201–210 of 668 posts
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The (not cost effective) solution is to carry both. Shut off the 'normal' smart phone when you don't need it (for banking or what have you). Use the web version of Whatsapp ( https://web.whatsapp.com/ ) if you must use it. You could even consider having a WhatsApp specific phone if you have an older model that you've upgraded from that contains no other data. That was my solution anyway.
Carrying a cheap/old/second-hand small android phone can be cost effective. Plus, it works as a backup for phone if the PinePhone runs out of battery. Also, PinePhone can run anbox - slowly.
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I love the PinePhone. It is an amazing project, and I'm definitely considering buying one. However, it does not solve my main problem. For most scenarios I still need a "normal" smartphone with either iOS or Android. Apps like WhatsApp and banking apps are unfortunately needed for a large part of my daily life. At risk of either socially isolating myself or bringing major inconveniences without having them. All unava…
Maybe a good solution would be to have an android emulator/sandbox running on the PinePhone?
I have a similar feeling, but with modern smartphones. Owning my computer is still relatively possible. I can build a computer from parts which I can choose, and have a choice in which operating system to install on them. Laptops are slightly more closed, but even on those I can choose the OS myself. Modern smartphones however, seem like walled gardens in which I have no control at all. I cannot choose any of the par…
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The question then, really, is how far are you willing to go down the stack of software on hardware, in pursuit of true ideological purity? How can, even the Pinephone manufacturers, be absolutely sure that their design is being implemented in hardware as they specced it, without backdoors? If you have a near infinite amount of money and resources, you can be absolutely certain (the hardware that runs NSA approved typ…
Hardware level trust would be really cool. It seems theoretically possible because all you need is an accurate measurement of some physical property that is hard to forge when changing transistors orders etc. Practically though, anything like that would be most likely affected by manufacturing tolerances for the transistors, so you’d have to find something that allows a certain amount of error when individual transis…
This feels like it was made to get to the top of somewhere like HN but I'm actually very confused. >I want it to be, but which can also be used to communicate securely with anyone on the planet without being observed by a third party. I don't want to be spied on by Microsoft or Google.I don't want the NSA intercepting my conversations or even their metadata. I don't see what this has to do with the actual computer ho…
You can have a computer that does not connect to the Internet, or connects to the Internet very little, or only connects to the Internet through specific communication channels you open in a firewall. That's all very attainable.
However, as soon as you communicate with third parties, be it your ISP, a cloud provider, or your end communication partner, you are potentially sharing with more than you intend. It's a "the only way to keep a secret between three people is if two of them are dead" problem. You can't control what other people choose to share.
"Perhaps I am looking for something like the x286 DOS computer I had in the early 1990's [...] Instead, I have a computer that is designed largely to maximize the profits of the computer industry." Who's going to tell him who made the x286 and DOS? Not exactly 501(C) organisations...
Get an old lenovo laptop and install openbsd on it. This post is legitimately a bit confusing to me since what they're describing sounds like a pretty standard sort of BSD/linux machine.
OpenBSD does not keep things from spying on you. All it does is, it prevents things (and the people behind them) from breaking in.
I have a similar feeling, but with modern smartphones. Owning my computer is still relatively possible. I can build a computer from parts which I can choose, and have a choice in which operating system to install on them. Laptops are slightly more closed, but even on those I can choose the OS myself. Modern smartphones however, seem like walled gardens in which I have no control at all. I cannot choose any of the par…
You will never own your smartphone. That would require you to be the licensed operator for the radio transmission. Instead the radio is licensed to the telco (or related) and the telcos have every regulatory and monetary incentive to prevent users from being able to access or control the radio. The government regulators demand the user not have control and the baseband modem manufacturer(s) demand their licensed inte…