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

Your phone is about to stop being yours

keepandroidopen.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

611–620 of 927 posts

Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#611

Post by duskdozer »

criddell wrote: post #61
NDlurker wrote: post #30

>Android's openness was never just a feature. It was the promise that distinguished it from iPhone. Millions chose Android for exactly that reason. Google is now revoking that promise unilaterally, on devices already in people's pockets, because they've decided they have enough market dominance and regulatory capture to get away with it. This is why I've stuck with Android for the past 15 years.

For you, is the openness of Android appealing as a matter of principle or does it enable you to do things you couldn't otherwise do?

I modify several apps for my own use in ways that wouldn't get accepted upstream (or are proprietary), and I modify OS components to reduce the impact of opinionated Google UI design (and Apple is worse in this context).

Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#612

Post by andai »

globular-toast wrote: post #602
ulrikrasmussen wrote: post #583

Someone here on HN used the term "cloud terminal" for modern electronic devices, and I think that is a very fitting name for phones and tablets. They are definitely not computers because they do not actually give the user access to general purpose computing in the sense that the users can control exactly what computations the device is going to execute. They are just terminals whose production costs we cover but whic…

Well, they can do computing, but it's awkward and most people don't use them for that, it's true. The question of ownership is interesting. If I buy a chair, it doesn't make a very good table, does that mean I don't own it? Most people don't know what general purpose computing is. To them a cloud terminal is a computer. So, to them, they do own their devices because that's all they are. I feel like some of us think w…

A phone is a computer whose creator is incentivized to make it pretend it isn't a computer, because it harms profits if they don't.

Increasingly, so is the government, because freedom of computing is incompatible with surveillance, age verification etc.

Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#613

Post by ulrikrasmussen »

janalsncm wrote: post #601
ulrikrasmussen wrote: post #583

Someone here on HN used the term "cloud terminal" for modern electronic devices, and I think that is a very fitting name for phones and tablets. They are definitely not computers because they do not actually give the user access to general purpose computing in the sense that the users can control exactly what computations the device is going to execute. They are just terminals whose production costs we cover but whic…

Speaking as someone who has built local-only apps (partially because I don’t want the hassle of maintaining a server): There are plenty of useful apps that run locally on a phone. You can even run a whole LLM on your phone. The shiniest and most popular apps are cloud terminals but the iPhone is actually a pretty darn powerful device.

Plenty of useful apps != general purpose computing capabilities.

You are not allowed to run computations that have not been approved by Apple if you are using an iPhone. Yes, the hardware is powerful, but it is cryptographically locked down. It is physically local, but the control of the hardware is entirely non-local and 100% owned by Apple.

Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#614

Post by fsflover »

pngwen wrote: post #68

This change has served me well! I have been a Mac OS X users for years who used an android phone. As soon as google announced their impending walled garden status, I went out and bought into the ios eco system. I have really been enjoying my iphone, ipad, and apple watch. You see, the only value that Android really offered me was the ability to run my own code on my own device. Since they are taking that away that ju…

I'm so tired of this false dichotomy. Sent from my daily driver Librem 5 running GNU/Linux.

Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#615

Post by bean469 »

janalsncm wrote: post #601
ulrikrasmussen wrote: post #583

Someone here on HN used the term "cloud terminal" for modern electronic devices, and I think that is a very fitting name for phones and tablets. They are definitely not computers because they do not actually give the user access to general purpose computing in the sense that the users can control exactly what computations the device is going to execute. They are just terminals whose production costs we cover but whic…

Speaking as someone who has built local-only apps (partially because I don’t want the hassle of maintaining a server): There are plenty of useful apps that run locally on a phone. You can even run a whole LLM on your phone. The shiniest and most popular apps are cloud terminals but the iPhone is actually a pretty darn powerful device.

> The shiniest and most popular apps are cloud terminals but the iPhone is actually a pretty darn powerful device.

They are powerful from a computational perspective, but the point was that it's a hassle to run a custom binary on them as compared to regular computers. You get a powerful device that is not flexible in this specific sense, so much of that power is not utilized

Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#616

Post by duskdozer »

iugtmkbdfil834 wrote: post #608

It is going to sound odd, but.. why do we need a phone number at all ( I know why it is so entrenched -- I am asking about need )? Because, if phone number is not needed, we can move to bypass the annoying effective duopoly.

