> mastodon.ml/@Lone_wolf2/115611…

Как мне нравится, что после законов и новостей о вероятности отключения РФ от мировой сети, потихоньку начинают вылезать вот такие новости.

Что оборудованию резко поплохело. Ни раньше и не позже.

У Ютуба, помниться, сервера так же "деграднули" в какой-то момент. Причем все разом. И сетевики в один голос вопили что это не они виноваты, а Google.

Так что если воспринимать все эти новости через призму здравых размышлений - данная новость просто очередная подводка к населения, что "нахер этот интернет нам не нужОн", и нас просто скоро отрубят от мировой сети как Корею или Китай.

Lone wolf

2025-11-25 18:34:34

Порядка 50–70 % доступной волоконно-оптической инфраструктуры в России на направлении запад-восток исчерпает срок гарантийного обслуживания в 2025 году. Об этом на Пиринговом форуме 2025 со ссылкой на данные аналитической компании рассказал директор по продажам инфраструктурной телекоммуникационной компании «Атлас» Павел Колочкин. 3dnews.ru/1132907/rossiyskomu-…

Российскому интернету грозит «помутнение»: до 70 % оптоволоконных магистралей устареют в 2025 году

^3DNews

DIY Test Gear from 1981

We can’t get enough of [Bettina Neumryn’s] videos. If you haven’t seen her, she takes old electronics magazines, finds interesting projects, and builds them. If you remember these old projects, it is nostalgic, and if you don’t remember them, you can learn a lot about basic electronics and construction techniques. This installment (see below) is an Elektor digital voltmeter and frequency counter from late 1981.

As was common in those days, you could find the PCB layouts in the magazine. In this case, there were two boards. The schematic shows that a counter and display driver chip — a 74C928 — does most of the heavy lifting for the display and the counter.

It is easy to understand how the frequency counter works. You clip the input with a pair of diodes, amplify it a bit, square it with a Schmitt trigger, and then, possibly, prescale it using a divider. The voltmeter is a little trickier: it uses a voltage divider, an op amp, and a 555 to convert the voltage to a frequency.

Of course, finding the parts for an old project can be a challenge. A well-stocked junk drawer doesn’t hurt. A PCB etching setup helps, too.

We’ve looked at her magazine rebuilds before. If you ever get the urge to tackle a project like this, you can find all the grand old magazines online.

youtube.com/embed/glEPG5nC8J0?…

hackaday.com/2025/11/25/diy-te…

Build A High Voltage Supply For Vacuum Tube Work

If you work on simple digital projects, just about any bench supply will offer the voltage and current you’re looking for. However, if you’re working with valves, you’ll often find yourself needing much higher voltages that can be tricky to source. [Chappy Happy] has shared a design for a simple HV power supply that should prove useful to vacuum tube enthusiasts.

The build is fairly basic in nature, lacing together some commonly available parts to generate the necessary voltages for working with common vacuum tubes from a 12 volt DC input. Inside the supply is a UC3843A DC boost converter, set up to output high voltage up to around 300 volts DC, with a ripple filter added for good measure. The output can be adjusted with a knob, with a voltmeter on the front panel. There’s also a 12-volt output, and a LM2596 step down converter to produce 6.3 volts for the filament supply. The whole project is built in an old Heathkit project box, and he demonstrates the supply with a simple single-tube amplifier.

If you find yourself regularly whipping up tube circuits, you might like to have something like this on your workbench. Or, you might even consider cooking up your own tubes from scratch if you’re more adventurous like that. Video after the break.

youtube.com/embed/WDhYEJN2J-A?…

[Thanks to Stephen Walters for the tip!]

hackaday.com/2025/11/25/build-…

The Zen Must Flow From Arrakis Sand Table

In Dune, the Fremen people of Arrakis practice an odd future hybrid religion called “zensunni.” This adds an extra layer of meaning to the title of [Mark Rehorst]’s Arrakis 3.0 sand table, given that the inspiration for the robotic sand table seems to be Zen gardens from Japan.

The dunes on the tabletop version of Arrakis owe nothing to sand worms, but are instead created a rolling metal ball. With all workings happening below, it looks quite magical to the uninitiated, but of course it’s not magic: it’s magnets. Just beneath the tabletop and its sands, the steel ball is being dragged along by the magnetic field of a powerful neodynium magnet.

That magnet is mounted in a CoreXY motion system that owes more than a little bit to modern 3D printers. Aside from the geometry, it’s using the standard G6 belt we see so often, along with a Duet3D mainboard, NEMA 17 steppers, and many 3D printed parts to hold its aluminum extrusions together. Thanks to that printer-inspired motion system, the ball can whirl around at 2000 mm/s, though [Mark] prefers to run slower: the demo video below shows operation at 1000 mm/s before the sand has been added.

