cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/58764195
I was in the non-profit shop of a local charity. They accept donations of used computers then resell them to the public. The profit goes to charity. I asked for their oldest machine. It had an AMD chip from the 16h family. Thus, a spychip.
So their oldest machine was still too new for me. I asked why don’t you have anything older? They said the general public would not accept anything older, and so the shop also does not accept anything older. When machines are rejected, they go to a factory that destroys them and recovers the raw metals.
It’s sad to see that pre-spychip machines are being destroyed and that even 2nd-hand customers are being limited to anti-consumer spychip hardware.
For the individualist thing… If there are these concerns, OP should not be just rolling his own jank setup to do his work. There are groups that could provide him with secure hardware or validate the hardware he can get.
I checked and the h16 processor they mentioned uses an Arm a5 core for trustzone functions. There are tools to audit that.
All of this is unreasonable for a charity junk shop.
You should stop trying to block the zero waste movement and stop trying to make people dependent on others.
You mean the 16h, I suppose. Tools to audit that the closed source software does what I want? That’s amusing for sure. I wonder by what magic I’m not permitted to see the code but I can use probably another closed-source blob to verify whether my boot-licking product is doing what /the maker/ intends.
Your comment is useful but just not how you intended. The tools to audit the trustzone functions would at least tell me whether a spychip is present, so I can avoid it.