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Looking forward to AMD laptops with Coreboot support as well.

by shmerl 6y ago

fsflover 6y ago
Probaly won`t happen since AMD have their own secret code which no one could neutralize yet.
- shmerl 6y ago
  Supposedly it's already in the works: https://twitter.com/jeremy_soller/status/1286457590289858560 https://twitter.com/jeremy_soller/status/1286457590289858560
  - nullc 6y ago
    Welp. Their response to Raptor in that thread just forever cost System76 my business. System76 takes the position that compatibility with x86 binaries is worth having to take closed, remote-access-enabled, binary firmware. That's a position someone can take. Responding "So what?" and "I was expecting this" is just nasty and unprofessional.
    - shmerl 6y ago
      Yeah, that was strange. Sounds like there is some argument history behind it.
      - kbenson 6y ago
        It does read like that, but even so, the initial question from Raptor Computing Sys was very well worded and not disrespectful at all. The inability to at a minimum leave it as "We've covered this before, and disagree on some items. We'll have to agree to disagree and leave it at that." or even "I'm doing what I can, we'll see where it ends up in the end" or "See the official account for official statements" is the troubling part. Then a gain, that doesn't appear to be uncommon on Twitter, where everyone seems to have trouble disambiguating their professional and personal lives, and those of the people they are responding to (which is related).
        wizzwizz4 6y ago
        To be fair, I can see why > Even if you do port coreboot was read as abrasive; that tweet can be read as a snarky attack that belittles the efforts of the porter, to which the "so what?" response is apt – in fact, a de-escalation. And yet, in reality, it wasn't one. (This is why you assume good faith, people!)
        kbenson 6y ago
        >> Even if you do port coreboot > was read as abrasive; that tweet can be read as a snarky attack that belittles the efforts of the porter I guess, because it allows for the chance that someone may not finish what they set out to do? > to which the "so what?" response is apt – in fact, a de-escalation "so what" is not a useful path to de-escalation. It's a way of saying "you've said your point and I don't think any of it applies, but I'm not going to explain why, nor even go to the length of explaining this to you, and instead respond with two words." It is, at it's core, dismissive, and that's not a useful way to de-escalate (even though I admit some people seem to think it is). What people don't seem to understand that that colloquial speech used with a friend is often dismissive in exactly this way, on purpose, because when you can actually assume good faith because of lots of prior interactions, it speeds up communication. > And yet, in reality, it wasn't one. Yeah, as I noted above, it very rarely is. The only times I think it can be used safely are when the people in question know each other well enough to know the other person is not being condescending and dismissive, and even then it's easy to be interpreted as that when the discussion is heated. In those cases, it sometimes takes people cooling off to assess the conversation more rationally and see what's actually the more likely intent in the phrase. > (This is why you assume good faith, people!) Good faith is useful, and necessary, but it really works best when only a little faith is needed in the first place. Since you can only assume good faith for yourself, it's also in your own self interest to make sure you limit the ways in which you speech can be misinterpreted. Often that means being a bit more formal so misunderstandings based on tone and familiarity are more rare. That's a shame, because sometimes we want to show friendship through our words, but that's much harder to do in pure text. Smiley's and emoticons can actually go a long way towards correctly communicating intent in these cases. Sorry for the rant, I used this as a way to solidify some of my thinking on the subject. :)
    - Godel_unicode 6y ago
      That's not System76 account. It's a personal account of one person who has a history of being harassed by Raptor. Raptors tweets were from their official account, and your reaction was the exact goal of their antagonism.
- boring_twenties 6y ago
  Recent (1-2 years?) AMD BIOS supports disabling the Platform Security Processor (their ME equivalent). I haven't been able to figure out what exactly this means, but it does seem to be disabled after system initialization. Kind of like Intel's HAP bit, except user-settable.
  - floatboth 6y ago
    Either like the HAP bit, or less — only disabling its visibility to the OS on the PCIe bus.
    - boring_twenties 6y ago
      Yeah, I'm a little confused as to why they'd bother implementing and deploying this feature without even a cursory explanation of what it does...
      - numpad0 6y ago
        Maybe it’s literally classified
  - LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
    I found [1] https://www.igorslab.de/en/inside-amd-bios-what-is-really-hidden-behind-agesa-the-psp-platform-security-processor-and-the-numbers-of-combo-pi/ https://www.igorslab.de/en/inside-amd-bios-what-is-really-hi... to be a good explanation. Essentially it's the crank which brings up the rest of the SOC. The other functions are optional, but no booting possible without it.
    - boring_twenties 6y ago
      Thanks for that! This is quite relevant to me right now as I'm thinking about my next upgrade. Obviously, I'd prefer to buy AMD, especially if this disable switch is legit. But grotesquely, I'm still considering going with Intel, because at least I know I can use me_cleaner there, and more or less understand exactly what it does. Hopefully this document will clear some of that up.
clmgs 6y ago
AMD has a similar backdoor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Platform_Security_Processor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Platform_Security_Processo...
- _kbh_ 6y ago
  I would argue that the out of band management provided by DMTF DASH is closer to what people consider then Intel backdoor then the AMD PSP. The PSP cannot be accessed remotely and is only available locally which removes most of the attack surface. https://www.amd.com/system/files/documents/out-of-band-client-management-overview.pdf https://www.amd.com/system/files/documents/out-of-band-clien...

