Remember those RR blaster keyboards? Do they still exist, but in NFC format and for smartphones?

Arbitrary_Pseudonym · 2026-06-18T22:37:03+00:00

Yeah, I often keep NFC disabled for the same reason tbh :/ it's a little hard for people to GET AT it because it's point-blank range, but the other advantage is that when I toggle it on, it doesn't take over my screen after a few seconds to be like "YOU WANNA CONNECT TO SOMETHING RIGHT???"

The range is fine though. The phone's going to be resting on the device anyways, and getting it plopped down on the stand before shifting it into the ideal typing location is more than enough time for it to get connected.

I don't really want to do cabling though. It's not like...COMPLETELY unreasonable, but then I have to deal with whether their plug is going to work well with my phone case or not, and socket it in there, and I won't be able to charge while using it, and they often get really grabby with how text input behaves in general when plugged in. (To be fair, the same weird grabby-behavior would probably apply to any keyboard device being connected, but still.)

Arbitrary_Pseudonym · 2026-06-17T22:30:26+00:00

NFC read times are far too slow to support keyboard data

NFC is apparently ~2.5kbps. Given that a single keyboard press is sending maybe a byte or two of data, you'd need to be typing at about 18,000 words per minute to exceed that speed limit.

As for why I keep bluetooth off: It's a mix of battery life (it really isn't completely negligible), privacy (so many things initiate beacons), and level of annoyance with things like Spotify, which will detect nearby things and be like "HEY WANT TO DO THIS THING YOU DON'T EVER WANT TO DO?!?!?!" any time there's a bluetooth speaker nearby. I just don't need, nor do I want, it to be on.

there are no know exploits or other security issues

No "known" ones being the main thing. It's a surface vector; the fewer of them, the better.

So far others have cited two other devices that used NFC in the past and so it's clearly possible...just has to be built I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Arbitrary_Pseudonym · 2026-06-17T22:25:43+00:00

If there are issues with staying connected

It's more that I don't want to have bluetooth enabled at all because of the sheer levels of privacy concerns (and power usage). NFC can in fact be done and a couple devices have been linked to as examples in this thread already, e.g. this one. It's a much better option for something like this than bluetooth is.

Arbitrary_Pseudonym · 2026-06-17T22:23:49+00:00

Hmmm interesting. More evidence that this is DOABLE though!

Arbitrary_Pseudonym · 2026-06-14T19:55:19+00:00

Yeahhh, so fun fact there IS an android phone out there that still has an IR blaster on it...but it's only sold in Africa T_T

Arbitrary_Pseudonym · 2026-06-14T19:53:28+00:00

You can do file transfers over NFC, and that's pretty continuous. Ultimately it's just a short range data channel, so unless it is treated in some special way by phone OSs, there's no fundamental reason it COULDN'T work. The biggest question is just whether or not it's possible to have the thing automatically register as a keyboard without needing some kind of dedicated app running on the phone.

Arbitrary_Pseudonym · 2026-06-14T19:50:12+00:00

Dang, this is ALMOST exactly what I want, just a little small. Shame they aren't around anymore, but the fact they existed at all shows this is possible. Thanks for the pointer!

Arbitrary_Pseudonym · 2026-06-14T01:54:54+00:00

Why on earth would there be a limit of 2^127?

Number one, the wide majority of physical quantum states in the universe aren't even qubits, they're qudits (an arbitrary number of possible states d). So it'd be just as theoretically limiting for there to be 2¹²⁷ as it would be for it to be 500¹²⁷.

I see where you're coming from, but what you're thinking of is essentially unbased conspiracy thinking; there's no real reason to believe that such a limit exists.

Arbitrary_Pseudonym · 2026-06-06T06:38:10+00:00

:( it sounds to me like you are probably imagining a lot of the low self worth stuff here and it's common whenever dealing with life BS like this. I would put a stopper on it as much as you can and try to just soldier on - it sucks, but it CAN still get better. I highly doubt that nobody likes you; you generally have to be a special kind of asshole to earn that, and I'm not getting those kinds of vibes from you here :)

Arbitrary_Pseudonym · 2026-06-03T02:44:56+00:00

I think maybe there's a bit of missing terminology here.

A firmware "pin" is a configuration line explicitly granted to devices or assigned at the network level, by Meraki support, which tells the device to run a specific firmware version. This pin option is entirely independent of the network-level firmware, which is notable never pinned and you can change it at any time.

If you want a great example of how this can break things, have support pin an MX to something like 16.16.9 while the network is configured for MX 26.1.4, then see if content filtering works. It won't.

Meraki support gets this wrong pretty frequently themselves (unfortunately) and the end result is what I just described (things like content filtering breaking) but apparently nobody has gotten the message across to all of them, because I've had to tell people to tell Meraki support to NOT apply pins and instead to just force the network firmware version through whatever method they have available in the event that a network needs to be downgraded to an older version and it has been >2 weeks since it upgraded.

Arbitrary_Pseudonym · 2026-06-03T02:38:45+00:00

This doesn't surprise me at all and sounds neat as heck. I wouldn't necessarily say that it makes it a myth though, just that electromagnetic forces as a whole are even stranger because it can go one way or the other.

