Finding out that t2linux is too broken was like finding out that Santa isn’t real

    • VaalaVasaVarde@sopuli.xyz
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      3 months ago
      • Download Ubuntu.iso
      • Right click and choose: Set as desktop background
      • Profit!

      Edit: It’s the Mac way of thinking, drag the iso to the computer icon and it installs the OS.

      • Noa Himesaka@lemmy.funami.tech
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        3 months ago

        Trust me, we* are trying, but T2’s quite annoying and it’s borderline impossible to get logs about why it’s crashing when it comes up from sleep/suspend. (*: t2linux, which I’m part of.)

      • smb@lemmy.ml
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        3 months ago

        well there is plenty of what is possible to try. but unless one had looked at the real cause i’ld suspect one of apples hardware backdoors to cause the crashes like if the backdoor doesn’t work, crash the kernel, so we never loose control over the sheeapple thing. or more realistic if you want:

        First maybe just crappy hardware:

        There is a reason why i suspect apple’s hardware, cause my shitty macbook at work should(!) go to something like hibernate, sleep, or its spyveillance-only mode when closing the lid, and it should also lock the screen when doing so, the actual results seem pure randomly choosen, sometimes the sleep mode survives the weekend with lots of accu left, sometimes its completely depleted and i even have to charge it for a while before it has enough power to show the charging logo. for security reasons i have to manually lock my screen, verify it and then close the lid, which is pure annoy. this could just be buggy hardware, a sensor so broken that reading its inputs directly could crash any OS that assumes i.e. no division by zero, pointers to nonexisting ram or whatever, and maybe apple just knows what faulty measurements mean what (but cannot make that stable too, only no crash occurs)

        secondly with a hardware backdoor:

        https://www.kaspersky.com/about/press-releases/2023_kaspersky-discloses-iphone-hardware-feature-vital-in-operation-triangulation-case

        “The discovered vulnerability is a hardware feature, possibly based on the principle of “security through obscurity,” and may have been intended for testing or debugging. Following the initial 0-click iMessage attack and subsequent privilege escalation, the attackers leveraged this hardware feature to bypass hardware-based security protections and manipulate the contents of protected memory regions.”

        which is that (some/all?) iphones have at least one memory page where one only has to accidently or intentionally write something into it, that could trigger the backdoor feature to let you choose which memory address to overwrite with what bytes, bypassing every(!) security mechanism in hardware AND of course those made of software too. that is how i understood documentation and presentations about it. now apple said they “fixed” it in software, from what i remember that fix was just a “os preventing apps from writing to that memory backdoor page” thus not a fix but only a mitigation, while “fix” is more a lie than only misleading words to just pretend it wasn’t permanent and unfixable. let us assume that linux does not include hardware backdoor mitigations for apple devices AND that apple placed the very same backdoor memory page into macbooks as well but maybe at (an)other physical address(es). now the code that runs on closing the lid “might” just reside at or write to the very same memory page on every boot for a given exact same kernel, which might be a memory page that acts the same or similar like that iphone hardware backdoor, overwriting some other memory page depending on what is actually written to the backdoor page which immediately crashes the kernel. if that’s whats happening there, t2linux is not broken, but macbooks are just insecure costly (loss of money, time, security, trust, work performance, patents, stability, a.s.o. …) waste.

        how to find out? (maybe)

        • get the kernel code.
        • deactivate every driver not needed to boot and run the lidclose stuff like i.e. the sensor, compile the kernel anew and try booting from it.

        changin the kernel a lot by removing everything(!) not needed should in theory/hopefully also change the pages that would be affected when closing the lid. same effect: likely no backdoor. no effect: maybe something you deactivated, maybe yet another backdoor discovery.

        it might also be solveable by sth like acpi settings or such, probably switchable from kernel boot cmdline , maybe change settings for hibernate / suspend to ram (does apple hardware even support such? i mean without the buggy behaviour i experience?)l

        • Noa Himesaka@lemmy.funami.tech
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          3 months ago

          We at t2linux do know that the basic cause of crash, it’s more of our module’s fault now. The crash does not happen if you unload our hardware support module before sleep (and you can reload the module after waking it up), so people have been using this workaround and have some success out of this.

