It was closed 14 hours ago with the status "completed" without further comment.
The guy who closed it posted an entry a day earlier called "So, you don't like a web platform proposal" on his rarely used blog. It has the appearance of telling people how to critique proposals in a professional way, while being completely dismissive of any communication attempts simultaneously. Perhaps he needs to reflect a little more on his blog entry's subheading "We're all humans", because he doesn't seem keen to address how users who rely on Assistive Technology are going to be able to use his DRM Web.
Edited to add: The code of ethics is for people who work at the W3c, so not entirely applicable anyway.
Makes sense and improves privacy but they’re not going to win on speed, not even on Firefox, unless you host a private instance or use a nearby-hosted one.
By default, when using Invidious, your browser loads the video right from Google, you can proxy videos through the Invidious instance but it’s disabled by default. Only Piped always proxies videos through the Piped server.
It probably would help, as Google couldn’t connect their advertising services that easily with YouTube, and both parties would have to be more independent.
Youtube is a money pit. If it had to split from Google, they will need to up monitization pronto or shut down. While I do want Google broken like Bane cracking Batman, there will be casualities. Too many parts of our internet infrastructure exist via subsidization and we use them like utilities. It is going to be messy out there if the FTC succeeds.
Agreed. I feel the same way about youtube going as Reddit did. For some of us, it is just a fun thing. Some people need it because it is their best access to knowledge. I worry for those who need it.
The first is related to things like paying to be the default search engine on iPhone, Firefox, etc. The second is related to ad tech. Neither really directly addresses the issues that average people have with Google's behavior though, so keep filing complaints!
Everyone in this thread is wild. Buying a phone on credit makes sense with how expensive they are. How else can Google protect themselves though? Just like cars get repossessed if you didn’t pay, this is a two-way street. Otherwise people could have a phone sent to them and then never pay anything for it.
I agree that this makes sense in the context of a creditor securing a loan, but I disagree that getting your phones on credit makes sense.
New, flagship devices can be had around $500 US, which is attainable for most Americans in a fairly short timeframe. Spending years locked into a carrier contract where you don’t own your device just doesn’t make sense unless you’re spending thousands on a foldable device or something.
For people who know as much about technology as most people in this discussion the thing to do if short of cash would be to buy a cheaper phone. I recently got myself a quite decent Note9 for $109AU and I could have got something even cheaper if I needed to. But many people aren’t as well informed, the above article is one example of people who are less well off being scammed by a corporation.
If the creditor wants to collect on a debt, there is a court process for that. I’ve used it. It works.
Locking the phone is not repossession. It does nothing other than sabotage the device the consumer may need to actually make the payment. The phone remains in the buyer’s possession and useless to the seller.
Power is also misplaced. What happens when the creditor decides to (illegally) refuse cash payments on the debt? Defaulting is not necessarily the debtor’s fault. This in fact happened to me: Creditor refused my cash payment and dragged me into court for delinquency. Judge ruled in my favor because cash acceptance is an obligation. But this law is being disregarded by creditors all over. If the creditor had the option to sabotage my lifestyle by blocking communication and computing access, it would have been a greater injustice.
I guess a closer analogy would be rental storage. If you don’t pay your mini storage bill, in some regions the landlord will confiscate your property, holding it hostage until you pay. And if that fails, they’ll even auction off your contents.
So in the case at hand the creditor is holding the debtor’s data hostage. One difference is that the data has no value to the creditor and is not in the creditor’s possession. It would be interesting to know if the contracts in place legally designate the data as the creditor’s property. If not, the data remains the property of the consumer.
This is covered by human rights law. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 17 ¶2:
“No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.”
If the phone user did not sign off on repossession of their data, and thus the data remains their property, then the above-quoted human right is violated in the OP’s scenario.
