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0 pointsRiverCrochet1y ago0 comments

0. Most of the UEFI is already open source. See TianoCore.

1. There are some things that may need to be updated from time to time that need to be applied before the OS is loaded - microcode updates being one of these. I would still like a physical write-enable switch.

2. Making a keyboard that is not a real keyboard is easier than ever with things like Arduino and Raspberry Pi, and it doesn't matter the interface. There is probably not a way to verify physical presence that can't be duplicated remotely. At some point humanity has to get beyond the primitive mentality of "this stuff on a computer monitor/from a speaker looks/sounds just like real stuff so it is the real stuff" and we have to accept that computers are machines and not in and of themselves a proxy for reality unless specifically considered so.

3. Funny, the original 1981 PC booted to ROM BASIC if it couldn't boot off of anything, so it was useful without an OS. I really wish UEFI firmware was on a replaceable SD card and the system would literally have no firmware if it was not present. I would pay the 2 cents more it would cost OEMs. With all the capability in modern chipsets I feel like this would be trivial to do.

4. Good idea. I wish computers had a separate display that is attached through some legacy interface like RS-232 and that doesn't go through VGA at all for this purpose, like a cheap LCD screen.

5. The old punched cards were very low density, but had one really nice property: you could physically see the data with nothing more than your eyes. It's funny that a stack of punched cards could potentially be more secure than millions of instructions of code hidden in a NAND or ROM that you cannot see or verify except with another device that you also have to trust and run on a platform you trust. Even then you can't really see the bits on a NAND or ROM without special expensive equipment. It'd be cool if there could be a high-density storage device where the binary contents are somehow physically viewable and discernable without a CPU needed. Something like QR codes but much, much more high density.

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zzo38computer1y ago

1. Yes. However, disallowing the operating system from automatically starting does not mean that the operating system cannot be started at all. If you deliberately want the operating system to add microcode updates like that, then you can perhaps type "AUTOBOOT" (or whatever the appropriate command is) at the Forth prompt that comes up when the write-enable switch is activated (or, if you don't like that, you can instead write the code to read the microcode updates from a disk, verify their cryptographic hash, and then apply them). FOSS microcode updates would also help with the security issues when doing so.

2. This is true, and can be useful in some circumstances, but having a dedicated port is still more secure, since it means that it will only act as a keyboard if you expect it to do so. (This does not prevent the external device from providing undesired input if it is connected to the keyboard port, but it does prevent it from doing so if it is connected to a different port.)

3. I know that the original 1981 PC has ROM BASIC, and I think that newer computers ought to be designed to do such a thing too (although you could use Forth instead of BASIC if you prefer).

4. I meant an internal connection, not related to any of the existing ones; leaving the RS-232 free for connecting external devices that will use RS-232.

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