elly

Random nerd feared by computers (no matter how "sentient" they might be).

Posts may contain traces of:
- Mainline Linux development (x86/x86_64, ARMv7/ARM64).
- Linux distributions such as: Alpine, Chimera, Fedora, Gentoo, Nura.
- Legacy UNIXes, possibly BSDs.
- Firmware development (coreboot, U-Boot) and everything related to it.
- Designing hardware and discussing interfaces like SPI, I2C, SWD/JTAG etc.
- General hardware (and software!) hacking and reverse-engineering.
- Screaming at digital enshitiffication.
- Memes, possibly doodles.

:neocat_flag_disabled: (ADHD-I, Autoimmune, Spastic Diplegia)

Posts are certified to be gluten-free. Please consult your doctor in case of other allergies.
While main posting language is "English", occasional "日本語", "Deutsch", or "Polski" might also appear.
Any opinions expressed in the process of "posting" belong solely to the account's owner (blah, blah).

Temporairly (or permanently?) done with the internet as of 2026-10-16.

Public Key

npub17p5uf3zjj0ycwmeqp2jxxxaveu6afqcfjecqjxggwy93jmvgfq6sura0st

NIP-05 Address

elly@donotsta-re.mostr.pub

Profile Code

nprofile1qqs0q6wyc3ff8jv8dusq4frrrwkv7dw5svyevuqfryy8zzcedkyysdgpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerfw36x7tnsw43q40pmuq

Publishing to

relay.ditto.pub

Author Public Key

npub17p5uf3zjj0ycwmeqp2jxxxaveu6afqcfjecqjxggwy93jmvgfq6sura0st

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Published at

2026-10-17T08:09:29Z

Kind type

0 Metadata

Event JSON

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Last Notes

2026-10-20 20:57:56 UTC

If you’re on #Gentoo, you should be tracking this: https://bugs.gentoo.org/984601
However, in the meantime:
sed -i \
-e 's|^mozilla/emSign_ECC_Root_CA_-_G3.crt|!&|' \
-e 's|^mozilla/Comodo_AAA_Services_root.crt|!&|' \
/etc/ca-certificates.conf; update-ca-certificates -f
Only emSign cert should be present/removed, output should look like this:
Clearing symlinks in /etc/ssl/certs...
done.
Updating certificates in /etc/ssl/certs...
rehash: warning: skipping ca-certificates.crt, it does not contain exactly one certificate or CRL
144 added, 1 removed; done.
You’re welcome :blobcatsalute:

2026-10-17 00:36:55 UTC

#netbsd on a Chromebook, because WCGW?
Standard ACPI stuff like CPU temperature reading, battery reporting, ATKBD or screen brightness does work.
However, nothing related to EC work (TigerLake and newer will not boot from USB-C due to Mux introduced in that generation, EC will also enter failsafe mode after few minutes, start ramping the fan up and hard power-off due to no response from nonexistent driver).
Graphical corruption in X11 (which also happens on Linux, this thing has a 4K display and works correctly only in Wayland).
Biggest surprise is that I2C seems broken, so touchpad/touchscreen/stylus probably wouldn't work (although I expect to beissing drivers for those devices as well).
Sound and WiFi of course doesn't work (Chromebooks use SOF, so it's not a standard HDA configuration and adding support for audio DSP would be... quite a lot of work) and WiFi is an Intel AX201 (cnvi), so obviously no luck there.
Probably biggest suprise to me is that NetBSD (seemingly) has zero complains about coreboot's ACPI, the only (mis)reporting of ACPI error is that it had no idea how to parse CrosEC stuff.
I'm positively surprised. Being the one to potentially write missing platform drivers sounds fun, I can implement some stuff I had in mind but maintainers of `platforms/chrome` in Linux absolutely hated :blobcat3c:
I think I'm gonna add NetBSD to my standard testing suite while working on coreboot, not just Linux and Windows.
https://asdf.donotsta.re/media/c02b52b0cd062b436906e50ee7e85c8837007eacf3f9849bb33efad955d0b1ba.jpg

2026-10-07 22:53:25 UTC

I really wonder why people aren't DIYing watercooling blocks. Found only two videos where they go "DON'T DO IT, BAD IDEA"... am I missing something?
You can get really cheap heatsinks that roughly match your CPU's surface (way cheaper than ready-made waterblocks) and design plastic part which feeds water trough that heatsink.
Add some inlet/outlet to attach a gardenhose, print in ABS (temperature resistance), add an o-ring (or just use silicone), insert the heatsink and secure it with screws.
Pull car radiator out of a junkyard and reasonably powerful pump (~20 years ago people were just using aquarium pumps) and boom, watercooling for the price of.. pretty good aircooler these days (~20 EUR). Probably the reason why nobody bothers with liquid cooling in general these days (not to mention maintenance burden) but it's still surprising that nobody even tried to do it :akko_shrug:

2026-10-02 02:49:01 UTC

"Yes we accept LLM contributions, but our code standards are high"
https://asdf.donotsta.re/media/7a490b5062367b6e3ff67c210120fdcdb9a2735c0c72a844415515f0cb869368.jpg

2026-09-30 10:29:45 UTC

I can't believe someone from @nprofile…v8fv managed to nerdsnipe me into bringing back AMD F15h support in coreboot :akko_giggle:

2026-09-28 20:38:14 UTC

Me: *mentions MIPS in CCCAC*
@nprofile…w20m and @nprofile…csn2: *jump over the couch and bring MIPS systems to the table*
#cccacleaks :akko_giggle:

2026-09-26 21:58:57 UTC

What do you mean you need to pay taxes if you adopt a cat? What the hell, Germany? :blobcatnotlikethis:

2026-09-07 20:22:58 UTC

Me: "Okay, time to put this into drawer and revisit it when I'll have more time"
My brain: "So... you're just going to let the device win?"
Me: "...hold my tea"
https://asdf.donotsta.re/media/fbaa0189c724ba27c2901e1628b6dbe12af54e2ab355996302dda090949ac35c.jpg

2026-08-30 23:41:03 UTC

Hacker equivalent of “Tony Stark was able to build this in a cave! With a box of scraps!"
https://asdf.donotsta.re/media/6a0620200834f6c5dc68435b75c36c255bc01b541d583733355f3bb287aa397a.jpg

2026-08-28 14:43:47 UTC

Finally after ~6 months of work we can (almost) boot AMD Phoenix (Ryzen 7000 Mobile) with upstream #coreboot (+3 unmerged patches as of now) and OpenSIL. Whew, what a ride.
Some issues still remain, platform still hangs while:
- Bringing-up UART0
- Sending POST_COMPLETE to PSP mailbox
So those need to be figured out (commenting-out those functions is just a massive hack as of now)
https://asdf.donotsta.re/media/6e6b316da64c16d33b2502bb513ffe3f5644c693adb3f029bde2b230b5a72ff5.jpg

