New Post: You Should Be In Control Of Your Tech

So… if you buy from apple you have tech but no control. If you buy from purism you have control but no tech. The choice is always yours!
(sorry, I couldn’t resist :crazy_face:)

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Not much. Nowhere near enough.

It will come as no surprise to readers of this forum that users of mainstream phones, tablets, laptops, desktops don’t own their devices. Their devices own them.

TVs, as mentioned in the post, are the new frontier.

But how far does this problem go?

“Owners” of PV equipment will know that this problem goes as far as the inverter and the hardware associated with the battery. That even has a nice covert channel that is potentially beyond your ability to block.

Noone in his or her right mind would bring in home automation equipment but it won’t come as any surprise to readers of this forum that all of that equipment owns you.

Printers are a potential problem area.

Cars are becoming a problem.

When will network equipment become a new front? When will your fridge become a new front?

How far beyond all of the above does this problem go?

While part of the solution is supporting open source, open platforms, open vendors … I have believed for a long time that unfortunately government also has to be part of the solution. (I say “unfortunately” because government is also part of the problem.) As long as vendors can legally get away with selling spyware, they will. Of course the landscape for government action varies dramatically between countries.

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I’m curious what kind of tech Purism can’t offer against the bad apple?
I only know that Apple it is huge business company.

I think he or she was just having a whine about delivery delays.

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I eagerly await a PureTV stick to replace my Roku. The Roku is better than connecting the “smart” tv connected directly to the internet, but I doubt that will last long.

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Yes, exactly that. Bought my wife iphone - now phone has her. Bought myself L5. Well, you know the story :slight_smile:

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https://nitter.net/isislovecruft/status/1487947074901463040
(discussion on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30147379).

And related comix:

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Apart from the laughs, that comic also points out another new frontier that is a major problem now: web cams and other security cameras.

People install them without realising that they can easily be reducing their security, not improving it.

A lot of them operate as a cloud model where very little resides on your local network and a lot happens beyond your control in the cloud. The device may even be basically useless unless you consent to send everything to the cloud. Hmmm.

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I guess the problem with a PureTV stick would be that so many of the TV services people would expect from it are proprietary and would never run on a PureOS derivative (Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Apple TV etc etc).

A partnership with Jellyfin (Open source, self-hosted Plex competitor - https://jellyfin.org/) could be great though. A PureTV stick that ran an optimized client for that really well would be awesome. Stremio is also open source and could be another option.

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And cars. I could even see the smoke alarm being a problem. I could see them being connected to one’s security system.

Also maybe the broom.

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My techs work by the hour. If not, I fire them. How’s that for control?

:+1:

Regulations vary from country to country. I don’t think that’s a requirement here. Here they must be interconnected to each other (if you have multiple detectors) and must have both mains and battery power. But, yes, they can be connected to a security system and these days the security system is most likely to be connected to the telecommunications network in some way, if remotely monitored.

Cars are already mentioned above.

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And to the insurance company (or all insurance companies).

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Prescient words written by Frank Herbert in 1965:

Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free.
But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.

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I’m expecting PureTV to host a bunch of clients, proprietary or not. I would expect it to provide a single UI that would connect to any service that published a complete API, passing through user-provided authentication credentials if required. I want TV to work like Podcast 2.0 app.

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I am not in control of my Librem 5, I cannot attempt to investigate GPS problems with friend, ESA/Galileo expert, when we do not have documentation of GPS antenna design and full placement of the components on the board.

Where is placed ANT3 ECT818000500 connector? It seems to be 1 Inner needle IPEX Board Edge -40 ~+85 6GHz 50 1.5mm SMD RF Connectors / Coaxial Connectors ROHS.

It i place where we can try to inject and measure signals…

I understand concerns etc… But I then say we are not open in the hardware honestly… OK, but then there is probably problem and lack of the experts in the Purism company… So you should hire experts and not to push one PR article after another claiming something which is true at least only partially.

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Not very knowledgable about hardware but does this help at all?

Yes, I have schematics a we have analyzed it with my friend. We have mapped some components found on PCB to it.

I have got even some excepts of PCB components placement from Purims support later with instructions to replace some parts. But random soldering on the board when it is not fully clear which pars are on the png exports calms our motivation down. You have to understand it is calming down our enthusiasm. We are used to work, debug, design etc. on our own hardware or modules where we have full schematics and are really open. Eve my actual company work for ESA with 80 k EUR price tag is fully open and we are commercial busyness company and do not promote ourselves same way as a purism based on crowd funding… So Librem 5 now lays at home switched off. Yes, I am happy that I have contributed by my money to Posh and other open stuff development, I have no problem to leave Librem 5 on hold for year or for ever. I have lot other open stuff to do.

Please keep the conversation in here on topic instead of veering into your support issue.

For an older theme try: The Feeling of Power by Isaac Asimov 1959

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