Local charity shop rejects pre-spychip PCs. Then they get destroyed.

Submitted ⁨⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨evenwicht@lemmy.sdf.org⁩ to ⁨retrocomputing@lemmy.sdf.org⁩

I was in the non-profit shop of a local charity. They accept donations of used computers then resell them to the public. The profit goes to charity. I asked for their oldest machine. It had an AMD chip from the 16h family. Thus, a spychip.

So their oldest machine was still too new for me. I asked why don’t you have anything older? They said the general public would not accept anything older, and so the shop also does not accept anything older. When machines are rejected, they go to a factory that destroys them and recovers the raw metals.

It’s sad to see that pre-spychip machines are being destroyed and that even 2nd-hand customers are being limited to anti-consumer spychip hardware.

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thejml@sh.itjust.works ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
They likely are only selling what people want to buy. Just the way the world works. It tends to cost money to send them some where they actually want those.

Sadly the same thing happens with retro Gear I want. History just being erased due to capitalism.

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- evenwicht@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Correction:
  
  They likely are only selling what ~~people~~ the mainstream masses want to buy.
  
  Smart consumers are marginalised. Just as they are with most of the ensitified market.
  
  Correction:
  
  Just the way ~~the world~~ capitalism works.
  
  But we are talking about a charity. I was not talking about a profit-driven company.
  
  It tends to cost money to send them some where they actually want those.
  
  I am willing to pick them up. They are not willing to maintain a list of hardware sought by people. Until we pull levers and twist arms to get a registry of parts sought and who to contact. The price I would pay exceeds the cost of paying their staff to enter a database record and cross-reference what arrives.
  
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  - thejml@sh.itjust.works ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    
    But we are talking about a charity. I was not talking about a profit-driven company.
    
    A charity still needs to turn a profit or they won’t be a charity for long. The point is that they make enough money from reselling these things that they can offer some sort of service.
    
    And by people I only mean the ones shopping there. Not the “mainstream masses”. Its a charity shop, not Microcenter or Amazon.
    
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rockSlayer@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
By spychip are you referring to IME and PSP? Chips that old are going to have security holes larger than a CEO’s ego. Those chips will be vulnerable to Spectre and Meltdown. Iirc from the fallout of those CVEs, only AMD bothered to patch chips that went back to 2011

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- evenwicht@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  “Meltdown affects Intel x86 microprocessors, IBM Power microprocessors,[1] and some ARM-based microprocessors”
  
  I don’t see AMD on that list. Do you?
  
  “At the time of disclosure (2018), this included all devices running any but the most recent and patched versions of iOS,[5] Linux,[6][7] macOS,[5] or Windows.”
  
  So this vuln can be fixed by patching OS kernels, and your reaction is to switch to a CPU that runs embedded closed-source software controlled by a corporate third party who decides what is authorized to execute on your own system? You can fix the problem with or without being nannied.
  
  Spectre affected “All pre-2019 microprocessors”. So no, the spy chip did not protect you. Intel injected the spychip from 2008 forward and AMD did it from 2013 forward.
  
  More generally, it’s not smart infosec to introduce complexity. It’s profoundly naive to stick a big attack surface in the core of your CPU. I think it’s quite well established that vulns exploit defects, and defects are proportional to complexity. Signing up for a closed source blob in the core of your processor is far from wise.
  
  The /chase the shiny/ mentality neglects the fact that you sign up for the worst kind of vulns – the unknown variety. With old gear the vulns are more of the known variety, which you have a fighting chance of controlling for.
  
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  - rockSlayer@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    
    I don’t see AMD on that list. Do you?
    
    Lashing out at me was unnecessary. I was pointing out that there are 2 catastrophic vulnerabilities that are going to be present in every chip that meets your criteria.
    
    I’m not defending the IME or the PSP. The most generous thing I can say about them is that they are unnecessary. I’m pointing out that the chips that you want to use have been unsupported for so long that they have catastrophic vulnerabilities that have never even been attempted to be patched. There are more catastrophic vulnerabilities than just Spectre and Meltdown.
    
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the_q@piefed.social ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I appreciate the spirit of your concern.

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sudoMakeUser@sh.itjust.works ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
How old do you have to go before you don’t consider them spychips?

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- evenwicht@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  2013
  
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  - MantisToboggon@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    What’s a spychip?
    
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