Hacker News Reader

karma_pharmeron The rise of the disposable car

Totaled means the insurance company buys the car from you.

It's not your car anymore, so obviously you don't get to drive it.

karma_pharmeron The rise of the disposable car

oh my god.

what exactly were the rivian engineers thinking?

karma_pharmeron The rise of the disposable car

That's a feature not a bug.

It's selective definancialization, and I love it. Same reason why buying tax foreclosures is such a great bargain: you don't have to compete with bank-financed buyers!

karma_pharmeron Toyota showcases compact engines adaptable to different fuels

Dangerous in automobile accidents.

Most, possibly all states in the US will refuse to register a LNG conversion. Only the vehicles designed for that fuel from the start (like transit busses) are allowed.

karma_pharmeron Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

Oh right that's why there are zero sociopaths at NGOs...

karma_pharmeron Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

Then why does kagi have the same artificially-massive github boost that google does and no other engine (bing, duckduckgo) does?

They're just reselling google searches. With maybe 1% salted in from elsewhere for deniability.

karma_pharmeron Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

... and 99% of the results come from just one of those.

karma_pharmeron Ex-OpenAI board member reveals what led to Sam Altman's brief ousting

I just want to say I love this comment and the way it's written, I wish more news articles had such creative verbiage! But could somebody please translate the following into something my helplessly-uncool brain can grok?

> I’ve been short this nonsense for a decade,

...this nonsense = deep learning? I mean the current research wave is only just barely 10 years old and its financial/investable effects definitely less than 10 years old....

Or is "this nonsense" something else? Can you short Sam Altman the individual? takemymoney.jpeg I will chug that ice-nine kool-aid.

> LeCun woke up the other day and chose violence on X.

maybe just a link?

karma_pharmeron Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

ads eat everything else

Well duh. Because it's the only value you're allowed to collect from retail customers without having to deal with either chargebacks or kyc.

We've deliberately made every other form of micropayment infeasible. It shouldn't be surprising that the only one left is insanely popular.

karma_pharmeron Anonymous Source Shared Leaked Google Search API Documents

Kagi is simply reselling google search results.

karma_pharmeron Surveilling the masses with wi-fi-based positioning systems

> I do not have reason to believe that

This phrase has no place in security research.

karma_pharmeron Surveilling the masses with wi-fi-based positioning systems

> Cleanroom reverse engineering for the purpose of publishing new driver code, to avoid legal/IP minefields, is super-expensive

Project Ortega did it to an entire gigabit ethernet controller for the princely sum of zero dollars:

https://media.ccc.de/v/37c3-11781-adventures_in_reverse_engi...

https://wiki.raptorcs.com/wiki/Project_Ortega

> Binary BL31 contains some unknown code to get HDMI-RX PHY access working.

That doesn't sound like DDR training to me. Maybe now you see the problem?

karma_pharmeron Surveilling the masses with wi-fi-based positioning systems

If it was that easy we'd have a cleanroom FOSS implementation by now. It's been more than two years!

https://wiki.raptorcs.com/wiki/Project_Ortega

karma_pharmeron Surveilling the masses with wi-fi-based positioning systems

an open source implementation of 802.11 for wifi 6 cards

For which baseband chip, specifically?

I mean this would be great, but I have a very hard time believing any baseband vendor gave you enough documentation to achieve that -- especially not without an OSS-prohibitive NDA. Would love to be wrong about that. It happened once, but that was back when Atheros was an independent company -- before they were Qualcommized.

Also, aren't all the wifi 6 baseband firmwares cryptographically signed? Best case it'll be as "open source" as Tivo was.

We've also reported mac leaks to vendors

That's good, but I don't think the whack-a-mole approach inspires much confidence. There have been so many of these problems that at this point we really need to take the car keys away from the drunkard and have the baseband chip and the MAC-bearing eeprom be separate devices which can only communicate via the CPU. Or just have the CPU derive the MAC from the CPU's own serial number. Or maybe just not have hardware MAC addresses at all.

karma_pharmeron Surveilling the masses with wi-fi-based positioning systems

> OSS TF-A at EL3 + closed DDR training (RK3588)

That should be "blob which does stuff, including DDR training, at EL3".

