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microtonal

26,313 karma · joined June 29, 2010

Opinions are my own.
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microtonal··on Dutch governments builds alternative for Microsoft based on NixOS
I'd argue Russia has done more there by invading Ukraine.

Nope, nobody was talking about getting nukes after the invasion in 2022.

Everybody started talking about getting nukes after: (1) Trump has been threatening to leave NATO and casting doubt about upholding Article 5, so nobody is really sure if the nuclear umbrella extends to Europe anymore; and (2) Trump has threatened to invade Greenland.

Basically, nobody here trusts the US anymore, but politicians are keeping up appearances to race to scale up production capacity of arms, etc.

Trumpists will typically say "but why should the US provide the nuclear umbrella for Europe?" Which is woefully ignorant of history, the whole NATO nuclear sharing arrangement, etc. exists, because the US didn't want European countries like (West-)Germany to have their own nukes.

Isn't it embarrassing that all these idiots are the dominant force on the planet and you have to cry to them to help you against Russia and they make much more money than your citizens? If you're going to insult Americans like this you should at least have something worth insulting us over. I do think biking culture is way better than driving, but I'm not sure about much else.

Sorry, but the arrogance is perplexing. First, European countries contributed a lot more money to Ukraine than the US. Second, when the US, Ukraine, etc. signed the Budapest memorandum, they US implied that they would respond to a Russian attack.

However, when negotiating the security assurances, U.S. officials told their Ukrainian counterparts that, were Russia to violate them, the United States would take a strong interest and respond. [...] Washington did not promise unlimited support. The Budapest Memorandum contains security “assurances,” not “guarantees.” Guarantees would have implied a commitment of American military force, which NATO members have. U.S. officials made clear that was not on offer. Hence, assurances.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/why-care-about-ukraine-an...

And this is exactly one of the issues of the US now. It is completely reliable. Make a trade agreement and then on a whim Trump can decide to shred it again.

The funniest case was that Trump wanted to impose tariffs when Denmark wanted to send troops to Greenland... Which is an autonomous territory of Denmark.

microtonal··on Dutch governments builds alternative for Microsoft based on NixOS
The US (or Trump) is the bigger threat because it is currently actively destroying the rule-based world order, which introduces exactly the lawlessness, chaotic times that opens the window for Iran and Russia to 'do business'. Plus it is destroying the its alliances, which were part of keeping the equilibrium between power blocks in tact.

One can only hope that another power that cares about rules fills the void.

microtonal··on Dutch governments builds alternative for Microsoft based on NixOS
You can absolutely return it within the 14 day window, even unpacked.

During the reflection period, you may open the packaging. You may try or fit the product, just like in a normal store. But you are not allowed to do more than what is needed to judge the product. For instance, you can try pants. But you cannot wear the pants for several days and then return it. If you do this anyway and the product loses value? Then the seller may charge you the damage. The seller needs to inform you of this before you buy the product.

https://consument.acm.nl/aankoop-dienst-annuleren/bedenktijd

I have sent back products within the 14 days, including smartphones that I tried and decided that I don't like it. Some sellers also extend the 14 days to 30 days.

Changing the terms later is a completely valid point though and it should be possible to reject any updated terms IMO.

microtonal··on Dutch governments builds alternative for Microsoft based on NixOS
It's not so much the AI vendors that are the issue. It's everyone else that want to grab some of those LLM profits as well. Apple in iOS/macOS, Google and Samsung in Android, Microsoft in Windows/Office, Raycast, Meta in WhatsApp, a company's helpdesk, random websites, etc. Everyone wants to make a profit by selling you an AI subscription or by reducing the number of humans employed.
microtonal··on F-Droid 2.0
Interesting, here you can still buy the P10 and P10P for hundreds of Euros off and the prices are still trending down. Also many stores still have them. This is not surprising, because Google still sells them themselves, just in fewer colors and storage tiers.
microtonal··on Toyota is taking the Corolla electric
We have had an EV for two years and it’s not a problem at all. We don’t even have a charger at home (apartment complex).

