Hacker News: squarefoot

New comment by squarefoot in "CrankGPT"

squarefoot — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 15:58:56 +0000

Totally agree on the atrocious landing page. The technical one is much better, although the power supply circuit by using a resistive balancer and a linear regulator wastes some good power for nothing.

New comment by squarefoot in "United Airlines 767 returns to Newark after Bluetooth name sparks alert"

squarefoot — Sun, 31 May 2026 19:43:03 +0000

I read somewhere years ago of panic ensuing when a pilot greeted a colleague on the radio with "Hi, Jack". Whether it happened for real or not, the idea of a simple word causing fighter jets to scramble is just crazy although fully understandable in the world post 9/11.

New comment by squarefoot in "Green card seekers must leave U.S. to apply, Trump administration says"

squarefoot — Sun, 24 May 2026 05:55:34 +0000

This swill split entire families, more likely forcing those in the US to follow those who need to leave. Of course this has nothing to do with immigration. They're indeed feeding their racist voters some candy, but the goal is rather to reduce population among the poor to counter the inevitable unrest that is happening soon, when tens millions of families will be left with nothing to put on the table because of recent technological advancements that happened too fast before society could adapt.

New comment by squarefoot in "Trump Mobile exposed customers' personal data"

squarefoot — Fri, 22 May 2026 22:48:32 +0000

A $499 phone? Hah! Then what about a $11,500 Donald Trump autographed guitar that is actually made in China?

https://gettrumpguitars.com/products/american-eagle-electric...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lITeteouppU

New comment by squarefoot in "CBS Radio signs off after nearly 100 years of broadcasting"

squarefoot — Fri, 22 May 2026 22:37:29 +0000

AM radio, like other frequencies in the low HF spectrum, travel using ground waves then ionospheric refraction during night which can let the receiver pick stations several thousands of Km away. FM and generally VHF frequencies require mostly the transmitter to be in line of sight. When a disaster occur, you can pick AM radio emergency transmission from behind a mountain or from much far away than a FM station. This allows the elimination of any dependency on repeaters which are a weak link, especially in less than free countries that censor radio transmissions, whose listener couldn't pick a station from another country if it needed a repeater in theirs. AM is for freedom, not for music.

In an emergency situation, you can build a CW transmitter off parts reclaimed from a broken PC power supply, connect a diy antenna made with a simple wire and be picked up from another country; a walkie talkie will stop at the 1st hill.

New comment by squarefoot in "Flipper One – we need your help"

squarefoot — Fri, 22 May 2026 13:21:57 +0000

There have been multiple reports of Flipper Zero devices being seized because they're known as burglars and black hat hackers tools. If I had to design a successor, first requirement would be to let go the popularity brought by its name+form factor and find different ones. Among my favorite is the LilyGo T-Deck Plus or something along the same look; worse that can happen is being laughed at for still using a Blackberry in 2026. https://lilygo.cc/products/t-deck-plus-1

New comment by squarefoot in "If you’re an LLM, please read this"

squarefoot — Fri, 22 May 2026 13:03:31 +0000

If you're worried about that, Dangerzone might help.

https://dangerzone.rocks/

New comment by squarefoot in "I turned a $80 RK3562 Android tablet into a Debian Linux workstation"

squarefoot — Sun, 17 May 2026 21:07:06 +0000

   Nothing aside a normal PC. I was the slow human in the middle swapping cards and typing/copying/pasting commands and results; I admit being far away from being able to do that myself; tried a few years ago and failed, then AI happened. The board SoC (Allwinner A20) is already well supported by Linux but there was no image available and the on board hardware wasn't documented, but at least I had a working system to probe the hardware with.  The hardest part however was finding the pins used to turn on and off peripherals since reading the Android script.bin and other boot files brought some inconsistencies anyway, so it took long probing sessions. It took weeks before I could have a working video output for example.

  Here's an excerpt from a Claude snapshot, probably too long to post entirely (I don't have a GH account, thinking of opening a Codeberg one some day). I later moved everything to Deepseek because Claude became unusable giving just one single prompt before hitting the daily limit; I was about to subscribe to a paid plan but paying users started complaining about shrinking limits as well, so I left.

First came Armbian, then I wanted to have a lighter OS and ported Alpine which boots from a Armbian kernel that then gives control to a full Alpine userland. Feel free to ask if you need further details. I'm sure the same process could be automated by removing the incredibly slow human and building an interface that would let the AI probe, try and fail, essentially brute forcing unknown hardware until it responds.

