Today's outages, hacks, phones, gadgets and fixes, plus the tech you grew up with, picked daily by Chris Pirillo for the pros everybody calls.https://lockergnome.com/en-ushttps://lockergnome.com/81-jokes-zx81-character-set-rob-manuel-book/https://lockergnome.com/81-jokes-zx81-character-set-rob-manuel-book/Rob Manuel's 81 Jokes for the ZX81 is a sewn hardback of gags he illustrated himself with nothing but the Sinclair ZX81's character set, out 3 December from Spelk Press.Wed, 28 Oct 2026 23:13:51 GMTRetrozx81sinclairretrobookshumorhttps://lockergnome.com/agenticbench-planted-secrets-25-coding-agent-harnesses/https://lockergnome.com/agenticbench-planted-secrets-25-coding-agent-harnesses/Independent lab Agentic Thinking Ltd ran nine planted-secret tests against 25 AI coding-agent harnesses and published which ones read, sent or ran what they shouldn't, with seven vendor disclosures made public so far.Wed, 28 Oct 2026 23:13:51 GMTSecuritysecurityai-agentscoding-agentsbenchmarksprivacyhttps://lockergnome.com/aqueous-archive-wasm-recompression-jpeg-png-zip-bit-exact/https://lockergnome.com/aqueous-archive-wasm-recompression-jpeg-png-zip-bit-exact/The open-source aqr tool unpacks files that were already compressed by weaker encoders, recompresses their contents with stronger models, and ships the WebAssembly decoders inside the archive; on a 10 GB benchmark it came in at 2.63 GB against tar plus zstd's 4.68 GB.Wed, 28 Oct 2026 23:13:51 GMTSoftwarecompressionopen-sourcewebassemblyaistoragehttps://lockergnome.com/camera-management-software-compromise-wpcmon-sideload/https://lockergnome.com/camera-management-software-compromise-wpcmon-sideload/Huntress says attackers used a compromised camera management application as their way into several customer networks in September and October, then loaded their malware through a legitimate Windows parental-controls file placed in the wrong folder.Wed, 28 Oct 2026 23:13:51 GMTSecuritysecuritymalwarecameraswindowsincident-responsehttps://lockergnome.com/discord-discoverable-server-messages-web-search-toggle/https://lockergnome.com/discord-discoverable-server-messages-web-search-toggle/Starting mid-December, public-channel messages from Discord's big Discoverable Servers can show up on Server Web Pages and in web search, and outside six regions every member is opted in unless they flip one switch.Wed, 28 Oct 2026 23:13:51 GMTSecuritydiscordprivacysearchsocialhttps://lockergnome.com/ebay-first-sale-broken-laser-pointer/https://lockergnome.com/ebay-first-sale-broken-laser-pointer/Over Labor Day weekend 1995, the founder of AuctionWeb, the site that became eBay, listed a laser pointer he said didn't work even with new batteries; it opened at $1 and sold for $14.83 to a Canadian named Mark Fraser.Wed, 28 Oct 2026 23:13:51 GMTWeird Techtech-historyebaye-commerceweb-historyhttps://lockergnome.com/executable-archaeology-claude-code-reanimates-simon-1961-heuristic-compiler/https://lockergnome.com/executable-archaeology-claude-code-reanimates-simon-1961-heuristic-compiler/Working from a 94-page line-printer listing found in Simon's archive, the team rebuilt the program on a modern Lisp, matched its published output, and did the same for Richard Waters's 1984 KBEmacs.Wed, 28 Oct 2026 23:13:51 GMTRetroai-historylispsoftware-preservationclaude-codehttps://lockergnome.com/fast-food-tycoon-2-decompiled-ghidra-agent-4046-functions/https://lockergnome.com/fast-food-tycoon-2-decompiled-ghidra-agent-4046-functions/Healey decompiled the 2001 pizza-shop sim, let a GPT-6.1 Sol agent drive the running game, and wrote up how its renderer stamps hidden people before drawing the walls in front of them.Wed, 28 Oct 2026 23:13:51 