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Comment by arjie | Hacker News Reader

I have a Flipper Zero and these guys made a great tool, so I clicked this headline because it said "we need your help". After scrolling two pages I couldn't find what they need my help with, though. I scrolled to the end and couldn't find it there either. If I'm being honest, I like their stuff but not enough to dig through 8 pages of content to find out what helping means.

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This effort seems less of a "Help us by buying our product" and more a plea for contributors as a FOSS effort, they want to do things like this: "Collabora + Flipper: Opening up the RK3576" https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/news-and-events/coll... , and are basically looking for developers and other technology enthusiasts to help them both with the projects themselves, and also try to network (socially) their way into convincing brands and companies to also open up themselves more:

> We're asking the community to help us polish RK3576 support so we can build a truly open platform together. We'd be glad for any kind of contribution, not just code. For example, maybe you can find a way to convince Rockchip to open up that last blob.

Then it seems like they're inviting anyone to participate in the entire development process too, should you be inclined:

> Openness has always been our thing. With Flipper One, we want to go further — not just open-source code, but an open development process. We're publishing our task trackers, internal discussions, half-finished docs, and architectural debates. All the messy stuff companies usually keep behind closed doors.

Seems the post mentions a bunch of stuff people can help with, CTRL+F "help" shows 16 hits even, but I am afraid even this does require actually reading the content. It kind of feels like if you can't be assed to read enough to figure out what they need help with, maybe you don't actually want to help them with even harder and involved stuff than that?

A good Tl;dr; is never a bad thing in a world where everyone is being pulled in different directions for attention. I agree with you for the most part, but after reading the post, it's a mess and could do with a clear summary at the top...hell, even an index of relevant sections and sub-headings.

I feel like especially when someone is asking something from me, they sort of have an obligation to make it clear, early on, what they're actually asking for.

Tangential but related; when I used to work for BigCo, I would get old acquaintances message me on LinkedIn. They would act like they're really interested in my life and I'd interact, and then after a day or two they would ask me for a referral for a job, I'd do it, and then they wouldn't be all that interested in talking to me anymore.

I wouldn't have had a big problem if they had just messaged me and asked for the favor, but I do find it pretty irritating that they're pretending to be my friend just to get a favor. I don't need more friends, I have plenty. Hitting the "refer" button and uploading a resume takes ten seconds of work on my end, but wasting my time with a pretend conversation takes considerably longer.

Nowadays when I ask for a favor from a friend or acquaintance I pretty much immediately ask for it. I might still want to converse with them afterward, but I figure it's better to lay my intentions out on the table immediately so there's no false expectations.

That is the way to do it. And IMO it should extend to all business communication. I hate getting "hey" in my DMs with no other context. Like...."hey? whats up?". Just get to the point, the day is too busy for this.

Yeah, if you're doing something asynchronous, exploit that fact!

When I message someone on Slack, I usually do something like "Hey! I was wondering if you could help me with..."

There's no need to add an extra blocking factor with this.

There's a manifesto for this: https://nohello.net/en/

> to help us polish RK3576 support

Having a few various RPi's (as one does), when they've been out of stock, I've looked into the huge variety of similar SBCs (OrangePi, etc) which can be even faster, with more ports and features for around the same money as an equivalent RPi. Many are powered by various RockChip SoCs, which extend up to desktop replacement-level, but the Linux driver support is usually lacking in some important way.

It's not Linux's fault, it's a small group of volunteers struggling with little manufacturer support or documentation. I don't get why RockChip doesn't budget the money in the business plan to fund full driver support for at least some of their more capable chips. I guess maybe too many of these chips are used in non-OS contexts to be worth it?

I've had the same frustration with rockchip, but if you search the lkml you'll find that they are indeed trying their best: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/?q=rock-chips.com

the biggest issue is that actually contributing to upstream is an *incredibly* difficult and painful process.

Maybe also because they don't release proper specs?

Silicon is a dog eat dog game. You release too much and you get sued for patent infringement by NPEs or competitors copy your designs and run with them. There is basically no upside unless you are running a charity like Raspberry Pi.

Margins are incredibly thin unless you're on the bleeding edge. It's not an easy business. You need to move millions and millions of chips to make a profit, and that means your FAEs are working directly with companies who are actually paying you for chips instead of trying to write perfect documentation for the open source community.

