arm-netbook July 2017

arm-netbook@lists.phcomp.co.uk

35 participants
21 discussions

Laptop LCD Touch Pad: Display KB Layout Idea
by Alexander Ross 25 Mar '19

25 Mar '19

On the laptops lcd touch pad. Here’s a idea for a feature. When leaning new keyboard layout. Say dovrak for example. The trouble is learning where the new keys are. For me at least, one could do with a constant reminder. What if the lcd touch pad displayed the current pressed keys? Maybe on a image of the keyboard, meaning some way of representing where the key you pressed is relative to other keys. So if its the wrong one you can see where the right one is. This info is only displayed while the keyboard is in use. When the touch pad is in use it switches to a relevant display for touch pad use. As for when the user is using not the touch pad nor the keyboard? What then? display keymap? If playing video display: video controls, time left, is internet speed fast enough for this stream? etc.

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Re: [Arm-netbook] Logos
by John Luke Gibson 22 Sep '18

22 Sep '18

I would highly recommend avoiding any logos, without proper historical reference. One of the problems with traditional Linux icons, are that they are very un-iconic. It's better to be textually based, in my opinion, than to use disorienting imagery. At this point, most of the clay has already set so referencing/alluding-to other gnu projects [such as blender] wouldn't be detrimental, however ascii has a very richer history of use by "hacktivists". Referencing some historically relevant (to "hacktivism") ascii iconography either overtly or subtly, kindof more or less as a hat tip to communities which support said historical events will cause the logo a greater likelihood of being regarded as iconic. I wish I had specific examples, but possibly using cloister black font would be a subtle hat tip to anonymous for some individuals use of various letters in that font as copy-cat of L from Death Note. Another thing of note, would be that we need to be careful who we tip our hats to, to be careful of who in the future people might assume us to endorse. A font is innocuous enough, that it can be adapted later due to circumstance (should a need arise to disassociate) without damaging the recognize-ability of any logo. The universal and modular style of blender, is a good point to mimic. A solid dot in the center of the "O" would probably be a subtle enough correlation to the blender logo. This is the pattern of thinking we need in developing logos and "slogans". Thinking about what sounds catchy only correlates us with random corporate culture. We don't need to be entirely original as we have a history to fall back on. However originality might also help distinguish us from our predecessors, the last thing we want is to fail to distinguish ourselves from your neighborhood corporation. I would recommend Luke to contact Wenqing Yang a.k.a. "Yummei", using the notability of the project to attract their attention. I would like to point out that despite being a cultural figure (famous artist) in the hacktivist community they previously lauched a multi-million dollar successful indiegogo which caused them much heart ache (per their blog) over legal controversy with so-called partners and their personal admonishment that they failed to do enough. >From: Alexander Ross <maillist_arm-netbook(a)aross.me> >To: Linux on small ARM machines <arm-netbook(a)lists.phcomp.co.uk> >Cc: >Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2017 16:07:15 +0000 >Subject: Re: [Arm-netbook] Logos >this all these efforts, got me to have a play around too. :) > > i was started having a go at one idea of letters inserting into each > other kinda like a module. > > I had put E and O in side the M. it then kinda looked like/spelled Meoo > like a cat. > So what about a darn cat logo? maybe a cat playing with a eoma68 card in > its paws? > > sry for the yet another internet cat image type of suggestion, never > thought id be making one heh.

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Re: [Arm-netbook] Logos
by John Luke Gibson 21 Sep '18

21 Sep '18

> The idea about a dot in the "O" of EOMA made me think of fonts where the > dot is in the 0 (zero) to distinguish it from O (capital letter O) As we > all are somehow computer related I would find such a design confusing. If it was really to be in honor of the modularity and progress of blender, one would want to make the "O" not really in any particular font, but to look exactly the shape blender logo, except without the flay or the color scheme: a perfect solid-color circle within another perfect circle. It wouldn't theoretically be confusing because the mark you are thinking of is a hollow circle in an oval. Letter-o'es and zeroes can only sometimes be confusing because in some fonts they are both written as vertical ovals, not just the zero. I'm not sure on the required dimensions of a certification mark, however, the solid-shape flag-esque convention I've noticed among popular one's, often seems to detract from the continuity of the design on the objects that bear them, making them seem particularly foreign and like they don't belong. The vaporwave-esque color palate which most of them choose only add to this affect, as if they themselves are trying to distance themselves on some subconscious level from their endorsements. As a side effect to this, it makes them harder to trust. Any symbolism of any significant body, displays historical awareness.. It's what tells people whether they can trust it, before reading or attempting to judge it. Therein lies the axiom, there is no such thing as an original thought, so, if by means of arbitrary work dedicated to make more concise and thoroughly plastered an announcement of what historical or cultural event may have inspired such thoughts and such work, people will then engage in the arbitrarily difficult work of judging whether the project is sincere or not. In other words, if we don't display more than necessary effort in our symbol that can be recognized with several magnitudes less effort than it took to generate, then no highly-self-valuing person will have any sane reason to take us seriously, because if they took every slightly promising project, which failed to create a Sybil-certificate reputation in this manner, then they would never find a single valuable project in their lifetime (obviously this is an exaggeration).

