I’m new to this forum as I just encountered it today! I have had my ears perk
up after seeing recent things about the big corporations and their ‘apps’. So
please forgive the ranbling …
I had joined a privacy training group that really got me going. Now, I’m trying
slowly but surely to ‘de-google’ myself. I am a Linux user for the past 15-20
years so that helps a bit, but it started me thinking deeper and finding there
is a LOT out there already! A good thing for sure.
So this brings the question I’m sure we all have … who can you trust?
Well I’ve ‘trusted’ Dell, Samsung, LG, AT&T, Verizon, et.al with their devices,
services and what not. Now as we get the top level slowly into a more secure state
using open source sources, we have to question our hardware vendors. I’ve learned
of coreboot and Qubes OS but had not known about Intel’s ME nor AMD’s DASH micros
and how vulnerable they are let alone possibly backdoors, so we’d never have total
assurance of privacy. A DIY option seems to be out of the question due to the
complex nature of the CPUs and probably the absence of an open architecture to
allow examination/testing of the microcode.
Just finding a motherboard that supports coreboot and Qubes is diffcult enough currently with perhaps a handful (at best) that may still be available.
As a side note … my wife had gotten an email from our granddaughter saying she
was on this diet for an upcoming wedding. Later we called her and she asked about
it. Can you guess? Right, she isn’t on a diet and never sent an email!
So put out the warning! They are listening and then creating communication!
Things are improving on this front, slowly but surely.
Laptop manufacturer Framework has a new RISC-V motherboard option with a completely open-source CPU:
There are also already many high-performance boards using RISC-V coming out lately:
While these specific products are really only recommended for developers, it’s easy to imagine a more general-purpose product using RISC-V being made available within the next few years
Once my homelab is functional my goal is to get the latest si five and work to create something similar to this guys RISC-V phone.
Imagine working with GrapheneOS guys to create an open design that meets their standards and built on RISC-V chips. Set up a global assembly line of sorts.
@jonah would such a phone meet privacy standards with so many new variables? I imagine most gov spyware wouldn’t have RISC-V on their radar yet.
Using RISC-V is a bit extreme, almost like using Qubes - the performance penalty is severe.
Also this could be malware on your granddaughter’s phone sending weird ads. On our part of the world, I get spam SMS from my mother-in-law. Oftentimes if you want privacy and security, you’d need to increase the perimeter to your loved ones and we have to be a special snowflake of sorts (in their eyes, at least) and ask nicely to install something like Signal.
So true, it’s not ready for consumer use yet as Jonah mentioned but I really believe it’s the future regarding sustainability and openness so that every chip and dev board manufactured doesn’t come from TSMC and locked down by a contract with ARM, Apple, Intel, and the rest of the usual suspects.
Not sure I understand. RISC-V becoming more popular doesn’t mean hardware companies won’t still go to TSMC for high-performance chip manufacturing. High performance being the kind that would be relevant to the general population in general-purpose computing devices.
Yeah it seems very likely high performance RISC-V chips will still be manufactured by TSMC. There simply aren’t many alternatives in semiconductor manufacturing.
It unlocks the potential to open the manufacture and distribution of these chips.
It seems to be the goal of RISCV international to incentivize more open fabrication and they are putting a lot of time into community events in Europe and online training: RISC-V Training and Certification
Not gonna happen over night but I feel it’s inevitable it will take the market and where we should start moving in technology.
The biggest leap is for the people moving there now and figuring out the fabrication steps and obtaining the skills and resources.
Once this catches on there will be an easy formula for the rest to follow.
Another question is, if we challenge the corporate infra do we need such high performance if we stand up open distributed infra.
I believe as we close the gap of private property of the means of production we will get closer to less need for high performance and high scale computing since most of the infrastructure will be distributed and shared.