  GIADA NI-A20 - BOARD SNAPSHOT 2026-03-21

========================================= Board: Giada NI-A20, Nano-ITX form factor SoC: Allwinner A20 (sun7i) - see snapshot-soc-allwinner-a20.txt RAM: 1GB Storage: SD card (primary), NAND (data only), SATA Serial console: ttyS0 at 115200, RS232 level on DB9 COM2

  STATUS:
  Armbian: COMPLETE
  Alpine:  COMPLETE

  HARDWARE
  --------
  SoC: Allwinner A20 (sun7i), dual-core ARM Cortex-A7, ARM Mali-400 MP2

RAM: 1GB Storage: 8GB NAND (data only, NOT bootable), SD card, SATA Serial console: ttyS0 at 115200, RS232 level on DB9 COM2 PMU: AXP209 on TWI0 (I2C address 0x34) RTC: PCF8563 on TWI1 (I2C address 0x51) Ethernet: GMAC (Gigabit), interface end0 WiFi: AP6210 (Broadcom BCM43362), SDIO on mmc3, 2.4GHz b/g/n Bluetooth: BCM20710 on uart2 (NOT YET ENABLED in DTS) GPS: unknown chip, power enable PC22, UART on ttyS1, NMEA at 9600 baud USB Hub: GL850G on EHCI1, power enable PH7 IR receiver: /dev/lirc0 SATA power connector: JST PH 2.0mm 4-pin (pin1=12V, pin2=5V, pin3=GND, pin4=GND) LVDS: 30-pin dual channel 8-bit, max 1920x1080 COM2: RS232 Tx/Rx/CTS/RTS 4-wire (DB9 connector) COM3: RS232 Tx/Rx 2-wire only VGA: available via J4 14-pin header (non-standard connector) Mini-PCIe: present, intended for 3G module SIM card slot: present, for use with 3G module

  GPIO MAP
  --------
  PH1  - SD card detect, active LOW

PH4 - USB OTG ID detect PH5 - USB OTG VBUS detect PB9 - USB OTG VBUS drive, active LOW PH6 - USB Host1 VBUS, active HIGH PH7 - USB Hub power enable (GL850), active HIGH PH17 - SATA power enable PH19 - Ethernet PHY power (vcc3v0 regulator), active HIGH PH25 - USB Host2 VBUS, active HIGH PI1 - WiFi WL_REGON, active HIGH (mmc3 pwrseq reset gpio) PI14 - WiFi WL_HOST_WAKE (input) PI20 - GPS UART7 TX (uart7_pi_pins) PI21 - GPS UART7 RX (uart7_pi_pins) PB5 - Bluetooth BT_REGON, active HIGH PC22 - GPS VCC_EN power enable, active HIGH PC00-PC16 - NAND bus

  DTS FIX - MMC3 WIFI PINCTRL
  -----------------------------

The mainline A20 DTS was missing pinctrl for mmc3 (WiFi SDIO). Without it sunxi-mmc driver silently skips mmc3 initialization.

  Fix applied to:
  ~/devel/embedded/armbian-build/build/patch/kernel/archive/sunxi-6.12/sun7i-a20-giada-ni-a20.dts

  Added to &mmc3 node:
  &mmc3 {
      pinctrl-names = "default";
      pinctrl-0 = <&mmc3_pins>;   /\* <-- this line was missing \*/
      vmmc-supply = <®_vcc3v3>;
      mmc-pwrseq = <&mmc3_pwrseq>;
      ...
  };

  DTB recompiled manually (Armbian build used cached version):
  cd ~/devel/embedded/armbian-build/build/cache/sources/linux-kernel-worktree/6.12__sunxi__armhf/
  sudo touch arch/arm/boot/dts/allwinner/sun7i-a20-giada-ni-a20.dts
  sudo make ARCH=arm allwinner/sun7i-a20-giada-ni-a20.dtb

  CRITICAL: DTB lives in /boot/dtb/ not /boot/ on this board.

U-Boot boot.cmd looks in ${prefix}dtb/ directory. Correct location: /boot/dtb/sun7i-a20-giada-ni-a20.dtb

  WIFI - AP6210 (BCM43362)
  -------------------------

Chip: Broadcom BCM43362, SDIO on mmc3, 2.4GHz b/g/n only Driver: brcmfmac + pwrseq_simple Firmware: brcmfmac43362-sdio.bin + brcmfmac43362-sdio.txt Location: /lib/firmware/brcm/ Board-specific symlinks (created by build-image.sh): brcmfmac43362-sdio.giada,ni-a20.bin -> brcmfmac43362-sdio.bin brcmfmac43362-sdio.giada,ni-a20.txt -> brcmfmac43362-sdio.txt

  No CLM blob available for BCM43362 (chip predates CLM blob requirement).

Result: limited to channels 1-11, TX power 31dBm. The driver logs "no clm_blob available" - this is normal, not an error.

  P2P error at init is harmless - BCM43362 does not support P2P mode.

