IMO this is pretty shortsighted and going to affect all the wrong people, skimasks and balaclavas are a thing!

Added benefit of not needing to purchase a secondary device… just imagine one!

It’s not like it can be wirelessly accessed

The creativity of research students shouldnt be underestimated lol, they have found ways to transmit data to cameras, to microphones (inaudible to us), and also by using coil whine in power supplies, all by modulation.

There is the caveat that these usually require the computer to be compromised first though, if it is airgapped

I don’t ☹️

There is a hidden LocationServices system app from Qualcomm that proxies the communication on some devices - however removing this causes a bootloop from what I’ve read, and would prevent Android from being able to identify your location even if it didn’t cause a bootloop.

I use a Fairphone 3 though with a bunch of Google services in the stock OS disabled, so I’ve settled for just keeping my location data out of Google’s hands

Edit: add info

The Qualcomm chipset is making these requests, most likely for GPS almanac data (satellite positioning).

Older chipsets send these almanac requests to izatcloud.net, unencrypted, containing your IMEI. No idea if newer chipsets have improved things though.

Slightly related but I hope uber doesn’t do this… personally I’m trying to reduce my dependence on rideshare services but sometimes 💩 happens

Nebula is beta, hopefully it gets support for sending back watch stats and saving watch progress 🙏

I see they have something similar for YouTube already, where you can enable/disable anonymity (using your google account for requests VS anonymous requests), and enable/disable saving watch history to your linked Google account

Ohh I see, sounds like more of a principled reason then if i’m understanding you correctly

Edit: while Louis is accepting feedback on the license specifically, I doubt the project will move to something relicensable, since Louis specifically picked this license to prevent what is happening to NewPipe and the spread of malware using his name to gain trust. He’s also been burned a lot during the R2R stuff with unforseen loopholes abused by rival lobbyists, so the FUTO license is probably looking at things from a protectionist perspective, not as an individual from the FOSS community.

I’ve only heard of one OSS project relicensing in recent times, and they had to reach out to each individual contributor for written permission, hopefully this rings a bell for someone here because I can’t remember the project name…

If only all modern software was like this, as they used to be over a decade ago ☹️

What’s wrong with the FUTO license?

AFAICT, the only restrictions are you cannot make money off it, and you can’t pretend to be the official app. Very similar to the Mozilla license, although Mozilla’s has some extra bits to be compliant with releasing on the App Store, which has its own licensing requirements that is not met by any version of the GPL

Steam does - warns you about anticheats, additional DRM, whether the game requires an additional account (ea/ubisoft/origin/whatever)

Anticheats block VMs faster than a social media user recieving an unsolicited message 😳

That’s interesting, wow.

I don’t want to imagine the reactions from people who think they’re having a “private” green bubble conversation, only to realise it’s a public record 😳

Personally, I see nothing wrong with what you’ve said. Them perma-banning you for “misinformation” instead of actually engaging in a discussion with you about it says all I need to know about that kind of community IMO, and it’s not one I’d want to be a part of… regardless of how amazing and secure their OS is.

The unfortunate thing is, I think it’s hard to maintain projects like GrapheneOS without people like that on the team - the community’s principled nature is kind of reflected in how watertight and robust the OS is

Is there a way to disable client image loading in general?

Syphon does this by default, but I can’t find an equivalent setting anywhere in Element

Squawker maybe?

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.ca.squawker/

Edit: should mention that Musk has crippled the ability to browse twitter without a login - no search, no feeds etc, so I don’t think we’ll ever actually see anything with Fritter’s feature set emerge without login capability

randomize the MAC address everytime they connect to a network

+1, had issues using Android devices for presence detection because of this very useful privacy feature. Even on your home network, the MAC address and device hostname get randomized, unless disabled in the settings

Edit: typo

I’m rooted with GSF, revoking some permissions forcibly from Play Services (most notably location access) causes the device to reboot, and the permission gets restored forcibly.

