Isn’t GitHub already blocked in China?

I know there are already a number of extensions specified in the specifications, such that Risc-V could be relevant to design the simplest of microcontroller up to the most powerful super computer. I suppose it is possible and allowed to design a CPU with proprietary extensions. What should prevent an ARM type of situation is the fact that so many use-cases are already covered by the open specifications. What is not there yet, to my knowledge, are things like graphics, video, neural-net acceleration.

Yes, I admit it’s still a pretty complex explanation. I gave it my best shot :)

RISC-V (pronounced risk five), is a Free open-source Instruction Set Architecture (ISA). Other well established ISA like x86, amd64 (Intel and AMD) and ARM, are proprietary and therefore, one must pay every expensive licenses to design and build a processor using these architectures. You don’t need to pay a license to build a RISC-V processor, you only need to follow the specifications. That doesn’t mean the CPU design is also free, no, they stay very much the closed property of the designer, but RISC-V represents non the less, a very big step towards more transparency and technology freedom.

Do not expect this thing to be a daily driver. It’s aimed at developers who need a Risc-V testing platform. Very few Software will run on it unless you can spend hours making it compile for Risk-V and lets not talk about drivers. Also it will likely cost over $1000.

I am exited for the future of Risc-V in the consumer space, but we aren’t there yet.

check the privacy policy of meta and TikTok vs Apple

Saying Apple is much better than TikTok, Meta and Google, is just setting the bare very low… Apple advertise heavily about how privacy oriented they are, it’s only fair to compare them to other privacy champions (regardless of company size) e.g. Proton, Signal.

[…] just isn’t possible for your average user […] Users don’t want to know what E2E is […]

I absolutely agree with you. It’s not possible for most to be a security conscious self-hosting gourou, and we can’t expect for everyone to care about digital privacy and security. It’s why I see it as our duty, as more tech-savy people, to set the standard for the industry, advocate and lobby for the companies to do better.

You don’t ask nurse to set the safety standards for electrical installations, but everyone benefits from electricians and engineers defining and setting these safety standards !

It’s actually not that people don’t care about privacy. It’s they don’t know about privacy, because they don’t think about it, and it’s alright. But ask someone random to hand you over their phone unlocked and start browsing their photos. They will care.

Anyway, I’m glad we could have an educating conversation here. I got to learn a couple of things :)

Apple doesn’t send your contact info or other details into the cloud, all that shit is anonymized.

Are you sure about that ? It is written in their Legal Privacy Policy in the chapter “Personal Data Apple Collects from You”:

Contact Information. Data such as name, email address, physical address, phone number, or other contact information

Doesn’t seems so anonymized to me…

deleted by creator

I may not be very well informed about it, I admit. Would you have documents to share ? All I seem to find about Intel security engine is about how closed it is and how it has been exploited by bad actors in the past to gain elevated privileges in targeted hacks. It sucks, that’s for sure. But it doesn’t have much to do with the mass data collection employed by Google, Apple, Open AI, etc.

Come on… You telling me they have to collect all this data to offer the service ? They have to send your health information to the main server to provide you your daily step count ?

Having it all disclose in the privacy policy is a formality. Honestly, have you read it carefully before buying your first iPhone? And review it again every time they’ve updated it?

Today you seem satisfied with the amount of data they collect about you and how they use it. Where do you set the boundaries? When would it be too far for you, making you reconsider using these products?

I am not trying to offend you. I am legitimately interested.

but as far as I’m aware they’ve never been caught doing anything remotely out of scope of their tight knit privacy policies with user data

That’s every interesting point. Let’s read a bit of their privacy policy :

At Apple, we believe that you can have great products and great privacy. This means that we strive to collect only the personal data that we need.

Hum, interesting… What do they need?

