There have been some hilarious issues on mobile devices over the years. The HTC Dream had a hidden shell that was discovered when a phone rebooted after sending a text containing just the word “reboot”. iOS has gotten in on the fun from time to time, and this time it’s ""::. Type the double quotes, a colon, and any other character, and Apple’s Springboard service crashes.
Another hacker dug in a bit, and realized that Springboard is trying to jump execution to a null pointer, leading to a crash. It’s very odd that user input breaks the query parser badly enough to jump to null like that. There are a couple interesting questions that we have to ask. Given that the crash trigger is quite flexible, "anything goes":x, is it possible to manipulate that function pointer to be something other than null? And perhaps more importantly, why is the code crashing, instead of an invalid address error as one would expect from a Pointer Authentication Code (PAC) violation? Regardless, the bug seems to be fixed in the latest iOS 18 builds.
You might think that TV stations or production houses would be great at archiving, but it’s not always the case. Particularly from the public access perspective. However, if you’re a fan of The Famous Computer Cafe, you’re in luck! The beloved series has now been preserved on The Internet Archive!
If you’re not familiar with the show, it was a radio program broadcast from 1983 to 1986. It was pumped out of a variety of radio stations in southern and central California in the period. The creators making sure to keep a copy of each episode in reel-to-reel tape format. For years, these tapes were tragically lost, until archivist [Kay Savetz] was able to recover some of them from a recent property sale. From there, a GoFundMe paid for digitization, and the show has been placed on The Internet Archive with the blessings of the original creators.
This is quite the cultural victory, particularly when you observe the list of guests on the show. Timothy Leary, Bill Gates, Jack Tramiel, and even Douglas Adams made appearances in the recovered recordings. Sadly, though, not all the tapes have been recovered. Episodes with Gene Roddenberry, Robert Moog, and Ray Bradbury are still lost to time.
If you fancy a listen, 53 episodes presently exist on the archive. Take a trip back in time and hear from some technological visionaries—and futurists—speaking their minds at the very beginning of the microcomputer era! If you find any particularly salient gems, don’t hesitate to drop them on the tip line.
[Hans Rosenberg] knows a thing or two about RF PCB design and has provided a three-part four-part video demonstration of some solid rules of thumb. We will cover the first part here and leave the other two for the more interested readers!
The design process begins with a schematic diagram, assuming ideal conductors. Advanced software tools can extract the resistive, inductive, and capacitive elements of the physical wiring to create a parasitic model that can be compared to the desired schematic. The RF designer’s task is to optimize the layout to minimize differences and achieve the best performance to meet the design goals. However, what do you do when you don’t have access to such software?
[Hans] explains that at low frequencies, return current flows through all paths, with the lowest resistance path taking most of the current. At higher frequencies, the lowest inductance path carries all the current. In real designs, a ground plane is used instead of an explicit return trace for the lowest possible impedance.
You really wouldn’t design an RF circuit like this.
[Hans] shows the effect of interrupting the signal return path on a physical test PCB. The result is pretty bad, with the current forced to detour around the hole in the ground plane. A nanoVNA shows a -20 dB drop at 4 GHz, where the ground plane has effectively become an antenna. Energy will be radiated out, causing signal loss, but worse, it will create an EMC hazard with an unintended transmission.
Additionally, this creates an EMC susceptibility, making the situation worse. Placing a solder blob to bridge the gap directly under the signal trace is all that’s required to make it a continuous straight path again, and the performance is restored.
Floating planes are also an issue in RF designs, causing signal resonance and losses. One solution is to pull back the planes near the signal or stitch them to the ground plane with vias placed closely on either side of the signal trace. However, such stitching may slightly affect transmission line impedance and require tweaking the design a little. The next two parts of the series expand on this, hammering home the importance of good ground plane design. These are definitely worth a watch!
