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Linux phones are more important now than ever

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Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#361

Post by akagusu »

shaky-carrousel wrote: post #258
akagusu wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately tech people don't understand this. Common people don't care about the OS, they care about apps.

I smell a "no true Scottman" here. Because people always say "common people do what I say" and when someone says "hey, I am common people and I disagree", the same people usually answer "well, then you're not common _enough_". Which is a huge fallacy.

> Common people don't care about the OS, they care about apps.

My statement is based on 25 year as an IT professional where I migrated people and businesses from Windows to Linux, from iOS to Android, from old Unixes to Windows/Linux and the list goes on.

Just give to people the apps they need or want and the rest is easily managed.

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#362

Post by Zak »

kmeisthax wrote: post #154

What you want isn't a "linux phone", what you want is a gun to put to the developers' heads so you can scream "let me tamper with your shit". If you just want "a phone OS", AOSP is still there and worth forking. But you don't want a phone OS, you want apps. And nobody is going to write apps for an AOSP fork (see also: Fire Phone). Actually, nobody is going to write apps for anything other than Android and iOS, just i…

I wonder what an alternate history where Google didn't implement remote attestation and actively made it difficult for apps to snoop on user modifications would look like.

I suspect the Fire Phone is where things changed. If Amazon had iterated on it and done a good job, it might have been a competitive threat to Google's revenue model for Android; that's less likely if it won't run games and banking apps.

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#363

Post by ulrikrasmussen »

mrweasel wrote: post #341
taneliv wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LOL, what? My (teenage) kids use my phone all the time, especially in the car, when I'm driving, but also at home. It's not like I have porn or banking apps on it, but what is the age verification going to help there? If the kids would install an app or used browser to see naked people, then my face would be available to these services, right? Better mine than the kids', I suppose! (We're not in Denmark, but I wonder…

The Danish MitID identity "service" is actually pretty clever, except for the app used to approve actions or requests on your behalf. It's designed in a way that ensure that it can verify your age, but reveal nothing else about you. It isn't going to be used for "Porn ID" though. Instead it will provide your age information, basically 15+ or 18+ (I think those are the options), to an identity wallet, which in term wi…

Exactly this. Except the new service is not released as part of MitID but as part of the new digital wallet app (den digitale tegnebog). This is a separate and "voluntary" app which is meant to be offered as a convenience. Except it isn't really voluntary when the app is introduced together with new regulation that requires you to verify your age in places where you were previously anonymous, and the only way to actually stay anonymous and retain access is via the app.

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#364

Post by dvrj101 »

karel-3d wrote: post #212

Isn't Android... Linux? It's not "gotcha", just... there are many clones of Android that work without Google Play, because Android (AOSP) is based on Linux. Why not just use that? What does "linux phone" add?

> Android that work without Google Play,

https://github.com/microg/GmsCore, so basically you cannot. It's monopoly in daylight.

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#365

Post by ulrikrasmussen »

food4thought1 wrote: post #313
ulrikrasmussen wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My government (Denmark) refusing to let me use their digital identity app because I don't want to accept Google's or Apple's TOS, and Google helping them enforce that via remote attestation services. Luckily there are alternatives in the form of code displays and NFC chips. However, next year I won't be able to watch porn unless I verify my age using a smartphone, no alternatives are planned. Or rather, I have the "f…

> or uploading my face to a porn site. I assume that in the pornography you've decided to consume, the participants are not clad in balaclavas. They're showing their faces to everyone, in perpetuity, which many may no longer want to, and - considering the exploitative nature of the pornography industry, where rape is endemic - some didn't consent to in the first place. So maybe consider that when you're complaining t…

Yes I do, and you argument is ridiculous. First of all, porn actors are operating legally and consent to what they are doing. There are real problems with the industry, but the fact that porn actors have their face shown does (of course) not mean that consumers of porn should logically have to also disclose theirs to online services.

Second, porn is just the beginning. This will also be rolled out to social media, and I wouldn't be surprised if in a few years this will be required in lots of places where children could be exposed to something that politicians find offensive.

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#366

Post by high_na_euv »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #310
mr_mitm wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the threat model here is that a different, malicious app (compromised, installed accidentally or by the means of social engineering) might take screenshots of your screen and forward them to take advantage of you. You can file this under one's "own stupidity" as well, sure, but in the end they're not protecting you, they're protecting themselves, because banks might be liable for these kind of things, and by…

> they're protecting themselves [citation needed] The theory here is that it provides a marginal security improvement if there is malware on the phone, but if there is malware on the phone then there are a hundred other things it can do to the same effect and you're likely screwed anyway. And by doing this, you also block the user from taking screenshots, which is bad, because screenshots are harder for computers to…

>because screenshots are harder for computers to parse, and that's a marginal security advantage. If the user is going to send e.g. their account number to someone else (for a legitimate reason), it's better that they do it as a screenshot than that you force them to type it as text, because text is machine searchable. Which is worse when that messaging system gets compromised and then the attacker can do a text search for a pattern matching a bank routing number and be more likely to discover that message than if it was only there in a JPG.

Tbf it is 2025, not 2010, it isnt that hard

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#367

Post by ulrikrasmussen »

nicman23 wrote: post #176
ulrikrasmussen wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My government (Denmark) refusing to let me use their digital identity app because I don't want to accept Google's or Apple's TOS, and Google helping them enforce that via remote attestation services. Luckily there are alternatives in the form of code displays and NFC chips. However, next year I won't be able to watch porn unless I verify my age using a smartphone, no alternatives are planned. Or rather, I have the "f…

route everything through a vps?

I would much rather fight this and retain my rights instead of participating in some kind of privacy and censorship arms race.

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#368

Post by t1234s »

I think certain "Apps" that you need to do "X" keep this from happening. You can have a super lean, private and secure linux phone using super clean, fast OSS software to do what you need to do, but what happens if you need one of the mainstream apps (Uber, etc..) to function in society with the rest of the normies. Maybe a linux phone that can dual-boot into android? I doubt we will ever see companies pulling out of the app stores and offering browser-based solutions that will work on any device or OS.

Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever

#369

Post by emporas »

rerdavies wrote: post #359
emporas wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is bigger than that. Why not two people share a device, and when passed from one person to another, delete applications and install all apps and profiles from scratch using verified checksums saved on a blockchain. An OS which could do that is something like Nix. When passed to the previous person same thing, delete and install everything from scratch. Using smartphones in a smart way, not a dumb way, like…

Android's Multiple Users feature does exactly this. Multiple users accounts with all user data completely sandboxed and restricted to each user. All user data is cryptographically protected on storage devices. The actual SE filesystem available to a logged in user is pretty complicated. But the short story is that user-data is completely isolated. Presumably application binaries (which require digital signatures by d…

> Multiple users accounts with all user data completely sandboxed and restricted to each user.

User data and user programs. Clean installation kind of user programs.

> Verified checksums on a blockchain are only useful if they are verified by some provider who associates a blockchain ID with a real-world identity.

Nix associates a unique id to each program version or package or config file. The verification happens on the Nix package manager.

The user uploads his exact config of OS somewhere, in his own home server, at a goverment server, at AWS, on a blockchain, somewhere. A blockchain seems like the best solution to me.

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