Weird Email Appliance Becomes AI Terminal

December 12, 2025 by 1 Comment

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.

Continue reading “Weird Email Appliance Becomes AI Terminal” →

This Week In Security: Hornet, Gogs, And Blinkenlights

December 12, 2025 by 4 Comments

Microsoft has published a patch-set for the Linux kernel, proposing the Hornet Linux Security Module (LSM). If you haven’t been keeping up with the kernel contributor scoreboard, Microsoft is #11 at time of writing and that might surprise you. The reality is that Microsoft’s biggest source of revenue is their cloud offering, and Azure is over half Linux, so Microsoft really is incentivized to make Linux better.

The Hornet LSM is all about more secure eBPF programs, which requires another aside: What is eBPF? First implemented in the Berkeley Packet Filter, it’s a virtual machine in the kernel, that allows executing programs in kernel space. It was quickly realized that this ability to run a script in kernel space was useful for far more than just filtering packets, and the extended Berkeley Packet Filter was born. eBPF is now used for load balancing, system auditing, security and intrusion detection, and lots more.

This unique ability to load scripts from user space into kernel space has made eBPF useful for malware and spyware applications, too. There is already a signature scheme to restrict eBPF programs, but Hornet allows for stricter checks and auditing. The patch is considered a Request For Comments (RFC), and points out that this existing protection may be subject to Time Of Check / Time Of Use (TOCTOU) attacks. It remains to be seen whether Hornet passes muster and lands in the upstream kernel. Continue reading “This Week In Security: Hornet, Gogs, And Blinkenlights” →

NASA May Have Lost The MAVEN Mars Orbiter

December 12, 2025 by 16 Comments

When the orbit of NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft took it behind the Red Planet on December 6th, ground controllers expected a temporary loss of signal (LoS). Unfortunately, the Deep Space Network hasn’t heard from the science orbiter since. Engineers are currently trying to troubleshoot this issue, but without a sign of life from the stricken spacecraft, there are precious few options.

As noted by [Stephen Clark] over at ArsTechnica this is a pretty big deal. Even though MAVEN was launched in November of 2013, it’s a spring chicken compared to the other Mars orbiters. The two other US orbiters: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and Mars Odyssey, are significantly older by around a decade. Of the two ESA orbiters, Mars Express and ExoMars, the latter is fairly new (2016) and could at least be a partial backup for MAVEN’s communication relay functionality with the ground-based units, in particular the two active rovers. ExoMars has a less ideal orbit for large data transfers, which would hamper scientific research.

With neither the Chinese nor UAE orbiters capable of serving as a relay, this puts the burden on a potential replacement orbiter, such as the suggested Mars Telecommunications Orbiter, which was cancelled in 2005. Even if contact with MAVEN is restored, it would only have fuel for a few more years. This makes a replacement essential if we wish to keep doing ground-based science missions on Mars, as well as any potential manned missions.

Consider This Pocket Machine For Your IPhone Backups

December 12, 2025 by 20 Comments

What if you find yourself as an iPhone owner, desiring a local backup solution — no wireless tech involved, no sending off data to someone else’s server, just an automatic device-to-device file sync? Check out [Giovanni]’s ios-backup-machine project, a small Linux-powered device with an e-ink screen that backs up your iPhone whenever you plug the two together with a USB cable.

The system relies on libimobiledevice, and is written to make simple no-interaction automatic backups work seamlessly. The backup status is displayed on the e-ink screen, and at boot, it shows up owner’s information of your choice, say, a phone number — helpful if the device is ever lost. For preventing data loss, [Giovanni] recommends a small uninterruptible power supply, and the GitHub-described system is married to a PiSugar board, though you could go without or add a different one, for sure. Backups are encrypted through iPhone internal mechanisms, so while it appears you might not be able to dig into one, they are perfectly usable for restoring your device should it get corrupted or should you need to provision a new phone to replace the one you just lost.

Easy to set up, fully open, and straightforward to use — what’s not to like? Just put a few off-the-shelf boards together, print the case, and run the setup instructions, you’ll have a pocket backup machine ready to go. Now, if you’re considering this as a way to decrease your iTunes dependency, you might as well check out this nifty tool that helps you get out the metadata for the music you’ve bought on iTunes.

