<clemens3>
I like the word abusing: The CCP (Chinese Communist Party) is abusing RISC-V to get around U.S. dominance of the intellectual property needed to design chips.
<clemens3>
seems the freedom fighters don't like others abusing the freedom to share knowledge
<tsenko>
freedom fighters is a money laundering scam .. look who's funding their NGOs
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<Armand>
clemens3: How exactly does one "abuse" something that's freely available.. ?
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<[exa]>
"Think about the poor industries!!!" :D
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<tsenko>
what are you doing to riscv, ccp .. why don't you try it on somebody your size
<Armand>
"Step-CCP! What are you doing?!?"
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<muurkha>
> Legislation was passed or tabled that seriously undermined human rights, including replacing the UK’s primary human rights protection instrument and attacks on the rights to freedom of assembly and expression and to asylum. Further proposals were launched that would provide impunity for grave human rights violations. Effective access to sexual and reproductive support remained inconsistent across the
<muurkha>
UK.
<Armand>
Well, that's totally unbiased and bound to be absolutely true. :P
<valerius>
lol... yeah, so basically this is completely off-topic
<Armand>
Indeed.
<muurkha>
where the government doesn't care much about Joe Public unless he's Irish, a trade unionist, a refugee, attempting to protest, or needing an abortion in Northern Ireland
<Armand>
Eeeerrrrr..... wut?
<valerius>
perhaps this is a conversation that is better taken elsewhere
<muurkha>
Amnesty is pretty strongly biased, but their bias is in favor of the UK
<Armand>
valerius: Yeah, totally agree because there's a strong stank of absolute bullshit around.
<valerius>
sorry, I only jumped in to point out that nobody should worry about RISC-V based devices being spy devices :p
<muurkha>
valerius: it's less of a concern than with non-RISC-V devices, but only slightly
<valerius>
...unless we decide to make them spy devices, in which case that's fully on topic
<valerius>
personally, I need to port a coroutine library to RISC-V
<valerius>
so I will need to learn the instruction set
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<muurkha>
clemens3: actually though Armand is in the UK
<clemens3>
indeed, UK wins
<clemens3>
at least in Europe
<valerius>
I see this whole conversation as basically the same FUD that existed around Linux and open source software back in the 90s
<muurkha>
valerius: RISC-V is a partial solution to the embedded-spyware problem, but only a very partial one
<clemens3>
both areas have been commercialized by now
<valerius>
"oh no, someone is making it easier to enter into this competitive space... bring out the propaganda"
<muurkha>
the fact that Minix is free software doesn't protect Intel users from IME
<muurkha>
at least not much
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<muurkha>
if your RISC-V CPU is a softcore you're instantiating in an FPGA, its open-source nature provides you with some protection, particularly if it's a design that postdates the FPGA's manufacture
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<muurkha>
but if you're buying silicon from Western Digital or SiFive, you can't inspect it to find potential backdoors or recompile it to remove them
<valerius>
hmmm... that sounds like a fun idea
<muurkha>
this is slightly better than the situation with Intel and AMD and Qualcomm and Huawei, but only slightly
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<muurkha>
hardware is inherently, you might say, pre-TiVoized
<muurkha>
the anti-TiVoization measures in the GPLv3 don't provide any real protection, and of course RISC-V isn't under any sort of copyleft
<muurkha>
not GPL, not even CC-BY-SA
<muurkha>
as the Crypto AG scandal showed, these issues have been absolutely central concerns in international politics for decades now, and if anything they've grown in importance since then
<muurkha>
even if most people are unaware of them
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<mps>
OT but, through all known history some people always inventing methods to spy on other people, nothing new just technology for spying changes over time
<muurkha>
the available technology fundamentally changes which power relations are stable and which are unstable
<muurkha>
that's why we have the free software movement in the first place
<mps>
yes, always people searched method to protect self from spying. never ending race
<muurkha>
none of the Crypto AG scandal, Tor, and Bitcoin were possible 300 years ago
<muurkha>
90% of people had to farm to survive
<valerius>
what attracts me to RISC-V is actually that change in power dynamic
<valerius>
similar reasons to what attracted me to open source software
<muurkha>
yes
<muurkha>
I think that's probably true for most of us
<muurkha>
and it's precisely what's alarming whoever the racist dumbfuck quoted in that article was
<muurkha>
Representative Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee
<muurkha>
also "Republican Senator Marco Rubio and Democratic Senator Mark Warner"
<valerius>
yeah, this article basically reminds me of the same stuff I saw in the 90s around Linux
<valerius>
I recall Linux being the software implementation of communism
<valerius>
