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mortalkastor

32 karma · joined September 3, 2012

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/mortalkastor; my proof: https://keybase.io/mortalkastor/sigs/IDITSPwM3fSZnb6Y2QWo8rVmbGI3q6immNurP-i--r4 ]
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mortalkastor··on I-cant-believe-its-not-webusb: Hacking around lack of WebUSB support in Firefox
This is nothing new.

Up until ~5 years ago, hacking U2F to make it pass (smuggle?) arbitrary data was exactly how hardware wallet like those from Ledger and Trezor were communicating with websites and web extensions (like Metamask), for the lack of a better alternative. This is how hardware secured "web3" came to be.

mortalkastor··on macOS Packaging for Ungoogled-Chromium
Because brave has a questionable business model where they, on one hand, block third party ads and trackers, and on the other inject their own ads, tied to their BAT cryptocurrency (the latter part being opt-in IIRC).

They also:

- added their own affiliate codes when visiting some sites [1]

- installed VPNs without consent [2]

which also taints their privacy focused posture.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/8/21283769/brave-browser-aff...

[2] https://www.androidpolice.com/brave-browser-windows-vpn-with...

mortalkastor··on Firefox has surpassed Chrome on Speedometer
I switched to Orion[0] as a test, discovered the awesomeness of superbly integrated, native, tree style tabs, and now I'm stuck with this browser where sites I need for work are half broken. I tried Firefox with Tree Style Tab extension, but it's not nearly as good :(

[0] https://browser.kagi.com

mortalkastor··on Instant flood fill with HTML Canvas
An unsuspected (to me!) place for good kid friendly games, free of ads and in-app purchases or other predatory patterns, is Apple Arcade on iPad.

My 5 y/o is having great fun with the Crayola app and Cooking Mama, and, honestly, between each round, I'm waiting for an ad to pop, a nag screen to pay for stuff or review, a countdown or some other crap we're accustomed to on mobile games and no. Nothing. Just the full game and nothing else. It's a refreshing experience.

mortalkastor··on Ledger Nano X – A Bluetooth-enabled secure device that stores private keys
You can still use the Ledger Nano X via USB, like a Nano S.

If you're not confortable using Bluetooth, you can disable it on the device itself.

mortalkastor··on Ledger Nano X – A Bluetooth-enabled secure device that stores private keys
Absolutely.
mortalkastor··on Ledger Nano X – A Bluetooth-enabled secure device that stores private keys
Disclosure: I'm a dev at Ledger working on the desktop and mobile apps. I'm not in the hardware team nor the security team.

> all the bluetooth, screen and button IO goes through an unsecure processor

On the new device, the screen and buttons are now directly wired to the ST33 secure element

mortalkastor··on The Internet Archive has digitized 25,000 78rpm Gramophone records
The "Bibliothèque nationale de France" (national library of France) did the same kind of thing with hundreds of thousands vinyl records from their archive, including international ones published in France: http://www.bnfcollectionsonore.fr/
mortalkastor··on Google Now vs. Siri vs. Cortana – The Great Knowledge Box Showdown
There's no Android phone, Google Now is running on an iPhone 5(s).
mortalkastor··on BadUSB – On accessories that turn evil [pdf]
> This is how the PS2, I think, was sucessfully rooted/unlocked/made-linux-run-on-it.

This was the PS3, actually.

Technical details here : https://web.archive.org/web/20120829232220/http://ps3wiki.la...

mortalkastor··on DuckDuckGo Direct queries per day (28 day average)
Fortunately, there is a userstyle, aptly named "startpage clean & minimal", for fixing the ugliness.

http://userstyles.org/styles/85728/startpage-clean-minimal

mortalkastor··on Opera will use Blink
I, somehow, missed the news about the new Blink rendering engine and thought this was about Opera supporting the <blink> tag. Phew.
mortalkastor··on Prominent Weibo Users Paid to Bash Apple? Introducing China’s ’820 Party’
The site appears to be down.

I was able to retrieve the content but not the CSS, so I made a mirror with no stylesheet (but with working comments) here : http://jsbin.com/apanuw/1

mortalkastor··on Consumer key/secret for official Twitter clients
On Android, the foss client Twidere let users change the tokens in the options. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mariotaku....

The Chrome app Hotot too. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hotot/cnfkkfleeioo...

mortalkastor··on Startup idea list
I read that as UnlikelyTech.com
mortalkastor··on Journalist goes undercover making the iPhone 5 at Foxconn
I'm appalled by the comments here. The consensus seems to be that the terrible working condition of the people making our favorite gadgets doesn't matter and shouldn't get coverage because you can find even poorer conditions in the same country.

Fucking hippies lamenting over the lot of a few Chinese working 10 h/day in a toxic prison factory while they are not even totally enslaved.

mortalkastor··on Depression lies
Not all medications decrease libido, and depression by itself does. Thus you may actually see an increase with drugs.