30 ms·

I want a computer that I own

• kjrose 6y ago
  I feel the same way but I quickly realize that as soon as all of those walled gardens and advertising networks are gone, a lot of the "free" or "cheap" tools and programs I like no longer are available. This is a combination of the fact that most people simply aren't willing to pay for the stuff they use and would rather have ads and the fact that the remaining pool of people willing to pay is too small to split the cost to something reasonable. Until we reach a point where we can break that cycle, getting a machine like he's describing is going to either be really expensive or impossible.
  • salawat 6y ago
    Most of the tools we already have materialized out of no small degree of voluntary labor and charity... In fact, I think you havethe effect straight up backwards. It wasn't the ads or walled gardens that created those free tools you like... It was the presence of those tools and the cleverness of users that made the formation of ad networks and walled gardens a thing. I assure you, the Free part of Free Software is one heck of a force multiplier.
    • kjrose 6y ago
      No, I agree that the open source movement and free software has helped immensely with organizations that create these environments. However, the key thing is those environments still need to be paid for in order to keep them operational and pay for improvements, etc. This is why Facebook is inherently free except for the ads. Same with Google. People have not demonstrated a will to pay for a search engine, or for a social network for that matter. The closest thing that I've seen to a Social Network that is paid for by the users is one that is quite politically oriented and isolated, and honestly that's more of a political statement than actually the regular public paying for something.
      • salawat 6y ago
        See, the problem there is the "paying" part. What do you, the customer, allegedly willing to pay, get from a search provider? Especially once everyone else piles on? What you get is a simple tool, that then requorements bloats as soon as the rest of the economy notices you're a growing centralized control point. You start getting DMCA pipelines. You start getting hosting amd analytics, and monetization. You get your supplier suddenly weighing everyone else's interests against yours. You start getting manipulated results streams when all you wanted wss reasonably consistent and well organized search results according to your query. And in today's age? You, the customer, will always lose. So people are willing to pay for search engines, they exist, but just aren't willing to pay for "someone else's" search engine. Many may even go as far as starting their own, and not advertising or commercializing it to minimize the number of entrenched filters between them and the Net. As impractical as it sounds. Not a lot of normal folks grok it enough to articulate yet, but nevertheless I see the pattern starting to coalesce.
        • kjrose 6y ago
          So what do I use if I don't want to use google? Or any other free service that's co opted
          • salawat 6y ago
            For Search, you can deploy a meta search engine or use one someone else has deployed; you still have the mainstream indexes at your disposal that way, but you tend to get less filtered results. You get the truest representation of the rest of the Net via the set up of your own index by writing and cultivating a web crawler. No, I won't suggest it's easy because it isn't. Nor will I suggest any type of paid service, because to be honest, once the rest of the world figures out you've got a successful business model around something they find inconvenient, welcome to legal troubles. Each and every internet staple started as a bunch of folks doing a project. Keep an eye out for those, or become one of them. Do it for you. Nobody can tell you not to, or hold you to task for doing so. It's only when you start building up enough network effect driven inertia that you start to become that leverage point ripe for the co-opting. Knowledge asymmetry is big business. The only way to keep people from pulling the wool over your eyes is to build what you need and have a good ole look yourself. Be warned it isn't for the light of heart, hard-drive, or net link, and your results are only as good as your crawler. There are also a lot of risks by perniciously going out and connecting with everything under the sun. I'd recommend keeping your forays constrained, or at least on a well insulated network.
• fengor 6y ago
  https://mntre.com/media/reform_md/2021-03-07-reform-production-update-mar-2021.html#news https://mntre.com/media/reform_md/2021-03-07-reform-producti... If you want to truly own your hardware I can recommend the mnt reform
  • bokchoi 6y ago
    This is such a cool project. I missed the crowdfunding but I love watching the progress. https://mastodon.social/@mntmn https://mastodon.social/@mntmn
  • black_puppydog 6y ago
    Came here to make sure this was mentioned. Unsure how that's not the top comment.
    • fengor 6y ago
      I'm not sure either.
• Klwohu 6y ago
  I suspect that the secret laws passed after 911, which Ron Paul among others have alluded to, make this a pipe dream.
  • hemloc_io 6y ago
    Hmm secret laws? Do you have a source for this. I feel like a secret law defeats the purpose of a law lol.
    • abhorrence 6y ago
      I assume they're referring to Rand Paul (and also Ron Wyden) who have both made assertions that the executive branch has it's own secret interpretations of the laws that were passed post-9/11. The laws themselves are not secret, but what the government thinks they authorize is.
      • mo2art 6y ago
        on the chance that I might sound naive, how does this supposedly work in regard to judicial review?
        • sneak 6y ago
          The court that reviews the interpretations is itself also classified, just like the interpretations and the verdicts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Court https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig... Snowden cited this as the reason he came forward. This applies to communications and stored records however, not end user computers.
          • autoexec 6y ago
            > Snowden cited this as the reason he came forward. yep. Once he realized that the NSA was outright lying to congress and the American people had no ability in law to actually know or address the abuses going on leaking the truth was the only way anyone would ever hear about it.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• adolph 6y ago
  What does it mean to own something? In the extreme, do you own anything that you don’t understand? In the extreme does owning something become a kind of performance art? https://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_thwaites_how_i_built_a_toaster_from_scratch https://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_thwaites_how_i_built_a_toas...
  • asymptosis 6y ago
    Reminds me of the saying about how "if you want to make an apple pie from scratch, first you have to make the universe."
  • themodelplumber 6y ago
    Ownership can also be seen as a gradient of more or less specific, but separate thought models along axes like "level of personal control" and "level of personal interest". I think it's fair to say you can "own" something you don't understand, maybe more fair, the more you're willing to clarify your ownership stake and ownership needs, if you have them... Certainly the author of the article could clarify a few different areas for better leverage though, for example their desired state of the "mine"-ness of their data in transit vs. their data at rest on their client's side of things. Do they need to "own" their ISP? And what's a hidden agenda from the factory--are we meant to intuit that without the author's help? Does it include software feature choice influenced by profit motives, or is the author talking about their subjective workflow being interrupted by something that is meant to fit a broader type or category of user? I think the author could use at least a few different methods to organize and arrange some precise outcomes, and would then be well on their way to achieving what they want without needing to burden their imagination so much (286? Yikes, my PS/2 Model 30 was so nice to be done with...maybe excepting the keyboard) from the outset.
• julienb_sea 6y ago
  There are approaches that can deliver large portions of this; run an open source linux distribution, running open source browser with open source tracker blocking software. You can run this on an inexpensive system and wipe out all external communication except what you specifically want. This is obviously unrealistic for most people. You can toggle off automatic feedback & updates in a modern OS and you can install Firefox with tracker blocking and you are 99% of the way there, plenty enough in practice. I want to point out both of these approaches introduce legitimate security holes (either from not using a production grade OS or from disabling updates on it) which are vastly more likely to have real impact on your life versus privacy tracking.
  • realsimplesynd 6y ago
    If anyone is interested in an extremely secure linux distro: https://tails.boum.org/ https://tails.boum.org/
    • a5withtrrs 6y ago
      Great for specific purposes, but not exactly a computer 'you own' and want to do things with. Tails always starts from the same clean state and everything you do disappears automatically when you shut down Tails. Ie, nothing persists, which means you loose everything each time. OpenBSD is also an extremely secure operating system. But also not terribly practical as a long term desktop environment. Plus it doesn't solve issues with underlying hardware trusts.
      • gautamcgoel 6y ago
        Can you please comment a bit about why you think OpenBSD is impractical as a desktop OS?
  • cortesoft 6y ago
    > This is obviously unrealistic for most people I think this is an inherent contradiction - if you want to be in total control of your computer while not knowing how totally control your computer, you are never going to get what you want. You are always going to have to put your trust in someone else to manage your computer. Some of those people might be more trustworthy than others, but you are still trusting in someone else to manage your computer.
• koverda 6y ago
  > Except for a handful of very over-priced models that I can't afford to buy. This statement here made me pause for a bit. He wants a computer with specific features, but doesn't want pay for the models that offer those features because they are too expensive? Everyone wants to have their cake and eat it too, but unfortunately, reality has constraints.
  • monkeyingaround 6y ago
    As someone who has watched the increasingly absurd price of laptops over many years in relation to what one should expect for the price, I'd say I have people like you to thank.
    • jodrellblank 6y ago
      As someone who has watched laptops get thousands of times faster, smaller, lighter, more battery life, clearer higher resolution screens, smaller chargers, faster connectivity, quieter fans, I flagged your comment for signing up a new account to post a personal attack.
