AI can speed up a lot of the manual labour needed to bring even an almost dead, 10-year-old device back to life. My Xiaomi Mi Max 2 (oxygen, MSM8953) was dead. With AI help and my own knowledge, I ported/rewrote the missing drivers, and it now runs Nura (postmarketOS) with working camera, torch, SIM, phone calls and SMS. Only the loudspeaker is still broken.
Everything is up for anyone who wants to install it, or to understand the changes and manually write the patches for mainline: https://github.com/sv1sjp/mi-max2-oxygen-msm8953-nura-drivers Testing, feedback and PRs welcome.
“AI” can also speed up the process of making a code base buggy and hard to debug, when the people that generated it do not understand the code.
Nura will not accept generated patches, by the way. It might run your own version of Nura, but will not run upstream Nura with your patches.
On one hand you don’t know what the code is doing but on the other hand it’s impossible to write so much code by hand and do any amount of testing for projects this big
LLM code is getting less sloppy and you now have the choice between generating open-source projects which you will never read the code of, or using an artisan coded buggy project.
Nobody has the time to test every single communication protocol manually to see when a camera is able to take pictures or a microphone records audio. LLM’s can do this driver development and even check when the result looks good. There’s soooo much tedious labour which can already be automated.
OP managed to revive an abandoned phone with working drivers thanks to LLM development. That’s a massive win.
LLM code is getting less sloppy and you now have the choice between generating open-source projects which you will never read the code of, or using an artisan coded buggy project.
If nobody understands the code, then I might as well use proprietary software, at least somebody will understand that code.
Too bad Android is locked down and the android versions on these devices don’t support a lot of modern apps.
You can use Nura (PostMarketsOS) and have the LLM write the hardware drivers for your own phone which are missing from the project. This is often a pretty custom for most phones. Once you get the drivers you can use the rest of the OS like normal.
You can now revive obsolete devices and get them useable. There’s probably some slop in there but the slop is really getting a lot better it would be great if people were more accepting for using LLM’s for extremely labour intensive tedious tasks which nobody would else do anyways.
proprietary software doesn’t have easily accessed answers for why things don’t work, source avaliable slop does.
Nura will not accept generated patches, by the way.
If you click OP’s github link and scroll down you’ll find this section which acknowledges that: https://github.com/sv1sjp/mi-max2-oxygen-msm8953-nura-drivers#about-ai-assistance-and-contributing-upstream
The drivers, patches, scripts and write-ups here were produced in collaboration with an AI assistant and tested on a real Mi Max 2 (oxygen).
The Nura project does not accept LLM-generated contributions. One of its maintainers explains the reasons in this post: the social and environmental cost of these models, and the risk that people use them to produce private knowledge instead of joining and strengthening the community whose work the models learned from. We respect that decision. So:
- This repository is not a contribution to Nura or pmaports, and its code should not be submitted there as it is.
- It is public documentation, not private notes. The reusable part is the knowledge: how the hardware is wired, register addresses and meanings, root causes, what was tried and ruled out, and how to test safely. These are facts anyone can check on their own device. It can save time for anyone who wants to understand what works and what does not, and then write their own code to submit upstream.
- If you want to get this into Nura or upstream, learn from it, verify it on your hardware and write your own implementation, following the rules of the project you contribute to (Nura, the Linux kernel and libcamera each have their own contribution policies).
- Please engage with the community. The Nura wiki, the msm8953-mainline project and the people credited below did the groundwork this builds on.
@OP (@[email protected]) what isn’t clear to me is why you don’t try to upstream the kernel parts, since Linux is accepting LLM-assisted contributions (as is Nura actually, just only indirectly after their upstreams like Linux accept them).
upstream linux does accept AI “assisted” patches. if this gets properly mainlined, why wouldn’t it run Nura?
Upstream Linux kernel doesn’t let people who don’t understand things to just submit. They have rules.
Yeah, if changes are requested and you don’t know what the kernel maintainers want from you, you’ve lost.
You said the forbidden word. How dare you!
That’s so cool, I wish I could go full linux on my redmi note 11
any information on how you did it? Like what the setup was, what you asked the ai to do, etc. With the video game fusions people have been doing using claude lately I’ve become interested in AI for cutting out the most tedious, life wasting parts of reverse engineering but I haven’t seen examples involving hardware
HUZZAH!!!
