Hardware, Tumbleweed, and Bad Passwords

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Sep 28, 2024

• Hardware/Modding

  • Arduino ☛ Let’s play at the Maker Faire Rome 2024!

    We’re excited to be back at Maker Faire Rome as a Gold Sponsor of the 12th edition (October 25-27, 2024), with some memorable experiences lined up for all makers, innovators, and creators who attend!

  • CNX Software ☛ Raytac AN7002Q – A smaller nRF7002 Wi-Fi 6 module for industrial IoT applications

    IoT solutions company Raytac has introduced the AN7002Q Wi-Fi 6 module series, which integrates Nordic Semiconductor’s nRF7002 chipset and is designed for Industrial IoT, smart home, healthcare, consumer electronics, and automotive applications. They can be paired with Raytac’s MDBT53 Bluetooth LE modules based on the nRF5340 multiprotocol SoC, supporting Wi-Fi and Bluetooth LE solutions.

  • Hackaday ☛ 3D Printed Jellyfish Lights Up

    [Ben] may be 15 years old, but he’s got the knack for 3D printing and artistic mechanical design. When you see his 3D-printed mechanical jellyfish lamp, we think you’ll agree. Honestly, it is hardly fair to call it a lamp. It is really — as [Ben] points out — a kinetic sculpture.

  • CNX Software ☛ NXP i.MX RT700 dual-core Cortex-M33 Hey Hi (AI) Crossover MCU includes eIQ Neutron NPU and DSPs

    NXP has recently announced the release of  NXP i.MX RT700 RT700 Hey Hi (AI) crossover MCU following the NXP i.MX RT600 series release in 2018 and the i.MX RT500 series introduction in 2021. The new i.MX RT700 Crossover MCU features two Cortex-M33 cores, a main core clocked at 325 MHz with a Tensilica HiFi 4 DSP and a secondary 250 MHz core with a low-power Tensilica HiFi 1 DSP for always-on sensing tasks. Additionally, it integrates a powerful eIQ Neutron NPU with an upgraded 7.5 MB of SRAM and a 2D GPU with a JPEG/PNG decoder. These features make this device suitable for applications including AR glasses, hearables, smartwatches, wristbands, and more.

• SUSE/OpenSUSE

  • Dominique Leuenberger ☛ Tumbleweed – Review of the week 2024/39

    Dear Tumbleweed users and hackers,

    This week looked pretty normal for Tumbleweed: we could publish 5 snapshots (0919, 0920, 0922, 0923, and 0924). 0925 was tested but needed to be discarded, as the cURL 8.10.1 update caused issues with libostree/flatpak. The issue could be resolved for Snapshot 0926, which is currently in QA and will likely be shipped over the weekend.

    The most relevant changes during this week are: [...]

• Standards/Consortia

  • Bruce Schneier ☛ NIST Recommends Some Common-Sense Password Rules - Schneier on Security

    NIST’s second draft of its “SP 800-63-4“—its digital identify guidelines—finally contains some really good rules about passwords: [...]

  • Six Colors ☛ New NIST recommendations take aim at bad password policies

    Other proposed changes: no restriction on which special characters can be used, a minimum required length of 8 with a minimum suggest length of 15, and hints that are not accessible to unauthenticated users.

  • The Washington Post ☛ How often should you reset your passwords? Not as much as you’ve been told.

    NIST said the changes are meant to help consumers choose strong passwords and avoid wasting time on unhelpful requirements. Research also suggests all those extra asterisks didn’t make our passwords that much safer.