This never used to happen previously (the permission used to get revoked successfully, and things like Google Timeline would act as if your device had disappeared despite location being enabled). I assume a background update implemented this permission recovery mechanism - i’ve since disabled play store on my device and slowly been culling off my usage of other Google apps

I use this, extremely handy app for inspecting links. It also warns you if the link contains unnecessary unicode chars, preventing the potential file extension issue with dot zip domains.

Easy to edit the config for the modules too - I added an additional filter to proxy Imgur images (via rewriting the url), as that site is partially blocked on my network

Would be nice if it appeared in the share menu

URLCheck is in the share menu for me, right beside my lemmy app lol. I can open the app and use the “test link” to paste a link in for editing too.

Not sure if you somehow got an older version, or maybe a different app?

uses the play billing api and firebase installations so on first run it phones home to the mothership

Ooh yikes

I think PGP is the only player in town as a general purpose encryption and signing tool TBH… The other alternatives I hear get mentioned are just e2ee messaging apps and platforms

IMO yes. It’s stored encrypted on their sync service, and you can additionally encrypt it locally too by setting a master password in FF settings.

Didn’t notice any mention that you can actually self host Firefox’s browser sync service yourself. Personally haven’t tried, but IIRC there’s setup docs on Mozilla’s github

Used to work in an office where dell’s wireless peripherals would every once in a while randomly enter pairing mode and connect to someone else’s machine… often to the humor of those nearby. Their tech was based on Logitech’s older Unifying stuff but I have no idea what they were thinking when adding auto pairing to it.

For wireless peripherals do research beforehand if this is something you’re worried about. Personally I stick with newer logitech stuff, which encrypt the connection and don’t start auto-pairing when peripherals are switched on

True, worn out 3.5mm jacks are very annoying.

I’m in no way trying to imply they’re perfect - IMO there’s always room for improvement. I just don’t think a low tolerance 10 gigabit, 100W capable connector is the right choice to replace a port that gets a lot of abuse.

I did get a bit carried away in my response though tbh, I did not notice you were focused on the morals part - I agree a connector jack is not a moral issue

I just double checked OP’s post (now edited) and couldn’t see anything related to morals though, unless they’ve removed it?

your location and device data from SUPL / A-GPS

IIRC this is worse on Qualcomm devices, where I believe the GPS almanac data is requested over plain HTTP, by the SoC itself outside of the OS’s control

Funny enough I don’t mind this ad at all 👍 extremely neat device

Solid agree.

The Galaxy S5 from ~7 years ago was submersible, had a headphone jack, and was pretty damn slim.

Any points made by manufacturers now for 3.5mm removal IMO are just excuses in my eyes. A supply chain issue is the only reason I’ll (selfishly) accept.

Those legacy connectors (AV, SCART, S-Video, RF Modulators etc.) have had a superior replacement with no compromises though, HDMI.

The 3.5mm jack hasn’t really had a viable replacement IMO, and to be honest I don’t think it needs one. Personally I use bluetooth headphones when I’m out, usually switching it off in shopping environments (see #1 below) but indoors everything is 3.5mm.

My main problems with the omission of the 3.5mm jack are…

• privacy: Beacon trackers can follow you through a store by monitoring the bluetooth packets between your phone and headphones
• Limited spectrum space: if you’ve been on public transport where everyone is wearing BT headphones, the signal is terrible. Newer versions of BT are much better at frequency hopping compared to the old ones, but it’s still not a great listening experience
• interference: retrofitting/replacing a perfectly good sound system just to add Bluetooth capabilities isn’t realistic for everyone. Most of the retrofit BT recievers add unnecessary interference to a sound setup, and this gets worse if you need a longer cable to put the aftermarket reciever somewhere to get a better BT signal for your phone
• dongles: they’re a solution, however IMO it’s a bit of a janky one that puts unnecessary strain on your charging port when you’re out and about. They also may consume more battery life (external ADC via USB, if your device/headphones/dongle does not support amplifying audio directly over the C port) and even more jank when the headphone cable is weighing down the dongle. In something like a car, or maybe home too, these dongles are OK, but they’re a non starter for people who like to go out and about.

