Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I want a computer that I own

misc-stuff.terraaeon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

471–480 of 668 posts

Re: I want a computer that I own

#471

Post by krageon »

guyzero wrote: post #258
rfrey wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't see why banning those things should be controversial or extreme in any way. Predatory business interests need to die.

Re: I want a computer that I own

#472

Post by bmn__ »

guyzero wrote: post #258
rfrey wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In a just world — where the basic human right of privacy counts as much as the basic human rights of free speech, free travel, free reproduction, not being tortured or enslaved etc. — they would be forbidden. Let them figure out a way to be profitable without infringing.

Unfortunately, the Americans, the Russians and the Chinese are against pervasive privacy and pay only lip service to the UDHR at best.

Re: I want a computer that I own

#473

Post by bmn__ »

vineyardmike wrote: post #79
marcodiego wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not overpriced, they're expensive. And they are expensive because they are rare. And they are rare because vendors stopped manufacturing them. And vendors stopped manufacturing them because most people do not refuse to buy a device "that is designed largely to maximize the profits of the computer industry".

>...And [the computer industry] stopped manufacturing [a computer that is not designed to maximize computer industry profits] because ... When you read it back, it sounds silly to expect any company to make products that ever fit this criteria. Except expensive ones, of course, which maximize profits in their own way.

Not only for-profit companies may build computers; non-profit organisations, cooperatives, governments may, too. I think that's a good way out of the problem described in the article.

Re: I want a computer that I own

#474

Post by Black101 »

aiisahik wrote: post #105

This is literally something that NEVER crosses the mind of the average consumer. We should have a HackerNews version of "first world problems" and call it "HackerNews Problems". You now have a computer that is 10,000 times faster than one you had 30 yrs ago at half the price. Oh and it fits in your pocket. A lot of time and money went into creating that. Those people need to get paid. And yes you pay for it with some…

> You now have a computer that is 10,000 times faster than one you had 30 yrs ago at half the price.

Actually, I think Apple has caused the prices of pocket computers to go up in the last few years (relative to features). And many of these features, I could do without (I.E.: I don't need so many sensors on my daily phone, this is dangerous from a privacy point of view). They removed the physical keyboard though...

> And yes you pay for it with some loss of privacy.

Why? You can pay $1,000 for your pocket computer and they still won't let you be administrator of it in the name of your own protection.

To tell you the truth, I don't like where today's computer designs are going.

Re: I want a computer that I own

#475

Post by oaiey »

Ensorceled wrote: post #456
guyzero wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Credit companies would do just fine if they couldn't sell your data. Loyalty programs don't need to sell your data, they existed before it was even possible. TV networks ... wait, how is broadcast TV even collecting your data. None of these businesses NEED to collect and sell your behavioural and demographic data to exist. TV and newspapers would probably start doing OK if precision targeted ads were not possible.

Google how modern TV spies on what you view on your screen (not talking your Netflix App here ;))

Re: I want a computer that I own

#476

Post by oaiey »

Black101 wrote: post #175
BoysenberryPi wrote: post #86

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…

> You don't want Microsoft to be involved Microsoft works closely with Intel... I wonder if they might have access to the invisible OS running on your PC... (Linux would not disable that)

Why would Microsoft rely on a third party when they have a whole platform above it?

And Intel platform is no secret anymore. It is inspected as is Microsoft's behavior.

Re: I want a computer that I own

#477

Post by morganvachon »

ciconia wrote: post #421
kokx wrote: 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…

I own a 5-years old Moto G4 Play running a de-googled Android 7.1. It works just fine, and I can install apps from either the F-droid or the Aurora stores. To me it makes more sense to continue with this phone, as I can find all the replacement parts I need on AliExpress, rather than investing in a new Librem 5 or a PinePhone. While I appreciate being able to use an open mobile OS, there's the problem of apps, and th…

One of the biggest and most overlooked issues with privacy on any cellphone, "open hardware" or otherwise, is the phone part. The baseband processor (BBP) will be a proprietary black box until at least one of the carriers decides to allow an open source BBP to access their network and exchange data. Even once that happens, if it ever does, the second your BBP accesses the network you are vulnerable to snooping, tracking, and spoofing like everyone else on the planet.

