this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2024
477 points (98.4% liked)

Technology

60462 readers
3886 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
(page 2) 20 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (12 children)

Lead dev of grapheneos is extremely toxic in communication. I don't trust someone like that developing the software running on a phone.

EDIT: This comment seems to be particularly controversial, with many people praising GrapheneOS as a project, while ignoring the developers views and actions. Although my opinion of the main developer is negative, the project itself and its goals are great. To clear up some confusion, I want to add to my previous statement:

At first, this seems like the standard "separating art from the artist", however, GrapheneOS is a ton of code, not just art. When it comes to other forms of art, like literature or paintings, an artist maliciously hiding their personal beliefs in their otherwise "unbiased" work might degrade the quality of the final result, but does not have much significant impact outside of that. When it comes to code, programs, OSes, this changes. The artist (programmer) changing their art (code) based on their personal beliefs is not just a degradation in quality, but a security risk for anyone running the code and trusting the developer. Having seen the way the GOS dev speaks about its community and even people in support of him (see Louis Rossman's video), it becomes clear that the mentioned "risk" of malware is very much present. Like many others, I don't have the time to verify the source code of an entire Android rom myself, which means I would have to trust the GOS dev to not insert anything malicious, after the statements he's made. I'd have to trust him after he's grouped a majority of his community into "people who are after him and are swatting him". It's a very real possibility that someone with beliefs like that would add malicious code to his project, and I'm personally not willing to run that risk.

Please note that I am not encouraging people to "go harass the dev", that is an immoral action nobody should be doing. I am trying to inform people of the developers behavior online, past and current, so they can make a decision for themselves whether to run his software on their personal devices.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (5 children)

~~He isn't on the project since last year.~~ androguru Edit: Sorry, meant "he isn't the project lead since last year". He is still part of the GitHub team and actively developing.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 22 points 4 months ago (2 children)

You can still be part of a project without being lead, to be part of the "we." Did he contribute and/or is he part of GrapheneOS, yes? So he's part of the "we."

Or does only the lead developer get the "we?" Wouldn't that make it more of an "I" instead?

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (11 replies)
[–] [email protected] 80 points 4 months ago (2 children)

GrapheOS now officially supports....

[please... something other than Pixel....]

Pixel 9

[–] [email protected] 86 points 4 months ago (2 children)

The problem is that (as far as i know) only pixels fulfill their security requirements, for example that the bootloader is not only unlockable but also lockable. But I also would like to have more devices supporting it

[–] [email protected] 34 points 4 months ago (5 children)

Fairphones should be supported imo. CalyxOS relocks the bootloader and they supported the FP5 right after launch.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 4 months ago (1 children)

CalyxOS relocks the bootloader and they supported the FP5 right after launch.

CalyxOS is not a hardened OS, and GrapheneOS requires more than than just relocking the bootloader.

Fairphone's devices do not meet basic security requirements for hardware, firmware and the software device support including drivers. Please look at the hardware requirements at https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices and check for yourself how many of those are provided by the Fairphone. Even the Fairphone 5 has a CPU core from 2021 without even PAC and BTI.

Ref: https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/7208-8y-security-updates-on-fairphone-5-will-the-devs-consider-porting-grapheneos

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (3 children)

gos is open source. If the fairphone people wanted to maintain a fork of GOS for their phones, they could.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 31 points 4 months ago (4 children)

Fairphone should sell phones outside of Europe

Unfortunately neither of us get what we want

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago (5 children)

Oh they dont? 0.o I didnt know that, weird

load more comments (5 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 21 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (9 children)

I am currently in the market for a new mobile phone. The current's one battery is basically dead and because of security patches now being about 2 years old I have to replace it whole instead of just getting the battery replaced again.

Pixel with GrapheneOS has been my number one choice for some time but...

  1. there is no (privacy friendly & legal) replacement for Google Play Protect. My banking app won't work without it as well as one other app I kind of need too.
  2. I am also just too used to having a phone in the 250-300 EUR range in the sense that I don't have to care about it that much.
    It's a "consumable" product for me. Loosing/drowning it is not a big deal, where drowning 800 euros is just hard to justify no matter how much money I make.

I will probably just get the OnePlus Nord 4 instead because of their pledge to do 6 years of updates.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 4 months ago (1 children)
  1. All of my banking apps work, I have 6 of them.
  2. You can buy an older Pixel, 5 or 6. They're still great.
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Buy used, and/or buy an "a" model.

GrapheneOS is clearly the ideal ROM/OS, but alternatively there is another privacy and security centric ROM that supports a lot more devices, with the trade-off being it's not GrapheneOS.

Check out DivestOS and it's supported device list to see if that's a better fit for you. It's from the same developer as the Mulch and Mull browser forks.

As far SafetyNet/Play Project and other anticonsumer "security attestation" features, some bank apps will work fine, what others won't.

Does their website provide PWA support?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Just buy an older supported device if grapheneos is important to you. Something like a 6 pro would be fine.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 months ago (8 children)

To anyone reading this a 6 is a great pick but its worth knowing that the 7 year update promise only began with the pixel 8 so if you buy a 6 in 2024 it probably only has about 2 years of updates left. However they are only like $150 used I think so the value is probably there even if you only get 2 years of use out of it.

load more comments (8 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

7a was the sweet spot for me, even if $300 is frankly a lot by my measure. But I think it was a worthy investment for me.

Would definitely not get a pro since the 7a is already on the edge of what I can use with one hand. Same for 7 but downplayed, I didn't opt for this one because it has a glass back.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 4 months ago (3 children)

I'm not sure about over in Europe but around here the trick to an affordable Pixel is to just buy last years model since you can usually find them lightly used or even new in the $300 - $400 range and updates are only incremental anyway and since they get 7 years of updates now it should be good for quite a while.

For google play protect yeah thats a bummer, I just use my banks website but I don't know if European banks allow that.

Personally though I love Graphene OS it turned my phone from a device I hated due to anxitey I feel around corporate surveillance into a device I genuinely like again.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 months ago

i can especially relate to the last part, it's so freeing to feel in control of my phone!

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments
view more: ‹ prev next ›