Don’t try to strawman this. Human rights are violated when someone is deprived of their property (their data in the case at hand). If food is withheld from starving people in Gaza, your argument is like saying:
“Claims human rights are being violated because someone failed to drive a truck”
They’re not at odds. We don’t have to choose between protecting UDHR Art.3 and Art.17. It’s foolish to disregard some portion of the UDHR needlessly and arbitrarily.
He presented his logic and included well-recognised definitions and sources. He literally could not have done better without a peer review in the field 🤣🤣
I’m OOP, I bought this phone outright. Google seems to be installing this on phones by default (the actual pattern based on people’s comments seems to be more recent phones, but not all have it).
It’s even shipping within de-googled phones, at some base ASOP level (or the hardware, I dunno, not that knowledgeable), as some GrapheneOS use reported having it on their phones too.
I’m pissed because: 1. It’s installed when it shouldn’t be, 2. Gives inappropriate power to creditors, which hurts the most vulnerable.
Imagine acting like having a $1000 phone is a right. If you didn’t want creditors shutting down your phone, pay for it. Apparently this is an undue burden these days.
Every OS, including Linux, has a way to install remote management. Every one. You are just pissed at how the phone company implemented it. Might as well blame Linus for making the os extensible.
You’re still not grasping how free software works. Users have a right to see the code and the right to change it. They also have the right to redistribute the code. Your complaint is unfounded because not a single user of a fully free platform is forced to have remote management code installed.
The fact you cannot even imagine a situation where this kind of power would lead to vulnerable people having their lives be made even harder for missing a payment, shows how little you imagination and empathy you have.
This kind of power should lie with regulators and the justice system, not private companies.
Also why is this app ON MY PHONE WHICH I BOUGHT OUTRIGHT? ffs.
I also paid full price and bought it from an official store with no connection to any carriers. Installed grapheneos and can confirm it is still present, whether anyone can use it is not is irrelevant if your putting shit in my phone that could potentially harm me. And you seem to take some kind of weird moral ground thinking people who default on a payment can have their phone which is a necessity in this era, turn into a brick if they choose to. You’re lucky you can afford to but be more empathetic to those who can’t.
Who’s taking about pixel mate? We are taking about android here. Not the hardware but the simple fact that a device I paid for has harmful shit I didn’t ask for. Pixel or whatever, this shouldn’t be installed on anything period
Buying something does not mean you control it. You might have bought an Amazon Ring doorbell but if Amazon does not like your behavior they can (and will) render it dysfunctional.
No amount of money you pay for your phone up-front will make that malicious code magically go away. You can pay cash, and you can even tip the seller. The code that reduces your control remains in that device. If you don’t control it, you don’t own it.
Lolol, nobody is using the API on my phone. Its existence doesn’t harm me in the last bit. You should stop using Linux if the existence of remote management bothers you.
Google welded anti-consumer logic into the kernel. Of course that’s on Google. Just like Intel started making CPUs with a management engine that can only work against non-corporate consumers, basically saying fuck the individuals’ needs… putting individuals at unconscionable risk without their knowledge or consent.
Consumers have decisions to make. Is a consumer happy to feed a supplier who sells them something that works against them? Some are. I’m not. Going forward they fail to earn my business because they have too many masters.
You going to ditch Linux because they support remote management too?
Linux is not locked down. Users can remove anything they want from it.
If you get Linux from work it school it uses the same exact tech. No, you can’t remove it. You don’t own the phone. That’s how credit works. Don’t like it, buy the phone. You are just pissed that creditors are using it. Welding against the consumers 🤦♂️.
it’s so hard to watch people in late-stage capitalism still have faith enough in the integrity of the whole thing to give a go at it, and inevitably get smacked down by the few with all the dollar, as if it werent all rigged against them from the beginning. I hope theyve learned and pivoted their efforts into helping press the big RESET button rather than kicking the can down the road, no matter how pure the intentions
there’s a class war on, and we’re losing. honestly, truly, maybe we don’t need an ethical review website right now, unless youre reviewing torches and pitchforks? I say this out of frustration that so many of the people behind that site will just pointlessly try to play by the rules again. the war needs more good fighters, not people who continue to swallow the lie that the way forward is playing by the current, just so laughably rigged game
Worst I ever seen of this is when discord was doing some NFT bullshit and everyone spent a week doing a boycott and making it clear they were never going to see a dime out of them, then Discord did like a 40% off sale on Nitro and suddenly they all went 😵[boink] 😃💰
Nobody is against capitalism because it’s an immoral system, just because it isn’t benefiting them personally enough, it’s fucking exhausting.