At the end of the day you are relying on a suspect network connection, hosted by a profit seeking corporation, regulated by a privacy hostile government, to maintain your connection to the world. No matter how "free" your device is, the network itself will never truly be free.

Re: I want a computer that I own

#478

Post by Black101 »

tux1968 wrote: post #54
walrus01 wrote: post #31

> Perhaps I am looking for something like the x286 DOS computer I had in the early 1990's You can do an almost fully GPL compliant Linux desktop by building it yourself today. I can already see people thinking "but what about the closed source binary blobs? my video card? my network interfaces?" But even your 12 MHz 286 or 386SX/20 had closed source AMI or Phoenix BIOS firmware on it. The motherboard manufacturer in…

You have (almost?) no way to verify how the transistors inside the computer chips are wired. And even if you design your own chips, you can't really know if the design you specified has been faithfully followed at the fab facility. It's a tough problem.

Wouldn't it be possible to verify that a quantum computer's design was properly implemented using a quantum problem?

Re: I want a computer that I own

#479

Post by alexisread »

So if we want to go with completely open arch, we'd be looking at something like this: https://www.hackster.io/news/a-feather-compatible-fpga-board...

https://github.com/mcci-catena/HW-Designs/tree/master/Boards... https://github.com/mcci-catena/catena-riscv32-fpga

ie. an FPGA you can put your own OS AND radio firmware on. Something like https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=5921 (and see the updates https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/precursor/updates) doesn't cut it fully as the wifi has a firmware blob, and in addition I'm not sure how open the xilinx toolchain is (might be, I know some xilinx chips are supported by open source toolchains).

As an OS for the feather board, you could use DASH7 for the radio portion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DASH7), and Oberon as a general OS. (https://blog.gadgetfactory.net/2016/02/how-to-implement-the-...)

Obviously several problems exist there - only Linux has an available FPGA toolchain, so you need a linux computer to bootstrap Oberon onto the FPGA, and DASH7 won't run on the same device (it runs on STM32 boards mainly).

So, to get a completely open design, you'd need to port DASH7 stack and the FPGA tools to Oberon to allow self-hosting and fully open radio. Add to that the fact that this board doesn't supply any video output so your development is over ssh/terminal and you have a way to go to get a fully open system.

Other pain points are that Oberon is a systems language that uses GC, so for deterministic/realtime (radio) operation it is not usable - you'd need to use it's cousin Composita to have a deterministic memory managed OS.

Lastly, Oberon doesn't have any formal verification tools which would be ideal for verifying the entire self-hosted stack. I suspect you'd need to use a LISP of some sort to be able to verify things from the ground up. Of course most LISPs have GC so you'd need to migrate the Composita+Oberon (A2) architecture to LISP to be able to build higher-level verifiable constructs.

However... this is almost possible. There are a few key things to work out here, but it's closer than at any point previously :)

Re: I want a computer that I own

#480

Post by oaiey »

Pawka wrote: post #327
cat_plus_plus wrote: post #135

It's nice to want things, the question is what are you willing to contribute or give up to get them. The author wants to be free of Microsoft and then says he wants something like DOS on x286. Well, DOS was not free of Microsoft. To really be sure corporations and government are not spying on you, you need 100% open source for all software and firmware, if not chip schematics. This means slower hardware and less soft…

> Well, DOS was not free of Microsoft. Probably he meant that Microsoft was not the same Microsoft as it is now. In the same way as having @gmail.com account let us feel "special" 15 years ago and Google was operating under "Don't be evil" flag. Things are changing.

Well ... TCP/IP was not yet the standard, the Internet was very different there. Microsoft then and Microsoft today is the same deal: They want to earn money. And most likely, then, they were more ruthless than today.

What he wants is simplicity he can understand. 286 had a processor architecture with a security model everyone could understand.

Post reply on HN