Thomas Dullien of Google’s Project Zero on why security suffers because it’s actually cheaper to build more complex things (i.e. ship some piece of hardware with a general purpose processor and define features in software instead of using a purpose-built chip).
Tag: Insights
Strings at Facebook
It’s great to see how the simplest things we take for granted are engineered and improved. Case in point: Facebook’s std::string replacement.
Exciting Unlimited Register Machines
A brief and entertaining talk by an obviously excited presenter. 🙂 It goes into the same directions as Jim Weirich’s talk about the Y combinator.
Rooting With/For Rowhammer
The Rowhammer class of exploits never stops to amaze.
OnePlus One Screen Repair
After almost three years I the glass of my OnePlus One broke. A repair shop in town refused to repair it, because it was a “not so common” model (i.e. no Apple or Samsung phone).
The good thing is there’re several tear-down/screen replacement guides on the Internet. Also the screen + touch digitizer assembly + tools can be ordered from Amazon (for around 40€).
The phone is fairly easy to disassemble, and there’re tons of videos showing you the step by step (dis-)assembly.
There’s not much adhesives and it’s not very strong, so they’re not much of an issue (except the one for the battery, see below).
There’re still a few points to look out for:
- the adhesive for the battery will deform the red wrapper around the battery
- beware of the antenna connector behind the main board
- don’t remove the ear piece speaker. It will more easily come apart than come out (and cost you around 3-5 € and 2-6 weeks of waiting time for a replacement) … been there, done that. 😐
- there’s a thin black frame around the screen, don’t remove it. It has a small ledge on the inside where the screen assembly is fixed to with adhesive.
- It’s quite a tedious task to heat up the corners of the screen frame and remove the old screen especially if it has splintered … and splinters of glass in the corners are the worst. 😫
In the end I managed to repair it, but the ribbon cable coming from the display is 3-5mm to long so it’s pushing on the display from below. After a few days one side of display separated from the adhesive tape below opening a gap. 😕
Mega Transistors
The Management Myth
An interesting read from a doctor of philosophy with a consulting firm who went through a huge pile of management theory books to see what he missed by not having a formal “management education.”
Comparing Signal-protocol-using messengers
There’re still privacy differences when you compare messenger apps all using the Signal protocol:
In this article, I’m going to compare WhatsApp, Signal, and Allo from a privacy perspective.
While all three apps use the same secure-messaging protocol, they differ on exactly what information is encrypted, what metadata is collected, and what, precisely, is stored in the cloud — and therefore available, in theory at least, to government snoops and wily hackers.
In the end, I’m going to advocate you use Signal whenever you can — which actually may not end up being as often as you would like.
AMP and Ads
Of course AMP was introduced to optimize the delivery of ads. ?
What Mafia Teaches Us About Trust & Security
David Eaves has some interesting thoughts on what Mafia can tell us about trust and security. He also has a few ideas on how the physical game setup gives advantage to different parties.