Category Archives: technology

Mining asteroids for gold

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I recently saw articles speculating about asteroids with high metal content and feasibility of mining gold, platinum and similar expensive stuff there. The calculations is basically that there must be a zillion tons of gold there and if we bring it to Earth the price of gold would plummet because the supply would suddenly increase.

I agree with Schiff’s analysis. However, I would also explore the details, as I once used the “gold is a discovery of a golden asteroid away from being worthless”. At first, this argument is sound, since the value of gold is based on restricted supply, and all the gold ever mined on Earth would fit in a cube with a side of 20 meters.

However, another argument is that gold is extremely abundant on Earth. Earth is unique among the planets because of its extraordinarily high metallicity. That’s why we have a magnetic field at the time where other rocky planets have cooled down and no longer have a core floating in a molten mantle. We have so much heavy elements, that nuclear fission and radioactive decay create over half of the temperature that keeps Earth’s interior molten. A significant portion of that are the elements we would deem precious, such as gold and the platinoids. Also, Earth’s crust contains quite a lot of gold. It’s quite easy to create heavy machinery assisted by human labour here on Earth, and create mining shafts and what not. Despite all that, mining gold is barely profitable.

Now let’s imagine we really do find out that there are significant amounts of gold on some asteroid. You know what would happen to the price of gold on the market? Nothing. Why? Because we still haven’t managed to bring home a sample of material from an asteroid. In comparison to mining asteroids, having a steady population on Mars is child’s play.

Operating a mine, which basically means crushing millions of tons of iron ore into dust, separating what you want to keep from what you want to discard, all in micro-gravity, high radiation and no atmosphere, no food for the workers, it’s such an enormous task, it could realistically be imagined by a Kardashev type II civilization, and we are not yet type I. You can realistically imagine us crushing asteroids for mining when it’s easy for us to terraform Venus and have six billion people living there, and have cities on Titan and Europa. However, at that point adding all the gold in the solar system still wouldn’t be enough to cover a GDP of the size necessary to run a civilization that mines the asteroid field for minerals and creates a Dyson sphere with the remaining material, just because they need the solar energy to operate the thing. Mining asteroids for minerals isn’t something that would be done by Earth. It would be done as a joint endeavour of Mars, Europa and Ganymede, by the Russians and the Chinese who would make up the population of the colonies; Earth would be too busy talking about genders to take part.

A Delta IV rocket launch costs $17,400 per kg delivered to lower Earth orbit (LEO). Falcon Heavy is supposed to reduce the cost to $1700 per kg. Essentially, you have to pay at least an ounce of gold to get a kilo of anything into orbit. This includes an entire asteroid-mining spacecraft, with human crew because a mine can’t be safely operated over more than half an hour delay due to light speed. If an AI could operate a mine in the asteroid field independently, then it would have a Kardashev type II civilization and you would be either apes in a zoo, or fossils. If remote operation is impractical because of the speed of light, AI operation is possible but then you have bigger problems, it leaves you with the simplest and the most practical option of maintaining a manned space station in the asteroid belt, supplying it from Earth, shielding it from radiation and impact in an area full of high-speed debris, dealing with rock and metal dust produced by crushing ore, in microgravity conditions, mining gold, shaping it into a sun sail in order to slowly reduce its orbital velocity and send it to Earth, catch it there by the second crew somewhere in Earth or Moon orbit, melt it into gold bullion and send it to Earth to be recovered.

In short, gold is going to become cheap once the AI running the solar system finds no use for it, but until then, or other cause or extinction, it’s the best place to store your life savings.

Security of Linux

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I was thinking a bit lately, running Linux as my daily driver for the last few days, at least on my desktop PC, about the rationale behind Linux as a secure OS.

Linux is secure because it’s open source so anyone can inspect it and find the back doors and insecure features. That’s the story.

However, a while ago they discovered an open-ssl vulnerability called “heartbleed”, which was there for years, in an open source library, that theoretically everybody could inspect, and yet apparently that didn’t help the slightest bit. How is that possible?

