PinePhone – Beta Edition Linux SmartPhone Preorder • Hacker News Board

Re: PinePhone – Beta Edition Linux SmartPhone Preorder

#221

Post by megous » Wed, Mar 24, 2021, 5:04 PM UTC

belval wrote: post #29

miralize wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the EU law make exemptions for unfinished products? They're still providing you a product.

These laws were made to protect regular consumers when they buy a washing machine to ensure that the manufacturer could not screw them over. This is Pine64, which is about as close to community driven hardware development as you can get. They give you the open-source design and source code. If you think you might need a two year guarantee just don't buy their product, it's probably not a good fit for you anyway.

> These laws were made to protect regular consumers when they buy a washing machine to ensure that the manufacturer could not screw them over over the last few decades:

That didn't work out very well. They just found different, more insidious ways of screwing people over.

https://www.ukwhitegoods.co.uk/help/buying-advice/washing-ma...

...

Re: PinePhone – Beta Edition Linux SmartPhone Preorder

#222

Post by reader_mode » Wed, Mar 24, 2021, 5:05 PM UTC

jascii wrote: post #175

viro wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>financial incentive ? ... financial incentives is the motivation for most labor.

Research has actually indicated that the link between financial incentives and motivation to work is actually very small: https://hbr.org/2013/04/does-money-really-affect-motiv Thus widespread availability of "labor of love" open source software, and the relative crappiness of a lot of commercial software.

Most OSS is funded by corporate and wouldn't exist without it

Re: PinePhone – Beta Edition Linux SmartPhone Preorder

#223

Post by zepto » Wed, Mar 24, 2021, 5:07 PM UTC

aroman wrote: post #162

zepto wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would this project be more effective at doing this than iOS or Android? This is an excellent question. The basic answer is that the incentive structures are different. Apple’s platforms are primarily designed to efficiently deliver commercial software. The app-store, the apis and everything else about their OS ecosystem is designed around the idea that packaged Apps, immutable to the user and remotely maintaine…

I agree that if the “active participant” model somehow became a better fit for most people than the Apple/Google model, it seems like disruption would be possible. That’s a big “if” though. Curious if you think there are larger trends that would suggest that the current standard of the “walled garden”/closed software model will become less effective than the “active participant” model in meeting the computing needs o…

Yes, it’s a big if, however the number of people who can code and the general sophistication level of even amateur programmers is rising over time.

Actual computer literacy in the sense of being about to both read and write programs is only going to increase over time.

My sense is that Apple is underserving the needs of software creators in general, by shoehorning everything into Apps.

They could respond to this, and I have been expecting them to for years. My sense now is that they may be too are too blinded by the store model to realize what is happening.

This is one of the trends that I think Jobs would have understood, but that a post Jobs Apple may miss.

Another trend is the rise of crypto. I am not a Bitcoin bull or anything like that, but now that there is so much creativity in the crypto space, I think it’s entirely feasible that we could solve the problem of distributing trust, so that we can provide something for end users with the safety of the App Store but without the central gatekeeper.

This is not even close to being a solved problem yet, which is why I oppose the breakup of app stores.

However the basic tools seem to exist for us to solve it, as does the pressure.

Re: PinePhone – Beta Edition Linux SmartPhone Preorder

#224

Post by Freak_NL » Wed, Mar 24, 2021, 5:08 PM UTC

zajio1am wrote: post #137

Freak_NL wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not even the lack of apps directly but the effect of not having one of the two supported OSes. For example, the Dutch government is slowly pushing everyone to either use their authentication app (for DigiD, the national digital government authentication service), or just stop using digital government services all together and just digitally mandate friends or family to handle your digital affairs. This latter op…

> For example, the Dutch government is slowly pushing everyone to either use their authentication app (for DigiD, the national digital government authentication service), Could not you use identity service from different EU country (based on eIDAS regulation)? Here in Czechia there is eIDAS-compatible identity provider that uses U2F tokens.

Eventually — and specifically for healthcare — yes! But I'm not sure if a citizen from one country can easily obtain credentials from another. It seems mostly meant for cases where you might need to sign on to a Dutch government website and you can then just use those Czech U2F tokens. It is a way forward though, but currently mostly hypothetical.

