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ValdikSS

1,446 karma · joined December 29, 2014

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ValdikSS··on The case of the 9 bit AES key
MuPDF is a more recent development from Ghostscript authors, and the latter has been in the development since 1988 (eighty eight).

Up until 2022, they had PDF interpreter written in Postscript, the current version is in C.

If you have a hammer, everything seems like a nail I guess.

ValdikSS··on The case of the 9 bit AES key
It's mind-blowing complex.

It's basically a browser, but a PDF instead of HTML. It even has JavaScript support.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49619715

ValdikSS··on I guess I'm using WebP now?
I haven't seen missing support of WebP in software I'm using, and also asked people of the software they're using to test it and check for WebP support some months ago.

I was curious because I use WebP pretty extensively for many years, and haven't seen any issues with it.

I don't consider web services to be a software. It's no news that many services don't support wide variety of formats, it's their decision. Missing WebP support is a minor inconvenience compared to other missing features of web services.

The article is about self-hosted website as far as I understand, so it doesn't matter what the external services support or not.

ValdikSS··on The Art of Dithering and Retro Shading for the Web
"Modern Digital Halftoning, Second Edition" by Daniel L. Lau, Gonzalo R. Arce if anyone looking for a whole book of halftoning and dithering.
ValdikSS··on I guess I'm using WebP now?
>Go try adding a webp image to a Google doc and then reconsider your position.

Lacking support for WebP or for other common media is a flaw of a specific service.

Many websites accept videos only in mp4 + h264 + aac audio for some reason, while there are many other video formats and codecs which could be used on the web and in general. That doesn't mean the other formats or codecs are worse or annoying.

ValdikSS··on I guess I'm using WebP now?
Windows 10 support is out of the box, I explicitly checked that in one of "I hate WebP" argument

>I've opened both .webp and .avif on Windows 10 22H2 in Standard MS "Photos", "MS Paint", "Paint 3D" applications before posting the previous message.

>Just tested in older Windows 10 21H2, and yes, in this version Paint doens't open webp

ValdikSS··on I guess I'm using WebP now?
It has transparency support, unlike JPEG.
ValdikSS··on I guess I'm using WebP now?
>I don't actually have this problem personally - all my apps seem to handle it fine

I heard this argument against WebP about 3 times, each time I asked people what software exactly do they use that doesn't support WebP, they told me, I checked the support (downloaded the software and opened/edited WebP file), and it did support WebP.

I deemed this "I hate WebP" just a comment bait argument in social networks.

ValdikSS··on I guess I'm using WebP now?
WebP have been in use for many years. It's good for still pictures, but its animation capabilities are very limited, because it's based on a much simplified subset of VP8 video codec.

AVIF on the contrary has great animation support. It's essentially a AV1 video without sound, but with all the benefits of <img> browser tag.

https://files.catbox.moe/blnad2.avif (334 KB, 35 seconds, 352×352 18 fps)

ValdikSS··on I guess I'm using WebP now?
And only some software. All my Linux software supports it and have been for ages.
ValdikSS··on Ask HN: Do you want a router that has DD-WRT pre-installed?
DD-wrt is not a free software, and they sell licenses on their website. Does its license allows redistribution and/or selling the routers?
ValdikSS··on Digital Audio on the ZX Spectrum's 1-Bit Beeper
This reminded me of a recent very detailed video on polyphony implementation on 8052

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49895486

There's also a phone with YM2149

ValdikSS··on Vintage Russian CallerID phones, 1-bit DSP and polyphony on 8052 [eng sub] [video]
Very detailed video on Russian phones with built-in CallerID systems, which usually had features far beyond number identification (metronome, guitar tuner, alarm clock, music composer, voice changing).

The video is interesting not only from the historical, but also from technological and programming point of view.

https://youtu.be/DvfgnR6mVDI?si=VDRPSzXKnSA1bZQQ&t=1402 (23:21) — "Rus-28 Sonata" music on a Spectrum's YM2149 chip

https://youtu.be/DvfgnR6mVDI?si=W1IQGhcyxUnyn8lK&t=1574 (26:14) — HQ polyphony using 8-bit output of Intel 8052 clone.

https://youtu.be/DvfgnR6mVDI?si=X8uRz3geBbcxWj0-&t=3050 (50:50 - 01:00:17) — how this polyphony was implemented

https://youtu.be/DvfgnR6mVDI?si=0hrcI-P75zHXQt98&t=2775 (46:15) — poor man's FFT on 1-bit ADC using comparator, for number identification and guitar tuning

As one of the comments says, "Once upon a time, the Rus'-based CallerID phone was the only form of entertainment at home..."

ValdikSS··on The newest ESP32 can run Linux and it's getting close to a Raspberry Pi
Wow, I haven't heard about BK7258.

What BES chip are you referring to?

ValdikSS··on The "Windows XP Box" (2003)
Here's a fascinating read about SHA implementation of Via Padlock: https://web.archive.org/web/20260123071403/http://www.logix....

Padlock hash engine can only hash the whole data, not a block of data (not init + update + update + ... + final), so the OpenSSL developer hacked up the MMU to prevent the CPU from accessing next regions and terminate the processing, emulating update() call :)

ValdikSS··on The "Windows XP Box" (2003)
>but not as crippling problems

:)

I was reusing about 40 kg of Via Eden Esther 3 years ago, and they hang under certain conditions when the software uses SSE2 instructions.

Had to rebuild the kernel and all the software in 'pentium4' mode, to make it work without SSE2.

I had this issue on my VIA Nano U2250 server in online.net as well back in 2013 :)

ValdikSS··on The newest ESP32 can run Linux and it's getting close to a Raspberry Pi
Full operating system with all the compatibility and device drivers. Ease of development: you program on Linux, testing on desktop Linux, and then run on a small Linux. Need additional software? Just compile and use it, without porting or adaptation/integration. I've described everything above, don't know what could I add.

