Is it common to do something like this against a person?
-------- Original Message -------- From: Bill Kontos vkontogpls@gmail.com Apparently from: arm-netbook-bounces@lists.phcomp.co.uk To: Linux on small ARM machines arm-netbook@lists.phcomp.co.uk Subject: Re: [Arm-netbook] Side-Topic: Liberating PocketCHIP Date: Mon, 8 May 2017 12:14:50 +0300
Verhaegen is one of those selected individuals who had the luxury of getting all the shit of the world thrown at their face for trying to do the right thing. He was one of the leaders in pushing amd into mainlining gpu drivers( which they have been successful to and keep working on) and got shit for that. He attempted to reverse engineer the arm mali drivers( look up lima driver) and he succeeded to some extend, then he run out of money becaue nobody was willing to help him and arm has put significant effort into destroying his life. The nda a company has to sign for getting the mali drivers requires 0 interaction with his work, therefor no company can hire him now.
On May 8, 2017 8:02 AM, doark@mail.com wrote:
I apologize for DOS'ing the list, I can only get online about once a week.
On Thu, 4 May 2017 17:13:23 +0200 "mike.valk@gmail.com" mike.valk@gmail.com wrote:
2017-05-04 9:04 GMT+02:00 John Luke Gibson eaterjolly@gmail.com:
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.
The PocketCHIP is powered by their SoM: http://linux-sunxi.org/NextThingCo_CHIP
That is apparently a Allwinner R8 pared with an external rtl8723bs Wifi/BT chip.
The R8 is a rebranded A13.
What? I own one of those and I'm almost certain that the CPU is an A7. Let's boot the PocketCHIP up... The processor is detected as an A7. I'll attach the output, it would probably be interesting to see all of it... Done, it's compressed bzip2 since it's ~300KiB decompressed which is large for an email.
<aside> I'm not too clever with gpg yet, so please tell me if the compressed file is also signed (I wanted to do that so that you could be certain that it was not infected en-route like happens to MS .cab files far to frequently (even though I don't have my key signed by anyone yet \me grumble grumble)). </aside>
Unless your saying that the WiFi has a built in ARM R8 (Why)? which would really surprise me considering how large the processor chip is compared with the WiFi chip.
If you look at https://getchip.com/pages/chip
You'll see: On the left image the RAM (Hynix) and Wifi+BT (Realtek) and Power module (Allwinner AXP209) On the right the SoC (R8/A13) and NAND (Samsung)
The A13 does not need blob's to run anymore, the WiFi+BT chip does. AFAIKT
Display output needs some checking in Linux and U-boot mainline. But most should be available or somewhat easily hacked in.
GPU needs a BLOB which does not work on mainline AFAIKT. Luc Verhaegen did get quite far before he burned out.
<snip>
You're not giving us enough details. Who is Verhaegen? What did he burn out on? When I first considered purchasing a PocketCHiP I read about the GPU not having 3D capabilities because of a binary blob. So, the CHIP folks hired (I think it was an extended goal of the kickstarter campaign), a kernel dev to add support to the Linux kernel for the GPU. I was going to mention this on this list before, but it's been so active...
Sincerely, David
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Don't top post please
2017-05-08 17:23 GMT+02:00 ronwirring@safe-mail.net:
-------- Original Message -------- From: Bill Kontos vkontogpls@gmail.com
Verhaegen is one of those selected individuals who had the luxury of
getting all the shit of the world thrown at their face for trying to do the right thing. He was one of the leaders in pushing amd into mainlining gpu drivers( which they have been successful to and keep working on) and got shit for that. He attempted to reverse engineer the arm mali drivers( look up lima driver) and he succeeded to some extend, then he run out of money becaue nobody was willing to help him and arm has put significant effort into destroying his life. The nda a company has to sign for getting the mali drivers requires 0 interaction with his work, therefor no company can hire him now.
"Is it common to do something like this against a person?"
No but not uncommon as well. Luc pressed were it hurts and Luc has a somewhat unfiltered personalty. Manager etc. usually have filtered personalities.
Managers also usually people with little technical insight and need to rely in information from others, the lack of information makes for easier decision making is the though here. And usually those that talk smooth are easier to listen to than those with an sound opinion, those are usually spoken loudly and don't concur with the mainstream thoughts.
ARM was afraid of lawsuits for infringement and loss of income by the details Luc might unveil on his RE quest.
This is how politics and business works.
On Mon, May 8, 2017 at 4:23 PM, ronwirring@safe-mail.net wrote:
Is it common to do something like this against a person?
in the unethical business world? of course it is! mostly you don't get to hear about it, but software libre developers are different. they're not beholden to anyone, they're not corporate slaves, they're not controlled and they are entitled to speak their mind.
consequently they get attacked. especially if some fucker deems that their "profit" is threatened.
for example: there was some discussion back in 1999 as to whether microsoft would ever take out a contract on my life, when i was doing the reverse-engineering of NT domains. consequently i decided that the research that i was doing had best be presented responsibly to them as "security vulnerabilities", presented PRIVATELY to them (as a responsible security researcher does) and only later disclosing them if they didn't fix the problems in a reasonable timeframe.
and that's why ISS hired me. the strategy that i deployed worked. one microsoft employee actually called ISS up asking them to fire me. ISS declined, pointing out that i was quite likely to get very pissed off, and would they prefer me inside pissing out or outside pissing in? they're absolutely right: i would have worked really really hard to release one devastating public zero-day security vulnerability - with full exploit code - every few days for several months, if they'd fucked with me.
luc verhaegen unfortunately did not deploy this type of strategy (muddying the P.R. waters by leveraging the "responsible security disclosure" track). if he had, then he could reasonably claim that ARM (and other unethical companies) are being highly irresponsible in trying to attack him. the technology and security press would absolutely go to town on them (as we know has been done in the past when other independent security researchers get attacked).
l.
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