The original use of the word comes from one of the developper speaking about cool tricks that you could do by abusing DMA to blast data to the VDP.
(Among other doing high color tricks mentioned in the Eurogamer articles, explored but eventually unused by some developers back in the day, and found on some modern-day demos).
Then marketing department found the term cool and ran with it, basically using it to say "our device has more raw power than the competitor's" and plastering it all over any communication channel.
Lots of manufacturers sell console either at thin profit margin at a loss and make crapload of money on games (and accessories).
Selling console that will not be used for gaming will make a huge cut into their profit stream. It won't happen.
So no comeback of officially sanctioned "Other OS" (you'll have to wait for the homebrew scene to find a way, and then Sony will block them in a game of cat and mouse "because piracy !"), no enterprise features, no multi-monitor setup(*), etc.
---
(*): for the "enterprise" variety. For the gaming applications, it won't catch-on because it boils to an "add-on". Unless in their largest market it suddenly becomes common to have 2 TVs in the living room, so by the time a dual-monitor console is released it seems natural to everyone to plug it into the 2 pre-existing screens at the same time. If that doesn't happen, dual monitor support would be a weird corner case that few studio will put efforts in supporting. See: - past add-on in console history (the classical example being SEGA's CD-ROM and 32x) - under utilized attempts at second screen (Nintendo's Wii U (an extra feature compared to same generation consoles, so few 3rd party multi-platfrom games exploit it) as opposed to DS/3DS/New 3DS family (the most popular console in everyone's pocket has it so it's worth trying to exploit) )
These company nowadays mostly make infrastructure equipment (cell towers, etc.) So yes, they have modem chips. That fit in a trailer, require at least a small generator to run and can cover a whole city block with thousands simultaneous conditions.
Not exactly what Apple is looking to put inside their next upcoming smartphone.
- That Google engineers are laughing maniacally in the style of a movie's evil character, while thinking at the best strategy to kill their competition in a horrible death? For no reason except for the evulz, because they aren't making their money by *selling* software, they make money by marketing the shit out of people online, no matter what browser they used, as long as these people online to be marked?
- Or that they're just horribly lazy, because they test of their product on their own web engine, because that's what they use themselves while developing? And it happens to work anyway, because once you factor in Google Chrome and all the other browser running on a Blink/WebKit/KHTML core, you happen to cover close to 90% of all only browser, so often errors go unnoticed and later aren't put on top of the priority list due to low exposure?
In the absence of equivalent to the Halloween documents leak, I would more likely presume the second options.
I'm not saying that it's not bad. It *is*. Their careless-ness could very easily lead to a new era of microsoft-levels of monopolies and smothering of alternatives. They are seriously at risk to fuck up the computing ecosystem, and instance taking care about competitive behaviour (like the EU) should monitor them closely and force them out of such destructive behaviours.
It's only that the phenomenon probably isn't conscious and planned, it very likely due to very massive levels of carelessness, simply because they can get away with it. Somebody (like e.g.: the EU) should come and slap them on the hands, and theach them not to try to get away with carelessness but pay attention.
Here around (Switzerland), the FM-RDS's "RT" and "RT+" (Radio Text and Plus) functionality was only implemented by the national radios much later than the rest of Europe, because they were literary afraid that the text would provide too much extra distraction to the driver and take their attention away from driving.
Meanwhile, the oldest Linux kernel still supported is 3.16, first released in 2014.
If your server is still running Linux kernel 0.01 you are completely allowed (thanks to the copyleft GPL it is licensed under) to upgrade all the way to the current 5.1-rc4.
If your marchine is running Windows XP (and don't get me about Windows 2.0 or MS-DOS 2.0), you're hosed. You can't get updates for that version, and you need to buy a new "upgrade license" to get something newer. (though from time to time some of these upgrade are free).
From the point of view of how Windows is handled, Linux is a single product which only differs by build numbers.
If that worked prisons could not have any surveillance either.
