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New Android Phone Questions
  • Device integrity is important, but in the sense that I don't want police to be able to get in if they take my phone while it's locked. The phone should not be trying to protect itself from me, the owner.

    I'm not planning on running any banking apps, nor any other proprietary apps that need any sort of remote attestation. For sensitive data, nothing like "other people's social security numbers". Just my own data, which I would prefer remain private.

    Seedvault uses Android's built-in backup infrastructure, so it won't back up things like Signal, or proprietary apps that resist being backed up. Only a rooted app (or rooted adb) can properly backup an Android device.

    By "mess with apps' internal states", I want to see what data proprietary apps are storing about me, and selectively delete it. I want to replace their certificate authorities with my mitmproxy's certificate authority, and intercept their connections to understand them. I want to try modifying apps' code -- for example, call recording doesn't work on my current phone, because there's supposedly some XML file somewhere that marks all the US as "recording is illegal". GrapheneOS claims to fix this, but there may be future problems in that same style, which could be fixed by modifying just one file.

  • New Android Phone Questions

    I'm planning to buy a new phone, and would like advice. I will probably get one of the following:

    • Pixel 8a running GrapheneOS
    • Pixel 8a running CalyxOS
    • Fairphone 5 running CalyxOS

    Either one of these phones will effectively be without warranty from the start. I can't file a warranty claim for a Fairphone 5, because they offer no warranty in my country. I can't file a warranty claim on a Pixel 8a, because I can't create a Google account.

    Free open source software is important to me, and these are the free-est phone OSs I could find.

    I'm planning to install Magisk to root the phone. I need adb root at a minimum. Will this prevent automatic updates?

    Why do the GrapheneOS people say that rooting breaks the whole security model of Android? I can't understand this, because only a few specific apps are granted root access, or possibly only adb.

    Reasons I need root access:

    • I need a comprehensive backup system. Non-root backup systems skip files.
    • I want to block connections using the hosts file.
    • I want to study the filesystem to learn more about Android.
    • I want to mess with apps' internal states.
    3
    Fan of Flatpaks ...or Not?
  • I've never heard anyone say that Flatpaks could result in losing access to the terminal.

    My only problem with Flatpaks are the lack of digital signature, neither from the repository nor the uploader. Other major package managers do use digital signatures, and Flatpaks should too.

  • The driver for my mouse occupies over 1 gb
  • Piper is less than 2MB, and allows reconfiguring Logitech mouse buttons. It's available in Debian and Ubuntu package managers.

    Screenshot:

    I had to use Piper to get exotic features like having mouse 6, 7, 8 buttons function as mouse 6, 7, 8, rather than the default of alt-tab and ctrl-v.

  • UK police probe Bob Vylan's festival chants against Israeli military, as US revokes band's visas
  • They should be more neutral in a non-opinion piece. They quote a lot more people saying pro-genocide things than they quote people saying anti-genocide things. They quoted pro-genocide politicians and pro-genocide BBC staff. They did not give the musicians any opportunity to respond to the article.

    Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza has inflamed tensions around the world, triggering pro-Palestinian protests in many capitals and on college campuses. Israel and some supporters have described the protests as antisemitic, while critics say Israel uses such descriptions to silence opponents

    Let's consider the two positions mentioned in this paragraph:

    1. Israel should stop committing genocide

    2. Israel should continue committing genocide, and position 1 is antisemitic

    The first position is described as "pro-Palestinian", as if these protesters support the Palestinian military (Hamas) and want them to win. This is incorrect. These people mostly just want the genocide to end.

    The second position is a shitty opinion, but also contains an overt falsehood. It's an objective fact that it's false, and that fact should be reported in the story, but it isn't.

  • Many such cases.
  • Sure, here are instructions for getting Linux Mint running: https://www.linuxmint.com/download.php

    These instructions are for creating a USB flash drive that functions as both a live environment or an installer. If you don't want to install it yet, this allows you to try it out while booting just from the flash drive, without modifying your hard drive at all.

  • Trump says he’ll withhold money from New York if Mamdani becomes mayor
  • I think people are more pissed off and divided than they have been in a very long time. It's hard to say how close we are to a civil war, though. There's been a lot of propaganda for a long time saying "violence is not the answer" (even though sometimes it is), and "violence has no place in our system of government" (even though the government abuses its own monopoly on violence to imprison and kill innocent, peaceful people).

    It feels like the media in the US is less reliable than it's ever been in my lifetime, and would probably suppress as much as possible any information that would support open rebellion.

  • If you had to live the rest of your life in single or triple digit temperatures F° (-13 or 38 C°)which would you choose?
  • First choice: 292 K

    Second choice: 9 C

    If we're talking only outdoor temperature, third choice is 100 F, because air conditioning exists, and my peppers would thrive.

    If it's ambient indoor temperature too, then I pick 9 F, which is unpleasant, but survivable. At 100 F indoors, you will be constantly sweating for the rest of your life.

  • How fucking stupid
  • This is actually a serious problem in parts of China (Shenzhen, at least). You can never predict what kind of wall outlets will be in a building. Either the UK style (popular in nearby Hong Kong), American style (NEMA 5-15), or Europlug, and sometimes multiple types in one building. At the company I was mostly visiting, each conference room had universal power strips, which accepted all three styles of plugs as well as pinky fingers. I never figured out what the voltage/frequency was, and made sure to plug in only devices that could handle 120-240V.