Looking forward to AMD laptops with Coreboot support as well.

by shmerl 6y ago

Looking forward to AMD laptops with Coreboot support as well.

fsflover 6y ago

Probaly won`t happen since AMD have their own secret code which no one could neutralize yet.

shmerl 6y ago
Supposedly it's already in the works: https://twitter.com/jeremy_soller/status/1286457590289858560 https://twitter.com/jeremy_soller/status/1286457590289858560
- nullc 6y ago
  Welp. Their response to Raptor in that thread just forever cost System76 my business. System76 takes the position that compatibility with x86 binaries is worth having to take closed, remote-access-enabled, binary firmware. That's a position someone can take. Responding "So what?" and "I was expecting this" is just nasty and unprofessional.
  - shmerl 6y ago
    Yeah, that was strange. Sounds like there is some argument history behind it.
    - kbenson 6y ago
      It does read like that, but even so, the initial question from Raptor Computing Sys was very well worded and not disrespectful at all. The inability to at a minimum leave it as "We've covered this before, and disagree on some items. We'll have to agree to disagree and leave it at that." or even "I'm doing what I can, we'll see where it ends up in the end" or "See the official account for official statements" is the troubling part. Then a gain, that doesn't appear to be uncommon on Twitter, where everyone seems to have trouble disambiguating their professional and personal lives, and those of the people they are responding to (which is related).
      - wizzwizz4 6y ago
        To be fair, I can see why > Even if you do port coreboot was read as abrasive; that tweet can be read as a snarky attack that belittles the efforts of the porter, to which the "so what?" response is apt – in fact, a de-escalation. And yet, in reality, it wasn't one. (This is why you assume good faith, people!)
        kbenson 6y ago
        >> Even if you do port coreboot > was read as abrasive; that tweet can be read as a snarky attack that belittles the efforts of the porter I guess, because it allows for the chance that someone may not finish what they set out to do? > to which the "so what?" response is apt – in fact, a de-escalation "so what" is not a useful path to de-escalation. It's a way of saying "you've said your point and I don't think any of it applies, but I'm not going to explain why, nor even go to the length of explaining this to you, and instead respond with two words." It is, at it's core, dismissive, and that's not a useful way to de-escalate (even though I admit some people seem to think it is). What people don't seem to understand that that colloquial speech used with a friend is often dismissive in exactly this way, on purpose, because when you can actually assume good faith because of lots of prior interactions, it speeds up communication. > And yet, in reality, it wasn't one. Yeah, as I noted above, it very rarely is. The only times I think it can be used safely are when the people in question know each other well enough to know the other person is not being condescending and dismissive, and even then it's easy to be interpreted as that when the discussion is heated. In those cases, it sometimes takes people cooling off to assess the conversation more rationally and see what's actually the more likely intent in the phrase. > (This is why you assume good faith, people!) Good faith is useful, and necessary, but it really works best when only a little faith is needed in the first place. Since you can only assume good faith for yourself, it's also in your own self interest to make sure you limit the ways in which you speech can be misinterpreted. Often that means being a bit more formal so misunderstandings based on tone and familiarity are more rare. That's a shame, because sometimes we want to show friendship through our words, but that's much harder to do in pure text. Smiley's and emoticons can actually go a long way towards correctly communicating intent in these cases. Sorry for the rant, I used this as a way to solidify some of my thinking on the subject. :)
  - Godel_unicode 6y ago
    That's not System76 account. It's a personal account of one person who has a history of being harassed by Raptor. Raptors tweets were from their official account, and your reaction was the exact goal of their antagonism.
boring_twenties 6y ago
Recent (1-2 years?) AMD BIOS supports disabling the Platform Security Processor (their ME equivalent). I haven't been able to figure out what exactly this means, but it does seem to be disabled after system initialization. Kind of like Intel's HAP bit, except user-settable.
- floatboth 6y ago
  Either like the HAP bit, or less — only disabling its visibility to the OS on the PCIe bus.
  - boring_twenties 6y ago
    Yeah, I'm a little confused as to why they'd bother implementing and deploying this feature without even a cursory explanation of what it does...
    - numpad0 6y ago
      Maybe it’s literally classified
- LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
  I found [1] https://www.igorslab.de/en/inside-amd-bios-what-is-really-hidden-behind-agesa-the-psp-platform-security-processor-and-the-numbers-of-combo-pi/ https://www.igorslab.de/en/inside-amd-bios-what-is-really-hi... to be a good explanation. Essentially it's the crank which brings up the rest of the SOC. The other functions are optional, but no booting possible without it.
  - boring_twenties 6y ago
    Thanks for that! This is quite relevant to me right now as I'm thinking about my next upgrade. Obviously, I'd prefer to buy AMD, especially if this disable switch is legit. But grotesquely, I'm still considering going with Intel, because at least I know I can use me_cleaner there, and more or less understand exactly what it does. Hopefully this document will clear some of that up.

clmgs 6y ago

AMD has a similar backdoor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Platform_Security_Processor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Platform_Security_Processo...

_kbh_ 6y ago
I would argue that the out of band management provided by DMTF DASH is closer to what people consider then Intel backdoor then the AMD PSP. The PSP cannot be accessed remotely and is only available locally which removes most of the attack surface. https://www.amd.com/system/files/documents/out-of-band-client-management-overview.pdf https://www.amd.com/system/files/documents/out-of-band-clien...