3 ms·

Are there any projects out there that throw the baby out with the bathwater and just restart computing from the ground up with freedom as a foundation? I'd love

Are there any projects out there that throw the baby out with the bathwater and just restart computing from the ground up with freedom as a foundation? I'd love to participate something like that and I think it'd be a great way to respark 80's like hacker movement.

throwaway77384 10y ago
Libreboot and coreboot are trying to open source things on the software side of things (think dd-wrt or openwrt or tomato for routers, custom firmware basically). With hardware it's a bit of a different story. You hear about attempts from time to time, but getting away from Intel / AMD is really hard. The suggestions from the article about alternative architectures seem to be our best bet currently.
- 1001101 10y ago
  Their attempts will be just that. There's a SHA256 signature required to verify the ME code - no signature, no boot (or boot for 30 mins less commonly). They won't share the keys with just anyone.
  - zvalqoh 10y ago
    It's sha256? I wonder if a Bitcoin shared mining setup could co-op some of those hashes to brute force the keys.
- jasonkostempski 10y ago
  Alternative architectures is definitely the most pragmatic thing to go for. I was going off on a bit of a tangent from the article and just wondering if anyone has tried redoing the 70's - 90's without trying to be compatible with any existing technology but still learning from the mistakes.
  - eternalvision 10y ago
    Pure speculation: Any entity that obtains the (financial, other) resources necessary to help facilitate such fundamental subversion is eventually convinced that the status quo is necessary to our survival.
  - RandomOpinion 10y ago
    The crowdfunded Open-V implementation of RISC V comes to mind. https://www.crowdsupply.com/onchip/open-v https://www.crowdsupply.com/onchip/open-v However, it doesn't look like they're going to come remotely close to hitting their funding goal. Fabricating chips is expensive.

throwaway77384 10y ago

Libreboot and coreboot are trying to open source things on the software side of things (think dd-wrt or openwrt or tomato for routers, custom firmware basically). With hardware it's a bit of a different story. You hear about attempts from time to time, but getting away from Intel / AMD is really hard. The suggestions from the article about alternative architectures seem to be our best bet currently.

1001101 10y ago
Their attempts will be just that. There's a SHA256 signature required to verify the ME code - no signature, no boot (or boot for 30 mins less commonly). They won't share the keys with just anyone.
- zvalqoh 10y ago
  It's sha256? I wonder if a Bitcoin shared mining setup could co-op some of those hashes to brute force the keys.
jasonkostempski 10y ago
Alternative architectures is definitely the most pragmatic thing to go for. I was going off on a bit of a tangent from the article and just wondering if anyone has tried redoing the 70's - 90's without trying to be compatible with any existing technology but still learning from the mistakes.
- eternalvision 10y ago
  Pure speculation: Any entity that obtains the (financial, other) resources necessary to help facilitate such fundamental subversion is eventually convinced that the status quo is necessary to our survival.
- RandomOpinion 10y ago
  The crowdfunded Open-V implementation of RISC V comes to mind. https://www.crowdsupply.com/onchip/open-v https://www.crowdsupply.com/onchip/open-v However, it doesn't look like they're going to come remotely close to hitting their funding goal. Fabricating chips is expensive.