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Lenovo vendor locking Ryzen CPUs with AMD PSB

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Re: Lenovo vendor locking Ryzen CPUs with AMD PSB

#221

Post by monocasa »

YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo wrote: post #213
monocasa wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not even a vendor lock in it's signing key lock in that is used in that manner by AWS, Gcloud and Azure. Which is not the mechanism under discussion.

No, my comment talked about that some believe PSB is only there to destroy the second hand market and I wrote that it is a false statement and PSB actually provides a higher security for servers and you persisted it's not.

You started off saying

> The feature was implemented in 2017 the only vendors that are using it are lenovo and dell. With lenovo being the only one using it on lower tier cpus than epyc.

All of the ODMs use PSB in some way (the PSP won't start without it); it's only Lenovo and Dell that use PSB to tie CPUs to certain boards.

Re: Lenovo vendor locking Ryzen CPUs with AMD PSB

#222

Post by josephpuccio »

michaelmrose wrote: post #170
BoorishBears wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trusted computing environments only hurt 1% of the users anyways. We live in a world where people talk about Thinkpads vs Macbook Pros, but for 99% of the world laptops are appliances they buy like we'd buy a toaster. They don't care that they can't run Linux, if anything onerous code signing requirements ala mobile devices would be great for the safety of their devices with minimal effects on what they can do. - I'm…

You are supposing that people would only use total control of a platform to forbid things almost nobody wants to do. This seems rather a waste. It's like being superman and using the ability to fly to get to business meetings slightly faster. One would suppose instead that the logical thing to do is create financial opportunities that wouldn't otherwise exist by restricting what you can do without allowing them to in…

I'm Joe, the guy who made takejohndown.com. Thanks for defending me on that other post, I saw a bunch of traffic from hackernews, surprised the post somebody was made was deleted, but then again I've been banned from the /r/NYC sub now just for posting a link. You won't believe how toxic it is there: https://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/s5nvz0/my_landlord_doe...

Re: Lenovo vendor locking Ryzen CPUs with AMD PSB

#223

Post by kube-system »

jkepler wrote: post #113
kube-system wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Market targeting, segmentation, and consumer preferences are real things which can be and are routinely measured.

Exactly the parent commercial it's point: market segments /can/ and do change sizes and their proportional relations. And more people are beginning to understand the importance of security for privacy in a world that is increasingly digital and dependent on information technology.

Yes, several of these companies have come out of nowhere in the past decade and are now making low single digit millions in revenue. Huge growth, yes, but also, still a rounding error as far as the whole market is concerned.

Re: Lenovo vendor locking Ryzen CPUs with AMD PSB

#224

Post by michaelmrose »

josephpuccio wrote: post #222
michaelmrose wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are supposing that people would only use total control of a platform to forbid things almost nobody wants to do. This seems rather a waste. It's like being superman and using the ability to fly to get to business meetings slightly faster. One would suppose instead that the logical thing to do is create financial opportunities that wouldn't otherwise exist by restricting what you can do without allowing them to in…

I'm Joe, the guy who made takejohndown.com. Thanks for defending me on that other post, I saw a bunch of traffic from hackernews, surprised the post somebody was made was deleted, but then again I've been banned from the /r/NYC sub now just for posting a link. You won't believe how toxic it is there: https://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/s5nvz0/my_landlord_doe...

I am sympathetic but if you inject it into every thread you will probably get banned and unfortunately it will be correct to do so.

Hacker news is about aggregating interesting things to read not a collection of grievances. For example this thread is about tech and if half of it was random grievances it would be a shitty website. Asking someone if they sympathize with your issue and asking them if you can paint it on the side of their house will get you two very different answers.

You and other tenants need to get together and either sue or more broadly look at how misdeeds by landlords are handled in your city and or state.

Re: Lenovo vendor locking Ryzen CPUs with AMD PSB

#225

Post by Avamander »

userbinator wrote: post #184
Avamander wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Secure Boot is really quite separate from AMD PSB and actually does provide protection against certain attacks, no need for the double quotes. It's fortunate, not unfortunate, that we've gone past such irrational opposition to a reasonable extent. Irrational opposition like that makes it much harder to talk about what's actually important, such as PSB/PSP, without getting lumped together with the tinfoil crowd.

It's most definitely not "irrational opposition". It's the observation that computing systems have slowly become increasingly user-hostile in the name of "security", and the associated rise of authoritarianism. There's no doubt it "does provide protection against certain attacks", but the thing is WE DON'T CARE. We don't want our freedoms slowly being eroded, we see the edges slowly creeping in, and the best way to d…

It's not "rise of authoritarianism" when your bootloader does a few checks you can disable. Stop with the ridiculous overdramatisations.

> but the thing is WE DON'T CARE

YOU don't care, FTFY.

> Most people thought Stallman was in "the tinfoil crowd" 20 years ago.

Just because some things RMS has said have become true does not mean that other things he has said will. Neither does that truth value carry over to other arguments considered similar.

