Rats Get even Better at Playing DOOM

We all know that you can play DOOM on nearly anything, but what about the lesser known work being done to let other species get in on the action? For ages now, our rodent friends haven’t been able to play the 1993 masterpiece, but [Viktor Tóth] and colleagues have been working hard to fix this unfortunate oversight.

If you’ve got the feeling this isn’t the first time you’ve read about rats attempting to slay demons, it’s probably because [Victor] has been working on this mission for years now — with a previous attempt succeeding in allowing rats to navigate the DOOM landscape. Getting the rodents to actually play through the game properly has proved slightly more difficult, however.

Improving on the previous attempt, V2 has the capability to allow rats to traverse through levels, be immersed in the virtual world with a panoramic screen, and take out enemies. Rewards are given to successful behaviors in the form of sugar water through a solenoid powered dispenser.

While this current system looks promising, the rats haven’t gotten too far though the game due to time constraints. But they’ve managed to travel through the levels and shoot, which is still pretty impressive for rodents.

DOOM has been an indicator of just how far we can take technology for decades. While this particular project has taken the meme into a slightly different direction, there are always surprises. You can even play DOOM in KiCad when you’re tired of using it to design PCBs.

hackaday.com/2025/12/12/rats-g…

Ich habe gestern einen Gastbeitrag von Kristina Schröder auf WELT online gelesen. Darin geht es um den Sozialstaat – und um persönliche Assistenz für behinderte Menschen. Und ehrlich gesagt: Er hat mich tief getroffen.

Denn wenn über Assistenz als „nicht mehr tragbare Kosten“ gesprochen wird, dann geht es nicht abstrakt um Haushaltszahlen. Dann geht es um mein Leben.

Assistenz ist für mich kein Luxus. Kein Extra. Kein Wunschkonzert.
Assistenz ist das, was mich morgens aufstehen lässt. Was mir erlaubt zu arbeiten, Verantwortung zu übernehmen, mich einzubringen, selbstbestimmt zu leben.
Ohne Assistenz wäre mein Leben kleiner. Abhängiger. Fremdbestimmt. Vielleicht sogar institutionell verwahrt statt frei.

Ich brauche Assistenz 24 Stunden am Tag, weil Behinderung keinen Feierabend kennt. Weil Notfälle keine Bürozeiten haben. Weil Würde nicht um 22 Uhr endet.

Wenn Politik und Medien darüber diskutieren, ob Menschen wie ich „zu teuer“ sind, dann erzeugt das Angst. Die Angst, dass meine Freiheit an einem Verwaltungsakt hängt. Dass mein Leben jedes Jahr neu infrage gestellt wird. Dass ich mich rechtfertigen muss, warum ich so leben darf wie andere ganz selbstverständlich.

Dabei zeigt die Geschichte etwas anderes:
Stephen Hawking, Helen Keller, viele andere – ihre Leistungen waren nur möglich, weil Assistenz und Unterstützung ihnen Zugang zur Welt gegeben haben. Nicht trotz Assistenz. Sondern wegen ihr.

Ja, Assistenz kostet Geld.
Aber die eigentliche Frage ist: **Was kostet es uns als Gesellschaft, wenn wir anfangen, Menschenwürde zu kürzen?**

Ich bin keine Kostenstelle.
Ich bin ein Mensch.
Und mein Leben ist kein Sparposten.

Quelle: Kristina Schröder, „Sozialstaat: Was wir uns künftig nicht mehr leisten können“, WELT, 11.12.2025.

#Inklusion #Assistenz #Selbstbestimmung #Behindertenrechte #Teilhabe #Menschenwürde

Review: Cherry G84-4100 Keyboard

The choice of a good keyboard is something which consumes a lot of time for many Hackaday readers, judging by the number of custom input device projects which make it to these pages. I live by my keyboard as a writer, but I have to admit that I’ve never joined in on the special keyboard front; for me it’s been a peripheral rather than an obsession. But I’m hard on keyboards, I type enough that I wear them out. For the last five years my Hackaday articles have come via a USB Thinkpad keyboard complete with the little red stick pointing device, but its keys have started parting company with their switches so it’s time for a replacement.

I Don’t Want The Blackpool Illuminations

Is it a gamer’s keyboard, or the Blackpool seafront at night? I can’t tell any more. Mark S Jobling, Public domain.
For a non keyboard savant peering over the edge, this can be a confusing choice. There’s much obsessing about different types of mechanical switch, and for some reason I can’t quite fathom, an unreasonable number of LEDs.