The explanation is quite easy. Yes, there is a huge number of people working on open source projects, but the trick is in how they are grouped. The largest majority is working on redundant high-level stuff, while the “invisible”, low-end, critical features are so obscure, that they are often maintained by either a single developer or a handful of them, and although people could in theory read some cryptographic c library, almost nobody does, because it’s obscure, difficult and unrewarding work. People who maintain those libraries need to have immense expertise, and yet they are usually paid nothing for their work. Nobody really competes for a job that requires a PhD in mathematics, a wizard-level knowledge of c, uses up lots of time, and pays nothing.

Which brings me to the main security issue in Linux: its critical security features are written and maintained by a few unpaid experts, are too obscure to read and understand by the vast majority of Linux developers, and the likely attacker can literally print billions of dollars that will never be tracked or accounted for, and has infinite means of intimidation.

This means Linux is in fact extremely vulnerable. It was proven to have “heart-bleeding” vulnerabilities out there in the open for years, and nobody actually bothered to read the open source code and find them. The vulnerability can be extremely obscure, and you’d need to be a professional cryptanalyst to be able to identify it, and there would be no incentive for you to go through all those mountains of code and find it, because you would assume it’s already been done, which is an easy and pleasant assumption to make, if somewhat unwarranted.

So, what am I saying here? Basically, I’m saying nothing is secure if those attacking the system have control of the hardware design, firmware design, operating system design, and can pay the best experts infinite amounts of money if they comply with their demands, or have them and their families disappear in darkness if they don’t. The idea, that you can simply install Linux instead of Windows and you’re secure, is incredibly naive.

New Raspberry Pi

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Raspberry Pi 4B has been released recently, and it’s the first such device that might actually be usable as a general-purpose desktop PC.

I don’t know yet what the Geekbench score is, but it has 4GB RAM, can drive two 4K monitors, is 2+ times faster than the 3B+ model, has gigabit Ethernet and USB3, essentially making it an ideal cheap and secure device for running general purpose office/school applications.

I ordered one and will report how it does running Linux desktop and my typical workload. In theory, it’s the first one that actually has enough power to rival a NUC for lightweight HTPC and desktop tasks.

Update after receiving and briefly testing the 4GB unit:

Geekbench 2 (ARM build) is 4830. The score of the 3B+ is 2266.

Subjective speed is comparable to my media player, Core2Duo E6500@2900MHz, which means it’s quite usable, since that used to be my desktop machine; the speed is not up to today’s standards, but it’s not stone age. I’m using it to write this article and the speed is fine, it’s a normal desktop computer.

kde-plasma-desktop package in raspbian made a mess, and is unusable, so I’m using the default raspbian window manager. Raspbian is incredibly breakable; after attempting to install multiple window managers, everything broke in many different ways, for instance raspi-config fails to set a valid boot to GUI or boot to CLI configuration; it just does whatever, and when I startx, it complately bypasses lightdm/sddm and opens whatever (at first Raspbian default GUI, but later Mate desktop, without the ability to switch between the two. It’s simply not ready for “normies”. Window manager switching should either not work at all, or work well, without conflicting daemons/applets, and reliably selectable through either GUI or CLI. I can’t believe I have to even say this.

The video works marginally OK when I use the legacy open-gl driver in raspi-config. 720p video works ok, only 9 dropped frames of 2800. Everything above 720p is not smooth. The mouse moves better now too.

Mate desktop is much, much better than the default Raspbian GUI. Normal things such as the volume buttons actually work. This machine should have Ubuntu Mate as the desktop OS, and Raspbian should be left for tinkering with hardware and emergency use only. Mate desktop, however, is good enough for normal desktop use. For instance, I couldn’t make Raspbian GUI make my mouse work non-sluggish; in mate-desktop-environment it just works. That also goes for the volume control buttons on both keyboards I tested. I could get used to this.

