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The secret project is out!
Work has been quite intense lately. Last week I was in Gothenburg doing hardware bringup. I worked on my day off. I worked on the weekend. It was a bit of a crunch but not the worst I've seen. Managed to sneak away with P for a concert with Malmö Symphony Orchestra, though: Prokofiev's Romeo & Julia. Five percussionists! So powerful!
For a while we were near panic when signatures didn't work on the real hardware! Everything worked in the chip simulator (Verilator) but not on the real iCE40. We worked in parallel on three different investigations, one of them being that something was off with I/O on real harware. Perhaps bit errors in the transmission? Then... suddenly... a breakthrough: All RISC-V multiplications on real hardware gave the wrong results! WTF!? Ah-ha! First, a software workaround, then hardware fixes. Phew!
This week we presented at the Open Source Firmware Conference (OSFC). We presented on Monday and unveiled the Tillitis Key 1, a new kind of USB security stick. Fredrik began the presentation by giving an overview of the general idea, then our CEO Sasko spoke about the hardware, then I did a small demo and talked about software development tools.
The stick is a small computer that can load and run small programs uploded to it from a host computer. It always measures every program and derives a new secret for every program that can be used as an identifier, for instance by signing messages.
Me, Daniel "quite" Lublin and Björn Töpel have written the software: the qemu emulator code, the firmware, the uplodable apps, the host software, some of the interfaces to the chip simulator and build stuff. Joachim Strömbergson did the hardware design in Verilog. Matt Metts did the PCB designs and the firmware for the MCU and the programmer as well as handling all the production. Fredrik Strömberg came up with the idea, the initial function design, and a lot of whiteboarding.
Most of OSFC was spent at our table in the hackathon room, talking to people about the TK1, but I managed to watch a few presentations as well.
You should definitely have a look at my friend Rasmus' talk about transparency logs (especially Sigsum) and firmware updates:
Really good stuff. He's very easy to follow. I liked his simple explanation of a Merkle tree.
Video of the talks will probably be up next week.
I'm taking two days off after the crunch to finish things for OSFC... But I couldn't resist refactoring the messy host-side protocol stuff while on the train ride home. Pretty productive train ride, I thought, even though there was a bit of chaos actually getting on the train because of the train chaos in Gothenburg.
I was *so* nervous for the talk. I took two Inderal beta-blockers but was still almost beside myself with nerves. And all I did was to do a small demo and say a few words about dev tools.
My mother's husband turned 75. I bought him a bottle of scotch but couldn't be present at the party. Instead I worked quite a lot and even if I didn't work that particular weekend I couldn't travel 1800 km just over the weekend, 16 hours on a train.
P went to Helsingborg to run a half marathon the same weekend. She had been training for the full marathon but since we both got Covid she felt that she couldn't do the whole thing. She had a nice time running the half marathon instead.
I got a really fine wine from the Venge wineyards in Napa Valley and some Primotalii chili seeds as a late birthday present from very dear friends who couldn't attend my birthday celebrations.
It will be interesting to see if we get the Primotalii to grow. On the other hand, considering that I don't know what to do with all the reaper fruit I have, what do I do with Primotalii!? Yes, I can eat a reaper but quite slowly. It's not like the three--four habanero fruits I chop and use on my dinner plate. And the Primotalii are even hotter!?
Attended lonsword practice only once during this period and that was one of the try out practices and there were a lot of people and mostly very basic things. Considering I couldn't take part of any other practice because of work, that would have to do. Will probably miss a few more in the coming weeks.
Election to parliament, the regions and the municipalities on September 11. Election night was spent biting my nails and watching the TV coverage until about 02:00. Results: The local ex-nazis seems to become second largest party. Seems likely we get a new government with support from the extreme right. I'm not happy.
I binged a series of really funny reviews of conlangs:
I think Interlingua sounds really beautiful and it's sort of useful at once. I can basically understand it, even if I can't form sentences myself yet.
Me and a friend tried to learn Esperanto in upper secondary and as a result I also tried simplifying Swedish grammar, as you do when you're enthusiastic about something. Wish I still had those papers.
As you know, I'm taking a pause from Fedi since April. I recently read a wonderful book review where I found this fabulous quote:
> with the advent of social media, and the resultant triumph of the spread of gossip over Dunbar’s number, we might have just inadvertently performed the equivalent of summoning an Elder God.
From Erik Hoel's review of David Graeber (RIP!) and David Wengrow's book "The Dawn Of Everything". I'm going to grab a copy of the book as well.
Really interesting article in Wired about Nordic style LARPs and a gay conversion therapy camp, including Karin, one of my longsword mates:
mc,
Sweetmorn, the 46 day of Bureaucracy in the YOLD 3188
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