Phone numbers so far have been one of the most effective unique identifiers that companies can convince people to give them

Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#617

Post by tsylba »

palmotea wrote: post #230

You know, I'm fine with this (just as long as the opt-in is one-time, not for every install). A device maker needs to balance the interests of many different groups, including nontechnical users subject to scams, and it's pretty self-centered to get self-righteously outraged when things get a little harder for power users, when those changes may save the butt of a lot of other people. The only thing that gives me pau…

I find it quite interesting that peoples talking on a website called "hacker news" find it fine that a company selling you an OS make it harder for you to install app not approved by them, notably so when there is enough scare screens as of now to discourage any too gullible peoples to do so.

What would we think if Microsoft decided all of a sudden to do something similar with Windows? How there is no outrage about this in that community?

Like the boiled crab in the chef's cuisine, we slowly accept the rising temperature around us as totally fine and normal.

Somewhat relevant article about the demise of a culture: https://aeon.co/essays/how-yuppies-hacked-the-original-hacke...

Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#618

Post by ulrikrasmussen »

globular-toast wrote: post #602
ulrikrasmussen wrote: post #583

Someone here on HN used the term "cloud terminal" for modern electronic devices, and I think that is a very fitting name for phones and tablets. They are definitely not computers because they do not actually give the user access to general purpose computing in the sense that the users can control exactly what computations the device is going to execute. They are just terminals whose production costs we cover but whic…

Well, they can do computing, but it's awkward and most people don't use them for that, it's true. The question of ownership is interesting. If I buy a chair, it doesn't make a very good table, does that mean I don't own it? Most people don't know what general purpose computing is. To them a cloud terminal is a computer. So, to them, they do own their devices because that's all they are. I feel like some of us think w…

We did not all choose convenience over freedom, but the majority did. Those of us who chose freedom were still able to participate in digital society, albeit with a bit of added inconvenience, but this is becoming increasingly difficult as cloud terminal use is becoming a prerequisite for doing banking, using public transport or even verifying your age on the internet.

The chair analogy is a bit weird, because I am actually free to buy a chair, disassemble it and somehow use it as a table if my needs for a table for some weird reason happens to coincide with the form factor of the chair. I don't think the analogy really works, but if a chair worked as a modern phone then it would be built with one-way screws and in general be built to lose structural integrity if you try to disassemble it.

A better analogy is roads. Anyone can put any car on the public roads (they may be breaking the law if the car is not legal). But we are moving towards a world where the roads will slash the tires of any car which isn't approved by Ford or Tesla. Ford and Tesla didn't build the roads, but they somehow took over the control of them.

Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#619

Post by seba_dos1 »

handedness wrote: post #585
seba_dos1 wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. You're either misunderstanding something or something really needs to be changed in the docs.

Citing an article [0], a post[1] on the site states, "Security researchers over the years have discovered ways to detect what you are typing on the screen simply by looking at variations in the accelerometer." (Infomercial-esque strikethrough not retained here.) Purism's solution, apparently, is hardware switches. As I understand it, the accelerometer isn't disabled via hardware switches unless all hardware switches…

I'll try my best to take this seriously.

I don't care much about hardware kill switches myself - but many people clearly do. I've seen it when I was involved in the Neo900 project, I've seen it in discussions about the Librem 5 and PinePhone, I've seen it in reactions when Purism has released a tablet that lacked them. I guess it's because, unlike software, they're easy to understand and easy to trust. Most people don't understand or particularly trust software, for various reasons. Even with Android's security model, I don't think a regular user trusts that Google Play Services that run on their phone always do what they told them to, so they often long for something tangible that would give them a peace of mind. Hardware switches do that.

There's a matter of the modem being a whole separate device that's not really under the user control too. The only way to be sure that it's actually off is to not give it access to power. You can trust your OS, but the modem could still do its own thing regardless of what you asked it to, so I can get that too.

> The Purism model increasingly looks fatally flawed for anyone who doesn't have a very particular and narrowly defined threat model: one who trusts all software they run from the kernel to their applications completely, trusts their hardware completely, yet for [reasons] somehow fully mistrusts the sum total of the device at very specific, limited, and irregular intervals.

The Librem 5 is a general purpose computer that you can run whatever you want to on. I have no reason to distrust the GNU/Linux distribution that runs on it, but I could very well run Android, perhaps even with Play Services, on it if I had to for some reason, just like I used to boot into Windows on my PC many years ago. If I wanted to make sure that it won't access the radios or sensors while I do so, the switches would indeed not just be helpful, but effectively effortless.

