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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: January 17th, 2022

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  • FWIW I do use a PineTab2 on a daily basis and… it works. I can warmly recommend it but some caveats :

    • WiFi didn’t work for a while, it’s good now though (mostly stable, AFAICT no instability for me)
    • BT still does not work (not ideal if you need a mouse)
    • USB-C is a single port for charging, single port for devices, iirc usb-C hubs don’t work, only usb-C to A single converters
    • it’s… not fast, so if your workflow is a bit of Web browser or a text editor great, if it’s Blender or Gimp or anything that can be a bit demanding, it might test your patience
    • WebCam does not work, problematic if you have to do video calls

    Overall while keeping such limitations in mind, still recommended! (if you can get it shipped somehow)




  • upgrade the UEFI or other hardware-level firmware you need a way to upgrade

    Indeed but unless the unit received is seriously flawed (to the point of possibly being exchanged by the manufacturer), no upgrade to UEFI or hardware-level firmware is actually required. Most people who received a computer never even upgrade the firmware. I’m not saying it’s not “nice” to upgrade it but the typical scenario for most common laptop or desktop is that such upgrades are optional.


  • I have a Razer Blade Stealth 13 QHD+ touchscreen (RZ09-02393E32) since 2017. Until recently it was mostly Windows and Ubuntu side by side. I realized few months ago I never ever boot on Windows so I removed it. I also got tired on Ubuntu pushing for its own package management system which I don’t find useful. Consequently back to “just” Debian stable and works great for me. Didn’t have to tinker with anything, just works.




  • Indeed. That being said I have a (sigh) Android video projector (Nebula Mars II Pro, by Anker) and even though it does comes with its bloatware (namely “trying” to force installation, without actually doing it, of e.g. YouTube or NetFlix apps) attempts one can ignore that, install F-Droid, install VLC and Launch on Boot from there then boot straight to VLC without have to interact with the stock launcher. Also remote adb works by default so one can tinker quite a bit without even having to active a kind of developer mode.




  • I used Kodi with LibreElec for years in a similar setup. It was nice… but in practice I didn’t really use the “cool” functionalities (like indexing, image preview, Web remote control, etc) so instead I checked how Kodi works and noticed DLNA. I saw that my favorite video player, namely VLC, supports DLNA. I then looking for DLNA server on Linux, found few and stuck to the simplest I found, namely minidlna. It’s quite basic, at the least the way I use it, but for my usage it’s enough :

    • install VLC on clients, including Android video projector, phones, XR HMDs, etc
    • install minidlna on server (RPi5)
    • configure minidlna to serve the right directory with subdirectories ( /var/lib/minidlna by default )
    • configure few extra software that get videos to push them (via scp script and ssh-key) to rpi5:/var/lib/minidlna/

    voila… very reliable setup (been using for more than a year on a daily basis.



  • So if you are genuinely worried about this, don’t.

    First because, as numerous persons already clarified, researchers here are breaking deprecated cryptography.

    It’s a bit like taking toothpicks and opening a lock while the locks used in your modern car is very different. Yes, it IS actually interesting but the same technique does not apply in practice, only in principle.

    Second because IF in principle there IS a path to radically grow in power, there are already modern cryptography techniques which are resistant to scaling the power of quantum computers. Consequently it is NOT just about small the key is, but also HOW that key is made, what are the mathematical foundations on which a key is made, and can be broken.

    Anyway for a few years now there has been research, roughly matching the interest in quantum computers, to what is called post-quantum encryption, or quantum resistant encryption. Basically the goal of the research is to find new ways to make keys that are very cheap to generate and verify, literally with something as cheap and non powerful as the chip in your credit card, BUT practically impossible to “crack” for a computer, even a quantum computer, even a powerful one. The result of that on-going research are schemes like Kyber, FALCON, SPHINCS+, etc which answer such requirements. Organizations like NIST in the US verify that the schemes are actually without flaws and the do recommendations.

    So… all this to say that a powerful quantum computer is still not something that breaks encryption overall.

    If you are worried TODAY, you can even “play” with implementations like https://github.com/open-quantum-safe/oqs-demos and setup a server, e.g Apache, and a client, e.g Chromium, so that they can communicate using such schemes.

    Now practically speaking if you are not technically inclined or just want to bother, you can “just” use modern software, e.g Signal, which last year https://signal.org/blog/pqxdh/ announced that they are doing just that on your behalf.

    You can finally expect all actors, e.g hosts like Lemmy, browsers like Firefox, that you use daily to access content to gradually both integrate post-quantum encryption but also gradually deprecate older, and thus risky, schemes. In fact if you try to connect today to old hardware via e.g ssh you might find yourself forced to accept older encryption. This very action is interesting because it does show that over the years encryption changes, old schemes get deprecated and replace.

    TL;DR: cool, not worried though even with a properly powerful quantum computer because post-quantum encryption is being rolled out already.


  • What this show is a total lack of originality.

    AI is not new. Open-source is not new. Putting two well known concepts together wasn’t new either because… AI has historically been open. A lot of the cutting edge research is done in public laboratories, with public funding, and is published in journals (sadly often behind paywall but still).

    So the name and the concept are both unoriginal.

    A lot of the popularity gained from OpenAI by using a chatbot is not new either. Relying on always larger dataset and benefiting from Moore’s law is not new either.

    So I’m not standing on any side, neither this person nor the corporation.

    I find that claiming to be “owning” common ideas is destructive for most.