GMTRetroreverse-engineeringgamesghidraairetrohttps://lockergnome.com/first-photo-on-the-web-was-a-cern-parody-girl-band/https://lockergnome.com/first-photo-on-the-web-was-a-cern-parody-girl-band/In 1992 CERN developer Silvano de Gennaro photographed the parody doo-wop group backstage, and a scan of it ended up on Tim Berners-Lee's web server as a stamp-sized GIF.Wed, 28 Oct 2026 23:13:51 GMTRetroweb-historycerntim-berners-leephotographyinternet-historyhttps://lockergnome.com/gheist-github-actions-base32-secrets-build-logs/https://lockergnome.com/gheist-github-actions-base32-secrets-build-logs/Wiz Research found a campaign that pushed more than 13,500 ci-sync branches from 850-plus compromised accounts, each carrying a workflow that base32-encodes the repository's secrets into its own Actions log, downloads the log and deletes the run.Wed, 28 Oct 2026 23:13:51 GMTSecuritygithubgithub actionsci/cdsecretssupply chainhttps://lockergnome.com/homelable-scans-your-home-lab-and-draws-the-rack-with-patch-cables/https://lockergnome.com/homelable-scans-your-home-lab-and-draws-the-rack-with-patch-cables/Rémy Jardient's MIT-licensed, self-hosted Homelable turns a network scan into a map, a rack canvas, per-device docs and health checks, with an MCP server that lets an AI assistant read and change it.Wed, 28 Oct 2026 23:13:51 GMTInfrastructurehomelabself-hostednetworkingopen-sourcemcphttps://lockergnome.com/mavis-beacon-was-never-real/https://lockergnome.com/mavis-beacon-was-never-real/The typing teacher on the box of one of the bestselling programs ever was a marketing creation; the woman in the photo, Renee L'Esperance, was paid for the photo sessions and got no royalties.Wed, 28 Oct 2026 23:13:51 GMTSoftwaretech-historysoftwaremarketingeducationhttps://lockergnome.com/michael-pick-cuts-bmw-i3-into-small-electric-pickup/https://lockergnome.com/michael-pick-cuts-bmw-i3-into-small-electric-pickup/A YouTuber bought a 2017 BMW i3 with over 100,000 miles sight unseen at an online auction, then rebuilt its back half into a pickup bed with a new rear cab, a 12.3-inch CarPlay screen and a running total of every dollar.Wed, 28 Oct 2026 23:13:51 GMTHacks & Buildsevbmwdiy3d-printingcarshttps://lockergnome.com/moldova-e-governance-chief-resigns-750000-data-breach/https://lockergnome.com/moldova-e-governance-chief-resigns-750000-data-breach/Nicoleta Colomeeț, director of Moldova's Electronic Governance Agency, is leaving after a cyberattack extracted personal data in about 750,000 cases through public services reachable without authentication, and the government suspended 82 digital services.Wed, 28 Oct 2026 23:13:51 GMTSecuritysecuritydata-breachmoldovae-governmentprivacyhttps://lockergnome.com/new-mexico-trauma-center-diverts-ambulances-after-skull-appears-on-staff-screens/https://lockergnome.com/new-mexico-trauma-center-diverts-ambulances-after-skull-appears-on-staff-screens/A cyberattack on the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center on Oct. 26 cancelled clinic appointments statewide and sent students home; a group called BYOD claims 36,000 machines, which nobody has confirmed.Wed, 28 Oct 2026 23:13:51 GMTSecurityransomwarehealthcarecybersecuritynew-mexicohospitalshttps://lockergnome.com/paper-thin-magnet-sticker-makes-robot-hands-crush-or-drop-what-they-hold/https://lockergnome.com/paper-thin-magnet-sticker-makes-robot-hands-crush-or-drop-what-they-hold/Researchers from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Singapore Management University hid a battery-free magnetic tag under a barcode label and spoofed the force readings of magnetic tactile sensors on a robot arm and a humanoid hand.Wed, 28 Oct 2026 23:13:51 