Synthead

joined 1 year ago
[–] Synthead@lemmy.world 67 points 11 months ago (4 children)

ChaCha20-Poly1305 and CBC with Encrypt-then-MAC ciphers are vulnerable to a MITM attack.

Saved you a click.

[–] Synthead@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Yeah it's an interesting project, but it looks bad with the printed case and exposed tact switches, and seems to have little functionality.

[–] Synthead@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

Came here to say this. fwupd is so good, it's almost magic, and good vendors will actually support it themselves.

[–] Synthead@lemmy.world -1 points 11 months ago (6 children)

I wouldn't be quick to assume that this means a failing disk. There would probably be more sporadic issues if this were the case.

[–] Synthead@lemmy.world 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (9 children)

Whatever happens on my browser is client side, which is hardware and software I own. I can make what I own do what I want. It's a right.

It's like Google saying that I can't skim a magazine in my home, and that I must read the ads. Google can do what they want server-side, and I'll do what I want client-side.

[–] Synthead@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

Oh you mean battery life?

[–] Synthead@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago (2 children)

What do you mean by "has a great runtime?"

[–] Synthead@lemmy.world 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

YouTube's users when they adhere to the YouTube TOS:

[–] Synthead@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

To be fair, forcing a bunch of software on the machine users own was never a good move, and in my opinion, not a new normal.

[–] Synthead@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It's a shame how obvious they're working their corporate bullying cards simply because of money. Imagine if I created a product called Google and tried to sue Google for it. That would be ridiculous, right? Well, that's what Facebook is doing, just with money.

[–] Synthead@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

in my opinion, Linux has an edge on pretty much everything except for adoption. It's stable, secure, and updated very often. There are a ton of very great libraries for it that make building and running programs very easy. It's great on resource management, and the kernel makes great use of the hardware.

However, most pitfalls in Linux comes from it having less adoption than more popular OSes like Windows or Mac OS. Ultimately, this dampens the "friendliness" of Linux to the masses. If you buy a piece of hardware from the electronics store, there will often be no Linux support. The "mom and dad" folk might enjoy it, but won't know how to install or update things, simply because it's different. Vendors will often deliver shoddy binary blobs for common hardware like wireless cards.

With more adoption comes more pressure for support. We're seeing this with the Steam Deck already: if a game company wants to sell their games on the Deck, then they need to add Linux support, even if that means ensuring that it runs on Wine. I'd love to see this kind of thing for everyday use, i.e. a scanner including Linux software and instructions (and hopefully isn't a nasty "install.run" thing).

If it becomes more common, then friends will help other friends with their computer. "Mom and dad" can look up solutions to problems on the internet, and they'll be able to fix it themselves. Your aunt will buy an iPod and she'll be able to run iTunes in a first-party way. With enough adoption, it will even be weird to run operating systems other than Linux because hardly anyone runs Windows or Mac OS anymore.

I don't think Linux will ever be in the majority, but I see it climbing a bit in the next ten years. Lots of kinks have been worked out, and with the right software, it's even easy-to-use and pretty to look at. We need more devices like the Steam Deck to help pave the way for more adoption! Then after a while, people will use it cause that's what they know.

 

Heya! I thought I'd mention that I've been doing a bunch of development on the optical Timex Datalink watches! I have been carefully sniffing data from the original Timex software with a logic analyzer, and have fully reverse engineered every Datalink protocol, the serial Notebook Adapter, and even the CRT syncing graphics! This means that every Datalink device, including every Timex and Motorola watch, all PDAs, and the funny e-BRAIN talking toy is supported!

For those that aren't familiar, the Timex Datalink is a watch that was introduced in 1994 that is essentially a small PDA on your wrist. The early models (supported by this software) have an optical sensor on the top of the face that receives data via visible light.

The original data transfer method involves drawing patterns of lines on a CRT monitor for the watch to receive with the optical sensor. CRTs use electron beams that draw scan lines one-by-one from top to bottom, then it returns to the top and repeats for the next frame. This means that the electron guns turn on when its drawing a white line, and and turn off when its drawing the black background. This produces flashing light as the graphics are drawn, which is ultimately received by the optical sensor and decoded by the Timex Datalink device.

For laptop users, Timex also offered the Datalink Notebook Adapter. Instead of using a CRT monitor, the Notebook Adapter simply flashed a single LED light. This adapter is fully supported by the Timex Datalink software, and sends the same data as a CRT.

However, Notebook Adapters are rare and expensive now, so I reverse-engineered one! Here's my timex_datalink_client Ruby library communicating with my DIY Datalink Notebook Adapter to emit data to a Timex Datalink watch!

And if you want to try the reverse-engineered CRT graphics, I got you covered! I reverse-engineered that, too!

As a fun tidbit, these watches are flight certified by NASA and is one of four watches qualified by NASA for space travel! Here's a shot of James H. Newman wearing a Datalink watch on the Space Shuttle for STS-88!

Here is my Ruby library with all options for all watches reverse-engineered into a tidy model-based syntax!

Here is a Notebook Adapter emulator that is fully compatible with all Timex software on old and new machines, and also works with my library too!

And if you have an anchor that happens to contain an electron beam and wanna try it, here's my library for drawing graphics to a CRT to transfer data!

This has all been done over months of careful effort with lots of VMs, Pentium machines, Windows 98SE, logic analyzers, and solving data puzzles little by little. On July 4th, 2023, I'm proud to announce that I have reverse-engineered every Datalink device with 100% feature compatibility! This is definitely a passion project by all means, and I thought I'd pop in and share this passion with y'all!

Enjoy!

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