Open Fabs

[grarpamp]

On Thu, Jul 30, 2015 at 6:11 PM, The Doctor <drwho at virtadpt.net> wrote:
> So what you're basically saying is that the entire tech stack, all the
> way back to far edge pf electromechanical information processing is
> basically completely untrustworthy.

A purist might say that, and you'd have a hard time refuting
them because for the most part, you raced to build a system
that "works", not necessarily one you "trust" or that is proofed.

The point is, that if you're going to consider, analyze, create
and certify trust, you have to rip apart your current way of
thinking in some pretty mind bending ways. Because everyone
has been cultured since birth to accept things that are blindly
handed to them as trusted.

Where along the historical line of tools would you feel
confident or shaky in using such tool, effectively blindly
dropped into your hand, to create or do something you
trust with it, and why?
>From sandpaper to CNC machine...
>From knife to MRI...
>From relay to the latest Xeons and ARM's...

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/01/countering_trus.html
Even with things like this, when it comes to hardware it's
still turtles. You can't use an Intel CPU to crosscheck
an Intel CPU. With actors like the NSA and datagrabber
ideology inserting and rooting stuff everywhere, you probably
can't use any other closed CPU either. Destructively testing
your rig just to replace it with an untested copy is pointless.

> There is no way at all to trust
> anything that we can't actually see the logic gates of with the naked
> eye

Theoretically, if the image data is passed through a computer
to your eye on the screen, yes. Unless you know that the
entire history and process that produced the suspect gates
that were just placed in your hand (or equivalently, your
imaging rig)... is trusted.

> which would put us... where?  Maybe tens of computations per
> second, at most?  A little more (but not much)?

No, use that level to build the next faster and so on.


> Fuck it.  Time to go home, everyone.  They Won.

Purists? Turtles? Who knows. But one thing's for certain,
today's hardware and production is closed. And just as
with closed source software, it would be a far stretch to
point at the billion+ transistors on your desk and genuinely
say "Yeah, I trust that".
That should be enough reason to put serious thought
and action into creating an opensource process that
could print trusted opensource hardware... an open fab.
Otherwise you're effectively saying "Fuck it".