[Myth Made] has a goal to get into writing. However, she likes to do things the aesthetic way, rather than the easy way. Thus, she has eschewed simple word processing on a conventional computer, instead choosing to build a remarkably attractive writing deck styled after a classic typewriter.
The keycap marking technique is worth watching the video for on its own.
The build began with a mechanical keyboard with a compact layout. The square keycaps were swapped out for custom 3D printed versions that were rounded to suit the desired look. [Myth Made] used a neat technique where the caps were colored in with a paint marker and then ran through a laser engraver to bond the paint to the surface to make all the key markings.
With the input side sorted, the rest of the build could progress. The typewriter shell was printed in multiple parts, and then welded together with acetone. This was then covered with an ABS-acetone solution that helped remove some of the surface artifacts, before priming and paint. As for the electronics side, a Raspberry Pi Zero runs the show, hooked up to a Waveshare e-ink display which can be cranked up and down like a piece of paper coming out of a typewriter. There’s also a lovely 7-segment display which displays the current word count.
A U.S. citizen has asked a court to throw out the government's claim that he gave over a passcode to border authorities that wiped his phone's data, opening up fresh questions about a person's constitutional rights at the U.S. border.
Welcome to Edition 9.04 of the Rocket Report! We've had to wait an extra week for SpaceX to get its 13th Starship test flight off the ground. A last-second abort on July 16 led engineers to roll the booster back to its hangar in South Texas to swap out engines. Starship is now back on the launch pad. Liftoff is set for Friday evening. A flawless launch and reentry will put SpaceX on the cusp of an orbital flight later this year. Ars will have a comprehensive recap story after the completion of the test flight.
As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
India's first private rocket reaches orbit. Indian space officials celebrated the debut flight of Skyroot Aerospace’s Vikram-1 rocket, India’s first fully commercial satellite launcher, as a “grand success” Saturday after an on-target climb into a 280-mile-high orbit following liftoff from an island spaceport in the Bay of Bengal, Ars reports. The Vikram-1 lifted off from India’s primary spaceport on Sriharikota Island around midday local time. The launch was delayed more than a half-hour to resolve a last-minute technical problem. The countdown resumed, culminating in the command to ignite Vikram-1’s solid-fueled first stage booster to propel the rocket off the launch pad.
I bought a Samsung Galaxy XR headset shortly after its launch, and I learned a lot about how I actually use VR during my time with that device. In the process, I found that there's a cheaper way to do much of what I use the headset for most often—one that's also far more comfortable and more portable. All you need is the right kit.
Whether it's an Amazon Kindle or any other eReader, fast and fluid motion is probably the last thing you associate with an E-Ink display—but that's changing. In fact, E-Ink has been fast enough to work for special computer monitors for some time now, meant for a limited set of use cases.
Google raised its 2026 capital expenditure forecast to as much as $205 billion as AI demand drives more investment in cloud infrastructure and data centers.
Fujitsu claims its addition to a UK government framework worth up to £14.9 billion, including tax, is consistent with its policy of freezing bids for new public sector work in the wake of the Post Office Horizon IT scandal. The Japanese tech services supplier has been named on the Digital Outcomes and Specialists 7 framework, which was amended this week. The Register understands Fujitsu's name was absent when the details of the contract were first published in February. Horizon is an EPOS and back-end finance system that was first implemented in the 1990s by ICL, a UK tech firm majority-owned by Fujitsu at the time and fully acquired in 1998. It has since undergone two upgrades. Between 1999 and 2015, the Post Office prosecuted 700 subpostmasters in cases in which Horizon evidence may have featured, while almost 300 more cases were brought by other bodies. Hundreds were wrongfully convicted, devastating lives in the process. A statutory inquiry into the scandal launched in 2021 and remains ongoing Its early findings suggest 13 suicides may be linked to the prosecutions. Frameworks are procurement vehicles that let public bodies buy from pre-approved suppliers under agreed terms, although a place on one does not guarantee any work. The Government Commercial Agency (GCA) – which replaced the Crown Commercial Service – is the Cabinet Office agency that manages the framework and receives a 1 percent levy on sales made through it. The Digital Outcomes and Specialists 7 agreement is split into four lots: digital, data, and technology services; outcome-based digital projects; support for long-term digital transformation delivery; and individual digital specialists. It is available to government departments and the wider public sector, including local authorities, police, and health services. In January and February 2024, Fujitsu wrote to the government's commercial arm, committing not to bid for contracts with new government customers until the Horizon inquiry reports. In a letter to the Cabinet Office dated February 6, 2024, Dave Riley, Fujitsu's head of UK public sector, confirmed: "There is no limitation or caveat on our intention to pause bidding for work with new government customers until the inquiry has reported... We would only bid for work with a new government customer if asked to do so." A Fujitsu spokesperson said the company's inclusion on the supplier list for Digital Outcomes and Specialists 7 allows it to bid for work from existing customers, in line with its voluntary pause, which only applies to "new government customers." "We continue to work with the UK Government to ensure we adhere to the restrictions we put in place regarding new contracts while the Post Office Inquiry is ongoing," the spokesperson said. A spokesperson at the Cabinet Office told The Register: "We follow all relevant procurement regulations when awarding suppliers onto our commercial agreements. "We are monitoring Fujitsu’s compliance with their bidding constraints and carry out regular reviews of Fujitsu’s performance across Government contracts." Fujitsu has won places on two other frameworks in recent months, including Technology Services 4, worth up to £19.08 billion, and Transport Technology, worth around £2.3 billion. Both figures include tax. ®
Astronomers have found strong evidence for a Jupiter-mass object orbiting a brown dwarf, potentially marking the first convincing detection of a moon beyond our solar system.