It’s prone to overheating. I got a high temperature icon repeatedly while working at the Raspbian desktop while performing apt-get install of a large dependency tree. The temps were above 80°C with alu heatsink glued to the CPU but plastic top of the case closed. I opened it now and the temps while just typing this are 66°C.
I plugged the USB3 powered hub from the desktop to the Pi and it just worked, plug&play, with all the devices.

There’s some super-weird shit going on with overheating. For instance, I forgot a Kingston USB drive in the device, and when I wanted to remove it, it was hot, like, incredibly hot. I can’t remember whether that was the case with 3B+ but this isn’t normal, since the drive was idling, and not copying the universe. 
The CPU temperature is now 62-66°C, which is about ten degrees more than 3B+ in similar workloads. This CPU needs stronger cooling, and that’s normal since it has the power of an E6500 which has a regular PC heatsink with a fan, and this has a small passive heatsink. 
The video drivers are generally the weakest spot of the OS so far, from what I can tell. All kinds of artifacting is going on while video is playing; mouse pointer hiding and showing, browser randomly redrawing, that kind of crap. It’s alpha release. I don’t think the hardware acceleration is turned on at all. There needs to be a Raspbian update having the 4B in mind, because from what I recall 3B+ actually has better YouTube video.

To repeat myself, there needs to be an OS fork for Pi devices: one for tinkering with hardware, for which Raspbian is great, and one for desktop use, for classrooms or similar, and that one needs to be polished. Ubuntu-Mate seems like an awesome candidate, although I would also like to see kde-plasma-desktop working.

I am testing it on a 4K 43″ monitor, with a mechanical keyboard and Logitech G602 wireless mouse plugged into a powered USB3 hub, and it’s a very comfortable desktop experience, until I get an idea of playing video. That part just doesn’t work well and needs to be fixed in a Raspbian update. This hub also provides the power for the Pi; I also tried a 45W USB-C Asus laptop brick, and Apple iPad brick. The iPad brick was the only one not providing enough power; I had constant undervolt notifications and at one point device actually crashed during a power peak when starting Mate. Have this in mind; this requires a netbook-level power brick, not a phone or tablet-level one. This is not your old Raspberry Pi that could run from a computer’s USB socket and be fine. The power demands are still nowhere near any kind of a x86 desktop computer, but it matches the small and frugal laptops. The overheating has apparently been resolved once I removed the top cover on the case. It would actually make good use of a slow case fan blowing on it, but a high-RPM small fan would be terribly counterproductive. The solution I would prefer would be this:

Aluminium case design where the entire top part of the case is a heatsink would be quite appropriate for a machine of this power, because if you close it inside an un-ventilated plastic enclosure it will melt itself to death, and if it’s left open it can be damaged in all sorts of ways in a classroom environment. Essentially, I’d install it in a VESA mounted enclosure with a large heatsink, and either extend the GPIO with a flat cable to some accessible spot on the monitor stand, or just forget about GPIO for desktop use; have a 4B model for driving a desktop environment, for coding and web/office stuff, and one small, cheap A-type unit for driving sensors and robotics. You’ll do the development/deployment/testing over a ssh connection in any case, it’s just a matter whether you do the development on a “proper” desktop PC, or a desktop-level Pi. As far as I’m concerned, 4B needs a software update that will fix its video problems, and make a mate-desktop-environment a default option in Raspbian: well tested, polished and not conflicting with the unnecessary LXDE and whatever GUI that used to make sense on the older generations. This one needs a choice between Mate, XFCE and KDE, not between SHIT and CRAP. Yes, this is high praise coming from me, and means the device itself is quite excellent for the intended purpose. With proper cooling, properly implemented video codecs and some OS polishing, this could be the ideal classroom computer: cheap, small, integrated into the monitor for robustness, and fast enough to run everything kids would need to learn. And it’s cheap enough you can equip classrooms with it even in the financially not so well off schools that can’t afford i3 or i5 desktops. So, thumbs up, but with a caveat regarding the OS which is obviously an alpha-release considering the needs of this device. I can hardly wait for Ubuntu Mate to be compiled and tweaked for 4B.