2026-08-19 17:54:05 UTC

Signal integrity isn't real, it can't hurt you
https://asdf.donotsta.re/media/d4d6bef7cd8f07d8deb3170ae134a3893668de0ea9225a06c93690f5a4d1abb4.jpg

2026-08-07 15:56:21 UTC

Me in my teens:
- "Why are we learning how to edit AUTOEXEC? This is ancient stuff, there's no way we'll ever need"
- "I don't wanna learn German, my teachers have no idea how to actually teach it"
Me in my late-20s, somewhere in rural Germany: "bruh"
https://asdf.donotsta.re/media/f363b9fefb025d33145f961ba35535ba68f76ed3db03744cb04b396612cf924a.jpg

2026-08-04 22:38:49 UTC

I really need to know where folks are getting those smol neocat plushies, they're way too cute :neocat_boop:

2026-07-28 15:30:46 UTC

> Lattice bought AMI
...since when does poop have value?

2026-07-18 21:31:10 UTC

Been doing some more sorting and clean-up today so I can finally have a bit more space in my (tiny) flat and it got me thinking:
I'm sitting on *a lot* of hardware which is at least partially broken (I would feel bad giving it away as it can possibly die at any moment) but it would be perfectly service'able as buildservers or systems people need temporarily (i.e testing something on older platforms).
However, I don't want to build those systems into cases due to space constrains and cost associated with it... but I could build a dedicated space for it under my electronics workbench.
Regular ATX mainboards are smaller than 19in racks (I guess they're roughly 12 inch long according to wikipedia as I don't speak 'Murican units) and some plywood I can get at a hardware store not only would do the job, it would support the workbench in case I put something heavier on top of it (after all, cheap IKEA benchtops are made pretty much out of cardboard).
Then I could 3D-print sleds for ATX/mATX mainboards (or even laptop mainboards) that would slide in perfectly, the only problem being "how do I cut perfectly straight sled guides without tools or space to do so".
In terms of power: ATX PSUs are super expensive these days... but server PSUs aren't, getting one that spits-out 12V even up to 1kW is pretty cheap (costs roughly 20 - 30EUR) and provides advanced monitoring over PMBus. The only downsides are noise they make (but who says you can't cut the case and attach bigger fans) and (usually) custom connectors that would need some RE-ing to yoink 12V busbar and i2c from them
Mounting them on an open-air side of that box for safety reasons (maybe covered with perforated aluminium cover) sounds like a perfect solution - very efficient PSUs that can provide a lot of power and advanced monitoring for pretty cheap, and ATX boards can get even cheaper PicoPSUs for 5 and 3.3V (basically DC-DC conversion and relay controlled by SuperIO) and be powered on/off on demand by GPIO on MCU.
Kinda curious if anyone built something like it in the past, or if there are any considerations that I missed?

2026-07-16 01:39:04 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…re2d on dGPUs I would absolutely expect that, you need specific VBIOS for RAM present on the card, VRM etc

2026-07-16 01:31:12 UTC

Asked around and were told that AMD ATOMBIOS wasn't storing device-specific configuration and I found that sus because I couldn't get eDP initialized with generic one provided by 3rdparty/amd_blobs and Intel has VBT for this exact reason...
Turns out my hunch was right, we're gaming :acat_sunglasses:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XlH_1Z0slk
https://asdf.donotsta.re/media/0e8f7add03faddb63e9a935b05f750e83df2a5741e59fa7049a1eb315be6fbc4.jpg

2026-07-13 08:01:26 UTC

- Mommy, mommy, how do chips get made?
- Oh, you see honey, when two vendors like each other very much...

2026-07-02 19:08:07 UTC

Almost done with porting MS-7D98... and oh boy, is it ever cursed (though mostly in a positive way).
MSI basically took a gayming motherboard where they didn't bother routing reset pins from PCH to separate slots and slapped a "Pro" label on it.
This sadly means that ASPM will not work reliably (with exception of RootPort 5, as they had to do proper power management for Thunderbolt add-on card they're selling). I was kinda hoping I could fix their laziness but can't do much if almost all slots have a common reset GPIO.
However, because I reverse-engineered the clock routing, I can only enable clocks that are actively used (hence why FREE_RUNNING). This along with some other tweaks already dropped idle power consumption to ~20W (@230V with mediocre PSU), compared to 35W with stock AMI firmware) so I still call it a win.
Positively cursed parts are:
1. This board has an RS232 and LPT headers, so breakout looks like something straight from the 90s (which looks really bizarre with USB-C and WiFi antennas right above it).
2. It has an SMBus header, so you can just connect your own I2C device to it and drive it without any external interfaces.
3. RGB controller is a Cortex-M0 MCU connected over USB and SMBus, so you could potentially run your own firmware on it and use it for different purposes than blinkenlights.
It can be powered from a standby rail so maybe it could be turned into a "BMC" by using SMBus as a serial console and USB for HID emulation :akko_thonk:

2026-06-22 12:18:13 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…8m52 @nprofile…3utp depends on the workplace it might be fine?
I found a rust book in the office and complained on slack that it didn't come with cat ears, so coworker 3D-printed cat ears for my headphones. When I was wearing them as a joke in the office, two of my coworkers meowed at me :akko_giggle:

2026-06-22 08:09:17 UTC

Finally, after ~2 days of bashing my head against GPIOs without schematics, all PCIe ports, as well as S3 resume is working* :ablobcatbongo:
It feels magical to not have to deal with PCIe bus errors caused by badly routed signals or broken S3 because someone forgot to include a gate between 5V and 5VSB (like it was the case on Erying board).
All that's left to do now is:
- Add automatic fan control/hook-up SuperIO sensors in devicetree
- Grab a PS/2 keyboard from the basement to test KBC
- Test JUSB1 header after I receive the FP Type-C to Type-A adapter
- Maybe test M.2 SATA SSD in M2_2 slot
- Bonus quest: Find someone with ancient printer to test LPT :meowgiggle:
*Windows 11 throws a BSOD "INTERNAL_POWER_ERROR (0xA0)" (0x613, 0x01) when suspending even though Windows 10 and Linux work just fine. I suspect that install might be cooked thanks to libvirt drivers or something

2026-06-18 01:48:08 UTC

I don't know where the misconception "you can't boot Windows using coreboot" came from, but I'm tired of correcting people... so here's the proof which should (hopefully) put that misconception to rest for once and for all :akko_tired:
All you need are sane ACPI tables (which makes booting windows a great test, otherwise it'll throw a BSOD at you) and payload providing UEFI services (for consumer versions). That's literally it.
https://asdf.donotsta.re/media/853fb62da127d693a16baab7db83417ccfb20ce2190657a7888f4a4ef06b4a4a.jpg

