New ARM laptops coming out right now have their bootloaders locked. So yeah…

Found the husband!

Sounds like a massive overreaction and abuse of century-old laws.

If those devices are so bad, why not forbid selling them in Italy, instead of punishing people who buy them completely legally. Imagine going through all of this because you bought a laptop and posted a review online.

It’s difficult to prove anything like that. From independent research we know that Intel, and likely AMD too with their counterpart, can remotely control your PC via IME. But they’ve never done that yet or have done so very secretly, because then a lot more people would know and that would be problematic.

Personally I think it’s reasonable to suspect that Microsoft has full capability to severely cripple your system at any given time. Maybe not ‘brick’ as that may be impossible without proprietary hardware inside the machine. However, even a simple Windows installation can mess up your UEFI. Given that, do you think that all those millions of fully secret lines of code cannot render you unable to use your PC, even if just temporarily?

I think this is true. Billionaires and their corporations are obviously morally bankrupt and have been manipulating all of us for long years. But at the same time, it seems to me that there is also some ‘consent’ on our part. There’s a lot of people who will still choose to be oppressed, even after having everything explained to them and seemingly having understood.

Perhaps thay’s how deep all the decades of social engineering go. Or maybe we just really like convenience, to the point where we’re willing to become slaves if it means our lives are convenient.

To be more precise: it is actually beneficial for big corporations if you pirate their media, as opposed to you having never been born. The sole act of you ‘consuming’ their media is positive for them, since you’ll almost definitely see their logos (advertising to you), and you may spread the word to people who may pay for it (advertising by you).

As you said, it’s all pretty much propaganda to brainwash us into trying to be ‘good citizens’ (obedient consumers).