LibVMI-based debug server, implemented in Python. Building a guest aware, stealth and agentless full-system debugger.. GDB stub allows you to debug a remote process running in a VM with your favorite GDB frontend. By leveraging virtual machine introspection, the stub remains stealth and requires no modification of the guest.
A modern virtualization architecture can be found in the OSS pKVM L0 nested hypervisor for Android Virtualization Framework, which has some architectural overlap with HP/Bromium AX L0 + [Hyper-V | KVM | Xen] L1 + uXen L2 micro-VMs with copy-on-write memory.
A Bromium demo circa 2014 was a web browser where every tab was an isolated VM, and every HTTP request was an isolated VM. Hundreds of VMs could be launched in a couple of hundred milliseconds. Firecracker has some overlap.
> Lastly, this approach is almost certainly more expensive. Our instances sit idle for the most part and we pay EC2 a pretty penny for the privilege.
With many near-idle server VMs running identical code for each customer, there may be an opportunity to use copy-on-memory-write VMs with fast restore of unique memory state, using the techniques employed in live migration.
Which is fine (although these routines are very slow, which makes it awkward to use for volume adjustments), but why make things so complicated when the possibility to adjust the volume in 1% steps via the app and 3% via buttons exist?
1. Schedule/ask cooker to start, then stop after fixed time.
2. Blind person can control microwave with voice.
3. Blind person navigation via prompts from multiple Echo devices.
4. Blind person notification when doors opened or motion detected.
5. Blind person item locator, via Tile + Alexa.
6. On-demand instructions for caregivers.
7. On-demand physiotherapy exercise instructions.
8. On-demand streaming radio and podcasts.
9. TV voice control via Logitech Harmony or Android Fire TV.
10. Call PSTN phones via VOIP (10 number limit).
11. Zigbee devices with USA-based cloud security (Echo4 is a hub)
12. Arm/disarm Blink cameras.
13. AC/heat control via temperature sensor in Echo devices.
14. Announce notifications from Google Calendar.
If Amazon would open up their devices and/or APIs, much much more is possible. There are some workarounds via HomeAssistant.
> The report also highlighted the dire need for this [AI] version of Alexa to make money to keep the voice assistant alive.
The early iPhone left doors open for experiments that could later be supported and productized. Alexa failed to open up devices for experiments that could seed innovation. Look at the failure of the official "Skills" program, compared to the thriving HomeAssistant ecosystem that is an obvious match for smart speakers.
If the device fails, 500K devices should be unlocked for use with generic Linux, instead of being relegated to landfill.
It was the second sentence in the article: "Amazon claims it has sold more than 500,000". 500m units in 4 years would have been an unqualified success. I don't even think the iPhone sold 500m in its first 4 years.
Yikes, that ASIC is so advanced that any product built around it will in some ways be designed for the landfill far more so than an equivalent that was generic.
You can use these around the house or car for location-tap automation. Tap on NFC tag and mobile phone can trigger a custom shortcut for local action or SSH script to Linux SBC or micro PC. Response time is about one second. Even the iPhone SE2 has an NFC reader.
For vision-impaired people, NFC tags can be attached to objects and the phone can read an audio description when the object is tapped against phone.
Around that time, I recall there being a lot of hype around RFID tags. E.g. the Touchatag was just a bunch of RFID tags and a USB RFID reader, but marketed as a consumer product. This never really seems to have caught on, though.
Nowadays, I suppose most consumers do have RFID tags (debit cards, transport cards, building keys, e-Passports), they just might not be aware of the underlying technology.
Given that these things are essentially QR codes via another medium, I'm not surprised that it never caught on: QR codes are much cheaper to make (it costs nothing to include them on a leaflet other than some extra ink/toner!) and basically serve the same purpose.
Where they make more sense is when they actually include dynamic information: Some of the newer tags can e.g. include an authentication tag in the URL part, which lets you verify the tag's authenticity (together with a web service that keeps track with the high watermark of opened sequence numbers).
I wouldn't call that "RFID" anymore, though; to me, RFID means transmitting only an identifier, with all the logic happening on the backend, but ISO 14443 tags get most interesting/useful when they go beyond that and do things like authentication or local processing.
All the patents and "sekhurity" isn't helping. A decade ago, I ended up with a bunch of programmable NFC stickers that my Galaxy S7 suddenly wasn't able to read, because some MIFARE intellectual property issue retroactively bricked this class of NFC stickers. Good luck figuring out where on the compatibility matrix the Amazon listing you're looking at is.
MIFARE (classic) tags were never really compliant with any industry standard (whether freely available or patent-encumbered) and are not actually NFC tags, so many systems betting on that but later wanting to e.g. change reader chip vendors ended up with issues such as this. (There's a way of writing NFC/NDEF-formatted data to them, but it's only readable by NXP chips.)
If you buy any standard NFC forum tag, chances are pretty good that it'll work with any Android or iOS device. The Ntag series has worked pretty well for me on both OSes and across various phones; I have one that instantly and cross-platform rickrolls everybody tapping it.
