[conspire] Quiet, Freedom-compatible NAT/firewall/misc box?

[Don Marti]

begin Rick Moen quotation of Wed, Mar 18, 2015 at 02:27:19PM -0700:

> The very high rate of chipset churn is related to another aspect:  In
> embedded computing (as an industry), the expectation is that nothing
> needs to be upgradeable, because you're expected to just throw the thing
> away and get a newer one, rather than upgrade it.

Yes, let's make all the devices on the market
have the glass go as close to the edge as possible.
Because it looks cool.  And people are more likely to
buy a device that has a few mm of cool-looking extra
glass on the edge, beyond the actual display area,
than a device that can survive a drop.

> E.g., normal non-developer people with Android smartphones aren't
> expected to ever upgrade Android.  They're expected to get new 'phones.
> And this mindset is absolutely routine in ARM-based computing, which is
> basically embedded computing.

When the hardware is designed to shatter (ignoring
the don't make the glass go too close to the edge
lessons of every portable device ever made, from
radios to multimeters) the software might as well be
disposable, too.

Also, you can hire the guys who took the short bus to
law school to write your software licenses...
  http://mer-project.blogspot.com/2015/03/some-doubts-about-gpl-licensing-and-bq.html

> So, those of us who expect to run secure, fixed, updated kernels are
> regarded as freaks and outside the target market.
> 
> Smartphones and tablets are likely to remain security nightmares, for
> that reason alone, and the mindset stands in the way IMO of the hardware
> being good for Linux use.

Speaking of Android....
  http://arxiv.org/pdf/1502.06577v1.pdf
Have a look at the table on page 3.  Yes, Google AdMob
sends "user age" and "user gender" over un-encrypted
HTTP (!)  (Fair warning: when I do set up my new Linux
router (thanks all for recommendations), I'm going
to have it sniff this.)

-- 
Don Marti                    
http://zgp.org/~dmarti/
dmarti at zgp.org