One year ago, AWS deleted my 10-year account over a disputed $100 bill.
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One year ago, AWS deleted my 10-year account over a disputed $100 bill. That day I learned something uncomfortable: unless you are a customer capable of causing a PR disaster, your monthly bill doesn’t buy much leverage.
That same week I noticed something else.
Vendor lock-in isnt just a cloud problem. Its a hardware problem too.
Here in Tangier (Morocco), there are warehouses filled with computers that Europe has already written off. Machines with 2-8 GB of RAM and 64-256 GB SSDs, sold by the pallet for almost nothing after being discarded by companies upgrading their fleets.
The hardware wasnt broken. The software had simply moved on.
The OS kept nagging users to upgrade, only to tell them afterward that their computer was too old to run the upgrade.
That is software gaslighting hardware into becoming e-waste. LOL.
So I started buying them.
In the past months I have bought over 5,000 discarded computers, not to build a datacenter, but to understand them, resurrect them, and eventually donate many of them.
That project became ChaosBSD.
In just six months, ChaosBSD has landed 87 upstream commits (it is not a AI number, lol). Ironically, after I started buying old hardware, the prices of SSDs and RAM even DDR2 went through the roof.
Drivers are unlike almost every other subsystem. Frameworks get rewritten. Filesystems get replaced. APIs evolve. But silicon doesn’t get updates. A driver is either correct, incomplete, or it never gets merged. Once it is upstream, it often stays there for decades. I updated drivers that were not touched for 24 years.
Losing my AWS account taught me not to trust a single cloud provider.
ChaosBSD was my answer to the same problem in hardware.
The project was never just about my machines. The drivers went upstream, so every FreeBSD user benefits from them.
If you have an Intel Apple computer, you can install FreeBSD 16 or DragonFlyBSD on it. The computer will feel snappier than it original OS.
@seuros mad respect!
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Now let me tell you about the 87th commit.
It was about FireWire.
https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src/commit/e7efe2f059a474f8f8e14393713071761a633e65
Most people think FireWire died when USB became famous. It didnt.
Its still used by professional audio interfaces, DV camcorders, industrial and scientific cameras, and plenty of legacy equipment that continues to do its job every day. Audio equipment don't need upgrades if they are still operating correctly. A firewire cable is superior to a new USB cable.
That where i tested it. The users just kept using old version of MacOS that don't even have updated SSH.
Together with Adrian Chadd, we dusted off the stack, rediscovered how it worked, cleaned it up, and refactored years of accumulated code.
And we didnt stop there.
We also added three new drivers:
• fwcam - Firewire webcams
• fwisound - Apple FireWire audio interfaces.
• fwdv - DV camcorders, including many classic Sony, Canon, Panasonic, and JVC models.That means #FreeBSD can now talk directly to equipment that many operating systems have quietly abandoned.
Someone in reddit used it to dump 50 tapes of childhood to digital format. I used it to have a zoom call with FreeBSD wifi group.
@seuros Audio person with a firewire i7 laptop here, appreciating this.
I have been wanting to move my old i7 gen3 laptop off windows, but it has the Texas Instruments FW chipset, which is the gold standard for audio. I've done 16 channels for 8 solid hours without losing a bit.Thank you!
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@encthenet @seuros We'll tackle that eventually, there's a lot of cleanup to do and both seuros and i have plenty of device<->device setups to test this on.
(I've already found lols when doing iperf between FW connected devices so that's on my plate to fix..)
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One year ago, AWS deleted my 10-year account over a disputed $100 bill. That day I learned something uncomfortable: unless you are a customer capable of causing a PR disaster, your monthly bill doesn’t buy much leverage.
That same week I noticed something else.
Vendor lock-in isnt just a cloud problem. Its a hardware problem too.
Here in Tangier (Morocco), there are warehouses filled with computers that Europe has already written off. Machines with 2-8 GB of RAM and 64-256 GB SSDs, sold by the pallet for almost nothing after being discarded by companies upgrading their fleets.
The hardware wasnt broken. The software had simply moved on.
The OS kept nagging users to upgrade, only to tell them afterward that their computer was too old to run the upgrade.
That is software gaslighting hardware into becoming e-waste. LOL.
So I started buying them.
In the past months I have bought over 5,000 discarded computers, not to build a datacenter, but to understand them, resurrect them, and eventually donate many of them.
That project became ChaosBSD.
In just six months, ChaosBSD has landed 87 upstream commits (it is not a AI number, lol). Ironically, after I started buying old hardware, the prices of SSDs and RAM even DDR2 went through the roof.
