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Everything I own, owned

schlarp.com

61–70 of 367 posts

Re: Everything I own, owned

#61

It's amazing to see LLMs give us software and hardware freedoms that the open source movement has only ever dreamed about.

I think that this is not true -- the achievements mentioned here are hardly ground breaking and mostly build on work that was already done years before LLMs were a thing. There are things that the "open source movement" dreams about, and one just has to search around... E.g. like codecs, Qualcomm's aptX lossless, adaptative, and other more recent variations.

It's not new capabilities, it's new levels of access. Reverse engineering this stuff used to be a very tedious process which required a lot of specialised skill. Which is why most devices haven't been reverse engineered or hacked despite being full of low hanging fruit.

Re: Everything I own, owned

#62
post #35

> My ASUS ROG Swift PG42UQ monitor was actually where I started, because I got annoyed at the pop-up overlay that comes up every once in a while that tells me to run “pixel cleaning”. I have never intentionally run pixel cleaning on this monitor and I never will, I don’t care, and I would like for that overlay to go away forever. Maybe there’s a debug menu or something that can turn it off, or worst case we patch a b…

Perhaps you didn't read the text you just copied and pasted, but here it is for you:

"I have never intentionally run pixel cleaning on this monitor and I never will, I don’t care, and I would like for that overlay to go away forever."

No need for ackshually, the guy is clear with what he desires. That is, by the way, the point of TFA. I want my devices to do what I want, not what a product manager wants or what a dude on hacker news wants.

The author even dropped a comment here doubling down on his intent. That is the main problem, when the smaht guys think they know better, to a pathological extent where they tell other people what they ought to do with their things .

Re: Everything I own, owned

#63
post #36

It's amazing to see LLMs give us software and hardware freedoms that the open source movement has only ever dreamed about.

The flip side is that this might become a thing of the past for future hardware/firmware, if AI hardening becomes standard practice. There’s no substitute for having open systems that aren’t cryptographically locked down by the manufacturer.

We were already there. For most people, we are still there. For most devices (especially popular ones, with enough manufacturing volume) there's just enough hardening, downgrade prevention, encrypted or signed firmware blobs, on top of already rare reverse engineering skills and patience, to make it infeasible for most people to give it a crack. Using an LLM for that also isn't a mainstream idea either (plus you're unlikely to have a Claude subscription if you're not a software developer in the first place).

Open systems are great and all in the idea, but the facts are that for profit companies do the research and produce most of the things.

Re: Everything I own, owned

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, you actually want to do this with monitors of that generation to make them last. You could argue that there should be an option to disable it for people who don’t care. Refusing to take 1 minute out of your day to learn the reason for the alert is a strange self-defeating protest next to the explanation that it was a pretty expensive monitor.

Eh I think the monitors should just handle this automatically - mine do. I basically have no idea that they do any cleaning cycles except when I check their “advanced” menu and it says it’s run 1200 times or whatever

They can.... which everyone bitched about: they would do their cleaning cycle, no matter if you were busy or not.

Re: Everything I own, owned

#69
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The user has to first specifically pick the device from the list and grant the website access. If a user is confused by a permissions prompt and has no idea what is going on, the default path is to reject the permission.

You realize that most of the time that you are giving access to an older HID device, you are giving the website permission to convert that device into a persistent backdoor forever? No matter if you later close the browser or revoke the permission -- the damage has already been done? Most devices predating WebHID and the like have almost no protection (why would they?), and you can corrupt or even entirely replace th…

WebUSB has been live in Chrome for 9 years and nothing happened. Compare to all the features that result in people getting hacked every day. Your threat model is ridiculous.

Re: Everything I own, owned

#70
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How should I learn more about how to do it, what to buy, etc ? I haven't found ChatGPT to be a good teacher about this topic, and in particular re glitching, AI will refuse to discuss specifics I have enough basic soldering to get UART attached, but not sure what to try after that. Equipment-wise, I currently just have a few ESP32-C3s and electronics basics kit and some basic soldering stuff.

There are plenty of pre-2023 resources out there, especially conference talks. But, Claude has no issues discussing glitching if you have CVP.

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