kogepathic

There is, or I should say, was a way to do this: adb backup

Unfortunately, for "security" reasons, nearly every app developer (Google included) opts out of it in the app manifest, completely nerfing the feature. [1]

We live in a truly terrible timeline where the infrastructure to do what the author describes exists and has been there for years, and yet has been made functionally useless by user-hostile policy choices.

Google's incentives are also opposed to allowing users to take an offline backup of their apps and app data, because now they're able to sell more cloud storage for your data.

[1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/74387730/back-up-android...

Which you cannot even buy anymore, because they discontinued it after 9 months (10/2022-07/2023) [1]

Microsoft's commitment to Windows on ARM (WoA) is a joke.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Dev_Kit_2023

FCC ID: https://fccid.io/2AYCHPODB000-07-206

Did a PM or sales engineer from your org ever sit down with the customer to figure out what they were doing with root access that your solution lacked?

My naive read here is that the customer saw it as easier to keep root access because your product didn't expose what they wanted or did it in a cumbersome way.

Yes, Chromebooks run coreboot and almost every model has a community coreboot build with a SeaBIOS/EDK (UEFI) payload available. [1]

When you flash that, you lose the ability to boot ChromeOS, but you can install a standard Linux distro on them.

IMHO, Chromebooks are awesome machines. With ChromeOS they have one of the most secure boot chain/data models of anything currently shipping. Unlocked bootloader, vboot by default, all user data is encrypted, and power washing is trivial. Amazing battery life. Also, they're cheap, and guaranteed to run coreboot with a bootloader that can always be unlocked by the user.

[1] https://mrchromebox.tech/

Somehow the residents of Oulu find a way to cycle in winter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU

> If you don't move, you're frozen.

Good thing cycling and walking involve moving.

True, but almost no one does this (Google/Chromebooks being an exception).

It would be a hugely positive step if manufacturers were required to ship/escrow/provide an unlocked bootloader to sell their products.

Unfortunately, that isn't the case today and it's only through goodwill that this is possible.

I develop for embedded devices and I don't see this working as intended.

Embedded devices often have secure boot efuses burned during manufacturing. There's no way to reverse that later or install your own cert.

Datasheets and SDKs for the chips are behind expensive support contracts and onerous NDAs.

Industry and middleware vendors are absolutely opposed to giving away anything, even though many of them fork existing FOSS projects for their SDKs.

We already have mechanisms to obtain source code, and yet there's no effective enforcement mechanism for companies that ignore GPL requests.

I agree that more needs to be done to prevent planned obsolescence, but I do not believe lawmakers have the technical knowledge to write anything effective.

This has been Twitter's Modus operandi from well before Musk acquired them.

They announced new features through Tweets (remember Fleets?) with glaring issues at launch (no authentication required to view a Fleet) and without any corresponding API documentation. The GraphQL that backs their website has more features and bug fixes than their paid API!

They also famously do not have a staging environment, which frequently caused issues when new features were deployed or tested with a subset of users.

Twitter has never been a trustworthy or reliable partner. They are just more of an obvious dumpster fire since the Musk acquisition.

Thanks for this, it goes a long way toward explaining how Cisco has a software list and a written offer for GPL for their products, and Meraki has an unpublished email address (open-source@meraki.com) that they ignore for months on end.

I often wondered how Cisco, who was famously sued for GPL non-compliance after the Linksys acquisition, could repeat that blunder with Meraki.

You say this, but money is also part of respect. Many employers do not index raises to inflation, so you're literally working for less each year you stay with that employer. Yes, you absolutely need to treat employees like humans and not numbers, but compensation is part of the respect you show employees. Ignore it at your peril.

> It works well, if you want transient, highly-capable people that will not stick around, and will not be there, when the fecal matter hits the air circulation device.

Anecdotally, the most capable people I have worked with are there to solve problems, and if they run into a problem that can't be solved (mostly because of organisation politics/culture) then they recognise the futility of trying and move on.

Not being there when the excrement hits the fan is just a byproduct of not sticking around in a dysfunctional environment.

This hasn't been my experience. macOS still incessantly bothers you about OS updates even if you decline signing into an Apple account during first-boot, and you can download major release updaters independently from the Mac Store (e.g. using the script from OSX-KVM).

[1] https://github.com/kholia/OSX-KVM

According to GSMArena, the Zenfone 8 did not have an SD slot either. [1]

Which is too bad, if Asus offered expandable storage on the Zenfone it would be the ideal phone for me.

[1] https://www.gsmarena.com/asus_zenfone_8-10893.php

It's quite astonishing by any reasonable standard, but this is Rogers we're talking about, so pretty much par for the course.

Not that great a deal when Zen3 based notebooks (5400/5600/5800U) have been out for over a year already.

It is baffling to me why AMD chose to have the odd-numbered 5000 series (5300/5500/5700) with Zen2, and the even-numbered 5000 with Zen3.