3 2

Standards Organization as a Potentially Universal Free/Libre Software Developement Sustenance Model
by John Luke Gibson 23 Dec '17

23 Dec '17

Neverminding the ridiculous length of that subject line.. I just thought an interesting thought. First, a little context, (I know how rms feels about blockchains) I was investigating slock.it and thinking to myself "why don't they just make a hardware standard like eoma instead of closing their development and calling it open?" (Like, Pi-Top is [n]ever gonna release those stl files) (I realize that's a loaded 'just' cause it sounds easy, but is one of the most difficult possible) Then, it dawned on me: Lulzbot doesn't do that.. Wait, Lulzbot exclusively uses open software in their development.. Then *bam* like a boulder (nothing to do with Lulzbot): GPL-violations, improper GUI training, failing to extend using APIs/Addons, failing to bugsmash/'track-issues', failing to participate in mailing-lists and irc, failing to simply fork when development goals conflict, planned esoteric-ism and/or planned obsolescence, failure to secure clientèle data by using fully free systems (when relevant), failure to participate-in and be-aware-of public conversations about the underlining security of said systems (when relevant), failure to disclose supplychain information/identities (when relevant), failure at general transparency. All of these things traditionally go wrong with not only companies that use open source, but companies in-general. Then, it truly truly dawned on me, free software needs standards organizations as well.

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python coding help needed (sin, cosine, blah blah)
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 10 Sep '17

10 Sep '17

http://hands.com/~lkcl/foldable3dsandwich200/belts.py ok, i could use some algorithm help, here, if anyone's interested. the key function is add_bearing in class Belt. basically what i have done is create a class which completely specifies a belt path, by starting out with the angle that the belt is wrapped around so far, plus the position, plus the diameter of the bearing (a fake bearing initially). subsequent bearings need only be added specifying their position, radius, and whether the belt is to go on the INTERIOR or the EXTERIOR of the bearing. the swapping-from-interior-to-exterior is where i'm having difficulties. i've made a half-assed approximation so far, i will upload a quick video about it... https://youtu.be/AV5yRz6GPX0 the problem i have is that the flip-over between interior and exterior is a little bit too complicated for my tiny brain to handle. i know that it involves twin offsets. i think it might be possible to work out the first angle between the bearings, then pretend that there's another bearing added on the *other* side (in the opposite configuration), then work out the angle of *that* (fake) bearing to the one before it... anyway if anybody would like to have a go at tackling this i would be really grateful. l.

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severe systemd bugs (two of them)
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 12 Aug '17

12 Aug '17

https://it.slashdot.org/story/17/07/03/0343258/severe-systemd-bug-allowed-r… two years. that's how long one of these bugs has been in systemd. *via a remote network*. what the hell is an init system doing being accessible *via DNS queries*? for anyone who still believes that systemd is okay to use and deploy, and that there exist "great advantages that outweigh the risks", are you *finally* getting the message now? dozens of distros, millions of people, all affected by the irresponsible act of switching "en-masse" to a single over-reaching init system which is developed in a fashion that is not being properly managed or controlled. i do not understand why people do not understand this. l.