I don’t want my keyboard to look like the Blackpool Illuminations (translation for Americans: Las Vegas strip), I just want to type on the damn thing. More to the point, many of these “special” keyboards carry prices out of proportion to their utility, and it’s hard to escape the feeling that like the thousand quid stereo the spotty kid puts in his Opel Corsa, you’re being asked to pay just for bragging rights.

Narrowing down my needs then, I don’t need any gimmicks, I just need a small footprint keyboard that’s mechanically robust enough to survive years of my bashing out Hackaday articles on it. I’m prepared to pay good money for that.

The ‘board I settled upon is probably one of the most unglamorous decent quality keyboards on the market. The Cherry G84-4100 is sold to people in industry who need a keyboard that fits in a small space, and I’ve used one to the deafening roar of a cooling system in a data centre rack. It’s promising territory for a Hackaday scribe. I ordered mine from the Cherry website, and it cost me just under £70 (about $93), with the postage being extra. It’s available with a range of different keymaps, and I ordered the UK one. In due course the package arrived, a slim cardboard box devoid of consumer branding, inside of which was the keyboard, a USB-to-PS/2 adaptor, and a folded paper manual. I’m using it on a USB machine so the adaptor went in my hoard, but I’m pleased to be able to use this with older machines when necessary.

Hello My Old Data Centre Friend

It’s not shift-3 for the £ sign that’s important, but shift-2 for the quote. You have no idea how annoying not having that is on an international layout.
For my money, I got a keyboard described as “compact”, or 75%. It’s 282 by 132 by 26 mm in size, which means it takes up a little less space than the Thinkpad one it replaces, something of a win to my mind. It doesn’t have a numeric keypad, but I don’t need that. The switches are Cherry mechanical ones rather than the knock-offs you’ll find on so many competitors, and they have something of the mechanical sound but not the racket of an IBM buckled spring key switch. Cherry claim they’re good for 20 million activations, so even I shouldn’t wear them out.

The keymap is of course the standard UK one I’m used to, but what makes or breaks a ‘board like this one is how they arrange the other keys. I really like that their control key is in the bottom left hand corner rather than as in so many others, the function key, but I am taking a little while to get used to the insert and delete keys being to the left of the arrow keys in the bottom right hand corner. Otherwise my muscle memory isn’t being taxed too much by it.

There are a couple of little feet at the back underneath that can be flipped up to raise the ‘board at an angle. Since after years of typing the heel of my hand becomes inflamed if I rest it on the surface I elevate my wrist by about an inch with a rest, thus I use the keyboard tilt. I’ve been typing with the Cherry for a few weeks now, and it remains comfortable.

The Cherry G84-4100 then. It’s not a “special” keyboard in any way, in fact its about as utilitarian as it gets in a peripheral. But for me a keyboard is a tool, and just like my Vernier caliper or my screwdrivers I demand that it does its job repeatably and flawlessly for many years to come. So its unglamorous nature is its strength, because I’ve paid for the engineering which underlies it rather than the bells and whistles that adorn some others. Without realising it you’ll be seeing a lot of this peripheral in my work over the coming years.

hackaday.com/2025/12/12/review…

Hackaday Podcast Episode 349: Clocks, AI, and a New 3D Printer Guy

Hackaday Editors Elliot Williams and Al Williams met up to cover the best of Hackaday this week, and they want you to listen in. There were a hodgepodge of hacks this week, ranging from home automation with RF, volumetric displays in glass, and some crazy clocks, too.

Ever see a typewriter that uses an ink pen? Elliot and Al hadn’t either. Want time on a supercomputer? It isn’t free, but it is pretty cheap these days. Finally, the guys discussed how to focus on a project like Dan Maloney, who finally got a 3D printer, and talked about Maya Posch’s take on LLM intelligence.

Check out the links below if you want to follow along, and as always, tell us what you think about this episode in the comments!

html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/…

Download the human-generated podcast in mostly mono, but sometimes stereo, MP3.

Where to Follow Hackaday Podcast

Places to follow Hackaday podcasts:

• iTunes
• Spotify
• Stitcher
• RSS
• YouTube
• Check out our Libsyn landing page

Episode 349 Show Notes:

News:

• Failed 3D Printed Part Brings Down Small Plane

What’s that Sound?

• What is that sound? Al didn’t guess, but if you can, you could win a coveted Hackaday Podcast T-Shirt.