I would presume that by default some small private part in a normal prison (e.g.: toilet booth) aren't on continuously cam (and an escort would be required if strong suspiction requires to monitor those moments). From what I've heard, here around in Europe, when inmates are having conjugal visits their activities aren't on cam either for the same obvious reasons.
(Where's BankRoberMBA when you need him to share his experience as an inmate ?)
I would strongly presume that nothing forbids the teenage person to engage in sex. And given they WTF-ness levels of laws on your side of the Antlantic Pond, where even teens consensually sexting each other could be charged for child pornography, I would suspect that suing for child pornography isn't as far fetched as it sounds.
A suspect for armed robbery disabled his monitor and is on the run?
First, as I've mentionned, if the guy is stupid enough to *actually* get into something like armed robbery, he's probably not smart enough to successfully mess with the monitor.
Second, someone smarter would probably not try to disable it (that would immediately attract attention), but instead try to artificially report the noises they want to the monitor (random background noises) to mask their activity to get some privacy.
I have to conceed, I was basing my reply on old numbers (back then China, India and Australia were still in the "doesn't matter if it is EV on coal electricty or ICE on petrol" category), apparently things have improved since and even China (the worse of above) has made efforts and even there nowadays EVs are slightly better than petrol.
...only those bacteria that are exposed directly to the UV radiation.
Bacteria ('s spores) could be hidden in small recesses, cracks on surface, etc. Bacteria ('s spores) could be hidden beneath a sheat of biofilm that would absorb some part of the UV light.
That will cause some of the spores to survive, and once atmosphere is re-established, to grow back into live bacteria colonies.
You do know traditional car makers are also making coal powered cars now, right?
You know that not every body lives in China, India or Austalia, right? ( ^- the part of the world that have such a horrible mix of power sources for their electrical networks, that it doesn't make any difference if the car burns fossil fuels locally itself, or if power stations burn fossils centrally to charge the car's battery)
In most of the rest of the world, even countries where part of the electrical grid is still powered by burning fossils (hello USA !), the electrically-powered cars are still offsetting some of the emissions.
And now if you take into account countries which rely more on cold-climate hydro (hello, lots of parts here around in Europe), complement their source with solar and wind (ditto), or even nuclear (still a lot less polluting than coal, despite all its associated drawbacks - hello France), there are lots of countries where electric vehicles are a lot less pollutting. By some historical chance, these countries also happen to be more densely populated, meaning that even models with less range than Tesla's are actually useful.
If these teens are not idiots (did they all get busted for stupid things like robery, or are there more-brain-than-brawl criminals in the lot), they would have some loud sex (they're horny teens after all) and try to counter sue for child-pornography.
Also, they are kids, they are probably more tech-savvy than most of the other people involved (well, save probably for the summary's burglar. Are there kids awaiting trial for hacking in this surveillance program ?), they will probably find ways to hack-around the system (put a speaker next to the mike, some padding to block out-side real-world noise and play something with an MP3 player)
Perjury - lying in a affidavit - is a crime in the Untied States. The threat of jail and having a criminal record should be deterrent enough, at least in the United States.
Again, have a look at the "abusive DMCA" situation on platform like YouTube. How many of the abundant false claims have ended up with the liar getting jailed? I can't even name a single occurrence that I've heard of. (I'm not saying it never happened, I'm just saying that it's a rare enough occurrence)
Eventually that is what you're "sue Platform because I'm the rightful owner of the account"-system will devolve into. Lost accounts are big thing (there's a market for hacked account, just to gain visibility for nefarious purpose on social media platforms). It's not just a few random occurrences like the porn-account hijack mentioned in the summary. It's a massive problem.
And if it's a massive problem, it means that there are going to be a lot of complaints. Which means that some level of automation need to be added to the system to help cope with the volume of cases. ( ^- again, see the DMCA automatic take-down request filing) Which in turn means some people are going to find a way to game the system. And because the whole thing is going to be automated, it will be hard to get the attraction of some actual human reviewer when you want to say "I was sued about account hi-jack just as an attempt to silence me !".