Huh, Nura? I like the name PostmarketOS better, but that’s just me.
Cool that you got it working with ai, but I hope that doesn’t become a standard in device porting. Sure with proper vetting the code can be ensured to be maintainable, but that code had to come from somewhere. These systems don’t just magically know how to make software work, so it sounds like they’re probably just referencing code somewhere else that could be under any kind of copyright. Sounds like a legal nightmare waiting to happen.
The thing I’m really hoping for is these general purpose mobile Linux systems being ported to the plethora of bootleg retro handhelds out there. The majority of these devices already have unlocked bootloaders and are super friendly to third party firmware. The problem is people are only porting these hyper minimalist emulation-focused Linux builds when there’s so much untapped potential.
Good work !
Well well well, you have something to xiaomi.
I have a pinephone pro, seems like manjaro bricked it and I can’t flash the rom again …Any theories on what to do?
Can ai get past the AT&T fuckery on my galaxy s5 active?
Can’t the ai trash just f*ck back off to windows, apple, and google where they belong?
Nura is an anti ai distro
You don’t have to use it? 🤷♀️
It’s not that simple, even if you are.
Explain it to me like I’m five
Sure, let me know when you get there.
deleted by creator
The Chinese are going to save us once again? I never thought I would root for fucking China vs US in my life.
Depending on what you mean by saving us, I don’t think China will, but they’re not invading random countries, staging coups, droning civilians, etc, so these two countries are not even remotely comparable.
Ahem. I’m not equating these things with what you said, but China doesn’t have the cleanest hands, not even counting the myriad human right issues they look the other way on so we all get cheap tech trinkets. When your companies have to install suicide prevention nets and leave enforcement to companies outside your own borders, its not a good look.
Not trying to do a whataboutism but they have significant issues as well.
China is an imperialist force in East Asia. It is destroying every non-Han culture and religious expression within the CCP controlled areas.
China is an imperialist force in East Asia
According to western media, thinktanks and commentators comfortably sitting and circlejerking in the imperial core, yes.
It is destroying every non-Han culture and religious expression within the CCP controlled areas.
Easily disproved by random travel bloggers that travel China e.g. Xinjiang and Tibet
According to western media, thinktanks and commentators comfortably sitting and circlejerking in the imperial core, yes.
No. They may be dishonest, but that doesn’t mean they will have to lie about every single thing. And it is not just westerners, but also South Koreans, Japanese and SEAsians too.
Easily disproved by random travel bloggers that travel China e.g. Xinjiang and Tibet
Carefully chosen and curated. Why is Chinese Muslim content only food and never religious sermons? Where are the Christians preaching their beliefs? Where are the children studying the Quran and the Bible?
No it is not just westerners
Names western aligned vassal states
Ok
Asks questions because they are uninformed
You’re aware Xinjiang has one of the highest amount of Mosques per capita right? Here’s further reading on the sub
- What’s going on with the Uyghurs / Xinjiang province?
- XinJiang: Facts vs Fiction.
- Debuking America’s slopaganda about the Uyghurs in China
- A Pakistani Diplomat given full access to “re-education camps” and this is what she found.
- Despite claims of “erasing Uyghur culture”, they stated: “I did not find any instance of forced labor or cultural and religious repression. The imams we met at the mosques and the students and teachers at the Xinjiang Islamic Institute told us that they enjoy freedom in practicing Islam and that the Chinese government extends support for maintenance of mosques all over Xinjiang. The most visible sign of protection of Uyghur culture by the government is the government-run bilingual kindergarten schools where children learn Putonghua as well as Uyghur language and culture from a very young age.”
- The grandaughters of Rebiya Kadeer (Once the richest woman in Xinjiang, and now a member of the “Uyghur world congress”, a Washington DC headquartered org claiming that China is oppressing Uyghurs), talking about how their grandmother is lying about Xinjiang.
- Egyptian media delegates provide a detailed insight of the situation in Xinjiang
- China’s policies in the Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region lift 1.85 million people out of poverty from 2014-2017.
- Dan Cohen - Is China committing genocide? Behind the US goverments propaganda campaign.
