January 31, 2015 / gbl08ma / 0 Comments
On 24th June last year, Version 1.4 of my Utilities add-in for the Casio Prizm calculators was released. The plan was for this to be final release of said software, with any further versions being bug-fixing only, and because of this, it was even more thoroughly tested than previous stable releases.
Ironically enough, an apparently innocent code optimization, introduced at a late development stage, introduced a bug in the Tasks functionality of the add-in, where a reference to a nonexistent memory object may happen when there are no tasks. At this point, I was more or less tired of the Casio Prizm platform, because of the many issues I have described throughout the years, and which the homebrew development community is yet to fully solve. However, as time went by, occasionally I’d look into my Prizm projects and I’d inevitably end up optimizing yet another function, or adding another small functionality.
This, plus the desire to iron out some edges, led to the discovery of another bug, this time in the calendar search function. After lengthy debugging sessions it turned out to be a buffer overflow issue that could happen when reading malformed calendar database entries. Fixes for these and other bugs, plus the functionality I added as I had time and will, made it clear that releasing a new version of Utilities was imperative. I often ask myself if continuing the development of such project is still worth it, since:
- I use my Prizm much, much less than I used to (finishing high school marked the end of the period in my life where graphic calculators were needed for education);
- The community of users of these calculators was never very big, and keeps on shrinking. Of the people who go on online communities dedicated to these calculators, some lost interest on the device, and others lost the device to a brick, for which nobody is able to pinpoint a certain cause. Taking into account the results of my survey so far, the intersection between the group of people who own a Prizm and the group of people who search for software for it, seems to be contain no more than 50 people;
- Of the people who remain in the communities, most never paid much attention to Utilities (due to feature creep, it’s likely that most people never understood its power) and the amount of users that still pay attention has reduced too (as well as their attention span for it).
Apparently, at least one hundred thousand of these devices are produced every month, but the amount of users who know they can run extra software in them, is in the order of the few dozens.
Despite all this, such questions are promptly answered by the fact that I still have fun developing it, even if nobody gets to use my work. And so development progresses, albeit at a much more relaxed rhythm, firstly because v1.4 is still very stable (at least, no one complained), and secondly because there is no roadmap to v1.5 nor planned release date. Heck, if I wanted to, I could not release it, and zero people would complain… but perhaps not after seeing what’s coming.
On the video below (without sound), I show a small subset of the new functionality for v1.5 (if it ever gets released, heh heh). The part that, in my opinion, is going to leave the mouths of some people open, starts at 3:30. It is an elaborate method to allow people to extend Utilities to a certain point, by having an easy way to use the big amount of utility functions used internally, as well as the nice GUI methods I developed. As if this wasn’t enough, one still gets access to most known syscalls (those that involve function pointers being the notable omission). What’s presented is, after all, the most powerful scripting engine ever made to run on the Prizm, and because of this one gets goodies like on-calculator development.
As hinted in the video, “PicoC script execution available on select builds only”. Starting with version 1.5 of Utilities, there will be two public builds made available: the normal one, with the now usual feature set plus the added features but without PicoC, and another with all that plus PicoC support enabled. The reason for this, is that such support increases the size of the add-in by at least 60 KiB, and as can be seen in the video above, the scripts have (almost) full reign on the machine, including read/write access to the whole address space (in the video, you can see a script changing the function key color, and while it’s not depicted, it also locks and unlocks Main Menu access). This means that a script can definitely brick a calculator on purpose, and do all the sorts of nasty (and good) things an add-in can do, except use syscalls with function pointers (the reason being, that PicoC doesn’t support them). It’s understandable that not everyone wants to have such a thing installed on the calculator, hence the limited builds.
PicoC is not especially fast, but definitely fast enough for many applications. It is also riddled with bugs, and even things as simple as the scope of variables appear to have bugs. Adding the differences between PicoC and the C90 standard it aims to run, expecting to write C code with the same kind of ease (if it was ever easy, especially after using newer C standards or C++) as when using a fully featured compiler is certainly unrealistic. Still, I hope my PicoC port will constitute an interesting alternative to the never-finished LuaZM and to the Casio BASIC interpreter that comes with the OS.
Regarding the other changes seen on the video, there’s the rearrangement of menus on the home screen. The tools menu now hosts a balance manager, with support for multiple wallets, and it will also host a password generator. The old tools menu has been moved to the “Memory & System” menu on the F5 key.
That’s nice and all, but for when?
I don’t have an answer to that. With v1.5 I would like to include even more features than what I have added so far, namely a proper text editor. Such an editor is being developed by ProgrammerNerd / ComputerNerd, who, just like me, doesn’t always have much free time to work on such things. So I’m patiently waiting, and you should too. Meanwhile, feel free to ask any questions, request features (please be reasonable, and I don’t promise anything) or request development builds for a sneak peek.
January 28, 2015 / gbl08ma / 2 Comments
During the past year, the WebView vulnerability(ies) in Android have been making the rounds in various technology-focused websites. More recently, another WebView vulnerability was discovered, affecting versions 4.3 and below of the popular mobile OS (or roughly 60% of the users). Three days ago, HotHardware released a piece on why Google will not patch this vulnerability on 4.3, let alone older versions.