The "lockdown mode" in particular is an answer to a UX issue. People want to have switches for various things, but if you just gave them all they ask for you'd end up with nothing but tons of switches around the screen. I believe the main motivation for the lockdown mode was squeezing the control over GNSS in when it was decided to use at most three switches, and the sensors then followed as adding them there could be done almost for free. You could do the thing PinePhone did, with plenty of tiny inaccessible switches behind its back cover; Purism opted for a limited amount of easily accessible switches, and I'm actually glad they did (it happened long before I got involved), because...

> Per Purism, it's perfectly usable in the same way any Linux slab with no radios or sensors of any kind is perfectly usable, yes, but that's stretching things in practical terms for a phone, and it's all very divorced from the reality of what most people expect from their phones.

I said that I personally don't care about the switches, but I also have to say that I surprised myself and ended up using them quite a lot. Not the mic/cam one, this one stays basically unused, but I'm using the cellular and Wi-Fi ones regularly - they're just super convenient. Whenever I want to save power or not be bothered by anything, I toggle the switches. If I had to unlock the phone and swipe through some menus, I probably wouldn't bother most of the time, but I don't have to, so I do. I used to be completely indifferent to these switches, but they ended up being really nice to have when I actually started using the phone. Let's not pretend that having an airplane mode option on a phone makes it a "slab with no radios", there are contexts where you do want to disable some things and continue to use the others.

> Still, it's entertaining. The marketing, the switches, the sweeping technical proclamations and bold self-assessments of high corporate ethics.

I don't see anything wrong in Purism providing what people have often requested. This is not exactly a kind of device that will just market itself, the more niches it can serve and differentiators it can tuck in without diminishing other aspects of the device the easier it will be to sell. I don't think the Librem 5 project would be economically viable if it only ever targeted people interested in Linux. Kill switches, modularity, smart card reader, replaceable battery, separate GNSS module, audio jack etc. are all attempts to extend its appeal and serve a yet another niche, as a device like this would never be able to compete on thinness or specs with what's offered mainstream. It makes perfect sense to me. Some of these things I enjoy, some I don't care about, but none bothers me.

> Beyond all that, installing packages from Debian stable on a mobile phone is a very enjoyable thing. I'm a former N900 and PinePhone user who's not opposed to making reasonable compromises for significant upsides, and would love a truly viable and fully open Linux phone that can run a variety of distros, but I remain unconvinced that the Librem 5 is that device.

I'm a former Neo Freerunner and N900 user, and a current Librem 5 user (with a PinePhone around too, but I already had a Librem 5 when I got it so I barely ever used it). Installing Debian packages is the only way I know how to use a smartphone. Well, okay, I used opkg in the past too :) I got involved in the project because it was clear to me that this was the device worthy of being the successor of my N900 and I'm happy with it and proud of what we, both Purism and the wider community, managed to achieve with it. In fact, I'm starting to get worried about it aging with no viable successor in sight. It's still fine today, but the arrow of time only points one way.

Re: Your phone is about to stop being yours

#620

Post by seba_dos1 »

handedness wrote: post #595
seba_dos1 wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be frank, I'm tired of this security theater. Yes, let's lock things down to prevent evil-maid attacks and bring in the technological dystopia in the process, who cares that the same evil maid could put your finger onto the fingerprint sensor and unlock the phone while you sleep without ever fiddling with the bootloader. "The masses" used to use completely unencrypted devices for decades. That doesn't mean they do…

I'm not terribly concerned about an evil maid entering my room at night and managing to authenticate my fingerprint without waking me. I do, however, regularly have to check my phone in at [places] and am highly concerned about that. I'm not interested in bringing about a tech dystopia to combat it, either, but I don't think those are our only two choices. Threat modeling is important, and selectively false equivalen…

I'm pretty sure that most of the actual evil-maids out there are phone owner's partners that they tend to share their bed with at night.

And yes, I don't think those are the only two available choices either. I already mentioned not just one, but two other ones above. They have some tradeoffs, but so does anything. Personally I'd choose a slightly less convenient option over a tech dystopia without second thoughts, but not everyone is tech savvy enough to even recognize the tradeoffs being made, and ultimately in the vast majority of cases it's not the users who make that choice, but Google and Apple.

Post reply on HN