raron (u/raron) - Readit News

raron commented on Swapping SIM cards used to be easy, and then came eSIM arstechnica.com/gadgets/2... · Posted by u/Brajeshwar

waweic · a month ago

Technologically, eSIMs are pretty nice. The electrical interface between the phone modem and the eSIM is the same as with a real SIM card, and the eSIM can run the same applications as a real SIM card, so at this point you can buy smartcards that can be swapped between devices and run eSIM applications. esim.me, 9esim and the "sysmocom eUICC for eSIM" (seems to be the most open/friendly at this point) are some of the options. Most of them offer an app for management, but there are also standardized interfaces.

SIM cards have always been secure elements that the provider trusts. With an eSIM, you can already own that secure element and the provider can provision it with their application. You can even have the applications from multiple providers on the same physical secure element.

The major advantage is now that the expensive and time-consuming part of provisioning a new mobile service (sending out a physical SIM card) can be replaced with a few standardized API calls. This is cheaper (which makes the extra cost some providers charge for an eSIM look quite silly) and a lot quicker, which enables new business models for short-lived cell connection services.

A world where all cell service providers offered eSIMs would be slightly nicer. But manufacturers removing the option of swapping the secure element is very annoying at the same time.

raron · a month ago

> The major advantage is now that the expensive and time-consuming part of provisioning a new mobile service (sending out a physical SIM card)

I don't know, choosing service package, signing paperwork, identifying and other KYC stuff (tens of minutes) for me was always much more time-consuming than the few seconds of reading the barcode(?) from a new SIM card and giving it to the customer (or putting it into an automatically addressed envelope).

I can't see any advantage of eSIMs except that it makes harder to change providers what they of course really like.

(Anyways the security of the whole PTSN is a joke and publications about cracking cell networks, why SIM cards are even a thing? I would suspect an customer-id@service-provider.country and a password would work, too. Maybe with a zero-knowledge password proof.)

raron commented on Clock synchronization is a nightmare arpitbhayani.me/blogs/clo... · Posted by u/grep_it

jaggederest · a month ago

In the 80s my uncle had digital clocks that used an antenna to tune into the atomic clock time signal that (was/is?) broadcast nationwide. I've long wished that it was incorporated into stoves, microwaves, essentially everything that isn't an internet device (yet... sigh)

Sadly I think the actual antenna and hardware were relatively large since it's a long wave signal, but maybe with SDR it'll all fit on the head of a pin these days.

raron · a month ago

> atomic clock time signal that (was/is?) broadcast nationwide

Probably DCF77 or WWVB.

> I think the actual antenna and hardware were relatively large since it's a long wave signal

Casio has some normal sized wristwatches that synchronizes to DCF77, it would definitely fit into a stove, microwave, or basically anything.

raron commented on Clock synchronization is a nightmare arpitbhayani.me/blogs/clo... · Posted by u/grep_it

NelsonMinar · a month ago

On the flipside, clock sync for civilians has never been easier. Thanks to NTP any device with an Internet connection can pretty easily get time accurate to 1 second, often as little as 10 ms. All major consumer computers are preconfigured to sync time to one of several reliable NTP pools.

This post is about more complicated synchronization for more demanding applications. And it's very good. I'm just marveling at how in my lifetime I from "no clock is ever set right" to assuming most anything was within a second of true time.

raron · a month ago

> clock sync for civilians has never been easier

I don't think civilian clock synchronization was an issue since a long time ago.

DCF77 and WWVB has been around for more than 50 years. You could use some cheap electronics and get well below millisecond accuracy. GPS has been fully operational for 30 years, but it needs more expensive device.

I suspect you could even get below 1 sec accuracy using a watch with a hacking movement and listening to radio broadcast of time beeps / pips.

raron commented on Markdown is holding you back newsletter.bphogan.com/ar... · Posted by u/zdw

eigenspace · 3 months ago

Some someone who learned document editing and drafting through LaTeX in my undergrad, I gotta say I'm not sure I'd recommend it anymore to people looking for a new tool.