As someone who has used Duolingo for multiple languages (German, French, Swedish) for about a decade (2012-2020) I am here to say that Babbel is vastly superior to Duolingo in terms of quality.

Duolingo is just rote memorization of their vocabulary. Despite investing years into "studying" the above languages in Duolingo, I didn't feel I was actually useful in these languages (I studied before relocating to the respective countries).

Babbel on the other hand, is very much like a digital version of the language textbooks you will find everywhere for levels A1/A2/B1/B2. The Babbel lessons involve listening comprehension, speaking (though their voice recognition is... poor), reading, writing, and they make a huge effort to teach you conjugation and grammar rules. There are also no ads or annoying animations.

Babbel does cost money, but it's far less than Duolingo's paid tier, and I personally find Babbel much more effective at actually teaching me the language as opposed to Duolingo having me memorize random vocabulary.

Babbel allows you to set learning goals (though max target is 9 per week) and daily reminders, but they don't have streaks nor do they get up in your face about it.

I will never go back to Duolingo after having used Babbel.

Have you got any grid-scale "green hydrogen" projects with a higher energy efficiency than existing grid-scale renewable energy projects (solar, wind)? Because unless you do, "green hydrogen" is dead on arrival in any market.

> can we stop shilling for green electricity?

No, because we already know how to make grid-scale low-carbon energy.

Show me grid-scale "green hydrogen" and I'll retract my criticism.

So, let's oversimplify and say that a typical household microwave consumes 1200W continuously. That's about 4.8kWh over 4 hours.

Given current Lithium battery energy densities (18650: 200Wh/kg) then you'd need 24kg of lithium batteries to supply the same amount of energy.

The cartridge Toyota has developed manages to do this for 5.5kg. Not bad, but not a paradigm shift, considering you have to build a logistics network to refill the cartridges.

> In its press release, Toyota acknowledges that most hydrogen is made from fossil fuels and so not exactly green. But it thinks that it'll be generated with low carbon emissions in the future, and that the cartridges could help with some of the infrastructure issues.

If we could all stop shilling for "Green Hydrogen" that would be great. Batteries can be charged today from low-carbon sources, and the electric grid is already present in most places you'd drive an EV, and certainly more places than have a preexisting hydrogen cartridge distribution network.

> However, Toyota seems to be pitching the cartridges for personal and home use, but it's not yet clear what you'd use them for.

In a world where Lithium batteries exist and the technology has far more R&D investment, what would you use these for? Why is Toyota still throwing cash into the hydrogen money pit?

Why should society be subsidizing home ownership more than they already do?

The real estate market already discriminates against people who cannot afford a deposit (an increasing proportion of people, since house prices are increasing so rapidly), and the design of North American cities encourages urban spawl which is unsustainable with current property tax rates. [1]

> and I think to promote everyone's owning a house

Why? Half of German households rent [2] and no one is wringing their hands about how people should be owning their home instead of renting.

As someone who has lived in Europe and North America, there seems to be a borderline obsession with owning a house in anglophone countries, and I don't understand why. If the rental market is sane (e.g. rent is approximately equivalent to a mortgage) then it's up to the individual if they want to purchase a home (e.g. to renovate how they see fit) or is comfortable just renting.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI

[2] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/04/global-percentage-ren...

Yes, the EFF should not be promoting FUD.

As I have stated several times in my comments, if the EFF had chosen a less sensationalist title, there would be no grounds to label this as FUD.

> And that it's okay if someone else wrote the article?

Yes, if someone had written such an article for their personal blog, or as a private individual on a site like hackaday, then it wouldn't have the endorsement of the EFF.

> Are you suggesting that EFF should not have done the investigation in the first place

No, however their choice to pulicize an otherwise unnoteworthy event was in my opinion, an extremely poor choice.

> As an EFF supporter myself, I enjoyed the article. I liked the walkthrough of the investigation, and all the steps they used to deduce the source of the tracker. It was interesting on its face, and also educates on a methodology for making deductions for other things.

That's fine, and I'm not here saying "the EFF should not be doing this" I feel I've been very consistent in saying:

* the title is sensationalist and this is bad for the EFF's credibility

* the methods in the article are very amateur, a more detailed investigation and/or a discussion about the privacy and legality of vehicle tracking would have been much more in keeping with the EFF's stated mission

Something between two private individuals, which was resolved through the subsequent investigation. No need to write an article about this.

> As we probably all did when clicking the title.

FUD is generally a strategy to influence perception by disseminating negative and dubious or false information and a manifestation of the appeal to fear. [1]

> you don't always want a spoiler in the title.

The GPS tracker is not mysterious (they identified the source and likely purpose), and the individual's support for the EFF did not contribute to the presence of the GPS tracker in their car.

Could you clarify how the title accurately reflects the situation in light of this?

> Research costs time and money.

Indeed, and FUD is free.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty,_and_doubt

Please point out the original FUD the EFF is refuting in this article.