2026-06-09 20:05:58 UTC

Would anyone here happen to have an “MSI B760 Gaming Plus WiFi DDR4” motherboard?
From what I can tell, it’s exactly the same as “MSI Pro B760-P WiFi DDR4” with slightly different heatsinks.
If you do happen to have one, I would appreciate if you could test if this boots on it:
https://review.coreboot.org/c/coreboot/+/93127
https://f.sakamoto.pl/elly/coreboot/msi/wip_bios_region.rom (if you don’t want to build it yourself, something something don’t flash binary builds from strangers or something)
PCIe clocks are not hooked up yet (figuring them is a PITA, but I might have a new strategy of doing it) so you would need:
1.8V-capable SPI flasher (i.e: Glasgow Interface Explorer or ch347 with level shifter)
USB stick with Linux to boot from
Monitor connected to iGPU
Sadly flash can’t be done internally due to ME, for that IFD region has to be pet with ifdtool after dumping the chip:
./ifdtool -p adl -u <path/to/dump>
Overall, it boils down to:
flashrom serprog:ip=localhost:2222 -r stock.rom; flashrom serprog:ip=localhost:2222 -r stock2.rom; diff stock.rom stock2.rom (if you have “files differ”, you’ve got an unstable connection and you need to try again).
flashrom serprog:ip=localhost:2222 --ifd -i bios -w wip_bios_region.rom
Disconnect flasher, boot the system and test if it works
flashrom serprog:ip=localhost:2222 --ifd -i bios -w stock.rom
PCIe 5.0 should work with ME disabled (have a small local patch for it that gets rid of VBOOT API dependency, will push it later), as well as S3 suspend/resume.
I don’t expect issues there without modifying IFD to set HAP bit though (which you shouldn’t do on stock firmware, as it would break PCIe x16 slot since Synopsys PCIe 5.0 firmware is loaded from HECI and stock firmware doesn’t have logic to replace this mechanism).
Thanks! :ablobcatheartsqueeze:
https://asdf.donotsta.re/media/2fb9a8a2ccbb325ff2b3d7048cb7f6cd76794bb78b7388d00b47403caa47fb48.jpg

2026-06-03 01:14:51 UTC

Bundenspolizei dillema: Is it a #postmarketos developer, or terrorist with a bomb? :akko_giggle:
Wires sticking out of the phone
Wall of text scrolling by after pressing the power button
Phone making weird noises
(In case anyone would want to play with this device at #gpn24, please do not squish the right side of the case, while it should be safe, I cannot guarantee you wouldn’t puncture the battery if you would go “full ham” on it)
https://asdf.donotsta.re/media/c6da6f0772da7f871ebd36518dcea79eca9303ce490569c0ef241e6184cc11e5.jpg
https://asdf.donotsta.re/media/6bb817b655726ea8edf6cef399f028b2610df22675394aa69772b3249df0ee28.jpg

2026-05-29 02:07:23 UTC

AMD: Used the same exact mounting holes from 2006 until 2017, if your cooler uses stock mounting bracket you can literally use cooler made for first x86_64 CPUs on the market on the newest 16-core beast, marking it 20 years of compatibilty
Intel: We change mounting holes ever-so-slighly every 4 to 6 years, screw you
Guess who just found that LGA1200 and LGA1700 has different mounting holes and who (likely) doesn’t have an LGA1700 backplate for their cooler.
Went trough everything and if it won’t be in the box stashed in the basement I will either have to design and 3D-print a new backplate, or email manufacturer and ask if they would send me a replacement (which would mean that I wouldn’t get this system up-and-running this week either way).
So, excuse me while I: cough
INTEEEEEEEL :akko_scream:
cough, thank you for your attention and have a nice day

2026-05-28 23:24:17 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…h6ty @nprofile…wm62 Maybe someone will find it helpful, it looks like:
- 3mm on the back (above VRAM, contacting backplate)
- 2mm on VRAM/VRM (heatsink)
(Fun fact: I took those pictures with Nokia N8. 16 years, camera still looks surprisingly decent)
https://asdf.donotsta.re/media/254674c63d19288e14c237938b97f8314ed1e295f7187bb985c7f10912d16e3b.jpg
https://asdf.donotsta.re/media/9d817dd1181a05c321639ba31984fb42f651a26fc68b89bcf0ff192549574d2f.jpg
https://asdf.donotsta.re/media/f7ba003c16e147bef9791bd9bd317b55cc526ba2e2a661b6722ee588479875cb.jpg

2026-05-27 19:46:46 UTC

#postmarketos can have contactless payments, as a treat :blobcat3c:
#nevent1q…7u54
https://asdf.donotsta.re/media/394a37949d3227916156972f681802aa778d5c2e8553a02cd137d603a5879927.mp4

2026-05-26 15:44:17 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…h6ty @nprofile…wm62 yes, I measured VRM pads that were touching the PCB (not mosfets), so I think it's safe to assume:
- 2mm under the heatsink (VRAM/VRM)
- 3.5mm under the backplate

2026-05-26 14:30:08 UTC

Does anyone know how to match thermopads? Of course GPU vendors never provide this information...
Back in 2024 I bought the fastest, most expensive card I ever had (~500EUR), it started crashing last summer and memory was idling at 70*C. It got better during the winter, but recently (before my motherboard died) it got worse.
Never had to replace thermopads before (even on 10 year-old cards they usually were fine), so I'd appreciate any tips.
I'm currently assembling a new workstation, thanks to friends ( @nprofile…j9hp, @nprofile…7vmv, @nprofile…wm62, @nprofile…rmme ) I was able to afford an LGA1700 DDR4 motherboard (there's no way I'm buying DDR5 in current market conditions even if it costs a fair bit of performance) and i9-14900K which will also be ~50% faster than Erying with ES i9-11980HK that... disintegrated.
Over the past 2 weeks I tested all components from my (dead) workstation, with following results:
- Heatsink: Bent in shipping (thanks LaPoste), will use a publicly-accessible vice in OBI to strengthen it. It should be able to handle this CPU.
- Seasonic 620W: Works perfectly, dusted it off and swapped a new fan in
- 32GB of DDR4 I bought back in 2023: Works without XMP enabled, but instability at 3200MHz might be caused by either bad board design or heatwave.
- SSDs/HDDs: Perfectly fine, I got all of my data uncorrupted.
- GPU (Sapphire RX7800XT Pulse): Overheats even at idle (bad fan profile), fan control doesn't work (even though it was supposed to). Opened it up to find completely dry thermal paste and thermopads crumbling if touched.
Measuring current pads (obviously squished) with calipers gave me following results:
- Backplate -> PCB (above VRAM): 3mm
- VRAM -> heatsink: 1.8mm
- VRM: 2mm
Should I just order the same thickness, or do they have to be slightly thicker (since heatsink should compress them)?
Thanks! :neocat_heart:
https://asdf.donotsta.re/media/1b1f7675a32bb3a5cc8e87d9c03d5c02e6a8e1d4ba4ab65445ba0ae219fe87cf.jpg

