Embedded

522: The Information Is in Poop

Sonia Grego speaks with us about a topic no one likes to talk about, but could be used to monitor personal dietary health and widespread disease outbreaks. Toilets! Sonia leads Duke University’s Smart Toilet Lab and the spin out Coprata which makes the Microbiome Activity Tracker. As discussed in the show, when developing a project far from where it will be deployed, there are many common issues. The Lessons Learned chapter of Sonia’s recent book gives an excellent introduction to the unexpected environment far from the comfort of desks. The book is (free online!) Engineering Field Testing of Non-Sewered Sanitation Systems: Compendium of Lessons Learned, See Sonia Grego at Duke Electrical & Computer Engineering, the Smart Toilet Lab as well as Sonia’s company Coprata. Some terms that came up in the show:Coprolite: fossilized excrement (Wikipedia entry has great(?) pics!)Scatological: material, humor, or language that relates directly to bodily wasteHelminths: parasitic worms including roundworms, tapeworms, and fluke (oh look. more great images on Wiki entry)Poop jokesTranscript

521: Are You the Tiny Domino?

Kenneth Finnegan entertained us with stories about accidentally contributing to the internet’s ability to network.Wondering how the internet works? All those terms about IPv4, IPv6, BGP, OSPF, CDN and other alphabet soup? Check out the YouTube videos by NetworkChuck.Kenneth writes about his adventures on his blog, The Life of Kenneth. Some of the posts related to this show are:Creating an Internet Exchange for Even More Fun and Less ProfitBuilding an Anycast Secondary DNS Service Building the Micro Mirror Free Software CDN We also mention FCIX aka fcix.net or the Fremont Cabal Internet ExchangeYou can also find Kenneth at @kwf@social.afront.org where you will find more about half-dollars, nickels, and trains.If you also secretly long to run a locomotive, take a look at the Run-A-Locomotive program at WPRM.The title is related to the XKCD comic 2347: Dependency.Transcript

520: All Sorts of Interesting Facts About Teeth

Chris and Elecia apologize, discuss uses and abuses of chatbots, reach out to an uncertain manager, try to help someone out of their professor’s draconian rules, and extol the joys of reading. Chabot Space & Science Center is in Oakland, CA, US. It is wonderful!Some suggestions for UncertainManager:Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving FeedbackResilient ManagementManager's PathSoft Skills Engineering podcastHang in there! You are probably doing better than you think.Audio books are great! In the US, many libraries have digital libraries with extensive audio collections. There are several apps with different catalogs for the same library Libby, Kanopy, Hoopla, and Palace (check out the California shelf at Palace!).And since you are probably going to ask about the games Elecia doesn’t play:Turing Complete shows how logic and logic gates work, building up a processor.Zachtronics’ TIS-100 is another logic and processor design game. It is a little ugly in spots (too real world) but it is a really deep dive into learning assembly. It is the precursor to Shenzhen IO but harder to finish.Zachtronics’ Shenzhen IO is about circuits and how they work .Human Resource Machine by Tomorrow Corporation is about optimizing resources, it turns out to be a lot like assembly programming.Should you have gotten here because you wanted facts about teeth, Elecia had been enjoying Bite: An Incisive History of Teeth, from Hagfish to Humans.Transcript

519: The Password Is All Zeros

Mark Omo and James Rowley spoke with us about safecracking, security, and the ethics of doing a bad job.Mark and James gave an excellent talk on the development of their safecracking tools at DEF CON 33: Cash, Drugs, and Guns: Why Your Safes Aren't Safe. It included a section of interaction involving the lock maker’s lawyers bullying them and how the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has a Coders’ Rights Project to support security research.As mentioned in the show, the US Cyber Trust Mark baseline has a very straightforward checklist; NISTIR 8259 is the overall standard, NISTIR 8259A is the technical checklist, NISTIR 8259B is the non-technical (process/maintenance) checklist. Roughly the process is NISTIR 8259 -> Plan/Guidance; NISTIR 8259A -> Build; NISTIR 8259B -> Support.We discussed ETSI EN 303 645 V3.1.3 (2024-09) Cyber Security for Consumer Internet of Things: Baseline Requirement and the EU’s CRA: Cyber Resilience Act which requires manufacturers to implement security by design, have security by default, provide free security updates, and protect confidentiality. See more here: How to prepare for the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA): A guide for manufacturers.We didn’t mention Ghidra in the show specifically, but it is a tool for reverse engineering software: given a binary image, what was the code?Some of the safecracking was helped by the lock maker using the same processor in the PS4 which has many people looking to crack it. See fail0verflow :: PS4 Aux Hax 1: Intro & Aeolia for an introduction. Mark and James have presented multiple times at Hardwear.io, a series of conferences and webinars about security (not wearables). Some related highlights:2024: Breaking Into Chips By Reading The Datasheet is about the exploit developed for the older lock version on the safes discussed in the show.USA 2025: Extracting Protected Flash With STM32-TraceRip is about STM32 exploits.Transcript

518: Nothing We Can Do About Frogs

James Cameron spoke with us about programming for and operating a large telescope. The show is a blend of astronomy, engineering on the fly, and weird lady bug habitats. The Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) is part of the Australian National University’s Siding Spring Observatory in Coonabarabran, New South Wales, Australia. The AAT has an all sky camera where you can check in on a very dark sky. James was on Embedded Episode 172: Tell Forth You Me Please where we talked about the Forth programming language and his experiences with One Laptop Per Child. Transcript