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by hombre_fatal 2413 days ago
Really? The marketing says they are hardware switches: https://puri.sm/products/librem-13/

> Two hardware kill switches, microphone/camera and wireless/bluetooth

> Now with a physical toggle switch, when your camera and microphone are switched off, you know they are off. Wireless and Bluetooth are combined in a second hardware switch to control all your radio signals inbound and outbound.

That would be a flat out lie if it wasn't actually a hardware switch which is hard to believe for a company whose entire identity and reputation is tied to these exact features.
2 comments
CaptSpify 2412 days ago
I don't have video/audio working on this install, so I'll try to get that set up later and make a video.

I do have a video of the wifi in action though: https://tmp.thekyel.com/month/wifi.mp4

I reached out to them a couple of times, and they asked if I had rfkill installed, I told them no, but it shouldn't matter if it was a hardware switch.

They told me that they would look into it, and then never responded after that.

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kardos 2412 days ago
Interesting indeed! Here [1] is how it allegedly works. Is the laptop easy enough to open and check if the board you have looks anything like those photos?

On the other hand, putting a signal onto disable pins is not exactly a kill switch. The description sounds like a hardware switch in front of a soft kill, which would make it some sort of quasi-HKS. A real kill switch would need to totally cut power to that controller rather than rely on it playing nice.

On the gripping hand, I find it hard to believe they would overlook something that crucial. Eg, if it didn't work, it would /have/ to show up during testing.

I wonder if the chip needs to be tightly integrated into the board and a proper HKS would require cutting signal to dozens of those pins -- something that is perhaps impractical -- so they went for a lesser option.

FWIW, there is at least one more person alleging the same broken functionality [2]

[1] https://puri.sm/posts/hard-not-soft-kill-switches/

[2] https://forums.puri.sm/t/wifi-killswitch-didnt-work-when-i-n...

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leethargo 2413 days ago
Maybe they mean that the switches themselves are hardware, but the deactivation is implemented in software, only triggered by the (harware) switch.
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