The hand repositioning was the rationale for the ThinkPad TrackPoint (which I still use daily). Right on the home row, and with 3 buttons for left/right/scroll+zoom purposes. Sadly it never caught on, possibly because the precision is not as good as a touchpad. It's even been removed from some of the latest ThinkPads.
I also try and avoid synthetic fabrics especially for everyday use. What's your rationale behind it? Asking because I'm not exactly sure why I hold this view, and need some inspiration.
This is really impressive to me as a natural hoarder of stuff (I call it "resourcefulness" when I can use some scrap to fix things, but it can get excessive).
I feel like if I dropped my desire to wear a variety of clothes (collared shirts, jackets ...) I could almost imagine this one bag life, especially when each item is designed to be modular and multipurpose (S-biners!)
I would have a few issues with this particular list though, mainly all the polyester clothes (my only poly clothes are "technical"/sports oriented, otherwise cotton/wool/linen etc...) Not sure exactly where I gained this dislike, I guess I just prefer natural fibers for comfort reasons.
Also, as a hardware-oriented engineer, I would have a hard time packing all the lab equipment/projects up. Perhaps could be solved by finding a good hackerspace, but fundamentally being interested in real-world physical technology means more "stuff" to carry around.
It would definitely be interesting to see a yearly stats breakdown of how many times I used each object. There are definitely many zeroes in that list.
E: Also, I'm too used to Linux and too attached to freedom (in principle) to switch to a Mac, even though the M-series power efficiency is unmatched.
I was the save everything, archive everything guy. I had a box of receipts for daily purchases at one point. I downloaded and burned all the movies I could.
Then I started nomading and now my life fits entirely in one 50lbs bag, which I still find way too much and I wish I could backpack like this guy. I can do monthly trips on a tiny backpack, but at some point some stuff is missing (for example I'd have to throw away nail clippers every time I take a plane during this time)
Finally, someone made a printer. I was always thinking about this, what with the hidden codes and the government-mandated "features" in commercial printers.
I know that many are intended to prevent counterfeiting, but I think it's about the principle and the hacker spirit to have something fully under your control and understanding.
I'd love to see open-source firmware / hardware that can slot into existing inkjet or laser printers, if only to remove the tracking dots added by all printers since the mid-to-late 2000s, but also because I'm sure the hardware is more capable than the existing firmware allows.
I love projects like this where you have to work around constraints like the Lego form factor and the support electronics for the CPU. In terms of modern hardware, the PCB is surprisingly sparse - using modern surface-mount components really helps.
The super detailed silkscreen on the Nintendo PCB does make me wish for the time when all products came with schematics and component specifications...
The Wikipedia page currently also states that it reduces the gorge crossing time from 70 minutes to one minute. So it definitely serves a purpose - whether we each judge that to be worth it is another question.
The neat thing about this is that it's self-balancing: if one side grows smaller, the ball bounces more often and increases how quickly it regains territory.
Sorry for the tangential, but as a non-native English speaker, and still learning... this really caught my attention: "grows smaller". It looks like a kind of contradiction. Is it common to use that instead of, say, "shrink"?
I'm working on exploring an exploit in physical security systems that I haven't seen anyone investigate before (at least, not published on the internet). It's involved an interesting combination of reverse engineering, pentesting and regular prototyping/hardware development.
Currently writing a run-through of it to publish on my website. I'm not sure how secretive to be - I think I just want to be the first to actually release my findings. In my post I'll detail the steps to reproduce my results so more people can look into this.
So far I haven't found any critical ways to (ab)use this access control system weakness, as it only typically applies to the outer layer of physical security.
They all know how to design a phone already, and don't have access to the proprietary Apple chipsets. Everything else is just industry standard electronic engineering. What would they gain? The specifics of how some power supply is connected?
Not sure why you would think the specifics of how one of the largest company’s in the world designs their phones wouldn’t be useful. There are entire companies that exist solely to generate their own schematics from teardowns because they’re so valuable to certain consumers.
The specifics that enable Apple's proprietary functionality are contained in the proprietary silicon, software, etc. not the schematics.
Granted, there are some specifics that could be interesting from a design analysis perspective like the bill of materials (BoM) cost, or the specific choices made in the design (e.g. using a buck regulator IC to improve efficiency, tradeoffs between cost and redundancy, etc...).
I maintain that most of the specifics contained in the schematic aren't useful for an engineer designing another phone. An experienced electronic engineer facing the same design problems would make similar decisions regarding which components to use, based on known principles - but that's only if they could access Apple's proprietary chips in the first place.
Everything we can see in the schematic could have been generated from a teardown as you mentioned. Not sure what "certain consumers" you're referring to - I imagine the schematics would help repair shops most in knowing what test points to diagnose and what components are involved.
Huawei, Xiaomi, et al. don't need Apple's schematics. They have plenty of design engineers of their own, and can't access Apple's chips anyway. The parts that do use market-available chips don't have any critical details that might take away Apple's edge.
Did you read what FCC published at all? They published the BOM, with specific part numbers and alternatives, the full schematics, and block diagrams of where the chips are laid out. Any teardown org would be absolutely salivating at this info.
Hard to beat “every single part used” from this document. You talk as if the electronics market vendors have some ability to identify what capacitor models are used.
Generally the specific model of capacitor used only matters in terms of its engineering specifications (value, tolerance, dielectric, etc.), all of which affect its functionality in some measurable way. The specifications chosen for a given purpose are also often predictable - so if a reverse engineer knows this is a power filtering capacitor (for example), they might guess 0.1uF X7R ceramic... and confirm with measurements.
Common "jellybean" passive components like resistors, capacitors, inductors... are designed to be standardized and interchangeable with any other component of the same specifications. The remaining factor might be cost and manufacturer (their quality control), but knowing which makes of capacitor are consistently reliable is hardly trade secret knowledge.
> Common "jellybean" passive components like resistors, capacitors, inductors... are designed to be standardized and interchangeable with any other component of the same specifications. The remaining factor might be cost and manufacturer (their quality control), but knowing which makes of capacitor are consistently reliable is hardly trade secret knowledge.
Not even close to true for capacitors and inductors. True for resistors mostly, but inductors and capacitors have wildly different specifications depending on their intrinsic parameters. The derating curves (AC, DC, etc) vary wildly depending on the individual part selection. One capacitor may have double or triple the capacitance of another for the same size, nominal rating, and type at a specific voltage condition.
Sure you can overbuild and not worry too much, but given the wildly small size of phones don’t be shocked if the individual components selected are very critical.
Any teardown org would be absolutely salivating at this info.
I'll disagree and say that any teardown org would be able to figure this out on their own in an afternoon, and end up with more information than the PDF in the process. You vastly over-estimate the value of schematics showing wire traces from one black box to another.
No teardown org will know what the models of passives are, nor would they be able to figure out all the traces between various parts “in an afternoon”. This stuff takes days or weeks depending on the depth of understanding you want.
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