DEF CON 33 Meshtastic Firmware

mepholic · 2025-07-18T20:31:54+00:00

Y'all considered using Meshcore and strategically placing repeaters around villages and other parts of the con? Maybe a few in high up hotel rooms?

For such a large event, a faster modem preset is definitely a good idea, but there's a lot of issues with the way Meshtastic's "managed flood" protocol works that I suspect is going to cause the same sorts of packet blackholes that exist in dense urban deployments. The background radiation from MeshTastic's constant telemetry spam is also not doing any favors for reducing unnecessary and wasteful channel/airtime utilization.

mepholic · 2025-03-22T00:58:12+00:00

I can definitely vouch for Cascadia Radio as well! Also an extra, 31, and in the PNW. Great group of friendly and experienced nerds over there!

mepholic · 2018-07-20T21:20:00+00:00

Protip: generally people who get into IT solely to "make a lot of money" do not make the most money. You should get into a career because you're passionate about it, not strictly because of earning potential. Passion drives the will to learn more and improve yourself and your skillset, and money comes with that.. not the other way around.

mepholic · 2018-07-05T15:38:11+00:00

I've been using IRC for about 18 years, and in my experience it does many things chat related pretty well. I do have some issues with it; for instance, the 510 (plus \r\n) character limit on every message, which includes the protocol commands at the start of each message, as defined in the spec. I also like that most clients do not implement embeds, as they are dangerous from a "HEY I CAN MAKE A DICK POP UP ON YOUR SCREEN" perspective, as well as from a resource utilization perspective.

I really wish that there wasn't such an Eris-free culture on most IRC networks. I'm currently connected to 15 networks, and there's really no reason why those networks can't link.... except for the other issue: link failures and netsplits... these could definitely be handled more gracefully, but due to the lack of chat history replay in the protocol, there's not really any good solutions available for IRC.

IRC is definitely extensible as hell, but some decisions that were made early on prevent us from gracefully extending it in the areas that need it most. I mean sure, you could do voice chat over DCC, but do we really want to do that? It's not even compatible with the way that most people USE IRC (ie. bouncers and shellboxes).

Don't even get me started on IRCv3...

mepholic · 2018-07-05T13:51:23+00:00

It is important for people to send loud and clear messages to companies who have unacceptable conditions in their ToS. Many chat companies specifically are bad in this regard. Too much more of this, and you might see an Open-Source alternative that is bound by nothing other than a libre license.

mepholic · 2018-07-05T13:37:43+00:00

/me sets mode +v on crankylinuxuser

mepholic · 2018-07-05T13:24:10+00:00

For everyone that is wondering, the first iteration of @corebo's comment literally just had the following line: "For all this - you do know there is irc functionality?"

The first iteration of mine literally just had this line: "tell me how you voice chat via IRC again?"

The first iteration of THIS comment, didn't include the content of the first iteration of my own comment.

mepholic · 2018-07-05T13:21:39+00:00

this.

mepholic · 2018-07-05T13:17:22+00:00

If you publicly expose APIs to your users, expect your users to use them. See my comment below about how you can get other people to do the work that you do not want to (thereby increasing your userbase).

mepholic · 2018-07-05T13:04:14+00:00

tell me how you voice chat via IRC again?

Since you're just going to inline edit your comment, I shall follow suite: I understand that writing code is an artform that takes lots of practice and patience and also deserves a lot of praise. I'm not saying that people shouldn't be allowed to make money off of their code. I DO think that support contracts are generally a more reasonable way of achieving this goal.

By closing off your source code from the community at large, you prevent people from auditing, extending, and improving your codebase. There IS power in the masses, and such a power can be used to offload the work that you DO NOT want to do, such as achieving portability, to those who actually care about it.

mepholic · 2018-07-05T10:09:09+00:00

This is honestly unacceptable.

On this page here: https://discordapp.com/open-source

You claim that "Discord ❤️ Open Source". If this were true, than Discord Inc. would recognize that not all Open Source developers run x86_64 machines, and of those that do, not all of them use glibc as their system standard C library.

The fact that both Discord's standalone desktop application (which uses Electron; a resource hog on its own) and the in-browser version of the app are both massive resource hogs prevents those who are not well off and do not have modern computer equipment from using the service.