20 87

Eoma68 update
by Joseph Lira 12 Aug '17

12 Aug '17

Hello >From your last update I havent seen an update as to how the os will be delivered/installed can you give an update? Will it be an SD card? Also when do you plan to start shipping boards the crowdfunding says nov of this year is that still correct? Im asking becuase i wanted to use the eoma68 to be a little low power stream box actually can this be done? Or i wanted to replace my original pi that runs pi-hole I been very temped to buy a new raspberry pi 3 for streaming or a tiny intel nuc to do the same, but i held of because i truly want to support your project

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Side-Topic: Liberating PocketCHIP
by John Luke Gibson 08 Aug '17

08 Aug '17

Since it seems like a trivially simple task that for some reason no one has taken up, I would like to take the opportunity to exercise a learning experience and simultaneously benefit the community, by liberating PocketCHIP by deblobbing the source and re-compiling. Browsing the archives to see if this had been talked about before, I find it very incredibly humourous I got name dropped on the mailing list by Parobath: > Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2016 20:13:10 +0200 > From: Parobalth <parobalth(a)gmail.com> > To: arm-netbook(a)lists.phcomp.co.uk > Subject: closed-source BootROM and RYF certification > User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.23 (2014-03-12) > > At the forum of NextThing Chip is a thread about Chip and a > possible RYF certification. I wrote there that I think that is unlikely > to happen and linked to https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop/updates/fsf-ryf-background. > Then someone else mentioned that a closed-source BootROM is used for Chip. > Another guy with username "eaterjolly" wrote about this BootROM: "The same type of SOC is > used for the EOMA croud project which is vying for ryf-endorsement quite > openly [...]" > > You can find the forum thread here: > https://bbs.nextthing.co/t/ntc-thoughts-on-ryf-endorsement/4490 > > Because they use Discourse to power their forum which relies heavily on > JavaScript I also attach a Pdf version of the forum post. > > I wonder if the mentioned statements are correct and how it relates to > the RYF certification of the EOMA68-A20 Libre Tea card. > > kind regards > Paro Like reading that URL, I was like? didn't I start that thread? then I re-read the post and noticed I was quoted in the email xD I didn't participate in the list back then, cause I was afraid my ignorance would be spurred, of course I know that not to be true in hindsight. Feels a bit melodramatic being name dropped on a linux mailing list, usually you only see legends get mentioned by name when they aren't around xD Anywhoo, I more or less just wanted to start this thread because I wanted to know if any one could point out anything that would need be removed besides the wifi firmware. I searched the sunix-uboot repository on github for the word blob and got a few interesting hits for the code in the folder binman: https://github.com/linux-sunxi/u-boot-sunxi/search?q=blob Particularly in files mentioning the devil: "# Entry-type module for Intel Chip Microcode binary blob" I suppose this is just another aspect of mainlining, meant to be parsed out once it's discovered that there are no such blobs in the kernel, but personally I'd feel more comfortable with a script removing these sections of the code altogether. If I had been actually reading the list digests back when I could have posted more accurate information in that thread rather than just guessing. Well, I suppose I can do so now. How humorous it is though too that I've run into the same 40k file limit? Small tiny things suggesting the work of the vicissitudes of fate, much like deja vu in the matrix.

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Rv: Update: 2.7.4 EOMA68-A20 Cards Arrived
by el_gallo_azul 31 Jul '17

31 Jul '17

I'd be happy enough to supply my own MicroSD card (in place of the TSSOP-48 NAND IC). 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Broadcom BCM2837 100% libre now ?
by Bill Kontos 31 Jul '17

31 Jul '17

Open firmware seems to be available here for a minimal boot. I have no idea if this is reverse engineered or provided by Broadcom, it seems like broadcom has at least released all the headers under some bsd-like license. The firmware here is gplv2+. https://github.com/christinaa/rpi-open-firmware Here is a report of someone booting using only the free firmware dated Jan 2017 while the most recent commits are from April. http://crna.cc/b/11 If I recall correctly the kernel driver was already open-sourced in 2014. The VC4 mesa driver made and upstreamed by a broadcom emploee here. I'm kind of confused since the vpu has to be used for the rpi to boot even if you don't want video acceleration, but this is an foss drm driver for the vc4 silicon only... what's going on with the part of the blob that used to do the initialization? https://github.com/anholt/mesa/wiki/VC4 And some documentation https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/gpu/vc4.html Is this enough ? Or close to enough for a fully libre BCM2837 system to make it worth taking a look ? It seems like with the community around the rpi any bugs etc would be very easy to spot and squash in the future. I still don't know what's going on with the wifi in that SoC and I won't pretend that I understand everything I just wrote, but it certainly seems like there has been some movement from the "the 2mb userland blob does everything" stage. I found somewhere that board schematics still require an nda though.

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arm-netbook July 2017