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I highly doubt one of the most authoritarian governments is going to produce a chip the libre community would use
by mfatica 7y ago
I highly doubt one of the most authoritarian governments is going to produce a chip the libre community would use
- butteroverflow 7y agoI live under authoritarian government. The basic idea everybody here adheres to goes something like this: as long as you're going to be spied upon (and you are), it might as well be a country on the other side of the globe. We're in much greater danger from the shadowy types who are supposed to be protecting us from foreign actors (heh), than from the NSA. That's one reason why we proxy everything through US servers. So who knows…
- jgalt212 7y agoI buy that logic so long as you: 1. never travel overseas. 2. the authoritarian govt doesn't run low on cash and start selling all this data to the highest bidder. very similar to fears about the Soviet nuclear stockpile after the fall of the Soviet Union.
- rudiv 7y agoThe companies involved are Taiwanese, not from mainland China. The libre community couldn't avoid Taiwanese chips even if they wanted to, which I don't imagine they do.
- mfatica 7y agoTaiwan is involved yes, but it's a joint venture between the government of Shanghai and a Taiwanese company. So certainly mainland China has the influence here.
- jandrese 7y agoWell they can't use Intel or AMD so the options are kind of limited. If they can get full control over the rest of the platform then they can make it more difficult for a compromised chip to remain undetected.