It's going to be lawyers vs. lawyers (and thus expensive) to settle out these situations.
Either you do little to nothing with your Linux installation: just browsing, email, and some text editing
Congratulation, you have successfully described what most of our species usually does with a computer ! ( <- you can substitute that with "smartphone" to keep up with times, if you want. But it boils down to the same thing for most average Joes).
Would filing a police report for idenitty theft help? Would a letter from a lawyer demanding the account not be used by anyone else pending a resolution help?
Which will near immediately start being abused to silence disliked opinions, etc.
See how DCMA is abused on YouTube. (e.g.: by people looking for a way to demonetize or censor video criticizing them).
But on the other hand, Snapchat's userbase is growing older and reaching adulthood.
It slowly will become less relevant on the fight for the social platform: it will slowly go the way of Instagram and WhatsApp (average platform that everybody uses, but starts to be a bit saturated in its attention-economy), which then in turn go the way of Facebook (kind of still here, but has become crap due to over commercialization on the attention market) which in turn will end up in the same spot as MySpace (a.k.a. "who the hell still uses that ?" social networks) whose own days are counted until it reaches the GeoCities level (Deleted from the web).
The next thing that Zuckerberg will actually focus on buying (or if buying fails, try to clone the shit out of it) is whatever the current kids are starting to use (random attempt at guessing: Tiktok ?). To keep swiming un uncle-scoorge-style pools-of-(Advertiser's)-money, Zuckerberg needs to attracks users. The network effect usually doesn't help for younger generation (They want to use what their *peers* are using, *not* being on the *same social platform as their parents*), and that's why Zuckerberg is usually shopping for new networks (Instagram, Whatsapp) or clonning them if that fails (Snapchat).
This whole "Snapchat's new strategy is a rallying call for the rest of the social web" and "to beat them, join us" narrative makes a nice "David vs Goliath" story of the lesser networks going up against the big Facebook. But in practice, it's yet another attempt at the same. It's basically the Snapchat crew wanting *to be the ones* who'll snatch the "next big platform" that kids will be using in the future, instead of Facebook. Just wrapped in a different narrative, because they try to present a different image to the public.
Samsung {...} Sony, and everyone else have their stuff made by Foxconn too.
Not every single company manufactures its stuff exclusively in China. For example, Sonystill manufacturesin Japan. (And Samsung obviously manufactures a lot in South Korea)
Those non-China-made products include their smartphones (and other high-tech, hi-priced gadgets), they'll prefer outsourcing less sensitive accessories (wall wart charger).
disclaimer: both of my latest two smartphones are Japan-made Sony Xperias. Though I still flashed an entirely different OS (not Android) on them. So it's not *China*'s spyware you're going to find installed in there.
In this case, they have been leaving their door unlocked and wide-open in a very unsafe neighborhood (we're speaking about the internet here. That's really far from a secure place), for MORE THAN A YEAR.
Be some insane luck, nothing horrible has hapenned yet. (Or didn't get reported to the authorities).
Meanwhile, the researcher has spent the whole year trying to work it out, metaphorically writing letters and putting post-it notes to anyone concerned.
He tried explaining to the manufacturer of the door, that they've basically forgot to put a lock on the door in the factory. Manufacturer responds by fix a hinge of the door which breaks easily, but forgets about everything else. (They only fixed 1 single flaw, ignoring everything else and still leaving everything vulnerable).
He tried explaining to the law enforcement, who simply said that they've put recommendation for people to stop buing these doors - but aren't actually doing anything in practice to stop the door being sold in home improvement shops.
Eventually, the researcher picked up 300 random houses which seemed abandonned for more that a year, and decided to teach a lesson by entering and pinning a giant "PWND!" poster to the wall of the living room of those houses.
Aaaaannd this is where the "white hat" crossed the line. I'm looking forward to the story a few weeks/months from now where we get to be outraged that an "innocent white hat hacker" was arrested for "exposing vulnerabilities" (and not for "fucking with data that wasn't his").
