Sal

I'm surviving, and definetly not the fittest.

I think that the TinyTapeout concept is super cool (https://tinytapeout.com/). In the past, it was not really feasible to design and manufacture a semiconductor device as a hobbyist... Unless maybe an extremely wealthy one.

Now, we have open source design tools, open process design kit, and the ability but small part of a manufactured wafer.

There are also now multi-project wafer runs for photonic chips at reasonable prices for startup/academia. I think these developments are pretty cool.

Salamander @mander.xyz 3mo ago

Thanks a lot for the examples! I have been looking through these, and, as far as I can tell:

In SSL stripping, the site would appear to your client as HTTP, not HTTPS. If that's the case, I think SSL stripping is blocked when using 'HTTPS-Only' mode
For DNS spoofing, the visited site would show up as insecure because they would not be able to generate a valid certificate for the target website

I still have not had the chance to look into leaky metadata. But, generally, I think metadata issues can in part be addressed by not generating much metadata.

Probably the biggest vulnerability is the captive portal. There is no way to verify you’re connecting to an official Starbucks router. I think that when connecting to a public router it is wise to assume that it is malicious.

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Salamander @mander.xyz 3mo ago

I'm curious about an example that comes to your mind as you say this. In your view, what is a privacy risk associated with public WiFi use that is not easily mitigated?

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Salamander @mander.xyz 3mo ago

Just saw this thread! https://www.reddit.com/r/Amsterdam/comments/1qhiry2/northern_light_in_amsterdam/

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Salamander @mander.xyz 3mo ago

Cool! Unfortunately it is not visible out of my window, and just saw this right as I am going to sleep... I imagine I would need to travel at least to the edge of the city to maaaybe get to see it, right? Or are these views really possible from within a city?

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Salamander @mander.xyz 3mo ago

Wow! Never seen this one before. It's amazing!

Salamander @mander.xyz 4mo ago

868 MHz is right

For dBi and directionality, it depends on terrain and goals. In MeshCore you can ask the signal to follow specific router paths, and so you may or may not want an omnidirectional antenna depending on how you want the signal to travel.

Most common antennas that you will find use wither SMA or N connectors. For outdoor use, N connectors are allegedly better in terms of water resistance. If you are making your own enclosure, you can find both SMA-IPEX and N-IPEX connectors with an O-ring which prevent water from entering the hole through which the connector threads come out. The inside of the enclosure is protected equally well for SMA and N, it is just the connector portion which remains exposed, so over months/years the connector may corrode and N-type may last longer. The Heltec T114 is probably shipped out with an SMA-IPEX cable with no O-ring.

I use this one: N-type connector, 8 dBi, omidirectional:

https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/1005007463706065.html

Salamander @mander.xyz 4mo ago

Thanks :)

Salamander @mander.xyz 5mo ago

It depends. In my experience: in an academic laboratory I have been able to use common sense.

For example, gloves go on when working with strong acids/bases. The statement:

gloves apparently only give researchers a false sense of security that can dull the sense of touch and prevent you from recognizing chemical exposure

Does not apply as much when you are working with such corrosive agents, because you really should never be in a position where spilling 4 M HCl into your hands would go unnoticed.

When working with large quantitites of oils, even if non-hazardous, gloves go on and they will probably get oil in them.

When working with cell cultures, the goal is often to not contaminate the cultures. Some people prefer to wash their hands thoroughly and not use gloves, and they have been working at it for many years and they seem to do just fine. It's a risk mitigation strategy - if the cultures have antibiotics and fungicides, risk is already not too high.

In an industry setting it is different. Companies often comply with specific standards and health and safety regulations. While the individual can use common sense, the people in charge of ascertaining compliance (sometimes 'EHS', Environment, health and safety personnel) aren't necessarily chemists themselves, nor should they need to be aware of the identity of the transparent liquid in the flask that you are holding. So, generic rules are often set in place not only because of their practical utility but also to simplify enforcement. In some cases external auditors can come in (announced or not) and verify compliance - this, again is much simpler when the rule is 'lab coat behind yellow line, gloves always on when touching a container with a liquid' than having to interview each person to understand what they were touching without gloves and to understand their philosophy of why they chose to do so.

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Salamander @mander.xyz 5mo ago

I have experienced issues both over tor and over clearnet. The tor front-end exists on its own server, but it connects to the mander server. So, the server that hosts the front-end via Tor will see the exit node connecting to it, and then the mander server gets the requests via that Tor server. Ultimately some bandwidth is used for both servers because the data travels from mander, to the tor front-end, and then to the exit node. There is also another server that hosts and serves the images.

What I see is not a bandwidth problem, though. It seems like the database queries are the bottleneck. There is a limited number of connections to the database, and some of the queries are complex and use a lot of CPU. It is the intense searching through the database what appears to throttle the website.

Salamander @mander.xyz 5mo ago

By hand. We are only two people, and we usually clean after we cook/eat. When one is cleaning only 2 plates + a pot/pan at a time, it is easy to use little water. Spray of soap, metal scrub, sponge scrub, and then turn the tap on to rinse for a few seconds. Utensils get individually scrubbed and then all rinsed together for a few seconds.

Maybe when we have kids a dish washer will make sense.

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Salamander @mander.xyz 6mo ago

AGUCUAGCAUAC

Salamander @mander.xyz 6mo ago

I have been happy with my Garmin. It is functional without having to connect to anything, and data can be easily exported to a computer for more advanced processing. It is a handy GPS receiver that lets me monitor heart rate and log running metrics.

Salamander @mander.xyz 6mo ago

That's good! There's some hope that this won't last forever then. Thanks.

And it's interesting that the challenge via old.lemmy.ca was so impactful. The first wave of bots that I noticed also came through an Mlmym front-end that I make accessible via tor. But lately they have been hitting directly via the regular front-end.

Salamander @mander.xyz 6mo ago

Thanks! The problem I run into is that the bags end up taking up a lot more space than the components themselves. Yesterday I started testing printing a small label with the component's code and sticking it into the reel.