I think that Victor may not have English as his primary/first language, I am trying to use a simple comparison that is more likely to convey the general, fundamental concepts.

No.

Secure Boot is basically a ‘lock’, on the UEFI.

UEFI - Shim is basically a ‘lockpick’.

UEFI is the first step in your computer booting, turning on.

So, if Secure Boot is supposed to be a ‘lock’, that limits who can access the UEFI … but it turns out that there are many, old, UEFI - Shims, that defeat that ‘lock’… then Secure Boot is not a good ‘lock’.

I don’t mean to be rude but it seems like there might be a bit of language confusion going on here… In English, a ‘shim’ is a kind of crude/simple tool that can be used to break or bypass some actual physical locks.

So ‘UEFI-Shim’ basically means ‘a thing that breaks into your UEFI’.

Secure boot is supposed to be a lock.

Turns out there are 10 year old tricks that bypass that lock.

A lock that cannot deny access to people without proper key… is a bad lock.

Yes, I’m trying to be hyperbolically facetious, to illustrate that.

Even worse!

Admitting that I was not always doing the most sensible thing, at all times! That I was actually doing really stupid things, for a long time!

I … I can’t make mistakes… no … reality is wrong!

Which means the new paradigm will be ‘every piece of hardware is a supply chain attack.’

cough TPM 2 cough

Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard

Zuck: Just ask.

Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS

[Redacted Friend’s Name]: What? How’d you manage that one?

Zuck: People just submitted it.

Zuck: I don’t know why.

Zuck: They “trust me”

Zuck: Dumb fucks.

Don’t be a dumb fuck, do not trust Zuck.

Yes, there is a high demand for SpaceX to be less insolvent.

Yep.

The absurdity of it all… I do not see how any thinking person could understand, and not be enraged.

I did a bit of a stealth edit, wrote more after you replied here, but basically:

Anger is a gift, when it is righteous, it motivates just actions.

But it is also a danger, because too much anger makes you stupid, makes you do things that will not help the situation, potentially make it worse.

All I can say for myself personally is that self-discipline… must be strong, and diligent.

When death can visit such a dispossessed (or dispossesable) person so easily, making mistakes needlessly is just going to shorten your lifespan, and you must be alive to be able to enact or spur any kind of real and good change.

Thus the anger must be controlled, otherwise, you will lose yourself, in one way or another.

If I can offer a seemingly stupid but effective trick:

Box breathing.

Inhale for 5 seconds.

Hold for 5 seconds.

Exhale for 5 seconds.

Do that at least 3 times, if you need to, wait 30 seconds, do 3 of em again.

By some quirks of our biology, with most people, it does help lower cortisol, and help you maintain focus, be more rational.

Sometimes, in a particularly enraging or terrifying situation… which is still ongoing, you still need to be able to think, or you may die.

Or, just generally, when you’re not in a life threatening situation, it works too.

Well without going too much deeper into my own story:

I then got very badly injured, got fired, got evicted, spent years crippled and homeless.

… So I know I don’t count.

And, having been something of an impromptu … effectively a field medic … oh yeah, I had ODs die on me, had people with necrotic, long untreated wounds, exacerbated by drug use… that I could do a basic field dressing of, beg them to go to a hospital, then never see them again. Sometimes I was treating minor gunshot wounds, stab/slash wounds. Sometimes I was dodging drive by shootings myself.

I’ve now very directly personally saved some, at least temporarily, and lost friends.

To the point that I have PTSD now too, and can tell you there is an entire second world behind the facade where a low level war is playing out, all the time, that most ‘normal’ people just … want to go away, whatever it takes, whatever it costs.

… To the point that I’m not able to be clever, or philosophical about it… I’ve fully experienced the horror of it, and can frankly only conclude the reason I am still alive is … basically, dumb luck.

All I know is that it doesn’t have to be this way, and that it is this way… causes me great anger.

My current goal is working on controlling that anger… pure rage makes you stupid, thus useless. Also makes you into a just generally unlikeable asshole.

I’m really still just recovering, physically, and mentally.

… yeah, don’t even know where I’m going with this, like I said, it broke my ability to … consider the implications of ‘the whole thing’. ‘The whole thing’ did too much damage to me.

You are correct.

Like, I actually don’t think I have any notes, at all, for once, hah.

No, yeah… once upon a time I was naive bright eyed idiot that thought the system was fucked, but at least theoretically could be fixed.

