Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

My Pinephone Setup

hamblingreen.gitlab.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 120 posts

Re: My Pinephone Setup

#81

Post by superkuh »

xvector wrote: post #14
superkuh wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's hardening against the user being able to do things, not against corporate or government threat models. Software can only do a little bit on megacorp smartphone hardware even if it tries to help the user instead of locking them out.

> Software can only do a little bit on megacorp smartphone hardware That isn't true at all. Do you have a source for your implication that the Pixel's trusted boot chain is compromised, or that remote attestation of software+hardware is backdoored?

Google has attempted to make sure the Pixel's hardware baseband modem is properly isolated from user space. But you can't trust it completely because the Pixel's baseband computer does have access to userspace RAM in terms of physical ability in the hardware. The GraphemeOS FAQ explains it here: https://grapheneos.org/faq#baseband-isolation

But the pinephone baseband literally does not have the physical/hardware capability. You don't have to trust software from Google or Qualcomm or Pine. https://www.pine64.org/2020/01/24/setting-the-record-straigh...

Your request for proof that Pixel's trusted boot chain is compromised or other things is irrelevant both because of the above, and because it's all controlled by the very company you have to worry about. The fox has the keys to the henhouse. It owns the henhouse.

Re: My Pinephone Setup

#82

Post by agent008t »

smilespray wrote: post #74
agent008t wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest problem with the iPhone to me is forced obsolescence. A device from 2014 (iPhone 6) is no longer able to run many apps, because it doesn't support iOS versions past 12. Many of these apps are essentially just web pages, so in principle the hardware should be more than capable of running them. But instead you are pushed to ditch perfectly functional and capable hardware in favour of a new model. Compare th…

Ahem. You should be comparing iPhone upgradability with Android upgradability, most of which get stuck after a year or so. If they receive any upgrades at all. Unless you carry you 2011 laptop around in your pocket, that is.

I am not saying Android is better - just using Apple as an example. Although it does seem like there are more options of at least reusing the hardware in some way with an Android device. I am not sure where exactly the problem is or how to solve it, but there seems to be something fundamentally wrong about the whole thing.

Re: My Pinephone Setup

#83

Post by nyanpasu64 »

kaba0 wrote: post #59
DeathArrow wrote: post #54

Why does Google hate the regular Linux Kernel and the regular Linux userland so much that Android doesn't have much Linux resemblance? I remember that wen Nokia did N900, it was pretty compatible with mainline Linux.

Because Linux userspace arguably sucks. While the kernel is excellent, there is no sane sandboxing (and I can’t communicate enough how truly terrible linux desktop’s “security” is. A single bash script could break absolute havoc), the IPC mechanism used to communicate between programs is fragmented and in my opinion the insistence that C should be used everywhere really holds back the platform. Compared to that, andr…

> why doesn’t mainline linux copy some things from android?

Because Android is actively interfering with:

- a shared filesystem where you can manage files from a graphical file manager, terminal, Git, editor/IDE, compiler, Python runtime, photo manager, and hex editor

- Being able to debug apps from other apps (Mac disables lldb altogether unless you disable SIP, then you need to type your password every time, and Android ships with no debugging tools at all)

Re: My Pinephone Setup

#84

Post by James-Livesey »

linmob wrote: post #42
ryukafalz wrote: post #22

> Gomuks: Ever wanted to get Matrix protocol notifications on your Pinephone, without the sluggishness of an Electron UI? Now you can! AFAIK: not without draining the battery you can't. You have to either disable the deep sleep mode ("CRUST") while the screen is blanked or leave the screen on, otherwise any Matrix client including gomuks won't run at all once you turn the screen off. (So no notifications for incoming…

There‘s a script for waking the PinePhone up regularly to mitigate this: https://codeberg.org/Silmathoron/pinephone-autowake

How can one make the PinePhone detect incoming calls on a regular basis using this method? It looks like the code sleeps for minutes at a time, which is ideal for fetching notifications for IM apps etc. but not for detecting incoming calls (which usually last about 30 seconds iirc before timing out/going to voicemail).

