I am fucking scared of the mass surveilence nightmare direction that the internet and the world as a whole is going towards… C2PA, france hacking itself into citizen phones, the UK anti encryption law, EU’s chat control, etc. Im also sick of and hate the “you will own nothing and be happy” mentality that corpos try to push. I dont wanna know how the world will look like in 5-10 years.
There’s actually a lot to look forward to. In fact you’re talking on one of those reasons right now.
e2ee is only a recent thing which is significantly more private. You can have an entirely private FOSS operating system that has parity with Windows for free.
The privacy and FOSS ecosystems are thriving more then ever. There are more VPN providers then ever before, and Tor gets better and better.
We have decentralized social media like the fedi which gives complete freedom against corporate control.
We have all sorts of amazing FOSS tools out there. We even have an AI that can be run completely locally and with custom unfiltered models that is very close to competitive with ChatGPT, and also free.
None of these things even existed like 10 years ago, or were in their infancy. They’re all competitive to modern corporate alternatives. Privacy alternatives are by far in the best state they’ve ever been, and they’ll just continue to improve as the community grows larger.
We can own all these tools and self host. In fact we’ve never been able to “own” anywhere near as much as we can today.
Thank you for the Hopium
Thank you, author!
aaand there’s intel management engine and amd platform security procesor which undermine your foss efforts on most platforms
If that was our only problem and most people would be using FLOSS software I’d be happy. Intel ME is bad but you can have a “good enough” usage of tech today.
Why do people want to be doomers over literally nothing. There’s so much good that you’re just ignoring.
Intel can read RAM directly and other parameters using their built in security systems on certain chips. Maybe do more research first to understand why that is distressing. There are some projects for open source CPUs on-going.
I’ve looked into this extensively but see zero actual real world effects other then being a boogyman to hardcore FOSS nerds
Idk what you’re talking about, it’s been done plenty of times?
Plus we dont even really know what new “Security” tech their cooking up nowadays. Especially with in-house chips like Apple M chips.
Meltdown Redux: Intel Flaw Lets Hackers Siphon Secrets from Millions of PCs
This is why we need RISC-V.
Even phones have security chips in them these days.
Fun fact: Intel introduced the Management Engine right around the time they joined the NSA’s PRISM program.
I feel like the management engine card is sneakily changing the threat model in the middle of the conversation.
Is it bad? Yes. Is it a big source of security holes? Absolutely.
Is it a way that Facebook is going to profile you to try and sell you to advertisers? Or a reason why you can’t ditch Windows? No.
What does ditching windows have to do with security chips? OS sits above the hardware so that does not make sense. Any linux distro is just as susceptible as it stands.
No ones worried about social media companies messing with your hardware (not yet). That’s off-topic. Besides, legally nothing stops Intel or AMD from just selling the harvested data to Fb or whoever so that point is kind of moot too.
Actually news just broke as I was writing this and guess what. Now there is a bug allowing browser exploitation of the CPU using… Javascript! What a time to be alive…
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/07/encryption-breaking-password-leaking-bug-in-many-amd-cpus-could-take-months-to-fix/
AMD (for that matter, any other processor manufacturer) isn’t off the hook either - eg. see “Platform Security Processor”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Platform_Security_Processor
They’ve been locking processors to individual motherboards and eliminating second-hand resale value for “enterprise” hardware in the name of “security” too: https://www.servethehome.com/amd-psb-vendor-locks-epyc-cpus-for-enhanced-security-at-a-cost/
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Thanks for providing a positive perspective! It’s really important we don’t lose sight of the good things.
What is this local ChatGPT alternative you are talking about?
https://gpt4all.io/index.html