ESP32-S31 is no longer an MCU anymore if it has an MMU I guess. It's a full-blown "computer chip".

ValdikSS··on The newest ESP32 can run Linux and it's getting close to a Raspberry Pi
Of course people will, I'm looking forward to!

>There's also limited support for 32-bit RISC-V in distros so anyone looking to run Linux on this will need to build everything themselves.

For this kind of a device, "everything" is a kernel + your application/libraries + maybe busybox/toybox with some applets, all with XIP.

>Easier to just get a cheap ARM SoC that can probably run Android

It's at least twice as expensive for the features S31 provides. See my other messages here.

ValdikSS··on The newest ESP32 can run Linux and it's getting close to a Raspberry Pi
It's 802.11ax, it's much better than 802.11n.
ValdikSS··on The newest ESP32 can run Linux and it's getting close to a Raspberry Pi
The benefit of running Linux on a what used to be an MCU is that you're getting the best network stack, Bluetooth/Wi-Fi stack, one of the best device drivers (say for USB Host), stock and very well tested software, etc.

For your use case, you need raw performance and low-level control, and you have it. But for IoT device which is all about network more or less, there's usually no need to go low-level.

ESP32 for Wi-Fi handling uses wpa_supplicant port from Linux for example.

You can run a real, multi-user Linux with as low RAM as 8 MB. You get the benefit of running any Linux-supported programming languages (and combine any amount of them without extra effort, just on a real machine), established portable abstractions, established memory protection model, ease of debugging.

You can run both though. Both FreeRTOS and Linux simultaneously, where Linux is a FreeRTOS task on a dedicated core. That's how several Linux ports work, haven't checked if Espressif's works this way as well.

ValdikSS··on The newest ESP32 can run Linux and it's getting close to a Raspberry Pi
I don't know what's the final retail/bulk price of S31 and its modules will be, but S3 module with 16 MB NOR Flash and 8 MB PSRAM costs $3.5 for 500+ pcs, and the final PCB BOM cost is $4 or so.

According to Espressif website, current "reference price" for S31 sample module (1 piece) with 16MB flash + 16MB RAM is $6.2.

If S31 won't be much more expensive than S3 in bulk, it has a chance to become a very successful and what's more importantly really cheap full-featured Linux platform, in a small form factor, with flash, RAM, and radios integrated.

Espressif here could easily kill many contenders. You can count Wi-Fi-integrated Linux SoCs on one hand, let alone with RAM+Flash integrated, let alone cheap and available in quantities, and with reasonable soft and tech support.

Oh, and ESP module quite literally doesn't need anything more than a 3.3V power and maybe 2 capacitors to work.

ValdikSS··on The newest ESP32 can run Linux and it's getting close to a Raspberry Pi
Too bad Linux has removed Execute-in-place (XIP) support for RISC-V since 7.1. It allows to run the kernel (and applications) from NOR flash directly, without copying it into RAM first. Somebody should reintroduce it.

Espressif's port use 6.18 due to this exact reason. There's also another port, using 7.1, not sure if it supports XIP.

https://www.phoronix.com/news/RISC-V-XIP-Being-Removed

XIP is almost essential for these low-RAM devices. You can run Linux with 8 MB RAM with reasonable functionality.

ValdikSS··on PDF Forgeries Are Surprisingly Rare (2022)
There's entire industry to detect PDF forgeries. They analyze how exactly each software acts upon editing the file and detect these features.

Some software rewrap the page into say additional XObject, some add unique elements, some change one IDs but not the others.

I had a great blog post about it but can't find it right now. Will post if find the link.

ValdikSS··on Warez: The Infrastructure and Aesthetics of Piracy (2021)
There used to be a large site called keygenmusic.org, but it's closed now. There's a dump of all of its tracks on web archive: https://archive.org/details/key-gen-music-music-pack-2020-03...
ValdikSS··on Jabber/XMPP: How Do We Gain Traction?
I use XMPP almost exclusively for the last 10 years and don't see any major issues, not with the protocol, not with the clients. Everything is pretty reliable and works fine.
ValdikSS··on Jabber/XMPP: How Do We Gain Traction?
>What for?

To prevent head-of-line blocking.

ValdikSS··on Jabber/XMPP: How Do We Gain Traction?
XMPP was not designed for human chat only, and XMPP foundation promotes it as an IoT communication protocol, like MQTT. Thanks to Daniel, the author of this post, we now have communication profiles which the IM-oriented servers and clients follow.
ValdikSS··on Iranian banks' SSL certificates are being revoked due to OFAC sanctions
The same applies to Russian banks. Russian banks have switched to internal Ministry of Digital Development CA which is not trusted in common browsers.

https://crt.sh/?id=22899279066 (Revoked: privilegeWithdrawn)

ValdikSS··on Jabber/XMPP: How Do We Gain Traction?
>Firstly, an out-of-band upload is ridiculous

It is a bit, true, but the alternatives are worse. XEP-0231 (Bits of Binary) Base64-encoded data inside the text message is more ridiculous idea. Direct P2P connections, which were widely used before HTTP upload, are mostly not working in our day.

>it doesn't support upload resumption in case the network is bad.

There's a draft for HTTP for it: https://httpwg.org/http-extensions/draft-ietf-httpbis-resuma...

ValdikSS··on Jabber/XMPP: How Do We Gain Traction?
XMPP also supports push notifications using Android and iOS infrastructure. But it also works with persistent connections, and the client notifies server when the app is not in foreground, for server to push only important data (such as direct message) to conserve battery.
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