Drivers are unlike almost every other subsystem. Frameworks get rewritten. Filesystems get replaced. APIs evolve. But silicon doesn’t get updates. A driver is either correct, incomplete, or it never gets merged. Once it is upstream, it often stays there for decades. I updated drivers that were not touched for 24 years.
Losing my AWS account taught me not to trust a single cloud provider.
ChaosBSD was my answer to the same problem in hardware.
The project was never just about my machines. The drivers went upstream, so every FreeBSD user benefits from them.
If you have an Intel Apple computer, you can install FreeBSD 16 or DragonFlyBSD on it. The computer will feel snappier than it original OS.
@seuros Wow! My 14yr old PC with its 2 even older HDDs just blushed. Any chance some of those "old" SSDs can migrate to South Africa?
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@seuros Audio person with a firewire i7 laptop here, appreciating this.
I have been wanting to move my old i7 gen3 laptop off windows, but it has the Texas Instruments FW chipset, which is the gold standard for audio. I've done 16 channels for 8 solid hours without losing a bit.Thank you!
-
@seuros Wow! My 14yr old PC with its 2 even older HDDs just blushed. Any chance some of those "old" SSDs can migrate to South Africa?
@adritheonly Your country receive deprecated hardware from Netherlands for sure.
Sometime some of those companies just like to destroy them instead of sorting them/donating them.
Check this video https://youtu.be/NU040CTdJI0 ...
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@adritheonly Your country receive deprecated hardware from Netherlands for sure.
Sometime some of those companies just like to destroy them instead of sorting them/donating them.
Check this video https://youtu.be/NU040CTdJI0 ...
@seuros
I bought mine 2nd hand from a shop that imported them from the US. Haven't seen SSDs 2nd hand though?
EDIT: the Tube seems to be about game boxes in England. That's a whole different kettle of fish. -
@seuros
I bought mine 2nd hand from a shop that imported them from the US. Haven't seen SSDs 2nd hand though?
EDIT: the Tube seems to be about game boxes in England. That's a whole different kettle of fish.@adritheonly the tube is correct link. go to minute 27 (the scrapyards) ... At one point the guy say that everything he don't buy end up in Africa....
You can even see he has a shit lot of Samsung Evo at his home, which he bought for 2-6 GBP per kg.
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@khm @dalias @seuros
DMA between host and external peripherals are NOT always insecure.
What's mutually insecure would be to allow external peripherals to become bus master "managers".
Until host manages memory range to be transferred by DMA from peripherals under proper control by properly secured IOMMU && the memory range are assured NOT for executing something, maybe it would be considered safe (bus master transfers are allowed, but to secured, protected memory area only). -
@adritheonly the tube is correct link. go to minute 27 (the scrapyards) ... At one point the guy say that everything he don't buy end up in Africa....
You can even see he has a shit lot of Samsung Evo at his home, which he bought for 2-6 GBP per kg.
@seuros Thanks! Will check. Would love to find the outlet here.
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One year ago, AWS deleted my 10-year account over a disputed $100 bill. That day I learned something uncomfortable: unless you are a customer capable of causing a PR disaster, your monthly bill doesn’t buy much leverage.
That same week I noticed something else.
Vendor lock-in isnt just a cloud problem. Its a hardware problem too.
Here in Tangier (Morocco), there are warehouses filled with computers that Europe has already written off. Machines with 2-8 GB of RAM and 64-256 GB SSDs, sold by the pallet for almost nothing after being discarded by companies upgrading their fleets.
The hardware wasnt broken. The software had simply moved on.
The OS kept nagging users to upgrade, only to tell them afterward that their computer was too old to run the upgrade.
That is software gaslighting hardware into becoming e-waste. LOL.
So I started buying them.
In the past months I have bought over 5,000 discarded computers, not to build a datacenter, but to understand them, resurrect them, and eventually donate many of them.
That project became ChaosBSD.
In just six months, ChaosBSD has landed 87 upstream commits (it is not a AI number, lol). Ironically, after I started buying old hardware, the prices of SSDs and RAM even DDR2 went through the roof.
Drivers are unlike almost every other subsystem. Frameworks get rewritten. Filesystems get replaced. APIs evolve. But silicon doesn’t get updates. A driver is either correct, incomplete, or it never gets merged. Once it is upstream, it often stays there for decades. I updated drivers that were not touched for 24 years.
Losing my AWS account taught me not to trust a single cloud provider.