> I don't get why RockChip doesn't budget the money in the business plan to fund full driver support for at least some of their more capable chips. I guess maybe too many of these chips are used in non-OS contexts to be worth it?

They have drivers in most of these cases; at a bare minimum the silicon was tested by the DV teams, and that generally includes running drivers.[0]

The issue is getting drivers upstreamed rather than just languishing in the vendor BSP.

And the answer for why they don't get upstreamed by the vendor is multifaceted. First off, the drivers in the vendor BSP are simply not at a quality level that would be accepted upstream. On top of that, even if they were at the quality needed, practically that coordination with upstream is a decent amount of work. Additionally, their customers don't really even care about upstream in the vast majority of cases, but instead prefer some vendor outdated fork billed to them as "stable".

[0] Apple for instance is rumored to have an internal Linux distro (or at least kernel fork) for DV of their Apple silicon chips to allow the hardware teams and macos teams to work with fewer cross department dependencies.

> First off, the drivers in the vendor BSP are simply not at a quality level that would be accepted upstream.

You're quite right, morally and practically. I can't help but wonder though, if the like of Rockchip or other big faceless chipmakers released whatever inadequate source they had, that it wouldn't somehow end up in a nice upstream high-quality driver.

The source is available [1]. The problem is that it's an unmerged fork of the 6.6 kernel.

[1]: https://github.com/rockchip-linux/kernel

If anyone’s wondering why this replier is so angry, it’s because they spent a lot of time arguing with people further down the comment section over whether this article is too heavily written by AI. (I'd say it is.)

It probably irked them to find the top comment had no mention of AI, but is still getting at the same root problem… the article is 2-3x longer than it could be, with lots of rambling and repetition, so it makes for a frustrating read.

> If anyone’s wondering why this replier is so angry

Angry? I'm guessing it's the last part that made me seem angry, I'm not though, just human, and tired of people who say they want to help yet seemingly reading is too much. A bit of straightforward language seems more effective at communicating this, than dancing around the issue.

And why on earth would I care if the top comment mentions AI? I don't even read HN comments in the "points" order, I read comments in chronological order...

Why the vendetta, did I say something annoying to you in the other thread or what's going on?

They're responding to the same question I had, and others surely had.

Namely, we see a AI DDOS'ing blog entry, 20 pages text, 35 with images, thats a mishmash of specs and requesting help with...Linux kernel coding!? to support their selected SoC? For hardware they're already accepting preorders for?

Then, someone reframing confusion as many people failing to read, which is about the most incurious and thought short-circuiting idea possible, even before it is used in discussion.

This question is only more forward in my mind after noting you're taking things personally. (vendetta?!)

It is worth noting this is the second time in 18 hours HN is dealing with their AI spam.

Yesterday's was a preorder page with multiple "needs verification" and "needs clarification" markers, including in the darn spec sheet. (via ChatGPT's system prompt for non-coding writing tasks)

> as well as why you're taking things personally (vendetta? really?)

Yeah, if you bring up completely unrelated stuff I've said elsewhere in a different context, to bring up where it's off-topic, then how is that anything else than personal, even the assumption about what feelings I'm feeling? Reply to what I said in that thread, if it's so damn important for you that I read what you write.

Fine, I understand the two of you really, really want to discuss if this article is AI or not, and how much of it is AI, and what what other Flipper pages were submitted to HN, but do you really need to discuss that in every sub-thread in this submission, can't that conversation happen where it happened before?

Well said, and handled.

Not at all. Pretending we’re so hyper focused on whether it’s AI that we’re mislabelling good writing as bad. And using abusive language. Marginally better than pretending everyone can’t read, I suppose.

Yeah, agree, ignoring would have been a much better response from my side, now in after-hand. I'm glad I said what I said though, although not sure where the "abusive" language comes from.

Does sorting in chronological order require a special client for HN or is this something available in the web interface? (I can’t find it)

Special client, I'm currently developing my own native, local-first, cross-platform HN client, a tiny little 7MB built-from-scratch beast: https://i.imgur.com/Y87KJwY.png :)

(Happy to accept beta-testers if people are curious, email in profile, available for Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS and Android currently, more coming soon :) )

Funny that I feel this same way around articles published on The New Yorker but have never once seen the same criticism about their articles. Usually it’s praised as great writing in the comment sections wherever it’s discussed. This observation predates AI by quite a while. In this case, I think its repetition is on purpose. I heard of the Flipper One recently and assumed it was a new version of Flipper Zero. I didn’t understand it was different. Even after they asserted it was at first, I didn’t fully grasp it until later in the article where the Layer 0/1 infographic was presented. This is quite simply consumer education around their products. Repetition isn’t always a bad thing, sometimes it helps and sometimes it’s done purposely.

