VPS and email are highly used in professionnal environment not only in hobbies. There is also AI where you can pay per tokens but I don’t really use that. I have even found a local phone carrier that have added Lightning Network and Bitcoin onchain for payment recently.
I live in a country where the currency holds strong even against US petrodollar. Where bank transfers have no additionnal cost (with the exception of international ones) and where cash is still used, so yes here bitcoin is considered more a store of value investment, despite mutiple merchants accepting it as a medium of exchanges. And crypto is more on the gambling side anyways.
However in countries like Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Vietnam, India, Venezuela, etc… people understand that the monopole of their government over money is not necesserly a good thing in their current situation. Use adoption is much stronger in the global south than the north. We also saw during recent protest in France people asking other to move out from the banks and store cash and Bitcoin to destabilize their corrupted system.
I would also like to remind people that without Bitcoin, Sci-Hub and probably WikiLeaks would be dead as both got banned by payment processor. So that is a strong indactor of how useful they can be. Also a non-monetray interesting use is OpenTimeStamps and the guatemala’s election of 2023 that takes benefits from the immuability nature of blocks produced by the consensus. Or also the mining facilities that reduce the price of the electricity bill of nearby citizen, or help renewable energy to sell when there is no demands or simply balanced the electricty grids. But one that I am really excited about is the ones that clear methane from the atmosphere to turn it into bitcoins and make it actual economically viable. It’s not all black or white, we have to see uses outside our comfort zone :D
Yeah I’m not into shitcoins either but the purpose of the NYM token is to create economical incentive for node runners and I don’t think its bad. Maybe the implementation is not perfect but it’s something worth exploring regarding how bad the Tor network is corrupted partially due to a lack of incentive to behave as good nodes.
Yes, I tried it when it was in beta but it is now officially launched (so shouldn’t be experimental anymore). The main difference with traditionnal VPNs is that it rely on the nym mixnet which is a decentralized network that is routing packets and noise packets of the exact same size and mixing them through relay nodes. Basically it’s a new gen Tor network (without hidden services).
The app let you access the full mixnet in Anonymity mode which is 5 hops and thus extremely slow but suitable for messaging, e-mail, etc… But it has heavy battery use on mobile, at least when I tried it. That’s because it has to constently send fake packets for noise. It also let you use Fast mode which reduce the hops to two and thus is less private than Anonymity. However NYM, the company is not running any nodes, these are community runned unlike most VPN companies. Which is making Fast mode actually more private than a single hop VPN such as NordVPN.
Another interesting thing they did for registration is generating a Zero-Knowledge proof of payment that is untied to your payment informations. And thus does not require an account to register similar to IVPN and MullvadVPN.
These are the payment methods supported:
- Credit Card
- Crypto (including Monero)
- Apple Pay
- Google Pay
- Cash
- Nym token
They are building a decentralized infrastructure with a tokenomics incentive for good behavior from nodes. They have their own blockchain on COSMOS and it is untied to the mixnet part. I’m not really into tokenomics and if you look at the price you can clearly see that the NYM token got dumped on the market by initial investors (like most crypto projects), will see how it plays in the future but I think they are right that the main issue with Tor is that nodes don’t have economical incentive and thus is compromised by feds allowing targeting deanonymization attacks on specific users.
It really depend on your threat model, Proton Pass is fine. Of course a self-hosted or local solution will be more privacy friendly but at the cost of being responsable for security and good backups (3,2 1 rule).
There is no black or white regarding privacy. You want to ask yourself what you want to protect from and is the investment worth being sovereign ?
Only non-carrier-locked Google Pixel phones. They have been talking about potential partnership with other OEM but it’s not easy with Google ToS for Android OEM manufacturer to support other OS officially. Also they have paranoid-level security model and beside a few company like Google, Apple and maybe Samsung few devices would meet their requierments… And you know, Samsung introduced Knox to prevent their users to flash other firmware or mod their hardware and the other one, Apple, is the company that killed the FOSS Cydia Store…
GrapheneOS will continue supporting the current devices we support until their end-of-life dates. We’ll also add support for new Pixels as long as they meet our requirements. We’ve tried to make that clear, but recent posts about changes to AOSP have been widely misrepresented. Prior to Android 16, Pixels had first class support in the Android Open Source Project as the official reference devices. This was never one of our requirements and no other device provides it.
From my understanding yes but maybe not in this thread
Yes. Revolut prevented new users to login in a specific version of their app (the newer). Users that were already logged in could update the app without issue and users could use an older APK of Revolut to sign in. However the PlayIntegrity process that was banning their GrapheneOS users have been resolved and now the harden OS is whitelisted from Revolut.