  • ColdWater@lemmy.ca
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    3 months ago

    Maybe it’s just camera angle but that’s the ugliest modern laptop I’ve ever seen

    • accideath@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      It‘s the camera angle. The ratio of keyboard to trackpad is a lot more pleasing if you don’t take the pic with a wide angle lens. You can see a top down shot of the keyboard area here.

  • smb@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    i would not trust hardware from a vendor that puts hardwired backdoors into physical memory… you’ld undermine any security the OS could give you.

    • cmnybo
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      3 months ago

      Unless you’re using ancient hardware, you already have an internet connected back door in your CPU.

      • SilentObserver@lemm.ee
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        3 months ago

        pulls out abacus

        “Not today fedboys! Now, how do I listen to Taylor’s latest single on this?”

        • Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee
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          3 months ago

          Use it as a harp?

          If it doesn’t work check for viruses, defragment your balls, and satanise your beads. Maybe you just need to download more orbs?

        • boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net
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          3 months ago

          Corebooted Thinkpads are pretty ancient.

          But 3mdeb, Novacustom, Starlabs, System76… well and Chromebooks exist.

          Also no idea about the new ARM laptops.

            • TurboWafflz@lemmy.world
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              3 months ago

              I bought an Asus Eee PC from 2007 for $7 a couple weeks ago and put NetBSD and it is honestly surprisingly usable for non web tasks. Your 2011 ThinkPad is like insane future technology by comparison

            • boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net
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              3 months ago

              Yeah really. I have a T430, tried an i7 upgrade but it ate too much battery and was crazy hot (3632QM, the “normal” model!).

              The dual core CPU still works kinda well. The keyboard is awesome but loud. The screen is terrible. I have some phone speakers I plan to use for swapping the laptop ones which are crap too.

              My T495 had an even better keyboard but proprietary, outdated (kind of, got a Spectre patch).

              The clevo honestly has crappy external hardware except the excellent screen. Camera sucks, touchpad sucks, keyboard tolerable. Very strong i7 cpu and good peripherls (well, no displayport, a nogo for FOSS computers I think)

              • Jumuta@sh.itjust.works
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                3 months ago

                The screen on the t430 is indeed horrible but I had a very modern laptop before this which was pretty high spec, and it had a even worse screen than this somehow (it was some horrendous IPS display, I don’t even understand how you mess it up that bad). Compared to that pile of garbage this is much better. The only problem is that you can’t replace the display on the t430 as easily as a modern (non-touchscreen) laptop because it uses the LVDS interface instead of the modern eDP interface.

          • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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            3 months ago

            You can run libreboot on newer devices but the Intel ME is needed to boot. Apparently the device shuts off after 15min without it.

            With that being said it is possible to disable it after boot

            • boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net
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              3 months ago

              Hmm, intel was sued by the literal NSA for the ME so they now need to include a setting for it.

              You need to place a specific bit in the BIOS and then it is disabled. This should not cause any problems.

              But for some reason, which may be a faulty USB flash install, Dasharo Coreboot on a Clevo NV41 loses the TPM when disabling the ME.

              I have 2 nitrokeys so might just use that as secure element instead of my TPM.

                • smb@lemmy.ml
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                  3 months ago

                  but you did notice that compilers can be manipulated to include backdoors into resulting binaries AND put the same manipulation into newly compiled compilers as well, right? then where did you get that compiler from? did you have a look at the binary output? then if so, did you look at it using the hexeditor of that same compiler? 😎 plz have a look … 💥 bzzzt … really you are lucky to be alive after a blast like that, especially you, have yourself checked out with ems before you leave!

        • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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          3 months ago

          AMD has an equivalent technology they put in around the same time. Also AMD chips aren’t nearly as compatible with libreboot.

          A while back AMD did say they were looking to open up a lot of the boot stack but I haven’t heard anything sense.

      • smb@lemmy.ml
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        3 months ago

        you already have an internet connected back door in your CPU.

        unless you’re running your own gsm station and let your cpu’s safely connect to it, and use that connection for additional snmp monitoring data?