He didn't do it for immediately demonstrating a flaw he'd just found, nor for the lulz.
He spent a whole year (flaw was found in december 2017) attempted to try to work out with both the manufacturer (who according to the article eventually patched one single flaw of the long list in march 2018, but basically left the whole rest of the watch as a giant gaping security flaw) and with the authority (whose reactio aon was: "we did issue a ban for the smartwatch for children, we've already done our job" - despite the ban not being actively enforced and the products still being sold).
Feeling powerless through the regular channels, he eventually decided to step out of the pure "white hat" approach, and go into whistle-blowing territory.
Also, he did it on the data collection coming 300 watches which haven't been online since early 2018. i.e.: probably watches that aren't used anymore, perhaps because they were indeed destroyed/recycled back when the ban got issued.
So he's very likely not even fucking with other people's data, but leftover data that isn't used anymore.
TL;DR: At some point when all the official channels don't lead to anything constructive, some might start considering going the vigilante's route.
The one interesting thing about Sony Xperia phone is that Sony has an OpenDevice program:
- which keeps providing modern Linux kernel and drivers, so you could easily get a 4.9 kernel and AOSP 9.0 Pie on a several-years-old Xperia. (As opposed to most manufacturer, where you're left with whatever blob is in the phone)
- their Xperia are trivial to unlock and flash with custom aftermarked OS. (Unlike some competitors which aren't letting you use anything but the manufacturer's official ROM)
That could be either something Android based, like LineageOS.
Or even something completely different. e.g.: Jolla (the former guys who used to do Meego / Maemo at Nokia before the whole Microsoft/Elop fiacso happened upon them) make Sailfish X for a few select models.
WTF? how is this guy in anyway a "security researcher", he was nothing of the fucking sort, he was a straight up hacker/thief.
Bonus point for having used "Hacker": the previous word that used to mean something else but was eventually cooped into meaning the malicious attacker that apparently called "security researcher" nowadays by the press.
The raspberry pi 3 is thermally challenged at room temperature.
"Having the thermal throttle kicking in and not letting you have 200fps on whatever thing you're trying to emulate in RetroPi"
!= "I won't be able to take a shot every now and then".
Also, the poster want to just take a shot every now or then of a street sign. A Raspberry Pi Zero (lower consumption, cheaper) would to the job okay. It's SoC is qualified for -40 to +85 (source), though you'll have to check if the other chip used (wireless functionality of Zero W for remoting, the chip used in the camera you plug into the MIPI connctor, the uSD card, whatever power solution) can sustain the necessary temperatures too. Some parts (e.g.: uSD) should be available in industrial or even "consumer, high endurance" (cf. some Transcend parts) variant.
And all are dead cheap, meaning that in case of failure, it's simpler replace the box with a spare and then see later on if parts can be salvaged from the dead one.
Also, Raspberry Pi Foundation has guaranteed that parts will be kept in production for quite some time. So if 5 years down the line, the project runs out of "spares", it would be trivial to source additionnal parts.
Charging rate is expressed as a fraction of the battery capacities ("C"). Meaning that two smaller batteries, will also each charge at half the maximum rate. So if you manage to charge them in parallel, you're back at the initial charge time.
Instead you need to tweak the chemistry and shallower charge cycles.
Indeed! If charging Lipo batteries for RC cars has taught me anything, itâ(TM)s that the quicker to 100% charge, the quicker the battery is permanently toast.
That's mostly true when going to 0% to 100% charge.
If cycling only through the 15% to 85% part of the battery you could actually charge faster, and that can also simulteanously extend battery life.
i.e.: if their 4000mAh battery is what other manufacturer would have called a 6000mAh battery. (Made easier by the current trend of having giant screens, thus giant phones and therefor a little bit more space for batteries)
Slashdot Mirror
The original use of the word comes from one of the developper speaking about cool tricks that you could do by abusing DMA to blast data to the VDP.
(Among other doing high color tricks mentioned in the Eurogamer articles, explored but eventually unused by some developers back in the day, and found on some modern-day demos).