A lot of parking spots have chargers. So we only charge it when e.g. bringing our daughter to sports or when my wife is at her choir. That way the car practically always has enough juice.

When traveling, we’ve found that we are generally more efficient. We stop every three hours anyway to get a drink or eat something and hook it up to a fast charger. Since we would have these breaks with an ICE vehicle as well, we skip the separate stop for refueling.

It’s funny, the first time we made a long trip with our EV we tried to plan where to charge, etc. Now we just go without thinking about it, because there are always some fast charging options when you need it (though e.g. NL is much better than DE).

microtonal··on Two-tier encryption in the UK
Even in 2015 Apple put in backdoors. They have been really good at making people believe things that are not true. E.g. from the linked post:

iCloud already protects sensitive categories of data (like Passwords, Health data, Messages in iCloud, etc) with end-to-end encryption by default.

Except that there is a footnote in Apple's security document where they confirm that Messages in iCloud is not end-to-end encrypted if you don't enable ADP and have iCloud Backup enabled (which is probably most users):

Standard data protection: When iCloud Backup is enabled, the keys to your backups are secured in Apple data centers. If you use both iCloud Backup and Messages in iCloud, your backup includes a copy of the Messages in iCloud encryption key to help you recover your data.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/102651

So, there is always a backup of Messages in iCloud accessible to Apple and thus (US?) law enforcement, unless you enable ADP and the people you communicate with also use ADP.

WhatsApp is similar by the way. Unless you enable E2E backups, they end up in iCloud/Google Drive backups and are only encrypted at rest. Of the major messengers, I think only Signal completely opts out of iCloud backups and have their own real E2E-encrypted backups.

Even most technical people I talk to do not know this and don't have ADP enabled.

There are a lot of weak defaults like that.

microtonal··on F-Droid 2.0
Then buy a Pixel second-hand or when they hit rock-bottom prices, which usually happens after 6 months or so. At some point Google is probably not making a lot of profit from the devices anymore and they want to sell it to you for tracking and to sell Google One subscriptions, which are mostly irrelevant if you use GrapheneOS.
microtonal··on There's a high chance of devices being sold with GrapheneOS preinstalled in 2027
Depends on what e.g. Mediatek does I guess. So far only Tensor and Exynos had the required security features, but I don’t think you can buy either chip when you are an OEM.
microtonal··on There's a high chance of devices being sold with GrapheneOS preinstalled in 2027
Pixel A series are often under 400 here new.
microtonal··on There's a high chance of devices being sold with GrapheneOS preinstalled in 2027
Hardware-wise it seems to be doable now that more and more CPUs have MTE. (And secure processors exist, most OEMs outside Google/Samsung are just too cheap to add them.)

What does add ongoing cost is doing monthly driver/firmware/kernel/etc. updates. But IMO they should be required by law. Just doing the minimal ASB patching is not keeping your users secure.

microtonal··on There's a high chance of devices being sold with GrapheneOS preinstalled in 2027
It’s selling an additional 150k flagship devices. They are selling the Signature line with Google-certified Android by default and those 150k would buy a Pixel to run GrapheneOS otherwise. For smaller OEMs, selling 150k flagships extra yearly is a pretty sizable increase.

Also, the GrapheneOS user base is really growing rapidly, plus I’ve seen quite some people who want to run GrapheneOS, but don’t want to give money to Google, so they might switch when there is a Motorola alternative.