Unfortunately, while there is a migration going on from offering only DigiD to offering the whole eIDAS suite (in the Netherlands this is done via a government service called ToegangsVerleningsService, so vendors only have to implement a SAML connection to that which will eventually support eIDAS), it is by no means sure that every government function will allow eIDAS instead of just DigiD. It's honestly a very opaque process.

Great to hear that the Czech Republic chose U2F (now part of WebAuthn) though!

Re: PinePhone – Beta Edition Linux SmartPhone Preorder

#225

Post by herogreen » Wed, Mar 24, 2021, 5:11 PM UTC

CraneWorm wrote: post #92

> Size: 5.95 inches I never understood it why it has to be so hard to find a reasonably speced smartphone that fits comfortably in your pocket

Well, it is easier to place all the components in a bigger phone :)

I too prefer small screens, but I bought a Pinephone anyway to support the effort and help testing.

Typed from Firefox on my Pinephone Braveheart running Mobian (works fine for me).

Re: PinePhone – Beta Edition Linux SmartPhone Preorder

#226

Post by ben-schaaf » Wed, Mar 24, 2021, 5:11 PM UTC

dheera wrote: post #163

wwarner wrote: post #20

I personally think that the effort to create open source phones is the single most important technology project going on out there. We have open source browsers, we have open source social apps, but we definitely do not have open source phones. Phones that can be truly owned and controlled by users will reshape the privacy discourse, from one of complaining and legal coercion, to one of choices and markets.

Isn't AOSP fully open source? What is the point of the PinePhone over an Android phone running pure AOSP?

You're still relying on closed source drivers for the vast majority of devices using AOSP, that's pretty far from "fully open source".

Re: PinePhone – Beta Edition Linux SmartPhone Preorder

#227

Post by thereddaikon » Wed, Mar 24, 2021, 5:12 PM UTC

I bought the postmarketOS edition phone last year. The software is improving although there is an annoying bug specifically with postmarketos where the app repo doesnt list anything you dont already have downloaded, You have to search for software by name.

The build quality is on par with some early android phones before glass screens became standard. performance is kind of what you would expect. Not great but it works. I definitely wouldn't consider this daily driver ready yet. I still think its worth supporting. With RISCV gaining steam perhaps the next version will use a mobile optimised RISCV SOC instead of the weird janky embedded ARM unit they have now.

Re: PinePhone – Beta Edition Linux SmartPhone Preorder

#228

Post by jascii » Wed, Mar 24, 2021, 5:14 PM UTC

viro wrote: post #68

wwarner wrote: post #20

I personally think that the effort to create open source phones is the single most important technology project going on out there. We have open source browsers, we have open source social apps, but we definitely do not have open source phones. Phones that can be truly owned and controlled by users will reshape the privacy discourse, from one of complaining and legal coercion, to one of choices and markets.

I must really like down votes because "single most important technology project going on out there" is quite the stretch. Hell, I would argue that over the last year during a pandemic doordash was more important(feeding people while letting them be socially distanced). People on this site like overestimate the avg. persons concern with privacy. the hardware toggles are cool tho.

I would argue that doordash isn't a "technology project" It's a food delivery company, that happens to have a web-shop.

Re: PinePhone – Beta Edition Linux SmartPhone Preorder

#229

Post by jascii » Wed, Mar 24, 2021, 5:18 PM UTC

reader_mode wrote: post #222

jascii wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Research has actually indicated that the link between financial incentives and motivation to work is actually very small: https://hbr.org/2013/04/does-money-really-affect-motiv Thus widespread availability of "labor of love" open source software, and the relative crappiness of a lot of commercial software.

Most OSS is funded by corporate and wouldn't exist without it

Corporations do provide funds for some larger projects, that is however not anywhere near "most".

Re: PinePhone – Beta Edition Linux SmartPhone Preorder

#230

Post by herogreen » Wed, Mar 24, 2021, 5:20 PM UTC

ryankrage77 wrote: post #217

ece wrote: post #118

This is great, and I plan on getting one to support the project. I do however wish there was a smaller screen one (perhaps EInk) with more 4G bands like band 71, and with Anbox/microG support to run apps like Signal. I would like to know what apps people are using for video chat, if they aren't using Signal.

I very much doubt the hardware in this can keep up with a video chat. It can barely play a YouTube video at 480p.

I just tested: Firefox is able to play reasonably well a Youtube video at 720p 25fps.