To my knowledge OsmAnd works fine without Google services, and is fully open source. Based on open street map, which others have suggested as well.
Alternatively, to more directly answer your question, there are apps that emulate the Google API. Look into GmsCore (GitHub), or cancer microg, maybe as a starting point. I’m not 100% on which part of the Google API they provide, and if it’s the part your app relies on.
Hilariously the Google Maps app itself works without Google Play Services, that one was a surprise to discover (and obviously pretty useless if you’re trying to avoid Google’s tracking)
Osmand is great for most of what I need on a daily basis, but on a trip a few years ago, some of the hiking trails were not up to date and we got lost. It wasn’t terrible, but it was uncomfortable and fortunately we had paper maps.
I would like to use the maps provided by the park or forestry service since I like to think that they’re current, but they rely on Avenza which relies on Google. I’m okay taking a risk on Avenza for the short duration of the trip and plan to not give it network access, but I doubt I could do that with Google Play services, much less cleanly uninstall it after the trip is over.
One question I have is about Vanadium. This is chrome based, right? Is it really the best/most secure browser? Aren't the better secured flavors of Firefox better (LibreWolf, Fennic, etc.)?
Everything the Gos team does it’s from a Security perspective and nothing more. There is no issue with FF, they are simply stating that of you have extreme security concerns (threat model of avoiding NK nation state actors for example) you should use the browser they spent all this effort hardening and to work specifically with GOS
I certainly don’t disagree, but I do believe the issues of FF are exaggerated. It’s a fav amongst the tech community (which includes infosec nerds) for a reason still, and is the baseline for the Tor project and even Mullvads wonderful browser, not to mention LibreWolf.
Don’t get me wrong I do use Firefox myself , just not on android. The reason for using FF in onion project is that FF allows proxy needed for Tor. The aim is only privacy , security as a by product. As such they need to take a lot of measures against fingerprinting and remove functionality that others have. So all the projects have their own justification. But using tor browser as intended for daily use would be a real pain.
…and Chrome based browsers do nothing for that level of threat actors. Its dev hates Firefox due to a personal grudge against Tor/Mozilla devs. lists.torproject.org/pipermail/…/013995.html
You know Tor Browser is based on Firefox, and they specifically recommend against Chrome/Chronium? Use TailsOS and avoid foolishly recommending their stuff for “security” against state actors. They lie about buying $1M Cellebrite kits on YouTube.
I just wrote a longer comment but it seemed to disappear. I did not find that writeup very easy to understand nor convincing because the underlying message is that Firefox is bullshit?
It was an ongoing debate on reddit that came up a couple times. I personally use both Mull and Vanadium. I just use noScript with Mull more for usability than anything else.
I’m not technically knowledgable enough to weigh in on the validity of the argument, I just posted it for those who were wondering why.
Here is a reddit discussion via libreddit where you can read a more at length discussion on it.
You beat me to it! I was gonna mention the same thing. However, I don’t think it may be that big of a deal if you use Firefox or some flavor of it. The one term I often hear about GrapheneOS and other AOSPs like it is “threat model”, and depending on that model, you may not necessarily be impacted if you decide to use something other than the stock browser.
That’s not to say the GrapheneOS developers are wrong in their Usage Guide. I’m sure they looked into this extensively, hence the usage guide.