      • monkeyingaround 6y ago
        time well spent then, sleep well
        • google234123 6y ago
          Laptops do not have absurd cost now. There are good options from 300$ upto 2000$+
        • jodrellblank 6y ago
          https://hn.algolia.com/?query=downvoters%20should&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=downvoters%20should&sort=byPop... https://hn.algolia.com/?q=downvoters+should https://hn.algolia.com/?q=downvoters+should
  • 6y ago
• realsimplesynd 6y ago
  > Governments seem to be universally terrified of even the slightest possibility of anyone in the world having a private conversation. How secure do you think face-to-face conversations are? (not sarcastic or anything, just genuinely interested on measuring security of conversations)
  • azornathogron 6y ago
    Not the author, but I would hazard an uninformed guess at three levels of security: (1) a government is already specifically interested in you or the person you're talking to when you have your conversation: both the fact of the conversation and the content of the conversation can probably be captured pretty easily. (2) no government is specifically interested in you prior to your conversation, but you take no special precautions: the content is probably secure, it's probably not being recorded, but your location is probably recorded so if you later become a target of interest then the fact of your meeting is likely to be recoverable. (3) no government is specifically interested in you prior to your conversation, and you take precautions (being careful about when and where you meet, and not bringing your phone): probably your conversation is reasonably secure.
    • gruez 6y ago
      [deleted]
      • samb1729 6y ago
        You appear to have missed that this is a discussion of in-person conversations.
  • a5withtrrs 6y ago
    That depends on a lot of things. But some realistic concerns might include evesdropping using parabolic microphones, covert listening devices deployed at the meeting point etc. Not to mention a) arranging the meeting and b) getting to the meeting need to be performed some how. Getting from point A to point B is, in today's society, not a surveillance free affair. Everything you carry can be used to track you, and even if you carry nothing, hundreds of CCTV cameras can likely follow you along the majority of your chosen route. Thus the 'metadata' of your meeting is still known, even if the contents of your meeting isn't.
• murftown 6y ago
  For an article about privacy and not being snooped on, some HTTPS would be nice! But then again, the author could understandably reply that TLS is an example of a system that has evolved to require "checking in" with a central authority - the opposite of what they want. So fair enough.
• buzzert 6y ago
  > Except for a handful of very over-priced models that I can't afford to buy, our computers are increasingly designed to be little more than advertising platforms and vehicles for maximizing the cloud revenues of their true owners Huh? You can buy a very cheap used ThinkPad for <$200 and run GNU/Linux on it. In fact, I don’t see any mention of Linux in this article.
  • Shebanator 6y ago
    This is a "have my cake and eat it too" rant, it has nothing to do with reality. He wants it to run Excel, he wants to be able to use google/fb/whatever. He just wants to be able to do it in a way that costs nothing or next to nothing and that somehow still gives him "full autonomy and control". Or, more accurately, the ILLUSION of full autonomy and control. Why an illusion? Because no matter how much control he has over his own computer, it doesn't matter the minute it talks to another computer. By definition he doesn't control that computer, and he is by definition trusting it to treat whatever personal info he discloses correctly. So his dream of a fully autonomous and controlled computer won't even give him what he really wants.
    • tomc1985 6y ago
      Then by extension any kind of communication with someone who isn't yourself is automatically untrustworthy and subverts ones goals of control. Even shouting across the hall to your roommate or family member. This is a ridiculous premise. If he exercises that control to limit what the computers are discussing -- which is the subject of the article -- then how does that subvert the premise?
  • tedunangst 6y ago
    Apparently that's not safe either. "Even open source encryption algorithms that some claim are above reproach are repeatedly being shown to have major flaws, and the fixes to those flaws have their own major flaws."
    • Thorrez 6y ago
      The author claims that, but I don't know of evidence of it being at all widespread. Dual_EC_DRBG is the one instance I know of, and I thought barely anyone used it.
• jakearmitage 6y ago
  I don't get it. For the "affordable" argument, you can buy a Raspberry Pi with Linux. Or any NUC with Linux. For everything else, system76, purism, think penguin, libiquity...
• kokx 6y ago
  I have a similar feeling, but with modern smartphones. Owning my computer is still relatively possible. I can build a computer from parts which I can choose, and have a choice in which operating system to install on them. Laptops are slightly more closed, but even on those I can choose the OS myself. Modern smartphones however, seem like walled gardens in which I have no control at all. I cannot choose any of the parts, and even doing simple reparation tasks like replacing a battery is a nightmare these days. I am locked into a single OS on my smartphone, which either spies on you or is locked down even more. Every iteration a bit more control is taken away from the user. And its increasingly hard to step away from them, since a lot of normal interactions such as banking almost requires you to have such a phone. Both Android and iOS suck. I've made my own Android phone tolerable with F-Droid and trying to ungoogle it as much as possible. But unfortunately I find myself locked into using google play services since solutions like MicroG just don't cut it. They lock me out of slightly too much of my daily smartphone usage (note that this is definitely not the MicroG's developers fault, they have done amazing work).
  • missedthecue 6y ago
    You could buy a flip phone
    • gruez 6y ago
      That solves the botnet/tracking aspect, but doesn't solve the "I want a computing device that I control" aspect.
    • tvb12 6y ago
      Every flip phone I've come across has run a version of Android.
    • approxim8ion 6y ago
      Most old flip phones support up to 3G, which is being phased out. The 4G ones run either Android (so a worse experience with the same spyware) or KaiOS (which is still fine but not very available).
• runjake 6y ago
  Build a PC and install Linux on it and be done with it.
  • asymptosis 6y ago
    Yes, my thoughts exactly. You can't quite escape concerns about motherboard and cpu manufacturers baking in little security holes, but it's better than buying some pre-packaged system or laptop. Chuck Linux or a BSD on there and boom you've got back most of your general purpose computational freedom. Of course, you can't change the crappiness of the broader infrastructure, but "give me wisdom to accept what I cannot change" and all that. Choose your battles.
  • luxuryballs 6y ago
    The hardware is also suspect. I think in the author’s mind we need an entirely new computing architecture.
  • Koshkin 6y ago
    Firefox on Debian spies on me. (I mean, sure, a bare Linux probably doesn’t.)
    • gautamcgoel 6y ago
      Can you elaborate on this please? I run firefox on Linux and wasn't aware of any tracking.
      • sodality2 6y ago
        Not who you're responding to but default telemetry, default search engine (google), etc
• waynesonfire 6y ago
  Isn't this essentially what Richard Stallman talks about?
  • zekica 6y ago
    Except that he (almost) has a solution, while the author doesn't.
• post_below 6y ago
  > Will this ever end? It remains an interesting question. Is there any way to reclaim the autonomy and ethos of freedom from the earlier part of the digital era? I'm not sure how that would look. I don't mean in terms of a set of hardware and software solutions. I mean technology that's actually for the end users, available to everyone with curiosity as the only barrier to entry. It sounds like a utopian delusion even though it existed not so long ago. I'm not sure there's a realistic way to get there from here. I'd love to be wrong about that though.
  • judge2020 6y ago
    Windows has been the mainstream OS for nearly 25 years (probably more, had a hard time getting good historical stats). The desktop has never been free, just simpler and less 'rent seeking after the fact'. https://www.cnet.com/news/windows-95-remains-most-popular-operating-system/ https://www.cnet.com/news/windows-95-remains-most-popular-op...
    • post_below 6y ago
      I suppose I should have added basic equipment as a barrier to entry, it seemed self evident as I was writing. Edit: I think you could call Windows mainstream (or becoming dominant) around version 3, maybe a bit before. So that's over 30 years.
• scelerat 6y ago
  Who is going to make this mythical computer which neither benefits any government nor lines the pocket of any corporation? At a cost that makes it accessible to the author? Real question. Maybe it's possible. Who's going make it. I think the best bet is for citizens of powerful and influential governments insist on legal privacy constraints for software and hardware manufacturers, as well as place limits on their own governments' snooping.
• blhack 6y ago
  Get an old lenovo laptop and install openbsd on it. This post is legitimately a bit confusing to me since what they're describing sounds like a pretty standard sort of BSD/linux machine.
  • Koshkin 6y ago
    OpenBSD does not keep things from spying on you. All it does is, it prevents things (and the people behind them) from breaking in.
    • yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
      Using OpenBSD should mean that your own system isn't spying on you.
• walrus01 6y ago
  > Perhaps I am looking for something like the x286 DOS computer I had in the early 1990's You can do an almost fully GPL compliant Linux desktop by building it yourself today. I can already see people thinking "but what about the closed source binary blobs? my video card? my network interfaces?" But even your 12 MHz 286 or 386SX/20 had closed source AMI or Phoenix BIOS firmware on it. The motherboard manufacturer in Taiwan and American Megatrends sure weren't handing out the source code to that. And if you had a video card, or a soundblaster, its drivers loaded in config.sys were also closed binary blobs.
  • tux1968 6y ago
    You have (almost?) no way to verify how the transistors inside the computer chips are wired. And even if you design your own chips, you can't really know if the design you specified has been faithfully followed at the fab facility. It's a tough problem.
