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No. In order for this to be "perverted as a way to grow DRM", it would need some other main function. The main purpose of this is to allow vendors, rather tha

No. In order for this to be "perverted as a way to grow DRM", it would need some other main function. The main purpose of this is to allow vendors, rather than users, to control personal computers. It will be great for finally allowing truly unskippable ads, ads that track your eyeballs to make sure you are looking, text that cannot be copied, etc.

contingencies 5y ago
Sounds like the way things are going, open systems are going to be effectively illegal soon. Tencent/Apple/Google (TAG) will arrange that if you're not on an approved 'secure' device you are 'suspect', and slowly find ways to integrate this in to governance "for social benefit". At that point, if you're not 100% on the system (read: surveilled 24x7x365 - voice assistant anyone? - with a credit card/bank account, state-ID and consumer profile associated) you'll be penalized: your views will be impossible to share (it's almost that way already), and you'll be incrementally excluded or dissuaded from travel and transport, financial services, educational opportunities, events, job markets, etc. To resist this situation a device manufacturer could emerge with a privacy-first experience and solutions to proxy just the right amount of legitimacy to the outside systems (PSTN, payment, etc.) with an international legal structure optimised for privacy, akin to what wealthy people do already. A sort of anti walled-garden shared infrastructure. Technically I could see an offering providing mobile # to VOIP forwarding, data-only phone with mesh networking > wifi connectivity preference, MAC shuffling, darknet/VPN mixing, payment proxy, global snailmail proxy network, curated (well tested for pop sites) lightweight browser with reduced attack surface and a mobile network only as a last-resort connectivity paradigm (with dynamic software SIM and network operator proxying). Open source of course. Issue being, infrastructure would be expensive to offer and if it were ever popular there'd be political pushback. I guess privacy will increasingly be the exclusive domain of the rich. We've already lost.
- Alekhine 5y ago
  As long as FPGAs are available to consumers, it will be possible to have a computer running on open hardware. On the front page right now is this project: https://github.com/stnolting/neorv32 https://github.com/stnolting/neorv32 It's possible right now to have an FPGA running an open-source RISC-V implementation. The software isn't there yet, but I expect this to change as more RISC-V boards get on the market. God knows how useful this 'bootleg' computer will be, but it's a foundation to build on, at least. There's already work on porting Debian to RISC-V. https://archive.fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/riscvdebian/attachments/slides/3179/export/events/attachments/riscvdebian/slides/3179/Porting_Debian_to_the_RISC_V_architecture_FOSDEM_2019.pdf https://archive.fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/riscvdebian/a... And with a free, open ISA, it's not impossible for smaller, independent manufacturers to crop up and produce their own chips, especially given that the US is now investing in chip-fab. (if there is demand. If nobody cares that they don't own their machines, we were screwed from the start.) I see a lot more hardware content on Youtube nowadays. Channels like Ben Eater are educating people on how computers work, and more accessible FPGAs may help create a more flexible environment for hardware.
  - contingencies 5y ago
    This was pretty interesting read. Thanks a lot for your considered reply. It is so sad that licensing issues prohibit progress even at the academic level. We should have a public interest licensing-free zone around educational and academic institutions IMHO, this would align human interest with actual outcomes (free market for core ideas) instead of only respecting commercial interest.
aitchnyu 5y ago
Outlook and Teams on Android "copy" an error message if you try to copy text and forces me to install Edge to open links.

contingencies 5y ago

Sounds like the way things are going, open systems are going to be effectively illegal soon. Tencent/Apple/Google (TAG) will arrange that if you're not on an approved 'secure' device you are 'suspect', and slowly find ways to integrate this in to governance "for social benefit". At that point, if you're not 100% on the system (read: surveilled 24x7x365 - voice assistant anyone? - with a credit card/bank account, state-ID and consumer profile associated) you'll be penalized: your views will be impossible to share (it's almost that way already), and you'll be incrementally excluded or dissuaded from travel and transport, financial services, educational opportunities, events, job markets, etc. To resist this situation a device manufacturer could emerge with a privacy-first experience and solutions to proxy just the right amount of legitimacy to the outside systems (PSTN, payment, etc.) with an international legal structure optimised for privacy, akin to what wealthy people do already. A sort of anti walled-garden shared infrastructure. Technically I could see an offering providing mobile # to VOIP forwarding, data-only phone with mesh networking > wifi connectivity preference, MAC shuffling, darknet/VPN mixing, payment proxy, global snailmail proxy network, curated (well tested for pop sites) lightweight browser with reduced attack surface and a mobile network only as a last-resort connectivity paradigm (with dynamic software SIM and network operator proxying). Open source of course. Issue being, infrastructure would be expensive to offer and if it were ever popular there'd be political pushback. I guess privacy will increasingly be the exclusive domain of the rich. We've already lost.

Alekhine 5y ago
As long as FPGAs are available to consumers, it will be possible to have a computer running on open hardware. On the front page right now is this project: https://github.com/stnolting/neorv32 https://github.com/stnolting/neorv32 It's possible right now to have an FPGA running an open-source RISC-V implementation. The software isn't there yet, but I expect this to change as more RISC-V boards get on the market. God knows how useful this 'bootleg' computer will be, but it's a foundation to build on, at least. There's already work on porting Debian to RISC-V. https://archive.fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/riscvdebian/attachments/slides/3179/export/events/attachments/riscvdebian/slides/3179/Porting_Debian_to_the_RISC_V_architecture_FOSDEM_2019.pdf https://archive.fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/riscvdebian/a... And with a free, open ISA, it's not impossible for smaller, independent manufacturers to crop up and produce their own chips, especially given that the US is now investing in chip-fab. (if there is demand. If nobody cares that they don't own their machines, we were screwed from the start.) I see a lot more hardware content on Youtube nowadays. Channels like Ben Eater are educating people on how computers work, and more accessible FPGAs may help create a more flexible environment for hardware.
- contingencies 5y ago
  This was pretty interesting read. Thanks a lot for your considered reply. It is so sad that licensing issues prohibit progress even at the academic level. We should have a public interest licensing-free zone around educational and academic institutions IMHO, this would align human interest with actual outcomes (free market for core ideas) instead of only respecting commercial interest.

aitchnyu 5y ago

Outlook and Teams on Android "copy" an error message if you try to copy text and forces me to install Edge to open links.