DIY Synth Takes Inspiration From Fretted Instruments

December 11, 2025 by 4 Comments

There are a million and one MIDI controllers and synths on the market, but sometimes it’s just more satisfying to make your own. [Turi Scandurra] very much went his own way when he put together his Diapasonix instrument.

Right away, the build is somewhat reminiscent of a stringed instrument, what with its buttons laid out in four “strings” of six “frets” each. Only, they’re not so much buttons, as individual sections of a capacitive touch controller. A Raspberry Pi Pico 2 is responsible for reading the 24 pads, with the aid of two MPR121 capacitive touch ICs.

The Diapasonix can be played as an instrument in its own right, using the AMY synthesis engine. This provides a huge range of patches from the Juno 6 and DX7 synthesizers of old. Onboard effects like delay and reverb can be used to alter the sound. Alternatively, it can be used as a MIDI controller, feeding its data to a PC attached over USB. It can be played in multiple modes, with either direct note triggers or with a “strumming” method instead.

We’ve featured a great many MIDI controllers over the years, from the artistic to the compact. Video after the break. Continue reading “DIY Synth Takes Inspiration From Fretted Instruments” →

Step Into My Particle Accelerator

December 11, 2025 by 4 Comments

If you get a chance to visit a computer history museum and see some of the very old computers, you’ll think they took up a full room. But if you ask, you’ll often find that the power supply was in another room and the cooling system was in yet another. So when you get a computer that fit on, say, a large desk and maybe have a few tape drives all together in a normal-sized office, people thought of it as “small.” We’re seeing a similar evolution in particle accelerators, which, a new startup company says, can be room-sized according to a post by [Charles Q. Choi] over at IEEE Spectrum.

Usually, when you think of a particle accelerator, you think of a giant housing like the 3.2-kilometer-long SLAC accelerator. That’s because these machines use magnets to accelerate the particles, and just like a car needs a certain distance to get to a particular speed, you have to have room for the particle to accelerate to the desired velocity.

A relatively new technique, though, doesn’t use magnets. Instead, very powerful (but very short) laser pulses create plasma from gas. The plasma oscillates in the wake of the laser, accelerating electrons to relativistic speeds. These so-called wakefield accelerators can, in theory, produce very high-energy electrons and don’t need much space to do it.

Continue reading “Step Into My Particle Accelerator” →

A man's hands are holding an assembly of 3D-printed parts. There is a white backplate, with a yellow circular piece running through the middle. The yellow piece is surrounded by metal rods. Another blue shaft runs through the left side of the assembly. A rougly-diamond shaped plate encompasses both of these shafts.

Designing A Simpler Cycloidal Drive

December 11, 2025 by No comments

Cycloidal drives have an entrancing motion, as well as a few other advantages – high torque and efficiency, low backlash, and compactness among them. However, much as [Sergei Mishin] likes them, it can be difficult to 3D-print high-torque drives, and it’s sometimes inconvenient to have the input and output shafts in-line. When, therefore, he came across a video of an industrial three-ring reducing drive, which works on a similar principle, he naturally designed his own 3D-printable drive.

The main issue with 3D-printing a normal cycloidal drive is with the eccentrically-mounted cycloidal plate, since the pins which run through its holes need bearings to keep them from quickly wearing out the plastic plate at high torque. This puts some unfortunate constraints on the size of the drive. A three-ring drive also uses an eccentric drive shaft to cause cycloidal plates to oscillate around a set of pins, but the input and output shafts are offset so that the plates encompass both the pins and the eccentric driveshaft. This simplifies construction significantly, and also makes it possible to add more than one input or output shaft.

As the name indicates, these drives use three plates 120 degrees out of phase with each other; [Sergei] tried a design with only two plates 180 degrees out of phase, but since there was a point at which the plates could rotate just as easily in either direction, it jammed easily. Unlike standard cycloidal gears, these plates use epicycloidal rather than hypocycloidal profiles, since they move around the outside of the pins. [Sergei] helpfully wrote a Python script that can generate profiles, animate them, and export to DXF. The final performance of these drives will depend on their design parameters and printing material, but [Sergei] tested a 20:1 drive and reached a respectable 9.8 Newton-meters before it started skipping.

Even without this design’s advantages, it’s still possible to 3D-print a cycloidal drive, its cousin the harmonic drive, or even more exotic drive configurations. Continue reading “Designing A Simpler Cycloidal Drive” →