now | writings | rss | github | twitter | contact
I don't know what it is with these kinds of communities (also: custom Android ROMs) that they like making things so hard for anyone to understand the big picture at a glance with just a few links and FAQs. Maybe it's the crappy forum software that encourages it?
I had a similar experience trying to "jailbreak" my newest Kindle the other day to be able to show a custom image on the screen when it's powered off. It was days of reading forum posts that linked to other 100-page threads and downloading random files.
Mazda finally came out with a CarPlay/Android Auto kit so I bought it for my CX-5. For the installation instructions and firmware I had to read a Mazda forum and wade through a maze of posts with links to random PDFs, Youtube videos, and file-sharing sites hosting the firmware.
November 2018 →
I see Bitcoin is on sale for Black Friday.
garbage[45]: New fixes for old laptops
I recently used VFIO on Linux to get stereo sound working on the Dolby Atmos sound chip on my OpenBSD laptop
https://jcs.org/2018/11/12/vfio
OpenBSD in Stereo with Linux VFIO
ChiBUG is meeting tomorrow night
https://chibug.org/2018-11-13
Correction: SPI keyboard/touchpad drivers (not i2c). I started looking into developing these for the 12" MacBook a while back but it required a new Intel SPI host controller driver first, which bored me to death and I gave up.
Of course, that's after disabling Secure Boot and enabling external device booting from rescue mode (⌘-R at boot)
And in case anyone cares, OpenBSD compatibility:
- 6.4 loads kernel but just shows black screen
- 6.3 boots, NVMe needs PCI id added but instantly powers off as soon as scsibus probes (wtf?)
- Broadcom 4355 wifi doesn't work with bwfm
- Needs new i2c keyboard/touchpad drivers
I'm not sure why I keep trying new Apple laptops thinking the keyboard will grow on me, they are all terrible. I held out hope Apple might leave it alone for the MacBook Air refresh but this 3rd gen still sucks. I guess the 2015 MBP is the last usable laptop Apple will ever make.
retweet  @romanzolotarev: OpenBSD battlestation/desktop/screenshot
by @jcs
https://www.reddit.com/r/openbsd/comments/9ujgcx/post_your_openbsd_battlestationdesktopscreenshot/e96tyfi/
I'm still annoyed by this. Just guess the user's country by IP and default to that with an option to override it. Why force every user to click a map? Porn ads can geolocate down to your city but http://ups.com still doesn't know I'm in the US.
https://twitter.com/jcs/status/693273774284603393
"None of this [OpenBSD] stuff works on the generic MS Surface or Apple Mac stuff you see in 99% of the use cases"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18370903
I like when websites have that "Oh no the user is moving the cursor up to hit the back button, they're leaving! Offer them a coupon!" Javascript but I was only moving the cursor up to click on my password manager button
October 2018 →
Hi @AppleSupport please send your e-mails in a different format so I can view them on my Apple device.
I finished my 1010 game for the Arduboy, which I developed on OpenBSD with my updated Arduino/Arduboy ports (https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-ports&m=153989390409353&w=2)

https://github.com/jcs/arduboy-1010
retweet  @openbsd: OpenBSD 6.4 is out now! https://www.openbsd.org/64.html

Grab the goods: https://cdn.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/6.4
Upgrade guide: https://www.openbsd.org/faq/upgrade64.html
retweet  @mjg59: Psst being passionate about something doesn't make you good at it
This guide was super helpful for setting up Linux to pass the PCI device (audio chip) to Windows under qemu and dump all PCI I/O to a log file. Now to try to make sense of all the data...
https://hakzsam.wordpress.com/2015/02/21/471/amp/
Lazyweb: what's the best way to log all I/O for a PCI device under Windows to reverse engineer what a driver is doing? Run Windows under qemu with some kind of PCI passthru? A shim driver on native Windows?
OpenBSD-themed fish & chips with @kremlinkremlin
This morning's hack to go with your tinfoil hat
https://github.com/jcs/login_duress
garbage[44]: /* +1 (252) 88-TRASH */
Garbage now has a voicemail feedback line, so you can call in and leave us your questions and comments and we'll play them on future episodes https://twitter.com/garbagefm/status/1047860385456513024
garbage[43]: What year is it?
September 2018 →
Chicago Area BSD Users Group is meeting next month
https://chibug.org/2018-10-10
After primarily using a fanless laptop for the past year, it's hard to go back to one with a fan even if it's not that loud or on constantly.