support Microsoft
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<muurkha>
they're terrified they'll lose the control over other countries' telecommunications equipment that they've been using to spy on those countries through backdoors for literally 50 years
<muurkha>
and they're right; they will
<muurkha>
here in Argentina one of my friends was raped by the police during the last dictatorship, which was a part of the CIA's Operation Condor. another fled the country with her family to avoid disappearing forever in the middle of the night
<muurkha>
the excuse then was also stopping Communism, with perhaps a bit more realism: there were in fact Communist insurgencies active at the time
<clemens3>
nothing beats talking to people from other countries
<muurkha>
I am very much in favor of reducing the centralization of power that gives government free rein to commit such human-rights abuses, and open-source hardware is an important part of that, but it's still only a small part; as long as the fabs are centrally controlled, they're still central points of vulnerability where governments can apply pressure (for example, to insert backdoors)
<muurkha>
and of course right now 80% of the population is walking around with Linux boxes in their pocket that Google has root on and they don't
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<valerius>
lol... yes, if you are from Argentina then you know about such things
<valerius>
perhaps I am not the only one sipping yerba mate while having this conversation then ;)
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<muurkha>
heh
<muurkha>
yes, I do in fact have a mate full of yerba right next to the keyboard at this very moment :)
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<sorear>
i don't think this has crossed the line just yet and there's nothing else going on, but we do have a very lightly used #riscv-offtopic
<muurkha>
:)
<muurkha>
I think we strayed into off-topic stuff but came back
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<jrtc27>
yeah, geopolitical politics is probably something that should be encouraged to make use of -offtopic
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<somlo>
muurkha: you might find this https://archive.fosdem.org/2023/schedule/event/rv_selfhosting_all_the_way_down/ interesting -- it's AFAIK the "state of the art" in how far you can leverage freely available sources to minimize the chances of having any back doors in your hardware+software stack (disclaimer: I'm the author, so this might be considered a "shameless plug" :)
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<clemens3>
riscv became just politics, so was totally ontopic
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<muurkha>
somlo: thanks!
<muurkha>
this is very relevant to my interests
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<jrtc27>
the intersection of RISC-V and politics is on-topic, but waving russian flags in germany, police raping people in argentina or anti-human rights laws aren't so much
<bbyoume>
would alibaba backdoor its chip/soc , including under order of chinese gov , and wouldnt they tell the usa since they used heavy western capital, including at foundng, ipo by us and jpn banks iirc, etc. ?
<gurki>
im not sure its wise to allow this intersection since well get a lot of ... whatever this is ^
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<bbyoume>
gurki: oshw is nice, but it loses much of the point for me if they are backdoored all the same as proprietary...oshw has been pricier to date, with "few forks", what other reasons remain?
<gurki>
youre just making random statements without any substance to it
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<bbyoume>
gurki: i didnt state they were backdoored, just that im worried or asking if they are or.. if anyone here has insight as to how close alibaba is to china vs u.s. or world interests?
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<somlo>
whether it is a proprietary chip design firm creating masks from proprietary sources using proprietary tools, or (at the other extreme end of the spectrum) if it is you creating masks from 100% free sources using 100% free tools: once you ship those masks to a chip foundry you don't own/control, whether or not the silicon you get back has been backdoored or not is *unknowable*
<somlo>
assuming it's ASIC CPUs we're talking about; you can mitigate some of that by using soft-core CPUs on FPGAs, at an extreme performance cost
<somlo>
you get fewer opportunities for backdoor insertion with oshw (fabrication time *only*), vs. proprietary all-the-way-down (backdoors could be inserted by the toolchain or in the design itself, in *addition* to during fabrication)
<somlo>
but asic fabrication is the big one against which there's no clever workaround available at this time, AFAIK
<somlo>
there's stuff I read about fabbing various layers of the asic die at "non-colluding" independent foundries, but that sounds like a huge PITA :)
<sorear>
things will be clearer as we get further into the post-moore era and process standardization becomes a thing
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<somlo>
you mean once everything standardizes on "0nm" node size, and everyone finally catches up? :D :D
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<sorear>
who knows
* pabs3
wonders how far bunnie has gotten with his verification work yet