2026-05-24 16:42:25 UTC

I have to say, this new MacBook Neo is really pretty :akko_giggle:
https://asdf.donotsta.re/media/05798fe6e7e552c3f957b3cf14ed1a4008474010ee831fe0eb6988136fd06d38.jpg

2026-05-23 12:32:29 UTC

Being a Polish person in their late 20s is... surreal.
Imagine that you were been born in country that was falling apart. Buildings literally crumbling, extremely high crime rates and everyone leaving as soon as they turned ~18 (myself included).
Fast-forward ~20 years. You now live in one of safest countries in Europe (stuff like terrorist attacks are simply not a concern). Streets are clean and public transport is (for the most part) pretty good.
Sure, you still need to make sure nobody snatches your phone from back pocket in crowded areas, but you've got nothing to worry about for the most part. People are leaving their laptops/iPads on their seats when they go to the toilet or restaurant on trains.
Not only people started moving back, you now see plenty of immigrants around (even in smaller towns), to the point where public administration had to add Ukrainian and English as official languages.
Of course, some things never change. Public healthcare is objectively terrible and politics are an absolute shitshow, but... that's par for the course these days.
Friend of mine decided to start learning Polish and I seriously cannot comprehend it, because this language is *extremely* difficult to learn. In fact, it shares a lot of pronunciation and rules with Japanese which (ironically enough) makes it easier for Polish person to learn Japanese (and vice-versa) than French or German.
Like... what the heck? :akko_what:

2026-05-22 08:03:54 UTC

2012 is so back :blobcat3c:
https://asdf.donotsta.re/media/c44af2a606d3859850f63c8cce7d595f66112c688c07c68fd1b65ca4f26b9922.jpg

2026-05-12 20:55:41 UTC

So Bambu Lab, a Chinese company, filed a DMCA (US law) against a Polish developer who... lives in Poland.
Isn't this simply... bullshit? Why would an European developer have to care about some law in the US?
I really don't understand that logic, so I hope someone can explain :neocat_googly:

2026-05-10 16:49:08 UTC

age verification failed :akko_giggle:
https://asdf.donotsta.re/media/83ca9c7aad88cee0583436bf7bdde0d0fe5bf4a5e6a9d115fb2005bb656a1ff5.jpg

2026-05-10 13:12:51 UTC

OH:
- Does alpine not have nested virtualization for it's test runners?
- What now runners?
- Does alpine not have testing infra?
- They do (it is @nprofile…agah laptop) /j

2026-05-10 12:55:54 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…8m52 that wouldn't make much sense? In this sentence "小国" was used, which seems objectively correct

2026-05-07 21:18:56 UTC

- reply

@nprofile…re2d https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhOH5p6mvHo&t=16

2026-04-30 04:11:37 UTC

This might be a hot take, but I will never understand why people new to hacking on mobile/embedded devices insist on trying to use vendor-provided sources.
Even if you get a kernel source from $vendor (which is not a given, welcome to the magical land of GPL violation) you will run into numerous issues even trying to compile it, only to end up with a pile of legacy crap that will never* work correctly with upstream userspace (unless you resort to using Ubuntu Touch or Droidian, which AFAIK use halium and can use Android HALs).
Seriously, if you're new to this and want to learn how to do it *properly* on a completely unsupported SoC, you should:
1. Dump downstream devicetree from running device. It's much easier to understand than vendor sources once you understand how it works: `dtc -I dtb /sys/firmware/fdt -O dts > /storage/emulated/0/Downloads/dumped.dts` (and pull it using adb).
2. Locate UART pins on your device (beware that most ARM SoCs use 1.8V or under) and what's the address for that (for example on MT6789/MT8781 it's `0x11002000`). Using simple-framebuffer is a last resort but you really want functional UART for early bringup.
3. Write initial upstream devicetree and minimal driver set. You more-or-less need the following to get into initramfs:
- Clocks
- Core cluster definition (in DT)
- Possibly reserved-memory (memory regions that shouldn't be used, often used by modem/wifi, gpu, remoteprocs etc)
- Interrupt Controller (usually ARM GICv3 unless it's Apple, then AIC)
- Pinctrl
- UART
*(Hopefully not forgetting about anything?)*
4. Go from there (drivers for interconnect, i2c/spi etc).
Using kernel trees for the same SoC (even if it's a different vendor) is a protip, it's all $soc_vendor's BSP after all. Or if you're in really deep, throwing kernel modules at ghidra is also an option :akko_shrug:

2026-04-24 19:26:19 UTC

Pakige took 3 months to arrive, but I'm already loving it. It can charge and transfer data via built-in USB cable, output clean 1080i and even use an external microphone if needed :blobcat3c:
Took an inspiration from @nprofile…9eh0 and her VHS camera, I wanted digital one for years but couldn't afford it (even today prices for ~14 years old models are insane in EU). This one really wasn't expensive
https://asdf.donotsta.re/media/333970b8f4a8d54889c8901ad8463ccfb62c41e1362e362e28805f13ff9263f3.mp4

2026-04-18 23:38:35 UTC

Amazing IKEA quality, good thing I noticed it before monitors slammed the keyboard :neocat_shocked:
https://asdf.donotsta.re/media/be15b47d1f1fc47caf0e1d9dd2ae8d6c05e321397c37062d78ff3cdb93d0d5a5.jpg

2026-04-16 17:07:23 UTC

> Put two socks into the washing machine
> One sock comes out
I thought I've put my socks into a washing machine, not a Half-Life teleporter

2026-04-11 20:03:37 UTC

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@nprofile…8m52 new season of tensura? I haven't even watched Frieren S2 yet :meowcry:

2026-04-11 19:40:23 UTC

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@nprofile…8m52 I guess it's just legacy stuff (much like SATA drives are enumerated as /dev/sdX in Linux)

2026-04-11 19:36:39 UTC

Welp, looks like upstream changes to uclass broke mediatek ufs driver, so that will need some debugging... but it works on older U-Boot tree, so I don't have to deal with annoying LK.
Since I can now boot this phone using U-Boot's EFI implementation, it's time to pet some penguins :blobcat3c:
https://asdf.donotsta.re/media/26632f9a4baab4ddd983c36c305d55b16dfe866c5d038f7ecb36fd5bbdd8d743.jpg