EU law gives researchers unprecedented rights to scrutinize social media data. Researchers say TikTok, X, and Meta impede their attempts to look inside.
"The Norwegian certification agency DNV has certified the commercial wave-driven power generator Corpower C4 for regular use," writes Longtime Slashdot reader Qbertino. "German news site heise.de has a detailed write-up. See a CGI video of the power station and its internals, as well as the company's website [at their respective links]." From the report (translated to English): According to the manufacturer Corpower Ocean, it is the first DNV prototype certificate for a wave energy converter. The certificate confirms that Corpower's technology meets DNV's requirements for structural strength, reliability, and safety, Corpower Ocean announced. The certification process began in the design phase and lasted seven years. DNV oversaw the process from concept development through design, manufacturing, and assembly, to dry-running tests and subsequent operation.
This is an important step, said Patrik Moller, CEO and one of the founders of Corpower Ocean. With the certification, wave energy is no longer just a promising technology, but a proven and financially viable one. This opens up new opportunities for project financing, insurance, and investments in commercial applications. The Corpower C4 wave power plant looks like a normal buoy: It consists of a 19-meter-long floating body with a diameter of 9 meters and a weight of approximately 11 tons. The system is anchored to the seabed. A mechanism inside the buoy converts its up-and-down movements in the waves into a rotary motion. This, in turn, drives a generator that produces electricity. The report notes that the company is "planning the first two industrial-scale wave energy farms off the coasts of Portugal and Scotland," which are scheduled to begin operating sometime between 2027 and 2029.
We enjoyed [Beej’s] trip down memory lane looking at a BASIC game, The Wizard’s Castle, written for the Exidy Sorcerer. It appeared in a 1980 magazine that included the title graphic above. It reminded us how, back in those days, we did things with BASIC that you shouldn’t be able to do and it often looks, today, rather cryptic.
In particular, even if you know modern BASIC, these few lines might give you a pause:
10 REM"_(C2SLFF4
40 POKE 260,218: POKE 261,1: T = USR(0): T = PEEK(-2049)
80 Q = RND(-(2*T+1))
Line 10 is a comment, but a strange one. Certainly that doesn’t matter, right? Actually, it is a key part of the action. On line 40, you can see some pokes to write directly to memory and a peek to read some memory value back. The USR function calls some machine language program. You may realize the whole thing is to get some value T to seed the random number generator in line 80.
This leads to a few obvious questions. First, how does USR know what to call? Second, where is the machine language program? The details varied by system, of course, but in this case, the program knows that location 259 has a jump instruction that USR called. So poking an address into 260 and 261 was telling USR where it should go.
But what’s at that address? Keep in mind that an old computer like the Sorcerer didn’t have megabytes of memory being swapped about by an operating system. That means that things tended to be in known places and that BASIC had to be judicious about storing source code.
As was common at the time, a line like “10 PRINT 1+1” would get tokenized. In this case, each line would get a pointer to the next line, a two-byte line number, a single-byte token for “PRINT” and then more bytes to represent the rest of the line. In the case of text in a string or a remark, the bytes were just the text with a zero to terminate the string.
The first line entered would always be at address 469. So? If you consider the format of the REM statement, there will be a pointer at 469 and 470, the line number at 471 and 472, and the REM token at 473. That means the other bytes just get poured into address 474 and beyond.
That might seem like an odd number until you look at the pokes in line 40. Keep in mind that POKE works on bytes, not words. So poking 1 into 261 gives you an address of 256 + whatever is in the low byte, in this case 218. Add 256 and 218, and you get… 474! So USR is going to call that odd string in line 10!
There is more to the detective story, but if you want to know exactly what the REM did, you can read the original post.