To me, Typst is the 'weirdly missing' option here. I really see it as the most promising successor to LaTeX, which is not something I say lightly given that I spent years scoffing at the idea of Typst ever displacing LaTeX in my life.

raron · 3 months ago

At a quick glance Typst seems to be very limited compared to LaTeX, especially for more unusual languages.

raron commented on The cryptography behind electronic passports blog.trailofbits.com/2025... · Posted by u/tatersolid

miki123211 · 3 months ago

1. It's easier to centralize cryptographic cert issuance than passport issuance.

You may allow embassy personnel to issue passports, while still requiring a computer system in the homeland to verify that the person actually exists in some government register (and that photos match) before the certificate can be issued.

If you give embassy personnel blank passport templates, they can issue passports with completely fake identification details, for people who have never existed. The moment computers get into the mix, that may no longer be possible, or at least leave an audit trail.

2. There's no risk of surveillance. Reading data from the chip still requires you to read the MRZ, so you can't do that remotely.

There's nothing a chip gives you that you wouldn't get from a normal passport (beyond a very easy and hard-to-fake way to verify that the passport is authentic).

raron · 3 months ago

> 2. There's no risk of surveillance. Reading data from the chip still requires you to read the MRZ, so you can't do that remotely.

There were many attack on that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biometric_passport#Attacks

> There's nothing a chip gives you that you wouldn't get from a normal passport

I think your fingerprints are stored on the chip and not on the printed part.

raron commented on SailfishOS: A Linux-based European alternative to dominant mobile OSes sailfishos.org/info/... · Posted by u/ForHackernews

TheAceOfHearts · 3 months ago

Many years ago I backed the Jolla Tablet, which never shipped and they never gave me a refund. At the time the company kept pretending like things were perfectly fine with every update right until they let everyone know that the project was being cancelled. There was zero transparency and accountability, and from that day I vowed to never support this company ever again. I would've been fine if the project had failed and they had been transparent and honest about their ongoing struggles with every update, but the complete lack of transparency was too much for me.

I don't know if the values and leadership at Jolla have changed since then, but it's not a company that I would trust to deliver and communicate honestly in good faith.

raron · 3 months ago

Not just the lack of transparency, they went bankrupt after the tablet fiasco (never refunded most of the people) and bought by some investment firm connections to the Russian state (not the thing you want from a privacy-friendly product / system) what they tried to keep secret.

AFAIK they have bought by some other company (again) since then, but they have basically nothing. Most of their Sailfish OS is actually closed source (like AOSP vs all the apps from Google), they don't have any hardware, they just re-flash some phone from Sony.

I had high hopes for them, but now wouldn't even touch them with a stick. Pixel with GrapheneOS seems to be a much better choice and maybe even closer to their original ideologies.

raron commented on Some people can't see mental images newyorker.com/magazine/20... · Posted by u/petalmind

vanadium1st · 3 months ago

Speaking of the Apple test, as many other commenters here I truly believe that people who describe themselves as being at 1 are actually much closer to 4, they just aren’t aware of it or don’t understand the concept well. https://lianamscott.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/f4c55-1_b...

I’m an artist - I draw professionally and studied drawing in a group setting. It seems like a profession that would require the highest level of visual imagination. And I wish I could see clear pictures in my head, but I don’t. I need to have a reference in front of me, constantly compare it with my sketch, and refine it using knowledge and techniques that took years to learn.

When discussing this concept with my artist peers, many say they’re at 1. But they clearly aren’t - I can see that in their work process. There’s an immediate difference in art quality depending on whether the artist is drawing from reference or not. If someone could truly see the picture in their head and draw from it, they could skip years of art training and become good almost immediately. Such a genius would be clearly obvious to their peers. But I haven’t met a single person like that - it seems like everyone works with roughly the same hardware as I do and has to develop the same workarounds to become good.