Tor Browser is based on Firefox/Gecko, and they advise against Chrome/Chromium because it is horrible. That should give you a clue about how garbage GrapheneOS and anything those people advise really is.
The reason why Firefox is not recommended by GrapheneOS is because its (sole) “lead developer” has a personal grudge against Mozilla developers. This personal sentiment did not exist before August 2019 for a mysterious reason. ╮(︶▽︶)╭ lists.torproject.org/pipermail/…/013995.html
I don’t really feel like they explained much in terms of why just a lot of detail around what they believe. The tldr seems to be that Firefox isn’t truly secure but Google’s work is.
All the talk about Tor also seemed to go back and forth between “this is the best and that’s why we use that approach” and “it’s not very good but will be eventually”.
Nothing they wrote was clear to me honestly. I do find it hard to believe that Firefox is inherently insecure and that the extensions many rely on for privacy reasons are all bullshit security theatre…
Sandboxing is crap on Firefox (specially on android) . Google is really fucking good at security since they are well a huge multinational behemot. They know security. Security =/ privacy. When you are using android you are using Chrome webview no matter what browser you are using. So just piling on stuff instead of replacing things won’t be a good security practice.
Also the Google parts are optional , you don’t need Googles stuff to use chromium. Just like vanadium does.
Regarding webviews – am I right in thinking that webviews are simply a frame within another app that acts as a web browser? I’ve been under the impression that since I disabled chrome on my android phone and that the upper right menu offers to open in FF, those are using FF. I guess I’m wrong?
Well you say the Google parts of chromium are optional, but that’s more just tracking and sign in stuff. Google is the major player in the chromium codebase, no? They have some fantastic engineers but it still sort of has the stink of Google on it, if nothing else due to the web standards supported which is steered by Google business decisions. That’s mainly why I don’t want to use it. I want other browsers to exist. That and mobile ff extensions are fantastic from a user perspective
I’m no expert but webview is used anytime remote content is loaded I believe. Certainly you can open links in FF but webview is always there , and not so obvious things always load that way. Webview is baked inte the OS itself. No matter how much you degoogle. Bromite had another webview based on chrome but that’s all the alternative that exist as far as I know.
Chromium is still Foss. Google might have a stink and definitely tries to influence on the Foss part. But when it comes to vanadium I have no question about that everything is under a magnifying glass.
As I wrote elsewhere , all projects have their place and I do use FF, just not on android. I would be really happy if FF on mobile would be able to compete but I don’t see that happening until we have full Linux phones (that actually does everything android does)
I appreciate your response. However, upon reading that article, it seems the truth is somewhere between our two understandings. WebView is no longer baked into the OS:
Around the same time, Google also decoupled WebView from the rest of the operating system and packaged it as a system app instead. This allows the component to be updated independently of major Android updates or security patches.
What I said about an app displaying content using Firefox is also true in some cases. You can see in this screenshot of the article that Firefox is being used in the manner I described (and the selected text describes):
I have often noticed that “powered by Firefox” text, so I guess that’s where my assumption came from.
I don’t doubt at all that certain apps, specifically Google built ones, still require/use the google WebView, but that’s not every app. Boost for Lemmy for example, in my screenshot, uses the custom tab feature which can use Firefox. I am tempted to disable the Google WebView app just to see what happens… I am guessing Google-built apps like Gmail will crash. I wish “custom tabs” were adapted in a manner that Firefox could always be used, but I doubt Google would make that a thing.
At least they do have the custom tab feature, something apple would never do, maybe not even if the friggin EU forced them to. They seem to be weaseling out of some other EU regs, anyhow.
But back to GrapheneOS. Given that Google apps are sandboxed and almost discouraged in that OS, I’m still not sure I understand the specific guidance against Firefox.
Edit: yeah disabling the WebView app causes Gmail to crash horribly and even K9 mail, made by Mozilla, responds the same way. :'(
It depends. I use GrapheneOS to avoid Google as much as possible, not to be the most secure thing in the world. I use Firefox with addons for a much less annoying browsing experience.
