Post AOCDdO05e5k9ioN876 by lucie@mas.to
(DIR) More posts by lucie@mas.to
(DIR) Post #AOBVP4Bg7LjAEe9bvc by libreleah@mas.to
2022-10-03T08:24:43Z
1 likes, 3 repeats
Debian recently voted to include firmware in the distro by default, including in standard installation media. I wholeheartedly approve this decision, for reasons that I wrote in detail here: https://osboot.org/news/policy.html#problems-with-fsdgThe context on that page is osboot. This graphic explains it:
(DIR) Post #AOCDdO05e5k9ioN876 by lucie@mas.to
2022-10-03T10:15:14Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@libreleah The way I see it is: it lowers the barrier to enter free software.Using mostly free software > using proprietary O.S.Same goes for Windows/macOS ports. I rather have the user use (and educate themselves while using) Gimp and LibreOffice than Adobe Photoshop and MS Office.
(DIR) Post #AOCDdOVdkmyrIf8KI4 by libreleah@mas.to
2022-10-03T11:48:54Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@lucie Yes, I agree 100%. Using libre software exclusively should be the goal, but we should encourage people to at least use some, rather than none. Banning non-free firmware flies in the face of such pragmatism.
(DIR) Post #AOCDdOww7IoafJu7pw by Archivist@social.linux.pizza
2022-10-03T16:42:29Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@libreleah @lucie Some of the FSF takes on software freedom are cognito-hazards to me. The community is sometimes worse though, like I have been yelled at that MIT bad GPL good quite a few times over the years
(DIR) Post #AOCEC5wykPw3sLT22K by PublicLewdness@freespeechextremist.com
2022-10-03T16:48:47.758876Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@Archivist I will agree that the community can be borderline insane at times but MIT has huge pitfalls. It's permissive licenses like it that helped Intel ME to be born.
(DIR) Post #AOCFDhHXXEFBtwPd0i by Archivist@social.linux.pizza
2022-10-03T17:00:16Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@PublicLewdness Well, I personally work as an independent. I make shit money in exchange of a lot of generally long hours. Over the years, GPL has been an incredible brake to my activity. GPL code is most of the time impossible to reuse for me, so I release whatever I can release through MIT, so that at least people in the same situation as I can reuse what I make
(DIR) Post #AOCFUBmNuiAh7Yhgye by Archivist@social.linux.pizza
2022-10-03T17:03:14Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@PublicLewdness Also, no, Intel ME would have been born anyway because no one is insane enough to manage a large datacenter without this type of tools. A server room? Okay. A large datacenter? Do you want 50 people running around managing PXE boot manually across an entire fleet of servers when you could have a tenth of that? 10 times less people with physical access is 10 times more security in my book, hackers generally aim at the human factor
(DIR) Post #AOCGnchg8PR054Kj7Q by PublicLewdness@freespeechextremist.com
2022-10-03T17:17:59.304315Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@Archivist Intel ME is one of the worst things ever created for privacy and security. If you think it's a good thing you have a very different idea of private or secure then me. No closed source software or hardware should have the access it has. I agree it would have been made regardless but the fact of the matter is Intel lifted code from a permissive license to start it.
(DIR) Post #AOCHKQqXEx5OrY7WJU by Archivist@social.linux.pizza
2022-10-03T17:23:53Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@PublicLewdness I have a more nuanced opinion. It is bad, but it is also quite central to most large datacenters infrastructuresYou could probably replace it, but I have no certainty that a replacement would be much better. It would probably be as bad, or worse, It would need to be able to do just as much, would probably involve either more hardware to be plugged in the servers, or more proprietary software (in variety) making it no easier to DC
(DIR) Post #AOCL0UmXIXcz5qzzCi by PublicLewdness@freespeechextremist.com
2022-10-03T18:05:08.090511Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@Archivist I understand your opinion. I don't share it but I don't have to. I'm a normal user who only has my system to worry about. For me as a normal the likes of Intel ME is only bad, nothing good. Same goes for PSP; Pluton and Trustzone. As you can imagine that eliminates 95% of chips for me which is damn near depressing.
(DIR) Post #AOFD7noR2e5LPeKmum by jonjon@social.linux.pizza
2022-10-05T03:20:55Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@Archivist @PublicLewdness if it was just a data center thing then I don't understand why its included on consumer chips/motherboards. Shouldn't it be exclusive to their Xeon and other server oriented chips? It's completely unnecessary for consumer hardware and I'm sure money would be saved if they excluded it from consumer products...
(DIR) Post #AOFDHw0XQWufj2pJy4 by jonjon@social.linux.pizza
2022-10-05T03:22:45Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@PublicLewdness @Archivist not entirely true, PSP and ime and such can be neutered or disabled like in coreboot or on librem devices. I don't know about Pluton because its still new but still.
(DIR) Post #AOFP3Ud7cPq6D8kosq by Archivist@social.linux.pizza
2022-10-05T05:34:35Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@jonjon @PublicLewdnessBecause while AMT is just the most used module for datacenters, TPM and Secureboot, as well as several other elements like DRM shenanigans and NFC encryption are implemented in IME because it is easier to handle all of that with a kernel like MINIX to serve as a base
(DIR) Post #AOFS0tv1RHbhdVaAyW by jonjon@social.linux.pizza
2022-10-05T06:07:45Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@Archivist @PublicLewdness ohh interesting, I did not know that