this post was submitted on 29 May 2025

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Forced E-Waste PCs And The Case Of Windows 11’s Trusted Platform (hackaday.com)

submitted 1 week ago by undead_falco@programming.dev to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Little Brother is a novel about a future dystopia where copyright laws have been allowed free rein to destroy people's lives.

It's legislated that only "secure" hardware is allowed, but hardware is by definition fixed, which means that every time a vulnerability is found - which is inevitable - there is a hardware recall. So the black market is full of hardware which is proven to have jailbreaking vulnerabilities.

Just a glimpse of where all this "trusted", "secure" computing might lead.

As a short video I saw many years ago explained on the concept: "trust always depends on mutuality, and they already decided not to trust you, so why should you trust them?"

Edit: holy shit, it's 15 years old, and "anti rrusted computing video dutch voice over" (turns out the guy is German actually) was enough to find it:

https://www.lafkon.net/work/trustedcomputing/

[–] towelie@lemm.ee 0 points 5 days ago

It may be a bold of me to say, but I hold the controversial opinion that I don't really give a shit which computer OS you use. If you can use a mouse and keyboard to navigate a desktop environment then 🤙 you are ahead of the curve at this point.

[–] Guidy@lemmy.world 0 points 6 days ago (2 children)

ROFL no. I once knew someone who got offered an upgrade from whatever to Windows 10, only for it to fail half way through because their CPU was some weird corner case that the OS thought it supported but when it was time to boot... didn't.

Also if you want to talk e-waste, look no further than Chromebooks.

Windows 11 has problems, this is hardly one of them.

[–] MattTheProgrammer@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago

Chromebooks and Apple products hitting EoL for sure.

[–] Baguette@lemm.ee 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Chromebooks sound good in theory but fall short because kids are great at breaking them and there is a lack of repairability.

There is also chromeos being kinda ass

[–] coffee_tacos@mander.xyz 1 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Idk about the lack of repairability, those things are really easy and cheap to fix in my experience. They are at least no less repairable than 95% of laptops on the market.

[–] Baguette@lemm.ee 1 points 5 days ago

Depends on what. The most common thing i see is that the kids mess with either the keyboard and or the screen, which you're basically forced to scavenge another broken Chromebook for because the replacement parts are pretty much like half the cost of the chromebook

If it's something simple then yea I agree, but kids are menaces against their chromebook so damage usually ends up being on the extreme side.

[–] towelie@lemm.ee 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

I couldn't bear to make e-waste, so I repaired two c.~2012 era chromebooks earlier this year. The end result was equal parts rewarding experience and a complete was of my time xD. Those sandy bridge cpus are sloooow

[–] audaxdreik@pawb.social 90 points 1 week ago (13 children)

The article focuses a lot on the security of the boot process, but there's no reason the TPM can't be used for DRM as well (as an example, https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/5283799). It's correct when it points out the locked down nature of consoles and phones.

We could conceivably be in for a future where Windows refuses to run code that's not validated even after the OS boots. Or where it sees pirated software on the system and refuses to function in some manner until the software is removed/corrected to its liking.

There are so many possibilities here and all of them are bad.

Forced online accounts so Microsoft always knows when/where you login
Stored encryption keys so Microsoft could theoretically provide access to any computer the government requests
Telemetry already reporting god only knows what metrics about what and how you use your software
Forced AI that literally watches everything you do on your screen storing it in a known location making for a valuable target and also potentially/likely being used to create more telemetry and insights into your habits
Eventual full control over your hardware by enforcing "trusted platform" restrictions

It's so fucking brazen I'm gobsmacked. As an elder Millennial, I get it, I can already hear most of you tallying in your head if having to care about your OS is gonna be the final straw . This is no longer a nerdy request to please use Linux, this is a five alarm fire. Add to all this how much Microsoft is in bed with the US government and potential issues with all that on the horizon and I really, truly believe it's time to switch, for your own good.

Please. Even if you're not going to run out and install Linux tomorrow, you need to start mentally preparing yourself for the inevitability of the task. Get yourself accustomed to the idea and when you're ready to dip your toes in, just know how many resources are out there for you.

