Or maybe we should just get rid of the "breaking DRM is illegal"-laws. See https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/

> Alternatively, just make it illegal to ship any kind of initial bootloader as part of a CPU's/SoC's mask ROM in any computing device that is marketed as a general-purpose one.

Funny, I have a related proposal: make it illegal to sell hardware and distribute software. Or at least, if you distribute software, we don’t buy your hardware. The idea is to force hardware companies to release the complete user manual for their hardware, and incentivise them to simplify and standardise their hardware interfaces.

What I did forget was forbidding them to arbitrarily restrict what kind of software can run with their hardware, which they could if the hardware hashes the software & verifies a signature before running it. But it would seem your separation between CPU and storage takes care of that.

That's probably not going to happen for a very long time. Relatively simple SoCs already do tons of work before the architectural reset vector in undocumented boot ROMs in order to assist the reset process.

There's also tons of value in a boot ROM that can't be accidentally erased to add low level DFU routines.

This won’t help; the SOC silicon can be revised to record each executed instruction from power-on until secure-boot handoff opcode, with various supporting opcodes to query status-of / overflow-of / signature-for so that the OS reports pre-boot tampering implicitly as part of developing its own attestations.

TFA is authored by the developers of an alternative operating system that can be freely installed on every Google phone since Pixel 6.

Alternatively, just make it illegal to ship any kind of initial bootloader as part of a CPU's/SoC's mask ROM in any computing device that is marketed as a general-purpose one.

No, you just need to make it illegal to have the bootloader contain hardcoded key material and use it for verifying the code it loads.

> Our civilization desperately needs a method to modify modern microelectronics

Micro is now nano, not amendable to modification, and even if it was theoretically possible, hardware is a super-easy target for legislation.

> Alternatively, just make it illegal to ship any kind of initial bootloader as part of a CPU's/SoC's mask ROM

If you had the political means to enact such legislation, you could legislate much cleaner and easier ways to deal with the problem.

I find myself saying this a lot but I still can't quite figure our why people keep seeking technical solutions to political problems.

I mean, these things aren't comparable, in some limited cases the naive approach might help but insisting on it while neglecting political action is worse than doing nothing.

> just make it illegal to ship any kind of initial bootloader

funny how you think the solution to people imposing their will on you is to impose your will on others

also, the solution you propose wouldn't work because signed firmware