At least that’s what I have followed/understood from the whole thing but I am not a Revolut user.
These projects suffer from the same issues with how Google share new Android versions. This is not a solution. Also if you have a Pixel I would personnaly use a secure locked bootloader OS rather than an unsecure unlocked bootloader. I tend to privilege /e/OS on Fairphone and LineageOS on phone that have already dropped support.
Honestly I think that AlternativeOS will always be possible, the main issue is how compatible it will be with everyday apps that people rely on. We’ve started to see some compatibility issue with Play Integrity on GrapheneOS, with Revolut (has been fixed) and Alternate AppStore such as AuroraStore having some apps refusing to launch if not installed from PlayStore itself.
On the Linux side of thing you could see how your plugins performs on a VM and or see how Ardour plays with your hardware.
That is a misleading claim right here, don’t blindly trust everything you read online. The core team of the project explained it very well why it’s not as dramatic as people made it seems too. It’s not an ideal position and Google is definitely going in a direction that doesn’t not benefit AOSP but no Android16 is comming to GrapheneOS and future version also should.
Well the chip is still capable of using some “AI cores” and you can install AI app on it but by default it’s gone. I would assume that there is some algorithme in Android that have been setup using Machine Learning and that you could market as AI since everything that is automated or made by computer gets the label AI as it’s the new buzzword of Silicon Valley and technology but I wouldn’t call them AI myself.
People care more about CEO’s opinion on politics and hate Web3 crypto more than they understand technical browser stuff.
Brave is far from perfect and the company had their contreveries but honestly if you disable all the cryptocrap and tweak it a tiny bit so it does not show you ads and feature you don’t use it is the best chromium browser in regards to security and privacy.
Ungoogled chromium by default can’t even compare, it’s not crap but brave does so much more than it’s better for the vast majority of users.
End-to-end encryption have been designed so that a “middleman” such as Signal can’t read your conversation. Signal goes even further by encrypting metadata protecting other information such as who you’re talking too and at what time (some technical and targeted attack could however determined these).
In asymetrical cryptography we tend to assume that what we call middleman is a third-party placed between the two peers during the public key exchanges (such as handshake). Signal is indeed a middleman on the infrastructure level but the software has been designed to protect you from middlemen having access to the raw, unencrypted data.
That say if you don’t verify your peer’s public key it’s not impossible that someone has done a man-in-the-middle attack and that you’re sending message to him and he’s rerouting them to your peer, etc… However this is unrealistic for the average person.
So even if it’s not a p2p infrastructure but some centralized servers we can assume that there is no middleman thanks to e2ee.
Zulip or Mattermost if you want basically a free (as in freedom) and open source alternative to Teams and slack But as you mention self-hosting isn’t really an option it can become expensive.
Maybe a mix of Signal and Jitsi Meet (there is several public free instances) if you want a good balance between privacy, price and efficiency
Maybe look at the kSuite from Infomaniak it’s not the best but might be a good balance too for your team.
Yes Vivaldi doesn’t come with crypto bullshit nor AI. However by default it’s so badly tuned for user privacy… and sprobably even security. Honestly I would prefer having a Vivaldi AI Agent over a proprietary web browser (I know it’s mainly open but it’s not) It was not that well optimized on several of my devices when I tried it… I’m not conviced by their chromium proprietary fork even tho it’s not the worst alternative either.
I think it’s a good alternative for many people but it’s more like an Open-Apple mindset. In the sens that they support and contribute to free and open source software, but they do collect data for their own use. Unlike Apple they do not serve ads yet. They have been here for years and have quite good security practices making it pretty strong.
So it’s not the end-to-end encrypted alternative that people on this sub are usually looking for but could be a great fit for some users. Also they are mainly known for web hosting and VPS then they added their collaboration suite of tools named kSuite after many years which is mainly forked from popular free software.
If you want to keep the Gecko Engine from Mozilla to support an alternative to Google’s monopoly here are a couple alternative for Linux :
- Librewolf
- Mullvad Browser
- Zen Browser
For Android you have to be aware that unfortunately every firefox based browser lack of per-site isolation unlike chromium browsers.
- IronFox (active fork of Mull by DivestOS)
- Fennec
On the dark side of the spectrum you have chromium browser such as :
- Brave (Linux & Android) (disable cryptocrap, sponsor backgrounds and it’s quite good)
- Cromite (Android)
Great ! Consider using an e-mail aliases service such as addy.io or SimpleLogin to keep your new inbox clear from spam and never give that real address unless you feel like it’s worth it.
