TPM. It’s what protects your phone and servers from attackers. Desktop would also benefit from it a lot.
Hard disagree here, TPM is only 1 more protection, it’s not what alone does protect your data.
Also desktop vs phone and servers are very different use cases. You can easily get your phone stolen in a public space. Your server if it hosted in a data center you don’t own might get compromised … but your desktop, it means breaking in or inviting in guests you do not trust. The situations are very different. Encrypting disks on a small device holding sensitive data, e.g. banking, that can easily be taken from you in public makes sense for most people. Doing so on a heavy bulky device that sits in your locked house where is quite another thing.




I think that’s an important distinction here :
versus
So when you say “what’s frustrating is that we can’t really vote with our wallets, and any right-to-repair or consumer-is-in-charge movement is going to be limited by intelligence agencies, corporations like John Deere, Apple, and the entire entertainment industry” I disagree.
We CAN really vote with our wallets precisely by purchasing things like Precursor, MNT, NitroKey, etc while at the same time expecting, sadly, that it won’t become the most popular devices in the market. I believe allowing creators and maintainers of such system, and even distributors like CrowdSupply, to exist even though they are and might always remain niche, is already empowering. So I’d argue both of us already voted with our wallets on this topic and our acquaintances too.
I’d also be cautious about preemptive pessimism. Sure it’s important to be mindful of worrisome examples like the FlipperZero (which AFAICT is only banned for purchase in Brazil due to lack of Anatel’s certification for wireless, I believe it’s possible to legally bring and use a FlipperZero in the country but I’m not a lawyer) or DRM for streaming (which I thought was a huge deal until I disabled DRM support in my browser and basically nothing changed in my browsing habits) precisely to learn from them. Also FWIW I did gather some ideas on the topic at https://fabien.benetou.fr/Content/SwappingPartsOfTheRestrictionStack so I’d be curious about your opinion on the topic, suggestions welcomed.