Over on IEEE Spectrum, [Stephen Cass] has a project that would probably have seemed like a magic a few centuries ago. Imagine a box that uses a magnetic device to holds a locking bolt, requiring a magnet to disengage it. The only problem is that any strong magnet can open the box. [Stephen], instead, used an array of 64 Hall-effect sensors developed by [Peter Jansen] to look for a specific magnetic gesture.
Inside is a Teensy that can read the 8×8 grid of sensors. A magnetic stylus allows you to draw an unlock pattern. The system lets you train the gesture you want. There are a few problems. The sensor covers a small area, so it is hard to reliably produce the gesture. Putting an obvious mark on the box is a dead giveaway, so [Stephen] put a Celtic knotwork pattern on the box and uses part of it as a reference.
The other problem is that if you run out of battery, the box is locked forever. Well, at least until you apply mechanical force and break the box open. Wireless charging would be an option, but we might favor a small jack that would allow you to plug in an external battery.
This is a clever use of the sensor. However, we might have preferred a mechanical solution that didn’t require batteries. Or, perhaps, you could use a few normally open and normally closed reed switches to make a kind of magnetic combination lock. It would still need a battery, but it wouldn’t draw current until you connected the switches. Both methods also have drawbacks, of course. Like most things, you just get to pick the drawbacks you can live with.
You can see a video of the magnetic imaging tile from [Peter] below. We really want a setup like this for our secret door. We also wonder whether switchable magnets could provide a battery-free solution.
Block previews Dessa, a voice AI model trained without text. Explore its local hardware claims, safety risks, and what businesses should assess next.
The post Block Previews Dessa, an AI Voice Model Trained Without Text appeared first on TechRepublic.
Block previews Dessa, a voice AI model trained without text. Explore its local hardware claims, safety risks, and what businesses should assess next.
The post Block Previews Dessa, an AI Voice Model Trained Without Text appeared first on TechRepublic.
Bitcoin Magazine
Block Releases THE Bitcoin National Ad Campaign
Block just launched “Bitcoin Does,” its first-ever mass-consumer Bitcoin advertising campaign, aimed at the 60 million Americans who are curious but haven’t taken the first step. Maria Pesce, Head of Bitcoin Marketing at Block across Cash App, Square and Proto, joins Grace Remington and Sean Hagan to explain why the ads skip the mining and blockchain explainers and just show Bitcoin working. She shares the customer insight behind the message, a Square seller calling Bitcoin “more honest money,” and how inflation, bailouts and private equity shaped the films. Plus, inside Block’s Lightning Lake at ComplexCon, where attendees fished for Bitcoin and paid over Lightning.
Chapters:
0:00 Block Joins the Open Secure AI Alliance With Nvidia, Microsoft and Visa
1:00 Maria Pesce’s Path From Gemini to Leading Bitcoin Marketing at Block
2:07 Bitcoin Does: Block’s First Mass-Consumer Bitcoin Ad Campaign
3:13 Connecting Main Street Frustration to What Bitcoin Can Do
4:42 What Cash App Users and Square Sellers Told Block About Honest Money
5:56 Fixed Supply, Self-Custody and Why Young People Are Choosing Bitcoin
7:18 Light Bulb Moments From People Who Didn’t Own Bitcoin
8:51 Making Bitcoin Work Like Email: Block’s Design Language
10:15 Lightning Lake at ComplexCon: Fishing for Bitcoin and Paying Over Lightning
13:36 Square’s 0% Bitcoin Processing Fees and What Keeps People Using Bitcoin
DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this show are those of the participants and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of BTC Inc., Bitcoin Magazine, or any affiliated entities. This content is provided for informational and educational purposes only and should not be construed as investment, legal, tax, or accounting advice. Nothing contained in this show constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer to buy or sell any securities or financial instruments. Viewers should consult their own advisors before making financial or business decisions.
This post Block Releases THE Bitcoin National Ad Campaign first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Patrick Green.
Bitcoin Magazine
Sazmining Now Sells Jack Dorsey’s Proto Immersion Hashboards
Bitcoin mining just got a lower barrier to entry.
Sazmining announced Thursday that it is now selling Proto’s immersion hashboards directly to individual and institutional buyers through its mining-as-a-service platform. Previously, the hardware was mostly in the hands of large-scale operators.
Each hashboard delivers roughly 200 TH at around 15 J/TH, and buyers own them outright while Sazmining handles deployment, monitoring and maintenance at a US facility. Mining rewards go straight to the owner’s wallet.
