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I want a computer that I own

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461–470 of 668 posts

Re: I want a computer that I own

#461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's once per year. Source: I have a paid developer account.

But I also need a mac for signing, don't I? Like, a Mac Mini? That's the most annoying part, tbh. I feel fine-ish for paying 8 $ a month for my dev account (if you calculate it that way), but buying additional, expensive hardware? No, not really.

I think that you can rent a mac for a day and do all your signing. Something like https://www.scaleway.com/en/hello-m1/

Re: I want a computer that I own

#462
post #15

I 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…

Most developers: I want open hardware. But I need to buy a specific brand for my income.

Ugh.

Re: I want a computer that I own

#463
post #278

I got a bunch of FPGAs and I'm building my own 68k/6502 machine to run my C programs and to tinker with assembly. Seems that I have a bunch of these chips so it will rapidly grow into a multiprocessor thing. This is likely the only way forward other than RISC-V on FPGA. But they aren't exactly well defined. Or open. Solid hardware RISC-V is interesting and medium term viable but I foresee a world of blobs waiting in…

You do realise your FPGA is a black blob itself, even if you are using an OSS toolchain?

Re: I want a computer that I own

#464
post #435

This 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…

I'm not sure if it's ironic or intentional, but I find it funny that they talk about these points while not having HTTP redirect to HTTPS on their own site, presumably because it's using a self signed certificate.

It may have something to do with the fact that in another rant the author complains about how HTTPS makes webmasters dependent on certificate-issuing bodies.

Re: I want a computer that I own

#465
post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I want these things too. But I'm also willing to pay for them. Everyone wants the best stuff for free. That's not controversial. But it is controversial to complain that the best stuff is more expensive than the cheap stuff. Of course it is. That's the type of stuff they sacrificed to make it cheap. If they want low end free btw, they do have that too. Pinebooks are super cheap.

> But it is controversial to complain that the best stuff is more expensive than the cheap stuff. Nah. Technically, and in terms of manufacturing cost, it would be even easier to make a simpler computer, without all those bells and whistles that can be turned against the user, without the Intel Management Engine, TPM, and what have you. > That's the type of stuff they sacrificed to make it cheap. No, it's economies o…

Don't forget that a lot of those features weren't put on there to spy on people, or control them, they were put on there to make non-technical users safer.

Non-technical users can and will be tricked into doing all sorts of ridiculous things to their computer, and then they will blame the computer manufacturer for letting them do that. Computer manufacturers responded by not letting them do that.

Mainstream computers are designed for mainstream users... the common clay of the land... you know... morons. They have to be protected from doing stupid things to their computers (because otherwise that's how you get botnets).

As the OP says, there are computers that don't have these features, and that you can do whatever you like with. But they tend to cost more, in part because they're not mainstream so they don't get economies of scale.

Re: I want a computer that I own

#466
post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can somewhat relate to you, but in different aspect. I own iPhone and I'm thinking about some home automation. I can program iPhones, I tried to find out some way to put my code onto my phone without restrictions and I did not find any. I can use web app, but it's restricted and I might need some API that's not available for web. I can install my development build, but it'll expire in a few days and I don't want to…

All those Apple apologists should go and take a look at the world; I live in Iran, and here Iranian apps just use a business profile to install. There are even alternative app stores using device management profiles. And these apologists keep bullshitting that the monopolist walled garden actually keeps people safe. The walls don’t keep out anyone powerful, they just enforce rents.

All the Apple haters keep missing the point for why Apple users prefer “walled gardens”: They are fucking beautiful respites from all the crap outside their walls.

Apple has refunded me without question whenever an app tried to scam me, no matter how big people popular it was, whereas apps using third-party payment systems almost never give any refunds.

Re: I want a computer that I own

#467
post #15

I 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…

> trying to ungoogle it as much as possible. From experience, no matter what you do, your phone will still continue to ping 1e100.net every few minutes. This may just be something innocuous, but there just is no way to get rid of this behavior (or to understand where it's coming from).

1e100.net is for dns resolution and captive portal detection.

> adb shell settings put global captive_portal_mode 0

will disable it.

Re: I want a computer that I own

#468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox on Debian spies on me. (I mean, sure, a bare Linux probably doesn’t.)

Can you elaborate on this please? I run firefox on Linux and wasn't aware of any tracking.

Not who you're responding to but default telemetry, default search engine (google), etc

Re: I want a computer that I own

#469
post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congrats, you have just negated the second factor in 2FA by having all your keys at one place in one application.

2FA is about having a factor which changes everytime you use it so if the medium is intercepted somehow the account isn't permanently compromised. It's protection for when using untrusted computing devices, or because most people have their passwords in some way visible or shared. TOTPs can't be reasonably made much longer then they are while still usefully entered, but my password database never leaves my own device…

IMO this reduces the protection of 2FA significantly. For me 2FA is primarily not having a single device that's enough to compromise to get access to your important accounts. This means that I never have both factors (password and TOTP key in our case) on a single device. That's why

> they've already got my Google Authenticator or whatever DB as well anyway.

is of course good for them, but they still need to get my password from my other device.

Re: I want a computer that I own

#470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Android does not allow you to take complete backups Can't you enable developer mode, open a terminal and just run `dd`?

Out of a variety of reasons: no. 1) You don't want to risk dumping a mounted filesystem because of inconsistencies 2) Good luck getting the right device - in the end it's devicemapper all the way down with a lot of layers (ecryptfs, sdcardfs, bind mounts, ...) stacked between your shell and the device. 3) Unrooted phones don't allow access to raw Unix devices 4) You can't restore these backups anywhere if your phone…

Makes me wonder if you can just dump the Flash storage chips through JTAG or similar - assuming the JTAG ports are accessible without completely dismantling the phone.
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