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mmebane

800 karma · joined April 30, 2014

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mmebane··on 7-Zip 25.00
I've not personally used it, but there's a fork that adds NSIS decompilation back in: https://github.com/myfreeer/7z-build-nsis
mmebane··on Ruby: A great language for shell scripts
You could try Nuitka [1], but I don't have enough experience with it to say if it's any less brittle than PyInstaller.

[1]: https://nuitka.net/

mmebane··on Recall: Stealing everything you've ever typed or viewed on your own Windows PC
As someone with ADHD, being able to have an assistant with perfect memory that I can ask extremely vague questions to about things I'm pretty sure I did some time between last week and 5 years ago sounds amazing. I'm skeptical Recall will actually be able to do that. I doubt its usefulness outweighs the legal and social concerns. But I can absolutely see the use.
mmebane··on Thorium: Cross-platform patched Chromium fork
It also usually only gets one release per upstream major version (and sometimes not even that), meaning a lot of Chromium security fixes can take several weeks to show up in a Thorium release. I appreciate the author's effort, but it's definitely riskier than normal Chrome/Chromium.
mmebane··on Yuzu emulator developers settle Nintendo lawsuit, pay $2.4M in damages
They started deleting repos a couple of minutes ago. I checked a lot of links and they were in the Internet Archive. I'm sure there are plenty of forks of the main repo.
mmebane··on SQLite 3.45 released with JSONB support
FWIW, this works for me with Python 3.12 from Homebrew, but not Python 3.12 from python.org. _sqlite3.cpython-312-darwin.so in Homebrew's Python appears to dynamically link /opt/homebrew/opt/sqlite/lib/libsqlite3.0.dylib, but the version in python.org's Python statically links the sqlite3 library.

EDIT: Python 3.9.6 from Xcode doesn't work either. It has _sqlite3.cpython-39-darwin.so which dynamically links /usr/lib/libsqlite3.dylib, but that dylib doesn't exist on my system, and I don't know enough about macOS internals to tell where it's coming from. The _sqlite3 so doesn't seem big enough to have it statically linked.

EDIT2: Xcode's Python works when launching via the real path instead of using the /usr/bin/python3 alias, I assume because /usr/bin is SIP-protected or something.

mmebane··on Japan to crack down on Apple and Google app store monopolies
Genshin Impact is (potentially) an interesting case - the iOS version has supported game controllers for almost 3 years now, but there's been no hint of support coming for Android. There's definitely some suspicion in the Genshin community that Apple has an understanding or agreement with Hoyoverse to keep iOS the premier mobile platform.
mmebane··on Advent of Code 2023 is nigh
I tried AoC for the first time last year, and that was pretty much my experience. A week or so of easy problems, then 1 or 2 that were still pretty straightforward but a bit more tedious, then 1 that was a lot more work because you were supposed to derive some of the rules from the example. I don't think it would've been too hard, but like you said, it was starting to feel like a chore at that point, so I stopped.
mmebane··on What's New in Python 3.12
It's a nice quality of life improvement. Most other languages I've used with some form of string interpolation allow quotes in nested expressions to be the same as the quotes on the top-level string, and this has IMO been a weird wart in Python. I'm happy to see it fixed.
mmebane··on Anti-Anti-Adblocker uBlock filter to get rid of the annoying YouTube message
I unfortunately can't find references at the moment, but I've heard that some/most of this is done with nVidia Shield TV boxes which have the same Tegra X1 security flaws used to exploit the early Nintendo Switches.
mmebane··on Anti-Anti-Adblocker uBlock filter to get rid of the annoying YouTube message
The authors of the default filter lists definitely try and block these - the biggest problems seem to be YouTube changing things faster than the default filter lists normally auto-update, or other filters/extensions conflicting. Ref: https://old.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/173jmog/youtu...
mmebane··on RyujinX – Open Source Nintendo Switch Emulator
They're probably referring to dynarmic: https://github.com/merryhime/dynarmic
mmebane··on Super Mario 64 – Watch for Rolling Rocks – 0.5x a Presses [video]
> I assume they would kill all sorts of hacks around their platforms, if they could

They've been doing exactly this with Tears of the Kingdom: patching pretty much every glitch that gets found, no matter how likely it is to affect casual players or whether it arguably makes the game more fun. I wouldn't be shocked if they had people lurking in the glitch hunting/speed running Discords just so they can learn about glitches and fix them ASAP.

mmebane··on Super Mario 64 – Watch for Rolling Rocks – 0.5x a Presses [video]
This one could absolutely be used in a computer science course as an intro to both PRNGs and IEEE floating point.
mmebane··on Super Mario 64 – Watch for Rolling Rocks – 0.5x a Presses [video]
If you enjoy talking about parallel universes, I highly, highly recommend watching the SM64 1-Key speedrun [1] and then Bismuth's explainer [2]. It's a truly amazing technical achievement based in large part in pannenkoek2012's research.

