Linux Fu: Moving /usr

September 3, 2020 by Al Williams 83 Comments

Linux has changed. Originally inspired by Unix, there were certain well understood but not well enforced rules that everyone understood. Programs did small things and used pipes to communicate. X Windows servers didn’t always run on your local machine. Nothing in /usr contributed to booting up the system.

These days, we have systemd controlling everything. If you run Chrome on one display, it is locked to that display and it really wants that to be the local video card. And moving /usr to another partition will easily prevent you from booting up, unless you take precautions. I moved /usr and I lived to tell about it. If you ever need to do it, you’ll want to hear my story.

A lot of people are critical of systemd — including me — but really it isn’t systemd’s fault. It is the loss of these principles as we get more programmers and many of them are influenced by other systems where things work differently. I’m not just ranting, though. I recently had an experience that brought all this to mind and, along the way, I learned a few things about the modern state of the boot process. The story starts with a friend giving me an Intel Compute Stick. But the problems I had were not specific to that hardware, but rather how modern Linux distributions manage their start-up process.

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Flipper Zero Blasts Past Funding Goal And Into Our Hearts

September 2, 2020 by Tom Nardi 22 Comments

There’s never been a better time to be a hardware hacker: the tools are cheap, the information is free, and the possibilities are nearly endless. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement. The Flipper Zero was developed to make the world of hardware hacking even more accessible, and as of this writing, has officially ended its Kickstarter campaign after raising a staggering $4.8 million. To say the community is excited about this little gadget is perhaps an understatement.

So what does the Flipper Zero do that’s gotten everyone so worked up? Well, for one, it’s not so much what it can do as how it does them. Taking inspiration from the already popular pwnagotchi project, the Flipper Zero gamifies the normally rather mundane tasks of sniffing for 433 MHz signals and flashing EEPROMs with the addition of an animated dolphin that’s sustained by your hacking. If you want the little fellow to grow and be happy, you need to keep poking and prodding around at any piece of hardware you come across.

If you’re looking for a comprehensive list of features, that’s a little harder to nail down. Partially because the device has picked up a number of new tricks (such as support for Bluetooth and NFC) thanks to the fact it made better than 8,000% of its original funding goal, but also because it can be expanded with additional hardware and software which obviously won’t get developed until the community gets their hands on the core device.

But even the core functionality, demonstrated in the video after the break, is quite compelling. The Flipper Zero’s CC1101 transceiver chip (anyone else thinking of the IM-ME right now?) allows it to record, analyze, and play back RF signals from 300 to 928 MHz, meaning you can instantly take over remote control systems that aren’t using a rolling code for authentication. It can also read and emulate many different RFID cards, record and transmit IR signals, emulate a USB HID device and run programmable payloads, and act as a USB to UART/SPI/I2C adapter. All contained in a sleek and pocket-sized enclosure that looks like a proper cyberpunk hacking gadget.

We’re extremely interested in seeing what the community can do with the Flipper Zero, especially now that the extra windfall has allowed the team to create a formal Developer Program for people who want to help work on the core platform or produce add-on modules. After banking nearly $5 million, this will be the yardstick by which all other crowd sourced hacking gadgets are measured for years to come; let’s hope they make it count.

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The B-Sides: Curious Uses Of Off-the-Shelf Parts

September 2, 2020 by Sonya Vasquez 44 Comments

I admit: a few years of prototyping without easy machine shop access really whets my tastebuds for turning metal chips. But all that time spent away from proper machine tools has also pushed me to re-imagine part catalogs, something I see almost every day. Without any precision metalworking tools handy, stock mechanical parts have become my supplement for complexity. And so a former dogma to machine-everything-thyself has been transformed into a hunt for that already-made-part-that-does-it-for-you.

