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seplox

119 karma · joined March 21, 2024

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seplox··on Tiny Basic for Arduino
Interesting that the author doesn't mention Parallax BASIC Stamp [0] when it's a Basic-programmable microcontroller that's been on the market since the 1990s. Regardless, the Arduino Due is 4x the CPU at about the same price. Kinda neat.

While this is fun, I'm not sure why anyone would choose Basic over CircuitPython or MicroPython [1] if they're trying to program a modern micro with a beginner friendly language.

[0] https://www.parallax.com/products/basic-stamp-2-microcontrol...

[1] https://learn.adafruit.com/getting-started-with-raspberry-pi...

seplox··on Meta Ordered to Pay $25B for Deceiving Users on Privacy
https://archive.is/f0IXC
seplox··on What I self-host
I'm puzzled that OP seems stumped on syncing keepass when they're already using syncthing. I've been using keepass+syncthing for years, and I've never had any issues.
seplox··on Geothermal heat map of US hot springs
I think it's funny that the volcanic fumaroles are listed. On one hand, yes, they're certainly active geothermal sites. On the other hand, the page is tailored to hot springs.

Average temp: 250F above ambient. Status: Open for soaking. Note: Please don't soak.

seplox··on No Man's Sky Cosmos
"There's nothing to do" is a straw man. There are about 6 things to do over and over and over and over.
seplox··on No Man's Sky Cosmos
As someone who played it for the very first time just last year, those 10 year old takes ring absolutely true to my experience in the game. It was fun for a little while, but it became repetitive and shallow quickly.

Different strokes, I guess.

seplox··on Check if a file was made with Claude
We've been here before: https://blog.elcomsoft.com/2011/04/nikon-image-authenticatio...
seplox··on Amazon without the knockoffs
Except that Raymond Hill explicitly refuses to accept financial contributions of any sort and directs people to support the list maintainers.
seplox··on Google Chrome Installed a 4GB AI Model on Your PC
I've been using Firefox pretty much exclusively since its first release (I did a year or two on Opera about a decade ago), and I can't remember it failing to render any site at all. I do run across broken sites from time to time, but they always work once I dial back my extreme privacy settings.
seplox··on US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections
According to the ruling, the exposure of your location history is the automatic price of conventional cell-phone usage—which, just as Carpenter noted, is a "pervasive and insistent part of daily life."

If we can't step out of our houses or drive to the doctor without that fact getting placed into a searchable database, then I'd argue that it qualifies as a "pervasive and insistent part of daily life."

seplox··on US Supreme Court rules geofence warrants require constitutional protections
> I don’t think a ruling about private records held by a private entity like google or a phone company naturally extends to surveillance of public places.

Even when the surveillance is being conducted by a private entity? A private entity that's selling access to its private records of the comings and goings of a sizeable chunk of the population to police who are buying specifically because it would be a 4th Amendment violation for them to collect the data themselves?

If it's reasonable for we consumers, who know that cell networks and phone makers are collecting our data, to expect privacy, then it's reasonable to extend that same expectation to operators of ALPR and related techs. There's no opt-out, after all. We can't reject the terms of service.

seplox··on An Interesting Find: STM32 RDP1 Decryptor
> Has Level 2 been cracked?

It's tricky because you have to chain multiple exploits, but yes. You can temporarily downgrade from RDP2 to RDP1 via glitching. At that point, you have to move directly into RDP1 techniques without causing a reset.

The protection levels are set in the RDP register. [listed out of order...] Level 0 = 0xAA, Level 2 = 0xCC, Level 1 = anything else. Flip just a single bit and you get out of RDP2.

Edit:

https://sec-consult.com/blog/detail/secglitcher-part-1-repro...

https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/woot17/woot17...

seplox··on Halt and Catch Fire: TV’s best drama you’ve probably never heard of (2021)
The idea is that specifications are not copyrightable, but implementations are. So, the first team reverse engineers the work and writes a spec for the second team to work from. That way, you guarantee that the second implementation is free of copyrighted code.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean-room_design

seplox··on Orion 1.0
Recently as in the last 8 years when they overhauled it. It really was slow as heck back in 2016, but the e10s effort really, really paid off in terms of performance.

It runs noticeably faster than chrome on my 12 year old laptop. Plus, it isn't riddled with invasive tracking garbage.

seplox··on Redmond, WA, turns off Flock Safety cameras after ICE arrests
Yeah, but. The side-effect of catching criminals and protecting the children is that they also provide a searchable database of everyone's historical travel habits.

It's my opinion that our historical ideas of expectation of privacy when in public spaces are incompatible with the current state of surveillance technology. Sure, everyone should expect that they might be recognized by an acquaintance when out in public, but I don't think it follows that our entire past history should be available at any time in the future.

seplox··on Modern Linux tools
I'd like to read this list, but the color scheme is among the least accessible that I've ever come across. Dark, greyish-blue text with dark, bluish-grey highlighting over a dark grey background. Wow.