This build was designed for ease of construction and movement: sized at 2’x4′ (about 61 cm x 122 cm), it fits through doors and fits an off-the-shelf slab of coffee table glass, something that [Mark] wishes he’d considered when building version two. That’s the nice thing about jumping in on a project someone’s been iterating for a while: you’ve got the benefit of learning from their mistakes. You can see the roots of this design, and what has changed, from the one he showed us in 2020.

Naturally you’re not limited to CoreXY for a sand table, though it is increasingly popular — we’ve seen examples with polar mechanisms and even a SCARA arm.

youtube.com/embed/reeg5gIOmBw?…

hackaday.com/2025/11/25/the-ze…

La compravendita degli accessi ai firewall FortiGate italiani nel Dark Web

Negli ultimi giorni, su un forum underground noto per ospitare attività illegali, è apparso un annuncio che merita molta attenzione.

Un utente appena registrato, con il nickname “Sarcoma”, ha pubblicato un messaggio in cui si dice disposto ad acquistare accessi ai pannelli di amministrazione dei firewall FortiGate.

L’annuncio è piuttosto esplicito: offre un compenso a partire da 20 dollari ad accesso e specifica che gli interessano accessi provenienti da Stati Uniti, Canada, Italia e Germania. Per rendere il tutto più credibile ha allegato anche uno screenshot che richiama l’interfaccia di gestione dei sistemi Fortinet.
Post pubblicato da un threat actors su un forum underground del dark web

La Compravendita sul DarkWeb

Il valore di un pannello amministrativo FortiGate nelle mani sbagliate è enorme. Chi riesce ad entrarci può alterare completamente il comportamento del firewall: aprire porte, creare backdoor, disattivare i log e preparare il terreno per intrusioni più profonde. Non è un caso che questi accessi siano molto ricercati nel cybercrime.

Questi forum non sono semplici bacheche: sono veri e propri mercati neri in cui si incontrano due figure chiave. Da una parte ci sono gli Initial Access Broker (IaB), professionisti del crimine informatico che si specializzano nell’individuare vulnerabilità, configurazioni sbagliate o credenziali esposte. Il loro compito è ottenere un primo punto di ingresso nelle reti aziendali. Dall’altra parte ci sono gruppi criminali più strutturati, spesso legati ad attività di ransomware o furto di dati, che acquistano questi accessi pronti all’uso per muoversi più velocemente e ridurre i costi delle intrusioni. È un ecosistema perfettamente organizzato, in cui ognuno trae profitto da una parte specifica della “filiera”.
Immagine allegata al post pubblicato da un threat actors su un forum underground del dark web

Cosa occorre fare

La presenza di un annuncio rivolto anche alla geografia italiana è un segnale chiaro: le aziende del nostro Paese restano un bersaglio appetibile, soprattutto quando i loro firewall non vengono aggiornati o vengono lasciati esposti su Internet senza le dovute precauzioni. Per difendersi è fondamentale applicare con regolarità tutte le patch di sicurezza rilasciate da Fortinet, molte delle quali riguardano vulnerabilità critiche che in passato sono state sfruttate proprio per ottenere accesso non autorizzato ai sistemi.

Un altro aspetto troppo spesso sottovalutato riguarda la visibilità dei servizi di amministrazione. I pannelli di gestione e gli strumenti utilizzati per configurare i firewall non dovrebbero essere mai raggiungibili direttamente dalla rete pubblica.
Un altro forum underground in lingua russa dove un criminale informatico riporta accessi ad una azienda italiana che utilizza un FortiGate
È necessario isolarli, limitarne drasticamente l’accesso e renderli disponibili solo attraverso reti interne, VPN sicure e metodi di autenticazione più robusti. Lasciarli esposti equivale a offrire un bersaglio perfetto, pronto per essere scambiato nei forum underground proprio come l’annuncio che ha dato il via a questa riflessione.

In un contesto in cui gli accessi si comprano e vendono come una qualsiasi merce digitale, la sicurezza delle reti aziendali non può più permettersi leggerezze. Ogni sistema esposto è una potenziale porta d’ingresso, e qualcuno là fuori è pronto a pagarla – anche pochi dollari – pur di aprirla.

Questo articolo si basa su informazioni, integralmente o parzialmente tratte dalla piattaforma di intelligence di Recorded Future, partner strategico di Red Hot Cyber e punto di riferimento globale nell’intelligence sulle minacce informatiche. La piattaforma fornisce analisi avanzate utili a individuare e contrastare attività malevole nel cyberspazio.