I would assume that suspending and waking, say, every 10 seconds could allow for detecting incoming calls but not be as energy efficient (or in the worst case, more detrimental than just keeping the phone on)?

imo I'd implement this by not suspending (except for some kind of 'battery saver' mode) and just keeping the screen at 0% brightness (which I assume is one of the primary consumers of energy from the battery cell)...

Re: My Pinephone Setup

#85

Post by moltke »

MartijnBraam wrote: post #64
satysin wrote: post #62

> Lately, I've been learning C programming solely on my Pinephone. Ha I like this guy already. That’s my kind of crazy :) It is an interesting experiment to be sure. I’m a big geek and love Linux but not sure I would go so far as to run i3 on my phone like this but more power to him and I’m glad there are people trying different things out and seeing how it goes. I know I’m getting old because every year I appreciate…

Hah I do most of my C programming directly on the pinephone, mostly in convergence mode :)

It's pretty fantastic for it. I've never had a better dev environment on a PDA.

Re: My Pinephone Setup

#86

Post by moltke »

James-Livesey wrote: post #84
linmob wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There‘s a script for waking the PinePhone up regularly to mitigate this: https://codeberg.org/Silmathoron/pinephone-autowake

How can one make the PinePhone detect incoming calls on a regular basis using this method? It looks like the code sleeps for minutes at a time, which is ideal for fetching notifications for IM apps etc. but not for detecting incoming calls (which usually last about 30 seconds iirc before timing out/going to voicemail). I would assume that suspending and waking, say, every 10 seconds could allow for detecting incoming…

The modem is a wakeup device. IIRC there's a separate GPIO line with interrupts specifically for this.

Re: My Pinephone Setup

#88

Post by kaba0 »

nyanpasu64 wrote: post #83
kaba0 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Linux userspace arguably sucks. While the kernel is excellent, there is no sane sandboxing (and I can’t communicate enough how truly terrible linux desktop’s “security” is. A single bash script could break absolute havoc), the IPC mechanism used to communicate between programs is fragmented and in my opinion the insistence that C should be used everywhere really holds back the platform. Compared to that, andr…

> why doesn’t mainline linux copy some things from android? Because Android is actively interfering with: - a shared filesystem where you can manage files from a graphical file manager, terminal, Git, editor/IDE, compiler, Python runtime, photo manager, and hex editor - Being able to debug apps from other apps (Mac disables lldb altogether unless you disable SIP, then you need to type your password every time, and An…

> a shared filesystem

There is absolutely zero reason for any random app to have access to arbitrary files on my computer. Why should a random bash script be able to wipe out all my family pictures?

Also, there is nothing inherent in the android model that would make a “shared filesystem” infeasible - it is just the wrong default. With specific access rights sure, it should be allowed.

Re: My Pinephone Setup

#89

Post by James-Livesey »

moltke wrote: post #86
James-Livesey wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can one make the PinePhone detect incoming calls on a regular basis using this method? It looks like the code sleeps for minutes at a time, which is ideal for fetching notifications for IM apps etc. but not for detecting incoming calls (which usually last about 30 seconds iirc before timing out/going to voicemail). I would assume that suspending and waking, say, every 10 seconds could allow for detecting incoming…

The modem is a wakeup device. IIRC there's a separate GPIO line with interrupts specifically for this.

That's handy, thanks for letting me know! I assume that applications that are resumed from suspension can then continue checking for incoming phone calls and alert the user when necessary, much like how (from my 'experiments' with the PinePhone) pressing the power button to wake the phone will still allow applications to capture the keypress event.

Re: My Pinephone Setup

#90

Post by lostgame »

I actually was not aware of the PineTime. As a huge Apple Watch/WatchOS fangirl, I'd honestly love to check out a far less restrictive smartwatch environment to mess around with.

I have a lot of interesting ideas that I've unfortunately been waiting for the WatchOS API's to catch up to, and I'd maybe be interested in getting on that PineTime train.

Has anyone purchased a PineTime? Can anyone give a bit of first-hand experience on what the experience is like? :)

Post reply on HN