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Comment by superkuh | Hacker News Reader

Smart phones are not personal computers. They're shopping/government/etc terminals. You don't and never have controlled them, even with root (re: tight integration of the baseband computer which only the telco has a license for, not you). Their best use re: computing is acting as wifi hotspot for their cell telco CNAT connection. The time to stop using them as computers is now, not when your local government passes these laws. Apple is already forcing it and Google has shown it's cards even if walked it back temporarily.

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You don't own your PC either. All modern PCs have a Trusted Platform Module that the authorities can and will use to lock down PCs eventually. Multiplayer games are already using hardware attestation on PC for anti-cheat.

I don't run any OS or games that would require such a thing. The two modern AMD cpus do have an fTPM but they are certainly not enabled in my UEFI firmware. My 3 other desktop computers including the one I'm typing to you on have no TPM and indeed this computer doesn't even have an Intel Management Engine (ME). And in my other old intel CPUs that do have ME I disable it and coreboot.

I can do whatever I want to my PC hardware and my software remains under my control. This is quite different than cell phone based computer platforms.

So, it's not locked down now. I won't lock my existing PCs I hand assembled down in the future, and I'd never buy any hardware that was locked down. In fact, I've never bought or used a smartphone because of this.

>You don't own your PC either.

Yes, I do.

you are right, but you are misplacing the blame. it's not that you dont own your phone, it's that you dont own your bank account and the bank can dictate how you access it

I see your point and it's valid in this context. But both ends of non-ownership contribute. One doesn't own the smartphone and one doesn't own the bank account.

The National Credit Union Federation of Korea (NACUFOK) represents over 800 member-owned unions (https://www.cu.co.kr/english/main.do), and then there is the even larger Saemaul Geumgo (MG) network which operates as community credit cooperatives with millions of members. These people ostensibly own their "bank" accounts.

Sounds dystopian. I hope projects like OsmocomBB and Purism Librem will shape the future

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