[1]: https://youtube.com/watch?v=iUt840BUOYA

[2]: https://youtube.com/watch?v=wjge1bVobN0

mmebane··on Threads Is Now Live
As well as roughly another $5k/month on Liberapay: https://liberapay.com/Infosec.exchange/

I'm really curious as to what the current operating costs are.

mmebane··on An Architectural Overview of QNX (1992) [pdf]
Probably because it's based entirely on (non-black-box) reverse-engineered Switch binaries, and is therefore very possibly a derivative work of Nintendo's copyrighted code.
mmebane··on Apollo is dead. Long live Apollo
The author posted on Twitter ~20 minutes ago that he shut it down early, due to some change in the API causing crashes. I presume he had been expecting to shut it down at midnight in some American time zone.

> Well, looks like Reddit pulled the plug a little early. Apollo started crashing, but I just manually revoked my token and it looks like it fixes the crashing, but no more Reddit access haha. Those folks are fun to the very end! > @ChristianSelig > 6:49 PM (CDT) · Jun 30, 2023

Source: https://twitter.com/ChristianSelig/status/167492828678112461...

mmebane··on C++17’s useful features for embedded systems
In this case, I think it's a typo, and should be std::is_integral:

https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/types/is_integral

mmebane··on Nintendo updates 3DS to block Bannerbomb3 despite eShop discontinuation
Hell, the original R4 managed it with 2006 hardware. It's conceivable you could do the same thing today with an RP2040.

EDIT: I found a recent GBATemp thread where some research into flashcart design is going on. Maybe something will come of that. Link: https://gbatemp.net/threads/gathering-ds-flashcard-knowledge...

mmebane··on Nintendo updates 3DS to block Bannerbomb3 despite eShop discontinuation
It pretty much has to be either a service mode or a developer back door. I'd love to know for sure. Maybe a leak some day will satisfy my curiosity.
mmebane··on Nintendo updates 3DS to block Bannerbomb3 despite eShop discontinuation
If you don't mind spending around $10 USD, hacking an updated 3DS is simple if you get an ntrboot-compatible flashcart [1] and a small magnet. At the moment, Ace3DS X flashcarts are available on AliExpress and work well.

If the supply of compatible flashcarts ever dries up, it will definitely get harder, though hopefully there will be more software exploits discovered by then.

[1]: https://3ds.hacks.guide/ntrboot

mmebane··on AMD CEO: The Next Challenge Is Energy Efficiency
nVidia's DLSS works somewhat like that: the game engine generates a low-res/noisy/low framerate image, and the GPU refines it with an ML model.
mmebane··on A dozen USB chargers in the lab: Apple is good, but not quite the best (2012)
AllThingsOnePlace on YouTube [1] has been doing a good job of reviewing performance characteristics of many different chargers, although he usually doesn't do teardowns.

[1]: https://youtube.com/@AllThingsOnePlace

mmebane··on All About USB-C: Illegal Adapters
> the problem is that the cables themselves have no indication of what was advertised in the first place

Fortunately, this is changing, though it's shameful it took this long to get standardized, straightforward labeling: https://tidbits.com/2022/09/29/usb-simplifies-branding/

mmebane··on Tell HN: Google is correlating location data to your IP
On Android, find Location Services in your system settings and look for Google Location Accuracy. The description for it on my Galaxy S21 reads:

> Google's location service improves location accuracy > by using Wi-Fi, mobile networks, and sensors to help > estimate your location. Google may collect location > data periodically and use this data in an anonymous > way to improve location accuracy and location-based > services. > > Turning this off will result in your device only using GPS > for location. This may impact the accuracy of location > used by apps such as Maps and Find My Device.

Based on that description, that should turn off the data collection, although it can also make GPS fixes take longer, and there may well be other apps collecting this data as well.

mmebane··on VS Code – What's the deal with the telemetry?
The extension author docs [1] say that extensions _should_ obey the global setting, even if using their own telemetry libraries:

> Extension authors who wish not to use Application Insights can utilize their own custom solution to send telemetry. In this case, it is still required that extension authors respect the user's choice by utilizing the isTelemetryEnabled and onDidChangeTelemetryEnabled API.

I suppose the quote in the article is technically correct, because there's no guarantee that _will_ follow this. I'm curious if I could report an extension for abuse and have it removed if it doesn't honor the global setting.

The article also says

> Microsoft’s C# extension (ms-vscode.csharp) sends data to Microsoft. There does not appear to be any setting offered by the extension to turn telemetry off.

I unzipped the extension and looked at the package.json, and it appears to use Microsoft's recommended extension-telemetry library, so I presume it is following the global setting.

I wish Microsoft required extensions to publish detailed telemetry info (or, really, info on any and all external connections an extension might make) on their Marketplace page.

[1]: https://code.visualstudio.com/api/extension-guides/telemetry

mmebane··on Rolling-PWN vulnerability affects all Honda vehicles
Isn't any method of synchronizing clocks likely to be vulnerable to the same sort of counter resynchronization issue that this attack exploits?
mmebane··on Add-on support in new Firefox for Android (2021)
Also, add the NewPipe repository [1]. The versions in the main F-Droid repository are often out of date.

[1]: https://newpipe.net/FAQ/tutorials/install-add-fdroid-repo/

mmebane··on FBI: Stolen PII and deepfakes used to apply for remote tech jobs
With social media influencers, you don't even have to worry much about the deepfakes glitching - the usage of filters is rampant enough that glitches have been completely normalized.
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