Monthly Archives: August 2025

QNX: The Incredible 1.44M Demo

Posted on 2025-08-10 by pappp

Source: Hacker News

Article note: That demo disk really was one of the niftiest artifacts ever shipped. A modern looking GUI and a network stack and everything on a floppy, which pretty much "Just worked." QNX itself is both historically interesting and widely used in embedded things where most people probably don't realize that's what they're interacting with; it's fast, it's UNIX-like enough to be easy to develop for, good RT features while maintaining those UNIX-like semantics where it can, customizable, and apparently the license terms are reasonable. Certainly getting squeezed from above by Linux's steadily-less-annoying RT features, and from below by Zephyr lately, but still a reasonable choice.
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New executive order puts all grants under political control

Posted on 2025-08-07 by pappp

Source: Ars Technica

Article note: We are so fucked.

On Thursday, the Trump administration issued an executive order asserting political control over grant funding, including all federally supported research. The order requires that any announcement of funding opportunities be reviewed by the head of the agency or someone they designate, which means a political appointee will have the ultimate say over what areas of science the US funds. Individual grants will also require clearance from a political appointee and "must, where applicable, demonstrably advance the President’s policy priorities."

The order also instructs agencies to formalize the ability to cancel previously awarded grants at any time if they're considered to "no longer advance agency priorities." Until a system is in place to enforce the new rules, agencies are forbidden from starting new funding programs.

In short, the new rules would mean that all federal science research would need to be approved by a political appointee who may have no expertise in the relevant areas, and the research can be canceled at any time if the political winds change. It would mark the end of a system that has enabled US scientific leadership for roughly 70 years.

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Cursed Knowledge

Posted on 2025-08-07 by pappp

Source: Hacker News

Article note: This is a brilliant piece of documentation, made all the better because they also link to how they handled their unfortunate discoveries.
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Patch now: Millions of Dell PCs with Broadcom chips vulnerable to attack

Posted on 2025-08-05 by pappp

Source: The Register

Article note: Somehow every dedicated hardware secure enclave mechanism seems to turn out worse than just using platform software.

Psst, wanna steal someone's biometrics?

black hat  Critical security flaws in Broadcom chips used in more than 100 models of Dell computers could allow attackers to take over tens of millions of users' devices, steal passwords, and access sensitive data, including fingerprint information, according to Cisco Talos.…

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Proxmox Virtual Environment 9.0 with Debian 13 released

Posted on 2025-08-05 by pappp

Source: Hacker News

Article note: I've played with Proxmox a bit recently, It's a pretty nice bit of tooling that seems to have made a lot of good decisions about the underlying stack (...Debian is forever...), and business model and such. A few weird choices and awkward corners, but overall really pleasing. I might take an afternoon to roll my test box to the new release, just to experience the migration tools.
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The Origin of Cisco Systems

Posted on 2025-08-04 by pappp

Source: Hacker News

Article note: The theft from publicly funded research covered up by corporate propaganda stories in the tech industry are a _serious_ problem that have allowed a lot of monstrous people to accrue wealth, power, and influence. I've seen this one challenged in several places recently, which I'm pleased about.
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Tesla loses Autopilot wrongful death case in $329M verdict

Posted on 2025-08-01 by pappp

Source: Ars Technica

Article note: Good, fuckers need to be liable for the shit they impose on society. This is not a "Platform provided a feature which people used in an unintended/undesired way" situation, Tesla has been hyping their driver assist features as elaborate autonomy, someone used it that way, and it killed someone.
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Tested: Microsoft Recall can still capture credit cards and passwords, a treasure trove for crooks

Posted on 2025-08-01 by pappp

Source: The Register

Article note: This whole thing is a _terrible_ idea.

Our tests have shown there are ways to get around the promised security improvements

exclusive  Microsoft Recall, the AI app that takes screenshots of what you do on your PC so you can search for it later, has a filter that's supposed to prevent it from screenshotting sensitive info like credit card numbers. But a The Register test shows that it still fails in many cases, creating a potential treasure trove for thieves.…

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