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Talos II

raptorcs.com

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Re: Talos II

#81

Post by rekado »

samstave wrote: post #57
olympus wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main criticism against Purism laptops is that they still contain proprietary blobs (from Intel) in the coreboot payload. We have no way of knowing what's in those blobs. Purism tries to be free, and is a step up from other vendors, but doesn't go far enough for some people.

Thanks for the info... what's a better/the best option? Also, this is a laptop, so a diff class than server/desktop models - so may not be fair to even compare them ?

You can buy somewhat older hardware with Libreboot from various outlets including Minifree.org, tehnoetic.com, Zerocat.de, and Vikings.net. They all offer x86 hardware that works without blobs and without ME.

(Of course they don't solve the problem of firmware on disk controllers or network chips, but there is no such project yet.)

Re: Talos II

#82

Post by rekado »

nextos wrote: post #58
samstave wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the info... what's a better/the best option? Also, this is a laptop, so a diff class than server/desktop models - so may not be fair to even compare them ?

The very best option right now (and dirty cheap, ~$200 new) is to get an Asus C201P / Flip Chromebook. It uses a Rockchip ARM CPU, and if you disable 3D acceleration (which is slow anyway) and use an external wireless antenna, you don't have any closed firmware in your computer. Not even CPU microcode firmware. This is unique. Of course, it's a machine targeted by Libreboot: https://libreboot.org/docs/hardware/c201.h…

At the moment GuixSD doesn't yet work on ARM. Not much is missing and you can use Guix as a package manager on top of some other variant of the GNU system, but GuixSD on ARM is not quite ready yet. Give it a couple more weeks.

Re: Talos II

#83

Post by wang_li »

olympus wrote: post #70
samstave wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So just to be 100% clear, and for the edification of everyone (myself included); It is literally safe to assume that every single device is 100% compromised and the 5eyes, can if they wish, monitor every single thing you do, based on these issues, correct? But then, you also have to think that every service that you use, outside of your own 100% controlled purview (I.e. Literally any cloud service) is also summarily…

That's a rather strong way of putting it, but yes, you should assume that every device you use can be penetrated by a sufficiently advanced and motivated actor. You should also be comfortable with the fact that state level actors have been recording information so that they can reach into your past should you ever become a problem with them. In that mindset, you have to create a security environment such that the tru…

The lazy part of me thinks that using a POWER based system as my desktop for internet related activities provides one of the best protections from shitty, buggy software. No one's exploit is going to include POWER based shellcode to go along with their vulnerability. My browser might crash, but that x86 shell code isn't going do to shit.

Re: Talos II

#85

Post by SkyMarshal »

This is excellent, glad to see these guys trying again. They attempted a crowdfund of this project a year or two ago and didn't raise enough, which was a huge disappointment. Hope the second try is the charm.

Re: Talos II

#86

Post by undersuit »

MatmaRex wrote: post #68
Kiro wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like many fellow Europeans I don't have a credit card, so if that is the only way to pay, I'd have to jump through a lot of hoops to buy this. Why would that be the only option? Never seen a shop accept credit cards only. I only have a debit card and have never had any problems.

Depending on the merchant and the bank, debit cards might not work. For example, the debit card from my bank will not work if used to pay at Amazon (allegedly the bank is too strict about payment details and Amazon doesn't provide something). I had to get a credit card specifically because of this (the debit card works everywhere else I tried it).

My debit card from Wells Fargo is referred to as an ATM card on the card itself. Using my PIN was required and even then some merchants would error. Since the switch to chips in America I haven't had an issue with the card being declined except when a merchant requires me to fall back to reading the magnetic strip.

Re: Talos II

#87

Post by Nullabillity »

CrystalGamma wrote: post #77
danpalmer wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a common misunderstanding. The US seems to use "credit card" to refer to all payment cards, but is rarely limit to just _credit_ cards. I think the distinction between credit and debit cards is more commonly made in Europe.

I mostly mean that I don't have a card that can be used for payment over the usual networks like MasterCard (unless those “Maestro”-cards do work, which I doubt), Visa or AmEx …

IME Maestro cards generally don't work, but there are MasterCard debit cards that do.

Re: Talos II

#88

Post by wmf »

pepijndevos wrote: post #84

I seem to remember some similar board based on RISC, anyone know what I'm thinking of?

There have been some Freescale PowerPC boards in recent years.

Re: Talos II

#89

Post by CrystalGamma »

wmf wrote: post #66
e12e wrote: post #22

It seems they're not all that interested in marketing to end users, despite the talos ii "bare-bones" kit available for pre-order on the site - I couldn't find any reviews of the previous talos I/power8 system online - i would assume they'd at the very least get someone like anadtech, ars or one of the many Linux journals to do some hands-on testing / free marketing? I mean, if I had too much cash, I'd be tempted to…

I don't think Talos I was ever released. They created a backlash last time by hyping an unavailable and unaffordable product so maybe the low-key approach is better.

There was a crowdfunding campaign, but it failed. This new product however can be directly preordered (and for much lower price: the board costs little more than half of what Talos 1 would have and the CPUs they are offering right now cost about a quarter of the cheapest option back then)

Re: Talos II

#90

Post by CrystalGamma »

eeks wrote: post #17
bitL wrote: post #7

How would this compare to a ThreadRipper/EPYC system? Any advantages in favor of Talos?

Huge memory BW, CAPI2, 8-way SMT, 120MB L3 cache, L4 cache, compression and crypto coprocessor, etc...

They are selling Scale-Out processors here, which IIRC “only” have 4-way SMT (which will, given IBM's track record, still actually give a ~2.5x improvement over no SMT, unlike <1.5x for SMT2 in Intel/AMD)
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