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5 yr. ago

  • I'm not sure about FF specifically, but 99% of the time you're connecting a microcontroller to a PC you're doing so over a serial port (UART) of some sort. It may be a physical COM port or it may be a USB to serial adapter or even a purely virtual serial port over a USB connection, but the methodology is all the same. Unless you are running a serial terminal on that port (as in, a commandline on your PC served on the given /dev/ttyX interface, not a terminal emulator letting you read/write from the port), the microcontroller can't just run scripts on the PC. Instead, you will want to write a script/program that opens the port and waits for a command to be sent from the microcontroller, then that listener script can execute whatever functionality you require. Note that only one application can have the port active at a time, so if your listener is a separate program from your event handler, you will have to close the port on the listener before running the handler, then reopen the port on the listener once the handler is done so it can start listening for the next event. Better to just make it all one program that is always running on the PC and does both listening for events and handling them so there's only one program that needs access to the serial port.

  • Please, get this garbage out of the kernel. If it isn't there to talk to hardware, third party code has no place in the kernel. The same shit that Crowdstrike did could easily happen with any of these useless anticheats.

  • No way in hell.

  • I don't disagree, but today the blame lies with CrowdStrike, not Windows. As much as I hate defending Windows.

  • Yes, coincidence.

  • I can't disagree with you there.

  • Should have not trusted a third party to install proprietary code into the kernel. It's not a Windows issue directly, they have a Linux version too, but anything that allows third parties to put proprietary code into your kernel and automatically update it without your approval is untrustworthy.

  • It's not specific to Microsoft, but the general idea of letting proprietary software install whatever it wants whenever it wants directly into your kernel is a bad idea regardless. If the user had any control over this update process, organizations could do small scale testing themselves before unleashing the update on their entire userbase. If it were open source software, the code would be reviewed by many more eyes and tested independently by many more teams before release. The core issue is centralizing all trust on one organization, especially when that organization is a business and thus profit-driven above all else which could be an incentive to rush updates.

  • It's also a "don't allow third party proprietary shit into your kernel" issue. If the driver was open source it would actually go through a public code review and the issue would be more likely to get caught. Even if it did slip through people would publically have a fix by now with all the eyes on the code. It also wouldn't get pushed to everyone simultaneously under the control of a single company, it would get tested and packaged by distributions before making it to end users.

  • Who knew that allowing, no, PAYING third parties to inject whatever the fuck they want encrypted proprietary binary blobs into the highest privilege and most dangerous level of your operating system without any user acknowledgement or third party code review could possibly have negative consequences?

    This is also why we shouldn't be allowing kernel anticheat games on our PCs by the way. One day Crowdstrike, the next day it could be Riot Vanguard. Proprietary shitware has no place in your kernel (though in Windows' case the entire kernel itself is proprietary, maybe do something about that next).

  • NVK is already usable, performancr isn't 100% of the proprietary driver but I play Overwatch on NVK at 165FPS on my RTX3070 laptop a lot, low settings but very playable. This is with an Optimus configuration (VRR Freesync panel on AMD iGPU) in GNOME Wayland.

  • I don't care if it's "better" than the existing system, Mozilla should not be helping the advertising industry at all. They should be actively working to block any and all attempts to gain access to user data, flat out. They are not, and their acquisition of an ad company shows that their motives are not in line with what their users want. They're a company after money, no different than any other. Big fucking shame, but when you hire business people and operate as a business, you can't have true integrity no matter what your supposed mission is. Yes, Mozilla operates a nonprofit but they also operate a corporation, and the corporation exists to make money above all else which is why they've succumbed to this ad industry bullshit. I hope we see a viable third option for browser, but until then the best option is a Firefox fork that actually gives a damn about the user and not just their wallets. I've switched to using LibreWolf on all of my devices. Like Firefox, but without the anti-user, pro-ad-industry garbage turned on by default. I've been calling Firefox adware for years now ever since they started stuffing Mozilla VPN ads, sponsored link garbage, "Pocket recommendations" horseshit, and all the other paid/sponsored nonsense in users' faces without their permission but people were like "no no Mozilla is actually good"....cut it out, Mozilla has shown their hands very clearly now. They want the advertising $$$ and are willing to give up any respect and integrity they used to have for it. They aren't at the level of Chrome and Google, but they're inching closer every day and acquiring their own ad company certainly isn't going to help in that regard.

  • Even if so, it would likely still have proprietary blobs, just embedded into a ROM or flash chip on the card. Personally, I'd rather have firmware loaded at runtime over hard-coded, at least then the blob is able to be reverse engineered possibly.

  • The best one right now is the OnePlus 6/6T, which has a relatively modern SoC.

  • Installing postmarketOS on it to turn it into a full fledged pocket PC. It now runs all your favorite Linux-compatible desktop applications except for those that don't have ARM64 versions, and even then emulation layers can fix this. It's not 100% as I haven't been able to get Steam working (it starts but errors out before the login screen) though I have seen some people have success on other distros so maybe it's a pmOS/Alpine/musl specific issue even though I was using distrobox with Debian to actually run it.

  • Yeah, that ship has sailed.

  • I don't use AliExpress often but for the commodities you want to stock your workshop with, it's often cheaper per unit with cheap shipping so if you want to order a bunch of something it's usually the way to go. Pre-COVID, clone Arduino Nanos were like $2 each on eBay but now they're like $5 at minimum. On AliExpress you can still ocasionally get them cheaper. I needed a bunch of them for a project and had exhausted my pre-COVID stash so I got a bunch on AliExpress and they work fine. For the less common stuff I'd not waste the time and just get it from somewhere with faster shipping. eBay often has free shipping on stuff while Amazon needs a $35 minimum if you don't have Prime, though I do make use of the free Prime trials and stock up when I get the offer.

  • Amazon and eBay are my primary places to get electronics/maker parts. I don't buy them for cosplay, but I expect the things you're looking for are available from either and likely for a better price than Adafruit. If you can tolerate the wait, AliExpress.

  • I use Fennec F-Droid on Android and LibreWolf on Linux/Mac/Windows.