Interesting Hacks of the Week:

• Bridging RTL-433 To Home Assistant
  
  • GitHub – merbanan/rtl_433: Program to decode radio transmissions from devices on the ISM bands (and other frequencies)

  
  

• The Key To Plotting
• Reverse Sundial Still Tells Time
• Trace Line Clock Does It With Magnets
• Volumetric Display With Lasers And Bubbly Glass
  
  • Wiremap, A Volumetric Display

  
  

• The Engineering That Makes A Road Cat’s Eye Self-Cleaning

Quick Hacks:

• Elliot’s Picks:
  
  • Production KiCad Template Covers All Your Bases
  • RP2350 Done Framework Style
    
    • github.com/semitov/SemiTOV-MCL

    
    

  • Neat Techniques To Make Interactive Light Sculptures

  
  

• Al’s Picks:
  
  • Super Simple Deadbuggable Bluetooth Chip
  • LED Hourglass Is A Great Learning Project
  • Your Supercomputer Arrives In The Cloud

  
  

Can’t Miss Articles:

• Ask Hackaday: Solutions, Or Distractions?
• Why LLMs Are Less Intelligent Than Crows
  
  • What Is ChatGPT Doing … and Why Does It Work?

  
  

hackaday.com/2025/12/12/hackad…

Banca dati IRS con 18 milioni di record 401(k) in vendita nel dark web

Una presunta banca dati contenente informazioni sensibili su 18 milioni di cittadini statunitensi over 65 è apparsa in vendita su un noto forum del dark web.

L’inserzionista, che usa lo pseudonimo “Frenshyny”, sostiene di aver sottratto i dati direttamente dal portale governativo irs.gov, che gestisce, tra le altre cose, documentazione fiscale e informazioni sui piani pensionistici 401(k).

Disclaimer: Questo rapporto include screenshot e/o testo tratti da fonti pubblicamente accessibili. Le informazioni fornite hanno esclusivamente finalità di intelligence sulle minacce e di sensibilizzazione sui rischi di cybersecurity. Red Hot Cyber condanna qualsiasi accesso non autorizzato, diffusione impropria o utilizzo illecito di tali dati. Al momento, non è possibile verificare in modo indipendente l’autenticità delle informazioni riportate, poiché l’organizzazione coinvolta non ha ancora rilasciato un comunicato ufficiale sul proprio sito web. Di conseguenza, questo articolo deve essere considerato esclusivamente a scopo informativo e di intelligence.

Cosa conterrebbe il database

L’annuncio elenca una quantità impressionante di dati personali, indicati come:

• Nome e cognome
• Età
• Stato e città
• Indirizzo
• Codice postale
• Numero di telefono
• Email

Si tratterebbe, secondo il venditore, di informazioni relative ai beneficiari dei 401(k) Benefit Funds, il celebre piano di risparmio previdenziale statunitense attivo dagli anni ’80.

La quantità – 18 milioni di record – suggerisce una compromissione estremamente ampia, che se confermata implicherebbe il più grande data breach mai registrato sul sistema pensionistico privato statunitense.

Il contesto del forum

L’annuncio è pubblicato in una sezione dedicata alla vendita di database rubati. Il venditore si presenta come membro “V.I.P.” del forum, sottolineando una certa reputazione nella community e offrendo la possibilità di contattarlo su Telegram per “prove e prezzi”.

Il post contiene inoltre una lunga descrizione del funzionamento dei piani 401(k), probabilmente inserita per rendere più credibile la provenienza dei dati.

Perché questo leak sarebbe estremamente pericoloso

Se autentico, un database di tale portata esporrebbe milioni di cittadini anziani a:

• Frodi finanziarie su larga scala, incluse truffe relative alla previdenza.
• Furti d’identità, grazie al pacchetto completo di informazioni personali.
• Attacchi di social engineering mirati, particolarmente efficaci su persone più vulnerabili.
• Accesso fraudolento a conti o servizi collegati ai piani pensionistici.

Gli over 65 sono tra i bersagli preferiti dei criminali informatici, e possedere dati verificati li rende estremamente appetibili per campagne fraudolente.

Un nuovo segnale del boom del cyber-crimine finanziario

L’apparizione di questo presunto database conferma una tendenza ormai consolidata: il settore finanziario e previdenziale è diventato uno dei principali target per i threat actors.

Dati come quelli contenuti nei registri pensionistici, infatti, hanno un valore particolarmente alto nei mercati clandestini.

Se verificata, questa vendita rappresenterebbe l’ennesimo colpo alla sicurezza dei sistemi governativi statunitensi e un rischio enorme per milioni di pensionati.