2026-04-03 02:23:05 UTC

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@nprofile…hfhc I guess it makes sense, having an IC card in your phone is only useful in really crowded areas like Tokyo or Osaka
>SUGOCA
:blobcat3c: (I still think Suica's design is cuter)
https://asdf.donotsta.re/media/5f909cf1a81cd3396cdf8001588b81c9fda20e44d6204667cecf6e9150173dac.jpg

2026-04-02 18:21:15 UTC

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@nprofile…hfhc I wonder if you'll be able to get OsafuKeitai running on it. I wish I changed my device model before the trip last year, sadly I was too lazy and had device with locked bootloader/no root on me so I couldn't test.
(International models of Google Pixel can use OsafuKeitai just fine, there's a check in the app if device was sold on Japanese market. I literally just ran "sed" on devinfo partition which changes model ID to one corresponding to a Japanese model and it works. Downside is that I have global shutter sound in Android but I don't really care about it since it's not obnoxious
https://asdf.donotsta.re/media/38bc91ccbb85d8d28138c011769a0fdac092fa37ff63353f091fa3e2154b5f31.png

2026-04-02 18:08:23 UTC

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@nprofile…hfhc I mean, that's... pretty standard? If you don't install GApps on LineageOS it's the same exact story

2026-03-27 12:34:51 UTC

@nprofile…wm62 bought a replacement board for Blackberry (Zinwa Q25) and nerdsniped me into mainline bringup (as it is tradition).
Looked at dumped DT, so far it looks like the SoC is quite similar to MT8183/MT8186 on Chromebooks so it shouldn't be too difficult to get working on mainline:
- MT6789/MT8781V (G99/G99 Pro) is basically the same SoC, 6x A55 and 2x A76 (MT8183/MT8186).
- MT6366/MT6358 PMIC (confusing strings, MT6366 would make it the same as MT8186 in Google/Corsola while MT6358 would make it the same as MT8183 in Google/Krane). Both supported in upstream.
- I/O block (i2c, spi etc) from MT6983 (Dimensity 9000).
- Weird touchscreen (i2c 0x11e00000 addr 0x67). DT says Synaptics S2716B, Kconfig says gigadevice, header says novatek, makefile says omnivision... and downstream kernel just ships pre-compiled object... what the hell?.
- Orient-Chip OCA72390WPAD audio amp at i2c 0x11015000 addr 0x58, ST21 NFC 0x08 on the same node.
- MT6375 charger at i2c 0x11017000 addr 0x34 plus wl2868c PMIC at addr 0x2f on the same node.
- wallComputer BBQX0KBD (BlackBerry keyboard controller) at i2c 0x1101a000 addr 0x1f
- UFS at 0x11270000 (mt8183-ufshci... wtf?)
- MicroSD slot (SDHC) at 11240000
- Smasnug S5KJN1 camera
- Sony IMX111 camera
- Little Kernel used as firmware (MTK BSP), unsure if they fused the BootROM (hope not)

2026-03-25 17:28:22 UTC

Maybe we should look deeper into politicians that keep bringing this rubbish up.
We told them to fuck off multiple times now, so it's clear they're corrupt and are likely funded by someone.

2026-03-24 08:45:13 UTC

turns out bisecting DRM is even more of a pain in the butt than I initially thought :akko_tired:

2026-03-23 00:52:52 UTC

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@nprofile…re2d @nprofile…75l3 can't find anything about ALS in Lenowo's techscpecs or on linux-hardware so... I don't think it has one?

2026-03-22 22:58:13 UTC

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@nprofile…re2d @nprofile…75l3 this just... works in Plasma Mobile on my phone?
There's a toggle in display settings if I want to use ALS to adjust brightness automatically... and it works the same as on Android (poorly because Xiaomi didn't calibrate the sensor correctly, but it does).
I guess you'd need to check how it's connected and if there are drivers in mainline for that particular sensor in your laptop

2026-03-21 17:59:12 UTC

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@nprofile…re2d this can't be true

2026-03-21 09:03:19 UTC

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@nprofile…8m52 @nprofile…u622 then I must be even weirder than people realize, I started using Gentoo in 1st year of high-school (age 15/16), ~2013. Then I stopped using it around 2021 and now I'm back again.
That being said, I don't think many teenagers would mess with Gentoo these days. Commodity of cheap but powerful hardware and smartphones really damaged the "hacker spirit" among teenagers, back then you had to somewhat understand computers to use them. These days it's all locked down so that advertising companies can serve you non-stop brainrot and monetize your attention *old woman yells at modern technology*

2026-03-20 23:06:05 UTC

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@nprofile…re2d oh yeah, eGPUs are a total mess...
Two years ago my company organized a hackathon somewhere in rural Germany, I brought some Chromebooks and my desktop, coworker brought his laptop and RTX2080 (I think?) in eGPU enclosure.
eGPU setup basically... didn't work. It behaved much better with RX7800XT we yoinked from my workstation, but still wasn't super stable either way.
I ended up letting him swap the SSD into my desktop and use it for few days, after which he sold nvidia card and eGPU enclosure. He bought used Ryzen system with the same GPU I have (I think) for pretty much the same amount of money he got from selling that setup.
That's why it might be a hot take but eGPUs are inherently stupid. Setup costs the same as used parts and you give up A LOT of performance due to bus constrains (it's like what, 32Gb/s on TB4?).
I'm pretty hyped for dual-oculink board for my work laptop (Framework 16) that someone's been working on.
You have direct PCIe 4.0 x8 exposed on the back of the laptop that you can do whatever you want with.
Plus, because AMD doesn't have the whole IFD nonsense, you can split those lanes however you want (at least according to my findings while reverse-engineering this stuff so far), so you can literally have 8x PCIe 4.0 x1 slots hanging off of your laptop if you really want.
This effectively means that once I'm done with porting coreboot to that system, you'll have a toggle that will allow you to split that PCIe port into:
- 1x 8-lanes
- 2x 4-lanes
- 4x 2-lanes
- 8x 1-lane
- Maybe something custom, like 2x2 for two additional (internal) NVME SSDs, and external OcuLink with 4-lanes of PCIe (40Gb/s)?
That would be really neat in my opinion, and board costs basically pennies (~40EUR) in comparison to licensed TB4 implementation (I don't even want to think how much TB5 will cost due to signal integrity etc)

2026-03-20 22:39:05 UTC

I really can’t wait until gpu resetting on Linux will become a thing…
Many motherboards (especially reference boards from silicon vendors or laptops) allow you to enable/disable power to the slot by controlling the GPIO (SoC pincontrol).
You can spot this by looking for “rtd” in src/mainboard/* directory in coreboot tree, there are pins specified for PCIe power and reset.
Imagine being able to cut the power to something like a dedicated GPU in your system by setting PCIE_PWR pin low and decreasing your desktop power’s consumption by ~30W (or even ~80W if you happen to use first-generation Intel Arc GPU).
Then when you want to play a game, you would set the pin high, DRM would re-initialize the card, and you could either play as-is (displays connected to iGPU would cost you some performance due to DMA framebuffer copy) or press the button on (very inexpensive these days) DP/HDMI switch and play with full performance straight from dGPU.
Of course none of that would be required if board vendor would implement ASPM correctly, but vast majority of board vendors fuck up their power management/board designs, so that would be nice to have.
(One day I will go insane enough to design an open-source ATX board that would implement everything correctly and use STM32 as an Embedded Controller)

