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Librem5 Hardware Update

puri.sm

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Re: Librem5 Hardware Update

#101

Post by sneak »

josteink wrote: post #97
sneak wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can disable all of that and boot any code you like. For the 99% that don’t want bootkits to be possible on their hardware, you can require a signed bootloader. Best of both worlds.

Inaccurate. Boot yes, but you can’t access your SSD from Linux, so you can’t actually install anything on your (very expensive) internal storage. For a Mac Mini with external storage that may be passable, but for a laptop like the MacBook that’s pretty much a no go. This move by Apple should not be confused with generic UEFI secure boot with user-loadable keys, which yes, IMO is a good thing for most people. Apple ho…

Linux distro support for Apple hardware has always been pretty weak; I doubt many people run linux on apples anyway. They ship with a viable unix and better UI, and getting Ubuntu or similar to work well on them is an uphill battle. I imagine most “linux people” are buying thinkpads.

Re: Librem5 Hardware Update

#102

Post by apricot »

sneak wrote: post #101
josteink wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inaccurate. Boot yes, but you can’t access your SSD from Linux, so you can’t actually install anything on your (very expensive) internal storage. For a Mac Mini with external storage that may be passable, but for a laptop like the MacBook that’s pretty much a no go. This move by Apple should not be confused with generic UEFI secure boot with user-loadable keys, which yes, IMO is a good thing for most people. Apple ho…

Linux distro support for Apple hardware has always been pretty weak; I doubt many people run linux on apples anyway. They ship with a viable unix and better UI, and getting Ubuntu or similar to work well on them is an uphill battle. I imagine most “linux people” are buying thinkpads.

I run Linux on an old Macbook Air, and it's a great machine. But it's getting a bit long in the tooth (2GB RAM doesn't cut it anymore) and I've been looking around for my next laptop. That locking move by Apple ensures I won't be buying a Macbook this time, it will likely be a Dell XPS or Thinkpad.

Re: Librem5 Hardware Update

#103

Post by [deleted] »

eudora wrote: post #64
dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you think about it, it amazes me. So many people, including me, would love to have these switches. Like physical switch for the mic, camera and radio. And yet, the companies that are supposed to listen to the customer seem to do exactly the opposite to what the customer wants, like installing all these unremovable crappy apps nobody uses or removeing the headphone jack. Are these people so out of touch with real…

Hold up. I don't have stats but I'm incredibly confident that almost no users want hardware switches. Does your mum want a hardware switch? Does the guy working at Starbucks? I think it might be the techheads who think that installing Linux and having hardware switches are normal - they're the ones who are out of touch with reality.

[deleted]

Re: Librem5 Hardware Update

#104

Post by jsjohnst »

jsjohnst wrote: post #77
lvs wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, I do see a large number of lay people with tape over their laptop cameras. Enough stories have filtered into the press about RAT malware and whatnot that there is likely to be some endemic insecurity about a camera pointed in your face across a fairly broad section of the populace.

Yet those tinfoil folks who cover the camera do nothing about the microphone. Since ~2009, it’s been impossible to turn on the camera on an Apple laptop/monitor without the light turning on, yet there’s no indication of something using the mic.

To clarify for the down voters, I didn’t mean to insult, I meant to imply it was an unfounded fear (as most tinfoil conspiracies are). Most folks I’ve talked to who do it, didn’t know about the impossibility of turning on the camera without the light on current gen hardware. When I told them about the very real risk of listening to audio without any similar visual indication they were rightly alarmed. I’m actually calling for the ability to either have a hardware mic cutoff or at minimum a visual indication similar to how the camera does.

Re: Librem5 Hardware Update

#105

Post by lvs »

jsjohnst wrote: post #104
jsjohnst wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet those tinfoil folks who cover the camera do nothing about the microphone. Since ~2009, it’s been impossible to turn on the camera on an Apple laptop/monitor without the light turning on, yet there’s no indication of something using the mic.

To clarify for the down voters, I didn’t mean to insult, I meant to imply it was an unfounded fear (as most tinfoil conspiracies are). Most folks I’ve talked to who do it, didn’t know about the impossibility of turning on the camera without the light on current gen hardware. When I told them about the very real risk of listening to audio without any similar visual indication they were rightly alarmed. I’m actually ca…

Regardless, that average people are cautious about their electronic privacy is something to applaud, not discourage. If you are trying to train people out of fearing their cameras, then you're doing a bit of a disservice.

In particular, your claim is false for phone and tablet cameras. These devices do not have visual indicators of camera operation. Furthermore, the only reason for an industry-wide adoption of laptop camera LEDs was consumer fear of them. If that fear erodes, there is no incentive to maintain the hardware feature and no governmental regulations governing such hardware.

Re: Librem5 Hardware Update

#106

Post by Aissen »

cyphar wrote: post #59
conradev wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see. The question here is not if there will be proprietary software: there will be. The question is which of that proprietary software runs on the CPU. Is the idea that all of the software in the kernel to interface with these devices is open source? I also don’t get the hangup over PCIe (vs USB). DMA with an IOMMU can be made fairly secure (and has obvious perf benefits).