Then marketing department found the term cool and ran with it, basically using it to say "our device has more raw power than the competitor's" and plastering it all over any communication channel.
Lots of manufacturers sell console either at thin profit margin at a loss and make crapload of money on games (and accessories).
Selling console that will not be used for gaming will make a huge cut into their profit stream.
It won't happen.
So no comeback of officially sanctioned "Other OS" (you'll have to wait for the homebrew scene to find a way, and then Sony will block them in a game of cat and mouse "because piracy !"), no enterprise features, no multi-monitor setup(*), etc.
---
(*): for the "enterprise" variety. For the gaming applications, it won't catch-on because it boils to an "add-on".
Unless in their largest market it suddenly becomes common to have 2 TVs in the living room, so by the time a dual-monitor console is released it seems natural to everyone to plug it into the 2 pre-existing screens at the same time.
If that doesn't happen, dual monitor support would be a weird corner case that few studio will put efforts in supporting.
See:
- past add-on in console history (the classical example being SEGA's CD-ROM and 32x)
- under utilized attempts at second screen (Nintendo's Wii U (an extra feature compared to same generation consoles, so few 3rd party multi-platfrom games exploit it) as opposed to DS/3DS/New 3DS family (the most popular console in everyone's pocket has it so it's worth trying to exploit) )
These company nowadays mostly make infrastructure equipment (cell towers, etc.)
So yes, they have modem chips.
That fit in a trailer, require at least a small generator to run and can cover a whole city block with thousands simultaneous conditions.
Not exactly what Apple is looking to put inside their next upcoming smartphone.
They finally finished copying all the multitasking features that Palm's webOS introduced a decade ago.
Which is more likely?
- That Google engineers are laughing maniacally in the style of a movie's evil character, while thinking at the best strategy to kill their competition in a horrible death?
For no reason except for the evulz, because they aren't making their money by *selling* software, they make money by marketing the shit out of people online, no matter what browser they used, as long as these people online to be marked?
- Or that they're just horribly lazy, because they test of their product on their own web engine, because that's what they use themselves while developing? And it happens to work anyway, because once you factor in Google Chrome and all the other browser running on a Blink/WebKit/KHTML core, you happen to cover close to 90% of all only browser, so often errors go unnoticed and later aren't put on top of the priority list due to low exposure?
In the absence of equivalent to the Halloween documents leak, I would more likely presume the second options.
I'm not saying that it's not bad. It *is*. Their careless-ness could very easily lead to a new era of microsoft-levels of monopolies and smothering of alternatives. They are seriously at risk to fuck up the computing ecosystem, and instance taking care about competitive behaviour (like the EU) should monitor them closely and force them out of such destructive behaviours.
It's only that the phenomenon probably isn't conscious and planned, it very likely due to very massive levels of carelessness, simply because they can get away with it. Somebody (like e.g.: the EU) should come and slap them on the hands, and theach them not to try to get away with carelessness but pay attention.
Kids, passengers, radio, etc....
Here around (Switzerland), the FM-RDS's "RT" and "RT+" (Radio Text and Plus) functionality was only implemented by the national radios much later than the rest of Europe, because they were literary afraid that the text would provide too much extra distraction to the driver and take their attention away from driving.
Seriously.
(Or at least that's what they were telling us).
Meanwhile, the oldest Linux kernel still supported is 3.16, first released in 2014.
If your server is still running Linux kernel 0.01 you are completely allowed (thanks to the copyleft GPL it is licensed under) to upgrade all the way to the current 5.1-rc4.
If your marchine is running Windows XP (and don't get me about Windows 2.0 or MS-DOS 2.0), you're hosed. You can't get updates for that version, and you need to buy a new "upgrade license" to get something newer. (though from time to time some of these upgrade are free).
From the point of view of how Windows is handled, Linux is a single product which only differs by build numbers.
If that worked prisons could not have any surveillance either.
I would presume that by default some small private part in a normal prison (e.g.: toilet booth) aren't on continuously cam (and an escort would be required if strong suspiction requires to monitor those moments).