    • walrus01 6y ago
      The question then, really, is how far are you willing to go down the stack of software on hardware, in pursuit of true ideological purity? How can, even the Pinephone manufacturers, be absolutely sure that their design is being implemented in hardware as they specced it, without backdoors? If you have a near infinite amount of money and resources, you can be absolutely certain (the hardware that runs NSA approved type 1 crypto goes through a very thorough vetting process), but such a concept is economically unrealistic for anything that normal people can buy.
      • ratorx 6y ago
        Hardware level trust would be really cool. It seems theoretically possible because all you need is an accurate measurement of some physical property that is hard to forge when changing transistors orders etc. Practically though, anything like that would be most likely affected by manufacturing tolerances for the transistors, so you’d have to find something that allows a certain amount of error when individual transistors change, but will reveal unknown transistors and connections. Even if this was achieved, the rabbithole would continue though, because the thing you measure with could now have a backdoor. Remind me of the classic paper about the same problem with software: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rdriley/487/papers/Thompson_1984_ReflectionsonTrustingTrust.pdf https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rdriley/487/papers/Thompson_1984_Ref...
• jay_kyburz 6y ago
  I want to live in Utopia too, but in the meantime I'm happy with Linux.
  • ARandomerDude 6y ago
    Exactly. Utopia (ou topos) literally means "nowhere" or "no [such] place" in Greek. https://www.etymonline.com/word/utopia https://www.etymonline.com/word/utopia
  • Koshkin 6y ago
    Most people are happy with Windows. (Nothing wrong with feeling happy.)
    • bmn__ 6y ago
      There's something wrong, though, when the feeling is based on ignorance. Hardly anyone knows about constantly being spied on by strangers in foreign countries, or that it is not normal that the product one dearly paid for shows advertisements, or that it restricts one's basic freedoms of using the product for any purpose, and studying and changing it. I liken the happy Windows useds to the people held captive in Plato's cave: if they knew about the sun-lit real world, they would realise their misery. We the enlightened have a moral duty and should strive to educate and unshackle them.
• marcodiego 6y ago
  You can have computers that you own today. There is a list here: https://ryf.fsf.org/categories/laptops https://ryf.fsf.org/categories/laptops . If you want something more powerful, there're these: - https://ryf.fsf.org/categories/workstations-and-servers - https://ryf.fsf.org/categories/mainboards Also, Andrius Stikonas achieved a blob-free fully functioning (AFAIK) RockPro64 more than a year ago: https://stikonas.eu/wordpress/2019/09/15/blobless-boot-with-rockpro64/ https://stikonas.eu/wordpress/2019/09/15/blobless-boot-with-... People have to vote with their wallets and pressure vendors.
  • asymptosis 6y ago
    Thanks for the ryf links, I didn't know about that. Something to keep in mind the next time I'm looking for hardware.
    • teddyh 6y ago
      If you’re looking for RYF-certified hardware, I suggest looking here: https://h-node.org/hardware/catalogue/en https://h-node.org/hardware/catalogue/en
  • luxuryballs 6y ago
    “CPU Intel Core 2 Duo SP9400 2.40GHz. Upgradable to SP9600 2.53GHz.” Looks like more of the same.
  • autoexec 6y ago
    Why on earth would they use re-imaged Lenovo laptops when that company has a history of hiding malware in firmware so that even a reinstall can't remove it? Why should anyone trust they haven't shoved something nefarious in a chip somewhere. If you want a trusted system you have to start from trustworthy hardware or at the very least avoid manufacturers that are already known to be both untrustworthy and unethical
    • hertzrat 6y ago
      Those machines are wiped and the low level firmware and boot loader is replaced. The specific models available are chosen because newer machines prevent you from doing this. You can’t easily get a computer more fully free than these. They link to some new processors and motherboards for desktop builds too, good companies making those who deserve some support
• charlieroth 6y ago
  https://urbit.org https://urbit.org
  • rlyshw 6y ago
    I assume you are getting downvoted for not adding context so I’ll help; urbit is literally designed around the principle of total ownership. The community (purposefully) does a terrible job of explaining it because of some enlightenment complex but the promo video put out by Tlon does a pretty good job of summarizing. https://youtu.be/M04AKTCDavc https://youtu.be/M04AKTCDavc I believe urbit is the solution, just waiting for the implementation to get polished up.
• a5withtrrs 6y ago
  > Our computers are increasingly designed to be little more than advertising platforms and vehicles for maximizing the cloud revenues of their true owners This applies so much to modern Windows operating systems that it's frankly disgusting. I think most phones are also solidly in this space as well. Apple is marginally better, but their efforts to ram iCloud services down your throat at every available opportunity is pretty obvious as well. Plus the amount of things that mysteriously call home. On the plus side, they don't actively send you ads baked into your lock screen or start menu.
  • meowster 6y ago
    Apparently Apple will display ads for Safari on the desktop if you run Edge. https://www.zdnet.com/article/i-opened-microsoft-edge-and-apple-got-angry/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/i-opened-microsoft-edge-and-ap...
    • samb1729 6y ago
      The style of writing in that article[0] is utterly infuriating to read or even skim for facts. For anyone else unlucky enough to want to know what happened here: - Microsoft Edge on macOS is apparently a thing that exists (I was not aware of this) - If you install and open Edge on macOS, a notification titled “Try the new Safari” appears on the top right of the display, claiming Safari is “Fast, energy efficient, and with a beautiful design” - The linked article is basically a tweetstorm made worse by being surrounded by distractions. [0]: https://www.zdnet.com/article/i-opened-microsoft-edge-and-apple-got-angry/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/i-opened-microsoft-edge-and-ap...
• zelphirkalt 6y ago
  One way to get closer to this goal is to buy an liberated X200 or similar machine, which can run on only free software, install a free software OS like Trisquel and only ever install free software on it. Buying such a laptop from people in the free software community will also support them and their work. There are a few shops. On the web you will still need to deal with how everything these days is behind the currently hip and trendy CDN, but you can choose not to use such websites. You can have a main machine and your freedom respecting machine. You choose your own compromise. I did that some time ago and I have to say I love my freedom respecting mostly distraction free X200 for writing or coding. It is a great machine to work with, if you can accept old hardware and the implied worse performance.
  • UncleSlacky 6y ago
    I've done this with a black 2007 MacBook 2,1 ("BlackBook") - ironically it's about the easiest laptop to install Libreboot on (all in software, no H/W intervention needed). Runs Trisquel Lite, the only thing that doesn't work is the webcam, but that's a privacy bonus.
• fogetti 6y ago
  I find it ironic that the author points out in the first part of the post that companies are the real culprit but later puts the blame on governments. I wouldn't do such differentiation. They are equally wrong. Regarding free speech too. Case in point are the recent de-platformings.
  • firedgergerly 6y ago
    I worked with you, Gergerly. I find it ironic you are mentioning free speech. You got fired from our company for being a dictator in a managerial position. One thing you hate is free speech.
• coding-saints 6y ago
  I want to add that while the complexities of building a PC or understanding fundamentals of open source and licences is steep... For anyone who wants these constraints but is unwilling to be curious enough to learn the ways of DIY/makers is gonna get smashed on this forum IMO. I would hope to see a sub-thread of OP asking for "advice" on how to achieve a solution solo (unless I missed it...) . I am a huge advocate for [devs] building their own PC's for fundamental understandings..
• chj 6y ago
  The author didn't define what owning means, but my guess is that, the computer must not run code without his approval, and must be able to run any code he wants. Nowadays, you can only truly own an emulator.
  • temporallobe 6y ago
    Yeah my guess is that OP is on Windows, judging by the way they mention advertising. This is the way I used to think and now that I am solely on macOS and Linux for my personal computing tasks, I don’t feel like that any more, though I am not foolish enough to believe that even on those systems you can’t be spied on at a hardware or OS level. Even if you’re on a theoretically 100% secure OS, any third-party software such as, oh, a browser, could be phoning home or have analytics hooks that track all kinds of things. If you’re super paranoid, I suppose you could always install Kali Linux on a VM and run TOR on that for covert communications. Or use smoke signals and manual OTPs.
    • autoexec 6y ago
      > Yeah my guess is that OP is on Windows, judging by the way they mention advertising. This is the way I used to think and now that I am solely on macOS and Linux for my personal computing tasks, I don’t feel like that any more, I don't think either are immune from the problem. Even Ubuntu was sending people's local disk searches to their servers so that they could push amazon ads. Everything I've ever touched from Apple seemed to push you to their own apps/ecosystem. If you want to put music on your iphone, you can't just plug it in and open it like a drive, they'll push you to itunes. They also seem to very heavily push their cloud stuff.
• markus_zhang 6y ago
  The problem is: Do we own ourselves?