> It kind of feels like if you can't be assed to read enough to figure out what they need help with, maybe you don't actually want to help them with even harder and involved stuff than that?

Or it kind of feels like if a project can’t be ‘assed’ to communicate clearly, that’s an issue.

> ditch binary blobs entirely

I agree there is not much of a clear call to action. As a firmware engineer who has worked with bluetooth amd wifi, this is a key phrase. It’s also a big fantasy. FCC compliance is a big headache, and part of why people buy a given chip is the FCC certification comes with it. For instance, if I throw an ESP32 into a product and use wifi, I don’t need further certification. That can only happen if “there is no way” you can make the radio do what the FCC doesn’t allow. A general stategy for this is for the company to give a binary blob for radio related functions that limits the radio capabilities that you need to link to in your final build.

So that means there is almost zero chance the chip makers will ever publicly move away from binary blobs. At best they might quietly support reverse engineering efforts by open source driver projects.

That said, I would love it if all the chips I worked with had a battle hardened non vendor alternative. One major downside to these binary blobs is that they can be buggy. We were recently able ro rewrite our Bluetooth firmware to use an opensource version which greatly sped up the data throughput since it didn’t have a bug that killed byte transfer. But we don’t use this code lightly. FCC violations are crazy expensive and not something you take lightly.

Would you happen to know where the requirement that "“there is no way” you can make the radio do what the FCC doesn’t allow" comes from? I found an FCC compliance guide [1] but it's very long and not easily searchable as far as I can tell.

If there has to be no way to change the radio's functionality, would that mean that simply using a binary blob wouldn't be enough. Wouldn't device vendors have to sign it as well?

Also, that makes me wonder about the one Wi-Fi chip I know of that does have free firmware: AR9271 [2]. I wonder what makes that situation different. Maybe I'm misunderstanding and there's firmware on a separate chip stored in ROM.

[1] http://www.fcc.gov/documents/compliance-guide [2] https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/AR9271

I'm far from an expert, but from what I understand the FCC cares most about consumer electronics is devices that stomp on the spectrum. And so frequency, antenna power, and signal band matter a lot. So you need to make sure that your antenna is only ever emitting in the band it's allowed, and that the total power never exceeds some amount, where the allowed amount is a function of the area under the curve of bandwidth vs antenna strength.

So when I say "there is no way", what I'm referring to, are the functions that configure drivers don't accept out of bounds values. And functions that ultimately drive the antenna can't drive them hard enough to be in violation. The main reason I know any of this, was that I found a function when working on firmware for the ESP32 on a commercial device, and I thought I could set the power to a level that I thought was too high. Well, that's when I learned what the binary blob that Espressif supplies was for. The guardrails are baked into the API for that blob.

So, does that mean you can't go out of your way to subvert those guardrails? No, but you would be incredibly foolish to knowingly create a device that will get the attention of the FCC. Similarly, there's nothing stopping you from building a circuit that amplifies the signal the device sends to the antenna. But when you're potentially talking about fines per event, and fines per device, it's wise to make sure you play nice.

If the wi-fi chip you're using has free firmware, where none of it is obfuscated, it's very likely that the limitations are baked directly into the chip, such that there is no register combination that would allow it to be out of compliance. Also, I'm not sure that all chips have transitive FCC licensing, so it might be wise to look into that before releasing the device commercially.

And keep in mind, I'm not even talking about creating accidental radios from poorly designed analog circuits, or unshielded high frequency digital circuits. That's a whole other can of worms.

> if I throw an ESP32 into a product and use wifi, I don’t need further certification

Sounds like nonsense to me, at least from past reading of the regulation. These devices are supposed to be type-accepted-- your entire product is supposed to be certified.

Is the FCC really allowing this? (not that I'm complaining, the FCC certification burden is outrageous).

Sorry, I was using imprecise (and possibly incorrect language). There are intentional radiators, and unintentional radiators. Using a given chip/SOC/module can greatly reduce the burden of dealing with the FCC for the purposes of intentional radiators. It's why you see products using Espressif's WROVER module have markings similar to

Contains FCC ID: 2AC7Z-ESP32WROVERE.