From what I've heard, here around in Europe, when inmates are having conjugal visits their activities aren't on cam either for the same obvious reasons.
(Where's BankRoberMBA when you need him to share his experience as an inmate ?)
I would strongly presume that nothing forbids the teenage person to engage in sex.
And given they WTF-ness levels of laws on your side of the Antlantic Pond, where even teens consensually sexting each other could be charged for child pornography, I would suspect that suing for child pornography isn't as far fetched as it sounds.
A suspect for armed robbery disabled his monitor and is on the run?
First, as I've mentionned, if the guy is stupid enough to *actually* get into something like armed robbery, he's probably not smart enough to successfully mess with the monitor.
Second, someone smarter would probably not try to disable it (that would immediately attract attention), but instead try to artificially report the noises they want to the monitor (random background noises) to mask their activity to get some privacy.
I have to conceed, I was basing my reply on old numbers (back then China, India and Australia were still in the "doesn't matter if it is EV on coal electricty or ICE on petrol" category), apparently things have improved since and even China (the worse of above) has made efforts and even there nowadays EVs are slightly better than petrol.
But UV does.
...only those bacteria that are exposed directly to the UV radiation.
Bacteria ('s spores) could be hidden in small recesses, cracks on surface, etc.
Bacteria ('s spores) could be hidden beneath a sheat of biofilm that would absorb some part of the UV light.
That will cause some of the spores to survive, and once atmosphere is re-established, to grow back into live bacteria colonies.
You do know traditional car makers are also making coal powered cars now, right?
You know that not every body lives in China, India or Austalia, right?
( ^- the part of the world that have such a horrible mix of power sources for their electrical networks, that it doesn't make any difference if the car burns fossil fuels locally itself, or if power stations burn fossils centrally to charge the car's battery)
In most of the rest of the world, even countries where part of the electrical grid is still powered by burning fossils (hello USA !), the electrically-powered cars are still offsetting some of the emissions.
And now if you take into account countries which rely more on cold-climate hydro (hello, lots of parts here around in Europe), complement their source with solar and wind (ditto), or even nuclear (still a lot less polluting than coal, despite all its associated drawbacks - hello France), there are lots of countries where electric vehicles are a lot less pollutting.
By some historical chance, these countries also happen to be more densely populated, meaning that even models with less range than Tesla's are actually useful.
Exactly what also flew my mind.
If these teens are not idiots (did they all get busted for stupid things like robery, or are there more-brain-than-brawl criminals in the lot), they would have some loud sex (they're horny teens after all) and try to counter sue for child-pornography.
Also, they are kids, they are probably more tech-savvy than most of the other people involved (well, save probably for the summary's burglar. Are there kids awaiting trial for hacking in this surveillance program ?), they will probably find ways to hack-around the system (put a speaker next to the mike, some padding to block out-side real-world noise and play something with an MP3 player)
Perjury - lying in a affidavit - is a crime in the Untied States. The threat of jail and having a criminal record should be deterrent enough, at least in the United States.
Again, have a look at the "abusive DMCA" situation on platform like YouTube.
How many of the abundant false claims have ended up with the liar getting jailed?
I can't even name a single occurrence that I've heard of.
(I'm not saying it never happened, I'm just saying that it's a rare enough occurrence)
Eventually that is what you're "sue Platform because I'm the rightful owner of the account"-system will devolve into.
Lost accounts are big thing (there's a market for hacked account, just to gain visibility for nefarious purpose on social media platforms).
It's not just a few random occurrences like the porn-account hijack mentioned in the summary.
It's a massive problem.
And if it's a massive problem, it means that there are going to be a lot of complaints.
Which means that some level of automation need to be added to the system to help cope with the volume of cases.
( ^- again, see the DMCA automatic take-down request filing)
Which in turn means some people are going to find a way to game the system.
And because the whole thing is going to be automated, it will be hard to get the attraction of some actual human reviewer when you want to say "I was sued about account hi-jack just as an attempt to silence me !".