ChaosBSD was my answer to the same problem in hardware.
The project was never just about my machines. The drivers went upstream, so every FreeBSD user benefits from them.
If you have an Intel Apple computer, you can install FreeBSD 16 or DragonFlyBSD on it. The computer will feel snappier than it original OS.
@seuros You bought FIVE THOUSAND old computers? Do you live in a warehouse or something?
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@seuros You bought FIVE THOUSAND old computers? Do you live in a warehouse or something?
@guenther I don't have have 5000 computer now. I buy a pallet with 300 mac minis or 200 laptops, ect ... (they are cheap because not all of them are working, or marked as working)
I take 1-2 at home, make get the drivers, install them.
The vendor handle the logistic to deliver them to some place that need them. -
A abekonge@venner.network shared this topic
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@guenther I don't have have 5000 computer now. I buy a pallet with 300 mac minis or 200 laptops, ect ... (they are cheap because not all of them are working, or marked as working)
I take 1-2 at home, make get the drivers, install them.
The vendor handle the logistic to deliver them to some place that need them.@seuros Wow! So basically there's now a shop somewhere in Tangier that's selling computers with freebsd preinstalled?
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@seuros Wow! So basically there's now a shop somewhere in Tangier that's selling computers with freebsd preinstalled?
@guenther No.
The stores are all over Morocco , One contact got me access to another....
They have unsold inventory rotten. They have weird stock .
I get them for free or less than 100$. I preinstall them with FreeBSD and then we donate them to orphanage, poor people in villages or old people.
2GB RAM and 64GB Disk is good for watching youtube and reading digital newspaper and play basic games.
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@guenther No.
The stores are all over Morocco , One contact got me access to another....
They have unsold inventory rotten. They have weird stock .
I get them for free or less than 100$. I preinstall them with FreeBSD and then we donate them to orphanage, poor people in villages or old people.
2GB RAM and 64GB Disk is good for watching youtube and reading digital newspaper and play basic games.
@guenther another
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@guenther another
@guenther An another , you can see them stacked on top of each other.
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Now let me tell you about the 87th commit.
It was about FireWire.
https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src/commit/e7efe2f059a474f8f8e14393713071761a633e65
Most people think FireWire died when USB became famous. It didnt.
Its still used by professional audio interfaces, DV camcorders, industrial and scientific cameras, and plenty of legacy equipment that continues to do its job every day. Audio equipment don't need upgrades if they are still operating correctly. A firewire cable is superior to a new USB cable.
That where i tested it. The users just kept using old version of MacOS that don't even have updated SSH.
Together with Adrian Chadd, we dusted off the stack, rediscovered how it worked, cleaned it up, and refactored years of accumulated code.
And we didnt stop there.
We also added three new drivers:
• fwcam - Firewire webcams
• fwisound - Apple FireWire audio interfaces.
• fwdv - DV camcorders, including many classic Sony, Canon, Panasonic, and JVC models.That means #FreeBSD can now talk directly to equipment that many operating systems have quietly abandoned.
Someone in reddit used it to dump 50 tapes of childhood to digital format. I used it to have a zoom call with FreeBSD wifi group.
@seuros I still have some firewire devices gathering dust in the closet. free to good home (though shipping may be an issue if you're not in the US).
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@seuros I still have some firewire devices gathering dust in the closet. free to good home (though shipping may be an issue if you're not in the US).
-
Now let me tell you about the 87th commit.
It was about FireWire.
https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src/commit/e7efe2f059a474f8f8e14393713071761a633e65
Most people think FireWire died when USB became famous. It didnt.
Its still used by professional audio interfaces, DV camcorders, industrial and scientific cameras, and plenty of legacy equipment that continues to do its job every day. Audio equipment don't need upgrades if they are still operating correctly. A firewire cable is superior to a new USB cable.
That where i tested it. The users just kept using old version of MacOS that don't even have updated SSH.
Together with Adrian Chadd, we dusted off the stack, rediscovered how it worked, cleaned it up, and refactored years of accumulated code.
And we didnt stop there.
We also added three new drivers:
• fwcam - Firewire webcams
• fwisound - Apple FireWire audio interfaces.
• fwdv - DV camcorders, including many classic Sony, Canon, Panasonic, and JVC models.That means #FreeBSD can now talk directly to equipment that many operating systems have quietly abandoned.
Someone in reddit used it to dump 50 tapes of childhood to digital format. I used it to have a zoom call with FreeBSD wifi group.
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