Tuta is a great german alternative with e-mail and calendar. For Drive there is many options but I don’t feel recommanding one now For VPN there is Mullvad, IVPN and NymVPN(beta) For Password Manager there is BitWarden or any popular KeePass clients but sync is mainly on you. For Documents there is CryptPad
I think switching from iOS to GrapheneOS doesn’t massively improve your privacy. However it improve your freedom and the control you have on your device. Privacy takes education if you install GrapheneOS and link it to your Google Account and use invasive apps that are not needed to be that so (like a calculator app that access your Pictures and geolocation) will not improve drastically over iOS but will a bit over Stock Android. But unlike iOS you can use you’re phone without accounts and that’s huge.
Where did you see that banking app only works on the main profile ? I personnaly use a seperated user profile for all banking related apps and it just works with the Play Services installed and not signed in getting apps through Aurora Store. Seperated user profile is not conveniante to use daily. If you want quick access to your banking apps you could use a Work Profile, setting it up with the FOSS app Shelter. You can installed the Play Services and the Play Store if needed to that profile and limits some of their permission (some are required for it work properly)
I do backup manually of what I feel is important so I won’t recommend you anything. However if I remember correctly WhatsApp let you do backup only on Google Drive if you’re on Android and iCloud if you’re on an iPhone.
I wouldn’t buy a 7A because of security updates ending in 2028 which is in 3 years already and the battery is worse than the newer models. While the 8 series is ending support in 2030 and 2031 for the 8A. Keep in mind that iPhone are premium devices while Pixel A are midrange, it’s a bit like the SE from Apple. Phone are getting expensive and if I were you I would wait to get lower price on the 8A or 8Pro.
Yeah Pixel Camera is amazing for photography, while lacking behind competition in Portrait Mode (used to be the best) and videos (iPhone are much better). But this is mainly thanks to the Google proprietary camera app. Phone photography is good only thanks to the algorithmes processing the images the hardware isn’t that great. You can still use the stock Secure Camera from Graphene and get good results in great lighting condition however installing Google Camera through AuroraStore or the PlayStore directly will give you better results. But it come with drawbacks as it only support Google Photos to open your previous shots from the camera app. It also asks for Play Services but someone told in the comment that is not the case so maybe it has changed since I did. There is an open source app that fakes the Play Services for Google Camera to work without asking questions. It’s called GCam Services Provider (Photos), you can also bypass the Google Photos limitation by using GCam Photos Preview but this one is a bit clunky to be honest, I hope it will get updated but doesn’t seems to. You can also install modded GCam to bypass all of this but this come with it’s own risk and is mainly focus on non-Pixel devices. But if you really want to try here is a trusted ressources.
This is a valid question and I hope we will be able to live our digital lives without being so dependant from Google or Apple. A great start is by switching to FOSS apps when possible, it’s not a magic solution and come with limitations but as of today it’s my goal even if I still use proprietary app for my bank for exemple.
Since you come from iOS I want to point out that there is Goodwy that’s maintaining amazing foss apps forked from SimpleMobileTools (now Fossify Tools) and applied an Apple inspired UI, you might feel more at home with his apps. Mention to Right Gallery, Right Contact, Right Dialer, Right Messages and Right Files. The apps are asking for internet permission but it’s for paying the premium fee to unlock all feature (you are not forced to pay to unlock them). I made a donation using Bitcoin to the dev because he’s doing great work and never allow the app to have internet permission thanks to GrapheneOS feature.
There is a fairly great ammount on ressources on AlternativeTo regarding Android apps I myself made a couple of list you might want to take a quick look :
- A clean Android setup with the best apps (mostly open source)
- Beautiful Open Source Apps for Android (nice & modern UI/UX) Some apps are not updated anymore!
- The ultimate F-Droid setup (300+ Apps) Need to be updated!
- My privacy & user friendly setup [Dec. 2022] Need to be updated!
Not from me
- Sonalder to
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- 7M
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- Sonalder to
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- 2Y
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Have you ever been on a cash based society, banknotes don’t do bank - user - seller - bank route, sometimes it might happen okay but it’s not the norm, these are global, not precise tracking.
I agree on this, but cash have still stronger anonymity and privacy than most electronic payment methods. That’s why they want cash to disapear in favor of CBDCs and banking cards. That’s also why corrupted european deputee have big bags of cash at home lol.