Which is kinda on brand right? The Discord community is similarly challenging.

As I read it they are simply out of their depth in terms of what their aspirations are and what they feel they are able to accomplish. The goal of "replacing binary blobs" with open source is a good one, I'm all for it. But my experience is that "binary blob" means "licensed IP, protected by patents and NDAs." So pretty challenging. You have to 1) reverse engineer something that someone has protected (potential DMCA violations), and 2) publish it without getting sued (just generally annoying even if it is an understood risk).

I'd love to see the Flipper one get built, I'd certainly buy one. That the Rockchip folks are unwilling to disclose to them sufficient documentation for them to re implement their binary blobs from scratch is a huge red flag.

If you're trying to convince people to contribute free labor to your for-profit product, you at least need to disclose what kind of MSRP you're shooting for -- why would someone help you build something that ends up being nowhere near a reasonable price point for the use-case that attracted them to it?

It seems quite clear from reading the page: they are crowdsourcing development.

Near the top:

  TL;DR With Flipper One, we're reimagining what a Linux cyberdeck can be — it's a huge 
  project. We're opening up the development process and asking the community for help.

Then later:

  We're asking the community to help us polish RK3576 support so we can build a truly 
  open platform together. We'd be glad for any kind of contribution, not just code. 
  For example, maybe you can find a way to convince Rockchip to open up that last blob.

And:

  Openness has always been our thing. With Flipper One, we want to go further — not 
  just open-source code, but an open development process. We're publishing our task 
  trackers, internal discussions, half-finished docs, and architectural debates. All 
  the messy stuff companies usually keep behind closed doors.

Then later:

  We're also hiring a Developer Portal Manager — someone to act as a proxy between 
  our dev team and the community, help shape the Developer Portal, and engage with 
  contributors. Apply for the Developer Portal & Community Manager role.

Then they go into a lot more of the technical details of the process, with a few specific callouts of places they want help.

  If you're into wireless work — auditing, monitoring, injection, mesh, anything — 
  we invite you to come test it with us: read the Wi-Fi Testing page on the 
  Developer Portal and help us decide whether this chipset is the right call, 
  or whether we should look elsewhere before we lock in the design.

I will say though: a lot of this has the feel of being LLM generated or "polished", which has the effect of making the brain kind of slide off of it. I know their team doesn't consist of native English speakers, so it's common for non-native speakers to use LLMs to try to polish their writing, but I find that the actual result is to make the writing have a just kind of bland personality that makes it harder to follow.

It was recently edited. I assume they saw this feedback

Maybe they wanted to see if any individual efforts piqued the interest of the reader base. In my case, it was FlipCTL that did so. I definitely think a generic library for hardware button interfaces to a menu system not requiring windowing is a great resource for resource-constrained embedded projects, so I'm looking forward to contributing to this.

Same, but the content on the page they linked for it and the design choices made in the hardware don't give me the impression that they are seriously interested in developing this aspect of the project (unless someone shows up who's willing to do all the work for free without pushing back on any of the preconditions they've set in stone with the hardware design, of course!).

It's with developing open software for it - there's a diagram on the page that shows lots of the BSP components are fully functional using the closed source versions and "partially functional" using open source code.

Thank you for reading and extracting that for me.

Edit: and to the sibling commenters as well

  Links
  The Flipper Devices team is small. The project is large. We can't do this without you. Here's how you can get involved:

  Flipper One Developer Portal — the entry point into every sub-project. Browse sub-projects, find tasks tagged help wanted, read the contribution guides, and subscribe to our developer-focused weekly digest.
  X.com/Flipper_RND — project updates and announcements.

Search for the "Developer Portal – let's build together" heading.

for a fan you show little reading patience

Funny enough I came here to say this. I had expected it to be a call to crowd-fund their initiative, but instead it had no clear CTA at all.

Heck, if nothing else, the lack of a clear CTA would be on brand with OSS Marketing.

In a classic Flipper Devices move, they offload once again work to the community. This time, its even the community trying to parse the post to begin with. They're just never there to give "back" and all work is always one direction: towards them. Its bad form to make your own community feel less like "community" and more like "free labor" to exploit.

They literally paid Collabora to do FOSS work?

collabora is a vendor not a community

they've always come across as pretty scummy. I know that saying this makes people go frowny face but I think it's obvious.

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