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djfergus

672 karma · joined March 14, 2012

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djfergus··on Meta VR Glasses
Very disappointing FOV specs for PCVR simulation fans (70 degrees: a downgrade from Quest 3). Looks like nice hardware though.
djfergus··on New stealth model: Union Alpha
https://developers.cloudflare.com/ai/models/stealth/union-al...
djfergus··on Show HN: Hacking a $20 4G wireless hotspot into a texting device
Postmarketos works well on those and they have lots of info and links. [1]

My biggest tip is to carefully back up every partition of the original firmware - there are many many seemingly identical variants and if you hose your particular baseband components you will lose your cellular functionality.

[1] https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Zhihe_series_LTE_dongles_...

djfergus··on The "omarchy" stuff is getting weird and weirder
The essay takes the anti-Omarchy arguments and pushes them to deliberately absurd conclusions:

>> “You don't want fascists benefiting from your code?”

> Then don't publish source.

> Background-check every user.

> Maintain a centralized approved-user registry.

> Monitor people's browsing.

> Use AI to detect unacceptable politics.

> Abolish encryption.

Seems like someone trying a reductio ad absurdum.

djfergus··on Apple's Dimensional Drawings
Curious why the Macbook Neo is the only Macbook included?
djfergus··on My iPad replaced my MacBook on the go
I always appreciate people trying this but its never made much sense. An M5 13" ipad pro plus magic keyboard costs and weighs more than a laptop which would have fewer ergonomic and OS compromises.
djfergus··on DHH's Omarchy Considering Replacing Arch/AUR with Nix
Interesting update:

https://x.com/dhh/status/2097623347802587393?s=20

https://xcancel.com/dhh/status/2097623347802587393?s=20

DHH: "To that effect, I've also removed the plans/nix.md file from the current quattro branch. We're having some amazing discussions with nix experts about what the future can look like. But that's for Cinque (if at all). Right now we're ALL IN on shipping Omarchy Quattro RS 4.5 next!"

djfergus··on iPhone Duo
Contrary to earlier rumours the Iphone Duo will support magsafe:

https://www.apple.com/iphone/compare/

djfergus··on iPhone Duo
Will be interesting to see what these look like in an Apple Store after a few months of people handling them. Seeing the creases and crunchy-feeling hinges on well-used Samsung Fold display models has always been enough to put me off wanting one.
djfergus··on iPhone Duo
I hope the tri—fold format catches on (Huawei mate xt 1&2, Samsung z trifold).

If I’m going to carry around an insanely fragile and expensive device I want to maximise screen area and aspect ratio.

djfergus··on Asahi Linux on M3
Have you tried very recently? I have a 2018 Macbook Pro with touchbar and the progress on getting T2 macs working lately has been amazing - 3 months ago I was having issues but I reinstalled last week with a 7 kernel and it has been flawless: suspend, restore, touchbar, fan control all great.
djfergus··on Omarchy: 1Password and 37signals become Distinguished Corporate Patrons
I'm not sure if this is joking/sarcastic.

They are fully funding the author of Hyprland for 3 years.

DDH offered to work with Arch and they refused.

djfergus··on Tether: iMessage, SMS, etc. on Linux
I installed this and spent a reasonable amount of time trying to get it to work. It didn't.

* GTK interface is buggy on hyprland (could only click buttons when app was on its own screen and not set to fullscreen)

* docs are vibe slop and incorrect:

~ tether pair

[2026-08-30 11:33:26.084] [ERR] Unknown action. Run tether --help for options

~ tether --pair

[2026-08-30 11:33:29.949] [ERR] Pairing requires a TCP+TLS connection. Use --host to specify a target.

* installation requires sudo escalation to configure bluetooth settings with a vague warning but no real explanation of what the risks are.

* couldn't get it to reliably connect - the feedback from linux and ios apps were vague and didn't help with what was broken or what was required to fix it.

Promising project, I'd love a solution like this but not worth my time for now.

djfergus··on Asahi Linux Progress Report: Linux 7.2
Fantastic to see the progress and a fascinating detailed write-up.

You have to appreciate the effort Apple puts into security - goes some way to understanding why they won't endorse/support installing an alternative operating system.

djfergus··on Open-source interactive map for the Aug 12 total solar eclipse
In the Dwarkesh podcast about relativity they talked about one of the ways to prove einsteins theory was to observe a total eclipse - stars that should not be visible were predicted to bend their light rays and be able to be seen. Explorers launched grand expeditions in the early 1900s to be the first to witness and prove the phenomenon.