As a quick reminder, Android 4.3, the last version of the Jelly Bean series of releases was launched on July 24th 2013 and its last point release (4.3.1) on October that year. That was 15 months ago. A device that shipped with this Android version was the second-generation Nexus 7, which is still under warranty on places where two-year warranty is mandatory, like in the EU. The Nexus 7, being a flagship Android device from Google, received updates to more recent Android versions; the same can’t be said about most other devices released with 4.3 or earlier.
Those 60% sure would like to be in the 39%.
Most of the discussion so far has been centered around whether the responsibility to patch older Android versions and/or push new ones to phones is on Google’s side or on the manufacturers’ side, or if the problem really is with the carriers, which won’t update their customized builds of the OS. There’s also the line of discussion that says such responsibility does not exist, because the problem is fixed in the latest Android version, and anyway, For God’s sake, are you still using a phone that came out six months ago? So vintage. Oh wait, how are you not using a high-end phone from <insert major brand>? (and even high-end phones sometimes don’t get updates past the next major release)
I would like to shine light on another side of the problem: the fact that smartphones, tablets and devices alike can’t be updated by the user software-wise. In fact, it’s not just the user who can’t update or choose to run a different operating system: I’m convinced that for the most part, if the manufacturers wanted to update their Android systems to a more recent OS version, or switch to, say, Windows Phone or Firefox OS, they would have much trouble themselves. And I pinpoint this down to two different but related issues, the lack of a proper drivers system on Android (possibly involving Linux) and the multitude of ways these devices boot their OS, expect updates and do basic hardware communication. Both issues are related to a bigger problem: the lack of standards in the world of embedded consumer electronics.
In this text I’m letting aside all the arguments regarding “open source vs. closed source”, “walled garden vs. open garden”, “but but binary blobs!”, etc. Both theory and practice have evidence that these debacles and inconveniences don’t matter, or there are ways to work around them that are successfully used in practice. The only “inconvenience” that might remain, is the hardware manufacturers’ wish for people to replace their “old” devices every six months or so. This turns out to be a game of extortion made for those who worry about their security: “if you want a OS patched against this horrible vulnerability, just buy a new device that won’t do much more than your current one, but will have that single line of code changed”.
In a perfect world though, manufacturers which wanted to play that game would have to do it in the clear, by explicitly locking their devices (as most already do) and announcing on the box that there will be no updates, fixes or warranties software-wise. (Curiously, the texts that say such things are usually free-as-in-beer software licenses, not software you pay for in the form of hardware). But letting aside the utopia and focusing on the two standards-related issues I mentioned before.
I said Android doesn’t have a proper drivers system. This statement can be taken as incorrect, because, after all, Linux is the part of the stack responsible for driving the hardware. But while Linux is not Android, Android definitely includes Linux, and their creators and maintainers make a deliberate choice to use this kernel. I’m not saying it’s a bad choice, well on the contrary – only Linux and a few other Unix-like kernels could scale down and adapt to the hardware and ARM architecture used in most handheld consumer devices.
Using Linux is taking a giant shortcut (again, that isn’t bad – reusing is good). Microsoft, for things like the (abandoned) Windows RT and Windows Phone, besides porting some of the upper layers of the Windows stack and developing new ones, also had to do additional work to get the NT kernel to run on such hardware. It’s worth mentioning that despite that effort, Windows Phone 8+ has hardware requirements higher than those of Android (comparing versions released in the same time span, please correct me if I’m wrong).
Going back to the drivers, many people say the big roadblock to making new Android releases run on (relatively) old hardware is the binary blobs, the closed-source drivers that control much of the hardware in those embedded systems. Now, a bit of anecdotal evidence: I use proprietary drivers from at least Nvidia and Broadcom on the Linux install on my laptop, and these have survived fine upgrades from Linux Mint 15 to 17, and multiple Linux kernel updates from at least 3.8.8 to 3.14.27. This is because the proprietary part is well separated from the things that can possibly change between kernel versions, and there are clear update paths defined.
Of course it helps if the maker of the proprietary drivers is interested in having their drivers run in newer operating system versions, but if all drivers were properly developed and not added into the system as ugly kernel patches (or should I say, “hacks”?) for which nobody has the source, as I’ve seen System-on-Chip manufacturers do (looking at you, Mediatek, Realtek, …), the problems would be mostly gone. The practice of doing such ugly source editing is one of the reasons I say that even if manufacturers wanted to, they couldn’t switch to another OS or update to more recent Android versions. I suspect that at some companies, just a few months after devices ship, even high-end ones, entire source trees, complete git repos, are rm -r-ed out of every system. Nowhere does the GNU GPL say that it’s not a violation of the license if you get rid of the source, does it? As if such license was ever read by said people…
There is another “entertainment” awaiting those who take the updating matter into their own hands and attempt to port the OS of their liking to their device, which is understanding how the device expects to be updated and how it starts its OS. While this is sometimes just a case of watching updater software do its job (that is, when an update is even available), often additional steps are needed, and this is where one finds out that most devices use U-Boot, but often it’s even more patched than the Linux kernel, and again, source code is nowhere to be seen. There is then a myriad of ways to boot the kernel and from there to starting userspace, and fortunately this is more or less constant between Android devices. Still, undocumented quirks are everywhere, and one basically has to work with each device on an individual basis. The same model has various versions? Great, expect to repeat that work for each version.