L'articolo La compravendita degli accessi ai firewall FortiGate italiani nel Dark Web proviene da Red Hot Cyber.

Citizen Science by the Skin of Your Teeth

If you are a schoolkid of the right age, you can’t wait to lose a baby tooth. In many cultures, there is a ritual surrounding it, like the tooth fairy, a mouse who trades your tooth for a gift, or burying the tooth somewhere significant. But in 1958, a husband and wife team of physicians wanted children’s teeth for a far different purpose: quantifying the effects of nuclear weapons testing on the human body.
A young citizen scientist (State Historical Society of Missouri)
Louise and Eric Reiss, along with some other scientists, worked with Saint Louis University and the Washington School of Dental Medicine to collect and study children’s discarded teeth. They were looking for strontium-90, a nasty byproduct of above-ground nuclear testing. Strontium is similar enough to calcium that consuming it in water and dairy products will leave the material in your bones, including your teeth.

The study took place in the St. Louis area, and the results helped convince John F. Kennedy to sign the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

They hoped to gather 50,000 teeth in a year. By 1970, 12 years later, they had picked up over 320,000 donated teeth. While a few kids might have been driven by scientific altruism, it didn’t hurt that the program used colorful posters and promised each child a button to mark their participation.

Children’s teeth were particularly advantageous to use because they are growing and are known to readily absorb radioactive material, which can cause bone tumors.

Scale

A fair trade for an old tooth? (National Museum of American History)
You might wonder just how much nuclear material is floating around due to bombs. Obviously, there were two bombs set off during the war, as well as the test bombs required to get to that point. Between 1945 and 1980, there were five countries conducting atmospheric tests at thirteen sites. The US, accounting for about 65% of the tests, the USSR, the UK, France, and China detonated 504 nuclear devices equivalent to about 440 megatons of TNT.

Well over 500 bombs with incredible force have put a lot of radioactive material into the atmosphere. That doesn’t count, too, the underground tests that were not always completely contained. For example, there were two detonations in Mississippi where the radiation was contained until they drilled holes for instruments, leaving contaminated soil on the surface. Today, sites like this have “monuments” explaining that you shouldn’t dig in the area.

Of course, above-ground tests are worse, with fallout affecting “downwinders” or people who live downwind of the test site. There have been more than one case of people, unaware of the test, thinking the fallout particles were “hot snow” and playing in it. Test explosions have sent radioactive material into the stratosphere. This isn’t just a problem for people living near the test sites.

Results

By 1961, the team published results showing that strontium-90 levels in the teeth increased depending on when the child was born. Children born in 1963 had levels of strontium-90 fifty times higher than those born in 1950, when there was very little nuclear testing.

The results were part of the reason that President Kennedy agreed to an international partial test ban, as you can see in the Lincoln Presidential Foundation video below. You may find it amazing that people would plan trips to watch tests, and they were even televised.

youtube.com/embed/1qptcKCzUU0?…

In 2001, Washington University found 85,000 of the teeth stored away. This allowed the Radiation and Public Health Project to track 3,000 children who were, by now, adults, of course.

Sadly, 12 children who had died from cancer before age 50 had baby teeth with twice the levels of the teeth of people who were still alive at age 50. To be fair, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has questioned these findings, saying the study is flawed and fails to account for other risk factors.

And teeth don’t just store strontium. In the 1970s, other researchers used baby teeth to track lead ingestion levels. Baby teeth have also played a role in the Flint Water scandal. In South Africa, the Tooth Fairy Project monitored heavy metal pollution in children’s teeth, too.

Teeth aren’t the only indicator of nuclear contamination. Steel is also at risk.

Featured image: “Castle Bravo Blast” by United States Department of Energy.

hackaday.com/2025/11/25/citize…

Heater is Either a Miracle or a Scam

[Big Clive] picked up a tiny heater for less than £8 from the usual sources. Would you be shocked to learn that its heating capacity wasn’t as advertised? No, we weren’t either. But [Clive] treats us to his usual fun teardown and analysis in the video below.

A simple test shows that the heater drew about 800 W for a moment and drops as it heats until it stabilizes at about 300 W. Despite that, these units are often touted as 800 W heaters with claims of heating up an entire house in minutes. Inside are a fan, a ceramic heater, and two PCBs.

The ceramic heaters are dwarfed by metal fins used as a heat exchanger. The display uses a clever series of touch sensors to save money on switches. The other board is what actually does the work.

[Clive] was, overall, impressed with the PCB. A triac runs the heaters and the fan. It also includes a thermistor for reading the temperature.

