Posts by JohnFen

Re: Another solution...

"No-one was shouting for smart phones till Apple made the iPhone."

That's not true at all. Before smartphones existed, one of the most common things people were crying out for with their handheld computers was that it included a cell phone.

Re: Another solution...

Those look very interesting indeed!

Re: Another solution...

"and real qwerty buttons"

Man, I miss those SO MUCH.

Re: Another solution...

"You wouldn't think it was cool if your phone could double it's display area when you wanted to watch something?"

It's cool as a curiosity piece, but it's not something that I personally compelling.

Re: Not enough

"If I set up a WiFi that is not encrypted, I am giving implicit permission for anyone to connect to and use it."

Sadly, legally this isn't true.

Fortunately, most people don't know or care. I run an intentionally open WiFi access point specifically for my guests and any neighbors or others within range to use. There is no shortage of people who use it.

Re: Not enough

"you're going to be up on charges of unauthorized use of a computer network"

I don't know... if you haven't joined the network or otherwise are not sending any packets to the network, are you really "using" it? I would argue that you aren't.

Re: Not enough

"How did they get passwords and other personal information over the "air"?"

Probably from people using an open WiFi without a VPN, and entering that data into web pages or including it in emails.

Re: Not enough

"No, you don't have to join the network, you can passively sniff the unencrypted packets out of the air."

Indeed. Many years ago, I lived near a courthouse and accidentally captured WiFi packets from the courthouse WiFi, which was being run open. I did not join the network, I passively captured the data in the air.

Since the data included emails from lawyers about cases they were involved in, I (anonymously, just in case I was on the wrong side of the law) informed the courthouse of the issue. I never checked to see if they fixed it.

Re: Corrupt SD cards

SD cards do wear out, but that's a different issue. It doesn't always take years -- I have a Pi that uses the SD card heavily enough that they last about 3 months before needing to be replaced.

Re: does ceramic heatsinks work ?

Ceramic heatsinks pull heat away a little bit faster than aluminum ones, but that's not the reason that they are used. The benefits of ceramic heatsinks are that they weigh less and are nonconductive (so you can do cool things like print circuitry directly on the heatsink).

The primary downside is that they are more fragile.

Re: What I do not understand is

"but generally use more suitable - ake expensive - boards for my own projects"

I mostly use Pis for toys and prototyping. I don't tend to use them in "serious" projects, primarily because they're too large (usually too tall) for the sorts of projects I tend to do. I have field-stripped all of the connectors and such off of Pis to reduce their profile, but that's a lot of work.

Instead, I tend to just use naked microcontrollers, or rarely a more serious SBC as you're talking about, depending on the project.

Re: Worked Too...

That wouldn't stop the condensation issue, though.

Re: Corrupt SD cards

"I've found the SD corruption thing to not really be as big of an issue as some make out."

Me too -- in fact, I've never had it happen at all. Perhaps I just got lucky in my choice of SD cards.

Re: Meltdown?

Personally, I figure that it doesn't matter until it matters. That is, it doesn't matter which way the fan is blowing. All that matters is that the cooling system is keeping the temperatures within specifications. My gut (and experience) tells me that for the vast majority of installations, a fan will achieve that regardless of which direction it blows.

I can imagine situations where air direction might actually be a critical consideration, and I'm guessing which way is best depends on the hardware. If, for instance, the heat issue is overall buildup in a case rather than a single problematic chip, then sucking is probably best. If the heat issue is a specific chip, then blowing is probably best.

Re: Heats always worth adding

I once made a heat sink for a peristaltic pump from two forks and a few paperclips. Worked like a charm!

Re: Meltdown?

I agree -- aside from the Zero, which seems to be fine without a heatsink, I've had to put heatsinks on all of the Pis that I've put to work in the past anyway. I'd do so with the 4 out of pure habit.

Re: 3D printed heat sinks

As you say, 3D printers that print metal are a real thing but they're not exactly hobbyist machines. A 3D printed heatsink can be useful as a cast, though (either as a positive to mold a negative from, or to use directly in lost-plastic casting.)

Re: You Can't Beat A Burner Phone - Or Pulling All Chips From Your Cell Handset

"and what nefarious activities you might be hiding."

If I were engaged in nefarious activities, I'd be sure to have a false electronic "identity" just to avoid that sort of suspicion.

But I'm not, so I'll accept the risk of any increased scrutiny that may result from my practice of minimizing my attack surface.

Re: There's always paper

Well, paper voting has its own vulnerabilities. The problem with electronic voting is that it doesn't eliminate the already-existing vulnerabilities, it just adds a new set on top of them.

Re: There's always paper

"Difficulties for blind people, postal votes (the entire military), when a polling station has to close, massive problems with queues at some if there's a problem"

Those are all solved problems, though. All that's required is for the states who haven't adopted the solutions to do so. There's literally no need to have the extra attack surface that electronic voting brings.

Re: "there is little cause for optimism"

"make voting secure and posting the code for the world to see."

I don't think the security of this system has been determined, and there is no mechanism that I can see that ensures the code that has been open-sourced is the code that will end up being used.

Regardless, it still seems like electronic voting is a terrible idea. It doesn't solve any problems and introduces a lot of new risk vectors. It looks to me like the better way to go is to stop doing it entirely.

Re: Thank you!

"Surely the voting public did that."

Not exactly. Trump narrowly lost the popular vote. He became President because of the electoral college.

Re: fElon

Well, this is a classic Musk pitch -- take an ancient idea and propose it like its a brilliant new thought. The odds of this actually happening in a real way in the near-to-intermediate future approaches zero.

Re: 5G around the corner and nothing very compelling to upgrade to.

I was being a bit snarky with the soldering iron line (although it wasn't that long ago that you really did need to do that with several models).

"iFixit sells kits for popular phones both iPhone and Android and has instructions including pictures"

But the need to buy a kit and have detailed instructions with pictures underlines the problem. On my phone, I can just pop the back off, lift out the battery, and pop a new one in. It's dead simple to do, impossible to get wrong, you don't need to buy a kit, and no instructions are necessary.

This is important to me because it's important to me to be able to carry spare batteries that I can quickly swap in.

Re: I bought a nice shiny Huawei this year.

It doesn't contradict the narrative. Ren Zhengfei, the founder of Huawei, said that last month's global smartphone sales were down by 40%, and they're expecting revenues to fall by $30 billion over the next two years.

I think the reason that Huawei shouldn't be considered when looking at how smartphone sales are doing is because they're experiencing serious business issues that aren't related to smartphone market movements.

Re: 5G around the corner and nothing very compelling to upgrade to.

That may be, but it doesn't matter to me. If I can't replace the battery on a phone without using a soldering iron or paying somebody to do it, I'm not buying that phone.

Re: I've bought my last one

I do like having a real computer on me when I'm out and about, though. That's the main thing I liked about smartphones when they came around -- they let me carry one device instead of two. I don't really want to go back to carrying two, but if I'm limited to what's available on the open market, then that's my only real choice.

"they wouldn't stand a chance of getting UEFI booting off a CD working as an average consumer."

Why not? The last few times I've installed Debian on new machines, that worked out of the box.

Re: Brexit Unlikely Reason

This. So interesting that I've sworn off buying any more Intel CPUs.

Re: A quick verification says otherwise?

"Unless it actually breaks, why buy a complete new box?"

I agree entirely. I only buy a new box in two circumstances -- if one of my boxen actually breaks, or if I need another machine to add to my fleet. The days when machines were wimpy enough that replacing working ones because you need something more powerful ended years ago (outside of someone with specialized needs, anyway).