Their title is sensationalist, a more accurate title would be, IMO, "a car dealership installed a third-party GPS tracking device in a vehicle" but anything more is a stretch because they have n=1 here. But you can see my proposed title is certainly less interesting than their portrayal.

> You can't write an article about something you haven't done.

Yes, and my point is that they are the EFF, not hackaday. The article does not inform the reader of how common GPS trackers are in vehicles, or what privacy implications they have, because the EFF just took the lack of a response from the sole vendor they contacted and went ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I would expect an organization that's supposed to advocate for privacy issues and carries clout to have covered at least some of the privacy concerns in more depth. FFS, they couldn't even establish if the device is still (or ever was) transmitting the car's location.

Geolocating cars is not new or novel, OnStar (GM) has had this capability for ~20 years now. [1] If the EFF wants to raise awareness about the privacy issues of vehicle location technology, they could have easily picked a more common case.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnStar

The article as-written provides almost no useful information apart from an anecdote about one person finding a GPS tracking device in their car and contacting the EFF.

> Given how many people have been surprised to find this specific GPS tracker in their cars (as mentioned above) it’s possible that many car dealerships are installing these devices without proper customer notification.

One person is mentioned in the article. If the EFF knows how widespread the installation of this tracking device is, why isn't this discussed? How many car dealerships did the EFF contact to find out if they install such devices?

All the useful questions at the bottom of the article are unanswered:

> Is the sky-link GPS device still sending location data back to a Sky Link server? If so, could it be accessed by an employee, or someone who activates the device in the future?

Writing an article about a single individual who was not targeted: FUD

Writing an article about how many cars these devices are installed in, what data they transmit, who the provider(s) sell your location data to: useful for privacy and policy discussions

The GPS tracking device had absolutely no connection to the individual being an EFF supporter, and was in fact entirely benign (if unknown to the vehicle owner).

What we need from the EFF: a serious discussion about anti-theft vehicle tracking and privacy (e.g. a list of brands/dealerships installing these devices, how/where to find them, how to disable them, which anti-theft GPS brands don't sell your location data)

What we got: someone at the EFF learns about UART, called a car dealership, and wrote a clickbait title

Do you have a script that doesn't rely on systemd? I run a distro without systemd (Artix) so I am unable to use the script you linked.

From my casual observations S3 seems to use around 8% per 24h.

According to the hardware maintenance manual: "Wireless LAN card (for selected AMD models)" [1]

I can confirm from the internal photos I have of my X13 AMD Gen 2 (I swapped the stock SSD for a SK Hynix P31 Gold 1TB) that the WiFi is indeed M.2 socketed.

[1] https://download.lenovo.com/pccbbs/mobiles_pdf/t14s_gen2_x13...

I am not sure. The first thing I did when I received my X13 AMD Gen 2 (20XH) was update the firmware to the latest available version at the time (1.14) and I haven't had any issues.

The X13 does not have a 32-core APU. The highest spec available is the 4750U with 8C/16T.

> By the way, the latest MacBook Pro comes with an Ethernet port. We loved the jokes about iDongle; how about ThinkDongle?

The latest MacBook Pro does not come with an Ethernet port. It is however very annoying that Lenovo requires a proprietary dongle to use the built-in Ethernet controller.

> The removal of the SD cards slot and Ethernet port has made recent ThinkPads a suboptimal choice for traveling photographers and some IT professionals.

The removal of the SD card reader on the X13 AMD Gen 2 is bizarre, but they can and do still offer Ethernet via a dongle.

> would you read about the update procedure after you’ve done multiple BIOS updates for the same machine already? Even if you would, would you pay much attention to the Notes section?

Yes, but I'm probably weird because I like to know what the vendor fixed and whether the firmware update might remove features that I use (shakes fist at Dell).

I own an X13 AMD Gen 2 (20XH), and I think it's a great laptop with some small caveats.

Pro:

- 1600p matte display looks amazing

- proper support for S3, very low S3 power consumption

- super quiet, I never hear the fan and the laptop is never uncomfortably hot (even doing heavy things like compiling buildroot)

- amazing performance for a laptop (5850U)

Con:

- no SD card reader (seriously, why?)

- proprietary dongle for Ethernet

- Ethernet is only GigE

- Came with MediaTek 7961 WiFi, which while supported by mainline Linux, the performance is trash (~30MBit on 802.11ac). Luckily it's only M.2 so you can replace it with something like the AX201

Jail isn't some magical free solution to your crime problems.

Would Americans still be so eager to imprison someone if they knew that the cost to incarcerate someone is ~$36k/yr? [1]

The government defines poverty as $12k/yr for individuals [2], which is three times less than the annual cost to incarcerate someone!

Is imprisoning someone at the taxpayer cost of ~$36k/yr a sustainable model?

At what point does America have a conversation about the cost of imprisonment versus the alternatives like raising the poverty line, raising minimum wage, or implementing social programs?

[1] https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2018/04/30/2018-09...

[2] https://aspe.hhs.gov/topics/poverty-economic-mobility/povert...