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Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS

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Re: Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS

#552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe "tech nerd" is being interpreted in a specific way that I don't quite follow. Are the multimedia guys with the expensive tech setups not nerdy enough?

They were nerds but not computer nerds. “tech nerd” would be someone building computers, learning how to program a bit, war driving, etc

Huh. For me "tech nerd" has always been more general, and encompassed the folks pushing the envelope in multimedia/games/home-automation, and so on

Re: Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS

#553
post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expect most people to think it's bad if a corporation can keep them from running apps on their phone when those apps are good for the user and bad for the corporation. If most people don't understand that conflicts of interest lead to unethical behavior, that's a larger and more urgent social problem. I expect tech nerds to be aware that the conflict of interests exists in this case, while the average person would…

You can be aware of the conflict of interest and still decide that is an acceptable trade-off to make. Ethics are personal, subjective, and subject to trade-offs. You have a strong ethical support for having control of the apps running on your devices and that overrides other trade-offs. Another person may have competing ethical beliefs such as Google is an advertising company and while Android allows open software i…

> Google is an advertising company and while Android allows open software installation (today, at least), Google's conflicts of interest as an ad company are more concerning for the entire platform and larger ecosystem than Apple's conflicts of interest as an application gate keeper.

This, I suspect is a large part of it. At least for me, as a self described "tech nerd" who have been messing with computers since my childhood in the 90s.

The other aspect is that I don't do anything serious from my phone. I'm still "old school" I guess and prefer a keyboard + mouse. My laptop is my main computing device, not my phone. And for that, Apple currently offers the best of a bad situation. It's still advantageous to them from a marketing standpoint to offer privacy, and they aren't primarily an advertising company. They are the only one of the two that offer E2EE (Advanced Data Protection) for photos, all the processing for that is done on device, etc. When meta threw their huge fit over the app tracking transparency, but were silent on anything Google was doing with Android, that just sold Apple even more for me.

I'v made a choice to accept the tradeoff of them being an application gate keeper because for anything "serious" I'd just be using my computer anyway, which still allows me to install and run whatever I want, and do whatever I want with the hardware. I don't need that from a phone. Quite the opposite, I don't want that on a phone, I'm totally fine with the phone just being an appliance, and Apple offers the best appliance experience still.

Re: Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS

#554
post #274

One thing that bothers me is the seeming lack of transparency about who is running GrapheneOS. Daniel Micay supposedly stepped down, so who is calling the shots now? Who runs the CI? Who owns the update servers and signing keys? Who am I trusting?

The directors of the the GrapheneOS Foundation and the other things you're talking about are public information. I stepped down as lead developer due to relentless harassment preventing me from being productive. The same people targeting me with harassment misrepresented what was happening. You shouldn't get info about GrapheneOS from Hacker News comments especially when multiple regulars here are part of the attacks…

Thank you, to you and the rest of the team, for your work on GrapheneOS!

If I may make a suggestion: as GrapheneOS becomes more popular, perhaps it's time to better establish users' trust in the control over it.

When the project was primarily you, who was already known for technical prowess and a principled exit from a different project, that was enough for many enthusiasts.

But as both the team and the user base have grown (and, secondarily, the outside world has become less stable), a new infusion of confidence in trustworthiness would help.

I'm not sure how to do that, but it may include communicating who is involved (not just names, but why they should be trusted), and what safeguards there are against mistakes and compromised/rogue individuals.

I say this because GrapheneOS may be the best candidate for a trustworthy smartphone platform right now, and I hope for the best followthrough and success of that.

Re: Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS

#556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be a custom rom guy in high school, and I also used to develop apps for my nexus 5. Now I have an iPhone and I save the tech nerding for work hours. I definitely would not have gotten this far without my custom rom days, but now my phone just needs to do phone things so I can work on robots instead.

This. I was heavily involved with the Maemo community back in the day and even made an Ubuntu 9.04 port to the Nokia N800/N810. These days I'm juggling multiple responsibilities and I need to conserve my mental energy for work. I certainly credit my career on that tinkering, but these days I just want something that works so I can put my energy elsewhere.

>I need to conserve my mental energy for work.

Is perhaps the saddest sentence. Whats the point of working when you don't have enough energy left to do the fun stuff?

Re: Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS

#557

Could this be a road to getting GrapheneOS approved under Play Integrity (for contactless payments, etc)?

I don't think so, since Play Integrity is incompatible with open source.

Right, my understanding is that the whole point of "device integrity" is for a device manufacturer that your bank trusts to be able to vouch that your device is "secure". If the device is under your control rather than the manufacturer's (as would generally be the case with an open source OS), they can't credibly make such guarantees.

Re: Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS

#558
post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't want your payments to be tracked you need to use cash or crypto. Otherwise, just use a credit card. I really don't see how unlocking a phone is easier or more convenient than using a credit card.

The watch is on my wrist, or the phone is already in my hand. The credit card is buried in a wallet that needs to be taken out of and put back into a pocket. Also “unlocking” isn’t an inconvenient step, on iPhone it just happens automatically. As it should on android if the fingerprint sensor is in a convenient location.

Umm, assuming you have the same opinion as grandparent comment, you don't want google tracking your payments but you'll happily trust google's pinky promise about your fingerprint being stored only on the phone?

Re: Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS

#559
It took a while but congrats to Daniel Micay and GrapheneOS. Hopefully it is the first of a few (looking at you HMD, Sony, Samsung, Nothing).

Will Motorola allowlist/whitelist GrapheneOS's avb key for green boot state? Does that have any implications for Play Integrity?

Do GrapheneOS finally get AOSP full partner access as a result of this? Will the Motorola device have USB port control, OS virtualisation and GPU virtualisation? Will it have a better secure face unlock story than Pixel 5 - 10?

Will the gushing fans and secret admirers finally stop flocking to me because I switched from Pixel-GrapheneOS to Motorola-GrapheneOS?

Re: Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS

#560
post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such an uncharitable take of your peers. The issue is not pedigree - it’s that many folks have an incurious mind. I certainly know many folks with a CS degree that are incurious and frankly terrible engineers. I also know bootcampers that are extremely curious, have a lifelong-learner attitude, and are subsequently great engineers. There’s nothing special taught in the vaunted halls of a CS undergrad that can…

I agree with your first couple of sentences. But the YouTube bit is dangerous misinformation. You cannot match any credible university education by watching YouTube.

There are many wonderful educational channels on YouTube. Just as in a classroom - you cannot passively absorb material and expect to understand it with any depth. You can absolutely get the same education off YouTube. The only advantage a proper course provides is pre-made structure. But even that is accessible to the motivated learner.
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