GMTSecurityroboticssecurity-researchsensorshumanoid-robotsccs-2026https://lockergnome.com/parley-coding-agent-sessions-irc-channel-breaker/https://lockergnome.com/parley-coding-agent-sessions-irc-channel-breaker/An open-source Go tool runs a local IRC server, pushes every message into each coding agent's own input path, and stops waking them when they chatter without you.Wed, 28 Oct 2026 23:13:51 GMTSoftwareagentsaiircopen-sourceclaude-codehttps://lockergnome.com/ploom-python-thread-bug-finder-replays-failing-schedule/https://lockergnome.com/ploom-python-thread-bug-finder-replays-failing-schedule/A two-day-old Python testing tool from Adil Zouitine turns the thread race your test passes almost every time into a JSON trace you can replay, minimize and fix, borrowing its idea from Rust's Loom.Wed, 28 Oct 2026 23:13:51 GMTSoftwarepythontestingconcurrencyopen-sourcepytesthttps://lockergnome.com/proxmate-lets-friends-run-vms-on-your-proxmox-cluster-without-admin-access/https://lockergnome.com/proxmate-lets-friends-run-vms-on-your-proxmox-cluster-without-admin-access/A self-hoster's open-source portal holds the one Proxmox API token, tags every VM with its owner, and fences each one with firewall rules that only work once you switch on the cluster firewall.Wed, 28 Oct 2026 23:13:51 GMTInfrastructureproxmoxhomelabself-hostedvirtualizationopen-sourcehttps://lockergnome.com/seoul-self-taught-hacker-ai-pentest-agent-8-2-million-records-210-won-ransom/https://lockergnome.com/seoul-self-taught-hacker-ai-pentest-agent-8-2-million-records-210-won-ransom/Seoul police referred a 32-year-old former mock-attack tester to prosecutors for breaching more than 90 organizations; his gang demanded 360 million won from 38 of them and got 300,000 won from one.Wed, 28 Oct 2026 23:13:51 GMTSecuritysecurityairansomwaresouth-koreahttps://lockergnome.com/smashcat-arduino-uno-races-beam-manic-miner-pac-man-two-resistors/https://lockergnome.com/smashcat-arduino-uno-races-beam-manic-miner-pac-man-two-resistors/Scott Porter's composite-video engine for the 8-bit Uno already ran Manic Miner, Scramble and Space Invaders with no framebuffer. Its newest port is a five-minute score-attack Pac-Man with scrolling mazes at a locked 50 fps.Wed, 28 Oct 2026 23:13:51 GMTRetroarduinoretrogamesopen-sourcehardwarehttps://lockergnome.com/space-invaders-speedup-hardware-limit/https://lockergnome.com/space-invaders-speedup-hardware-limit/Fewer aliens meant each one came around sooner, so the march and its four-note thump sped up on their own; Nishikado kept the effect, while also saying he always wanted the game to get harder and regrets what the hardware couldn't do.Wed, 28 Oct 2026 23:13:51 GMTRetrospace-invadersarcadegame-designtech-historyhttps://lockergnome.com/stanford-sun-board-bechtolsheim-sun-sgi-cisco-first-products/https://lockergnome.com/stanford-sun-board-bechtolsheim-sun-sgi-cisco-first-products/At the Vintage Computing Festival Berlin, Michael Engel traced how Andy Bechtolsheim's 1982 Stanford University Network board, licensed out by a university that didn't use it, became the base for first products from Sun, SGI and Cisco.Wed, 28 Oct 2026 23:13:51 GMTRetroretrocomputing-historysun-microsystemsciscostanford68000https://lockergnome.com/survival-llm-offline-930000-wikipedia-articles-9-gb/https://lockergnome.com/survival-llm-offline-930000-wikipedia-articles-9-gb/The free, open-source app runs a local AI model over offline Wikipedia, WikiMed, U.S. military medicine and survival manuals and iFixit guides, and its makers measured about 100 W per answer on a MacBook Pro, roughly 100 to 300 questions per battery.Wed, 28 Oct 2026 23:13:51 GMTSoftwareaiofflinelocal-llmopen-sourcepreparednesshttps://lockergnome.com/tar-minefield-81-archives-20-tar-implementations-disagree/https://lockergnome.com/tar-minefield-81-archives-20-tar-implementations-disagree/A