Call for stories: Ever wanted to tweak software embedded in a product you own, but found yourself stymied by digital locks? We want to hear from you! https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/10/tell-us-how-you-want-modify-and-repair-devices-your-life
Update: I just trimmed this to shape it and remove the neck beard and it's not too bad. I may just let it fill in a bit and see what that looks like...
New episode out! @katherined @doc and @kyle talk about facial recognition and surveillance technology in the hands of individuals, and how that affects the balance of power. https://reality2cast.com/46 #FacialRecognition #privacy #Surveillance #technology #AI #podcast
I was inspired to expand this into a full article to give myself a bit more space to talk about the issues:
https://puri.sm/posts/the-general-purpose-computer-in-your-pocket/
❌ NSA analysts spied on significant others.
❌ Ring employees were caught looking at off-limits footage.
❌ Verkada staff use their own facial recognition tech to harass other employees.
Abuse of dangerous tech often starts with the people who build it. https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkdyqm/surveillance-startup-used-own-cameras-to-harass-coworkers
@davidrevoy Depends on your form factor I suppose, and whether Librem Mini works or whether you need to slot full-size PCI cards, etc.
@davidrevoy I have some (biased) ideas!
Microsoft got in antitrust trouble for bundling IE for free w/ Windows to compete with Netscape.
Now imagine Microsoft controlled whether Netscape could be installed or updated on Windows, and blocked them, and you are closer to the current situation with phones.
@ted The laptops certainly started with that first group originally but has matured into all three over the years. The phone is still early days so it's still primarily getting interest from the FOSS core for now. I expect it will follow the path of the laptops as it matures.
In either case, our desire is to market these products to *everyone* not just FOSS geeks, because it's not only FOSS geeks who deserve privacy, security and freedom.
@ted There are three main categories of customer that map to the legs of the stool.
The traditional FOSS core values our commitment to free software and the fact our hardware fully supports Linux out of the box.
The privacy-focused customer tends to care most about the hardware kill switches and our public commitments to privacy.
Security folks tend to care about code auditability, freed up firmware, Qubes support, and the kill switches.
Some customers are a blend of the three.
@ted Purism currently is trying. Even though the existing FOSS community continues to pigeon-hole Purism into the traditional categories, they would be surprised to discover the parts of our customer base that are outside of the FOSS community and are using Linux for the first time.
We sit on a three-legged stool of privacy, security and freedom and customers come to us based of some combination of those three values.
@ajmartinez @angdraug I think a lot of folks on other platforms still assume Linux on the desktop is the same as it was a decade ago when they switched to OSX and aren't aware of all of the advances.
@twrightsman Their primary goal is to take away disillusioned devs from Macs, but as some of those disillusioned devs might have tried out Linux again after a decade and discovered just how far it's come, I suppose it will have some effect.
It's also a marketing opportunity: "The best Linux development environment isn't Mac or Windows, it's Linux of course."
Technical author, FOSS advocate, public speaker, Linux security & infrastructure geek, author of The Best of Hack and /: Linux Admin Crash Course, Linux Hardening in Hostile Networks and many other books, ex-Linux Journal columnist.