Made me yearn for a more heroic time.

They kept being thwarted by weather, clouds etc and eventually scientists worked out the theory could be easily proven by the red shift of stars by direct observation.

djfergus··on Can Intel finally beat ARM on performance per Watt?
>> what does this cost for dell to include?

1) a few cents of components

2) the opportunity cost of selling you a high margin dongle

3) minus the risk of a lost sale if you buy a competitor

djfergus··on I'm switching my phone from Android to Linux
Thank you (and the GP post) for the insight.

I wonder if further developing microg or similar would be a better use of resources than Postmarket, Ubuntu touch etc? Would that be a faster path to wider adoption and therefore better chance of challenging the Android/iOS duopoly?

djfergus··on Investors are having doubts about Elon Musk's grandiose ambitions
https://archive.is/XeR68
djfergus··on The session you cannot take with you
“A classic pattern in technology economics, identified by Joel Spolsky, is layers of the stack attempting to become monopolies while turning other layers into perfectly-competitive markets which are commoditized, in order to harvest most of the consumer surplus; discussion and examples”
djfergus··on GhostLock, a stack-UAF that has existed in all Linux distributions for 15 years
Also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48826404
djfergus··on Harman and Dr. Sean Olive are reshaping headphone sound (2025)
The subject of the article (Dr Sean Olive) has been doing research into actual perceivable differences in audio reproduction - he wrote the book on ideal curves for headphones based on blind tests by trained and untrained listeners. I read his blog religiously decades ago - he really cut through the audiophile snake oil.
djfergus··on We won $92,337 bug bounty using a single kernel 0-day
Wow. A universal, unprivileged local kernel stack use-after-free enabling ~97%-reliable privilege escalation and container escape via a constrained write primitive, control-flow hijack, and ROP

* Introduced in Linux 2.6.39 in 2011

* patched in 7.1 (April 2026)

djfergus··on Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads
"By the end of 2026, we expect CXMT to reach roughly 350 kwspm, which is only modestly below Micron’s estimated ~385 kwspm. This would position CXMT close to becoming the industry’s third-largest memory supplier"

https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/chinas-cxmt-is-set-to-...

At current margins their capacity is going to commodity DRAM since their HBM process is not competitive. Will be interesting to see how it pans out

djfergus··on China's CXMT Is Set to Challenge DRAM Incumbents
Its rational for CXMT to not chase HBM right now, because commodity DRAM currently carries higher margins than its immature HBM process. Curious to see how this influences the consumer RAM shortage medium term (2027).
djfergus··on Usbliter8: an A12/A13 SecureROM Exploit
Sounds like it’s a low level hardware/firmware hole that can’t be patched.
djfergus··on A low-carbon computing platform from your retired phones
The lack of open, replaceable software is the main blocker. The article talks about only keeping the motherboard anyway.

End users don’t need to replace screens, ports and batteries if there is reasonable cost parts and skilled labour available.

I’m happy with a trade off where a device has extreme miniaturisation and water resistance but needs someone with some surface mount soldering skill and the right tools to work on it.

Regardless, many (most?) phones hardware will last longer than the software running on it.

djfergus··on A low-carbon computing platform from your retired phones
Exactly this. Few phones allow bootloader unlock let alone open drivers that can be brought forward to a mainline kernel.

The article seems to refer to a 2023 Pixel Fold as one of their candidates - I guess a good opportunity if those fragile screens get damaged but not a cheap used device otherwise.

Even normal slab pixel devices have limited support for true android replacements like PostmarketOS let alone cheaper 3rd party devices usually running Mediatek/Exnos SOC that have zero open docs or support.

djfergus··on Google Chrome is killing all uBlock Origin bypasses, Edge, Opera to follow
On lower end cpus (N100) chromium/brave benchmarks 10-20% faster than Firefox.
djfergus··on If Claude Fable stops helping you, you'll never know
We need a benchmark that tests a models ability to do LLM research.
djfergus··on Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers
I feel like your analysis is correct and it’s overvalued but employees and insiders have already been selling shares (eg on platforms like Forge) for around the $130-135 IPO price. So there are buyers, question is if there is enough to consume the liquidity of a $75B IPO.
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