You can learn more about the power supply and how the heater measures up in the video. Suffice it to say, that a cheap heater acts like a cheap heater, although as cheap heaters go, this one is built well enough.

youtube.com/embed/QiDUKYc0B2Y?…

hackaday.com/2025/11/25/heater…

So Long Firefox, Hello Vivaldi

It’s been twenty-three years since the day Phoenix was released, the web browser that eventually became Firefox. I downloaded it on the first day and installed it on my trusty HP Omnibook 800 laptop, and until this year I’ve used it ever since. Yet after all this time, I’m ready to abandon it for another browser. In the previous article in this series I went into my concerns over the direction being taken by Mozilla with respect to their inclusion of AI features and my worries about privacy in Firefox, and I explained why a plurality of browser engines is important for the Web. Now it’s time to follow me on my search for a replacement, and you may be surprised by one aspect of my eventual choice.

Where Do I Go From Here?

It’s Hackaday, in Ladybird! (Ooof, that font.)
Happily for my own purposes, there are a range of Firefox alternatives which fulfill my browser needs without AI cruft and while allowing me to be a little more at peace with my data security and privacy. There’s Chromium of course even if it’s still way too close to Google for my liking, and there are a host of open-source WebKit and Blink based browsers too numerous to name here.

In the Gecko world that should be an easier jump for a Firefox escapee there are also several choices, for example LibreWolf, and Waterfox. In terms of other browser engines there’s the extremely promising but still early in development Ladybird, and the more mature Servo, which though it is available as a no-frills browser, bills itself as an embedded browser engine. I have not considered some other projects that are either lightweight browser engines, or ones not under significant active development.
It’s Hackaday, in Servo!
Over this summer and autumn then I have tried a huge number of different browsers. Every month or so I build the latest Ladybird and Servo; while I am hugely pleased to see progress they’re both still too buggy for my purposes. Servo is lightning-fast but sometimes likes to get stuck in mobile view, while Ladybird is really showing what it’s going to be but remains for now slow-as-treacle. These are ones to watch, and support.

I gave LibreWolf and Waterfox the most attention over the summer, both of which after the experience I’d describe as like Firefox but with mildly annoying bugs. The inability to video conference reliably is a show-stopper in my line of work, and since my eyesight is no longer what it once was I like my browsers to remember when I have zoomed in on a tab. Meanwhile Waterfox on Android is a great mobile browser, right up until it needs to open a link in another app, and fails. I’m used to the quirks of open-source software after 30+ years experimenting with Linux, but when it comes to productivity I can’t let my software disrupt the flow of Hackaday articles.

The Unexpected Choice

It’s Hackaday, in Vivaldi!
It might surprise you after all this open-source enthusiasm then, to see the browser I’ve ended up comfortable with. Vivaldi may be driven by the open-source Blink engine from Chromium and Chrome, but its proprietary front end doesn’t have an open-source licence.

It’s freeware, or free-as-in-beer, and I think the only such software I use. Why, I hear you ask? It’s an effort to produce a browser like Opera used to be in the old days, it’s European which is a significant consideration when it comes to data protection law, and it has (so far) maintained a commitment to privacy while not being evil in the Google motto sense.

It’s quick, I like its interface once the garish coloured default theme has been turned off, and above all, it Just Works. I have my browser back, and I can get on with writing. Should they turn evil I can dump them without a second thought, and hope by then Ladybird has matured enough to suit my needs.

It may not be a trend many of us particularly like, but here in 2025 there’s a sense that the browser has reduced our computers almost to the status of a terminal. It’s thus perhaps the most important piece of software on the device, and in that light I hope you can understand some of the concerns levelled in this series. If you’re reading this from Firefox HQ I’d implore you to follow my advice and go back to what made Firefox so great back in the day, but for the rest of you I’d like to canvass your views on my choice of a worthy replacement. As always, the comments are waiting.

hackaday.com/2025/11/25/so-lon…

Simple Tricks To Make Your Python Code Faster

Python has become one of the most popular programming languages out there, particularly for beginners and those new to the hacker/maker world. Unfortunately, while it’s easy to get something up and running in Python, it’s performance compared to other languages is generally lacking. Often, when starting out, we’re just happy to have our code run successfully. Eventually, though, performance always becomes a priority. When that happens for you, you might like to check out the nifty tips from [Evgenia Verbina] on how to make your Python code faster.

Many of the tricks are simple common sense. For example, it’s useful to avoid creating duplicates of large objects in memory, so altering an object instead of copying it can save a lot of processing time. Another easy win is using the Python math module instead of using the exponent (**) operator since math calls some C code that runs super fast. Others may be unfamiliar to new coders—like the benefits of using sets instead of lists for faster lookups, particularly when it comes to working with larger datasets. These sorts of efficiency gains might be merely useful, or they might be a critical part of making sure your project is actually practical and fit for purpose.