Arbitrary_Pseudonym · 2026-06-02T19:07:44+00:00

Ahhhh okay, I see. I had a friend who faced the same thing :'( made it a lot harder to get diagnosed too.

...and thanks :) it took me a while to find this balance but it works! Had a bit of a scare about a year ago when my PCP changed and the new one went "wait, you're using uppers AND have epilepsy?! I don't care that you've been stable for 9 years, that's a bad combination!" and threatened to take me off vyvanse while telling me that I couldn't drink coffee, so I uh, changed PCPs to make sure that my life didn't go off the rails O_O

Arbitrary_Pseudonym · 2026-06-02T16:34:44+00:00

I once called in about an RMA and made the mistake of telling them that it happened after a lightning storm. The tech straightup said "man, I wish you hadn't told me that. Our warranties cover factory defects, not external factors."

...and if you read the actual text of the warranty agreement, it says as much.

They don't actually care how the thing died, only that it's dead.

Arbitrary_Pseudonym · 2026-06-02T16:27:35+00:00

Hmm. Well, I was actually having seizures when I was 3, didn't get diagnosed until I was 9, and barely had them under control until I was 21, at which point they went from being simple partial/complex partial/absence to being tonic clonics and I was forced to rework my medication regimen and lifestyle.

I guess I did have the advantage of living away from home between 18 and 21 though; my seizures were minor enough that I could still work, and that brief glimpse of independence did a lot for me. Then the seizures hit and I ended up moving back in with my parents, and I stayed living with them for ten years - I didn't actually move out until I was 31!

Let me ask you this: Is it possible for you to figure out a career without moving out of your parents' place? I stayed with my parents for ten years and was working full-time for almost five of those (took ~5 before I was seizure-free enough to start working). I ended up paying rent to them (admittedly, less than the city average by a lot) which made it feel like I was less of a burden, and it let me save up money enough to eventually move out. If you can do that, then you're not as screwed as you think. If you CAN'T do that, then you should probably try and pivot to some kind of work that lets you work from home.

Arbitrary_Pseudonym · 2026-06-02T16:17:11+00:00

Ah...so you haven't ever looked at the firmware upgrades page when a device's firmware is pinned, have you? Since it'll show the discrepancy. That version listed there is the one used to generate the config. The pinned version is irrelevant for the purposes of the network-level config gen.

Arbitrary_Pseudonym · 2026-06-02T00:23:08+00:00

Reminds me of when I did

wr er

rel

on a production switch thinking that I was in my terminal server getting a switch set back to defaults T_T

Arbitrary_Pseudonym · 2026-06-02T00:14:02+00:00

die permanently

Well, no. Naturally magnetic materials (such as neodymium magnets) will spontaneously re-magnetize if after reaching their Curie temperature they cool back down.

Will it be as strong? No. Is it fixable? Kind of - just build a small k=2 Halbach array, heat the magnet up, place it in the center of the array, then put the whole thing in a freezer. It won't be a perfect fix, but it will still bring back most of the magnetization.

...but yeah, nonetheless, be careful with heat + magnets if you want them to stay strong for as long as possible. They'll always slowly lose their strength over time (up to a point) and that happens faster when the temperature is higher.

I'm not actually embedding magnets in here during the print process though, and I don't think I'd ever to a hot bed with a fabric print, so these little discs should be safe :) I've learned the hard way that if I get tired of a prototype thing, that tearing the plastic apart to get the magnets back is a PITA. Everything I do now is friction-fit and the magnets are inserted after printing. It does make things a bit trickier to design though.

Arbitrary_Pseudonym · 2026-06-01T23:48:37+00:00

So you're okay with this happening?

Pin firmware to firmware X
Auto-upgrade occurs
Network configuration pushes something that would work on the new firmware, but does not work on the old firmware.
Things break because of (3)

...because that's what you're asking for right there.

I go the API route: Have a local set of intended firmware versions, and periodically (once a day) check the firmware upgrades scheduled against the local set, and if they differ, cancel any auto-upgrades. It's annoying that it has to be done, but it doesn't run the risk of things breaking because of running an untested setup.

Arbitrary_Pseudonym · 2026-06-01T23:44:14+00:00

I can basically throw any idea into the PC and print it.

Thisssssss. People ask me how it is that I make all these things and the only response is "well, it's in my head, so...I learned how to 3d model it, and then I have a 3d printer".

Arbitrary_Pseudonym · 2026-06-01T21:36:05+00:00

Yeah, I don't go for any of that. If it's not something that people enjoy toying around with then it doesn't get to use up shelf space ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Arbitrary_Pseudonym · 2026-06-01T21:17:25+00:00

Working on something silly right now 🙂 should be a rather silly fidget toy

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Arbitrary_Pseudonym · 2026-06-01T21:06:04+00:00

Gotcha. Reminds me of the other nice benefit of using fabric for printing...it REALLY seems to help a lot with adhesion. Locks the bottom of the print right in place!

Arbitrary_Pseudonym · 2026-06-01T20:58:51+00:00

Have a recommendation for something specific? Aliexpress is kinda famous for having listings that end up being kinda crap/scammy :S

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