2026-03-19 23:31:14 UTC

I really appreciate folks working on Plasma Mobile though, this is really comfy (pretty much my daily-driver now) :neocat_floof:
(Yes, I still need to fix internal audio, wifi and cameras, but they're not deal-breakers for me especially since I can use bluetooth in the meantime)
https://asdf.donotsta.re/media/2eb27c14949537fcb9f0cfd73bf188f2e2bc011763858b5fb28ad3d28bd8fe28.pmosftw

2026-03-19 17:04:01 UTC

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@nprofile…re2d :akko_hug: same here, today is truly *the* day it seems

2026-03-19 02:17:00 UTC

restore original security features in your device
I’m pretty sure #postmarketos is more secure than android, dear banking app :akko_giggle:
https://asdf.donotsta.re/media/75c11c8e394a8c73b4c2225de667572c032c62151dde2052a70258509e127313.png

2026-03-09 17:39:21 UTC

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@nprofile…hfhc you're missing the beans (tm)
https://asdf.donotsta.re/media/0d6c55bf347ea62b6c6d4f971c1e5dbeae8c02998cdd38ee60b5d357faf1b072.jpg

2026-03-04 21:58:33 UTC

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@nprofile…re2d I mean, I can relate... (maybe I went too far, but I'm also just freakin' tired)
https://mail.coreboot.org/archives/list/coreboot@coreboot.org/thread/CMMTIGZFCGWC57BK3WCHQQNC3D7523EP/
Can recommend TesseracT's albums from early 2010s, hang in there :blobcat_huggies_sad:

2026-03-04 21:49:10 UTC

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@nprofile…re2d hey, look at it this way - if we would meet our teenage selves they'd think we grew up to be pretty darn cool (at least I hope so)

2026-03-04 21:44:16 UTC

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@nprofile…re2d real question being: Did you (also) listen to bands like Escape the Fate?
(I kept my old music collection, Eyes Set to Kill and Bring me the Horizon are still bangers tbh)

2026-03-03 17:09:47 UTC

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@nprofile…hfhc I think one of the reasons is poor optimization for Asian languages to be honest... or even any non-English language. I started using Linux when I was 11 (2008) and back then I didn't speak English.
Translations were terrible and often missing altogether so I had to keep English dictionary on top of my monitor because I needed it *very* often. Things had improved over the years, but I can still clearly see that support for languages using non-latin alphabet (like Japanese) are usually an afterthought in FOSS :akko_shrug:
(I switched to using en_GB.UTF-8 circa 2012 and never looked back, but while setting up a laptop for my elderly mother I saw that UI elements are not designed to display long sentences etc so if you're using pl_PL.UTF-8 for example it looks horrible).

2026-03-03 16:26:19 UTC

1984: "Obey"
2026: "Verify"

2026-02-26 22:07:57 UTC

I have to say that using Linux on a phone feels... nostalgic? Kinda like Windows Mobile PDAs used to or Android in the very beginning (in a good way).
These days mobile OSes obscure everything from the user, actively punishing them for rooting their devices or instaling custom builds.
Linux on the other hand feels like ~2008. You have apps for daily needs (like you did on PDAs back in the day), you can consume media (reading books, watching movies, listening to music).
But if you're a curious person... there's a terminal. You can see exactly what your device is doing and how it works. You want to know which GPS satellites can see you? No problem, just query the modem-manager or use simple GUI app that will tell you the name of a satellite and which system/country it belongs to (turns out my device supports GALILEO, neat!).
Im really enjoying it. Two years ago I would say it was still unusable, but now (despite WiFi, Audio and Cameras not working on my device yet) it's... neat.
(Post written from xiaomi-pyxis running postmarketOS with Plasma Mobile while walking back home from a supermaket btw)

2026-02-05 23:01:13 UTC

Kinda wondering if anyone else notices more eyestrain with modern displays (especially cheap ones that use PWM).
On my desk I have three monitors:
1. Cheapest 2560x1440 "gaming" monitor from LG that I could get my hands on back in 2023 (EDID doesn't even show the model). Likely PWM.
2. LG 24EA53V (1920x1080) from ~2012, likely DC.
3. NEC MultiSync LCD2470WNX (1920x1200, ~2007, CCFL).
On my workbench I have a pair of:
- Dell 2007FPB (2x 1600x1200, ~2007, CCFL)
Plus my Chromebook, which I got as a birthday gift back in ~2022:
Samsung Electronics SDC4142 (13.3' 3840x2160 AMOLED)
Using old CCFL monitors I can stare at them for hours and not feel any tiredness, same with my Chromebook.
Old 1080p LG monitor is also fine, my eyes don't really hurt but they get tired a bit more than with CCFL.
However, with the (currently main) cheap 27in LG "gaming" monitor it's... pretty bad, especially if I decrease brightness in the evening.
It's so bad in fact that I consider de-commissioning it and use it only for games (which is a bit ironic, as I haven't played almost any games outside of few VRChat sessions since... 2023).
I'm really torn on this one because CCFL displays use A LOT more power, but are much nicer to use overall. Or maybe I'm just crazy, who knows :akko_shrug:

2026-02-03 06:57:16 UTC

1. Be me
2. Turn heating off before heading to FOSDEM
3. Be on your way back, see a snowstorm
4. Realize heating's off and it's -15*C outside (compared to ~6*C in Brussels)
5. Neuron activation, desktop is online
6. SSH into your desktop at home
7. Set fans to 50% (piping to hwmon)
8. Start a full system update with emerge
I knew running Gentoo is a good idea :akko_giggle:

2026-01-31 10:04:51 UTC

After watching Dankpods’s new video I wonder how nobody’s talking about Gigabyte purposefully crippling performance of their laptops if you boot Linux.
Either nobody’s buying their rubbish… or nobody noticed that if you add acpi_os_name="Windows 2021" to your kernel parameters you suddenly get much better performance.

