[trome]

So why not build our own network with crypto, blackjack & hookers on libre hardware? Say on an OrangePi PC2 with a bunch of high gain USB 5GHz radios attached, and throw some spinning rust on there so you can run a Nextcloud instance and/or join your local Ceph cluster/IPFS.

We have CJDNS (which salsa20's all your data & can VPN legacy networks to ya), fully FLOSS SBCs for under $20ea, and 802.11n and AC outdoor radios can be had for cheap, this is merely a community involvement problem.

[timonovici]

I'm a software engineer myself - but I can't even contribute to projects such as lowRISC - is way beyond my abilities. Right now I'm learning to program microcontrollers, and I want to learn about FPGA's as the next step.

I also work at a company that has exactly this focus - to sell, and eventually produce devices that can be run with free software from top to bottom - but I don't see ourselves producing our own devices in the next 5 years, even if we would become wildly sucessful.

The hope seems to lie with ARM for the moment - C100 / C201 have even the Embedded Controller (EC) code avaiable - but they do have plans to implement something simillar to ME, AFAIK.

[trome]

Yeah, I'm not advocating for building our own SoC, as just taping out a chip is tens of millions, instead I'm advocating for using inexpensive Arm64 chips that already are a known quantity (firmware free, mainlined drivers) to build a fast & secure network, and scale from there.

[timonovici]

The issue is not widely known, silicon is very costly to manufacture, and most people frankly don't care, as long that spying is unobtrusive (and hell it is so).

Also, most people already are living with the thought that their computers are cracked/hacked/virused the moment they are connected to the internet - all my friends and relatives ask me to check their computer for viruses - almost none trust their computers or phones (especially Android phones, it seems). For such people, where this is the natural state of the world, it's very hard to imagine that they can change anything about it - and telling them that there are backdoors from the moment the laptop is assembled, doesn't help much.

[trome]

Sure, but the silicon & libre drivers already exist and don't need to be manufactured, so at this point its a marketing problem of selling a more secure computing box.

[throwawayish]

Anyone trusting a computer - any computer - is a giant fool in my book. Trust is a strong word, and computers suck balls fundamentally at keeping information safe.

[Famicoman]

tomesh is literally doing CJDNS+OrangePiZero+5GHz+WAP+802.11s to get the most inexpensive yet performant meshing node. Come chat via Matrix at #software:tomesh.net

[trome]

Mmm, how is throughput? I know that on an OrangePi PC (same Allwinner H3) I was getting 5MB/s for a point to point transfer, didn't check relay throughput though. I assume the H5 would do better with gigabit and 2.5x better NEON performance, but I've yet to test (just got kernel 4.10 built for it & booting Debian reliably).

[Famicoman]

Seems to be good, here are some iperf3 tests over the link:

OPi with no build flags: [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth Retr [ 4] 0.00-120.00 sec 290 MBytes 20.3 Mbits/sec 165 sender [ 4] 0.00-120.00 sec 290 MBytes 20.3 Mbits/sec receiver.

OPi with optimal build flags: [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth Retr [ 4] 0.00-120.00 sec 366 MBytes 25.6 Mbits/sec 141 sender [ 4] 0.00-120.00 sec 366 MBytes 25.6 Mbits/sec receiver