What I find rather puzzling is the increasing secrecy of hardware manufacturers; search the part numbers of all the ICs on a motherboard from the first IBM PC/XT/AT (for which schematics and BIOS source were available) up to the 486/586 era, and chances are very good that you'll find the full datasheets. Try that with a modern motherboard, however, and you may find that something as seemingly mundane as the CPU voltage regulator controller or temperature monitoring/superIO has next to no public information available. Wouldn't a company making data on how to use its products easily available be more likely to earn new customers and have better sales?
I want a computer that I own
251–260 of 668 posts
Re: I want a computer that I own
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not ever... when we vote corporations out of controlling the government, or "we the corporations". Red/Blue is for strawmanning, both parties are $green.
Genuinely curious: Has change of this magnitude ever been achieved entirely by voting? It feels to me like it can only be achieved by revolution (ie, replacing the government entirely with a new government that does what the people actually want). I very well could be wrong.
indirectly thru elected representatives, legislation, I think so but I'm no political historian. Problem we've got now that you touch on is the judiciary gave this to corps through a 50 year push. Can we get citizens united overturned...
Re: I want a computer that I own
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
HN is substantially larger than 4000 people, besides, telling people to design and fab their own chips is disingenuous. The right to privacy is not a 'first world problem', it is a problem.
I agree that privacy is a problem - and yes it is a first world problem. The specific privacy problem espoused by this post is not just a first world problem, it's an HN problem. I am being disingenuous - this request is pure insanity and I absolutely promise you that this "computer you fully own" will have such a very small market that it doesn't have a chance of breaking even.
Agreed, I care about privacy but this is fetishizing privacy, is pathological.
Re: I want a computer that I own
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
oh my. I don't see why bloomberg got all busy with hidden Chinese chips. It looks like intel already have it covered.
Alas, it is so. Graphics cards have much the same going on. It's part of why Nvidia will likely never opensource or mainline their drivers... They have a huge need for blobs and hardware backed secrecy in order to enable most systems to be compatible with HDCP. That means they need to be able to attest to their cards having not been compromised since leaving the factory. As someone could in theory cobble together an…
The biggest difference is that graphics cards don't have network access. Without network access, proprietary code can be an annoyance, but won't be an outright compromise.
(sure the code could still do nasty stuff like facilitate tempest or other sidechannels, but that's leaps and bounds ahead of the built in assumed-RCEs of ME/PSP).
Re: I want a computer that I own
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not quite a modern smartphone, but it's the best we have at the moment; have you looked into the PinePhone? I have mine running openSUSE Tumbleweed.
How is it for daily use though? Last I knew Pinephones were still mostly just for developers to work on to one day make it a daily driver.
It's about the same quality as a budget Android 2-4 phone.
The basics are pretty much down. Kernel support is solid. It can make calls, send texts (MMS mileage may vary), and use data pretty reliably. Web browsing is actually pretty fast with Angelfish. You technically have access to the full repository of Linux ARM software, and some of it even resizes properly to the phone. The camera is usable but terrible. Anbox works for Android apps but is painfully slow and can't share data with the rest of the phone to my knowledge.
Battery life is terrible, I don't think that the phone has power states of any kind, so it's either with the screen on, on with the screen off, or off altogether. Updates frequently break my install, although updating through SSH has been working for me recently on Tumbleweed without breaking anything. Little things like Plasma not having a way to exit the keyboard, apps taking up full screen with no way to exit them, etc.
Performance is painfully slow, but has also improved (for KDE anyways) by leaps and bounds. It used to be completely unusable but now it's merely very slow.
I would say it's somewhere between for developers, and usable, at this point. You could use it with some sacrifices, and still have a functional wireless communication device. It absolutely is nowhere near replacing my OnePlus running Android, however.
Re: I want a computer that I own
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is it for daily use though? Last I knew Pinephones were still mostly just for developers to work on to one day make it a daily driver.
Some people will tell you that the Pinephone is daily-driver ready. They're right, but only in the sense that using a feature phone is daily-driver ready. It's only feasible if your lifestyle permits it, if you're willing to go without sometimes, if leading by example, and voting with not just your wallet, but whatever you value (be it time, money, or uncertainty) is a deal you're happy to make. I love my Pinephone.…
I'm really heartbroken that I can't use a Pinephone as a daily driver because of the simple fact that it doesn't have a 5ghz wifi antenna. Where I currently live there's just too much interference on 2.4ghz. It's literally the one feature I need. As soon as they come out with a model that has 5ghz wifi I'm happy to jump right on board, especially since they're coming out with a keyboard attachment.
Re: I want a computer that I own
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not quite a modern smartphone, but it's the best we have at the moment; have you looked into the PinePhone? I have mine running openSUSE Tumbleweed.
Terribly slow for modern usage though. And you are still missing essential apps on this kind of device.
user-controlled / cheap / fast - pick 2. There's no way around economies of scale for consumer products.
Re: I want a computer that I own
#258This feels like it was made to get to the top of somewhere like HN but I'm actually very confused. >I want it to be, but which can also be used to communicate securely with anyone on the planet without being observed by a third party. I don't want to be spied on by Microsoft or Google.I don't want the NSA intercepting my conversations or even their metadata. I don't see what this has to do with the actual computer ho…
Alternatively, they want the NSA to obey the law, and for surveillance-for-profit business models to be forbidden.
"surveillance-for-profit business models to be forbidden"
Are you going to ban TV networks and credit card companies next? Grocery store loyalty programs? Practically every company these days collects about their users and customers.
Re: I want a computer that I own
#259I have a similar feeling, but with modern smartphones. Owning my computer is still relatively possible. I can build a computer from parts which I can choose, and have a choice in which operating system to install on them. Laptops are slightly more closed, but even on those I can choose the OS myself. Modern smartphones however, seem like walled gardens in which I have no control at all. I cannot choose any of the par…
> Owning my computer is still relatively possible. Sorry to burst your bubble, https://libreboot.org/faq.html#intelme
https://puri.sm/learn/intel-me/
Purism was able to completely disable Intel's ME
Re: I want a computer that I own
#260I felt this way about iPhone. My compromise was to only connect using a VPN. The goal wasn’t to keep my traffic private — it was so that I could have complete visibility and control over what the iPhone was talking to.
The idea was that my iPhone could be as nefarious as it wanted to be — it could never talk to anyone I didn’t want it to talk to because iptables stopped it, or something.
The project didn’t pan out, but I did end up using pihole a lot which felt like a good compromise.
I also discovered that iOS and cell carriers have a some kind of partnership to silently send each other text messages containing lots of unique looking identifiers, which was fun (REG-RESP?v=3&r=...&n=+555994321&s=FB87CD658A...etc). I used a niche IOT carrier for a while that showed me the complete SMS logs, including all these messages being sent multiple times a day.
I’m sure there’s some banal engineering reason for it but it’s not exactly heartening to find “secret” text messages being snuck out, by the dozen.