Outside raw user numbers, I think there may be other motivations for Motorola. First, the way they pitched it, the seem to want to position Motorola + GrapheneOS as a secure alternative for business users (so, they may bring in new users themselves). Plus there may be strategic reasons for them to do that. Google has been tightening the grip on Android. Supporting GrapheneOS as an alternative could also be a message to Google - we have an alternative if you tighten the grip too much. Kinda similar to how Samsung has their own App Store, etc. as a message to Google.

microtonal··on Apple has added persistent 'ads' to iOS, and it's driving users crazy
Also greetings from the EU. I recently saw in the settings:

- Ads for Apple Care

- Ads for Apple Fitness+

- Ads for iCloud stuff.

microtonal··on Apple has added persistent 'ads' to iOS, and it's driving users crazy
Both the UI and UX are rough compared to the polish of iOS.

Sorry, but no.

I also have an iPhone for $REASONS. Both my prior iPhone Air and my new iPhone 18 Pro still frequently stutters. Even scrolling some settings screens (which are very simple), I can often see frames getting dropped. Apple apps like the App Store are one huge frame-dropfest (even if you let it preload all assets). Apple can't get a nearly 1500 Euro phone with the fastest single-core performance and probably the fastest GPU to render normal window chrome smoothly anymore.

My P10P with GrapheneOS, which only has a midrange SoC by modern standards (don't believe what Google tells you) and it is buttery smooth.

iOS got even more terrible with Liquid Glass, so many things are badly readable, even with the slider set to completely opaque in iOS 27.

iOS used to be premium compared to Android. But Apple enshittified iOS over the last few years. Even most Apple pundits agree.

Since people seem to disagree because they simply cannot see it, here are two recordings at 0.5x speed so that even people who are not sensitive to stutters can see it:

https://drive.proton.me/urls/S24N1S17XG#56iNGffWKqZr

https://drive.proton.me/urls/DH527V6GRR#625BpPuAcYPb

microtonal··on Apple has added persistent 'ads' to iOS, and it's driving users crazy
I think you have a wrong idea about GrapheneOS. You install the sandboxed Play Store/Services through their app store and then it's pretty much the same as any other Android phone. Except that it doesn't get in your face with preinstalled crap (Google, Apple, or Samsung). On the GrapheneOS forums there are a lot of non-technical people that install GrapheneOS and don't have many issues. The primary annoyance is Google's abuse of their monopoly with Play Integrity.

I would say it often feels more like a luxury product than an iPhone or Google-certified Android phone because it's not full of cheesy stuff. It's what iPhone and Pixel would look like if Apple/Google didn't want to push you: subscriptions, AI, movie/music apps, etc.

microtonal··on Apple has added persistent 'ads' to iOS, and it's driving users crazy
Even better, Morphe can rip ads out of the native YouTube client :).
microtonal··on Apple has added persistent 'ads' to iOS, and it's driving users crazy
Install Wipr on her phone. Problem solved.

About Photos: why not disable notifications for the Google Photos app?

microtonal··on Apple has added persistent 'ads' to iOS, and it's driving users crazy
Why would you even enable notifications on these apps?

I'm on GrapheneOS, so they are not enabled by default, but I think on Google certified Android you can also switch them off. Also, besides that, if apps implement notifications nicely, they are nicer on Android, because you can turn on/off notifications per category/channel. Of course, some apps just put everything together.

microtonal··on Apple has added persistent 'ads' to iOS, and it's driving users crazy
it’s an objectively better experience than using an android device with the YouTube app that is automatically installed on it

It's not better than YouTube after Morphe. Morphe is an app that can patch other apps. It makes the official YouTube app nice by removing ads, skipping over sponsored segments, remove tracking from links, improves the player, etc.

Would be extremely hard to do something similar on iOS.

microtonal··on Apple has added persistent 'ads' to iOS, and it's driving users crazy
They also try to sell Samsung Care+ through the settings app.
microtonal··on Apple has added persistent 'ads' to iOS, and it's driving users crazy
Which Android though? AOSP doesn't have ads. But Samsung phones are full of ads for their own and other's services (McAfee VPN, McAfee security scan, OneDrive, etc.). I heard that Chinese phones are similar. Even Pixel pushes Google One in places.