Apple, we may collect a variety of information, including:

• Account Information. Your Apple ID and related account details, including email address, devices registered, account status, and age
• Device Information. Data from which your device could be identified, such as device serial number, or about your device, such as browser type
• Contact Information. Data such as name, email address, physical address, phone number, or other contact information
• Payment Information. Data about your billing address and method of payment, such as bank details, credit, debit, or other payment card information
• Transaction Information. Data about purchases of Apple products and services or transactions facilitated by Apple, including purchases on Apple platforms
• Fraud Prevention Information. Data used to help identify and prevent fraud, including a device trust score

This one is particularly interesting, very very ambitious, this could be anything! What is the device trust score?

• Usage Data. Data about your activity on and use of our offerings, such as app launches within our services, including browsing history; search history; product interaction; crash data, performance and other diagnostic data; and other usage data
• Location Information. Precise location only to support services such as Find My or where you agree for region-specific services, and coarse location

• Health Information. Data relating to the health status of an individual, including data related to one’s physical or mental health or condition. Personal health data also includes data that can be used to make inferences about or detect the health status of an individual. If you participate in a study using an Apple Health Research Study app, the policy governing the privacy of your personal data is described in the Apple Health Study Apps Privacy Policy.
• Fitness Information. Details relating to your fitness and exercise information where you choose to share them
• Financial Information. Details including salary, income, and assets information where collected, and information related to Apple-branded financial offerings
• Government ID Data. In certain jurisdictions, we may ask for a government-issued ID in limited circumstances, including when setting up a wireless account and activating your device, for the purpose of extending commercial credit, managing reservations, or as required by law
• Other Information You Provide to Us. Details such as the content of your communications with Apple, including interactions with customer support and contacts through social media channels

Ok, it’s difficult for them to violate their own privacy policy when they literally reserve themselves the right to get anything they want.

BTW, some user-rights associations are not in agreement with Apple on this. Here is one example I could fine very quick: France fines Apple over App Store ad targeting ePrivacy breach | TechCrunch

Intel and AMD security platforms are shit, I know they exist, I don’t trust them either, but the threat model is very different from this AI application. They don’t upload my photos to a server out of my control.

About the power of the hardware, you don’t need to worry too much. My NAS is a SBC with 6 ARM cores and 4GB or RAM. It run flawlessly all the services you’ve listed and more ! (Also, without transcoding for jellyfin).

I don’t know if your budget includes Hard disks, but it should be plenty enough to get you an ready made NAS from Synology or other brands, that will give you an easy start with self-hosting.

If you want to go the DIY route. Then I recommend to build yourself a small computer from a Intel N100 motherboard, or the older J5040. From there you can install Open Media Vault, or otherwise the Linux distribution you are the most familiar with, and install Docker. You can check Linuxserver.io for many guides for spinning up docker containers for all of the services you’ve listed.

No source-code, no trust. How good is my data on their super secure servers if they have the encryption keys.

How good is a 3rd party scrutiny if those are mandated and paid by Apple to make the audits?

Privacy?

• Apple: trust me dude
• Andrej: <3

Signal displays text bubbles in all sorts of colors. But I feel the encryption is stronger when the bubble is pink 🩷

Streaming services don’t support artists in any meaningful way.

Instead, buy music for download when it’s available (Bandcamp and the like).

If not possible, just pirate it and buy merchandise or go to a concert. You will bring as much revenue to the artists this way, than listening to them on Spotify for 200 years non stop, and it will be cheaper for you in the end.

It has been purchased by EPIC and a large portion of the staff was layed off. But it is still up and you can still buy music there.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/16/23919551/bandcamp-layoffs-epic-songtradr

GrapheneOS has an option to restart the phone after a given time without any successful unlock. I have it set to 8 hours, so it reboots every night. Shorter is possible.

A freshly restarted phone is in its safest state. Necessary to input the unlock code, strict minimum required processes running in the background.

Sorry, can’t find the stuff I read about it a while back when I was interested about it, or was it a YouTube video?

Anyway, here is what I remember: having the radioactive fuel as a liquid makes it easier to leak, and once that’s happened, the environment damage will spread faster to ground water. Also sodium salt is liquid at high temperature, at which it will spontaneously catch fire in contact with oxygen (air), so any leak will cause a catastrophic fire, and this is what caused the demise of the French prototype “Projet Phénix” in the 70s.