The move follows a multi-megawatt supply deal between Sazmining and Proto — the bitcoin mining arm of Jack Dorsey’s Block (NYSE: XYZ) — which both companies expect to expand as demand grows.
“Because of our aligned-incentive model, Sazmining only earns when we produce bitcoin for our clients,” said Kent Halliburton, CEO and co-founder of Sazmining.
He also pitched mining as a form of bitcoin acquisition diversification: rather than paying the market price on the day of purchase, a miner’s costs are spread across the machine’s working life.
Wyoming-based Sazmining, founded in 2018, operates renewable-powered facilities across the US, Paraguay, and Norway. It says its fleet runs more than 20 percentage points ahead of the Bitcoin network’s carbon-free share.
Proto is Jack Dorsey’s Block’s bitcoin mining play. The Twitter founder has spent years arguing bitcoin is the foundation of “a more open financial system,” funding everything from Cash App’s buy-and-send rails to the Bitkey self-custody wallet, and he framed mining as the obvious missing piece back in 2021: “Bitcoin mining should be as easy as plugging a rig into a power source.”
Block formally announced it was building an open bitcoin mining system in January 2022, with the stated aim of making mining “more distributed and efficient.”
This post Sazmining Now Sells Jack Dorsey’s Proto Immersion Hashboards first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.
Atomic clocks are super accurate. But, unsurprisingly, some atomic clocks are better than others, depending on your definition of better. Researchers at Vienna University claim to have a superior thorium-based atomic clock. It isn’t necessarily more accurate than other atomic clocks, but it is self-regulating.
Apparently, prior atomic clocks need help to stay stable. But scientists have thought that thorium, with its very narrow gap between two states, would make an excellent clock with the help of a laser. However, the laser has to have precise properties that, at least in early experiments, were provided by another nuclear clock.
Obviously, you’d like to be able to use a laser to excite the source — a thorium crystal in this case — and then use the output of that to adjust the laser. That’s apparently what the team has done. If the laser drifts, the thorium nuclei absorb less light, and that adjusts the output frequency to compensate. If you can follow the physics, you can read the source paper in Nature.
Optical atomic clocks are the way to go for time standards, but this research has promise to provide even more accurate results in the future.
Bitcoin Magazine
Jack Dorsey’s Block Gifts One Bitcoin to Lucky ComplexCon Attendee
Jack Dorsey’s Block is pushing so hard for bitcoin adoption, it gifted 1 BTC to a lucky conference attendee at this year’s ComplexCon in Los Angeles.
The fintech giant attended the Complex Networks yearly event at the weekend in a bid to introduce newbies to the leading cryptocurrency through — in its words — “culture, shopping and play.”
Block’s Cash App had a stall at the event with a fishing game dubbed “Lightning Lake”, allowing attendees to win small amounts of bitcoin.
the ₿ was bitin at Lightning Lake https://t.co/t3SFTaLHIU
— Bitcoin at Block (@BitcoinatBlock) October 5, 2026
But one fortunate player was lucky enough to scoop up a whole coin — worth $85,000 at the time.
“We wanted bitcoin to feel approachable, tangible and fun,” Maria Pesce, Head of Bitcoin Marketing at Block, told Bitcoin Magazine.
“People could go from never having used bitcoin to paying with it, all in a trip around the lake.”
She added: “At Block, our goal is to make bitcoin everyday money, and ComplexCon gave us a chance to introduce bitcoin to a new audience through culture, shopping, and play.”
Block has long pushed for bitcoin adoption via its companies and products: Cash App allows users to send, receive and buy bitcoin and Square point-of-sale terminals accept the orange coin via the Lightning Network.
NYSE-listed Block this month even debuted an advertising campaign to make the push for people to use the leading cryptocurrency as a medium of exchange.
Dorsey, who in 2021 left Twitter to focus his efforts on payments and Bitcoin adoption in 2021, has repeatedly said he wants the cryptocurrency to be the global currency and “everyday money.”
Block even piqued the interest of celebrities at ComplexCon: Kanye West’s daughter North West and rapper French Montana were spotted by Lightning Lake trying to fish for bitcoin.
This post Jack Dorsey’s Block Gifts One Bitcoin to Lucky ComplexCon Attendee first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.
The China-based hacking group has been exploiting SharePoint vulnerabilities since July 2025.