The primary exceptions are GrapheneOS and Lineage, but it's not like people can buy a phone with them in the store (yet).

microtonal··on There's a high chance of devices being sold with GrapheneOS preinstalled in 2027
Yes, you can do that, but Graphene is probably best used without Google apps at all.

That totally depends on your goals. For some it's security, for some it's privacy from Google, for some it's removing the ability from Google to (worst case) remote brick/block your device. The latter may sound a bit far fetched, but if I was employed by, say the ICJ, I would know what system I'd run to avoid that.

One of the things that I like about GrapheneOS is that it accommodates all these use cases and on a gradient (e.g. personally privacy from Google is also important, but I like that I can use sandboxed Google Play Services with most of its permissions removed).

microtonal··on There's a high chance of devices being sold with GrapheneOS preinstalled in 2027
Yeah, people have different needs. One of the nice things with GrapheneOS on Pixels is that you can even pick up the latest Pixel 10a for ~400 Euro (and older models even cheaper) and it will still have what Google calls a flagship chip, but more importantly all the nice security stuff like the Titan M2. For a mid-range phone it also has pretty ok cameras.

I hope that a few years down the line there will also be great midrange Motorola phones with GrapheneOS support. But they have to start somewhere.

microtonal··on There's a high chance of devices being sold with GrapheneOS preinstalled in 2027
Two clarifications:

- This is about preinstallation. For the planned models, you can install GrapheneOS yourself. This should be really simple, if it is similar to the current installation process for Pixels, which can be fully completed through their website.

- The preinstalled devices don't seem from Motorola themselves, as mentioned later in the thread: Probably not via their website but rather another company provided with the devices directly by Motorola. It could be us doing it ourselves but we aren't set up to deal with it.

Really excited for the Motorola GrapheneOS phones! (Currently have a P10P with GrapheneOS.)

microtonal··on There's a high chance of devices being sold with GrapheneOS preinstalled in 2027
My banks (in Europe) work fine. The primary thing that is missing is tap-to-pay because Google is abusing its monopoly position and not letting GrapheneOS pass remote attestation. There are some apps that have their own tap-to-pay, such as Curve in most of Europe and PayPal in Germany, but they don't work great everywhere (e.g. where I live, all payment terminals accept tap-to-pay based on debit cards, but more than 50% does not accept credit card-based tap-to-pay, so something like Curve or Garmin Pay doesn't work in many stores).

At any rate, there is a well-maintained list here: https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa...

microtonal··on There's a high chance of devices being sold with GrapheneOS preinstalled in 2027
Cameras of flagships are still significantly better than a $150 Moto G. If you are using a smartphone in place of a camera and like good-quality photos, it's worth the money. That said, flagships can last many years as well.

I update pretty frequently, but all the older devices get used by family members, etc.

microtonal··on I said no and Apple said yes
Can’t you just disable notifications for the Google Play Store app? Maybe it’s because I’m on GrapheneOS, but I can just enable/disable notifications like any other app.
microtonal··on Probes into Toronto's shooter-for-hire network thwarted by impenetrable phone
I was surprised how well-written it was for a newspaper article on something technical. They really took the effort to talk to both sides. I strongly disagree with the anti-privacy side, but getting both takes is what a good journalist should do. (Taking a stance belongs should be in an editorial or opinion piece.)
microtonal··on Spymarks, not Watermarks
Read the actual privacy brief. Even though the audio transcription is done on device. For Siri recap, a condensed transcription (which mostly removes superfluous words, etc.) goes to their PCC servers. So even though their servers do not get raw audio, their servers do get transcriptions, which is nearly the same privacy-wise.

Of course, at that point it depends on how much you trust their PCC.

microtonal··on Spymarks, not Watermarks
It’s absolutely not a bad faith argument. They proudly tell you about iMessage being end-to-end encrypted. The part where it’s practically only encryption at rest, because everyone enables iCloud backups without ADP is hidden somewhere in a footnote.
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