Worked for a few corps. Some genuinely good people, management never has any humanity.

One day… I walked past a crumpled lump, in the alley, just before the block with my building.

It was a person.

I’d… never actually seen that before, a homeless person, just sheltering under a blanket.

I could not shake this… it bothered me immensely… what was the point of this whole city, if that can happen? What the fuck am I even doing this for? Who am I trying to impress?

… Go out for lunch, walk past the same spot.

The lump is gone.

Men with essentially flamethrowers are burning the… spot, on the ground, where he was.

I had a complete break down, panic attack, whatever.

The existential dread became fully realized in the same moment I realized… I am part of this machine that eats people. I pull its levers. I am having a pathetic break down, whereas that man died.

That was it. That was what radicalized me.

Quit, worked for a non profit helping the homeless, after that.

Oh, but I’m a crazy conspiracy theorist when I tell people something like this almost certainly exists…!

… god fucking damnit.

Yeah. Yeah this is what the TPMv2 push was for.

This is why dual booting is always impossible in practice, because Windows can rewrite the boot sector, whenever it wants, and the Pluton system allows Windows to have an effectively below ring 0 level of access to the kernel, and… you cannot audit this.

https://en.ittrip.xyz/windows11/pluton-firmware-event

Windows 11: Bonus Combo Bundle with unremovable NSA rootkit!

Its for your health!

… they never needed to do this, it makes and it made no sense to throw away so much goodwill/reputation by just declaring the vast majority of the worlds pcs are now e-waste, upgrade to our new hardware standard for secure computing!

The only explanation that could ever make sense was that they wanted total control. Because its insane brand suicide from a purely capitalistic pov, the juice is not worth that hard of a squeeze.

Fucking… Windows is malware, by the FBI’s own guidelines for that from not too many years back.

… they just applied the same approach they did to making Xboxes non hard-moddable… to all PC hardware.

Make it so the system physically cannot function if you remove or even poke the part you’d need to poke or remove, once it has their software on it.

People think the Israeli pager thing was a well done supply chain attack.

… MSFT invented this shit.

Used to work for em, had a veteran co worker tell me about the one time he got deployed to Saudi Arabia to flash the bios of hardware destined to be installed in Saddam’s CnC/Air Defense systems.

And that was for Gulf War 1, by the way.

As far as I know, that is still fucking classified, because I’ve never heard anyone else talk about that, anywhere, ever.

… fuck.

Doesn’t matter now, I guess.

Freedom.

So basically:

His companies are hilariously insolvent, so he rolls them all together and does the biggest IPO of all time to raise money.

But he still needs more money.

So then he tries to do a corporate bond issuance… doesn’t go super duper well.

So he still needs more money.

Welp, ok then, jack up fees, whatever, not very original, but does at least kind of work.

Any takers as to whether or not he’ll still need more money?

If you guess correctly, you get a free Neuralink installed in your head that you can send OTA bluetooth firmware overrides to nearby devices with your brain!

Or well, maybe it works… maybes its the opposite of that. Whatever.

… But you can recharge them with your solar roof tiles! And then get in your Tesla Roadster! And then take a Starship ICBM flight to Hong Kong or Moscow or Buenos Aires or Rome! And then take the hyperloop to Antarctica!

That they are in the position where they even need to ask is an admission that they are sell out traitors to the inherent responsibilities and duties vested in them by the voting public.

They are frauds and failures, the only correct thing they could all do is rescind all permits for any data center contracts, and then resign immediately.

Anything less than that?

Run them out of town, outta the entire fucking state.

Tippmann really are the GOATs of just like… the ‘I like to go paintballing everyonce in a while’ demographic.

Yeah, yeah, other people make fancier pantsier shit… T98 is the goddamn AK47 of markers.

Maybe one of the actual last examples of American manufacturing one could actually be proud of.

I mean yes, true, but:

More dangerous

More expensive

Easier to track who purchased/likely owns one

More complex to use.

… if you get caught marking up a camera with paintballs… or frying it with a laser…

Which person do you think is looking at more potential fines and jail time?

Whats less expensive and easier to dismantle and throw away or otherwise dispose of?

A fairly decently powered laser?

Or a Tippmann 98?

Hah!

Well shit, I was not aware of that.

… that’s uh, funny, I guess, in a more modern context, with more temporal distance.

But, Minnesotans are bleeding again lately, due to armed tyrants, so I guess in that sense, its less funny.

Thou Shalt Always Kill