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Lennart Poettering, Christian Brauner founded a new company

amutable.com

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Re: Lennart Poettering, Christian Brauner founded a new company

#531

Post by surajrmal »

blacklion wrote: post #512
esjeon wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Attestation is a critical feature for many H/W companies (e.g. IoT, robotics), and they struggle with finding security engineers who expertise in this area (disclaimer: I used to work as a operating system engineer + security engineer). Many distros are not only designed for desktop users, but also for industrial uses. If distros ship standardized packages in this area, it would help those companies a lot.

IoT and robotics should (dare I say "must"?) not use general-purpose OSes at all. This «Linux have a finger in every pie» attitude is very harmful for industry, IMHO.

I agree but it's difficult to argue against it. There is just so much you get for free by starting with a Linux distro as your base. Developing against alternatives is very expensive and developing something new is even more expensive. The best we can hope for is that someone with deep pockets invests in good alternatives that everyone can benefit from.

Re: Lennart Poettering, Christian Brauner founded a new company

#532

Post by deknos »

deknos wrote: post #402
quotemstr wrote: post #353

People demonize attestation. They should keep in mind that far from enslaving users, attestation actually enables some interesting, user-beneficial software shapes that wouldn't be possible otherwise. Hear me out. Imagine you're using a program hosted on some cloud service S. You send packets over the network; gears churn; you get some results back. What are the problems with such a service? You have no idea what S i…

> Attestation, secure enclaves, and other technologies create ways to distribute software that otherwise wouldn't exist. How many things are in the cloud solely to enforce access control? What if they didn't have to be? To be honest, mainly companies need that. personal users do not need that. And additionally companies are NOT restrained by governments not to exploit customers as much as possible. So... i also see i…

additionally:

> This potential shouldn't prevent our inventing new kinds of tool.

Why do i see someone who wants to build an atomic bomb for shit and giggles using this argument, too? As hyperbole as my argument is, the argument given is not good here, as well.

The immutable linux people build tools, without building good tools which actually make it easier for private people at home to adapt a immutable linux to THEIR liking.

Re: Lennart Poettering, Christian Brauner founded a new company

#533

Post by seba_dos1 »

gcr wrote: post #271
yxhuvud wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Afaik bankid will actually run as long as you can install play store (IE the device don't need Google certificate), which isn't great but a little bit better than what it could have been.

That can't be right. My onyx boox note air 2 eInk tablet lets me install the google play store by registering myself as an AOSP developer and enrolling my device's serial number or GSF identifier with Google using some Google Form that some android team somewhere's automated by now. The device has no hardware security features from what I can tell. There's no way this platform would pass muster with any bank.

> There's no way this platform would pass muster with any bank

"Any bank"? Although the bank I use locks NFC payments behind such checks (which is not a big loss since a physical debit card offers the same functionality), anything else still works otherwise. Most of the things are available through the website (which fits well on mobile too), and mobile BLIK payments can be done from the Android app which works inside Waydroid with microG.

There's no reason other banks can't work the same way and it's outraging when they don't. Look around for a better bank.

Re: Lennart Poettering, Christian Brauner founded a new company

#534

Post by axus »

wolvoleo wrote: post #483
esjeon wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Attestation is a critical feature for many H/W companies (e.g. IoT, robotics), and they struggle with finding security engineers who expertise in this area (disclaimer: I used to work as a operating system engineer + security engineer). Many distros are not only designed for desktop users, but also for industrial uses. If distros ship standardized packages in this area, it would help those companies a lot.

This is the problem with Linux in general. It's way too much infiltrated by our adversaries from big tech industry. Look at all the kernel patch submissions. 90% are not users but big tech drones. Look at the Linux foundation board. It's the who's who of big tech. This is why I moved to the BSDs. Linux started as a grassroots project but turned commercial, the BSDs started commercial but are hardly still used as such…

As a complete guess, I would say that 90% of Linux systems are run by "big tech drones". And also by small companies using technology.

Open source operating systems are not a zero sum game. Yes there is a certain gravitational pull from all the work contributed by the big companies. If you aren't contributing "for-hire", then you choose what you want to work on, and what you want to use.

