I find it strange how the article puts forwards having to build a desktop computer as some kind of weird, horrific, form of torture. Oh no man! Don't build a de

I find it strange how the article puts forwards having to build a desktop computer as some kind of weird, horrific, form of torture. Oh no man! Don't build a desktop computer. Anything but that! The problem can't possibly be so bad that... h-he is considering --building-- a computer... Does the author not know how many computer enthusiasts do just that every day and what a basic task it is? They literally teach you enough about hardware to put together your own PC in most introductory college courses. These days its like lego blocks. I don't think the assumption that processing power is decreasing and all devices are becoming dumb terminals is true, either. Moore's law... Look at the new chips released by AMD and Intel. Look at CPU benchmarks: the more recent chips blow older generations out the water... and there's no conspiracy to keep these advancements out of consumer's hands. Anyone is free to buy a server rack and build a small super computer (should they have the cash.) What this article raises that I agree with is the complaint that many chips contain proprietary blobs that can't be inspected or removed. Unfortunately, technology like this is how companies try protect trade secrets. It's definitely not ideal, and backdoors + security flaws have been found in these areas in the past. I think if you're concerned about such flaws you really have to ask yourself whether you need to protect government-secrets... or whether your laptop is just going to contain your shopping list and other mundane data. Once you decide what type of data you're going to be working with. You can decide on an appropriate security strategy. I doubt it makes sense for most people to stick to decades old hardware to avoid the possibility of having someone exploit (and risk revealing what would probably be worth millions on the black market) something in their firmware or microcode.