3 ms·
It is coming, and there is nothing we can do about it. There's a chilling feeling watching this all unfold, as our freedoms get taken away and we're powerless
by enlyth 5y ago
It is coming, and there is nothing we can do about it.
There's a chilling feeling watching this all unfold, as our freedoms get taken away and we're powerless to do anything other than complain on a programming themed social media website.
We'll be labelled as conspiracy theorists, wackos, nutjobs, unintegratable people.
That meme you shared with your friend in a private chat? Sorry, was a bit too anti-establishment for our tastes.
- dontneedajacket 5y agoAlternatives are already being built and released, both hardware and software. There will simply be more divide between know-how people who can save their freedom (tech people, friends, family) and the rest who get left behind. Now, if we get to China and North Korea levels of authoritarianism and people start snitching on each other, then that's a whole other problem :-)
- bitwize 5y agoUntil Jeri Ellsworth MacGyvers together a way to make Ryzens with some sand and an Easy-Bake Oven, we are at the mercy of the chip manufacturers, all of whom would gladly add spyware to their chips' must-have-in-order-to-boot firmware with minimal arm twisting from the USG/CCP, if that. And President Biden has already started urging people to report extremists to the goverment.
- jacquesm 5y agoThat isn't going to happen. Jeri Ellsworth is fantastic at what she does but there are some hard to get around physical limits in terms of material purity and once you get to a certain degree of integration that pretty much guarantees a yield of 0 until you spend a very large amount of money.
- bitwize 5y agoThen we will always be beholden to large chipmakers who will crumple to governments at the drop of a hat and implement whatever spyware they desire on-die.
- jacquesm 5y agoNot necessarily. But it is a hard problem to solve. If you can't trust complex hardware your options are limited to using simpler systems where a part that behaves in an undefined way could still be detected.
- knownjorbist 5y agoIt's incredible to me that what's unfolding in the crypto and decentralization worlds is met with such harsh criticism on HN.
- colordrops 5y agoThere are absolutely establishment forces at work on HN, both overtly and covertly.
- silon42 5y agoEven in crypto. Most crypto is not anonymous.
- nine_k 5y agoI think that "nothing we can do" is an overstatement. Open-source media players do exist. Projects like VLC have seen worse times when they were banned because of the DVD-decoding ability, for instance. Hardware is harder, but dumb enough devices keep existing. Industrial displays, simple audio tracts on hobbyist computer boards, etc. Such devices either has no ability to host surveillance processing, or at least can't do so covertly. Of course, mass consumer devices are not like that. Well, know your risks.
- fsflover 5y ago> and there is nothing we can do about it Have a look at the website where the article is published.