Re: Lenovo vendor locking Ryzen CPUs with AMD PSB

#226

Post by hilbert42 »

pjmlp wrote: post #158
voakbasda wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point, their government has completely undermined foreign confidence in their semiconductor industry. I would be careful to avoid any processors from there, because the chance that it contains a backdoor is just too great to risk. Even if that is only a perceived risk and not a real one. American propaganda in recent years clearly set out to reach this new status quo, and it’s probably all smoke and little to…

That applies to every foreign country actually. Anyone that wants to be 100% sure of the supply chain has to move away from globalization.

Exactly! Exactly! Exactly!

I still cannot understand why the US and other countries with high tech allowed themselves to become so absolutely dependent on China.

When their own companies killed of local manufacturing and went to China out of greed and increased profits then governments should have stepped in on strategic grounds, so why didn't they?

It was obvious to me some 25 years ago and I've no monopoly on this insight so they must have been well aware that this would happen. In essence, these countries have been shooting themselves in the feet for decades.

The question is why.

Edit: I can remember the time when the US military required certain components, chips etc. to be able to be second-sourced from multiple manufacturers before they were incorporated into equipment. Does anyone else remember this?

Clearly governments, not only the US, have been aware of the problem for many decades and have chosen to do nothing about it. Moreover, what brought them to abandon this once good policy in the first instance?

Re: Lenovo vendor locking Ryzen CPUs with AMD PSB

#227

Post by hilbert42 »

BoorishBears wrote: post #69
sedatk wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These would only help the power users, not the remaining 99%.

Trusted computing environments only hurt 1% of the users anyways. We live in a world where people talk about Thinkpads vs Macbook Pros, but for 99% of the world laptops are appliances they buy like we'd buy a toaster. They don't care that they can't run Linux, if anything onerous code signing requirements ala mobile devices would be great for the safety of their devices with minimal effects on what they can do. - I'm…

"They don't care that they can't run Linux, ..."

This is why we need government intervention. If laws dictated that computing equipment etc. sold to the GP couldn't have 'locks' on them then these problems would instantly disappear.

Such laws can be easily be justified on grounds of (a) stopping monopolistic practices (anti-monopoly laws), and (b) minimizing e-waste.

This won't happen unless there's pressure on government like there has been over the right to repair from the Right to Repair movement. In fact such pressure could come from an extension of the group's current activities.

Re: Lenovo vendor locking Ryzen CPUs with AMD PSB

#228

Post by hilbert42 »

kaladin-jasnah wrote: post #52
rasz wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think thats what the previous gen did, so most likely yes.

Doesn't this one have a prompt? So if you choose "no" every time on startup, it won't blow fuses?

That needs to be fully determined. If it blew the fuses without prompting then it's likely the owner of the replacement chip could sue for damages (the 'replacement' chip only in the machine to test the faulty mono/CPU argument).

Also, it would be complicated for Lenovo too as warranty and consumer laws in every country are different.

Everyone, thanks for the info, once I had a high opinion of the company but it's been going steadily downhill in recent years. Reckon I'd never buy another PC from them again over this nonsense.

Re: Lenovo vendor locking Ryzen CPUs with AMD PSB

#229

Post by alerighi »

mjg59 wrote: post #211
raxxorrax wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The real thing is, we don't need this kind of security This is a real argument. While it might make sense for cloud computing for the client to verify system integrity, malware that modifies firmware is not the largest blip on the radar in these times. A good protection is actually the numerous different manufacturers. I agree, these technologies aren't primarily for security, they are to enforce how devices are us…

It's not the largest, but against advanced targets who have a chance of detecting other attack vectors, it's a realistic threat. "We don't need this kind of security" is probably true for specific (and even broad) definitions of "we", but it's not universally true and it's not an argument for the technology not existing. Like I said elsewhere, I'm not convinced that the way it's currently being deployed provides anyw…

With we don't need that kind of security I was talking about average home computer user (the one for which the personal computer was created!) that buys a computer to use it for normal everyday tasks.

There are situations where that kind of security is required, of course, but they are not something that you should worry about if you use the computer to watch YouTube videos and thus I don't think that makes any sense at all to be present on a consumer PC.

Re: Lenovo vendor locking Ryzen CPUs with AMD PSB

#230

Post by josephpuccio »

michaelmrose wrote: post #224
josephpuccio wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm Joe, the guy who made takejohndown.com. Thanks for defending me on that other post, I saw a bunch of traffic from hackernews, surprised the post somebody was made was deleted, but then again I've been banned from the /r/NYC sub now just for posting a link. You won't believe how toxic it is there: https://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/s5nvz0/my_landlord_doe...

I am sympathetic but if you inject it into every thread you will probably get banned and unfortunately it will be correct to do so. Hacker news is about aggregating interesting things to read not a collection of grievances. For example this thread is about tech and if half of it was random grievances it would be a shitty website. Asking someone if they sympathize with your issue and asking them if you can paint it on…

This mission is more important than not being banned on HackerNews.

> You and other tenants need to get together and either sue or more broadly look at how misdeeds by landlords are handled in your city and or state.

We've had 3,200 people visit the site in the last 3 days. We're on our way.

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