And to the Linux community out there, there are going to be a lot of newcomers who don't have the technical skills to undertake this and enjoy/appreciate this in the same way as you do. Be kind to them, the need for us to support each other has never been greater. Please.

[–] Dran_Arcana@lemmy.world 52 points 1 week ago (1 children)

DRM is already the primary purpose of trusted compute if you read shareholder meeting transcripts; security is a marketing side effect.

[–] audaxdreik@pawb.social 27 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Ya boy Richard Stallman agrees and has been saying this for years (although this article is more recentish), https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/can-you-trust.en.html

“Treacherous computing” is a more appropriate name, because the plan is designed to make sure your computer will systematically disobey you. In fact, it is designed to stop your computer from functioning as a general-purpose computer. Every operation may require explicit permission.

As of 2022, the TPM2, a new “Trusted Platform Module”, really does support remote attestation and can support DRM. The threat I warned about in 2002 has become terrifyingly real.

Actual, honest to god reasons to upgrade to Windows 11 are already vague and questionable. Your average user probably doesn't even see any particular reason and only perceives the nuisance of it. But it's hard to fully close your iron fist around a platform when TPM enablement is so sparse in the consumer space. So what better way to do it than a mandatory OS upgrade with it as a system requirement and assure all (or a vast majority of) systems align at once?

Of course there are ways for stubborn users to skirt those requirements, but that misses the primary point of Trusted Computing. While the OS may baseline function to some degree, there's no telling what functionality may be crippled by not being in a trusted state. EDIT: For example, this could easily tie into games with anti-cheat such that they will refuse to run on Windows 11 unless TPM is enabled.

I don't know the future any better than anyone else, I'm just trying to read the winds at the moment. I suspect they may not try to pull the entire trap closed all at once and that Windows 11 may continue to more or less function as we've seen past iterations. But the pieces will be in place by then and it's only a matter of time before some greedy exec gives the word .....

[–] LedgeDrop@lemm.ee 23 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I suspect they may not try to pull the entire trap closed all at once and that Windows 11 may continue to more or less function as we've seen past iterations

Microsoft will be taking a page from Google playbook. Google has be gradually reducing the "openness" of their android platform. They now have these "security checks" enforced on android. Meaning that it's trivial for an application to determine if the phone a "genuine android" or not.

This'll trickle into webbrowser too (if it's not already in browsers like chrome). It's only a matter of time before web pages will be able to determine if they're running on a "secure OS" and fail to run. It'll start out with your banking website, then expand to shopping websites, ultimately every page will enforce it ("oh, I see you have an unauthorized browser plug in installed. We care about your security, therefore we won't run. Please restore your device to it's secure defaults.")

This future is so horrible and Linux with its 4% market share won't change anything.

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[–] plumbercraic@lemmy.sdf.org 55 points 1 week ago (7 children)

I can hear the ‘just use Linux/BSD/etc.’ crowd already clamoring in the comments, and will preface this by saying that although I use Linux and BSD on a nearly daily basis, I would not want to use it as my primary desktop system for too many reasons to go into here.

Still though.

🐧

[–] thesmokingman@programming.dev 31 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (6 children)

This rings a little hollow to me. Most of the people I know that understand Linux can quickly summarize why they might not use it as their daily driver (eg staying on macOS for graphics/video or staying on Windows for desktop Word/Excel). If you can’t summarize that quickly, it really makes me wonder if you really understand it. I’m not trying to No True Scotsman my way around it; I really don’t understand.

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[–] medem@lemmy.wtf 23 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You can argue all you want about TPM and its 'security'. I ALWAYS thought that forcing users to use TPM 2+ hardware is planned obsolescence and nothing/no one will convince me otherwise.

The only thing affected users can and should do is to leave that PoS of an 'operating system'.

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[–] VagueAnodyneComments@lemmy.blahaj.zone 19 points 1 week ago

yeah I'm over here trusting them to flood the scrap market with AM4 motherboards so I can build Linux machines

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