If you are using Firefox on android you are using Firefox AND Chrome. Webview is chrome whatever browser you use. So using Firefox double the attack surface and weakens security since Firefox is not properly sandboxed.
If you open a link in an app you are using the webview , gecko is not a webview. As Firefox says: “Google does not allow a third party to implement the System WebView and the GeckoView API is not compatible with the WebView API in a very meaningful way unfortunately, so this is not possible.”
Ah, I thought you were implying that FireFox itself depends on Chrome for rendering.
I feel like I'm not exposed to vebview particularly often when using my phone though, maybe in part because I dislike it and tend to actively avoid it in my workflow.
Sure. That’s fine. My point was that your goals matter to determine if something is good or not. My goals involve no ads, dark reader, and script blocking for better user experience.
The GrapheneOS devs largely prefer their chromium based browser. I however decided for me that a combination of the URLCheck and Mull apps fits my needs best.
Ok, I try. So URLcheck is just nice to review what you have clicked and maybe remove some tracking.
I prefer Mull because I have the impression I get better privacy. First, there is Adblock and other extensions which ( I think) I can’t use in Vanadium. And second, I use a feature to delete just any history/ cookie etc. on app close. I think this option is also not available.
Purchase an A series model from last year. Run Graphene for 3 years. Then switch to Calyx for the next 2 years, assuming your battery lasts (or you fix it with an iFixit).
You don’t even need to switch after the initial support period ends, in my experience they’ve kept supporting older pixels for longer than they promised
Copy from another comment I made about “extended support”, I think it means they are still supporting it but they might stop at any point. From their actual doc:
The following devices are end-of-life, no longer receive firmware or most driver security updates and receive extended support from GrapheneOS as part of the main releases with all GrapheneOS changes including all of the latest Android Open Source Project changes
Paid $250 for a refurbished Pixel 7 on Amazon. Other than coming in a generic box and having a generic charging brick and cable, from the phone itself you’d never know it was a refurb.
I’ve never spent less for what I’ve gotten than with pixels. Paid $350 for a pixel 4a that lasted me 3.5 years and I paid less than 400 for a 7a. Just get last year’s model. To be clear the hardware still worked after 3.5 years but I decided to not continue after the security updates stopped
their CEO also moderates the discussion on Kagi’s Discord. he’s been removing criticism by queer folks, while - the last time I’ve checked before I’ve left their group - keeping replies like “stop shoving LGBTQ down our throats”.
edit: also their response regarding a request to add a “don’t do it” widget to suicide searches basically boils down to “but if we make a moral choice now, we’ll have to do more moral choices in the future!”, which is… suboptimal. kagifeedback.org/…/865-suicide-results-should-pro…
Reading about the suicide thing: I might try kagi again this year. This is the exact type of software I want. It should only perform its intended function (returning relevant results to any query) and not try to influence me into following someone else’s moralisations.
Maybe not too helpful, but I’ve been using startpage for years now and it still seems like the best option for me. It is google-based but at least private.
I’d like to specifically avoid using straight-up Google as a source, proxied or not. Most of the smaller engines do seem to use Google for at least a part of their results, but for me that’s preferable to having to completely rely on it since the results are mostly not very good
The best I can say is that it technically does the job, just slowly and not particularly well. There really isn’t anything which even approaches the search quality and featureset of Kagi. I don’t even have the strongest opinion on working with Brave even though they’re clearly awful given how monstrous both Google and Microsoft are (who are both part of the core foundation of their search), but their approach to this whole situation leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I turned off auto-renewal of my subscription but I really hope they take a step back and realize how much goodwill they’re destroying for a significant part of their userbase so I can resubscribe. There’s no suitable replacement.