If any fledgling designers are here, then take note and add this to your list of examples to avoid.

seplox··on Indefinite Backpack Travel
I think that minimum redundancy is a wiser ethos. There are a couple of places where the weight penalty versus cost of failure makes the decision a no-brainer.

In my case, that means bringing aquatabs to back up my primary water treatment system and a second way to strike my stove. An extra 2 grams for aquatabs versus 4 weeks of greasy diarrhea? Check. Ten grams for a second mini bic or small fire steel versus cold soaking meals that I designed for cooking? Check.

But I do agree with you that bringing less in general frees you to move faster, go farther, and enjoy the journey even more.

seplox··on F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash
No, that's not dumb at all. Inputs are filthy and sensors fail. If you're not comparing all available sensor data to confirm your understanding of reality, then a single sensor failure could... oh I dunno... cause your 737 MAX to divebomb.

The F-35 could compare weight on wheels to airspeed as a simple sanity check.

seplox··on Emailing a one-time code is worse than passwords
It's easy to screenshot or physically print a QR code during setup.
seplox··on Playing with more user-friendly methods for multi-factor authentication
> When I tell people I work on authentication software, I nearly always hear some version of the same story: I hate multifactor authentication. No, really. People hate this stuff.

I hate all of the half-cooked non-TOTP MFA methods that I'm forced to use. Just let me use my freaking authenticator app. If you believe that your users prefer (or maybe it's just you?) more databroker-friendly methods, then fine, but please at least provide TOTP as an option.

seplox··on Tour de France confronts a new threat: Are cyclists using tiny motors?
If I were responsible for a mechanical doping program, then I'd install the motors for the leadout and mountain domestique riders and leave the team leader clean. Who cares if they pay the weight penalty after peeling off if it means that they can provide extra support for those critical minutes?
seplox··on Data brokers are selling flight information to CBP and ICE
I guess you were just distracted by all of the other house-on-fire crap going on.

https://therecord.media/ftc-complaint-against-kochava-unseal...

Among the additional information Kochava collects and sells are non-anonymized individual home addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, gender, age, ethnicity, yearly income, “economic stability,” marital status, education level, political affiliation and “interests and behaviors,” compiling and selling dossiers on individuals marketed as offering a “360-degree perspective,” the FTC said.

...

According to the FTC, Kochava’s data can identify women who visit reproductive clinics by name and address along with, for example, when they visit particular buildings, their names, email and home addresses, number of children, race and app usage.

...

Kochava marketing materials tell customers it offers “rich geo data spanning billions of devices globally” and that its location data feed “delivers raw latitude/longitude data with volumes around 94B+ geo-transactions per month, 125 million monthly active users, and 35 million daily active users, on average observing more than 90 daily transactions per device.”

...

The complaint also alleges that the company has lax procedures for determining who it is selling data to, saying purchasers are allowed to use a generic personal email address, label an alleged company as “self” and explain they plan to use the data for “business.”

And then there's this: https://therecord.media/data-brokers-are-selling-military-se...

seplox··on Mathematician solves algebra's oldest problem using intriguing number sequences
I think the incongruity that the original commenter was pointing out is that Wildberger critiqued radicals by saying that they're imprecise approximations that rely on the problematic concept of infinity.

So setting aside the new method's practical implications, replacing an infinitely accurate approximation with a different infinitely accurate approximation doesn't feel any different.

seplox··on A $20k American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, no screen
I mean... the same should be said for pretty much every vehicle. The F150 maxes out at the bottom of the hubs.
seplox··on Elliptical Python Programming
It's not a python thing. 1-(-2), distribute the negative.
seplox··on Study finds solo music listening boosts social well-being
You just reminded me of one of my favorite Tony Joe White songs, so thanks!

Tony Joe White - Even Trolls Love Rock and Roll https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fJMNJTEhuw

seplox··on Breaking into apartment buildings in five minutes on my phone
> now many people need to consult the manual to figure out how to pop their hood.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but auto manuals haven't included such technical information for close to two decades.

seplox··on With 10 months of support remaining, Windows 10 still dominates
That article was incorrect when written and has since been retracted. The link now takes you to a rewrite that reaffirms Microsoft's commitment to TPM v2 and that reports Microsoft's current position that they reserve the right to break your computer if you install Windows 11 on unsupported hardware.
seplox··on Pi Chess Board
This comes across a little aggressive and braggy. Perhaps a better way to write it would be:

> I much prefer reading something that is imperfect but written by a human to something auto-generated. That feels as if we someone would say "I'm busy, talk to my agent instead."

seplox··on Is My Blue Your Blue?
As someone who rage-quit on the third question, I'm going to say that frustration is a likely experience.
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