/tech/ - Technology

Here is a thought experiment about a hard problem in auditing computer security
https://farside.link/invidious/watch?v=sOeuYuvOcl0

if you didn't watch it here's the tldr:
In principle it's possible to compromise enough of the existing software and hardware stack so that a intelligent enough malicious security flaw could hide it self from you no matter how hardcore you go with your security audit. The conclusion being drawn is that the only solution to making sure you have a clean system, is to start from scratch with basic logic circuitry and then slowly build up a trusted software and hardware stack.

It's a clever argument, but there is a much easier way to get around all of this.

You can get to a trusted stack simply by scrambling the logic of a cpu. The only one that will be able to run logic operations on that cpu will be the person that can use the de-scrambler-key on the logic instructions given to that cpu. Malicious inserts into the hardware will return gibberish if they try to listen, and make the cpu produce logic errors if they try to inject code. It doesn't need to be a performant cpu either, something equivalent to 1985 era processors is good enough, as it's only necessary to bootstrap a trusted environment. A moderately sized organization can probably muster the necessary funds and technical sophistication to get a small batch of scrambled cpus produced.

Because freedom matters.

If your computer still is running a proprietary prison.
And every time it fails you, your frustration grows.
When the system's not free, you will always be hosed.
Put a GNU system on and reboot it
Put it in your horn and toot it!

I know I am a little bit late to the party with this but some "anonymous" group tried to cancel rms and the FSF as well: archive.md/Pt37W (stallman-report.org). It's the usual shit: whining about Stallman's comments on Epstein, supposed "sexual harassment" etc. Basically, the author calls for Stallman to step down from the FSF and/or for FSF members to take him down.

It is already known who wrote this "report": Drew DeVault, a developer who worked (or still works?) on Wayland. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41859793

So apparently big publishers want to kill the internet archive again.

They accuse I.A. of having done a copywrong by lending out books. I won't bore you with the legal technicalities because i think it's just a pretext for publishers trying to kill a library because it's a cartel that wants a monopoly.

I think the lessons here are if you pay these people money, they're going to use it to attack nice things like the Internet Archive, and "copy-right" is nothing but a heinous weapon.

People who build archives to preserve the memory of the past are like really rare flowers, it's an incomprehensible act of barbarism to try to burn down their archives.

https://blog.archive.org/2023/03/25/the-fight-continues/

Fuck imageboards. I want text. And if you do too, then hoo boy do I have the thread for you!
This thread is for sharing textboard links. Hard mode - No Clearnet.

(Yes, I'm begging. But come on, my mouth is open and the spoon is right there…)

So OpenClosedAi has appointed a NSA-guy as director.
So it's probably best to avoid that one.

So Intel processors are crapping out and they're already on the financial downturn. Intel might go under or continue on in a diminished fashion.

Many think that the X86 platform will stagnate without the competition between AMD and Intel.

I don't know, but there's always Risk-V, with it being a very open platform, there is nothing stopping anybody from taking a RISC-V design with small low-power cpu cores and adding a few really powerful chunky desktop type cpu cores to it, to make a hybrid processor. Lowering the barrier to entry for companies to make desktop-type processors.

halp. bitch neighbors

https://farside.link/invidious/watch?v=py4Tc-Y8BcY
https://github.com/hacksider/Deep-Live-Cam

This is a piece of software that does deep-fake face-swaps but it's fast enough to do it live.

While everybody lost their minds over how to use this maliciously.

I think this is some really empowering technology for video creators. It enables super low budget movies to be shot by a very small number of actors that play multiple roles, each with a different fake-face, they can also economize on stuff like make-up and hairdressing (especially for scifi alien foreheads) .

For people that wanna be actors but didn't win the genetic lottery on looks this might be the time to shine. (at least briefly until more advanced tech comes along)

it will also level the playing field for e-thots somewhat.

A video game that nintendo had a legal distribution monopoly on was leaked ahead of the official release. They got really mad about that and they are trying to take it out on the video-game emulation communities, by attacking emulation related software projects on github.

So the lesson here is if you give companies like that money they are going to use it to attack your hobbies. I think this legitimizes "pirating" games because you have no legal option to buy these games without also supporting nintendo's legalistic mafia-terror.

If copy"right" wasn't set up like a monopoly, and you could buy these specific games from any distributor not just nintendo, so that you could choose to buy from non-mafia sellers, it would at least be logically possible to make a case against "piracy". But as long as that's not possible "piracy" is basically just self defense. Keep in mind that nintendo doesn't make games, it's just a legal entity, and not the same as the people that make the games like for example programmers and artists.

Obviously there also is the hole deal with DRM which is total hypocrisy, it basically attacks the concept of personal ownership of your possessions. It's property-rights for me but not for thee.

If they were to reform copy"right" and remove the distribution monopoly aspect, so that everybody with the means to distribute copies was free to do so as long as they gave royalties (as a form of revenue sharing) to the people who actually created the stuff that is being copied. Maybe that would work.

But as long as they keep the monopoly part "piracy" is basically just competing distributors that were arbitrarily banned from participating in the market. Some times people make the strange argument that pirates gain from the work of others but that's also true for the capitalists that own nintendo, by that logic all of nintendo's profits are pirated.

I sometimes feel like the copy-monopolists take the most extreme ideological positions, while we don't and that's why this hole shit drifts ever more towards reactionary insanity where Nintendo gets to rape random software devs on github as some kind of bully-frustration release mechanism and it's a crime if you play with toys "the wrong way". Maybe we should redefine piracy as everything that keeps works-of-art outside the creative-commons/public-domain and drm as a product defect. Maybe that will create a counter-weight.