For me, it is doing a good job, and it’s pretty fast. I think in the past was slower and with many issues, but it improved a lot. I never tried Kagi and I don’t think it’s rational to “login” and identify myself to be able to get results, even if it’s working better, everyone should be able to get good results without needing to pay.
everyone should be able to get good results without needing to pay.
Until this stuff is funded with public money, it’s not really doable for such a compute and storage intense task.
I am perfectly OK with paying for good software, until then. I also agree with the principle of aligning interests of users and the search provider by having the users pay. Other models (ads, sponsoring) creates incentive to favour those who pay. The other reasonable model is donation, that can work potentially, but it has its problems.
But searx.space is like Lemmy, you can donate to those instances to help them to keep it on. It is not really a search engine, so the power usage isn’t that big, it uses other search engines to get the results, the difference is that the search engines like Google, DDG, Bing and etc don’t know who did those requests. The quality isn’t bad neither, but I can’t really say the difference as I never tried Kagi. 🤔
In fact it’s not comparable, because this is a metasearch engine. Kagi has quite many unique features and besides that it’s great in surfacing small websites (for which it mostly uses its own crawler) and downranking pages full of tracking. They are just different and the Kagi model is the most reasonable, in my opinion, for what it does (search engine).
Looking at the “evidence” discussed, I saw three points:
The refusal to disengage with Brave. It’s totally possible to disagree with his position, but the overall motivations were legit and no “fascist” attitude was shown. Users screaming “cancel culture” were shut down
there was clear intention to discuss, and it has always been done in a respectful way.
The refusal to support the widget that prompts for suicide hotlines. Even here, I personally agree with the motivation provided, but it doesn’t matter, it does not have anything to do with being a fascist. Moreover, the discussion about that was quite lengthy and definitely showed a good-faith engagement from their side.
Finally, the most ridiculous of all, which was part of the mastodon thread linked. Some user claims that “queer people” were getting censored in Discord (we have no evidence except for a private exchange which seems off-topic) and that greatcountry.org is apparently a proof that the creator (CEO of Kagi) is a white supremacist, because the countries on the top of the list are mostly white countries. I won’t even go into details in this one, because it’s such an idiotic statement that qualifies way more the user making this claim, which shows -in my opinion- a complete lack of a good faith and the desire to really find any angle to disqualify the person (possibly due to lacking ability to discuss the arguments). The other “proof” (the thread has 3 posts) is a paraphrased and reinterpreted (in bad faith) piece of a comment, which even includes an addendum that takes the distance from this statement. The guy mentioned that “politics into tech is the reason there is no innovation”, and the Mastodon user rephrases it as “inclusion is the reason […]”, which is a completely different statement (it is possible that’s what the guy meant, but that’s not what he said).
If this is anybody’s definition of fascism, then I personally consider that person’s opinion on fascism completely irrelevant. Now, since my mother tongue has the unfortunate responsibility for having coined the term “fascism”, I think I have at least an idea of what it means. It means -in a wider sense- discrimination, suppression of minorities and violence as a mean to shut down opposition. I see no such thing in this context, and if you do, I think it’s time you provide some evidence for this claim, because just name-calling random people fascist on the internet doesn’t help anybody, and it doesn’t help in particular due to the fact that waters down the term and reduces its meaning.
Well, I was giving him a few days to backpedal but it seems like he’s not going to do that. There goes my subscription, back to ddg I guess. Since they are supposed to be 100% subscription funded (they still are, right?), this is one of the few companies where that hopefully might actually have a noticeable effect if enough people care about it.
edit: also their response regarding a request to add a “don’t do it” widget to suicide searches basically boils down to “but if we make a moral choice now, we’ll have to do more moral choices in the future!”, which is… suboptimal. kagifeedback.org/…/865-suicide-results-should-pro…
Meh, good for them tbh. I find these messages to be incredibly patronizing and somehow I doubt you can find a single person who will say “google posting the suicide number has made me reconsider killing myself”
As a Kagi subscriber, I’ve been very happy with their transparency in general. The feedback site is open to the public and Vlad and other staff members regularly engage in conversation about possible future features, limitations, and even business decisions in the Discord. It’s been refreshing.
