Quick summary: Author had money "from crypto" and wanted to create a solar power plant in Texas. After dealing with challenging mineral rights and health issues, interconnect fees to the power company were too expensive to make the project worth it.
805 karma · joined May 15, 2017
I found the article hard to follow, but maybe because I was already familiar with the problem and was just skimming. Skip to "Some experiments..." for the actual useful examples.
I disagree with the conclusion, though. I think there should just be more obvious ways to escape the input so one can keep their sanity with nested 'sh -c' invocation. Maybe '${var@Q}' and print '%q' are enough (can't believe I didn't know those existed!)
The way it usually works is that the initial packets are handled in software but once the endpoints are established it flows through hardware. Sometimes certain patterns are always handled in software. The software could be a patched kernel or a XDP style kernel bypass.
Source: worked peripherally on an Intel Puma cable modem router/gateway that used DPDK or something like it. So I'm not 100% sure, but it is an educated guess.
Someone at DEFCON captured the wireless data from a mouse/keyboard dongle. The dongle was connected to a computer that belonged to the organizers, possibly managing the Wall of Sheep. They were able to capture and/or simulate input from/to the dongle.
Nice.
I hope the whole industry pushes to prefer websites-as-apps. So many services have both native apps and websites and one or the other is broken or limited for no good reason other than it's hard to develop two things instead of one.
"Declarative Web Push" is a web browser javascript API to subscribe to events from an HTTP server. It is similar to the "Web Push" API but changed to be better for mobile devices in a few ways.
Both the old Web Push and this new Declarative Web Push APIs use "the same Apple Push Notification service that powers native push on all Apple devices". I don't know if that means an Apple server actually listens for the notification from the HTTP server or if the device itself maintains the connection to the server.
It seems that for iOS this API only works on websites that are pinned to the home screen (i.e. not a notification from a site open in safari as a browser). These pinned websites work more like apps.
Is there something similar like this on Android? Either for pinned apps or from the browser? In other words, is there a reliable and efficient way to get notifications to an android phone without having to sign up for any service?
I never could get the upgrade to work when connected to my phone. I did get it to work connecting my PC to the dongle (which acts as a wifi access point). My PC then loaded the firmware in a desktop browser window as I was connected to Ethernet and the dongle at the same time. I may have had to set some up routes manually.
They absolutely should not get Internet access through the phone. I really hope it doesn't work that way! I searched quite a bit but could not find a definitive answer.
Edit: I read the other replies and it makes sense. The browser on your phone can make a request over wifi and over cellular, so really the browser would do the fetching over the internet, not the device.
Firefox does not support talking to arbitrary USB devices (whereas Chrome has WebUSB to do that). However, Firefox does support talking to U2F security keys over USB.
This project programmed a microcontroller to pretend to be a U2F security key. The goal was to talk to the microcontroller over USB through Firefox.
They use the Javascript Credentials APIs (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Credential_...) and some cleverness to send data to and receive responses from the microcontroller.
Apple devices listen for BLE advertisements of a certain form to indicate a "Find My" network lost device.
The lost device advertisements mainly contain the public key part of a key pair.
The public key does not fit in the in payload of the advertisements, so it is stuffed into the address field. Edit: Only 46 bits of the full 224 bit public key is stored in the address field.
In general anyone can make a "lost device" advertisement as demonstrated by OpenHayStack[1]. The requirement is the address field needs to be fully controllable.
BLE advertisements have a header that indicates what kind of address is present (specified by 3 bits: Public, NRPA, RPA, Random Static). The lost device advertisements are supposed to be "Random Static", but the researchers found that Apple "Find My" listeners ("finders") will accept advertisements for any address type.
They use this fact to generate the private key part of a public key that matches an existing host adapter BLE address. The host adapter BLE address cannot generally be changed unless user has root/superuser privileges. This step is computationally expensive. However, private keys can be precomputed (rainbow tables) because a large chunk of the address is a manufacturer code (OUI).
Although I don't think I agree. Wouldn't a currency shortage be another way to say deflation? If your economy is producing more value than your currency represents, then your currency is more valuable.
I have also heard people say deflationary currencies inevitably lead to a catastrophic spiral where liquidity dries up because no one wants to spend (or loan) today what can be more valuable tomorrow. There's even a page on the Bitcoin wiki about it that has been there since 2010.
Also, a quick google brings me to the "Price revolution" page on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_revolution) where it says: "Generally it is thought that this high inflation was caused by the large influx of gold and silver from the Spanish treasure fleet from the New World; including Mexico, Peru, Bolivia and the rest of the Spanish Empire."
In the end... I don't really know. I appreciate you sharing your thoughts.
You might think about the long game where no more bitcoin is issued and only transaction fees are awarded to the miners. How much energy will bitcoin consume then? There will be an equilibrium somewhere between energy prices and transaction fees.
I'm not even saying we should abolish fiat currency, or that the USD has to be fully backed by a hard asset. Individuals will hold whatever asset/currency/whatever they think will be the best choice for them.
There is also "gigabit pro"/"gigabit x10" where they run fiber to your house. That is $350/month for symmetric 10gbps. Lots of limitations on availability and a big install fee, though. Gotta get the other half on board with that ;-)
I think that is what the commenter meant: "...unless I pay a whole bunch of extra fees or accept a stupidly low monthly data cap"
(edit: I initially thought it was $15/mo for the gateway + no data cap but just checked and it is $25/mo. They are called "Xfinity Gateway" vs "xFi Complete").
If an application framebuffer is full screen and in a compatible pixel format the compositor can do "direct scan out" where the compositor sends the framebuffer directly to the crtc instead of compositing first. I know that wlroots supports that. I'm not sure how much performance it saves to be honest.
And I'll second that most commercial games do go through XWayland, though it depends on what games you like!
I agree Bitcoin is not a productive asset. However, is there an obviously better way to bootstrap a new form of decentralized money?
The author of the article classifies Bitcoin as an "early bird game" which is defined as a zero sum game where early players win at the expense of later players (and for every winner there is a loser). I don't really understand it. Is it possible for a deflationary currency to keep going up in purchasing power forever? I feel like it is. The productivity of our species as a whole is not like a zero sum game (at least not until some absurd physical limits).
There are so many interesting questions about how Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies can work in the future! I am definitely more of a zealot at the moment!