I guess this is not news to most people, but the chip maker Intel has been revealed, via the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities, to put in unchangeable code in their chips that is able to perform all sorts of duties one might not want to have in one’s computer by default. It is called the Intel Management Engine, in short “ME”. FSF has a short description of the thingie and its problems.
A little irony is that Intel has built its brand by the “Intel Inside” slogan (and logo). I suppose every adult person have seen an Intel Inside sticker on a computer. It’s all fine and dandy to have an Intel chip or two in your computer, but it seems it is more than just a chip; maybe it is inside your activities. It does feel a bit itchy. I do have some crackpot “code” in me called M.E., although not from birth, and certainly not by design. I am not that conspiratory :p M.E. is an autoimmune disorder, and I must say I chuckle at the ME name of Intel’s computer within the computer. Anyone who was around in the 1990s probably also remember parodies of the campaign. I recall “Intel Inside, Idiot Outside”. But since I was a user of Macs (who had Motorola and later IBM RISC processors) Intel was sort of in the Windoze camp, and of course an object for sectarian ridicule.
I wonder if anyone has copyrighted the slogan Firmly Implanted Firmware?
If Kafka had been a chip maker, he would have named it The Processor.
By reading this you have been caught by the Inscius Inside campaign.
Mwahahahahaha.