2026-01-30 21:39:15 UTC

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@nprofile…m7ah Yep, but in my case my skin also starts itching and then bubbles start appearing (similar to gluten, it's just food allergy)

2026-01-30 21:11:39 UTC

Welp, looks like I'm allergic to Spezi. Not sure why I'm surprised given I'm allergic to most citrus-like fruits (especially oranges) but still... sucks, no more Spezi for me :meowcry:

2026-01-30 16:53:30 UTC

Yet another day of screaming at digital enshitiffication:
1. My coworkers and I are in a car driving to FOSDEM.
2. We pull up to charge the car.
3. Charging station REQUIRES you to use an app, no option to just pay with a card.
4. We try to install the stupid app. We carry phones running:
- GrapheneOS
- GrapheneOS
- GrapheneOS
- LineageOS, postmarketOS, iOS
5. Neither of our phones meet requirements to install the stupid app (Play Integrity API).
6. My iPhone can't install the app, because it's "Not available in your country".
7. We give up and drive to another charging station.
This is NOT how you introduce applications, "Circle K" :akko_scream:

2026-01-29 16:57:37 UTC

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@nprofile…ujul I've had similar issues that started relatively innocent (crash here and there), but then I started getting segfaults while compiling and ended up spewing corruption across my filesystem...
I noticed that launching Unity game failed every time, so I made "Launch Unity game using Steam" my standard test procedure when working on firmware/tuning memory controllers. Might be a bit silly, but it's usually faster than memtest.
P.S: You can use GRUB's BADRAM parameter to disable the chunk of faulty memory. From your picture it looks like only ~600MB is flipping bits, so might be something to consider :blobcatsalute:

2026-01-28 14:56:26 UTC

I will never understand why people are complaining that Japanese websites are "outdated".
They load incredibly fast, don't use almost any resources (many don't even require JS!), use native scrollbars and give you information you're looking for at a single glance.
Compare that to most modern websites that can easily hog 2GB of RAM with JavaScript, want to do scrolling themselves and require 4K screens because muh design language.
Japanese websites are a pinnacle of usability and I will die on this hill :akko_giggle:
https://asdf.donotsta.re/media/246485fc81842fbf1b5179c94df1b74aceca4ddc3e3ed1d334e4cf51859aff34.jpg

2026-01-26 14:04:00 UTC

[ This list is incomplete. You can help by expanding it. ]
https://asdf.donotsta.re/media/da65445e841d768fbe80a1951c97faca1d41419557b85dfebb16627b23ce10de.jpg

2026-01-24 20:53:37 UTC

- Hey Spotify, can you do something about the slop?
- No can do. More monies please.
- Okay then *cancells subscription*.
- B-but you've been our customer for 10 years :neocat_googly_shocked:
I'm too lazy to dig historic pricing, but taking current 24PLN/m, I spent ~2880PLN on Spotify over the past decade (~600EUR).
CDs cost ~15EUR, so that would be an equivalent of 40CDs. Not to mention artists pull their songs from Spotify all the time, while you own CDs (and they last ~30 years on average).
Just something to think about :meowtea:
https://asdf.donotsta.re/media/92d16de833b01ae6b4b32bc09bf76891c6575cf95d5ac78eb0041213408ab876.jpg

2026-01-19 10:26:20 UTC

Here's an idea: EU should ban all US big tech (Microslop, Google, Meta, Amazon, all companies doing LLM nonsense) from selling their services/products in the region.
Not only we would be better off without them, but trumpet would suddenly change his mind about taking Greenland.

2026-01-10 02:06:03 UTC

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@nprofile…8d0p @nprofile…9eh0 Oh, but that's just... a par for the course for Matrix/Discord. Same thing was happening to us, it's precisely why we stopped using those platforms. They're unmoderable (especially if you allow matrix.org accounts), they waste your time and ruin your mental health.

2026-01-10 01:51:01 UTC

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@nprofile…8d0p @nprofile…9eh0 Well then, take you time and collect your thoughts. I like both projects and if "mutual slap in the face" is needed to end this spiral of "they said", "they did" then I would like so see it happen. Please also consider what @nprofile…9eh0 and I discussed in other comments, we genuinely have no ulterior motives (be the change you want to see in the world or something something).

2026-01-08 15:59:44 UTC

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@nprofile…8m52 @nprofile…0vwd well, if you speak a bit of Japanese you can get some nice deals on used hardware in tiny corners of Akiba if you're into that (most tourists don't even know those tiny spots exist).
I would go there just for that (I got a PowerBook G4 for a friend of mine for 2200JPY for example) :blobcatwink:

2026-01-08 15:53:10 UTC

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@nprofile…8m52 @nprofile…0vwd Tokyo feels like playing space invaders IRL, try to avoid bumping into people challenge level impossible

2025-12-29 23:35:38 UTC

Someone: *drops off a server motherboard asking to install coreboot*
Me: Hm, I don’t see that variant in the tree. It doesn’t have BMC and has different RPs so it could blow up
#coreboot ports done during #39c3: 2 (and counting) :ablobcatbongo:
https://asdf.donotsta.re/media/c2b0640810cc8d517de87570586ca4f1ef93c07bb3caa8ff6f409b1dcaed51b9.jpeg

2025-12-27 01:24:33 UTC

BREAKING: You can now season the pigeons at Hamburg Dammtor #39c3
https://asdf.donotsta.re/media/586b988ef2c4c2cacd8e2181c7b6e30669edac58e9e85667c4617a7dc1fa98e0.jpeg

2025-12-21 16:27:07 UTC

My train got delayed today so I pulled out my laptop and started playing a game.
When it was time to get off the train I started panicking because I couldn't save (seems like you can only save at determined points in VA-11 Hall-A) but had to go, so I closed the lid and threw it in the backpack.
Not only system had suspended without any issues, when I pulled the laptop out at my brother's place... game resumed as well and I could continue playing. Just like that.
One of my friends owns a handheld running windows and he's upset with how buggy the suspend is, as it takes forever to suspend and games tend to crash...
I'm (once again) really impressed with how far we've come with power management and suspend in mainline Linux.
Not only this laptop lasts longer in Linux than it did with stock firmware and ChromeOS, it also suspends without any issues whatsoever.

2025-12-18 01:37:32 UTC

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@nprofile…9dq6 I genuinely wonder why you didn't include the headphone jack though.
Sure, most people have bluetooth headphones now (or just blast brainrot on speakers in public transport...), but it would be nice to have a headphone jack (which isn't hard to implement).
I don't think enough people talk about it, but saturation of bluetooth devices on the train for instance makes bluetooth congestion *very* bad. My headphones tend to lose packets when I'm taking the train (no matter if I'm using them with phone or computer), and that's entirely caused by corporate greed and manufacturers getting rid of headphone jacks.
That's the reason why I'm using old Xiaomi Mi 9 Lite (xiaomi-pyxis) as a music player. 512GB microSD card loaded with FLACs I bought online or ripped CDs, stick a headphone jack in and you're good to go. Even ANC works if you turn headphones on before plugging the headphone jack in.
If you try to use any bluetooth accessory in places like Chaos Communication Congress, you'll be simply out of luck. Amount of bluetooth devices at the venue successfully jams the bluetooth band.
That's why having a headphone jack is important and we really need to start talking about bluetooth congestion problem in urban areas.
"Thinness" isn't an answer by the way. My KOHAKU (Samsung Galaxy Chromebook) is as thin as Google Pixel 6, but it has a headphone jack (as well as 2x USB-C and microSD reader).
MediaTek will be fun to mainline though.