  • Who's in charge?
  • When you switch to an admin account on Windows, there are still files owned by "TrustedInstaller" that you can't touch, and processes owned by "System" that you can't terminate.

    Linux doesn't have that. When you switch to root, you can kill any process. You can modify or delete any file.

  • A powerful tool in Trump’s immigration crackdown: The routine traffic stop
  • a Tennessee Highway Patrol checkpoint

    These checkpoints are illegal in all of the US. Cops can't stop a driver without a reason. I know that's not much consolation to someone who is arrested during a stop for no reason.

    She drove because her husband, Hilario Martínez García, 46, is undocumented and cannot obtain a license in Tennessee

    During a traffic stop, cops can ask the driver for a driver's license. There is no reason to ask the passengers for ID, and if the passengers are asked, they don't have to give ID. They may have to give their name in some jurisdictions, but cops usually need a reason for asking for the name, and being a passenger at a road checkpoint isn't a reason.

    It seems clear to me that these cops are operating outside the law, and probably have been since before this immigration stuff.

  • GNOME Moves On: What the End of the X11 Session Means
  • X11 has effectively already been deprecated for years, seeing little to no development on it. No one should be surprised.

    X11 is complete.

    Wayland is incomplete, and is missing essential features like accessibility and automation (ydotool will never have half the features xdotool has).

  • New Costco User

    I just signed up for Costco and visited the store for the first time. I'm a little disappointed. Everything there is really unhealthy. They have a full bread aisle, but no whole wheat bread. I feel like the store is 1% produce, 69% highly processed food, 30% objects.

    Lots of types of groceries are missing. I overheard two other parties saying they would go to Walmart afterwards, to get stuff they couldn't find at Costco.

    Everything there is such a disorganized mess. Most of the aisles are incoherent.

    What's with the baggers? Why would they have bag boys but no bags? Do all Costco stores have no bags? I don't need an entire worker just to put my stuff back in the cart.

    16
    Is Ubuntu shipping software with known security vulnerabilities?

    Ubuntu's current LTS version (24.04) contains ffmpeg version 7:6.1.1-3ubuntu5 which has this buffer overflow vulnerability:

    https://trac.ffmpeg.org/ticket/10952

    https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2024-32230

    On my only Ubuntu computer, my update widget says that I need to upgrade to ffmpeg version 7:6.1.1-3ubuntu5+esm2 but can only only do so with Ubuntu Pro. I'm not eligible for Ubuntu Pro.

    Ubuntu claims that 24.04 is currently fully supported, and should have complete security updates. However, they seem to have paywalled this security update.

    What should I do?

    18
    Major Russian lenders say yuan coffers empty, urge central bank action

    cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/2595239

    > Major Russian banks have called on the central bank to take action to counter a yuan liquidity deficit, which has led to the rouble tumbling to its lowest level since April against the Chinese currency and driven yuan swap rates into triple digits. > > The rouble fell by almost 5% against the yuan on Sept. 4 on the Moscow Stock Exchange (MOEX) after the finance ministry's plans for forex interventions implied that the central bank's daily yuan sales would plunge in the coming month to the equivalent of $200 million. > > The central bank had been selling $7.3 billion worth of yuan per day during the past month. The plunge coincided with oil giant Rosneft's 15 billion yuan bond placement, which also sapped liquidity from the market. > > "We cannot lend in yuan because we have nothing to cover our foreign currency positions with," said Sberbank CEO German Gref, stressing that the central bank needed to participate more actively in the market. > The yuan has become the most traded foreign currency on MOEX after Western sanctions halted exchange trade in dollars and euros, with many banks developing yuan-denominated products for their clients. > Yuan liquidity is mainly provided by the central bank through daily sales and one-day yuan swaps, as well as through currency sales by exporting companies. > > Chinese banks in Russia, meanwhile, are avoiding currency trading for fear of secondary Western sanctions.

    0
    Should lemmy.lukeog.com be defederated?

    All the communities on lemmy.lukeog.com are mirrors of Reddit boards. lemmy.lukeog.com does not accept posts from Lemmy users -- only its bot may post and comment, and its posts and comments are just mirrors of Reddit posts and comments.

    This doesn't seem like a useful way to use Lemmy. It's more like just a mirror of Reddit, in which case archive.is or web.archive.org would be more useful, in my opinion.

    Better not to waste bandwidth and resources on this, in my opinion.

    12
    Year of Linux on the Desktop

    2024 is the Year of Linux on the Desktop, at least for my boyfriend. He's running Windows 7 right now, so I'll be switching him to Ubuntu in a few days. Ubuntu was chosen because Proton is officially supported in Ubuntu.

    325
    darkpatterns @lemmy.world Limonene @lemmy.world
    Twitter now requires signing in for everything

    This is a screenshot of https://twitter.com/ . As you can see, you can't even view the home page any more without signing in -- it instantly redirects to a page to sign in. It's the same for viewing tweets. It's been like this for a few days.

    0
    InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)LI
    Limonene @lemmy.world
    Posts 7
    Comments 472