A simple WIFI/bluetooth only device like the iPod Touch but with Linux, combined with a modem puck would actually be enough. You separate the untrusted part from your own device.
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Linux phones are more important now than ever
401–410 of 515 posts
Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever
#402I deeply want the equivalent of Debian on a phone. Rock solid. Every few year feature updates, only security fixes otherwise.
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Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever
#403Earlier quoted context omitted.
I want to send my new IBAN to my company, I can, no screenshot allowed on the screen with banking information. So I need to log on their website to do it. At least my new bank allows such screenshot and to copy account information directly from the app.
There is a special place in hell for people providing non copyable text information in the form of screenshots.
And PDF documents in image form. Usually scans of printed copies.
It is fine for historical documents, but doing today means you really want to piss people off. And by the way, PDF files support signatures, both handwritten and digital. There are ways other than printing a 100+ page document and scanning it just so that your signature shows up on a single one of these pages.
Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever
#404Earlier quoted context omitted.
Less conspiratorial answer (better late than never): Google services, integrity hardening: From outside it might be difficult to understand the distinction, but Google is acting here as the owner and maintainer of a services ecosystem, which is the entire Google service-package provided to end-users. For them, Android is provided as a foundation for that package, and they increasingly experience difficulty to contain…
> Google is acting here as the owner and maintainer of a services ecosystem... > they increasingly experience difficulty to contain issues within that ecosystem and prevent them from spreading (piracy, malware, hacking,...) I wonder if the smartphone app industry is big enough now that allowing just two corporates to govern them is no longer fair or democratic. It has outgrown the "ecosystem" word a long time ago. It…
This is more or less the journey the EU has started with the Digital Markets Act, but in a very agnostic way.
They identified that, among others, Apple and Google are operating a "Digital Market" of significant size within their ecosystem, where they invite others to participate and compete, and it's the role of a government to ensure fair conditions in the markets of its economy so forces can flow freely.
The way they defined that is very smart. They don't define what an "app" is or an ecosystem, they identify in a objective way that their operations constitute a market, and that they have to comply to certain rules in order to ensure fair competition.
I just hope that they can see this through and have those Digital Markets established as proper "markets" in the same sense as physical markets are, before some political "wind of change" is dissolving everything again.
Apple is very much counting on such a wind of change, by actively rallying its users against the EU...
Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever
#405Earlier quoted context omitted.
I genuinely think if Sony offered a Linux phone and didn't lock it down too bad, they could serve as the catalyst for the whole market. I don't think I would trust any other company at this point to execute the platonic "Linux phone" we need. The uncompromising vision on building a fantastic product for the technically minded make them an obvious choice.
Sony tries out so many different types of products too across their entire lineup. They have made some memorable handhelds over the years, even their eink readers were special.
True. Sony is a conglomerate, which explains their business strategy. Lots of divisions and groups operate independently and have little coordination.
Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever
#406Earlier quoted context omitted.
In some sense they are. But being protected either from a consequence of my own stupidity or a consequence of their lack of security. I think the worst part of all is that these "bandaids" are being used in place of actual security. I don't need to be protected from my own stupidity nor do I need security theater.
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…
There was a Microsoft Terminal Server "monitoring" application that worked by recording the screen through a series of JPG screenshots. It worked surprisingly well and bypassed all kinds of controls.
Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever
#407I keep my eye on Linux phones from time-to-time. By "linux" -- I guess I mean using a phone that runs a valid linux distribution that gives me freedom of control as well as software freedom. I know people have a love/hate with environments like GNOME, but I don't mind it and happy for it on my phone.. as long as it adapts nicely on smaller screens. My only issue is applications. Like many, I am using an Android/IPhon…
I run Andoid apps on my Librem 5 using Waydroid.
Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever
#408What's the hardest part about an open phone? Cellular support? App support? Maybe I'm unique, but nowadays 99% of my phone time is spent in a browser. If anything, it seems easier now to get something like this going because all you'd need is a bare bones UI and a good web browser. Sure, it's not competitive with a Samsung foldable, but he I've gotta start somewhere... I do sort of wonder if an x86-based phone is at…
> What's the hardest part about an open phone?
Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever
#409Unrelated question: What is this feddit.org site? It seems like reddit but I have never heard about it! I checked and it appears this is the very first post ever posted here on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=feddit.org
Lemmy[1] is a federated Reddit-a-like running on the ActivityPub protocol. feddit.org is one particular instance of a Lemmy server that's hosted in Germany.
Personally, I'm pretty enthusiastic about the whole Lemmy project, and I think it's actually a much better fit to the federated ActivityPub model than Mastodon.
Re: Linux phones are more important now than ever
#410Earlier quoted context omitted.
> prevents me from taking screenshots if an app author doesn't want me to The most frustrating part about this "feature" is that you don't know it's enabled until the screenshot is taken and you're left with a picture of nothing. That and some app authors thinking they're protecting you with this (referring to banking apps in particular)
It is not for preventing you from taking screenshots, if you insist, you can do it with another camera. It is to prevent malware and "helpful" AI tools from doing it for you and then uploading the picture to who knows where. Signal does this too, though I think it is optional. Beyond preventing screenshots, it blacks out the window content in the task switcher, which is useful if someone is looking over your shoulder…
I mean if the goal is to prevent potential malicious apps from taking screenshots automatically; instead of saving a clueless user from themselves or worse getting in the way of legitimate users I believe that the proper solution is to disallow programmatic screenshots while still allowing screenshots when there is the correct button press (and ensure that this cannot be emulated). Windows reserves ctrl-alt-delete as a direct signal to the kernel for security purposes. Why can't android do the same?