Re: Lennart Poettering, Christian Brauner founded a new company

#535

Post by surajrmal »

modo_mario wrote: post #460
esjeon wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Attestation is a critical feature for many H/W companies (e.g. IoT, robotics), and they struggle with finding security engineers who expertise in this area (disclaimer: I used to work as a operating system engineer + security engineer). Many distros are not only designed for desktop users, but also for industrial uses. If distros ship standardized packages in this area, it would help those companies a lot.

I'm not too big in this field but didn't many of those same IOT companies and the like struggle with the packages becoming dependent on Poeterings work since they often needed much smaller/minimal distros?

I don't think this is generally true. If you are running Linux in your stack, your device probably is investing in 1GiB+ RAM and 2GiB+ of flash storage. systemd et al are not a problem at that point. Running a UI will end up being considerably more costly.

Re: Lennart Poettering, Christian Brauner founded a new company

#536

Post by UltraSane »

blacklion wrote: post #521
UltraSane wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If malware on your phone steals it the bank could be on the hook. The bank can set terms on how you access their computers.

Can it sets terms on my religious and political views? I'm not speaking about race and sex, you cannot choose them (ok, sex you could in some jurisdictions, and there is difference between sex and gender, please, don't be nitpicky here), but about things I can choose same as I can choose my hardware and software to run. If there is real effective market (which is not in any country on Earth, especially for banks), yo…

You DO understand you can own more than one phone, right? Just use one that isn't rooted as a dedicated banking device and the rooted phone for whatever else you need. You are making life far too hard.

Re: Lennart Poettering, Christian Brauner founded a new company

#537

Post by plagiarist »

mikkupikku wrote: post #480
sam_lowry_ wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dunno about the others but Pottering has proven himself to deliver software against the grain.

Poettering gas a track record of recognizing good ideas from Apple, then implementing them poorly. He also has a track record of closing bug reports for plain and simple bugs in his software to protect his own ego, and this kind of mentality isn't a great basis for security sensitive software. Audio server for linux: Great idea! Pulseaudio: Genuinely a terrible implementation of it, Pipewire is a drop in replacement…

He really will just close a ticket because he disagrees with how Linux works. I read about systemd sysusers and thought they would be neat for running containerized services. But Poettering doesn't like the /etc/subuid files and refuses to work with them.

Re: Lennart Poettering, Christian Brauner founded a new company

#538

Post by 4gotunameagain »

mariusor wrote: post #494
getcrunk wrote: post #56

systemd solved/improved a bunch of things for linux, but now the plan seems to be to replace package management with image based whole dist a/b swaps. and to have signed unified kernel images. this basically will remove or significantly encumber user control over their system, such that any modification will make you loose your "signed" status and ... boom! goodbye accessing the internet without an id pottering recen…

> the plan seems to be to replace package management with image based whole dist a/b swaps The plan is probably to have that as an alternative for the niche uses where that is appropriate. This majority of this thread seems to have slid on that slippery slope, and jumped directly to the conclusion where the attestation mechanism will be mandatory on all linux machines in the world and you won't be able to run anythin…

Nobody says that you will not have alternatives. What people are saying, is that if you're using those alternatives you won't be able to watch videos online, or access your bank account.

Eventually you will not be able to block ads.

Re: Lennart Poettering, Christian Brauner founded a new company

#539

Post by youarentrightjr »

PunchyHamster wrote: post #418
youarentrightjr wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This company is explicitly all about implementing remote attestation (which is a form of DRM): Is there a HN full moon out? Again, this is wrong. DRM is a policy. Remote attestation is a technology. You can use remote attestation to implement DRM. You can also use remote attestation to implement other things.

there are no other things. The entire point of remote attestation is to manage(i.e. take away) rights of user that runs it, unless you own entire chain, which you do not on any customer device

[dead]

Re: Lennart Poettering, Christian Brauner founded a new company

#540

Post by surajrmal »

inetknght wrote: post #305
cyphar wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm Aleksa, one of the founding engineers. We will share more about this in the coming months but this is not the direction nor intention of what we are working on. The models we have in mind for attestation are very much based on users having full control of their keys. This is not just a matter of user freedom, in practice being able to do this is far more preferable for enterprises with strict security controls. I…

Can I build my own kernel and still use software that wants attestation?

Do you have a way to tell the software to trust your kernel? If so, yes. Things like the web show how we can achieve distributed trust.
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