2025-12-17 19:45:30 UTC

Allll I want for christmaaaaas is *glitch* death of GenAI industry

2025-12-16 21:58:01 UTC

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@nprofile…8lge @nprofile…rl69 protip: @nprofile…95kz removes all that garbage in their fork, the only "firefox" worth using these days

2025-12-15 22:40:30 UTC

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@nprofile…4zgr (I really hope people won't find this meme offensive)
https://asdf.donotsta.re/media/ff7ee70af81ed1ab614ef2d31262085b9ea55f67776226cf78c6301ba93e9ad9.png

2025-11-28 19:55:59 UTC

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@nprofile…f9sr that I agree with, TPM is a meme on desktop systems :)

2025-11-28 19:53:06 UTC

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@nprofile…f9sr Remote attestation is what I'm planning to deploy on desktop systems. They all run coreboot, so I can cram Linux inside a SPI flash that will poll attestation server and upon successful verification it will pull LUKS headers + key from two separate hosts.
(It's offtopic, but just an example of what can be done)

2025-11-28 19:41:35 UTC

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@nprofile…f9sr I reckon Titan is basically the same as H1/D2 (CR50/Ti50) in Chromebooks, which I'm personally familiar with.

2025-11-28 19:38:07 UTC

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@nprofile…f9sr I know, I still have a Pixel 6 kicking around.
You might be surprised, because police instructed my friend to turn their phone off (in relation to my previous post). From analysis of their device I've done, device was turned off around 2024-02-15 11:36 and then turned on on 2024-02-21.
https://asdf.donotsta.re/media/60661aa053a2b606fcf4d25dd32d6692338c9e2f648e2f3c268d89a128cc3201.png

2025-11-28 19:30:37 UTC

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@nprofile…f9sr So you're suggesting that Qualcomm's hardware-based UFS FDE is backdoored/has been broken?

2025-11-28 19:17:08 UTC

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@nprofile…f9sr @nprofile…gfhq Of course they have zero-days for mainline, I didn't imply that's not the case. Polish police likely has the bottom-tier devices they barely know how to operate (yes, I'm implying they're incompetent) and that's why they were unsuccessful.
"BFU (LUKS2)" postmarketOS is safe as there are no keys stored on the device. You could boot custom kernel + ramdisk to try and bruteforce but let's face it - it's not really feasible. They were unable to break LUKS2 encryption on friend's machines either.
You're right about runtime (or what you call "AFU"). pmOS has no protections against kernel exploits at the moment and that's something I really would like to change. The only thing you can do is to modify the devicetree to make USB controller work only in gadget mode, but then you can't connect USB drives, DACs, keyboards etc.

2025-11-28 17:14:50 UTC

Since we're on the topic of Cellebrite: #postmarketOS is NOT vulnerable.
Among devices that police seized from my friend was Xiaomi Poco F1 (xiaomi-beryllium) running postmarketOS build I pmbootstraped in late January 2024 (without LUKS2). Police seized the device 2 weeks after I gave it to said friend.
They tried to exploit it, but gave up. Mainline Linux kernel (6.6 at the time) did not have vulnerabilities in USB HID drivers.
To mitigate further against tools such as Cellebrite, we could enable USB authentication which prevents kernel modules from loading prior to user's consent.
Problem with that approach is that Desktop Environments have authentication implemented for Thunderbolt, but not for USB.
https://usbguard.github.io/
I really would like to see SELinux implemented as well, but it would be a Herculean effort because rules would need to be hand-written for Alpine.

2025-11-27 03:47:09 UTC

About 1.5 years ago my friend was (wrongly) accused of terrorism.
All of their electronic devices have been seized, plus my stash of hard drives (which were at their place for reasons).
Of course they didn’t find any evidence. Culprit that framed my friend (and many others) was arrested (article in Polish).
Upon returning the hardware, I found that all of my harddrives have been destroyed, which made me (understandably) pissed.
We’re very good friends, so I’ve been given their personal phone that was pwned with cellebrite. It hasn’t been turned on since police extracted data from it so I decided to do some forensics on it.
As it turns out, police forgot to clean after themselves. Took a peek at the first-stage payload but it’s too complex for me to reverse-engineer. It’s clear it’s full of obfuscations and is even using TLS to talk to Cellebrite box.
If you’re a security researcher (or just curious nerd with more spoons than me) and you wanted to take a look at it - here you go.
Payload was uploaded onto the device on 2024-02-21. If you want to re-create the environment it was executed on, you will need a:
Samsung Z Flip3 5G (SM-F711B)
Android build SP2A_220305.013.F711BXXS2CVHF
Rough execution flow:
1. USB device plugged in (Cellebrite Cheetah)
2. USB controller switches to host mode
3. Gadget switching USB VID/PID to load kernel modules
4. Module 'hid_akeys' leaks memory
5. Screen unlocked
6. ADB key '82:E5:EA:F3:DC:D1:7D:CA:65:3C:D4:58:65:CD:81:8E' added to trusted keys on the device
7. First-stage payload '/data/local/tmp/falcon' copied onto the device.
8. Second-stage payload executed as root:
- /data/local/tmp/chrome-command-line
- /data/local/tmp/android-webview-command-line
- /data/local/tmp/webview-command-line
- /data/local/tmp/content-shell-command-line
- /data/local/tmp/frida-server-16.1.4-android-arm64
- /data/local/tmp/init
9. Data extraction (photos, telegram, firefox, downloads)
# Unanswered question: What the hell is "jtcb.sdylj.axpa" running as root? Seems to have been dropped around the same time...
Have fun!

2025-11-26 06:55:57 UTC

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@nprofile…8lge oh, you're coming to FOSDEM again? Neat :ablobcatbongo:

2025-11-17 21:27:45 UTC

I don't register for discounts.
I don't install apps.
If your product requires an app, I'M NOT BUYING IT.
https://asdf.donotsta.re/media/bc5f87d21ac8db6872bffe71567d2ab5dcfad5b6a462fb83e4291f4f95b03632.jpg

2025-11-13 13:30:28 UTC

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@nprofile…erfp @nprofile…4zgr https://dbrand.com/shop/limited-edition/companion-cube

2025-11-12 21:16:11 UTC

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@nprofile…4zgr they should do a limited run of Steam Machines painted like Companion Cubes :blobcataww: