful to [jicasi] for the tip. Just as it is always clock time at Hackaday, so you can always toss a tip of your own into the box.
2025 One Hertz Challenge: The Real-Time Clock The VIC-20 Never Had
Like many early microcomputers, the Commodore VIC-20 did not come with an interna real-time clock built into the system. [David Hunter] has seen fit to rectify that with an add-on module as his entry to the 2025 One Hertz Challenge.
[David]’s project was inspired by a product that Hayes produced in the 1980s, which provided a serial-port based real-time clock solution for computers that lacked one on board. The heart of the project is an Arduino Uno, which itself uses a Dallas DS3231 RTC module to keep accurate time. [David] then drew from an IEC driver developed by [Lars Pontoppidan] for the MM2IEC project. This enables the Arduino to report the time to the VIC-20 via its IEC port.
The project is a neat way to provide a real-time clock source to programs written in Commodore BASIC. It’s also perfectly compatible with the IEC bus, so it can be daisy chained along with printers and disk drives without issue. [David] hasn’t tested it with a Commodore 64, but he suspects it should work just as well on that platform, too.
If you’ve ever wanted to build something clock-based for the VIC-20 but didn’t know how, this is a great piece of hardware to solve that problem. Meanwhile, you might find joy in reading about real-time clock hacks for other systems like the Raspberry Pi. Meanwhile, if you’re working on your own nifty timekeeping projects, don’t hesitate to let us know!
Hackaday Podcast Episode 332: 5 Axes are Better than 3, Hacking Your Behavior, and the Man Who Made Models
Elliot and Dan got together this week for a review of the week’s hacking literature, and there was plenty to discuss. We addressed several burning questions, such as why digital microscopes are so terrible, why computer systems seem to have so much trouble with names, and if a thermal receipt printer can cure ADHD.
We looked at a really slick 5-axis printer that COVID created, a temperature-controlled fermentation setup, and a pseudo-Mellotron powered by a very odd tape recorder. We also learned little about designing 3D printed parts with tight tolerances, stepping a PC power supply up to ludicrous level, and explored a trio of unique entries for the One Hertz Challenge.
And for the Can’t Miss section, we looked at what happens to planes when they get hit by lightning (and how they avoid it), and say goodbye to the man who launched a lot of careers by making model kits.
It was also exciting to learn that the first day of Supercon is Halloween, which means a Friday night sci-fi cosplay party. It’s gonna be lit.
html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/…
Download this MP3, full of twisty passages, all alike.
Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast
Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:
Episode 327 Show Notes:
News:
What’s that Sound?
- Boom, nailed it
- Congrats to [Dan Maloney] who came up with the right answer at the last second, and of course also to [Wes G]!
Interesting Hacks of the Week:
- Open Source 5-Axis Printer Has Its Own Slicer
- Why Names Break Systems
- Why Cheap Digital Microscopes Are Pretty Terrible
- A DIY Fermenter For Flavorful Brews
- The Tape Speed Keyboard
- Can A Thermal Printer Cure ADHD?
Quick Hacks:
- Elliot’s Picks
- Sparks Fly: Building A 330 KV Supply From A PC PSU
- A Speed Loader For Your 3D Printer Filament
- How To Design 3D-Printed Parts With Tolerance In Mind
- Fire Alarm Disco Party
- Dan’s Picks:
- 2025 One Hertz Challenge: Blinking An LED The Very Old Fashioned Way
- 2025 One Hertz Challenge: Shoulda Put A Ring Oscillator On It
- 2025 One Hertz Challenge: Op-Amp Madness
Can’t-Miss Articles:
- Farewell Shunsaku Tamiya: The Man Who Gave Us The Best Things To Build
- What Happens When Lightning Strikes A Plane?
hackaday.com/2025/08/08/hackad…
Talking Robot Uses Typewriter Tech For Mouth
Many decades ago, IBM engineers developed the typeball. This semi-spherical hunk of metal would become the heart of the Selectric typewriter line. [James Brown] has now leveraged that very concept to create a pivoting mouth mechanism for a robot that appears to talk.
The real benefit of this mechanism is speed. It might not look as fluid as some robots with manually-articulated flexible mouths, but the rapid mouth transitions really help sell the effect because they match the pace of speech. [James] demonstrated the finished product on Mastodon, and it looks great in action.
This isn’t the first time we’ve featured [James Brown]’s work. You may recall he got DOOM running on a tiny LEGO brick a few years back.
Thanks to [J. Peterson] for the tip!
hackaday.com/2025/08/08/talkin…
I made a new mouth mechanism. I'm calling it Selectramatronics.
Una nuova tecnica di Privilege Escalation (PE) consente il bypass del UAC su Windows
Una recente scoperta ha portato alla luce una sofisticata tecnica che aggira il controllo dell’account utente (UAC) di Windows, consentendo l’escalation dei privilegi senza necessità di intervento utente, grazie all’uso dell’editor di caratteri privati, e suscitando preoccupazioni su scala mondiale tra gli amministratori di sistema.
L’attacco divulgato da Matan Bahar sfrutta eudcedit.exe l’editor di caratteri privati integrato di Microsoft, disponibile in C:WindowsSystem32, originariamente progettato per creare e modificare i caratteri definiti dall’utente finale (EUDC).
I ricercatori di sicurezza hanno scoperto che questa utility apparentemente innocua può essere sfruttata per aggirare il principale gatekeeper di sicurezza di Windows.
La falla di sicurezza è causata da impostazioni critiche integrate nel manifest dell’applicazione eudcedit.exe. Questa vulnerabilità è generata da due particolari tag di metadati. Questa combinazione si rivela particolarmente pericolosa. Quando UAC è configurato con impostazioni permissive come “Eleva senza chiedere conferma”, Windows eleva automaticamente eudcedit.exe da un livello di integrità medio ad uno alto senza visualizzare alcun avviso di sicurezza, ha affermato Bahar .
L’attacco si sviluppa attraverso una sequenza accuratamente studiata che sfrutta i meccanismi di gestione dei file dell’applicazione. Gli aggressori iniziano avviando l’editor di caratteri privati, che passa automaticamente al livello di integrità “Alta”. Accedono quindi alla funzionalità di collegamento dei font all’interno dell’interfaccia dell’applicazione, solitamente accessibile tramite il menu File.
La vulnerabilità critica si manifesta quando gli utenti selezionano le opzioni di collegamento dei font e viene richiesto di salvare i file. In questo frangente, il processo eudcedit.exe con privilegi elevati può essere manipolato per eseguire comandi arbitrari. Semplicemente inserendo “PowerShell” nella finestra di dialogo del file, gli aggressori possono generare una sessione PowerShell con privilegi elevati che eredita il livello di integrità elevato del processo padre.
Il bypass dell’UAC di eudcedit.exe dimostra come gli aggressori possano sfruttare le utilità di sistema legittime per raggiungere obiettivi dannosi. La semplicità e l’efficacia di questa tecnica la rendono una preoccupazione significativa per i team di sicurezza aziendale.
L'articolo Una nuova tecnica di Privilege Escalation (PE) consente il bypass del UAC su Windows proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.
Scempio Digitale: Instagram della Fondazione Giulia Cecchettin, la ragazza uccisa dall’ex fidanzato è stato hackerato
Il cybercrime è sempre da condannare. Che tu colpisca una multinazionale o un piccolo negozio online, resta un crimine.
Ma quando prendi di mira ospedali, associazioni senza scopo di lucro, fondazioni che vivono di donazioni, il livello scende ancora più in basso. Non sei un “hacker” perché i criminali non si chiamano così, non sei un “genio del computer”.
Sei solo uno sciacallo digitale.
Rubare un account social è già un atto deplorevole. Ma violare la pagina Instagram della Fondazione Giulia Cecchettin – creata per onorare la memoria di una giovane donna uccisa dall’ex fidanzato – è qualcosa di infinitamente peggiore. È un colpo basso, un atto vile che travalica la sfera tecnologica per diventare una ferita emotiva e collettiva.
La sorella di Giulia, Elena Cecchettin, ha dato la notizia tramite una storia Instagram: “La nostra pagina è stata compromessa. Vi preghiamo di non rispondere a messaggi o richieste sospette. Siamo al lavoro per risolvere il problema“. Poche ore dopo, è arrivata la conferma: un attacco informatico mirato, con un messaggio intimidatorio lasciato nella bio dell’account: “Se volete indietro il vostro account, controllate la mail e contattatemi su Telegram.”
Un ricatto in piena regola, che dimostra quanto i criminali informatici senza scrupoli non conoscano limiti né rispetto. Questo non è “semplice” cybercrime. Questo è scempio: l’uso della tecnologia per colpire il dolore, per profanare uno spazio nato per sensibilizzare, per dare voce a una causa che riguarda tutti.
Ed è qui che la società deve rispondere compatta: non solo recuperando l’account, ma trasformando questo atto vile in un’ulteriore ragione per combattere chi sfrutta la rete per distruggere invece che per costruire. Perché la memoria di Giulia – e la battaglia della Fondazione – non si hackerano.
L'articolo Scempio Digitale: Instagram della Fondazione Giulia Cecchettin, la ragazza uccisa dall’ex fidanzato è stato hackerato proviene da il blog della sicurezza informatica.