c720 Trackpad set up

I reinstalled or upgraded my c720 or something and things are a bit all over the place. Tonight I started firefox in the hackerspace and noticed my trackpad wasn't working, it needs to be explicitly setup. This is mentioned on the comprehensive FreeBSD c720 guide , but there have been some updates to the driver that aren't reflected on the page. You now need to load the chromebook_platform driver manually. 

# kldload chromebook_platform
# kldload ig4
# kldload cyapa

The cyapa driver offers all the features you would want from a trackpad, two finger dragging, thresholds for taps and an three button mouse emulation mode. 

# sysctl debug.cyapa_enable_tapclick=3

Which gives me the following awesome mouse button layout on the trackpad. 

        Trackpad layout

         2/3               1/3
+--------------------+------------+
|                    |   Middle   |
|                    |   Button   |
|       Left         |            |
|      Button        +------------+
|                    |   Right    |
|                    |   Button   |
+--------------------+............|
|     Thumb/Button Area           | 15%
+---------------------------------+

Also disable super danger mode: 

# echo "hw.acpi.power_button_state=NONE" >> /etc/sysctl.conf

JTAG on USB3

Physical access is pretty much always game over, apart from the iPhone there are not many devices that can stand up to attack. Intel seem to want to make physical access even easier and are now offering JTAG access on USB.

JTAG is a hardware debugging protocol normally seen on embedded systems or accessed through a special adapter on the motherboard. You can use JTAG to pause a processor, step through the instructions being executed and read into memory. With JTAG access you have full access to the machine.

Reading: Babylon's Ashes

State of Interner Censorship

One of the speakers asks the audience early on 'Do you think Internet Censorship should be allowed?' and gets about half the crowd showing hands. I really cannot understand that sort of response, clearly there are things we don't want people to see, but I can't support a blanket censorship system to block that content.

If there was a way to block really dangerous material, without risking blocking completely reasonable material I am sure that is what we would be implementing.

The slides for the presentation are here , there are some other slides here .

Reading: Babylon's Ashes

This podcast it is quite nice.

Loch Brandy

Went up a hill today.

It was a change from sitting inside, the view was really nice. On the way up I was thinking about photography and finding the right equipment. It is pretty clear my J1 with a 10mm pancake lens isn't ideal for landscape photography, but I am not really sure how to get a set of gear to make the photos I want to take possible.

Sitting down with books and reviews are the obvious way to figure this out, but maybe there is a more 'fun' solution. Here's an idea for free:

  • We take in the camera equipment you already have.
  • You go through flickr, 500px or something else and tag photos you wish you had taken.
  • We parse out the lens/camera used
  • We recommend the gear to help take the photos you want

Skill will have to be provided by the user.

It is Sunday, so that makes seven days of writing .

Reading: Babylon's Ashes

Hot Adventure

What do you do when you find a USB stick on the ground?

Clearly you take it to work, plug it into a computer with network admin privileges to make sure there is nothing funny about it.

I guess something could go wrong, I saw a documentary once where criminals dropped a load of USB sticks on the ground which an unsuspecting prison guard used in a computer. They probably put some malware on that USB stick and all, not cool.

Anyway, at congress I saw this sign, sans stick. I hope there was both something horrible on it and something that made it worth the hassle.

Reading: Babylon's Ashes

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