Very weird this is not getting more upvotes. If you've ever looked in to IPMI and BMCs, the stuff is scary. Once properly backdoored (available through either route), you can never confidently reclaim full control of modern hardware. It has to be chucked.
My opinion is definitely colored by political bias, but it seems like HN's culture has become a lot less concerned with or aligned with the concerns of libre computing in recent years (if it ever was) in favor of startup buzz. I've come to see the two as more or less incompatible if not outright at odds.
I'll admit I couldn't casually afford one of their desktops, but I pledged on crowdsupply to buy one anyway because I so badly wanted the Talos to succeed. While my credit card breathes a sigh of relief, I'm honestly a bit saddened this did not pan out. I really hope the outcome of this campaign isn't the "referendum" on workstations and owner-controlled computing at this calibre that Raptor Engineering suggested it was.
Really sucks that they're shutting down, was looking forward to POWER 8/9 based desktop machines.