Chick-fil-A disclosed a credential stuffing attack affecting customers across 10 states, underscoring the risks of password reuse and account takeover.
— Agility Roboticsnamed Michael Beeras its chief financial officer. Current CFO and chief operating officer Jennifer Hunter will transition to serving exclusively as COO.
“Michael brings outstanding public company finance and capital markets experience, while Jennifer, with her prior experience as a publicly traded COO, will focus exclusively on scaling our operational excellence and manufacturing capabilities,” said CEO Peggy Johnson, in a statement.
The Salem, Ore.-based startup, whose two-legged Digit robots have been tested inside Amazon warehouses, is set to become the first publicly traded U.S. company dedicated solely to humanoid robots, the company announced last month.
Beer joins Agility Robotics from the California energy storage company Energy Vault, where he was CFO for two years. Past roles include venture partner at Vest Coast Capital and CFO at FreeWire Technologies.
Matt Fisher. (Efekta Education Photo)
— Seattle-area tech veteran Matt Fisher has taken the role of CTO for London-based Efekta Education. The company is developing an agentic teaching and learning platform.
“I’ve spent my career building technologies that help people learn, connect and achieve more. What attracted me to Efekta is its clear vision for using AI to enhance learning, support teachers and make high-quality education accessible to more people around the world,” Fisher said.
Last August, Fisher joined immersive media startup Adventr as a late-stage co-founder. Prior to that, he was co-founder and CTO at Daydream, a startup that raised a $50 million seed round last year to shake up the way people find and buy clothing online. Other past roles include leadership at Amazon, Microsoft, Nordstrom and Auth0.
— There is another name to add to the raft of departures from Microsoft‘s security leadership.
Rahul Prakash. (LinkedIn Photo)
Rahul Prakash, head of product for Microsoft Security Copilot, shared that he’s leaving his role after nearly a decade with the company.
“As any Identity professional will tell you, the world of [Identity Access Management] is far more intricate than people realize, and it’s being rewritten for the world of AI agents. At Microsoft, I’ve had the privilege of going deep into this space…” Prakash said on LinkedIn.
On Monday, GeekWire reported that Rudra “Rudy” Mitra, who spent more than 27 years at Microsoft, was joining Amazon Web Services as vice president of security services. Other recent departures include Krishna Kumar Parthasarathy, who resigned at after nearly three decades.
Nancy Lipson. (LinkedIn Photo)
— Nancy Lipson has joined Zap Energy as chief legal officer. The Everett, Wash.-based company is in pursuit of fusion energy, and recently expanded its scope to include next generation nuclear fission.
Lipson was previously executive vice president and CLO for the gold mining giant Newmont Corporation, departing after 18 years in 2023.
“Nancy’s deep expertise in areas of corporate strategy, governance, compliance, and sustainability will be key assets as Zap pursues its integrated approach to advanced nuclear,” Zap posted on LinkedIn.
Jyoti Shukla. (LinkedIn Photo)
— Jyoti Shukla was named chief product and technology officer at KEXP, a nonprofit radio station serving Seattle and the Bay Area. The station includes community and performance spaces, and features wide-ranging music genres.
“There is a lot of meaningful work ahead, and I’m excited to keep learning, building, and partnering with an amazing team as we shape what’s next,” Shukla said on LinkedIn.
Prior to taking the role, Shukla served on KEXP’s board of directors and was senior vice president of product design at SiriusXM. She has also worked in tech leadership roles at Nordstrom and Starbucks, and started her career at Microsoft.
— ZEV Co-op, a Washington-based nonprofit EV carshare cooperative, announced Ry Armstrong as its new executive director. Armstrong was previously at Sustainable Seattle, where they served as co-director.
— Tirzah VanDamme has joined Gagen MacDonald as senior director of AI and digital transformation. She brings more than 20 years of experience and was most recently at Microsoft.
— The Washington State Academy of Sciences (WSAS) announced the election four new board members. They are:
Amanda Boyd, executive director of Native American Programs and Professor in the Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine at Washington State Universit
Mary Czerwinski, former research manager at Microsoft Research
John Stein, former science and research director of NOAA Fisheries’ Northwest Fisheries Science Center
Judith Wasserheit, professor emerita of Global Health, Medicine, and Epidemiology at the University of Washington
WSAS also elected 30 new members, who will assist the organization in providing scientific and technical information to state policymakers.
They include 26 scientists and engineers elected by their WSAS peers and four members recently elected to the National Academies of Science, Engineering, or Medicine or awarded the Nobel Prize and who reside or work in Washington state.
The members include 11 UW professors and eight from WSU, five researchers from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, three from Fred Hutch Cancer Center, and three at private companies, with some participants holding roles at multiple institutions.
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