My biggest issue though is the planned obselecence stuff. The tiny li-ion batteries in the buds being pushed by manufacturers as a “3.5mm replacement” are likely going to get their recharge cycles rinsed out with frequent usage, leading the consumer to buy new buds every 2 years, just like with phones. It’s really disappointing.

I use the FP3. It’s an old device but I find it very responsive, and keeps up with what I need it to do personally. I like it, but don’t like Android. I wish the device had more RAM though.

The FP5 looks promising (and big 😳) the only turn offs for me are no 3.5mm headphone jack, and the price could do with another 150-200 off at least. Since FP is a niche company with some special supply chain arrangements, I think this price is the best we’ll get for now (unless you trade in an old device for recycling for money off), but it’s still expensive.

If you value the ability to own and repair your device, the knowledge that people further down in the supply chain get paid a little extra when they’re collecting materials for Fairphone, and that your device will very, very likely get supported for the full time they claim (and even longer in the case of the FP2), then it’s probably worth it.

Otherwise, a new/recent Pixel (eligible to recieve GrapheneOS updates) is another very good option.

Regardless of what device you choose, if you want to keep your next phone for 10 years, you’ll want a lot of onboard storage - but keep as much things as possible on an SD card. This is to avoid burning out your onboard NAND, since it has a finite lifespan and not replaceable.

Pixels don’t support SD cards AFAIK, so if you go for one of them I’d recommend going for the highest builtin storage that you can afford (especially if it’s a used one)

Oh oops, my bad - I misunderstood the question…

This sounds tricky…

The only iOS message bridge i’m aware of is AirMessage, and that requires a Mac computer to act as the app’s server

Quite a few creators have quit Odysee due to the lack of moderation, most recent i’m aware of is TLE/The Linux Experiment.

Apparently the comment sections there are heinous now, personally the last time I visited was several years ago after Louis Rossmann mentioned he was dual uploading there

I’m rooted using an FP3 (essentially stock, only a single preinstalled manufacturer app).

Revoking location permissions from Play Services reboots the device immediately (previously this didn’t happen - the permissions would be revoked as expected, and things dependent on Google’s location API would fail as expected) so I assume a GMS update was pushed via play store resulting in this reboot problem

And dont ever use any Stock Android, its all spyware.

Also reboots your device if you try and revoke permissions from Google Play Services

I use FlorisBoard - but it’s under heavy development at the moment, as the dev is doing a complete rewrite… autocorrect isn’t implemented yet, but swipe/gesture typing is.

There is another one that has swipe typing and autocorrect but can’t recall the name at the moment

How so? The message is safely delivered solely to the intended recipient, albeit in plain text (not private).

If there’s anywhere that the commonly used email analogy fits, I think it would be here

An agressive DNS and packet inspection based adblocker (to block CNAME cloaking attempts to bypass blocklists and share cookies when blocked), and teaching my SO how to bypass it to play her mobile games, or load websites that are blocked unintentionally.

Despite being a Chrome user, she shows an interest in Firefox due to the effectiveness of its addons, pop-up blocking, and our steamlinks actually shows the Netflix/APV stream when watching from Firefox, whereas Chrome shows a black screen.

TikTok and Instagram are accessed very, very sparingly in the household.

My parents on the other hand, keep trying to convince me to come back onto WhatsApp, which is a hard no for me personally. Ever since it stopped working on one of my devices a while back, I haven’t exactly missed it, and I don’t want Facebook-owned apps on my mobile anymore out of principle.

I imagine it being quite difficult to explain the many, many reasons to them behind my reasoning for caring about who stores my personal data, tracks my personal activity for purposes that don’t benefit myself, and what apps go on my device.

Same - I actually check Nebula for new videos first now, then NewPipe (YouTube).

Personally I think the future is probably people supporting content creators (video and written alike) through direct financial contributions, not through ads - unless there’s some kind of major change in how ads work

Hearing a lot of negative Mozilla stuff recently, is there a writeup or something about this for someone OOTL? What happened?