• varenc 6y ago
  It's a bit ironic this site is served over unencrypted HTTP. While static content on a blog doesn't really need it, HTTPS would still help protect the privacy of visitors browsing history.
  • judge2020 6y ago
    I wonder if he'd be interested in a secure website without having to rely on trusting CAs.
  • charcircuit 6y ago
    It also protects viewers from MITM attacks that can add advertisements, add malware, change your words to make you say something bad, etc.
• heterodyning 6y ago
  I want the search index of the early google age where it was less monetized and more accurate. I want real information not force fed crap that is essentially information fast food causing type-2 terminal stupididty. I want information without the built in addiction.
  • autoexec 6y ago
    I agree, google's search certainly peaked a long time ago. It's great for anything highly popular but between marketing bullshit and spam results for anything else have just gotten worse
  • asymptosis 6y ago
    I think there is a market niche which is being overlooked: pay-to-use search engines. Infinity Search (https://infinitysearch.co https://infinitysearch.co) is something like what I have in mind, but they only charge $5 per month, and search results are noticably less comprehensive than Google. Kind of like how there are various pay-to-use email services which market themselves on their security, I'd like to see a lot more competitors in the paid search engine space. Eg instead of paying $5 per month, let's pay $200 a year for a search engine which consistently returns superior results to Google.
• BoysenberryPi 6y ago
  This feels like it was made to get to the top of somewhere like HN but I'm actually very confused. >I want it to be, but which can also be used to communicate securely with anyone on the planet without being observed by a third party. I don't want to be spied on by Microsoft or Google.I don't want the NSA intercepting my conversations or even their metadata. I don't see what this has to do with the actual computer honestly. You don't want Microsoft to be involved so I'm going to assume you are going to install Linux on whatever you get, awesome, this doesn't stop the NSA or Google from harvesting your data because that doesn't really have anything with the computer. Seems like you want a search engine and ISP that you own as well.
  • rfrey 6y ago
    Alternatively, they want the NSA to obey the law, and for surveillance-for-profit business models to be forbidden.
    • guyzero 6y ago
      "surveillance-for-profit business models to be forbidden" Are you going to ban TV networks and credit card companies next? Grocery store loyalty programs? Practically every company these days collects about their users and customers.
      • Ensorceled 6y ago
        Credit companies would do just fine if they couldn't sell your data. Loyalty programs don't need to sell your data, they existed before it was even possible. TV networks ... wait, how is broadcast TV even collecting your data. None of these businesses NEED to collect and sell your behavioural and demographic data to exist. TV and newspapers would probably start doing OK if precision targeted ads were not possible.
        • oaiey 6y ago
          Google how modern TV spies on what you view on your screen (not talking your Netflix App here ;))
• Koshkin 6y ago
  What do we own though? (Heck, we don’t even own our bodies - they are “owned” by the nature, which can often be pretty “evil.”)
• guerrilla 6y ago
  This is epitome of what free software is. Get a system76 system. It'll have a web browser and wine for when you feel like using non-free software. p.s. aren't Raptor Computing's systems pretty much free too?
• andred14 6y ago
  Well said well said
• solmanac 6y ago
  My approach to getting a computer I own has been influenced by the esolangs website and I am implementing a single instruction set computer using random ttl chips. I don't care that it won't run preexisting software. Networking will be implemented using hand-couriered one time pads.
• aiisahik 6y ago
  This is literally something that NEVER crosses the mind of the average consumer. We should have a HackerNews version of "first world problems" and call it "HackerNews Problems". You now have a computer that is 10,000 times faster than one you had 30 yrs ago at half the price. Oh and it fits in your pocket. A lot of time and money went into creating that. Those people need to get paid. And yes you pay for it with some loss of privacy. The reason why this product doesn't existing on the market is because because NOBODY (except the odd 4000 people on HN) wants this product. Most people don't even use a VPN or know what TOR is. If you don't want it, then design and fab your own chips and write your own software from scratch.
  • jacquesm 6y ago
    HN is substantially larger than 4000 people, besides, telling people to design and fab their own chips is disingenuous. The right to privacy is not a 'first world problem', it is a problem.
    • aiisahik 6y ago
      I agree that privacy is a problem - and yes it is a first world problem. The specific privacy problem espoused by this post is not just a first world problem, it's an HN problem. I am being disingenuous - this request is pure insanity and I absolutely promise you that this "computer you fully own" will have such a very small market that it doesn't have a chance of breaking even.
      • jacquesm 6y ago
        You fail the principle of charity test on several levels.
      • hellisothers 6y ago
        Agreed, I care about privacy but this is fetishizing privacy, is pathological.
      • thefz 6y ago
        > I agree that privacy is a problem - and yes it is a first world problem. Where a right for privacy really matters is not in the part of the world where your google searches are used to pick an etsy ad, but where typing the wrong thing against the wrong person could land you in jail, or at the morgue.
• p2t2p 6y ago
  I call bs on that article. A guy wants to do nothing and get the stuff for cheap. We'll guess what, even if you get your thing for cheap once you get on the internet you'll be open for all kind of malice and there's ain't anybody but you to deal with it. Get a free hardware or hardware with crippled anti-features, they're plenty of vendors that supply it, slap Linux on it, PGP encrypt your email and use secure chat. Oh, your want all of that to be done for you? Well you'll have to pay then. Or that another argument - that encryption is workaround. It's like saying that food is not solution for being hungry but a workaround, a ridiculous statement. How are you supposed to stay private and anonymous if you communicate in the open? Are you going to have a private cable line to every correspondent you talk to?
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• ohiovr 6y ago
  This is one of the reasons I built LibreStudio.
• Vaslo 6y ago
  This reminds me of my stress in finding a high end TV without a major company watching my TV habits. It doesn't seem you can buy a high end TV without having Android or some other company watching what you are doing. Are there any high end TVs that have more open software? Or is profit such a high priority that we basically have to supplement tech companies through TVs?
• aranibatta 6y ago
  yup, https://sail.so https://sail.so
• TruthWillHurt 6y ago
  You want "a computer"... what is this mithical box? are you reffering to the hardware? the operating system? the internet? Sounds like my mom - "make the gizmo do things". Install Linux, leave us be.
• cat_plus_plus 6y ago
  It's nice to want things, the question is what are you willing to contribute or give up to get them. The author wants to be free of Microsoft and then says he wants something like DOS on x286. Well, DOS was not free of Microsoft. To really be sure corporations and government are not spying on you, you need 100% open source for all software and firmware, if not chip schematics. This means slower hardware and less software, because people don't do as much work for free / on donations vs paychecks paid by copyright royalties and ads (that can be easily stripped from open source). Want to keep your photos if you drop your phone into the lake? Well, then a copy is on someone's servers. Want traffic information in your map app? Someone knows where you have been driving then. Running desktop/laptop Linux is a relatively minor sacrifice in terms of available software, especially if you consider Wine and Steam emulation. Yet market share is tiny. People do not seem to own a computer enough to do anything about it.
  • Pawka 6y ago
    > Well, DOS was not free of Microsoft. Probably he meant that Microsoft was not the same Microsoft as it is now. In the same way as having @gmail.com account let us feel "special" 15 years ago and Google was operating under "Don't be evil" flag. Things are changing.
    • oaiey 6y ago
      Well ... TCP/IP was not yet the standard, the Internet was very different there. Microsoft then and Microsoft today is the same deal: They want to earn money. And most likely, then, they were more ruthless than today. What he wants is simplicity he can understand. 286 had a processor architecture with a security model everyone could understand.
• sanxiyn 6y ago
  Please consider funding https://www.powerpc-notebook.org/ https://www.powerpc-notebook.org/. I did. (Seo Sanghyeon)
• 40four 6y ago
  It’s a somewhat angry & rambling rant, but without picking it apart too hard, one sentence really resonated with me. I would summarize the thesis in this sentence -> ”I want a computer that does what I want it to do, not one that has a hidden agenda programmed into it at the factory.”
• addicted 6y ago
  Isn’t Linux sufficient to achieve what the OP is asking?
• bogwog 6y ago
  > Except for a handful of very over-priced models that I can't afford to buy Which models is he talking about here? Those Raptor Power9 workstations that are like $7k are the only things that come to mind.
  • spijdar 6y ago
    Just FYI, you can make a functional system for way less than 7k. I pieces together my system for a little over 2k, and I could have gone cheaper for some of my parts. I probably spent around 1.3k on parts from Raptor themselves. (the prices have increased since then but the point remains)
    • justinjlynn 6y ago
      Happy user of RCS Talos II and Blackbird for several years here. It really does live up to all the hype. There's also a very close knit community of users and an IRC channel (#talos-workstation on Freenode) if you want to drop by and chat. :)
• Wolfenstein98k 6y ago
  "Perhaps I am looking for something like the x286 DOS computer I had in the early 1990's [...] Instead, I have a computer that is designed largely to maximize the profits of the computer industry." Who's going to tell him who made the x286 and DOS? Not exactly 501(C) organisations...
  • yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
    DOS and PCs were, of course, always commercial products, but they still had the user's best interests at heart to a far greater degree than most modern machines; for starters, it often lacked the ability to phone home and report on your activity or download ads.
• jancsika 6y ago
  > Except for a handful of very over-priced models that I can't afford to buy This is an implicit admission that the technology itself really doesn't matter. If it did, the author would have scrounged and saved to get the expensive tool they need to start getting the results they desire, the same way musicians scrimp and save to get the instrument their ear tells them they need.
• obviouslynotme 6y ago
  Damocles was an obsequious courtier in the court of Dionysius II of Syracuse, a fourth century BC tyrant of Syracuse. Damocles exclaimed that, as a great man of power and authority, Dionysius was truly fortunate. Dionysius offered to switch places with him for a day, so he could taste that fortune first-hand. In the evening a banquet was held, where Damocles very much enjoyed being waited upon like a king. Only at the end of the meal did he look up and notice a sharpened sword hanging directly above his head, held only by a single horse-hair. Immediately, he lost all taste for the festivities and asked leave of the tyrant, saying he no longer wanted to be so fortunate. Dionysius had successfully conveyed a sense of the constant threat under which a powerful man lives. - The Sword of Damocles, https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sword_of_Damocles https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sword_of_Damocles The powerful are perpetually terrified. They are scared of each other. They are scared of the populace. If someone created a perfectly secure computer or phone with secure messaging capabilities, from the hardware up, that company would immediately be told to play ball or face blackballing.
• hrishi 6y ago
  Agree with most of the comments, but it's worth mentioning that you will never get those things for cheap. The reason most of the things you buy are cheap is due to economies of scale - you want something a lot of people want. Want a bicycle with 2 wheels? Cheap. Want one with 7 wheels? Expensive. Unfortunately for you, almost none of the things you say you want in a laptop are things you're aligned with most of humanity in terms of priority. Sure, most people might tell you they want those things, but they're not willing to give up the benefits of centralization, or pay a few bucks to get rid of ads. Tldr: if you want something few people will buy, expect to pay more.
• annoyingnoob 6y ago
  To some extent, 'maximizing the profits of the computer industry' has given us the slick hardware that we have available.
• guidoism 6y ago
  A microcontroller is probably the closest you can get these days and honestly a modern MCU is going to be powerful enough of for most use cases. There’s a huge world of difference in complexity and understandability between an MCU and the SOCs in a phone even if the instruction set is the same.
• mrverify 6y ago
  A collection of ice40 FPGAs built into a computer? surface mount transistor implementation of a pdp8 with regular semiconductor memory and an FPGA MMU that handles gigabyte memory sticks? I was thinking a forth computer, but the applications are sparse: gForth spreadsheet and word processor, both text based.
• tern 6y ago
  I know how much HN loves Urbit /s, but it's the only attempt to create a computer that you can own that I'm aware of and (1) shows the scale of the endeavor and (2) proves it's possible https://tlon.io/ https://tlon.io/
  • boomlinde 6y ago
    I think that by "computer" most people mean a device that stores and processes information, not a cloud service that in some opaque way may allow users to share computational resources from such devices.
    • tylershuster 6y ago
      Urbit's underlying language nock can have hardware written for it, it just hasn't been yet.
• kshitijgoel 6y ago
  Well, you have your brain.
• pengaru 6y ago
  What the hell is an x286
• mikewarot 6y ago
  You can own a computer, but you have to go back to the days of MS-DOS and floppy disks to really be sure. Once a program is running on MS-DOS, it essentially owns the machine until it makes a DOS or BIOS call. There isn't really enough room in the system to fit any advanced back doors, and you can have your operating system on a hardware write protected disk. You can make backups that you can verify, and write protect those, and keep them offline. -- The key advantage of an old MS-DOS / floppy based computer is that you can always bring your system back to a known safe state-- Once you adopt any operating system that is always running, the OS has to protect the hardware from everything, if you want to be able to trust it. This rules out Linux, Mac-OS, Windows, etc. I'm hoping that Genode does a good enough job to be able to trust it, but it's a bit beyond my learning curve right now. If you have a secure OS, which isn't stupid about trust, then you're back in the saddle again, and can build upon this foundation, being careful to never give any executable you run more privilege than it needs to do the job. Linux, Windows, and Mac-OS all have stupid defaults (allow everything the user is permitted)... Genode and systems that implement capabilities don't do that. (No, "access your contacts" on your tablet or phone is not a proper "capability", "you can read this file", and "you can write this folder" are proper capabilities). -- A secure system lets you assign capabilities using dialog boxes like you're used to using, except they call them a "power box". The OS then enforces your decisions, not the application. No matter how rogue or confused your program gets, it can't access anything outside of the files or folders you've given it access to. 8) We're a few years out before awareness of the stupid defaults we're all living with take hold, and the inertia of everything then has to be overcome. We'll get there eventually, if we can keep the idea at least an open option before big business closes it down for good.
  • mikewarot 6y ago
    My main point to all of the above is that you need a better OS, the hardware can mostly be ignored once a proper OS is running that can keep the hardware from being hijacked.
• AnonsLadder 6y ago
  Purism/Librem sell coreboot'd devices. It's worth checking out
• natural219 6y ago
  You should consider trying Urbit. There's a large community of people who have had this desire for decades, and most of the good ones are settling there. https://urbit.org https://urbit.org
• m1117 6y ago
  In a way you can achieve that. Microsoft and google, they don't know who exactly you are, they just treat you as a behavior pattern, not a human. So they don't know you personally. You're good. If you talk to anyone, the other person will know what you texted them and who you are, so it's not anonymous already.
• userbinator 6y ago
  What I find rather puzzling is the increasing secrecy of hardware manufacturers; search the part numbers of all the ICs on a motherboard from the first IBM PC/XT/AT (for which schematics and BIOS source were available) up to the 486/586 era, and chances are very good that you'll find the full datasheets. Try that with a modern motherboard, however, and you may find that something as seemingly mundane as the CPU voltage regulator controller or temperature monitoring/superIO has next to no public information available. Wouldn't a company making data on how to use its products easily available be more likely to earn new customers and have better sales?
• gorgoiler 6y ago
  I felt this way about iPhone. My compromise was to only connect using a VPN. The goal wasn’t to keep my traffic private — it was so that I could have complete visibility and control over what the iPhone was talking to. The idea was that my iPhone could be as nefarious as it wanted to be — it could never talk to anyone I didn’t want it to talk to because iptables stopped it, or something. The project didn’t pan out, but I did end up using pihole a lot which felt like a good compromise. I also discovered that iOS and cell carriers have a some kind of partnership to silently send each other text messages containing lots of unique looking identifiers, which was fun (REG-RESP?v=3&r=...&n=+555994321&s=FB87CD658A...etc). I used a niche IOT carrier for a while that showed me the complete SMS logs, including all these messages being sent multiple times a day. I’m sure there’s some banal engineering reason for it but it’s not exactly heartening to find “secret” text messages being snuck out, by the dozen.
  • greet11882 6y ago
    Apple devices are extremely chatty to the mothership. You can find many many comments on HN. The M1 included.
• fctorial 6y ago
  > Except for a handful of very over-priced models Which ones?
• imissmymind 6y ago
  Get a pinephone and a pinebook pro and be done with it. When you want to get online, use a public WiFi like mcdonalds or starbucks and connect to tor or i2p and do your thing. Attempting to hide in a world full of people who could care less about their privacy will make you stand out to those watching, however.
• vladmk 6y ago
  You will get there you just need to wait. The latest computers are driven to improve because of the profit it seems you hate in your post, but Moore’s law is on your side.
• unobatbayar 6y ago
  It's probably very difficult to be 100% sure, even if we create the hardware and software on our own. Therefore, be mindful of your actions and always assume it's being monitored. Running linux on raspberry pi might be a good start though.
• jhoechtl 6y ago
  Owning sthg. vs. renting has economical comsequences. If you own sthg. you will keep it for longer. If you rent you will keep it shorter. Plus all sorts of assurances can form as an ecosystem around that. Therefore economy will push us to goods we don't own. If you would like to own something you will have to pay the surplus for reduced turnover at the economies side.
• dasf 6y ago
  I got a bunch of FPGAs and I'm building my own 68k/6502 machine to run my C programs and to tinker with assembly. Seems that I have a bunch of these chips so it will rapidly grow into a multiprocessor thing. This is likely the only way forward other than RISC-V on FPGA. But they aren't exactly well defined. Or open. Solid hardware RISC-V is interesting and medium term viable but I foresee a world of blobs waiting in the wings. Time will tell.
  • dbuder 6y ago
    You do realise your FPGA is a black blob itself, even if you are using an OSS toolchain?