But with part catalogs featuring tens of thousands of purpose-built parts, I started reimagining some of them for other misdeeds. And after a few years spent reinventing use cases for some of these parts, I’m about ready to tell you how to misuse them properly. So today I’d like to show you some of my favorite mechanical part B-sides, so to speak. These are ordinary parts in unorthodox places–something you surely won’t find in the datasheet! Now let’s have a look. Continue reading “The B-Sides: Curious Uses Of Off-the-Shelf Parts” →

An Up-Close Look At The First Martian Helicopter

September 2, 2020 by Dan Maloney 49 Comments

The news was recently abuzz with stories of how the Mars 2020 mission, which launched from Cape Canaveral at the end of July, had done something that no other spacecraft had done before: it had successfully charged the batteries aboard a tiny helicopter that is hitching a ride in the belly of the Mars 2020 rover, Perseverance.

Although the helicopter, aptly named Ingenuity, is only a technology demonstrator, and flight operations will occupy but a small fraction of the time Mars 2020 is devoting to its science missions, it has still understandably captured the popular imagination. This will be humanity’s first attempt at controlled, powered flight on another planet, after all, and that alone is enough to spur intense interest in what amounts to a side-project for NASA. So here’s a closer look at Ingenuity, and what it takes to build a helicopter that will explore another world.

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Potential Contenders For Battery Supremacy

September 1, 2020 by Zoe Skyforest 47 Comments

Lithium ion batteries have been a revolutionary technology. Their high energy and power density has made the electric car a practical reality, enabled grid storage for renewable energy, and put powerful computers in the palm of the hand. However, if there’s one thing humanity is known for, it’s always wanting more.

Potential contenders for the title of ultimate battery technology are out there, but it will take a major shift to dethrone lithium-ion from the top of the tree.

Dominant For Good Reason

Lithium-ion batteries were first developed by Stanley Whittingham, working at Exxon, who were looking to diversify away from oil in the midst of the major energy crises of the 1970s. Over the years, the technology was developed further, with work by John Goodenough (a superb hacker name if we’ve ever heard one) and Akira Yoshino increasing performance with improved cathode and anode materials. Commercialization was first achieved by Keizaburo Tozawa, working at Sony to develop a better battery for the company’s line of camcorders. Continue reading “Potential Contenders For Battery Supremacy” →

Start Me Up: What Has The Windows 95 Desktop Given Us 25 Years Later?

August 31, 2020 by Jenny List 103 Comments

We’ve had something of an anniversary of late, and it’s one that will no doubt elicit a variety of reactions from our community. It’s now 25 years ago that Windows 95 was launched, the operating system that gave the majority of 1990s PC users their first taste of a desktop-based GUI and a 32-bit operating system.

To the strains of the Rolling Stones’ Start me up, Microsoft execs including Bill Gates himself jubilantly danced on stage at the launch of what was probably to become the company’s defining product, perhaps oblivious to the line “You make a grown man cry” which maybe unwittingly strayed close to the user experience when faced with some of the software’s shortcomings.

Its security may seem laughable by the standards of today and the uneasy marriage of 16-bit DOS underpinning a 32-bit Windows operating system was clunky even in its heyday, but perhaps now is the best time to evaluate it unclouded by technical prejudice. What can we see of Windows 95 in the operating systems we use today, and thus from that can we ask the question: What did Windows 95 get right? Continue reading “Start Me Up: What Has The Windows 95 Desktop Given Us 25 Years Later?” →

What’s The Deal With Rolling Blackouts In California’s Power Grid?

August 31, 2020 by Bryan Cockfield 148 Comments

A heat wave spreading across a large portion of the west coast of the United States is not surprising for this time of year, but the frequency and severity of these heat waves have been getting worse in recent years as the side effects from climate change become more obvious. In response to this, the grid operators in California have instituted limited rolling blackouts as electricity demand ramps up.

This isn’t California’s first run-in with elective blackouts, either. The electrical grid in California is particularly prone to issues like this, both from engineering issues and from other less obvious problems as well.

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