corpus of ambiguous tar archives shows GNU tar, Python, Go, Rust, 7-Zip and the rest disagreeing on what's inside, and proposes a strict default that still opens 99.79% of 82,586 real source tarballs.Wed, 28 Oct 2026 23:13:51 GMTSecuritytarsupply-chainparsersopen-sourcehttps://lockergnome.com/trojan-room-coffee-pot-first-webcam/https://lockergnome.com/trojan-room-coffee-pot-first-webcam/In 1991 researchers at Cambridge's Computer Lab aimed a camera at their shared coffee machine so they could check it from their desks; in 1993 it went on the web, and in 2001 Spiegel Online paid £3,350 for the pot.Wed, 28 Oct 2026 23:13:51 GMTRetrotech-historywebcamcambridgeweb-historyhttps://lockergnome.com/wenlan-living-wiki-refuses-pages-citations-dont-match/https://lockergnome.com/wenlan-living-wiki-refuses-pages-citations-dont-match/The open-source desktop app and CLI has the AI tool you already use draft cited wiki pages from your files and chat history, then refuses a page when most of its citations fail to match what they point at.Wed, 28 Oct 2026 23:13:51 GMTSoftwareainotesopen-sourcelocal-firstobsidianhttps://lockergnome.com/whole-486-pc-motherboard-and-cards-runs-in-one-browser-tab/https://lockergnome.com/whole-486-pc-motherboard-and-cards-runs-in-one-browser-tab/e486-web is a dependency-free JavaScript emulator of an 80486DX2-66 that draws the motherboard and lets you hot-plug ISA and VLB cards while it boots real SeaBIOS and FreeDOS.Wed, 28 Oct 2026 23:13:51 GMTRetroemulationdos486javascriptretro-computinghttps://lockergnome.com/wifi-came-from-black-hole-search/https://lockergnome.com/wifi-came-from-black-hole-search/He never found the black holes Stephen Hawking predicted, but the Fourier transform work behind the search became the 1990s CSIRO fix for radio echoes indoors, patented in the US in 1996 and now in more than five billion devices.Wed, 28 Oct 2026 23:13:51 GMTInfrastructurewifitech-historyradio-astronomycsirohttps://lockergnome.com/wikipedia-ai-cleanup-pangram-20-percent-new-articles-ai/https://lockergnome.com/wikipedia-ai-cleanup-pangram-20-percent-new-articles-ai/WikiProject AI Cleanup, started by editors in December 2023, tracks the phrases and habits chatbots leave behind, and cofounder Ellia Lebleu says detector scans put the share of AI-written new articles at about a fifth in late 2025.Wed, 28 Oct 2026 23:13:51 GMTWeird Techwikipediaai-writingmoderationllmhttps://lockergnome.com/z80-planet-tracker-tranz-330-credit-card-terminal-gps/https://lockergnome.com/z80-planet-tracker-tranz-330-credit-card-terminal-gps/Hobbyist CharlesD rewrote a 1995 Verifone TRANZ 330 point-of-sale terminal in Z80 assembly so it computes a planet's rise, set, azimuth and elevation from GPS time and position and prints the result on its two-colour receipt printer.Wed, 28 Oct 2026 23:13:51 GMTRetroz80retrogpsastronomyhardwarehttps://lockergnome.com/shadow-kindle-jailbreak-mtp-daemon-dummy-folders-rop-chain/https://lockergnome.com/shadow-kindle-jailbreak-mtp-daemon-dummy-folders-rop-chain/A new write-up shows how Kindles that switched to MTP in 2024 can be rooted by talking to the file-transfer daemon alone: leak its address through a file's creation date, then overflow its stack. Amazon patched it in firmware 5.20.1.Wed, 28 Oct 2026 20:14:27 GMTSecuritykindlejailbreakexploitsusbe-readershttps://lockergnome.com/arc-rebar-intel-arc-b580-resizable-bar-2015-supermicro-board/https://lockergnome.com/arc-rebar-intel-arc-b580-resizable-bar-2015-supermicro-board/The card's own PCIe switch parks an 8 MB BAR in the same window as the VRAM, so a boot script makes Linux forget the GPU and find it again with a 16 GB window.Tue, 27 Oct 2026 23:13:41 GMTInfrastructureintel-arclinuxpcieresizable-barhomelabhttps://lockergnome.com/bruce-ediger-million-page-scraper-junkyard-contabo-crawler/https://lockergnome.com/bruce-ediger-million-page-scraper-junkyard-contabo-crawler/Every page in his Scraper Junkyard carries a number that encodes its place in a binary tree, so the order of the requests gave away one central queue behind thousands of rented servers.Tue, 27 Oct 2026 23:13:40 GMTInfrastructureweb-crawlersscrapingbotslogscontabohttps://lockergnome.com/data-cymru-ransomware-test2-account-password1-twelve-years/https://lockergnome.com/data-cymru-ransomware-test2-account-password1-twelve-years/Its IT contractor made the account in January 2012 to test logins before real users moved over, and nobody ever turned it off. Attackers took 42 GB covering about 3,300 people, most of them children.Tue, 27 Oct 2026 23:13:39 GMTSecurityransomwarepasswordsactive-directoryvpnicohttps://lockergnome.com/enkiplate-inkplate-e-ink-japanese-flashcards-kana-kanji/https://lockergnome.com/enkiplate-inkplate-e-ink-japanese-flashcards-kana-kanji/Peter Hraska's open-source companion app schedules the reviews on a Mac and keeps up to 16 cards on the 600-by-600 screen, with the day's weather and next three meetings above each one.Tue, 27 Oct 2026 23:13:38 GMTTools & Geare-paperesp32open sourcelanguage learninghttps://lockergnome.com/esp-watchtower-esp8266-honeypot-fake-telnet-router-camera/https://lockergnome.com/esp-watchtower-esp8266-honeypot-fake-telnet-router-camera/Abhishek Prasad's MIT-licensed firmware logs whoever pokes its decoy ports 23, 8080 and 554, passwords included, and pings Discord, while its own dashboard has no login.Tue, 27 Oct 2026 23:13:37 GMTSecurityesp8266honeypothome networkopen sourcehttps://lockergnome.com/esp32-bluetooth-keyboard-swift-pair-trust/https://lockergnome.com/esp32-bluetooth-keyboard-swift-pair-trust/A hobby ESP32-C5 project that emulates Bluetooth keyboards is a plain reminder that a paired HID device types as you, and that the convenience notification asking to connect one is the whole trust decision.Tue, 27 Oct 2026 23:13:36 GMTSecuritybluetoothwindowssecurityesp32hidhttps://lockergnome.com/glider-4-mac-game-ported-pascal-to-typescript-claude-golden-master/https://lockergnome.com/glider-4-mac-game-ported-pascal-to-typescript-claude-golden-master/The TypeScript port of John Calhoun's paper-airplane game rebuilds enough of the Macintosh Toolbox to run with no ROM, keeps the original's bugs on purpose, and has Calhoun's blessing.Tue, 27 Oct 2026 23:13:35 GMTRetroclassic macgliderclaudetypescriptemulationhttps://lockergnome.com/gmo-onamae-desktop-cloud-hack-forex-brokers-told-block-its-servers/https://lockergnome.com/gmo-onamae-desktop-cloud-hack-forex-brokers-told-block-its-servers/Onamae.com Desktop Cloud rented Windows desktops to people running automated forex bots around the clock. Attackers lifted the broker logins stored on them, and GMO's founder says his own white-hat hackers had flagged the weak spots first.Tue, 27 Oct 2026 23:13:34 GMTSecuritysecurityransomwareforexvpsjapanhttps://lockergnome.com/gottschalk-grande-tarantelle-decoded-from-braille-score-midi/https://lockergnome.com/gottschalk-grande-tarantelle-decoded-from-braille-score-midi/No scan, no optical music recognition: a standard-library Python decoder reads Hu Haipeng's braille transcription note for note, checks every one of 539 bars adds up to 6/8, and layers rubato, pedal and rolled chords on top.Tue, 27 Oct 2026 23:13:33 GMTWeird Techmusicbraillemidipythonopen sourceaccessibilityhttps://lockergnome.com/hack-the-north-1750-esp32-badges-capacitor-inductor/https://lockergnome.com/hack-the-north-1750-esp32-badges-capacitor-inductor/Nick Ficara's build log for Canada's biggest hackathon walks through every mistake between a $5-a-head pitch and 1,750 assembled badges at about $11.60 each, and how attendees then built 120 apps on them.Tue, 27 Oct 2026 23:13:32 GMTHacks & Buildsesp32pcbhardware badgeshackathonsopen sourcehttps://lockergnome.com/kevin-coleman-google-account-phished-attacker-added-passkey-backdoor/https://lockergnome.com/kevin-coleman-google-account-phished-attacker-added-passkey-backdoor/A sites.google.com login page, a 2FA code that 'failed' twice, a fake Apple passkey prompt and a fake Bitwarden modal later, Google emailed him that a new passkey had been added. That email is the only reason he found it.Tue, 27 Oct 2026 23:13:31 GMTSecuritysecurityphishingpasskeysgoogle2fahttps://lockergnome.com/keybytes-risc-v-chip-in-every-key/https://lockergnome.com/keybytes-risc-v-chip-in-every-key/An MIT first-year's open-source keyboard makes every key its own 19.05 mm circuit board with a CH32V003 chip, so you can rearrange the layout like tiles around a Bluetooth STM32WB55 main board.Tue, 27 Oct 2026 23:13:30 GMTTools & Gearkeyboardsrisc-vopen-sourcehardwarediyhttps://lockergnome.com/kitcut-ai-film-studio-used-gaming-pc/https://lockergnome.com/kitcut-ai-film-studio-used-gaming-pc/KitCut's maker wiped a second-hand gaming PC and installed Linux over SSH with no USB stick and no spare machine, then watched a box on the living-room floor out-render the cloud VM it replaced by 4.6x.Tue, 27 Oct 2026 23:13:29 GMTInfrastructureai-videoself-hostinghomelabcloud-costsclaude-codehttps://lockergnome.com/last-commit-ofrenda-browser-qwen-epitaphs-dead-github-repos/https://lockergnome.com/last-commit-ofrenda-browser-qwen-epitaphs-dead-github-repos/Joe Simo's Last Commit turns a quiet GitHub repository into an ofrenda card, and it throws out the local model's epitaph whenever the model invents a number or slips into first person.Tue, 27 Oct 2026 23:13:28 GMTSoftwareopen-sourceaigithubwebgpuhttps://lockergnome.com/nietzschian-debugger-claude-cli-only-asks-questions-never-fixes/https://lockergnome.com/nietzschian-debugger-claude-cli-only-asks-questions-never-fixes/A philosophy graduate turned developer in Lahore built a command-line debugger that only ever answers with a question, with a model-judge checking every reply so it never slips and hands over the fix.Tue, 27 Oct 2026 23:13:27 GMTSoftwareaiclaudedebuggingclipythonopen-sourcehttps://lockergnome.com/oldest-windows-gui-app-runs-on-windows-11-nt-cdplayer-1992/https://lockergnome.com/oldest-windows-gui-app-runs-on-windows-11-nt-cdplayer-1992/Hunting for the oldest unmodified Windows program that still opens on Windows 11, a developer found a CD player linked on 16 November 1992 in an NT 3.1 pre-release, and it works because Windows 11 still ships crtdll.dll.Tue, 27 Oct 2026 23:13:26 GMTRetrowindowswindows-ntbackwards-compatibilitywin32retro-computinghttps://lockergnome.com/shitty-screenshare-obs-ffmpeg-whip-sharp-video-calls/https://lockergnome.com/shitty-screenshare-obs-ffmpeg-whip-sharp-video-calls/A one-page site from Pion's Sean DuBois puts a browser screenshare beside an OBS one and points at WHIP, the open standard that lets OBS and FFmpeg push WebRTC video straight to a service with settings you pick.Tue, 27 Oct 2026 23:13:25 GMTSoftwarewebrtcobsffmpegvideo-callsopen-standardshttps://lockergnome.com/sudo-play-mac-app-spotify-playlist-coding-mood/https://lockergnome.com/sudo-play-mac-app-spotify-playlist-coding-mood/Alberto Arena's open-source Sudo Play gives everyone who picks the same genre and mood the same playlist for the day, and its 1.0.3 update fixes the bug where the app looked alive while its built-in PHP server was dead.Tue, 27 Oct 2026 23:13:24 GMTSoftwaremacosspotifyopen sourcephpnativephp