 

It’s not really yours

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Regarding my recent bout of paranoia regarding Intel kill switch in the CPU, which can basically allow America to brick your Intel-running computer if you are placed on some “black list”, because you’re “politically incorrect”, “enemy of America” or whatever bullshit they are throwing at Julian Assange. Essentially, any American-made CPU, chipset, BIOS etc. is not yours. You’re just allowed to use it while you comply with the guidelines imposed by America, which say that you must at all times be an obedient slave. If not, “American technology” will be taken away from you.

Let me quote some things from Wikipedia:

The Intel Management Engine (ME), also known as the Manageability Engine, is an autonomous subsystem that has been incorporated in virtually all of Intel’s processor chipsets since 2008. It is located in the Platform Controller Hub of modern Intel motherboards. It is a part of Intel Active Management Technology, which allows system administrators to perform tasks on the machine remotely. System administrators can use it to turn the computer on and off, and they can login remotely into the computer regardless of whether or not an operating system is installed.
The Intel Management Engine always runs as long as the motherboard is receiving power, even when the computer is turned off.
The IME is an attractive target for hackers, since it has top level access to all devices and completely bypasses the operating system. Intel has not released much information on the Intel Management Engine, prompting speculation that it may include a backdoor. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has voiced concern about IME.
AMD processors have a similar feature, called AMD Secure Technology.
The subsystem primarily consists of proprietary firmware running on a separate microprocessor that performs tasks during boot-up, while the computer is running, and while it is asleep. As long as the chipset or SoC is connected to current (via battery or power supply), it continues to run even when the system is turned off. Intel claims the ME is required to provide full performance. Its exact workings are largely undocumented and its code is obfuscated using confidential huffman tables stored directly in hardware, so the firmware does not contain the information necessary to decode its contents. Intel’s main competitor AMD has incorporated the equivalent AMD Secure Technology (formally called Platform Security Processor) in virtually all of its post-2013 CPUs.
Several weaknesses have been found in the ME. On May 1, 2017, Intel confirmed a Remote Elevation of Privilege bug (SA-00075) in its Management Technology. Every Intel platform with provisioned Intel Standard Manageability, Active Management Technology, or Small Business Technology, from Nehalem in 2008 to Kaby Lake in 2017 has a remotely exploitable security hole in the ME. Several ways to disable the ME without authorization that could allow ME’s functions to be sabotaged have been found. Additional major security flaws in the ME affecting a very large number of computers incorporating ME, Trusted Execution Engine (TXE), and Server Platform Services (SPS) firmware, from Skylake in 2015 to Coffee Lake in 2017, were confirmed by Intel on 20 November 2017 (SA-00086). Unlike SA-00075, this bug is even present if AMT is absent, not provisioned or if the ME was “disabled” by any of the known unofficial methods. In July 2018 another set of vulnerabilitites were disclosed (SA-00112). In September 2018, yet another vulnerability was published (SA-00125).
Critics like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and security expert Damien Zammit accused the ME of being a backdoor and a privacy concern. Zammit stresses that the ME has full access to memory (without the parent CPU having any knowledge); has full access to the TCP/IP stack and can send and receive network packets independently of the operating system, thus bypassing its firewall.
Intel responded by saying that “Intel does not put back doors in its products nor do our products give Intel control or access to computing systems without the explicit permission of the end user.” and “Intel does not and will not design backdoors for access into its products. Recent reports claiming otherwise are misinformed and blatantly false. Intel does not participate in any efforts to decrease security of its technology.”
In the context of criticism of the Intel ME and AMD Secure Technology it has been pointed out that the NSA budget request for 2013 contained a Sigint Enabling Project with the goal to “Insert vulnerabilities into commercial encryption systems, IT systems, …” and it has been conjectured that Intel ME and AMD Secure Technology might be part of that programme.
As of 2017, Google was attempting to eliminate proprietary firmware from its servers and found that the ME was a hurdle to that.