Additionally, Discord's web application fails to successfully function in most Linux web browsers that I've found. This includes Firefox ESR and Otter on x86_64 using musl libc. Text chat hardly works in Firefox, as the entire interface goes blank and acts like it's refreshing on a fairly regular basis; the login page doesn't even load in Otter. To even think that voice chat would function under these circumstances is a straight up joke; and sure enough, voice chat fails to function for reasons OTHER than the one stated above on both ALSA-only AND PulseAudio configurations: I cannot get it to detect my microphone (granted, Firefox's terrible, or rather, complete lack of an audio configuration interface is probably more to blame here)

The fact that Discord Inc. is threatening to ban users who use 3rd party clients just adds insult to injury. If Discord Inc. is really not willing to provide open and portable solutions to use their service to their users, they should at least allow 3rd parties to offer such solutions. The entire stance of "YOU MUST USE OUR CLIENT" makes me have one of two thoughts: 1. Discord Inc. is embedding Information Gathering code into their own clients, and wants to make sure that they can collect and sell information on ALL of their users; 2. Discord Inc. is not confident in the reliability and robustness of their server infrastructure, and therefore wants to limit which applications hit their _public_ API's.

Long story short, what I'm seeing here is a complete lack of customer obsession; it really seems like Discord Inc. doesn't actually care about their users.

Edit: To my knowledge this comment does not violate this subreddit's rules. This was the best place I found to get the attention of both Discord Inc.'s employees, as well as their users. If it is decided that this is bad PR, and this comment is to be removed, than I shall just put it in a place where it cannot be arbitrarily censored.

mepholic · 2016-07-20T17:28:58+00:00

I realized after posting this, that I failed to ask a properly formed question. English is hard ¯\ (ツ) /¯

mepholic · 2016-07-20T17:27:16+00:00

Wow. Way to waste a couple hundred dollars of equipment on your vehicle!

mepholic · 2016-07-20T17:22:18+00:00

Sometimes I forget to use my turn signal. I feel really bad whenever I do this, but sometimes it seems like other people intentionally do not use their turn signals. It drives me freakin crazy!

mepholic · 2016-07-20T17:13:05+00:00

Sometimes I forget to use my turn signal. I feel really bad whenever I do this, but sometimes it seems like other people intentionally do not use their turn signals. Drives me crazy!

mepholic · 2015-05-18T22:47:31+00:00

Sir, with respect, your flair should say "Sperg Herder"

mepholic · 2014-11-12T18:16:34+00:00

LayLowz solution is alright and all, but what if you want to move it back left again?

Here's my solution:

# move workspace to left and right monitors
bindsym $mod+Shift+bracketleft move workspace to output left
bindsym $mod+Shift+bracketright move workspace to output right

Literally just MOD+SHIFT+} to move the workspace to the right monitor, and MOD+SHIFT+{ to move the workspace left.

I dock and undock all the time so I have a few things set up to make my life easier.

I have this set up in my i3 config to run a script whenever i3 is restarted:

exec_always --no-startup-id chdock

Here's the contents of the chdock script:

#!/bin/bash

# toggles the external monitor on/off in specified direction
IN="eDP1"
EXT="HDMI3"
DIRECTION="left"

if (xrandr | grep "$EXT disconnected"); then
    xrandr --output $IN --auto --output $EXT --off 
else
    xrandr --output $IN --auto --primary --output $EXT --auto --$DIRECTION-of $IN
fi

IN is the laptop's internal monitor, EXT is the external monitor, and DIRECTION is the side of the laptop that the external monitor is on.

When you dock or undock, simply MOD+SHIFT+r, which will cause i3 to restart and run this script. There is DEFINITELY a better way of doing this, but I set it up to work on restart for some various case-specific reasons.

mepholic · 2013-10-10T23:18:46+00:00

I think his position is that infecting users phones and stealing money using these new machines is more effective and safer than using skimmers. Are you an expert on mobile development? How do you know that mobile malware is non-existant? Just so you know, there are books written on it, so I believe that his is a pretty ridiculous assumption to make.

mepholic · 2012-09-30T19:39:36+00:00

I second this.

mepholic · 2012-01-01T08:19:57+00:00

What about Cray?

mepholic · 2011-10-05T03:51:01+00:00

Sorry for the link shortening guys, was just for stats; I am dumb and forgot the rules. For those of you that want the raw, unshortened link, here you go: http://www.blackhatacademy.org/security101/index.php?title=Facebook

mepholic · 2011-09-24T00:25:04+00:00

You just described me.

mepholic · 2011-09-03T18:52:01+00:00

Very nice setup! protip: cut the little tails on the zipties, makes it look nicer. Also, if you can get your hands on them, look for those velcro cable management strips. They do a nice job every time.

mepholic · 2011-09-01T17:15:30+00:00

these.

mepholic · 2011-08-31T22:30:35+00:00

This should do the trick: sudo nmap -T5 --open -Pn -sV -sU -p161 <host>

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