It's going to be lawyers vs. lawyers (and thus expensive) to settle out these situations.
Yes, I agree that these problems already had solution a lon....
Disk access failure.
Abort, Retry, Fail? _
Either you do little to nothing with your Linux installation: just browsing, email, and some text editing
Congratulation, you have successfully described what most of our species usually does with a computer ! ( <- you can substitute that with "smartphone" to keep up with times, if you want. But it boils down to the same thing for most average Joes).
Would filing a police report for idenitty theft help?
Would a letter from a lawyer demanding the account not be used by anyone else pending a resolution help?
Which will near immediately start being abused to silence disliked opinions, etc.
See how DCMA is abused on YouTube.
(e.g.: by people looking for a way to demonetize or censor video criticizing them).
But on the other hand, Snapchat's userbase is growing older and reaching adulthood.
It slowly will become less relevant on the fight for the social platform: it will slowly go the way of Instagram and WhatsApp (average platform that everybody uses, but starts to be a bit saturated in its attention-economy), which then in turn go the way of Facebook (kind of still here, but has become crap due to over commercialization on the attention market) which in turn will end up in the same spot as MySpace (a.k.a. "who the hell still uses that ?" social networks) whose own days are counted until it reaches the GeoCities level (Deleted from the web).
The next thing that Zuckerberg will actually focus on buying (or if buying fails, try to clone the shit out of it) is whatever the current kids are starting to use (random attempt at guessing: Tiktok ?). To keep swiming un uncle-scoorge-style pools-of-(Advertiser's)-money, Zuckerberg needs to attracks users. The network effect usually doesn't help for younger generation (They want to use what their *peers* are using, *not* being on the *same social platform as their parents*), and that's why Zuckerberg is usually shopping for new networks (Instagram, Whatsapp) or clonning them if that fails (Snapchat).
This whole "Snapchat's new strategy is a rallying call for the rest of the social web" and "to beat them, join us" narrative makes a nice "David vs Goliath" story of the lesser networks going up against the big Facebook. But in practice, it's yet another attempt at the same.
It's basically the Snapchat crew wanting *to be the ones* who'll snatch the "next big platform" that kids will be using in the future, instead of Facebook.
Just wrapped in a different narrative, because they try to present a different image to the public.
Samsung {...} Sony, and everyone else have their stuff made by Foxconn too.
Not every single company manufactures its stuff exclusively in China.
For example, Sony still manufactures in Japan.
(And Samsung obviously manufactures a lot in South Korea)
Those non-China-made products include their smartphones (and other high-tech, hi-priced gadgets), they'll prefer outsourcing less sensitive accessories (wall wart charger).
disclaimer: both of my latest two smartphones are Japan-made Sony Xperias. Though I still flashed an entirely different OS (not Android) on them.
So it's not *China*'s spyware you're going to find installed in there.
Except that, if you RTFA (yes, I know /. ):
In this case, they have been leaving their door unlocked and wide-open in a very unsafe neighborhood (we're speaking about the internet here. That's really far from a secure place), for MORE THAN A YEAR.
Be some insane luck, nothing horrible has hapenned yet. (Or didn't get reported to the authorities).
Meanwhile, the researcher has spent the whole year trying to work it out, metaphorically writing letters and putting post-it notes to anyone concerned.
He tried explaining to the manufacturer of the door, that they've basically forgot to put a lock on the door in the factory. Manufacturer responds by fix a hinge of the door which breaks easily, but forgets about everything else. (They only fixed 1 single flaw, ignoring everything else and still leaving everything vulnerable).
He tried explaining to the law enforcement, who simply said that they've put recommendation for people to stop buing these doors - but aren't actually doing anything in practice to stop the door being sold in home improvement shops.
Eventually, the researcher picked up 300 random houses which seemed abandonned for more that a year, and decided to teach a lesson by entering and pinning a giant "PWND!" poster to the wall of the living room of those houses.