L'articolo Banca dati IRS con 18 milioni di record 401(k) in vendita nel dark web proviene da Red Hot Cyber.

Weird Email Appliance Becomes AI Terminal

The Landel Mailbug was a weird little thing. It combined a keyboard and a simple text display, and was intended to be a low-distraction method for checking your email. [CiferTech] decided to repurpose it, though, turning it into an AI console instead.

The first job was to crack the device open and figure out how to interface with the keyboard. The design was conventional, so reading the rows and columns of the key matrix was a cinch. [CiferTech] used PCF8574 IO expanders to make it easy to read the matrix with an ESP32 microcontroller over I2C. The ESP32 is paired with a small audio output module to allow it to run a text-to-speech system, and a character display to replace the original from the Mailbug itself. It uses its WiFi connection to query the ChatGPT API. Thus, when the user enters a query, the ESP32 runs it by ChatGPT, and then displays the output on the screen while also speaking it aloud.

[CiferTech] notes the build was inspired by AI terminals in retro movies, though we’re not sure what specifically it might be referencing. In any case, it does look retro and it does let you speak to a computer being, of a sort, so the job has been done. Overall, though, the build shows that you can build something clean and functional just by reusing and interfacing a well-built commercial product.

youtube.com/embed/pRIfY21PpyI?…

hackaday.com/2025/12/12/weird-…

Amnesty sbarca nel Dark Web: ecco perché ha aperto il suo sito .onion

Amnesty International ha attivato un proprio sito accessibile tramite dominio .onion sulla rete Tor, offrendo così un nuovo canale sicuro per consultare informazioni e ricerche dell’organizzazione. L’iniziativa, lanciata ufficialmente nel dicembre 2023, nasce dall’esigenza di garantire accesso ai contenuti anche in quei Paesi dove il sito principale viene oscurato o pesantemente monitorato.

La decisione arriva in un contesto globale segnato da crescenti restrizioni digitali. In Stati come Russia, Iran e Cina, l’intero portale di Amnesty International risulta bloccato, impedendo ai cittadini di informarsi liberamente sulle violazioni dei diritti umani. In diverse altre regioni, invece, la navigazione è esposta a sorveglianza governativa, con rischi diretti per attivisti, giornalisti e dissidenti.

Tor, acronimo di The Onion Router, rappresenta uno strumento fondamentale per aggirare queste limitazioni. La rete utilizza una serie di relay gestiti da volontari e applica più livelli di crittografia, rendendo estremamente difficile risalire all’indirizzo IP dell’utente. Questo sistema consente un livello di anonimato più elevato rispetto alla navigazione tradizionale.

Nei browser comuni, l’accesso a un sito avviene tramite DNS e connessioni dirette al server, un processo che espone gli utenti al tracciamento del loro indirizzo IP. Questo elemento, paragonabile all’indirizzo di ritorno di una lettera postale, può essere utilizzato per mappare le attività digitali di una persona senza che ne abbia consapevolezza.

Il browser Tor, invece, inoltra i dati attraverso una catena di nodi distribuiti, mascherando la vera origine del traffico. Quando si accede a un dominio .onion, la comunicazione non abbandona mai la rete Tor e beneficia di una crittografia end-to-end, riducendo ulteriormente i rischi di intercettazione o identificazione.

Amnesty International ha scelto questa infrastruttura proprio per proteggere gli utenti che consultano materiali sensibili relativi a denunce, indagini e campagne sui diritti umani. L’obiettivo è permettere l’accesso a informazioni indipendenti anche in contesti autoritari, senza che chi naviga sia costretto a esporre la propria identità digitale.

La necessità di strumenti come Tor è emersa in modo ancora più evidente dopo indagini come il Project Pegasus del 2021, in cui Amnesty ha documentato l’uso dello spyware della società NSO Group per monitorare fino a 50.000 dispositivi mobili. Tecnologie di questo tipo, utilizzate da governi di varie nazionalità, hanno colpito attivisti, avvocati, giornalisti e oppositori politici.

In un’epoca segnata da sorveglianza avanzata e censura mirata, l’apertura del sito .onion di Amnesty International si inserisce in una più ampia strategia di difesa della libertà digitale. Fornire accesso sicuro ai contenuti è un passo concreto per permettere alle persone di informarsi senza mettere a rischio la propria privacy o la propria sicurezza personale.

L'articolo Amnesty sbarca nel Dark Web: ecco perché ha aperto il suo sito .onion proviene da Red Hot Cyber.