Coil whine is worse though. I've been playing with undervolting and limiting TDP to see if I can minimize it, but it's still there.
Aw shucks, the Intel ME seems to have been neutered and doesn't work any more
And we're live... thanks @mjg59
Flashing coreboot on the X210
These last two episodes of The Daily have been really hard to listen to

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/13/podcasts/the-daily/hurricane-harvey-houston-floods-emergency.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/14/podcasts/the-daily/hurricane-harvey-houston-floods-emergency.html
But on the plus side, ThinkLight!
I'm sad the modem is still a Winmodem though and won't work in OpenBSD
My 51nb ThinkPad X210 finally arrived that I ordered long ago. Kaby Lake R quad-core i5-8250, 1920x1200 IPS, outfitted with 16Gb RAM (expandable to 32Gb) and a 500Gb Samsung 860 SSD. I swapped in a palmrest from an X200 to get rid of the useless miniature touchpad.
I always picture Comic Book Guy writing the one-star reviews of @PushoverApp on Google Play and it makes me slightly less upset
First mention of Linux in a commercial BIOS? https://twitter.com/hdevalence/status/1038305566517415936
"Please be informed that there was a mix up with another server and your drives were removed."

k
Fridays are supposed to be read-only, right? One of my dedicated servers with 2 1TB SATA drives (softraid RAID 1) spontaneously restarted according to the iLO and now neither of the drives are recognized by the BIOS/AHCI controller. Sounds like a long day of tarsnap recovery...
August 2018 →
OpenBSD on the Microsoft Surface Go https://jcs.org/2018/08/31/surface_go
OpenBSD on the Microsoft Surface Go
Yeah but for most people, there's no difference between Samsung and Android
https://www.appbrain.com/stats/top-manufacturers https://twitter.com/ntcomplete/status/1031596340923363329
Wow, my Galaxy S8 test device shows this notification every couple weeks recommending that I restart the device just because it's been a while. Android really is the new Windows.
What is the best practice for doing customer support when a user loses their 2FA device/token? Tell them they're SOL? Just reset manually and confirm by e-mail?
The last thing I backed is a year past its delivery estimate and they just e-mailed all of us to advertise that they're now selling the product from their own website (before sending out any product to backers).
I really need to stop backing things on Kickstarter. Aside from the Pebble and Thimbleweed Park, everything else I've backed has ended up being garbage.
Artisanal ethernet cables
I was inspired by @bradfitz to put all my home equipment in a rack
July 2018 →
My bitwarden-ruby project has been renamed to Rubywarden and now uses ActiveRecord on the backend
https://github.com/jcs/rubywarden
Chicago BSD Users Group is meeting on August 8th, come out and eat pizza with us

https://chibug.org/updates/20
retweet  @rob_pike: Things should just work.
Do any services notify the account owner when an account login succeeds but 2FA fails/times out?
It's a `git reset --hard` kind of day.
I'd just assume never update anything once it works, but Google is mandating that apps target Android 8 or they won't be able to be updated in Google Play in a few months. And of course Android 8 changes everything about notifications and services that Pushover relies on.
Android Studio kept bugging me that stuff was out of date, so I let it update. Then nothing built because some deprecated things in the Gradle config needed to be changed, so I do that and now nothing builds but in a completely different way.
Halfheartedly considering using one of those crappy cross-platform frameworks to rewrite Pushover for Android just so I never have to deal with Android Studio and all of this Java crap ever again. So much time wasted with tooling upgrades that break stuff I care nothing about.
"OpenBSD still uses [CVS], and it's the main reason I've only rarely contributed patches. CVS is just that crappy."

Yeah, I'm sure that's why. #shithnsays
Schadenfreude-as-a-service: monitor eBay auctions you got sniped on and lost, then later notify you if that auction resulted in negative feedback because the thing being sold was garbage anyway
Pizza delivery guy: Here you go, enjoy
Me: Thanks, you too
Adventures in Open Source
Load more...