• Thorrez 6y ago
  >I must rely on encryption algorithms that are designed with subtle flaws that can take years, if not decades, to come to light. There's Dual_EC_DRBG . Are there any other instances where this happened? And I thought barely anyone even used Dual_EC_DRBG because it was super slow. Did the author ever use it?
• drvdevd 6y ago
  I don't believe what the author is asking for exists. The answer to his question, in my opinion, is a definitive "No." Even his 286 was arguably full of components which were probably backdoored in some manner. And even if your hardware and software stack is somehow fully private, having to work with the web as we all do, almost guarantees compromise. This is not to say our efforts at privacy are completely in vain, just that this perfect endpoint doesn't exist.
  • yoz-y 6y ago
    What good is a backdoor without a worldwide network connection?
• alexashka 6y ago
  > Will I ever have a computer that I own? Maybe yes, but why? Why do you want it? As long as you remain a human being, there will always be things you'd prefer be otherwise if you just wait a while. If we take that as an axiom, we can stop trying to react to every discontent with thoughts of wanting the world to be different. Once you accept that things are the way they are and there ain't a thing to do about most of 'em, maybe that's better than owning a computer you own. I dunno, works for me :)
• t0r0nat0r 6y ago
  Get a VM and s VPN.
• _pmf_ 6y ago
  "You will own nothing, and you will be happy" is only getting started.
• chipotle_coyote 6y ago
  What does it mean to "own a computer"? Do I own my M1 MacBook Air? Did I own my TRS-80 Model 4, an 8-bit, Z80-based computer circa 1983? Well, I didn't lease either one of them, I bought them outright. Apple can't demand their hardware back now any more than Radio Shack could have demanded theirs back then. So that's owning, right? No? You say I don't own my Mac because I can't put a different operating system on it. It's true, I could run multiple operating systems on the TRS-80. Sort of. There was TRSDOS, CP/M, and... several nearly-interchangeable TRSDOS clones. Of course, I can run a lot more on the M1 if you count virtual machines (including all the TRS-80 operating systems), but I know that's not what you mean. You can run any OS that's been ported to the Mac on the Mac, though, and there's already work being done to port Linux and NetBSD. Do I not own the Mac because Apple's security measures make it difficult to do that porting? You say I'm dependent on the largesse of Apple and they can "take things away" from me as long as I'm using the Mac. And, it's true they have a potential level of control over what I can run on macOS that Radio Shack didn't have over TRSDOS. Yet for practical purposes I depended on the largess of Radio Shack, too, and when that stopped, the writing was on the wall for that compuer line. Not the same thing? No, not exactly, but I bet you can't name a Mac application that you can't run because Apple pulled a hidden switch that stopped it from running. You can name a few that you could run a decade ago -- or in a very few cases, a year ago -- that you can't now because the OS changed, or the hardware changed. I can't run my once-beloved crazy writing brainstorming app, Dramatica Story Expert. But that's because its developer is legendarily terrible at keeping up with modern Apple hardware. It isn't because I don't own my computer. You say that things aren't "private" on the Mac. What's that mean? The local data on the Mac is more protected than the local data on the TRS-80 was, I can tell you. Forget encryption, stuff rarely had plain text passwords! Data that isn't local is a question mark now, but it was a question mark then, too -- to the degree it was possible to have non-local data on places like BBSes and Compuserve and even the early Internet. I have way more data "in the cloud" now, but in many ways it's a lot more secure, because we weren't just thinking about security in the same way three or four decades ago. As for ad tracking, I'd argue that's a really important conversation about privacy, but it's not a conversation about "owning my computer" unless we're really stretching the metaphor. And in the final analysis, "you don't own your own computer" is a metaphor, a semantic sleight of hand. I'm surely playing a semantic game here myself, but my issue with a lot of these arguments is that they're presenting as something that they maybe aren't. They're maybe less about liberté, égalité, fraternité than they are about nostalgia for a (remembered as) simpler, more tinkering-friendly time. Perhaps we're going to return to a time where it's difficult to put an OS on your computer other than the one sanctioned by its manufacturer. Is that great? No. Does it mean we don't really own our computers? I'm just not sure I buy that. [To vainly try to head off the "but iOS" responses: I'm explicitly talking about Macs in this example. And no, I don't expect Macs to ever be locked down to the degree iOS is. That's a rant for another time, though.]
• frobisher 6y ago
  I'm curious, why is there no widespread Ubuntu for mobile?
• NiceWayToDoIT 6y ago
  It is interesting thought, especially as few days back someone in HN wrote completely opposite view, that everything should be controlled and spied on (and for the love of universe I cannot find it again, it was on first page of HN I would appreciate link ...), because with progress we are becoming more powerful and more destructive - so any human in future with enough knowledge, would have ability to destroying entire humanity. Where is the middle ground between those two ends? Maybe it is similar to what we have now?
  • jillesvangurp 6y ago
    It's basically fighting the inevitable. Technical progress is relentless and basically impossible to control. You can unilaterally choose to not participate. But that just means giving more control to exactly those people you are most afraid of. The best way to stay ahead of that game is to be a part of it. I take it as a given that a few generations from now, every move, expression, twitch, etc. will be recorded, persisted (in perpetuity), analyzed, etc. by many mutually hostile parties. Even right now, we're never far away from dozens of active microphones (i.e. phones) that may or may not be live streaming an audio feed over the network. Many cities are covered in cameras. A lot of financial traffic is electronic already. So, you could argue that although incomplete, it's already getting hard to cover your tracks. Tin foil hats don't really suffice anymore. In fact, I believe we are just living through a very narrow window of time where this is all technically feasible but not common practice or practical yet on a global scale. I'm talking about a cradle to grave thing. It's not going to be opt in or opt out for anyone ultimately. It's basically an arms race. However, I take some comfort from the notion that there will be many parties doing that and watching each other and thus keeping each other honest. The irony of that is that this applies equally to dictators, corrupt politicians, criminals, terrorists, military, etc. as well. They may be empowered to misbehave but they won't be able to do so covertly. If you are powerful enough, you get to rewrite history. But in the future that will require access to the digital archives of all your enemies. And you can never be sure that you got every bit of that.
• ncmncm 6y ago
  There are many, many more people who don't want you to have that computer than there are yous. So you have to want it more at least as many times over as they don't. There certainly are other people who also want that computer. (E.g. me.) Maybe there are as many or more who do than don't want any of you, or us, to have them. We have the advantage that what we want is just like the computers everybody else has, except with things taken out. The software is doable. The CPUs have "management engines" that, at least in some cases seem possible to disable. The wi-fi chips are a problem; we might need SDR to bypass those. But the cell phone system is going to be a problem.
• arpa 6y ago
  You still own the computer. But, but, the root of the problem is actually the web. The browser is essentially a operating system nowadays, there are very few browser engines and even less browser engines without links to corporate overlords.
• Animats 6y ago
  For the total opposite, see today's article on "remote workstations", where your computer is just a dumb terminal.
• rini17 6y ago
  Expensive? Depends on where you are looking. I am writing this from 10 year old 4-core AthlonII (pre-PSP) PC. These is surplus of these widely available for pennies. Will do everything I need except 4K video (might be solvable by GPU upgrade). I only regret I have not built Phenom system with ECC memory. I am worried more about software. I'd like to have a compatible privacy-oriented browser with governance that puts quality and transparency first.
• geff82 6y ago
  Wouldn't a Thinkpad with Linux or BSD be what the writer wants?
• Naracion 6y ago
  If you vibe with this article, you might be interested in the framework device ecosystem. They're about to release a laptop, and a mobile device is also in the plans. While this will not provide the kind of freedom on the software side that the thread seeks, at least you get the freedom to choose the hardware components that run your device. https://frame.work/ https://frame.work/ HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26263508 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26263508
• h0nd 6y ago
  Since phones are nothing else than computers nowadays: I want a phone that I own! The mobile phones are by far more limiting and take away control of the owner. A simple example would be the possibility to edit the HOSTS file on Android. I am the owner and administrator of this device, yet I am unable to do basic controls of my device.
  • megous 6y ago
    Or just troubleshooting things, even if you don't want to change anything. You're not even allowed to view what's stored on your phone. My gf asked me why her Android can't install new apps (gplay says it doesn't have enough space to install 14MiB app, phone says it has 200MiB free). So I go to adb shell to see what's taking up space, df says 700MiB free on user data filesystem (so the stupid gplay app is lying). `ls` and `du` says permission denied almost everywhere. To unlock/root the phone, it needs to be erased, or needs some apk installed (which doesn't work). Even Windows 95 20 years ago had less shitty debugging experience. Just makes me glad I never bought a smartphone, personally. Other time we needed access was just to back up the list of contacts. Also not possible without a stupid possibly closed source apk. It's not even part of adb backup. But many regular apps are allowed to steal your contact list and send it anywhere they want. Bleh. "User hostile" doesn't even cut it, when you lose access to your data the moment app installation breaks, and can't get to your data via debug tools.
