Category Archives: News

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Apple Pencil joins the iPad confusion zone

Posted on 2023-10-17 by pappp

Article note: I've used a bunch of student's iPads with styluses, and they are broadly the least-shitty stylus experience I've ever had, but ... The Gen1 pencils are ALWAYS missing their cap and/or have connector issues, because that was a terrible design. The double tap to swap tools feature is both necessary for it to not be frustrating to edit things, and annoyingly inconsistent. I can't imagine the experience being half as good without pressure sensitivity or wirelessly charging when docked. The Gen2 pencil is the _only_ one that doesn't have some kind of bewildering design failure to it.

A picture of four iPads and three Apple Pencils — the second-generation one is attached to one, while the other two sit next to iPads. — *Three Pencils were given to the iPads.* | Image: Apple

A third, cheaper Apple Pencil now sits in Apple’s lineup of styluses, giving iPad owners more choice than ever. And yet, that choice is fraught with compromises and caveats. There’s still not one Apple Pencil to rule them all, and that’s a problem for shoppers.

Let’s run down what was announced today. The new Apple Pencil is $79, can be magnetically attached to the side of your iPad, and no longer needs to be plugged directly into the iPad’s charging port for power, like the 2015 original. On the newest Pro models, it also supports the hover feature that shows where your Pencil is before you actually touch the screen. These are all good things!

But Apple made some strange omissions, too. Pressure sensitivity, a headlining feature of both...

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OpenWrt 23.05

Posted on 2023-10-13 by pappp

Source: Hacker News

Article note: Such a good project. That weird schism era seems to have settled out fine and they've been making regular high-quality releases.

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Tiny Linux on a No-MMU RISC-V Microcontroller

Posted on 2023-10-11 by pappp

Source: Hack a Day

Article note: I went to find documentation about the current state of nommu Linux systems the other day and things are _rough_ documentation-wise and mostly alarmingly out of date. This (and its sister article) actually strings together all the details in a comprehensible way, which is super nice.

In the vast majority of cases, running a Linux-based operating system involves a pretty powerful processor with a lot of memory on hand, and perhaps most importantly, a memory management unit, or MMU. This is a piece of hardware which manages virtual memory, seamlessly giving each process its own memory sandbox in which it shouldn’t be able to rain on its neighbours’ parade. If there’s no MMU all is not lost though, and [Uros Popovic] gives us a complete guide to building the MMU-less μClinux on a RISC-V microcontroller.

The result is something of a Linux-from-scratch for this platform and kernel flavour, but it’s so much more than that aside from its step-by-step explanation. It’s probable that most of us have heard something of μClinux but have little direct knowledge of it, and he leads us through its workings as well as its limitations. As examples, standard ELF binaries aren’t suitable for these systems, and programmers need to use memory-safe techniques.

Whether or not any of you will run with this guide and build a tiny MMU-less Linux system, anything which expands our knowledge on the subject has to be a good thing. it’s not the first time we’ve seen a RISC-V microcontroller turned to this task, with a nifty trick to get round the limitations of a particular architecture.

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Coordinated Disclosure: 1-Click RCE on Gnome (CVE-2023-43641)

Posted on 2023-10-11 by pappp

Source: Hacker News

Article note: Automated background metadata scanning is a huge source of vulnerabilities in general. It's parsers. Hand-coded in C. That the caller probably didn't look at, because it's in some library from the dark ages. For old poorly structured formats. Running unattended in system processes.

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Judge throws out $32.5M Sonos win against Google

Posted on 2023-10-10 by pappp

Source: The Verge - All Posts

Article note: I don't usually root for megacorps, but Sonos was trying to pull some bullshit here with a weak submarine patent, and it's good they got smacked down. I always enjoy Alsup's rulings on this kind of thing, he seems to be one of the few high profile judges who has a solid understanding of tech.

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Another game controller maker is embracing drift-resistant Hall effect joysticks

Posted on 2023-10-10 by pappp

Source: The Verge - All Posts

Article note: This is one of those staggeringly obvious changes to a basic component that is taking a surprisingly long time to really assert. Hall effect sensors are all over the place in consumer electronics, and hall rotation sensors in particular have kind of eaten the motor feedback market, they're dirt cheap because they're small and simple and made in huge volume, they're easier to interface... and almost everyone is still using resistive joysticks that wear and die.

Black and white controllers standing back to back with rainbow colors surrounding them. — *The T4 Cyclone comes in white and the T4 Cyclone Pro in black.* | Image: GameSir

GameSir is the latest company to launch wireless controllers featuring magnetic, stick-drift-resistant “Hall effect” joysticks: the new T4 Cyclone and Cyclone Pro gamepads. Currently, standard controllers from companies like Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft still incorporate potentiometer joysticks that are prone to annoying stick drift over time as they wear down. Third-party accessory makers have started a trend to include Hall effect technology in their controllers, hoping to offer better longevity.

The first of the T4 Cyclone pair has a Nintendo-style face button layout, where the A button is to the east of the cluster. The Cyclone’s joysticks aren’t the only part of it that includes Hall effect tech — GameSir is also using it in the...

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Bambu Lab X1E

Posted on 2023-10-10 by pappp

Source: Hacker News

Article note: Man, as much as there are concerning things about Bambu as a company, they are making generations of impressive products that both advance the state of the 3d printer market and directly address criticisms of their previous offerings.

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Why did the Motorola 68000 processor family fall out of use in PCs?

Posted on 2023-10-06 by pappp

Source: Hacker News

Article note: It's interesting to see that as a historical question rather than a memory of an era. Motorola tended to be behind on architectural features and fab processes. Even though the 68k was one of the first "serious business" microprocessors to make it to market, even the original 68k had the whole "a 68010 is a 6800 that works" fiasco with its virtual memory, and that slowness is what later launched the major RISC designs like SPARC and PRISM and MIPS because all the UNIX workstation vendors started with 68ks and had to move off because it wasn't keeping up. Motorola also had the distraction of their own RISC plans with the 88k which was too late and not impressive enough, then rolling over to PPC.

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A 20MP Sensor in a Film Canister Reinvigorates Vintage Analog Cameras

Posted on 2023-10-06 by pappp

Source: Hacker News

Article note: Nifty. Absolute hipsterbait, but nifty. Micro 4/3 is an ...odd... choice for a 35mm back/pack even given the cost constraint, but it's still neat.

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