The post Warlock Expands SharePoint Exploitation in Critical Infrastructure Attacks appeared first on SecurityWeek.
Bitcoin Magazine
Jack Dorsey’s Block Launches Campaign To Get People Spending Bitcoin
Jack Dorsey’s Block continues the push to make bitcoin “everyday money.”
The NYSE-listed company announced Thursday it had debuted an advertising campaign to make the push for people to use the leading cryptocurrency as a medium of exchange.
It comes as the U.S. is in the midst of an affordability crisis, with high prices a hot topic — perhaps the most pressing — amongst voters ahead of the midterm elections. Dorsey and Block have constantly pushed for bitcoin to be used to pay for goods.
Some things don't make sense.
— Bitcoin at Block (@BitcoinatBlock) October 1, 2026
Bitcoin does.https://t.co/iJsCzyg7e3 pic.twitter.com/x8hHOL7vW4
“At Block, we’re focused on building financial products that make everyday life easier,” said Bitcoin Lead at Block Miles Suter said in a statement.
He added: “This campaign is our first major illustration of what a Bitcoin-centric financial system could look like, and we’re excited to show how it can make a meaningful difference in people’s lives.”
An advert accompanied the announcement on X. It featured everyday Americans complaining about the cost of living and other things, such as Wall Street bankers getting bailed out by the government.
The ad contained the slogan, “Some things don’t make sense. Bitcoin does.”
Block said in its announcement that the campaign starts rolling out on Thursday across YouTube, X, Meta, Instagram, and on television through Fox Sports until December 31. The ads will also run in theaters at select screenings of movies Avengers: Doomsday and Dune 3.
The billionaire founder of Twitter left the social media company to focus his efforts on payments and Bitcoin adoption in 2021, saying he wants the cryptocurrency to be the global currency.
He has also described Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin white paper as “poetry.”
Cash App allows users to send and receive and buy and sell Bitcoin and point-of-sale terminals. Square accepts the orange coin via the Lightning Network.
Block also last year debuted a Bitcoin mining rig with swappable parts, with the idea that miners could cut costs on repairing and replacing the devices.
This post Jack Dorsey’s Block Launches Campaign To Get People Spending Bitcoin first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.
October could become a significant month for crypto token supply, with more than a dozen major unlocks scheduled throughout the month.
According to data shared by Dami-Defi, the combined value of the listed October unlocks runs into the billions of dollars. But the numbers reveal an important distinction: the largest unlock by dollar value is not necessarily the largest event when measured against a token’s existing supply or market size.
The biggest event comes at the end of the month.
Celestia (TIA) is scheduled to unlock approximately 175 million tokens on October 30, representing around 17.68% of its total supply. Based on the figures in the schedule, the unlock is valued at approximately $1.08 billion, making it the largest single token unlock in October by dollar value.
That puts TIA well ahead of the other major events on the calendar.
RAIN follows with a scheduled October 10 release of approximately 37.2 billion tokens, valued at roughly $683 million to $785 million in the cited data. The release represents about 3.2% of RAIN’s total supply.
October 5 brings two major unlocks.
ASTER is scheduled to release approximately $503.6 million worth of tokens, equivalent to around 4% of its circulating supply.
Meanwhile, ENA is scheduled for an unlock of approximately 1.41 billion tokens, valued at around $212 million, representing roughly 14.3% of its circulating supply according to the cited schedule.
These numbers show why looking only at dollar value can be misleading. A $200 million unlock can represent a much larger relative increase in available supply than a much bigger dollar release.
The calendar highlights two different ways to measure an unlock.
Dollar value shows how much capital is represented by the newly released tokens. Percentage impact shows how large that release is relative to the token’s existing supply or market size.
That distinction is particularly visible with SCR. Its scheduled unlock is only around $14 million, far smaller than TIA, RAIN or ASTER. Yet the cited data puts the release at roughly 43.6% of its market cap, making it one of the most notable events when measured proportionally.
October, therefore, is not simply about one giant $1 billion unlock. It is a month filled with releases of very different sizes and potential supply impacts.
For crypto traders and market watchers, the key dates may be worth keeping on the calendar — especially October 5, October 10, October 20 and October 30, when several of the larger or more significant unlocks are scheduled.
As the month approaches, the focus will likely remain on how these newly unlocked tokens enter the market and how each project’s supply dynamics evolve.
October Is Bringing More Than $3 Billion in New Crypto Supply was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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