…which makes the response to this issue all the more frustrating and disappointing.
I think Vlad’s comments in the original feedback thread were fair enough, but then later, in the Discord, I saw a lot of “let’s move this to a private chat”. They even changed their General channel to “slow mode” to prevent live conversations as this topic became hot. Now I see they were also deleting threads?! Ugh. That’s not transparent at all. Not what I expected based on my previous experience with Kagi.
I am a paying subscriber to Kagi because the search results are excellent and there are no ads, so of course you show me a thread on “we should maybe add a small message to suicidal users telling them there is help for them” which then reads like a truth-social propaganda thread, filled to the brim with “helping people is a slippery slope!!! muh freedoms!!” arguments.
it is unclear whether anybody in history has ever been helped by that kind of message.
it is kind of a religious morality that suicide needs to be prevented and that if someone wants to do it, it’s because they are not in control. This doesn’t mean it’s wrong in absolute sense, but it’s very opinionated.
realistically speaking, there is no need to “search” how to suicide.
trying to conclude what you want to do, rather than what you want to know (I.e. search) is IMHO exactly against what kagi’s idea is. It’s a service that does only what it is asked for, and doesn’t try to “know” you, as a customer or user. No text editor prompts you to suicide hotlines by analyzing the text you are writing, and we would consider it extremely weird if it did. However, with search we get used to the tool trying to guess what we want to do because Google does know you, I think the beauty of Kagi is going in another direction.
But let’s assume that all the previous points are invalid, and - for a greater good - it’s worth displaying a message when someone is looking at suicide-related topics. What about “how to kill someone”, " how to rape", “how to […]” with the hundreds of things that are universally considered wrong? And even worse, what about the thousands of things that are not universally considered wrong, but that some group thinks are wrong? “How to change sex”, " how to blow up a pipeline", etc.?
This I think was their point in that conversation, and I agree with. The moment you try to interpret what the user wants to do with the info they ask you, and you decide to assume responsibility to change the user’s mind, there are hundreds or thousands of instances in which users or groups of users will demand you take a position for what they believe is right. Instead I think a search engine should stop at providing information relevant to your query and not assume what you want to do with it. It’s not its place to correct people’s behavior or educate people. The public education system should do that, the healthcare system should ensure people have the right support. A search engine is (or better, should be) basically like a librarian, or a library index, you ask what you want and they point you in that direction. They don’t try to guess why you are looking for books about torture or environmental activism.
God I’m a nerd, I read the first few words of the third one and my mind immediately jumped to debug symbols and was instantly confused. Lol then i told my adhd to take a back seat and read the rest.
I get it 100%! I’m a systems nerd myself and that meaning came to my mind right after I had typed the word “symbols.” It would have been more accurate for me to have said “glyphs”instead.
I'm seeing that buying a Pixel and then degoogle-ing it with Graphene OS is the way to go. Before I pull the trigger on that, can anyone point me to a good guide on how and when to load Graphene OS? Do I load it after activation with a carrier? Ok to do this before carrier activation?
And what functionality do I have with Graphene OS? Only Fdroid as a store? Can I sideload apps?
I'd really like to hear from some people that have actually done this about what to do and what their experience is with grapheneos. I'm leery of spending hundreds of dollars on a phone that may or may not work as I want.