It’s worth looking over the whole list, even if you’re an intermediate coder. You might find some easy wins that drastically improve your code for minimal effort. We’ve explored similar tricks for speeding up code on embedded platforms like Arduino, too. If you’ve got your own nifty Python speed hacks, don’t hesitate to notify the tipsline!

hackaday.com/2025/11/25/simple…

Windows 10 è morto? Ecco l’alternativa Linux che sta esplodendo online!

Il periodo di transizione successivo alla fine del supporto per Windows 10 è diventato particolarmente evidente, alla luce del crescente interesse per sistemi operativi alternativi.

Mentre gli utenti continuano a cercare alternative ai loro ambienti familiari, una delle distribuzioni Linux più incentrate su Windows ha inaspettatamente ricevuto notevole attenzione. Gli sviluppatori di Zorin OS hanno riferito che la nuova versione del loro sistema ha registrato una domanda straordinaria in poche settimane.

Il team di Zorin OS ha annunciato che Zorin OS 18 ha superato il milione di download in circa un mese. Secondo la telemetria, oltre tre quarti degli installer sono stati scaricati da dispositivi Windows.

Questa cifra non garantisce un’adozione realmente diffusa, ma riflette il crescente interesse per le alternative in un momento in cui l’aggiornamento a Windows 11 sta suscitando preoccupazione in molti. Secondo i creatori del sistema, la nuova versione è progettata per essere il più intuitiva possibile per coloro che non sono pronti a cambiare completamente il proprio modo di lavorare.

Zorin OS 18 presenta un’interfaccia riprogettata, che combina elementi di Windows 11 con accenti visivi di macOS, oltre ad animazioni e gestione delle finestre aggiornate. Il sistema ora offre un layout delle finestre avanzato che funziona senza moduli aggiuntivi e consente una gestione flessibile dell’area di lavoro. Gli sviluppatori sottolineano la loro attenzione nel rendere l’ambiente più veloce e reattivo, pur mantenendo un’esperienza utente familiare.

Oltre alle modifiche esterne, la distribuzione ha ampliato il supporto per le applicazioni web. Gli utenti possono installare servizi come Office 365, Teams, Google Docs o la versione web di Photoshop come programmi autonomi con le proprie icone. Le funzionalità cloud più diffuse, tra cui OneDrive, sono integrate direttamente nel file system, semplificando la transizione da Windows.

Anche la compatibilità con le applicazioni Windows classiche è stata migliorata: Wine rimane la base, ma le impostazioni sono state ottimizzate per consentire l’esecuzione di più programmi senza necessità di configurazione manuale. Con l’ascesa del gaming su Linux, grazie all’impegno di Valve, questo approccio è diventato più attuale che mai.

L’aggiornamento aggiunge anche funzionalità essenziali per il lavoro quotidiano. Il file manager ora offre una ricerca rapida in tutte le directory, risparmiando tempo durante la navigazione. Il supporto per le connessioni remote tramite RDP è integrato nel sistema ed è rivolto agli utenti che necessitano di connettersi a computer Windows. Il sottosistema audio è ora basato su PipeWire, migliorando la qualità e riducendo la latenza durante l’utilizzo dell’audio Bluetooth. Poiché questa build è stata designata come versione a lungo termine, riceverà aggiornamenti fino al 2029.

L’aumento di interesse per Zorin OS è evidente nel contesto della fine del supporto di Windows 10. I severi requisiti hardware di Windows 11, i servizi in background, i continui dibattiti sulla privacy e le controverse funzionalità basate sull’intelligenza artificiale hanno portato a un notevole affaticamento degli utenti. In questo contesto, il download di centinaia di migliaia di copie di Zorin OS dimostra un desiderio significativamente più forte di esplorare alternative.

Linux non è ancora leader nei sistemi operativi desktop, ma la tendenza generale sta cambiando. Lo sviluppo della piattaforma SteamO , il rafforzamento del segmento gaming e le distribuzioni rivolte ai principianti stanno incoraggiando sempre più utenti a sperimentare.

Mentre Microsoft conta su una transizione graduale per tutti i rimanenti utenti di Windows 10 a Windows 11, le statistiche di Zorin OS suggeriscono uno scenario diverso: un graduale passaggio di alcuni utenti ad altri.

L'articolo Windows 10 è morto? Ecco l’alternativa Linux che sta esplodendo online! proviene da Red Hot Cyber.