Aaaaannd this is where the "white hat" crossed the line. I'm looking forward to the story a few weeks/months from now where we get to be outraged that an "innocent white hat hacker" was arrested for "exposing vulnerabilities" (and not for "fucking with data that wasn't his").
He didn't do it for immediately demonstrating a flaw he'd just found, nor for the lulz.
He spent a whole year (flaw was found in december 2017) attempted to try to work out with both the manufacturer (who according to the article eventually patched one single flaw of the long list in march 2018, but basically left the whole rest of the watch as a giant gaping security flaw) and with the authority (whose reactio aon was: "we did issue a ban for the smartwatch for children, we've already done our job" - despite the ban not being actively enforced and the products still being sold).
Feeling powerless through the regular channels, he eventually decided to step out of the pure "white hat" approach, and go into whistle-blowing territory.
Also, he did it on the data collection coming 300 watches which haven't been online since early 2018.
i.e.: probably watches that aren't used anymore, perhaps because they were indeed destroyed/recycled back when the ban got issued.
So he's very likely not even fucking with other people's data, but leftover data that isn't used anymore.
TL;DR: At some point when all the official channels don't lead to anything constructive, some might start considering going the vigilante's route.
The one interesting thing about Sony Xperia phone is that Sony has an OpenDevice program:
- which keeps providing modern Linux kernel and drivers, so you could easily get a 4.9 kernel and AOSP 9.0 Pie on a several-years-old Xperia.
(As opposed to most manufacturer, where you're left with whatever blob is in the phone)
- their Xperia are trivial to unlock and flash with custom aftermarked OS.
(Unlike some competitors which aren't letting you use anything but the manufacturer's official ROM)
That could be either something Android based, like LineageOS.
Or even something completely different. e.g.: Jolla (the former guys who used to do Meego / Maemo at Nokia before the whole Microsoft/Elop fiacso happened upon them) make Sailfish X for a few select models.
WTF? how is this guy in anyway a "security researcher", he was nothing of the fucking sort, he was a straight up hacker/thief.
Bonus point for having used "Hacker": the previous word that used to mean something else but was eventually cooped into meaning the malicious attacker that apparently called "security researcher" nowadays by the press.
The raspberry pi 3 is thermally challenged at room temperature.
"Having the thermal throttle kicking in and not letting you have 200fps on whatever thing you're trying to emulate in RetroPi"
!=
"I won't be able to take a shot every now and then".
Also, the poster want to just take a shot every now or then of a street sign.
A Raspberry Pi Zero (lower consumption, cheaper) would to the job okay.
It's SoC is qualified for -40 to +85 (source), though you'll have to check if the other chip used (wireless functionality of Zero W for remoting, the chip used in the camera you plug into the MIPI connctor, the uSD card, whatever power solution) can sustain the necessary temperatures too.
Some parts (e.g.: uSD) should be available in industrial or even "consumer, high endurance" (cf. some Transcend parts) variant.
And all are dead cheap, meaning that in case of failure, it's simpler replace the box with a spare and then see later on if parts can be salvaged from the dead one.
Also, Raspberry Pi Foundation has guaranteed that parts will be kept in production for quite some time.
So if 5 years down the line, the project runs out of "spares", it would be trivial to source additionnal parts.
it's just two batteries.
Nope.
Won't work.
Charging rate is expressed as a fraction of the battery capacities ("C").
Meaning that two smaller batteries, will also each charge at half the maximum rate.
So if you manage to charge them in parallel, you're back at the initial charge time.
Instead you need to tweak the chemistry and shallower charge cycles.
Indeed! If charging Lipo batteries for RC cars has taught me anything, itâ(TM)s that the quicker to 100% charge, the quicker the battery is permanently toast.
That's mostly true when going to 0% to 100% charge.
If cycling only through the 15% to 85% part of the battery you could actually charge faster, and that can also simulteanously extend battery life.
i.e.: if their 4000mAh battery is what other manufacturer would have called a 6000mAh battery.
(Made easier by the current trend of having giant screens, thus giant phones and therefor a little bit more space for batteries)