The AMD Platform Security Processor (PSP), officially known as AMD Secure Technology, is a trusted execution environment subsystem incorporated since about 2013 into AMD microprocessors. According to an AMD developer’s guide, the subsystem is “responsible for creating, monitoring and maintaining the security environment” and “its functions include managing the boot process, initializing various security related mechanisms, and monitoring the system for any suspicious activity or events and implementing an appropriate response.” Critics worry it can be used as a backdoor and is a security concern. AMD has denied requests to open source the code that runs on the PSP.
The PSP is similar to the Intel Management Engine for Intel processors.
The PSP itself is an ARM core inserted on the main CPU.
In September 2017, Google security researcher Cfir Cohen reported a vulnerability to AMD of a PSP subsystem that could allow an attacker access to passwords, certificates, and other sensitive information; a patch was rumored to become available to vendors in December 2017.
In March 2018, a handful of alleged serious flaws were announced in AMD’s Zen architecture CPUs (EPYC, Ryzen, Ryzen Pro, and Ryzen Mobile) by an Israeli IT security company related to the PSP that could allow malware to run and gain access to sensitive information. AMD has announced firmware updates to handle these flaws. While there were claims that the flaws were published for the purpose of stock manipulation, their validity from a technical standpoint was upheld by independent security experts who reviewed the disclosures, although the high risks claimed by CTS Labs where often dismissed by said independent experts.

The fact that both American x86 CPU manufacturers have the same type of a low-level back door makes it highly likely that someone from NSA visited them and politely asked to put it inside and give them unlimited access, or else. Based on what is known, I would hypothesize on what is possible and likely, and state that it is likely that everything except Elbrus CPU produced in Russia, and ARM CPU produced in China from peer-reviewed schematics, is an instrument of American control, which will go dark if America orders it to. This includes Internet/mobile routers and other infrastructure. Notice how I implicitly count everything produced in Europe as essentially American-controlled.

My recommendations? There aren’t really any. If America does indeed utilize this, it will either be against select persons who occupy top positions on their shit lists, like Snowden and Assange, against foreign governments on their shit list, such as Iran, DPRK, Cuba, Venezuela, Russia and China, and they will pretend they hacked their computers using a virus or a Trojan. If they use it against you, it means you’re already fucked in so many ways and on so many layers before that point, that computer vulnerability will be the least of your concerns. But be aware of it and know that buying American means voluntary submission to their control.

Would Russia or China be any better if they happened to be in that kind of a position of power? Of course not.

 

Current state of Linux

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Considering the current state of affairs where America started using their technology, including Windows and Android, as weapons of economic warfare (read: sanctions), I’ve been looking into Linux again and let me share my findings. The current state of Linux is this:

void fork(void v) {
    return fork(v);
}

Essentially, Ubuntu forks Debian, everybody else forks Ubuntu by adding their skin and a few configurations, and they are all pretending there’s variety and choice, and if you’re trying to get anything to boot on an old Macbook with Nvidia graphics, the same thing breaks almost everywhere in the same way, and when it doesn’t break immediately, you don’t know why, you only know it breaks on suspend and not on startx. Sure, I’ll give it the benefit of a doubt and assume it works better on modern hardware (they all actually work on my 15″ Macbook Pro with Intel graphics), but one of the often recommended usage cases for Linux is installing it on old hardware, thus giving it new utility. There’s even a website recommending what distros to install on an old Intel Mac, and they are obviously pulling it out of their collective butts because I tried top two of the distros on their list and none of them managed to boot into GUI. The important thing is that they are all so incredibly certain that Linux is better than Windows and Mac. Also, there’s so much variety, almost as much as in today’s politics. Tons of political parties and they all amount to shit.