I believe that Kim Jung Gi was a 1. I’m sure there were other historic geniuses with such a superhuman ability. But I’m also sure that 99% of people just aren’t there - whether they admit it or not.

raron · 3 months ago

Maybe that are two different thing? Some may experience what is in their head the same or very similar way to how they would experience it if they would actually see it, but I think that doesn't mean that what is in their head must be static or photo-realistic. I suspect these are important factors, too, in a reference image you use for drawing.

raron commented on Nearly 90% of Windows Games Now Run on Linux tomshardware.com/software... · Posted by u/jamesgill

Grom_PE · 3 months ago

I've gone over to Linux after using Windows for 25 years.

As someone who enjoys older games, I am pleasantly surprised that Wine (with dxvk and cnc-ddraw) lets me run more games in a better way than I was able to on Windows.

I can run some 16-bit games on a 64-bit OS!

Games that rudely switch to fullscreen, I can run in Wine Virtual Desktop. Previously on Windows, I had to configure hacks like DxWnd and it didn't always work.

I only wish Wine also allowed me to zoom 2x or 3x, but this is where Gamescope comes in:

    gamescope -S integer -F nearest --borderless wine game.exe

Also there is a potential to use a different Wine configuration (prefix) for every game specifically. So far I haven't had to resort to this.

I noticed some Unity games waste disk space with gigabytes of zeroes, Linux lets me run them from inside a compressed SquashFS image, this even makes the game load faster:

    mkdir ./game
    squashfuse ./game.squashfs ./game
    pushd ./game
    wine game.exe
    popd
    sleep 1
    umount ./game
    rmdir ./game

I encountered a game that crashes due to multiprocessor system, the fix is simple, restricting it to one CPU:

    taskset --cpu-list 1 wine game.exe

raron · 3 months ago

> Games that rudely switch to fullscreen, I can run in Wine Virtual Desktop. Previously on Windows, I had to configure hacks like DxWnd and it didn't always work.

Maybe Wine could be ported to Windows :-)

raron commented on Nearly 90% of Windows Games Now Run on Linux tomshardware.com/software... · Posted by u/jamesgill

mindcrash · 3 months ago

In case you don't own a Steam Deck and would like to see how much of your library would run on Linux:

1. Go to your library

2. Click the filter button

3. Under "hardware support" you'll see a dropdown "Steam Deck" with 4 options, here's some explanation what they mean:

Verified - Means this game 100% works on Linux (and Deck), which is verified by Valve

Playable - Means this game works on Linux (and Deck) but it might have some tiny issues (e.g. font size)

Untested - Might work, but not tested

So to check if your games would run pretty nicely either filter on "Verified" games or "Verified or playable" games and it filters out everything which will or might not run at all.

You'll be surprised how much games can run on Linux these days -- thanks to the massive effort Valve puts in Proton and some devs (including Valve) publishing native Linux builds of their games on Steam, and even things you might not even consider at all like Skyrim or Oblivion with all your favorite mods (!)

raron · 3 months ago

Also in some / many cases even "unsupported" games work out of the box or needs only minimal tweaking. AFAIK most of the issues are with online competitive games which uses anti-cheat.

raron commented on Kernel: Introduce Multikernel Architecture Support lwn.net/ml/all/2025091822... · Posted by u/ahlCVA

yjftsjthsd-h · 5 months ago

That's fine for

  - Enhanced security through kernel-level separation
  - Better resource utilization than traditional VM (KVM, Xen etc.)

but I don't think it works for

  - Improved fault isolation between different workloads
  - Potential zero-down kernel update with KHO (Kernel Hand Over)

since if the "main" kernel crashes or is supposed to get upgraded then you have to hand hardware back to it.

raron · 5 months ago

> since if the "main" kernel crashes or is supposed to get upgraded then you have to hand hardware back to it.

Isn't that similar to starting up from hibernate to disk? Basically all of your peripherals are powered off and so probably can not keep their state.

Also you can actually stop a disk (member of a RAID device), remove the PCIe-SATA HBA card it is attached to, replace it with a different one, connect all back together without any user-space application noticing it.