I think the main reason is that powering off a device (for their hardware kill switches) connected via USB is more reliable than powering off a device connected via PCIe. There's also just more layers of security when using USB as opposed to a single layer with PCIe (IOMMU -- which is secure as far as I know but I'd prefer to be safe rather than sorry in this case).

It depends on the board design. It costs more, but you can have controlled power line for a single device, controllable with a gpio.

Edit: it has a "radio hardware killswitch" ; so it's well designed.

Re: Librem5 Hardware Update

#107

Post by jsjohnst »

lvs wrote: post #105
jsjohnst wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To clarify for the down voters, I didn’t mean to insult, I meant to imply it was an unfounded fear (as most tinfoil conspiracies are). Most folks I’ve talked to who do it, didn’t know about the impossibility of turning on the camera without the light on current gen hardware. When I told them about the very real risk of listening to audio without any similar visual indication they were rightly alarmed. I’m actually ca…

Regardless, that average people are cautious about their electronic privacy is something to applaud, not discourage. If you are trying to train people out of fearing their cameras, then you're doing a bit of a disservice. In particular, your claim is false for phone and tablet cameras. These devices do not have visual indicators of camera operation. Furthermore, the only reason for an industry-wide adoption of laptop…

> your claim is false for phone and tablet cameras

Yet nobody seems to care about them (unless forced to care by their employer). The exact same folks I see in work environments with the tape on the Apple laptops are the same folks with nothing on the phones/tablets (and previously mentioned mics, where as at least on iOS you always have a visual indication of that). If you really care about privacy, you learn the different ways to protect yourself. If instead you have a different motive, you instead just grab a piece of tape and call it done.

Re: Librem5 Hardware Update

#108

Post by eudora »

Digital-Citizen wrote: post #80
eudora wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hold up. I don't have stats but I'm incredibly confident that almost no users want hardware switches. Does your mum want a hardware switch? Does the guy working at Starbucks? I think it might be the techheads who think that installing Linux and having hardware switches are normal - they're the ones who are out of touch with reality.

"I don't have stats but I'm incredibly confident that almost no users want hardware switches." How "incredibly confident" can you be about this claim without published stats? I would like hardware switches ala Purism's laptops but I see that Hacker News prioritizes steering discussions away from these switches (such as down-moderating the grandparent post for making a similar claim with no pointer to evidence but lea…

As you say we both provide no evidence, but I suppose my claim aligns better with HN user's anecdotal evidence

It's true I could be wrong, it might be something really unintuitive and for some reason people want hardware switches and I've just literally never heard it until now.

But in my experience 99% don't even know about, let alone care about advanced features. Even simple features you and I take for granted. They want to launch Instagram. That's about it.

Re: Librem5 Hardware Update

#109

Post by eudora »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #99
eudora wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hold up. I don't have stats but I'm incredibly confident that almost no users want hardware switches. Does your mum want a hardware switch? Does the guy working at Starbucks? I think it might be the techheads who think that installing Linux and having hardware switches are normal - they're the ones who are out of touch with reality.

> Does your mum want a hardware switch? Actually, she does. She read some news and put some tape over the camera of her notebook. Just as Zuck does - and I imagine there is an enormous gap in technical knowledge between the CEO of FB and my mum. So yes, maybe the demand is higher than the marketing departments are willing to admit. Apple's years-long reluctance to cater for people looking for a phone with two SIM car…

I mean, maybe. I freely admit I have no evidence other than the anecdotal.

It's just generally been my experience that the vast majority of users don't care about privacy issues or "freedom" the way techies do.

Re: Librem5 Hardware Update

#110

Post by eudora »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #100
amelius wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies are basically dictating what users "want": from social media to personalized ads. The problem with regular users is: they don't care until it's too late. Can we blame them? Not really, because life is too diverse to worry about every consumer product. It's good, however, if there is a bunch of good guys who do the thinking for these users. Still, most users may not care, but eventually consumer advocacy gro…

> The problem with regular users is: they don't care until it's too late. But it shouldn't be that way, should it? At least it's not what I learned during my marketing lessons. You do market research, listen to your potential customers, discuss the results and proceed based on that. In the mobile world you have an absurd situation that you remove an important component of the device, you release the device, everybody…

I mostly see what you're saying here

The thing is, if these things resulted in increased profit over the medium term, they'd probably have happened already.

So yes there's user-hostile decisions made that put profit over users. Like ad tracking.

But there's other things that I think convince a user to purchase a product, and purchase the next product from the same company (loyalty maintained) that may not be in the user's best interests.

An example is a larger battery. My current theory is a manufacturer could easily have a 2 day battery and it wouldn't make for a terribly unwieldy phone.

But they don't, because customers are going to buy the phone next to it that is sleeker and weighs less.

I think customers are more often than not short sighted when making decisions like this. When they're in the store they think "but this one's so much nicer, and the battery probably lasts enough"

I think purchases are often made emotionally, not rationally, and a phone with 7 extra switches and more weight or thickness just seems clunky and less "high tech"

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