Keybort

This one is a MicroWeb Touch-1 XT/AT. Kinda.

you know how Atari called the Jaguar as a "64bit system", because it had two 32bit CPUs? (or because it had a 64bit bus, but let's not worry about that)
we should apply that logic to the current generation of consoles.
So the Switch is a 256bit console. It's the Nintendo 256.

The Xbox Series X? terrible name.
Better call it the "Xbox 512 Blu-ray".
like the Jaguar CD, the Sega CD... the good old days when consoles had their media type in the name.

Boringly the PS5 is also a Playstation 512 Blu-ray, because both of them are using the same AMD Zen 2 CPU.

The Switch one is weeeird. It's built on an Nvidia Tegra X1, which is an 8 core 64-bit CPU, so that should be 512, right?

Well... no. Four of them can't be used. And later documentation doesn't even mention them.

it's some weird system where the system-on-a-chip has four Cortex-A57 cores and four Cortex-A53 cores but only the A57s are usable?

Lockpicking Floppies!

I don't know why twitter is refusing to insert a card for this one. In any case, It's the @LockPickingLwyr, and it's a floppy-drive-lock.

so I've been meaning to do a video or thread on these sorts of locks myself. I have several, of different designs.

generally they're all designed vaguely like this one: it's a plastic insert that goes into the floppy drive, then it has some bit that rotates with the key to hold itself inside.

and they pretty much universally use super-cheap low-security tubular locks like this. You can probably pick most of them with a ballpoint pen

So there's a class of puzzles called "river crossing puzzles" which involve having to cross a river on a boat/bridge containing some set of individuals/items with restrictions on which ones can be on the boat/left on each shore, right?

and the most common subclass of these problems is the one where you have 3 items/animals to cross with.
This is alternatively called the "fox, goose, and bag of beans" or "wolf, goat, and cabbage" puzzle.

the idea is that your boat can only carry one item at a time, but if you leave the wolf/fox unattended with the goat/goose, the wolf/fox will eat the goat/goose.
and similarly, the goose/goat will eat the beans/cabbage if left alone

so you have to set up a set of actions that never leaves either side of the river in one of the lose-states.

the solution to this variant being:
1. take the goat/goose over
2. return empty
3. take the wolf/fox over
4. return with the goat/goose
5. take the cabbage/beans over
6. return empty
7. take the goat/goose over

I like how mediawiki exports pages because there's nothing I enjoy more than parsing a 1 gigabyte XML file

and I'm doing simple-english-wiki! it's way smaller than english wikipedia
I can only imagine how impossibly unparsable that nightmare is

fun fact: when programmers need to write code to extract data from an XML file, the process usually goes like this:
1. find XML file
2. open it in a text editor, see what the structure is
3. write some code that parses that

do you really want to open a 1 gigabyte XML file in your text editor?

do you want to fucking die?

I used to run into this problem back when I worked for the government, because sometimes I'd click a database query log (don't ask why our logs were in XML, it's... complicated) and it would turn out to be 100mb

I'm watching these videos about the Georgia Phone Call and they're talking about if Dominion did any kind of weird hacks, and all I'm thinking is:

I need to get a voting machine.

Yeah, it turns out if you select the party vote option and toggle it Democrat-Republican-Democrat then tap the Libertarian candidate Jo Jorgensen three times, you'll trigger the Easter egg and you can play DOOM!

Set your location to California, vote no on Prop 22, party vote democrats and select the Green presidential campaign Howie Hawkins, then toggle Prop 22 to yes, then longpress "reset ballot" and you'll get rickrolled.

This is how my brain works. "the voting machines could be hacked! The president might be trying to steal the election! What should I do?

Oh yeah, get a screwdriver and make a voting machine play DOS games."

I wonder if they're still x86 based? The last time we had a big electronic voting scandal, of the they were... But now we're in the arm era.

I went looking for a remote-controlled power switch (the wireless christmas kind, not the modern IoT kind) and didn't find it, but I did find this thing I bought just to figure out why it exists.
It's a timer outlet, but you program it from your phone... but it's not wireless.

Yeah instead it plugs into your phone's HEADPHONE PORT

I got it on sale.
probably because iphone dropped the headphone port and they had to get with the 21st century and make it bluetooth

So inside the box is the device. it's got a little 2-prong polarized outlet with no ground.

on top is the only controls: on/off/timer.

Elastic didn't really relicense ElasticSearch. It forked it.

🧵 A thread.

1/18

There's a lot of talk in the open source community about the cost of forking.

2/18

- "Forking is best avoided."

- "Forking is a last resort option."

- "Forking is like a nuclear weapons. It's a defensive threat."

3/18

Forking is seen as impractical and extremely expensive.

And that's a Really Good Thing(tm).

It's a forcing function for figuring out solutions that are broadly acceptable across the community.

4/18

The thing is, the cost of forking is mostly a function of three things:

1⃣ the size of the community that you can bring along with you,
2⃣ whether you need to rename your fork (who owns the trademark), and
3⃣ how much infrastructure you need to rebuild.

5/18

Last weekend, I made a threat on the ongoing #SocialMedia shutdown in Uganda and some implications on the future of #internet & Uganda's #digital agenda.

The thread attracted a lot of engagement and questions. Tonight, I will share some final thoughts on the subject. (1)

Conceptually, social media sites are the largest on-boarding platforms for internet users in Uganda. Notably, Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram & Snapchat attract the highest internet traffic- which drives demand for other platform services e.g Google and Zoom recently.

So- when we talk about an "open internet", we mean the FULL resources of the internet. Any encumberance on selected applications has ripple effects across the entire network thus jeorpadizing standardization of internet/data transmission which is essential for innovation & growth

Furthermore, shutdowns hinder network interoperability (technical ability to plug/link one digital product or service into another product or service). Interoperability is the heart of the "Internet of things" eg business, devices, networks, services, e-govt, integration etc #IoT

Because the internet is a global resource, shutdowns enhance a digital divide (the gap between demographics and regions that have access to modern ICTs, and those that don't or have restricted access). Ironic that 3rd world countries have the highest number of shutdowns globally.