I also read the article, and did look at the linked projects, and it's not clear to me how they solve GP's issue, because the company is still providing these solutions precompiled on hardware they control.

How does GP know that everything is actually being provided unmodified, without any backdoors?

> it helps a lot rather than broadcasting every nascent thought that pops up in the head to the internet.

I don't think this is helpful, it's unnecessarily antagonistic and dismissive.

GP's point seems reasonable to me; I don't see anything here that means that the Thinkpad x230 couldn't be modified before installation/paring, or that the tools themselves couldn't be modified before the laptop was shipped. If there is a reason to trust the initial build process, the linked page isn't explaining what it is.