Less dishonest*
Posts by Waseem Alkurdi
1240 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Apr 2018
Microsoft mulls cheap PCs supported by ads, subs
Linux world gains ability to repair exFAT drives
Windows Subsystem for Android declared ready for prime time
Microsoft open-sources its emojis as part of new design philosophy
Concern over growing reach of proprietary firmware BLOBs
A Snapdragon in a ThinkPad: Lenovo unveils the X13s
Believe me, the bootloader is the least of your worries. With the current Windows-on-Snapdragon tablets, you do have an unlocked bootloader, Linux aarch64 can boot, but there's no graphics acceleration, making the thing entirely useless. Blame Qualcomm for that one.
See: https://github.com/aarch64-laptops/build
Microsoft: Russia invasion of Ukraine ‘unlawful, unjustified’
Samsung: We will remotely brick smart TVs looted from our warehouse
'Not great, but usable': GNOME desktop boots on Asahi Linux for Apple M1
Razer ponders how to fix installer that grants admin powers if you plug in a mouse
Re: Razer went full evil back in about 2013 or so
You might like this then: https://github.com/CalcProgrammer1/openrazer-win32
BOFH: They say you either love it or you hate it. We can confirm you're going to hate it
Right to repair shouldn't exist – not because it's wrong but because it's so obviously right
Microsoft has a workaround for 'HiveNightmare' flaw: Nuke your shadow copies from orbit
Re: Time to 'Nuke' Microsoft
Linux is flexible, free / FOSS, light, tinkering-friendly, but not secure.
Bill Gates lays out a three-point plan to rid the world of COVID-19 – and anti-vaxxer cranks aren't gonna like it
"The self-interested thing and the altruistic thing," he said, "are one and the same."
Huh? Has someone forgotten to disconnect this thing before they left for home?
United Arab Emirates’ Mars probe successfully launched and phones home
Honestly no idea what are they proud of
but the mission is significant as it is the first interplanetary effort mounted by an Arab nation. As such it is the source of considerable pride.
If the technology is sourced from Japan, the actual probe was built in the United States, and the expertise is sourced from the West, where's the "Arab" angle? That they funded the project?
It's good that they did *something*, but had they channelled these funds to actually train people who would build the aircraft and manage the mission from top to bottom (perhaps like the Mangalyaan project), it would have been a source of actual pride. Until then, it's just another demonstration of how rich these guys are, not of their actual will to contribute.
Everything must go! Distributors clear shelves of ALL notebooks in Q2, even ones gathering dust over last 12 months
'It's really hard to find maintainers...' Linus Torvalds ponders the future of Linux
Leaked benchmarks from developer kit for Apple's home-baked silicon appear to give Microsoft a run for its money
Of course it won't have the same chip.
"Another point worth noting: there's no guarantee the A12Z chip in the Developer Transition Kit will appear in the first consumer Arm-based Macs, which are expected to land later this year. "
The other well-known Developer Transition Kit, the one for PowerPC to x86, had a Pentium 4, while the final release had a Core Duo chip (which was much more powerful).
Apple said to be removing charger, headphones from upcoming iPhone 12 series
Capture the horrors of war in razor-sharp quality with this ruggedised Samsung phone – or just lob it at enemy forces
The rumor that just won't die: Apple to keep Intel at Arm's length in 2021 with launch of 'A14-powered laptops'
They would be better off porting to ARM and releasing an ipad pro-pro with full macos.
Won't happen, at least currently.
What I would note is that MS' attempt at ARM laptops have not been a spectacular success and the only place I've seen a lot of Google's devices are those dumped on kids in school.
What about phones, which are pretty much mini PCs without a keyboard?
What about the Raspberry Pi and its clones?
What about ARM servers? (I know that ARM servers tend to be specific-purpose as opposed to general-purpose, but hey, it's there)
Welcome to life in the Fossa lane: Ubuntu 20.04 let out of cage and Shuttleworth claims Canonical now 'commercially self sustaining'
Thought you'd go online to buy better laptop for home working? Too bad, UK. So did everyone. Laptops, monitors and WLANs fly off shelves
Re: Mr downvoter
This is also hedging lots of bets on your perceived immunocompetence.
It's a little like playing Russian roulette.
Nation's home workers hitting refresh on 7 April can buy... Honor's bargain-basement Ryzen ultrabook
Look ma, no Intel Management Engine, ish: Purism lifts lid on the Librem Mini, a privacy-focused micro PC
As far as it's known from Intel documentation, Intel MEI loads its firmware from an SPI chip on the motherboard, the same one that holds the BIOS/UEFI.
This project's whole point is to keep only a minimum of MEI components that would still permit the CPU to boot (while obliterating ME functionality).
I said x86 (the architecture), not Intel CPUs themselves. Your question was about how the choice of architecture could affect backdoor presence.
Backdoors could be built in any hardware including open-source hardware. You have to have perfect control of the supply chain, from the individual silicon wafers, even the machinery used to cut and process the wafers, to the couriers transporting your finished CPUs. An impossible amount of control, plain and simple, even for nation-states.
Same goes for software. You have to write your own assembly code if you want to be 100% guaranteed to be free of backdoors.
Re: Good but not great
A stateless laptop isn't a Chromebook. It has persistent storage, but that persistent storage is external to the laptop.
The whole concept of stateless means that the laptop itself doesn't have any chips capable of storing anything (including malware) - everything is moved to an external USB stick. Therefore, malware can't persist in firmware on the machine because the user can replace the stick on demand.
Good but not great
Purism is the ideal candidate for designing the stateless laptop.
Don't know why they don't ... the concept surely makes sense.
All roads lead to Bork in Kansas as Windows puts on a show for motorists
HMD Global revamps infamous commuter-botherer, the Nokia 5310 XpressMusic
Apple updates iPad Pro with a trackpad, faster processor. Is it a real computer now?

You pretty much nailed it here.
Maybe they have a skunkworks project to get their chip to run a full version of macOS, but they haven't demonstrated anything yet.
To be honest, some "practical" proof exists.
Ages ago, the original iPad Air (only the iPad Air) can run Mac OS X Mavericks, because Apple had included ARM binaries of the whole system in the Mavericks release.
Still not a real computer.
Unless you can totally control every partition of that flash storage.
Until you can change out the operating system for anything you might see fit.
Until it runs a real operating system, not a mobile operating system wearing a T-shirt five sizes too big.
The previous release was faster than an i7-8700U, so faster than basically all laptops on the market at the time except gaming laptops and workstation laptops running H-Series chips.
These figures are very suspicious. They are based on benchmarks, which are prone to all sorts of fiddling. And that's for the same SoC on the same OS ... let alone when both are different.
But on the other side, perhaps this is why ARM Apple laptops are coming in 2021 or thereabouts?