    • h0nd 6y ago
      Exactly, thats my point, too. You brought up a very nice example (which i actually experienced first hand as well). I feel forced to circumvent this so called 'protection'.
• mogoman 6y ago
  Looking through some of the points above, I was somehow reminded of Johnny Mnemonic, where he puts together a computer to get online. Based on today's reality he wouldn't need all the most modern, hard core parts, but actually as retro as possible - break into a computer museum and fire up some kind of antique running code he writes himself.
• oytis 6y ago
  > Except for a handful of very over-priced models that I can't afford to buy, our computers are increasingly designed to be little more than advertising platforms and vehicles for maximizing the cloud revenues of their true owners. I don't quite get what the author is talking about. There are some concerns about what proprietary BIOS firmware does, but otherwise pretty much any PC on the market can run whatever software (including the OS) the user installs on them. Or can the author only afford a smartphone?
• milliams 6y ago
  I realise that ISO 8601 is behind a paywall but using > 2-26-21 as a date format is just wrong.
• MikeTaylor 6y ago
  Richard Stallman's got your back: see http://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.en.html http://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.en.html and skip down to the "Challenges in our future" heading. I understand why people find Stallman irritating, but my word, he does tend to be right with terrifying frequency. (Come to think of it, that's probably part of _why_ people find him irritating.)
• xchip 6y ago
  yeah, I hate Windows 10 making all those https requests on the background sending who knows what to who knows where.
• teekert 6y ago
  My computers are cerebral prostheses. They are deeply personal, I know them, they know me. They are a part me. Without them I would have a different character. Please, indeed, allow me to have one that has me as it's only priority. In practice I strive for this. I run all the backend services I can get my hands on from my basement (Home Assistant, NextCloud). But getting to the 100% mark indeed seem impossible today without mayor inconveniences, compared to other people, in this time frame at least..
• alexisread 6y ago
  So if we want to go with completely open arch, we'd be looking at something like this: https://www.hackster.io/news/a-feather-compatible-fpga-board-running-a-risc-v-core-with-lorawan-848d6257aa88 https://www.hackster.io/news/a-feather-compatible-fpga-board... https://github.com/mcci-catena/HW-Designs/tree/master/Boards/Catena-4710 https://github.com/mcci-catena/HW-Designs/tree/master/Boards... https://github.com/mcci-catena/catena-riscv32-fpga https://github.com/mcci-catena/catena-riscv32-fpga ie. an FPGA you can put your own OS AND radio firmware on. Something like https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=5921 https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=5921 (and see the updates https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/precursor/updates https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/precursor/updates) doesn't cut it fully as the wifi has a firmware blob, and in addition I'm not sure how open the xilinx toolchain is (might be, I know some xilinx chips are supported by open source toolchains). As an OS for the feather board, you could use DASH7 for the radio portion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DASH7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DASH7), and Oberon as a general OS. (https://blog.gadgetfactory.net/2016/02/how-to-implement-the-old-oberon-system-on-a-modern-fpga/ https://blog.gadgetfactory.net/2016/02/how-to-implement-the-...) Obviously several problems exist there - only Linux has an available FPGA toolchain, so you need a linux computer to bootstrap Oberon onto the FPGA, and DASH7 won't run on the same device (it runs on STM32 boards mainly). So, to get a completely open design, you'd need to port DASH7 stack and the FPGA tools to Oberon to allow self-hosting and fully open radio. Add to that the fact that this board doesn't supply any video output so your development is over ssh/terminal and you have a way to go to get a fully open system. Other pain points are that Oberon is a systems language that uses GC, so for deterministic/realtime (radio) operation it is not usable - you'd need to use it's cousin Composita to have a deterministic memory managed OS. Lastly, Oberon doesn't have any formal verification tools which would be ideal for verifying the entire self-hosted stack. I suspect you'd need to use a LISP of some sort to be able to verify things from the ground up. Of course most LISPs have GC so you'd need to migrate the Composita+Oberon (A2) architecture to LISP to be able to build higher-level verifiable constructs. However... this is almost possible. There are a few key things to work out here, but it's closer than at any point previously :)
• bsima 6y ago
  give this guy an urbit
• larrik 6y ago
  This seems like a lot of words for "I wish I was brave enough to try Linux"
• TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  You can't have a "computer that you own" because a computer is no longer an independent device. It's an access point - what used to be called a terminal - into a complex information ecosystem. You won't get what you want with different hardware and an open OS unless you also fix the ecosystem. And that means fixing ad tech, cloud services, DNS, open packet inspection, location tracking, security at multiple levels, and any number of other technologies, only the last of which is the local OS. Worrying about the item in your hand or on your desk is almost literally looking through the wrong end of the telescope.
• hyko 6y ago
  Except for a handful of very over-priced models that I can't afford to buy What models are being referred to here? Sounds like the OP’s problem can be solved with more money.
  • kenmacd 6y ago
    While it might be possible for individuals to solve this problem with money, I feel you may be missing the forest for the trees. OP could just not connect to the internet, job done, right? The issue isn't so much they want privacy, it's that they want us all to have privacy. It's not reasonable to expect average-joe to know about coreboot, seek out hardware that specifically supports it, then find a collection of browser extensions and communication tools just to have a private conversation with a friend. Instead we should have regulations in place that make it possible to buy the computer at the local store and talk to your kids online without being monitored every step of the way.
• vonwoodson 6y ago
  Lost me at “that the NSA won’t intercept...” Sorry, it’s a spy agency, you can’t beat it because it’s sole purpose is to defeat whatever barriers you put up. Furthermore, “no metadata” that is the data required to be public in order to be routed through a publicly accessible network. And, it may be possible to anonymize that data, but... In light of the recent attempted overthrow of the government, I’m now firmly against giving away government monitoring of the internet. In fact, it’s time we give it some teeth. We’ve been the victim of foreign propaganda to the point where the people have been driven mad by lies and the destruction of the American culture. We need defense in cyberspace the same way that we need defense against any invading forces. Few, sane, people argue against having a Navy or an Army; it’s just by the nature of the internet as a new technology that we’ve neglected it this long. And, before you give me the “those who would give up freedom for security...“ line: we already don’t have freedom, we already don’t have security. I often wish that people could recognize that the government of the people and by the people is for the people. And quit treating out greatest tool against tyranny as a whipping boy for whatever personal crap they are going through.
  • kenmacd 6y ago
    If you can't beat the NSA then you accept you can't beat any foreign governments spy agencies, right? That's part of the premise of the original article, that you can't have a private conversation. And your suggestion that mass surveillance is a reasonable solution to domestic terrorism is quiet terrifying to me. Mass surveillance is far too easy to abuse. Sure you can have a 'for the people' government and it not be abused, but a 'for the people' government needs a healthy amount of fear of the people to remain so. Your country already has issues with gerrymandering, do you think that's made better or worse by the government collecting more information about the people? To follow your overthrow path, would more surveillance have helped? Would less have hindered? I'd say no to both accounts. The government already had information on when/what was going to occur and that was obtained not with mass surveillance but with simply in infiltrating the communities involved. We should also consider if mass surveillance is the best solution to the issues you mentioned. Perhaps you could get the same thing you wanted by increasing education funding. Perhaps the same could be accomplished by building better cyberspace communities where you can be closer to your neighbours rather than the much more filter-bubble communities we commonly have now.
• pif 6y ago
  > I want a computer that I own No, you don't. Or, at least, you didn't want it enough for too long enough! Each time you sent your friend a document which was not formatted in an open standard, you didn't want a computer that you owned. Each time you accepted DRM in order to access some nice content, you didn't want a computer that you owned. Each time you run a program or, God forbids, an OS which you didn't have the source code of, you didn't want a computer that you owned. Each time you accepted to be target by advertisers as a way to enjoy a "free" service, you didn't want a computer that you owned. Industry gave you what you wanted. Industry gives you what you still want.
  • pnt12 6y ago
    First, you're mixing population with the author. He wants his own private computer, maybe the global population doesn't. Second,participating in a ubiquous system does not mean you support a part or all of it. If I buy chicken from the supermarket, that does not mean I support all the atrocities in chicken farms. I could avoid buying chicken and going vegan, but then the same argument can be made for pretty much any other industry. Someone is getting screwed either way, doesn't mean I like it.
• MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  So they've independently discovered the tenets of the Free Software movement. They make valid points, but that's all they've done. I'm surprised there's no mention of this in the comments here. > I must rely on encryption algorithms that are designed with subtle flaws that can take years, if not decades, to come to light. Cryptography is an extremely technical field, so yes, you do. That's not really relevant to the matter of truly owning your computer. If you want to personally validate modern theoretical physics, that would also take years of study. > Even open source encryption algorithms that some claim are above reproach are repeatedly being shown to have major flaws, and the fixes to those flaws have their own major flaws. Again, a separate issue. That's not a matter of having a computer you truly own, that's a matter of software quality. > Will this ever end? Will I ever have a computer that I own? They pose this question as if it's a rhetorical one. The Free Software movement already exists. You can support it with code contributions, documentation, testing effort, money, or advocacy/activism. See [0]. If you don't like the FSF specifically, you can support other initiatives. [0] https://www.fsf.org/about/ways-to-donate/ https://www.fsf.org/about/ways-to-donate/
• holstvoogd 6y ago
  While there are some nice open solutions out there, pine64 etc, one thing I'd like to see in more open projects is high quality. I have a Pinebook Pro & an System76 Darter laptop. I use neither because the build quality is weak. Things like a proper trackpad, decent resolutions etc. Basically, I want a Macbook Air, but open-ish. And I'd gladly pay the 'premium' for it. Hell, that Darter was more expensive than a pretty decked out MBA & it is a heap of cheap plastics. If the hardware was there, I wouldn't mind having to out some more effort in to getting a proper Linux distro running properly/
• peanut_worm 6y ago
  This article made me look into Intel ME and AMD PSP. Kind of concerning to have a black box in my PC that could be doing pretty much anything.
• squid_demon 6y ago
  Really looking forward to the C256 Foenix U https://c256foenix.com/ https://c256foenix.com/
• another_comment 6y ago
  >> Modern smartphones however, seem like walled gardens in which I have no control at all. By design, I think. >> I am locked into a single OS on my smartphone, which either spies on you or is locked down even more. Every iteration a bit more control is taken away from the user. I got so fed up with this, I abandoned the whole mobile infrastructure and built my own phone with a Raspberry Pi 3B+. The Raspberry Pi is pretty open hardware (yes, I'm aware it's not perfect). For software I used Python 3, C and GTK. It does voice and SMS/MMS only, but that is enough for me. I built it for myself. It's stable enough that I use it as my daily driver. I am in the process of open sourcing the code and putting it out on github. https://github.com/another2020githubuser/thepyphone https://github.com/another2020githubuser/thepyphone I truly hope an open hardware smart phone becomes available soon. Until then, I'll use my home grown PyPhone to get by.
• mbravorus 6y ago
  Surprised nobody mentioned The Helm ( https://thehelm.com/ https://thehelm.com/ )
• ubermonkey 6y ago
  Under-acknowledged here is the relationship between the networks that make our devices useful and the increased homogenization of the devices themselves. When I last truly owned my computer, connectivity (if it existed) was via dial-up. The other thing I'd note is that we have more and better ways to communicate securely today than ever before. In the world I grew up in, we had phones, and Ma Bell knew who you called and how long you talked, and possibly even what you talked about. There was no real privacy or encryption possible; we all just pretended like those calls were private. Private communication is possible now on Windows, Linux, Mac, iOS, Android, and I assume ChromeOS, right?
• olah_1 6y ago
  For people asking why Urbit created new programming languages and architecture, this is big reason why. Owning something should mean that you are able to fix it. A single person can peak under the hood of the entire OS and know what's going on (provided they learn the language). This is inconceivable even in something like Linux. Simplicity is required for true ownership.
• T3RMINATED 6y ago
  Homeboy never heard of Linux.
• bjarneh 6y ago
  > Governments seem to be universally terrified of even the slightest possibility of anyone in the world having a private conversation. We used to make fun of the countries behind the iron curtain for their lack privacy. The thought of living in a surveillance state seemed horrible as well as unrealistic in "the west". Freedom / democracy loving people like us would never have that kind of problem. Now it seems the whole world has gone mad, and it seems that people looking for privacy, are just considered as people looking to do something terrible that the state needs to stop anyway.
• kebman 6y ago
  I'm already some ways along with program that allows secure communication over TCP/IP between clients. I'm sure there are many like it, but this one is mine. :) Not sure how you'd cooperate on such a project though.
• bumbledraven 6y ago
  This separation of ownership and control is discussed at length in James Burnham's The Managerial Revolution (1941). The central idea, if I'm not butchering it too badly, is that, as our technological society becomes increasingly complex, the owners of things no longer have control over them, and, therefore, the "owners" of those things no longer actually own them. The true owners, according to Burnham, are an emerging "managerial class" consisting of, e.g., bureaucrats, administrators, and technical managers.
• literallyWTF 6y ago
  This is probably one of the honest to god, lamest things I’ve read.
• jpttsn 6y ago
  Computers have come a long way in a short time and are very complex. Maybe the diffuse ownership (that OP bemoans) is necessary for that complexity, or at least for it to develop so quickly. If I want a typewriter, car or handgun I “truly own”, I might be able to build one, as a last resort. But building a satisfactory computer without the global supply chains (that impose the bemoaned limitations) seems impossible.
  • sircastor 6y ago
    The unspoken statement here is “what do you want the computer to do?” A typewriter or gun both have very narrow application. Any computer can do what any other computer can do provided the right software, data, and time. An Apple I can be built with discrete components pretty easily. But what utility does having an Apple I give you?
    • jpttsn 6y ago
      Right on. A “computer I own” seems to presuppose that this computer does all these millions of things, many of which (I fear) can’t be provided practically for less than a compromise in ownership. You can build (and own) the Apple I but you can’t reasonably write a Chrome-compatible browser for it, if Google aren’t interested. Thus I find asking for a “computer you own, like any other tool” is a bit nonchalant wrt. the scope of the request.
• chias 6y ago
  > I want a computer that can be completely autonomous when I want it to be, but which can also be used to communicate securely with anyone on the planet without being observed by a third party. I think this is the rub of the problem, because it's a contradiction: "I want secure software with no vulnerabilities, but don't you dare force me to update". This kinda sorta worked in the early 90's because most people weren't on the internet and few were actively thinking of exploiting anything -- it was a time of plaintext protocols and unauthenticated commands. The world has moved on, and our tradeoffs balance in a different place today.
• dhanvanthri 6y ago
  My daily driver is a thinkpad X200 that I librebooted myself. I kid you not when I say that I derive immense pleasure from using it. Apart from a few (equally freedom respecting) devices I find, I literally never feel like I'm wanting for anything. I can't recommend it enough. I don't have the words.
• ho_schi 6y ago
  I understand the author. While I'm more suspicious about the hardware companies than the governments. But care about both. And look pure software companies, which try to sell you services instead of code, executable and support. When hardware- and software are integrated be extremely wary - usually you only get an appliance. I try to follow these guidelines: 1.) Used and buy only general purpose computers, where you can swap hardware and operating-system. Or even better, firmware. 2.) Avoid Big Tech: Apple (literally all), Microsoft (Surface) and Google (Pixel) 3.) Laptops: Invest into vendors which allow all purpose computing or especiall Linux. Big ones are Lenovo and Dell, small ones are {System76, Purism, Tuxedo, ...}. 4.) Desktop: Built it yourself or order some from a shop which built it for you. Actually the Pixel Phones are rather good. But Google is not better than Apple. Miracast is really complicated but good. Google? Disables Miracast in the Pixel phones and tries people to lure into Chromecast, which is inferior and requires practically always Internet. If you want send content two meters across the room you don't want Internet! And Pushmail? Only with GMAIL on Pixel. We are in 2021 and this phones don't provide Pushmail for IMAP servers which actually provide this feature. Even Apple is better there, and Apple also provides CalDAV and CardDAV. But Apples doesn't provide file system access nor allow you to use your devics as you want! Lenovo and Dell improved their Linux support a lot in recent years - so I consider them pretty positive. But nothing is perfect. PS: Probably I receive downvotes because saying negative things about Apple is not well received here. Silicon Valley Clique?
• aidenn0 6y ago
  I'm going to push back a bit when the author is both comparing what they want to an 80s 286 PC and complaining that the only models today that meet their needs are too expensive. The inflation-adjusted price of an IBM AT when it was introduced in 1984 was about $15k.
• JulienBoyreau 6y ago
  What to own for, really ? For wasting time reproducing the mistakes of the makers risking noise for signal ? For fixing rules to be the king of a kingdom of one risking blood for throne ? For protecting secrets to dangerous to share, having risking life ? For the gut feeling sake of owning, missing common culture as a much more powerful nudge than Google & Co ? Or just properly for the need of justice ? Just in math, just in time, just for men ! Don’t want to own, but to get proper : one small step in mind, one giant leap in mind kind ;))
• SexyBaby0909 6y ago
  I want You https://sites.google.com/view/meet-for-sex69/home https://sites.google.com/view/meet-for-sex69/home
• greendude29 6y ago
  Is this a joke? Of course Apple and Microsoft won't get you any privacy (see Prism), but Linux and a good VPN can get the author everything they want. This isn't a high bar for computers. I'm not sure what part I'm missing.
• mrRA 6y ago
  Use Urbit