The next move would be to run a complaint at the local Data Protection Authority - eg. for Austrians https://www.data-protection-authority.gv.at/.

Sounds like Token Ring...

A token ring like protocol was in an early proposal for what became 802.11

Well, with the remaining trust available at this point you might just as well use something cryptographically secure, like encrypted ones, twos, or simple HMACs of the block number.

A too-simple scheme is likely to be detected (and bypassed!) by the firmware a nearly no time.

Simpler: fill the drive with random data, hashing as you go, flush the kernel's buffer cache, hash the entire contents of the drive, and compare.

Conceptually,

  # tee /dev/DEVICE </dev/random | sha256sum
  # echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
  # sha256sum /dev/DEVICE

though I wouldn't expect this exact command sequence to work unless tee's buffer size divides /dev/DEVICE's capacity and tee errors out writing past the end of /dev/DEVICE before writing to stdout.

I did exactly this earlier last week

the drive size divided by 4MB, so dd with bs=4M and fixed count

(with oflag=direct you don't even need to drop caches)

Oh, that's a clever way of doing things.

The "write the block #'s to the given block" would help identify where a fraudulent device goes wrong.

But for just checking if a device is storing data 100% correctly then your way would probably be more robust. :)

Sure, that's a decent idea too. :)

HackFu 2021 was held there: https://hackfu.at/

This is already possible in Austria.

The "eAusweise" app allows people to "prove" others their age without giving away any more data:

https://www.digitalaustria.gv.at/eng/services/eServices/Proo... (German only:) https://www.oesterreich.gv.at/eausweise/haeufige-fragen/haeu...

I often use RHEL7-compatible binaries on RHEL8 and Debian (testing) machines, with no problems.

Wouldn't a (3-D) cube have eight corners?

And 3 length dimensions plus time gives a hypercube, with 16 corners.

For 11 dimensions, 2048 corners... for 26, 2^26 ;)

Good discussion on this at https://old.reddit.com/r/askmath/comments/10a2xmc/do_corners...

One of the requirements is that you have to clearly define whether your n-dimensional object is a solid.

You should instead try some belly-button logic.

> By the way, does anyone know of a VNC-like solution that can use MPEG compression?

You want xpra.

Try http://xpra.org/ - that's a "gnu screen" for X11, but bandwidth-optimized, can also relay USB, audio, ...

Just to give you an idea: I used it for forwarding a Firefox window across an UMTS connection when sitting in a train. (Long story: 32bit Java required to remote desktop into a client's environment across the Atlantic, ugh.)

I have tried xpra, and it was my go-to option until I tried NoMachine. I did try just forwarding windows, Firefox it was too, but there was some(times) frustrating delays.

I may re-visit, however, as the delays could have been network/environment issues rather than the technology.

Even some on the Danube - in the middle of Europe...