yesturi

I think this is a classic chicken and egg problem and the only way to solve this issue is government regulation. Anyone aware of the mandatory IPv6 in Europe? I heard that the Chech Republic is doing something about it. I Poland, only Orange and probably TMobile supports it, the smaller ones - almost none.

BTW, in the European Union, reverse-engineering is perfectly legal, if it is done to ensure compatibility with the current tech.

I cannot cite the reliable sources for it, though.

It is interesting that the vendor adapts the hardware token and then makes it weak on the software side.

I recently did similar thing for the FineReader 6 using a hardware dongle [0]. It was surprisingly easy, no disassembly at all, just injecting srand(0) and a hardcoding the responses from the dongle. I had no prior reverse-engineering experience at all.

[0] https://slomkowski.eu/abbyy-finereader-6-ikey-1000-hack/

I guess it is some kind of problem with the home-made counter (e.g., picking up electrical noise), or perhaps the counter is placed in a building with a higher background level.

As far as I’m aware, buildings made of blocks containing coal power plant slag have a higher background, but I don’t know how pronounced the effect is.

The normal background should be like 15–25 counts per minute for majority of Geiger tubes.

This is not my project, I just submitted it as an interesting website.

Perhaps if the discussion catches on, I can send the link to the website's owner.

He's right. Strengthening of real human presence against in the internet is a noble goal.

When I do/create something I find useful for others, I usually publish it on my website too. I (and probably almost every other developer/tinkerer) benefited from the open-source and the wealth of information available on the Internet so much, that giving some small part back is only fair.

Recently, I started using Marginalia Search as a first choice when researching something technical. Surprisingly, almost always I find a real person writing about their experiences, not some content farm or corporate bland talk.

There's some news about some psy-op or some damage every couple of days. We hear about "Russian trolls" and influencing the political discourse.

I wonder if there is any symmetrical response to this happening. How about unleashing psy-ops and "Western trolls" in Runet? Is Europe in purely defensive mode?

PC-s were only described in hobby magazines, like Bajtek or Młody Technik. Nobody had them, though, except maybe some institutions. The hobbyists used to own ZX Spectrum or Commondore 64, but even that was rare.

I know one programmer in his 50s. He had an access to the ZX Spectrum in his primary school, but that was by effort of his local physics teacher.

That is ridiculously fantastic idea!

Shame I used to have an SCSI scanner but I already disassembled it for parts.

One can write a simple bootloader, which reads bytes printed on a paper sheet to memory then boots it. Something like: black (0), white (1) or long rectangle (1), short rectangle (0). Wonder about the storage capacity of the A4 paper.

Maybe that's the charm of mechanical watches? Precise metal parts moving in harmony. You can entertain yourself with analyzing its workings by simply watching it (no pun intended).

Precise, but featureless digital clocks lack "soul" which you can actually see.

Today, storage is so advanced that to the ordinary user it simply presents as some kind of non-leaky abstraction: small rectangular shape, no moving parts, stores blocks, retrieves blocks, low latency, high reliability.

Back then, the storage is was much more 'real': it was slow, made noises, degraded noticeably because of stray magnetic fields etc, complicated mechanical parts. By the hearing alone, you may spot problems.

In Poland, in the communist period, the national broadcaster used to do it. For Atari, ZX Spectrum, Commmodore 64.

Haven't heard the audition, though. Well before my era.