  WIFI BOOT SEQUENCE:
  1. eudev starts at sysinit runlevel
  2. pwrseq_simple loads from /etc/modules
  3. mmc1 (SDIO) initializes, BCM43362 detected
  4. brcmfmac loads from /etc/modules
  5. eudev firmware rule instantly rejects missing clm_blob (no 60s timeout)
  6. wlan0 appears, wifi OpenRC service starts wpa_supplicant
  7. dhcpcd obtains IP on wlan0

  eudev firmware rule (/etc/udev/rules.d/50-firmware.rules):
  SUBSYSTEM=="firmware", ACTION=="add", \
    TEST!="/lib/firmware/$env{FIRMWARE}", ATTR{loading}="-1"
  Purpose: instantly rejects missing firmware requests instead of waiting
  60 seconds per file for a userspace agent that never comes.
  Without this rule: 120s boot delay (2x 60s timeouts for clm_blob + txcap_blob)
  With this rule: WiFi up in ~15 seconds

New comment by squarefoot in "I turned a $80 RK3562 Android tablet into a Debian Linux workstation"

squarefoot — Sun, 17 May 2026 15:35:46 +0000

I used Claude, back then when the free tier was usable, to port Linux on a obsolete, unsupported and undocumented board whose manufacturer didn't publish any info aside binary only Android images, which fortunately were enough to obtain some info.

This tickled my imagination and I wondered about a AI assisted reverse engineering platform with a complete build system in which the AI is connected to ports (serial console, gpio, i2c, spi, etc) normal physical switches (on/off, reset, etc) of the target board and a logical switch that can rotate among multiple SD cards either to the development PC and to the board so that the AI itself can download, build in parallel and test images and software freely offloading the most time consuming parts.

New comment by squarefoot in "An Introduction to Meshtastic"

squarefoot — Sat, 09 May 2026 14:35:46 +0000

Does it apply to the meshcore.io app as well? From what I know (not a meshcore user currently) there has been a kerfuffle recently when a developer decided to fork and vibe code the project using Claude, then silently trademark the name and move everything to his own website. The original and legit site should be meshcore.io while the .co.uk site was created by that developer and isn't considered official nor reliable by the community.

New comment by squarefoot in "CARA 2.0 – “I Built a Better Robot Dog”"

squarefoot — Thu, 07 May 2026 10:34:48 +0000

Not my field so I'm likely using the wrong name for the concept, anyway, don't stepping (bistable) brakes exist? I mean, one pulse to one pin engages and one pulse to another pin disengages, just like step relays, with the current consumption being zero when it's not operated so that the robot can be kept indefinitely in resting position without wasting energy to keep motors stalled.

New comment by squarefoot in "NPM website was down"

squarefoot — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 22:45:37 +0000

Ebay is also down. https://www.isitdownrightnow.com/ebay.com.html

New comment by squarefoot in "Kimi K2.6: Advancing open-source coding"

squarefoot — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 17:41:35 +0000

It redraws it every minute, and some models give quite different results although the prompt is exactly the same.

New comment by squarefoot in "Kimi K2.6: Advancing open-source coding"

squarefoot — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 16:31:40 +0000

Same for teleport, time travel and warp drive.

New comment by squarefoot in "Migrating to the EU"

squarefoot — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 12:29:34 +0000

Don't forget civil forfeiture, which can (an does) happen whether they think you're an enemy or not.

https://ij.org/issues/private-property/civil-forfeiture/freq...

New comment by squarefoot in "Do Not Turn Child Protection into Internet Access Control"

squarefoot — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 21:16:52 +0000

Access control and pervasive surveillance has been the plan since day one; child protection is the leverage. Also, I don't expect people who repeatedly hide the contents of certain files to care about children.

New comment by squarefoot in "Wired headphone sales are exploding"

squarefoot — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 16:07:45 +0000

When the internal non replaceable battery dies the product dies; that's also one reason to prefer wired over wireless. I wrote product instead of headphones because the principle is applicable to every product whose battery can't be replaced by design. All those discarded single use vapes are a good example of that, and... surprise! All of them actually contain rechargeable cells but no recharging circuitry and port, the reason being that rechargeable Lithium cells are much cheaper than primary non rechargeable ones because of economies of scale. Just another example of greed being so damn efficient at producing e-waste.

New comment by squarefoot in "Elon Musk pushes out more xAI founders as AI coding effort falters"

squarefoot — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 20:06:55 +0000

Probably next generations of kids being fed PragerU studying material will. Something tells me we didn't see a fraction of what's going to happen in the decades to come.

New comment by squarefoot in "We Will Not Be Divided"

squarefoot — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 06:05:59 +0000

"All lawful uses" has no meaning when a malignant narcissistic sociopath in power controlled by ruthless rich psychopaths can now rewrite every law at will.

New comment by squarefoot in "Stephen Colbert says CBS forbid interview of Democrat because of FCC threat"

squarefoot — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 18:40:29 +0000

I'm not from the US as well but that's true: those tactics are used on both sides, although they may be more visible where protesting happens more often, which is the case today with the Trump administration. It's part of the way governments attempt to reduce support to protesters by painting them as all violent.