3 ms·

But how do I trust the independent parties?

• Ajedi32 7y ago
  The same way you trust anybody? If you're so paranoid that you believe literally everyone is out to get you, then you're not going to be able to function in any society, let alone one as interconnected and interdependent as our own.
  • zaarn 7y ago
    But this is about trust. With open source, anyone who understands even a little bit of code can atleast attempt to understand it. You can hash the source code and verify that what you have is the same that the developer shipped. There is no hash function for hardware.
    • Ajedi32 7y ago
      How do you trust your hash program? How do you trust the cryptographers who came up with the hash algorithm? How do you trust your compiler is faithfully interpreting the source code you're reading? IMO if you're at the point where you believe you can't trust multiple decentralized, independent, multi-jurisdictional bodies all telling you the same thing: that the hardware they've tested matches the published design, you've reached a level of paranoia where no amount of reassurance, technological or otherwise, will satisfy you. I suppose if you really wanted to you could build your own X-Ray machine from scratch and check the design yourself. That's probably not much more difficult than going line-by-line and manually verifying the source code of your entire software tool chain because you don't trust anyone else who's read the source code enough to believe them when they tell you they've already verified that everything looks correct and that your text editor probably isn't lying to you about the contents of your source files. Which is to say probably totally impractical, but again, that's kinda my point.