These all have a color screen, a speaker, a microphone, some buttons, and can make calls. It’s 2015, standards exist, they must be really similar, right? Yes, as long as you don’t attempt to change their OS…
And finally, we get to what I personally think is the core of the issue: each device is too much of an individual situation, and work must be done for each device. It’s been like this since, well, ever – for well more than a decade, since what can be called the first smartphone was launched (HTC Wallaby). In the beginning, I think this was justified – the hardware was not very powerful to be able to handle complex software abstractions and advanced boot methods, nor did software advance at today’s pace. Consumer handhelds were also not as ubiquitous as today. We can compare this to the evolution of the Personal Computer, where in the end everyone settled around the IBM PC standard. A corresponding standard for the smartphones and tablets everyone has is yet to be found – such a standard is what enables one to buy almost any computer off the shelf and install a different OS in it, or a different version of the same OS. It would also allow for buying devices without OS preloaded. This means the user would be able to control its user experience and security. I would no longer have to buy a new phone to stay safe, just because (and this would happen inevitably – no software is bug-free) a vulnerability was found in Android 4.2.
Sure, despite the PC standards, there are computers in the market which come as locked down as today’s tablets and smartphones. And there is no problem with that, as long as such locked-down things are not the only option. When locked-down is the only option, or unlocked options are prohibitively expensive, there is little room for innovation, consumers end up not having much to choose from, and eventually, no way to have durable hardware, if all the available alternatives support the “update the hardware to update the software” scheme.
Even in today’s context, there are better ways to ensure operating systems keep up-to-date in terms of security, without exactly requiring a change to another version. Google should look a bit more into Microsoft, which got one thing right on Windows for over ten years: Windows Update. Microsoft ensures support for a specified number of years for its OS, independently of the hardware it runs on; this is something consumers like and enterprises love. Google seems to have learned, so much that it is moving a lot of things that were previously built into Android to Google Play Services, a component that can be updated through the Play Store like other apps. Unfortunately, this means making more and more of the OS closed-source, but that’s another subject. Personally, I would rather pay, say, 10 to 20% of the original price of my phone with each update, than having to buy a new phone when I definitely don’t need one except for the bits executing in its CPU which all of a sudden are “old” and insecure.
I believe an update scheme a-la-Microsoft would be profitable for Google and let them have a bigger market share in the enterprise. (Actually, if Google is taking any of that market share, is because of the “cloud! factor” and because enterprises are moving to Google’s systems as “it’s what everyone uses”, and not because it fits their needs better). It could be perceived as terrible for hardware manufacturers, because there would be one less reason to buy new devices, and let’s not forget Google also sells hardware. Apple sells hardware too, and people happily run Windows, Linux or whatever on their Macs and MacBooks, and I doubt Apple has lost any business because of that: well on the contrary. It shows the two things don’t need to be exclusive. Apple still manages to sell a lot of Macs and people who want to stay with an older machine still enjoy updates for much longer. In their line of consumer handhelds, while it is perceived as being even more locked down than the competition, each model tends to get at least two major OS updates (for free!), making people who aren’t in an “upgrade cycle” happier.
I am actually surprised and annoyed that consumer rights associations don’t complain more about the situation. It seems that certain companies were successful in sinking into people’s minds the idea that in the case of phones, tablets, smart watches, etc. the software can’t be decoupled from the hardware. In fact, in its current state, it’s really hard to decouple it, but it’s because that’s what manufacturers want, not because of technical obstacles. Perhaps this thinking comes from the fact that, after all, the introduction of smartphones and tablets to the general public was done by Apple, which presented their vertically-integrated walled-garden first and foremost, and giving everyone else the idea that was the only way these devices would ever be successful.
To finish, another anecdote. I have bought a cheap unknown-brand tablet with a x86-64 Intel CPU. It runs full Windows 8.1 and is fully up-to-date thanks to Windows Update; I’m very happy with it. When Windows 10 comes out I plan to install it; either the upgrade is as easy as from 8 to 8.1, or I’ll install it manually by connecting a USB stick and using the UEFI. As we know, Windows is closed-source, and drivers are nothing more than closed-source “binary blobs”. Still, I know I’ll be able to install most if not all of these drivers in Windows 10, to a point where I can use that version of Windows on the hardware I have now. Perhaps I’ll need to throw some money at Microsoft to have Windows 10, if that idea of giving it for free to users of 8.1 and 7 turns out to not apply to me. Had I bought an Android tablet, I could throw money at Google and at the manufacturer, and I’m sure that after a year or so, neither would put a single update out for the hardware. The money would have rendered a new piece of hardware, yes… but of how much use is another piece of plastic and silicon, when the previous one works perfectly? They sure like to contribute to e-waste.
Related question: are there any phones running full x86 Windows? Perhaps once Windows 10 comes out?
