i think they will. or worse yet they can make it without bios at all just device tree and all that garbage that phones do. then make it subsction based,filled with ai,cloud streamed only. no apps outside store. but thats too much orwellian stuff for now,i think what will happen is the locking bios thing for now.
what do you think?
Won’t happen, mainly because of the fact that some motherboard manufacturers cheap out on OS-level firmware upgrade (looking at ya, MSI) and some motherboard manufacturers have shitty Secure Boot configuration just for Win11 to let users install it.
Legit concern & lots of good comments on the device side of things so I’ll just toss in that another perhaps far easier approach for fascist regimes would be to force telcos, ISPs to permit online access only once registered, similar to a hotel guest WiFi. Only of course more rigidly enforced & monitored.
Thus removing the device itself from the equation, and using infrastructure as the chokepoint.
Future generations are largely doomed by the apathy of the “we have nothing to hide” folks of today, or those who buy into the its “for the children” movement.
Horrifying for the generations to come, as it all advances from multiple angles to 1984 reality
Legit concern , though why just Windows? Plausible its built right into the silicone of every device & unreliant upon an OS. Each country forcing manufacturers to build into the chipset whichever spyware they wish, registering each time its online.
Many different angles, but the end game is clear. Most folks will just willingly be onboard with it, its “for the children”, right? Aso long as they control the masses that’s really all that matters to them. You bring up a great concern, and the cat & mouse game needed for android phones today with privacy focused roms shows the challenges that only get harder the further it gets baked into the chipsets.
No. Because the information is user provided and unverified, so there’s no reason to lock anything down that could increase security. Once they want attestation, they need a third party service involved, in which case the device being part of the trust-chain doesn’t make sense anymore.
I pretty much don’t care about how the future of laptops looks like. If you are stupid enough to buy that shit, you get what you asked for
Mainstream stuff? Yes. But there will always be devices catered towards enthusiasts that will be open.
Open devices will be way costlier too. That’s the price of letting these demagogues get away with such abuses. Should have rubbed it in their faces.
The EU wallet seems to expect the user to simply have an Android phone with Google Play services that passes Google Hardware Attestation, or alternatively an iOS phone, or apparently you’re not a citizen: https://leminal.space/post/31858818/21120139
Don’t buy computers with locked parts. Buy computers with non locked parts. Problem solved.
It’s not that easy earlier all phones had unlocked or unlockable bootloader but now only few do. Even xiomi once hailed as cheap phone for custom ROMs now has unlockable bootloader
now only few do
That’s the one you buy then if that’s what matters to you.
To be clear I’m not saying it’s “easy” or that the situation is “good”, only that there are choices and if we as consumers can support them, and as voted can support politicians that do make legislation to protect them (or at least not make others mandatory) then we are still going in the right direction, even if most people don’t care.
That’s the one you buy then if that’s what matters to you.
Yeah. But where can I find a phone with Qi, reverse-Qi, and a 3.5mm jack? Other than the old one I have now, that is.
That’s the false premise…if we just buy the one which isn’t enshittified to hell, there’s less and less options for “enthusiasts” and secondly, most users are fucked, because they just need something that works.
The only way to prevent keep the devices open is via regulatory oversight, forcing politicians to see the relevance of open platform / devices and create rules accordingly. And even that is a massive uphill battle…
Amazing how governments opposed to MAGA/US fascism, ensure the tools for fascism. I will choose “illegal” phone, computer, 3d printer.
The computers in the store, yes. I expect all computers in the store to be phones and the cell company will verify.
Open Source computers will be more important. Might need to brush up on wire wrapping… (Implication being that chip supplies might become dedicated to only those manufacturers that lock the product down.)
The end goal of the elites is eliminating access to actual computers from the masses and using software to manipulate, spy on and control the masses.
That is why libreboot and the Free Software community need active support.
None of us can be free if any of us can’t choose freedom.
They can’t get all computing devices. If desktop PCs are done for, I’ll go to Raspberry Pis. There’s plenty of embedded and industrial computer systems that can be repurposed to use as a general purpose computer.
The cyberpunk dystopia has arrived, prepare your tools and defenses accordingly.
That’s what SecureBoot and TPM paved the way for.
It used to be that similar (and equally bad) ideas were getting traction because of copyright law, e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Broadband_and_Digital_Television_Promotion_Act
Now other excuses for the same thing have been invented. I wonder which will be next.
I don’t feel this push for locking us out of control over our own systems under the cover of “protecting the children with age verification” is anything more than a continued effort to secure a DRM-based hardware system for the MSFT OS and media companies. This smells just like their pushes in the past to steal control over hardware through legal channels. It’s the same war we’ve been fighting for 30 years now.
Read up on the Clipper Chip from the 90’s. What’s old is new again.
Just adding links for the lazy…
Clipper Chip
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip
https://www.cryptomuseum.com/crypto/usa/clipper.htm
Does the age verification stuff matter for this? Microsoft, if they wanted to, could already lock down systems in this way.