I am seriously considering doing this but I'll buy an iphone if I can't really understand the pixel/graphene path well enough before dropping the $$.
grapheneos.org has a lot of info. Make sure to buy a phone with an unlocked bootloader. All carriers lock it so buy it used and make sure that its unlocked or buy it directly from Google. You can install all google apps through Aurora store, a Play Store fronrend. You can also install sandboxed Google Play services so your Play Store apps can run and have functionning notifications, as they usualy rely on Play services. Yes you can sideload apps like normal android. Its AOSP without the google stuff. Some videos/channels: www.youtube.com/watch?v=vh5xjsE4mU4www.youtube.com/watch?v=igSUmfKTXqUwww.youtube.com/channel/UCrG6IID2FX7-GxyKtavRhEAwww.youtube.com/watch?v=L1KZWjZVnAw
The stores I have on my GrapheneOS pixel 7a: F-Droid + droidify, Aurora store, and the Google Play store as well for some official apps I cannot do without. Between these, there isn’t an app that I couldn’t find or install.
I bought my pixel second hand, to not put more money in Google’s pocket, and to avoid any carrier locking. Not sure how that will impact the installation, but it might. Best to investigate that matter.
I have to mention: I still cannot believe how easy that installation was. I rooted my previous phone and put lineageOS on it, which was such a tedious procedure back in the day, I really dreaded installing GrapheneOS. But that web interface, detecting everything and guiding me along was pure heaven. I hope that’ll become the default for any custom installs.
The Google Play framework service is very sandboxed on GrapheneOS. Most stuff just works, and - as long as all went to plan, which it seems to - the invasive stuff fails silently or with a harmless error message.
It’s been a better experience than I expected!
For the most part, Google has no idea what apps I’m even installing, beacuse I get free apps without login through Aurora.
For the apps that are important enough to me to purchase through Google Play, Google knows I bought and installed them. But even those are talking to GrapheneOS’ sandboxes Google Services Framework. For the most part, nothing changes in how I use those apps, beacuse the sandboxes framework drops and reports ‘success’ on unsupported framework calls, and the vast majority of apps I have used just move on.
The exception has been anything that only supports Google’s auth layer. I like Google’s auth layer, but I don’t use it anymore. So those apps I can’t use at all. I don’t expect it to work well on GrapheneOS, but I haven’t honestly tried.
I’m a GrapheneOS user. You can use whichever store you like. Sideloading works too if you want to get stuff directly from GitHub, for example.
If you use esim, probably better to activate before flashing GrapheneOS. Otherwise, doesn’t matter imo.
I’d suggest you take a look at the discussion forum. You can ask questions there or just browse and you can probably learn a lot about GrapheneOS there. Also the homepage has tons of info, of course.
I’d really like to hear from some people that have actually done this about what to do and what their experience is with grapheneos. I’m leery of spending hundreds of dollars on a phone that may or may not work as I want.
I’ve done this, here’s my takeaways:
On the install:
The install guide is long and detailed, and it felt important to take my time and do every step exactly as it says.
In spite of the length of the guide, I was done with my install in about 45 minutes. I spent about 30 of those minutes sipping coffee and reading on my Kindle while my phone applied updates automatically. -By the time the install finished, my feeling was “that was it? I feel like I clicked like 4 links and it did everything.”
On owning it:
My $300 GrapheneOS Pixel 6 is substantially more responsive than my previous $1000 phone. I migrated to a 3 year old phone and if feels like a big upgrade.
My camera opens quickly, snaps pictures quickly, and is ready to snap another picture, quickly. This shouldn’t be a big deal, but some of your with $1000 Android phones know what I’m talking about. I’ll die on the “this should never have been hard in the first place” hill. But in the meantime, the responsive camera is the most important quality of life upgrade I got from GrapheneOS.
Installing apps from Aurora, with it’s privacy insights, was very eye-opening for me. I mention this mainly for context on my next point.
App compatibility has not been an issue for me; but I quit using certain really invasive apps when I saw their tracking details in Aurora store. (Cough - Paramount Plus - cough)
I’ve heard bank apps can be a challenge, but mine works perfectly. I now love GrapheneOS enough that I am realizing I will move my money if that changes.
I did a bit of searching, maybe used the wrong terms, but is there a list somewhere with Banking Apps compatible with Graphine or Lineage that you know of? It’s literally the only thing holding me back…
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