Captain Beyond

Been a while since I used microG but I remember the Google registration specifically being opt-in. Then again, I also remember reading that /e/OS automatically enables it, so…

I do not have a high opinion of /e/OS or Murena. It is LineageOS but “degoogled” which is a meaningless buzzword considering LineageOS already does not contain Google services/apps (you have to install those yourself). Instead it’s connected to its own “Murena cloud” which itself uses OpenAI for a speech to text service. But hey, it’s not google so it must be okay, right…?

https://community.e.foundation/t/voice-to-text-feature-using-open-ai/70509

It might be opt in (or opt out? dunno) but this sort of thing should not be a cloud thing, it should be a local service.

It also comes with at least one proprietary app built into the OS and their app store offers proprietary apps with some sort of “tracker detection” thing. I do not trust any “app store” that purports to tell me which proprietary apps are “good.”

LineageOS comes with no google apps, no cloud apps, no proprietary apps, etc. It’s just a perfectly usable AOSP system. It doesn’t even have an “app store” but you can install F-Droid on it. I think GrapheneOS is the same (it supports “sandboxed Google services” but it doesn’t include them by default)

As far as I know the only options that exist are LineageOS, GrapheneOS, and maybe non-Android Linuxes if you’re brave enough. There used to be DivestOS which although based on LineageOS brought several security, privacy, and freedom improvements, but that project has been discontinued. None of these “degoogled privacy OS” LineageOS reskins impress me.

It does seem like a bug. I actually have a UnifiedPush distributor but have never configured Fennec to use it (I didn’t even know it was an option) but now Fennec shows me this warning and there is no way to actually enable it in settings anymore.

conspiracy theory time: “AI” is a psyop designed to manufacture consent for unpopular internet regulations such as this one. We used to take anonymity and privacy for granted and now every other website demands you to “prove you are human” (my instance is unfortunately no exception… its a necessary evil).

I think it’s even worse than that. I imagine the point is to mislead people into believing that privacy laws mandate obnoxious banners in order to get them to oppose said laws.

This is a web wrapper for several proprietary social apps. It is effectively a browser locked into a pre-approved set of URLs. Just use a real browser.

“It’s not foss but something something privacy…” Proprietary software, not even once.

The FOSS equivalent of “find my device” is called… Find My Device. https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.nulide.findmydevice/

As I understand it the sandboxed google apps are entirely optional. You can go completely free with GrapheneOS just like with LineageOS.

They’re working with an (unrevealed) major OEM to bring a compatible device to market sometime next year.

https://old.reddit.com/r/GrapheneOS/comments/1o32gpg/blackberry_phones/nivsx0k/

Here’s hoping its a device with an SD card slot and optionally a 3.5 jack. The Pixel’s lack of those is the one reason I haven’t made the switch.

Recently Google announced they were going to restrict certified Android devices to only allowing apps approved by Google. An F-Droid member found references to “blocked developers” in the new verification code. It’s not unreasonable to assume that this developer blocklist could be region-dependent and Google could use this ability to block Signal from being installed in EU.

Unfortunately those tools are not open source, they are under some source-available proprietary license. That may be why they (rightfully) get downvoted.

You can use them if you like of course, but they should not be advertised as open source.

correct me if there is something wrong with the app

It’s proprietary (source available non-commercial license)

Note that “source available on github” doesn’t necessarily mean it’s free software. You have to look at the license to make sure.

That said I believe Stremio’s repos are licensed freely (the web app looks like it’s GPLv2), but as OP noted their application(s) are proprietary.

Like any company offering “exclusive deals only in the app” the catch is you have to sign up for an account and install an app. That’s one more account and one more app that you would have not normally installed but for the “deal.”

This might be a hot take but the best way to avoid or “bypass” onerous things like the “integrity API” is to opt out of the proprietary world as much as possible. Use exclusively free (Libre) software and technology where you can.

We should not be thinking in terms of how do we get proprietary crapware onto our free systems, because that defeats the purpose of a free system. The idea is to build an alternative to the proprietary world.

I think F-droid is woefully misunderstood especially in privacy circles.

The main benefit of F-Droid is that it works (as best it can) to guarantee software freedom. This means, for each app, you can be assured it is under a free software license, built from corresponding source code, and contains no proprietary components. F-droid has an inclusion policy that forbids proprietary blobs and they have to build everything from source in order to ensure that - however, if the app is reproducible, F-droid can actually verify that the already built app from the developer satisfies the inclusion policy without needing to sign its own builds, which is ideal. It’s important to note that without building from source, there is no way to guarantee that the source corresponds to the binary, which is important for exercising the four freedoms.

I don’t agree with everything F-droid does and I don’t think F-droid is perfect. The security folks have a few valid points, I think, but they fail to offer a solution that solves the same problem that F-droid does, either because they misunderstand what problem that is, or simply do not care about it. F-droid is not an app store, it’s a community-maintained distribution like a GNU/Linux distribution. App stores are not alternatives to F-droid and serve different problems. There is, as far as I know, no other project that attempts to serve the same purpose as F-droid.

No. This isn’t a thing. Don’t try to make it a thing.

Once something leaves your computer you lose control of it. The recipient can do whatever they want with the message. If you don’t trust the recipient not to be malicious then don’t send them anything sensitive. You can’t untell a secret.