That blob certainly does DDR training. Maybe it does other stuff. But all of it is done at EL3.

> In decreasing order of preference

"Warning! Diagram is not drawn to scale."

karma_pharmeron The Internet Archive is under a DDoS attack

Because the orphanage refuses to use cloudflare.

karma_pharmeron Surveilling the masses with wi-fi-based positioning systems

Yeah but then millennials came along.

karma_pharmeron Surveilling the masses with wi-fi-based positioning systems

Like I said: blobs in EL3, the highest privilege level.

We've been getting these "almost there" announcements quarterly for multiple years at this point.

karma_pharmeron Surveilling the masses with wi-fi-based positioning systems

Rockchip RK3399 and RK3588 SoCs

Just so people don't get confused, there is a huge world of difference between these two chips. They are not in the same category.

Rockchip RK3399 is 100% blobless. You even control the EL3 Trustzone Secure World! This is True Root.

Rockchip RK3588 still needs blobs in EL3, the highest privilege level. We've been hearing rumors for years now about "oh they'll open source it next month for sure" and it.... just. never. happens. Please stop spreading this rumor. Source or GTFO, Rockchip.

karma_pharmeron Surveilling the masses with wi-fi-based positioning systems

Most wifi baseband firmware "helpfully" leaks the true eeprom-written MAC address in places like management frames and beacons:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13839540

As of 2017 the authors of the paper above found MAC leaks in a shocking 96% of all android phones. And the remaining 4% aren't proven to be leak-free -- they simply hadn't noticed any leaks by the time they wrote the paper.

Unless you have fully open-source firmware on your baseband, like ath9k_htc, there's really no way to prevent this leakage. Or even be sure if it's happening.

https://wiki.debian.org/ath9k_htc/open_firmware

With open source baseband firmware you can guarantee that the baseband never even has access to the hardware MAC address. You can even reflash the MAC address eeprom (on every boot if you like!)

karma_pharmeron Priced out of home ownership

... which are also the same ten square yards where all the butt-in-the-air folded-in-half fent zombies hang out.

Sorry but it's true.

karma_pharmeron Is regulated BGP security coming?

Russian and China Telecom constantly claim networks that aren't theirs to begin with.

... and coretx's "nobody wants to peer with an idiot" is clearly not working here. These networks are still being peered with.

Maybe the regulators should start by regulating only international peering.

karma_pharmeron Is regulated BGP security coming?

With cryptography? I doubt it. Not the same thing as RPKI.

karma_pharmeron Is regulated BGP security coming?

And yet SS7 still has no cryptographic security measures.

karma_pharmeron Hurl, the Exceptional Language

i think you mean to to say "has sunk"

karma_pharmeron The accidental tyranny of user interfaces

you want to convert a file to Google Sheets, that likely requires several different microservices working in tandem to handle your request.

Well there's your problem, right there.

karma_pharmeron Goodix Fingerprint Drivers for Linux (Or at Least Debian)

up your... nose, of course.

karma_pharmeron Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

I don't see cellphones as general purpose computers either. For exactly the same reason why I don't see game consoles as general purpose computers: neither one will run arbitrary programs. They only run programs that are blessed by their manufacturer. Both are appliances.

I'm really failing to see the distinction here.

Big tech will simply declare that phones aren't "general purpose computers". There is no reasonable endgame here in which: (a) this is enforced against cellphones and (b) this is not enforced against game consoles and (c) the EU doesn't end up looking completely ridiculous and arbitrary.

I'm betting that they cave on (b). It's the least painful option. The EU is going to have to enforce this against game consoles in order to be taken seriously.

karma_pharmeron Big Tech to EU: "Drop Dead"

What makes you so sure there isn't one already? The FBI's whining?

It's like that scene at the end of Sneakers: "they just don't want to share with the other children..."

karma_pharmeron Microsoft's Emissions Spike 29% as AI Gobbles Up Resources

the ones that actually looked at it and

... noticed that it doesn't even define "indigenous"