Hacker News Reader

frippertronicson AES-GCM and breaking it on nonce reuse

AES-GCM is also used in the Bluetooth Low Energy protocol, which is commonly used for IoT-purposes. As a result it’s more often than not available as a hardware-accelerated peripheral, saving both time and power. There’s also hardware-RNG available in those cases.

I think one reason nonce-reuse is a problem in IoT is lack of experience and awareness. Up until relatively recently a lot of embedded development was constrained to just offline devices, so cryptography wasn’t really required.

frippertronicson Half-Life 25th Anniversary Update

Play the original!

Black Mesa is a modernised version, so it plays different, more like a modern shooter. The original has aged well compared to many other games from its era.

frippertronicson The Interstellar Style of Sun Ra (2016)

A clip of John Gilmore talking about the intervals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SR0oSpRA_B4

frippertronicson Apple’s anti-union tactics in Atlanta were illegal, US officials say

I don't think it's valid to write off all unions based on anecdotal evidence. For every example of bad unionisation one can probably provide one or more counter-examples of good unionisation (e.g. the Scandinavian countries).

frippertronicson Show HN: Hacking Bluetooth to brew coffee in GitHub actions

I'm surprised the De'Longhi BLE protocol doesn't have _any_ replay attack protection. I get that making coffee isn't a safety-critical operation, but you could do some hilariously annoying denial-of-service on the communal coffee machines.

frippertronicson Ask HN: Alternatives to The Economist?

+1 for Le Monde Diplomatique. They also have localised variations with region-specific articles in addition to the translated main articles. The political orientation is to the left, but IMO it doesn't get in the way of the content.

frippertronicson The great semiconductor drought may be about to break

The latest Electronic Design to Delivery Index (EDDI) report for September (available here [1], but behind a free subscription) indicates this as well, with a general increase in component supply. IC's are still low, but have been increasing since the seemingly largest recent dip in supply in May 2021.

It's going to be interesting to see the report for October to see if the trend is continued.

[1]: https://nexar.com/spectra/eddi