181–190 of 204 posts
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Yes, that's Google's excuse for banning side loading. It's a terrible reason.
They aren't banning it. They are introducing a one time 24 hour waiting period. Not ideal, but not banning.
I don't understand why ensuring general-purpose computing is not a priority of the European Union. All that talk about sovereignty, and we are giving full control of our digital lives to 2 American companies.
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GrapheneOS or other custom ROMs don't solve the actual problem that you can't just buy a smartphone and install any operating system like you can with an actual computer, despite technically being one. Also, GrapheneOS supports device attestation (the non-google kind at least), which is still ridiculous as such systems have no benefit to people, only to technofeudalist corporations.
> you can't just buy a smartphone and install any operating system like you can with an actual computer, despite technically being one. What's stopping you from buying a phone, unlocking the bootloader, and flashing whatever ROM you want?
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GrapheneOS or other custom ROMs don't solve the actual problem that you can't just buy a smartphone and install any operating system like you can with an actual computer, despite technically being one. Also, GrapheneOS supports device attestation (the non-google kind at least), which is still ridiculous as such systems have no benefit to people, only to technofeudalist corporations.
> you can't just buy a smartphone and install any operating system like you can with an actual computer, despite technically being one. What's stopping you from buying a phone, unlocking the bootloader, and flashing whatever ROM you want?
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> you can't just buy a smartphone and install any operating system like you can with an actual computer, despite technically being one. What's stopping you from buying a phone, unlocking the bootloader, and flashing whatever ROM you want?
the "whatever ROM"s are all Android, what difference does it make? Many bank apps have this SafetyNet thing and will refuse to run on non-official ROMs, that too.
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> you can't just buy a smartphone and install any operating system like you can with an actual computer, despite technically being one. What's stopping you from buying a phone, unlocking the bootloader, and flashing whatever ROM you want?
OEMs removing bootloader unlocking at an increasing rate.
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The number of choices exposed to users is irrelevant, what's relevant is that choices which I'd want exposed are not exposed, and without root, there's no extension mechanism which'd let me load my code into for example the system server process. What you also seem to be ignoring is that the fact that for example there's no simple runtime internet permission toggle is NOT an accident, this functionality is deliberate…
And if you wanted a toaster with a setting to enable which side of the bread gets cooked you may have to look for a niche product instead of using main stream toasters similar to how you may need to use a niche operating system like GrapheneOS for your special handling of internet permissions. Even if a toaster doesn't have such a setting or an easy way to add, you still own it. When products are designed they have a…
However, it's pointless to focus on what's not available but could - it's the WHY that matters. A toaster without fancy functionality might be mine, but a toaster that only cooks a specific brand of bread, or that displays ads doesn't feel like mine. This is not just a lack of a feature - it's deliberately not there to prioritize the manufacturer over my experience..
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Device attestation is how you can use private keys you don't actually have access to. It has a lot of value to literally anyone who wants to store tokens or use one time authentication codes. Linux folks need to implement the full stack and offer an open alternative to payments, secrets, and tokens. In the age of LLMs there is no excuse. It is annoying as hell that I can't buy a System76 or Framework laptop with a fi…
"Device attestation is how you can use private keys you don't actually have access to." Read that phrase back and then ask "is this the future of computing that we wanted?" The likes of passkeys, essentially user-hostile ssh keys that live on your device but aren't accessible by you, would have been an unbelievable dystopia to us in the 90s. "Linux folks need to implement the full stack" Nah it's fine thanks, I'd rat…
It is what I want.
If you own a mobile phone it's unavoidable. The physical SIM is a guarded area with secrets you can't know or touch - the secrets it holds prove you paid for access to their network.
If you want to carry a zillion others devices you can't access the innards of that prove something about you then good for you. But don't assume the rest of us think that's a good idea. We no more object to carving out a little bit of firewalled memory for the exclusive use of the bank than we object to the electricity meter in our houses. It's also a locked down piece of equipment we can't modify or touch that lives on our property. Most people are happy to grant that intrusion on their personal space in exchange for having the electrity connected.
It's no different on your phone. In return for your phone protecting its details from you, you no longer have to carry a credit card, or driver's licence, or prove you paid for ads to go away in some app, or access your works VPN. I honestly can't see much difference between carrying a credit card the hides some information from me, or putting the same info in the phone and it hiding the info. Except for having one less device to haul around, of course.
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Do you think you would be allowed to sell such a phone to normal people in any serious quantity? (I know HN people get delusional about using laptops as mobile phones, but here is a hint: you wouldn’t. You would be hauled up for enabling distribution of CSAM etc until you stopped). Look at how they treat Graphene, and that is an afternarket mod niche.
Yes, I do think you'd be allowed to sell a phone to normal people in serious quantity. The kerfuffle with Graphene was about whether or not they specifically targeted organised criminals, Anom-style. No charges were made - some idiot politician just assumed Graphene==Encrochat and made a public statement based on that.
Wrt Graohene the problem isn’t the politicians making announcements, the police assume you are a criminal if you have Graohene and are profiling you on this basis.