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The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

gabrielsieben.tech

181–190 of 554 posts

Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

#181
post #160

This is the problem, when normal people stop buying PCs, only gamers and enterprise customers remain. So they will sell what their customers want.

I'd say that stage has already come, there's huge amounts of people where their main or only computing device is a phone or tablet. I've dealt with recruitment in a non-technical field and their phone is the online nexus point for them for any emails, documents, or website interactions. Even for gaming I'd argue PC is going into enthusiast territory and the GPU pricing situation hasn't helped that, consoles and phone gaming is strong and streaming has developed a niche.

Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

#182

What is to prevent school WiFi from one day requiring a Pluton assertion that your Windows PC hasn’t been tampered with before you can join the network? Remote attestation is the true enemy of your freedom. The power of the authoritarian corporatocracy to force you to use only the (entire) systems they control. It's worth reading https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html again just to see how prescient Sta…

Stallman was right again.

Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

#183
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ron DeSantis doesn't need hardware-level DRM to ban math books. https://www.baynews9.com/fl/tampa/news/2022/05/06/florida-ba... If you're worried about book bannings in states like Florida, DeSantis is up for reelection in just over 3 months . Go volunteer or donate money to his opponent (probably Charlie Crist).

Mein Kampf is a banned book which I don't think many would disagree with. There are many other such books filled with propaganda that are rightly banned. I don't see why other propaganda-filled books that are being pushed on unsuspecting children shouldn't be banned too, unless the only reason is that you dislike the direction of the propaganda.

I think many would disagree with the banning of it, not based on its contents but based on the principle of not banning books in general and not banning speech that’s unpopular.

Unpopular speech needs more protection than popular speech, not less.

Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

#184
post #145
post #72

Regardless, I think that the pc platform deserves a good anti cheat solution. Separating the groups of those who have a good anti cheat system enabled (such as this) and those who don’t is a good compromise for everybody. I think more reasonable companies such as Valve will go that way.

Anything that prevents me from modding or cheating in my single player games is anathema to me. And companies like Activision, Ubisoft and Rockstar would love a hardware-based system that takes control away from gamers.

Who needs to cheat in a Ubisoft game? Just point to the marker, walk, then hit R1 a few times, rinse repeat for 30 hours.

Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

#185

What is to prevent school WiFi from one day requiring a Pluton assertion that your Windows PC hasn’t been tampered with before you can join the network? Remote attestation is the true enemy of your freedom. The power of the authoritarian corporatocracy to force you to use only the (entire) systems they control. It's worth reading https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html again just to see how prescient Sta…

> Remote attestation is the true enemy of your freedom.

Technology is a tool. What is true however is that under the current way how the economy is structured remote attestation weakens freedoms of individuals mostly.

If Facebook was under remote attestation that private information was only used in limited and specific ways and even the NSA can not get to them without breaking the remote attestation, that would be a good thing. If firmware was under remote attestation we would have to worry a lot less about backdoors and the Diesel scandal would have never happened.

Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep! Basically, it's safer if you don't own your PC. Think about users with a million toolbars and Bonzi Buddy installed. Of course, the system for it is rudimentary, and puts a disproportionate amount of control in the hands of providers. And that works very well for them too.

Quoted post unavailable.

Oh, modern democracies solved this nasty problem of voters possibly making the wrong choice by simply providing only the right choices to chose from: you get two slightly different brands of shit whose policies mostly coincide, enjoy your right to vote.

Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

#187

The NSA and other three-letter US agencies will be all inside this chip, or have side-channels to the firmware update mechanism, obviously. A secure operating system means nothing if the hardware itself cannot be secured, and the case for a new, trusted, transparent manufacturer of Intel-compatible CPUs and hardware in general grows stronger.

Obviously

Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

#188

Can RISC-V save us here? Or is it time to start hoarding CPUs?

Might be a blessing in disguise?

The libre computing movement got lazy. We got used to care about free software and just accept free-riding on non-free hardware because "hardware too hard" and frankly we got it easy with x86 CPU and PC manufacturers being generally friendly, actively or passively, to free software and actually benefiting from industry concentration. The less attractive proprietary CPUs and other chips get, the greater chance a small but lively open ecosystem develops?

Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

#189
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ron DeSantis doesn't need hardware-level DRM to ban math books. https://www.baynews9.com/fl/tampa/news/2022/05/06/florida-ba... If you're worried about book bannings in states like Florida, DeSantis is up for reelection in just over 3 months . Go volunteer or donate money to his opponent (probably Charlie Crist).

Mein Kampf is a banned book which I don't think many would disagree with. There are many other such books filled with propaganda that are rightly banned. I don't see why other propaganda-filled books that are being pushed on unsuspecting children shouldn't be banned too, unless the only reason is that you dislike the direction of the propaganda.

Mein Kampf was not banned in Germany either. It is just that after Hitler's death, having no heirs, the state of Bavaria got the printing rights and decided not to allow printing of them (there was a heavily commented version made for academics like a study bible). Meaning all prints violated copyright until the book enters public domain.

Re: The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

#190
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uhm, these things don't really take away your control, rather, they shift it from you to you. The software you boot sets up some state and then toggles a bit, and after that something can't be changed. The state is secure against much modification after that time, but not before that time. The "you" that boots the device are in control, and the "you" that uses the device after that have exactly what "you" set up at b…

This is false and just redefining control.

How so? Redefines from what to what? Please elaborate.

Perhaps you mean that if you, as owner and legitimate user of a device, are able to perform a particular change only during a brief window of time rather than at any time of your choosing, then that limits your control over the device? If so, then my answer is yes, certainly it does. But it also limits the access of anyone who impersonates you (such as the evil exploity javascript I make your browser execute).

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