It’s not a super-complicated build, but it is a well-executed one. It combines laser cut acrylic with 3D-printed brackets to produce a housing that looks clean, sharp, and of almost commercial quality. That’s the benefit of laser-cutting—it avoids all the ugly problems of layer lines. From there, [Rudd] simply set about stuffing the PS4 motherboard inside, along with placing the relevant ports and vents in the housing where needed. A screen with inbuilt speakers was then attached to complete the build. The one thing it’s missing is a set of batteries for playing it on the bus. This thing needs mains power to run.
We’d love to see [Rudd] take another stab at the concept, making it fully independent from cables. It’s definitely possible. Who wouldn’t want to play some Persona 5 Royal on the train, anyway? Video after the break.
When WiFi first came out, it was a super exciting time. The technology was new, and quite a bit less secure back then—particularly if not configured properly. That gave rise to the practice of wardriving—driving around with a computer, looking for unsecured networks, often just for the fun of it. [Simon] has been examining this classic practice from a modern perspective.
He’s been at the game for a long time—from back in the days when you might head out with a thick old laptop, a bunch of PCMCIA cards, and dangly antennas. It’s much more advanced these days, given we’ve got WiFi on all different bands and Bluetooth devices to consider to boot. Heck, even Zigbee, if you’re hunting down a rogue house full of Internet of Things gadgets.
Today, when he’s out researching the wireless landscape, he uses devices like the Flipper Zero, the Raspberry Pi, and a Google Pixel 5 running the WiGLE WiFi Wardriving app. [Simon] notes that the latter is the easiest way to get started if you’ve got an Android phone. Beyond that, there’s software and hardware out there these days that can do amazing things compared to the simple rigs of yesteryear.
If you’re out looking for free internet these days, wardriving might be a bit pointless given it’s available in practically every public building you visit. But if you’re a wireless security researcher, or just curious about what your own home setup is putting out, it might be worth looking at these tools! Happy hunting.
As Neuralink works towards getting its brain-computer interface technology approved for general use, it now has two human patients who have received the experimental implant. The second patient, [Alex], received the implant in July of 2024 and is said to be doing well, being able to play games like Counter Strike 2 without using his old mouth-operated controller. He’s also creating designs in Fusion 360 to have them 3D printed.
This positive news comes after the first patient ([Noland Arbaugh]) suffered major issues with his implant, with only 10-15% of the electrodes still working after receiving the implant in January. The issue of electrode threads retracting was apparently a known issue years prior already.
We analyzed Neuralink’s claims back in 2019, when its founder – [Elon Musk] – was painting lofty goals for the implant, including reading and writing of brains, integration with AIs and much more. Since that time Neuralink has been mostly in the news for the many test animals which it euthanized during its test campaign prior to embarking on its first human test subjects.
There also appears a continuing issue with transmitting the noisy data from the electrodes, as it is far more data than can be transmitted wirelessly. To solve this seemingly impossible problem, Neuralink has now turned to the public with its Neuralink Compression Challenge to have someone make a miraculous lossless compression algorithm for it.
With still many challenges ahead, it ought to be clear that it will take many more years before Neuralink’s implant is ready for prime-time, but so far at least it seems to at least make life easier for two human patients.
Permanent magnets aren’t typically switchable. They’re always doing their magnet thing. However, if you align them with a bunch of other magnets in just the right way, you can create a permanent magnet that you can effectively switch on and off. [Andrew Klein] has done just that with his 3D-printed magnetic switch design.
The concept is simple enough. The design consists of a 3D-printed housing in two parts, top and bottom. When set into one orientation, the housing holds two arrays of magnets in opposite orientations. This effectively cancels out their magnetic fields and allows you to move the assembly around as if it’s pretty much not magnetic at all. However, rotate the device to its alternative orientation, and the magnets poles are aligned. This effectively combines their magnetic fields and makes the assembly act as one big large magnet.
These devices are useful if you want to create magnetic clamps or fixtures that can be attached and detached at will from ferrous surfaces. Being able to effectively “switch the magnet off” is much easier than trying to wrench a powerful magnet from a metal plate, after all.
