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I want a computer that I own

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581–590 of 668 posts

Re: I want a computer that I own

#581

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Librem 5? PinePhone?

A push in the right direction.. But I have been waiting two years after payment at this point.

I ordered my PP (KDE CE) in mid December. It arrived early February.

There's another round of sales coming up, keep an eye on the blog.

Re: I want a computer that I own

#582

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> 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…

Your definition of complete backup exceeds even the definition the parent is using for IOS. There are some things like downloaded files that don't get backed up to the cloud. (Some of them probably do get backed up via iTunes backups, but even there, I'm quite certain that not quite everything gets backed up. Instead it contains nearly everything that an non-jailbroken user might care about.) Things like the set of a…

local backups (used to be iTunes, now it’s just done from the Finder) do indeed backup everything. And as another commenter pointed out, your application state is also backed up and restored.

Re: I want a computer that I own

#583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not quite a modern smartphone, but it's the best we have at the moment; have you looked into the PinePhone? I have mine running openSUSE Tumbleweed.

How is it for daily use though? Last I knew Pinephones were still mostly just for developers to work on to one day make it a daily driver.

I use Mobian on the Pinephone as a daily driver. Other distributions I tried were not stable.

Re: I want a computer that I own

#584
post #231

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…

Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. There are valid reasons to lock down the radio, that doesn't mean we have to accept every smartphone vendor, app author and cloud service provider violating your privacy in every possible way they can think of.

Don't let good be the enemy of change. Don't use smart phones except when you literally are mobile. Use a real computer for computing.

Re: I want a computer that I own

#585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What features of the banking apps do you require? My bank’s app is essentially a wrapper around their mobile site. I can’t think of any specific features it has that require it to be an app, both technically, and in their implementation. Check deposit may be the only feature not available in the mobile site. It’s certainly not a technical requirement that they can’t implement that though.

Probably the most noticable feature of banking apps that I've noticed is real-time payment authorization. Sometimes when making a card payment online (not necessarily on the phone), my phone shows a notification from the app asking me to confirm the transaction.

Ah, I hadn’t thought of that. Several of my credit cards have that same feature and it never shows up until I leave the US and don’t have connectivity and get locked out of my card.

Re: I want a computer that I own

#586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's surprising as Apple is supposed to revoke those kinds of certificates pretty quickly. Enterprise certificates are for use inside enterprises, not for outer users.

Iran is under embargo by the US. Consequently, Apple doesn't do business in Iran. If someone buys an Apple product in Iran they're getting smuggled hardware that has likely been jailbroken. It won't be connected to anything Apple or iCloud unless they're going through some kind of VPN. Certainly nobody is getting developer certs there and they can't do any payment processing so most regular apps are gonna be out of t…

Please stop opining on what you have zero knowledge on. The Apple devices in Iran are never sold jailbroken (in fact, I have never seen a jailbroken Apple device in my life). They can usually connect to all the Apple services without a VPN. There are apps that use Iranian payment processors in the App Store itself (e.g., https://apps.apple.com/us/app/fidiketabi/id1464658470 is an app that sells ebooks and audiobooks, its real name being Fidibo), and others have apps as direct installs that need the user to accept their profile, or use one of those Iranian app stores. There was a brief period after the Facebook VPN scandal that Apple did make a show of blocking these Iranian certificates, which caused a surge in web apps (which I liked a lot), but that didn’t last long. What is super clear is that Apple gives not a single fuck about privacy, security, US laws, or anything except PR. They do exactly what generates the most money for them, and have no principles. Every single big stunt they have done costed them nothing and further consolidated their monopolies. It is always others who shoulder the costs, never Apple.

Re: I want a computer that I own

#588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, I know the bullshit Samsung etc. is up to. How is broadast television doing it?

Not broadcast per se but cable company set top boxes monitor your viewing habits and correlate them with your account which has a bunch of demographic data.

Yeah, so not TV Networks (Fox,NBC,ABC,...) but Comcast/AT&T etc.

Re: I want a computer that I own

#589
post #164

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Universal Android Debloater can remove them without root, using ADB (Android Debug Bridge): https://gitlab.com/W1nst0n/universal-android-debloater/ In case you do want to install a custom Android distribution (ROM) to clean out the Samsung bloat more thoroughly, the risk of hard-bricking your phone is almost non-existent nowadays. The worst that can happen is usually a soft-brick which can be fixed by reinstalling th…

Worth noting that Samsung doesn't allow the bootloader to be unlocked in most (if not all) of its flagship devices released in the US. Although, there's paid services that could unlock the bootloader.

And if you do unlock the bootloader, you blow the Knox E-Fuse, meaning you can't use banking or payment apps

Re: I want a computer that I own

#590
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…

> I cannot choose any of the parts, and even doing simple reparation tasks like replacing a battery is a nightmare these days. There is the https://www.fairphone.com/en/ which is a modular and easy to repair smartphone. They also make it easy to install alternative operating systems like Sailfish or an OSS version of Android.

Unfortunately they don't seem to work in the US, and from what I've seen they are mainly focusing on selling and making sure their phones work in Europe.
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