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I want a computer that I own

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Re: I want a computer that I own

#481

Post by oaiey »

Koshkin wrote: post #119
walrus01 wrote: post #31

> Perhaps I am looking for something like the x286 DOS computer I had in the early 1990's You can do an almost fully GPL compliant Linux desktop by building it yourself today. I can already see people thinking "but what about the closed source binary blobs? my video card? my network interfaces?" But even your 12 MHz 286 or 386SX/20 had closed source AMI or Phoenix BIOS firmware on it. The motherboard manufacturer in…

The difference is, the BIOS and other firmware in early PCs did not spy on you.

Because they had no internet, no CPU power and no memory/hard disk. Otherwise they would have ;)

Re: I want a computer that I own

#482

Post by mPReDiToR »

SilverRed wrote: post #210
superkuh wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There is no reason we can't have a proprietary radio chip connected to an open source phone.

As sibling comment says, PinePhone works like this FOR NOW. OSS version is being built, but like a few things on PP "not quite ready".

When they are ready, get one. They'll be amazing no matter which OS you end up with.

Re: I want a computer that I own

#483

Post by mPReDiToR »

hakfoo wrote: post #267
superkuh wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I never understood why they don't sealed box the wireless stuff then. I could imagine a family of cellular and Wi-Fi devices that present as Ethernet bridges. They'd offer a configuration interface reminiscent of home routers (go to a magic IP either with a REST API or a browser-controllable menu). This eliminates a lot of the delicate, externally facing configuration options and has the side benefit of eliminating a…

On PinePhone it's a USB attached modem.

They do do this.

Re: I want a computer that I own

#484

Post by sammorrowdrums »

fxtentacle wrote: post #445
sammorrowdrums wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it is early days but Librem and System76 (and several others like Pine64) are making huge headway in the open hardware space. I know there have been lots of failures in this area but I think we are getting to a threshold point where building on top of these companies acheivements is quite possible. Linux on Mobile and open EC and Coreboot etc. are all making rapid progress at the moment. I would still say we are…

The issue with open hardware is that DRM vendors don't support it. A fully open phone doesn't have hardware DRM keys so you won't get FullHD in Netflix. And now you've lost 90% of the market.

Yeah, even when you boot up into Netlfix in Epiphany browser or something and discover you can't. It's not a great OOTB experience for new Linux users, never mind being locked out entirely. But that said, I don't really know how to fix the DRM problem without first making progress on open hardware. Viability and market share in spite of the adversity is the only chance I can see.

It still might fail. We try because we feel it is too important to simply do nothing, not because we expect mass success.

Re: I want a computer that I own

#486

Post by cutthegrass2 »

antman wrote: post #424
bboygravity wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> iOS takes all of these away. Complete backups are built-in (I know android has it, but I don't know how bulletproof is this) Not to burn you down, but to burn Android down: no, Android does not allow you to take complete backups. Let alone "built-in". The only backups that are made are forced to Google cloud and only backs-up apps that where downloaded through Google Play and app settings for Google stuff. It is an…

Backups are a total black pattern where you either pay Apple for ever or the respective APIs are horribly broken. It would require zero effort on Apple's side to integrate backup to other servers using the OS or other Apps. That means without silently stopping them or even worse slowing them down to kb/s once in the background.

Assuming you've already paid Apple for the device and you don't want to make use of the 5GB free iCloud storage for backups, you could backup iPhone to iTunes on your laptop (encrypted) and then ensure your laptop was backed up locally also. This way you avoid paying Apple for ever.

Re: I want a computer that I own

#487

Post by mPReDiToR »

monkin wrote: post #297
kokx wrote: post #15

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…

There should be just a phone for hackers and hardware/open source enthusiasts. They would have a toy to play with without a need to bash other “walled garden” platforms which isn’t for them apparently. As ordinary consumers don’t want to or do not have a knowledge on how to do those advanced tasks most HN users want. And, that’s great! They shouldn’t know that, maybe there will be some cultural shift in the future, w…

Typing this on Huawei Android.

I have a PinePhone. It's much fun being around the guys who are making the next evolution of phone. Hackers gonna hack.

I'm still here bashing the walled gardens because no matter what the non-techies want to do, they need protecting from themselves by either the .gov or by being given alternatives.

Every day we get closer to giving them another usable option.

Re: I want a computer that I own

#488

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

thwoeriu2334234 wrote: post #458
kokx wrote: post #15

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…

> trying to ungoogle it as much as possible. From experience, no matter what you do, your phone will still continue to ping 1e100.net every few minutes. This may just be something innocuous, but there just is no way to get rid of this behavior (or to understand where it's coming from).

Doesn’t LineageOS with MicroG strip out calls to Google servers?

Re: I want a computer that I own

#490

Post by mschuster91 »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #470
mschuster91 wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of a variety of reasons: no. 1) You don't want to risk dumping a mounted filesystem because of inconsistencies 2) Good luck getting the right device - in the end it's devicemapper all the way down with a lot of layers (ecryptfs, sdcardfs, bind mounts, ...) stacked between your shell and the device. 3) Unrooted phones don't allow access to raw Unix devices 4) You can't restore these backups anywhere if your phone…

Makes me wonder if you can just dump the Flash storage chips through JTAG or similar - assuming the JTAG ports are accessible without completely dismantling the phone.

That still doesn't solve the problem of getting the crypto keys.
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