- Redsails - The Xinjiang atrocity propaganda blitz
- RodericDay - A thread about the key sources for Uyghur Genocide (Especially Adrian Zenz).
- Chollima report - Who is Adrian Zenz? The Christian Fundamentalist Leading the Global Xinjiang Narrative
- BayArea415 - american debunks major western propaganda on Uyghurs and Xinjiang
- Dr. Asata Bair - The six basic problems of the Uyghur genocide narrative.
- Nuance - The sad truth about Muslims in China.
- The Xinjiang “Genocide” - an excerpt from the Genocide panel.
- TheCanadaFiles - Subcommittee report declaring “Uighur Genocide” dominated by researchers and groups funded by CIA cut-out, National Endowment for Democracy.
- US fuels terrorism in China.
- Wiki on the Turkestan Islamic Party (has a full list of terrorist attacks committed by east turkestan separatists)
- About the TiP (Turkestan Islamic Party)
- The TiP militants fighting in Syria.
- Alan Macleod - In 2018 the US Was at War With Uyghur Terrorists. Now It Claims They Don’t Even Exist.
- China’s Xinjiang Problem – Made in USA.
- Numeves: US Col Wilkerson - Why the US is in Afghanistan and Pakistan, in 2 minutes.
- US Col Lawrence Wilkerson admits to USA involvement in fomenting civil unrest in Xinjiang China using Uighurs.
- Former FBI Agent turned whistleblower Sibel Edmonds talks about how US-funded Gladio operatives from Turkey have been smuggling out young Uyghurs, turning them into militants, and sending them back to poorer areas in Xinjiang to commit terrorist attacks, as part of an effort to destabilize Xinjiang and disrupt Chinese trade.
- No, the UN did not report China has ‘massive internment camps’ for Uighur Muslims.
- What about Democracy now and the Intercept’s claims about the Uyghur camps?
- The better cotton initiative, a global advocacy group for cotton laborers, found that no forced labor was taking place in Xinjiang.
- Religious freedoms in China explained.
- Thousands of Muslims from the Uyghur province make Hajj Pilgrimage yearly. 11k Chinese Muslims travel from Xinjiang on free chartered flights to Saudi Arabia for the Hajj, in 2019.
- EU rejects China offer of Xinjiang tour.
- The sources for an Australian documentary about the uyghurs, turn out to be members of the FSA and TIP, right wing, ultra-nationalist Turkish terrorist orgs. The two men with links to terrorist groups were interviewed on nearly every Australian TV station for a week. 2
- A wikileaks cable from 2011 shows that the US coordinated with groups to incite separatism in Mongolia, XinJiang, and Tibet.
- If China Is Anti-Islam, Why Are These Chinese Muslims Enjoying a Faith Revival?
- A New York Times “expose” of re-education centers in Xinjiang lied and mistranslated every claim.
- Reddit holds an AMA for an “Uyghur Activist”, who turns out to be Rushan Abbas, a CIA agent who worked for Homeland Security, Department of Defense, Department of State, Department of Justice, and various U.S. intelligence agencies, and even worked at Guantanamo bay, the US muslim torture camp. 1 2
- Reddit holds yet another AMA with Sophie Richardson, the “China director” at the US soft-power regime-change agency Human Rights Watch. The comments expose her as not speaking chinese, and spreading blatant lies about China. 2
- Reddit holds another AMA with a grifting author, Amelia Pang, who wrote a NYTimes best selling book about going undercover into an Uyghur prison. It turns out that she worked for the Epoch Times for many years, and also never visited or talked with a single prisoner. Her book is based on extrapolations from a 1991 film. She leaves the AMA after leaving all the top questions unanswered.
- A case study in Anti-Chinese racism.
- Debunking an article from the intercept about Uyghurs.
- A debunk of a buzzfeed article that used google maps as its primary source.
- Zenz makes a claim that 500,000 tibetans (1 out of every 3 working age Tibetans) are in forced labor camps.
- Breaking down the BBC’s visit to XinJiang.
- BBC gets caught doctoring an image from a vlogger in China to make it look depressing, then quietly reverts their change after getting caught.
The usa could save us all by falling into the ocean
