6 ms·

I for one am looking at alternatives.

by pgt 5y ago

Bud 5y ago
Good luck with that. Every alternative is an order of magnitude worse and also less honest about it.
- formerly_proven 5y ago
  Maybe a smartphone is not worth it if the price is so high.
  - 3000000001 5y ago
    The price being what exactly? That you’ll get caught for storing CSAM in the device makers cloud? I think the pros list stays longer than the cons list.
    - aesh2Xa1 5y ago
      Your rebuttal is, at best, a specific, straw man instance of "If you were doing nothing wrong then you have nothing to hide." I needn't be holding child pornography to be concerned about a third party viewing my photos, writing, or other media on a device that is just mine and not published, public content.
      - mrzimmerman 5y ago
        CSAM is a hash database. The images are converted to a hash and then compared to the hashes of known pornography of children, not directly viewed. The weirdly less discussed aspect of this is that anyone who is storing their images of any kind on someone else’s computer and network thinks that nothing could have been viewed before. If Apple or Google or Amazon want to scan the data you store with them they could be doing it, so if that was a concern for a person from the get go then they wouldn’t have been storing their data with third parties to begin with.
        JohnFen 5y ago
        > The images are converted to a hash and then compared to the hashes of known pornography of children, not directly viewed. I honestly don't understand why this is a relevant point. It's still surveillance. > that anyone who is storing their images of any kind on someone else’s computer and network thinks that nothing could have been viewed before I don't think that's the confusion. I think a huge part of the issue is that the surveillance is not taking place on someone else's computer, it's taking place on your smartphone. Yes, Apple says it only happens if you're uploading to the cloud -- but that's just Apple saying "trust us". If they did the scanning on their computers instead of yours, it wouldn't be necessary to trust them on this point.
        mrzimmerman 5y ago
        That’s true of any software you’d use anywhere if you accept the updates of the creator. Linus Torvalds could accept an update tomorrow that surveils people’s data and YES people might notice but plenty of people just accept updates and move on (if you’ve done code reviews you know how arduous multi-hundred or thousand line contributions can be to review). My point is we've already been taking the same risks and the only reason it’s something now is because it’s a transparent process. It’s always a “trust us” scenario unless a person routinely scans all software they is and all updates for malicious server calls or some other kind of recording of data and maybe opening of a back door.
    - Syonyk 5y ago
      It's not just this. This is a major push, certainly, but... as we come up on about a decade of smartphones being more than "that weird nerd phone one person I know has" it's worth stepping back and looking at the benefits and costs. Where you put these will depend on your view on a lot of the issues, certainly. But, in the past decade: - Every interaction with your primary device is now, by default, an opportunity for aggressive data collection, often in ways even the people who write the software don't know (because they rely on tons of other libraries and toolkits that are doing this quietly under the hood). - The default is now that you use a smartphone for everything, with the desktop experience limited or turned into a crappy version of the smartphone version (Image! Video! Scroll, scroll, scroll, never stopping, always seeing more ads! Text, who cares about that ancient stuff?) - The default has gone from "If you're alone in a social space, you talk to other people" to "You stare at your phone." Certainly was a trend before, with the Walkman/iPod/etc, but it accelerated dramatically. - Everything has been turned into either a subscription service, or a "Free-to-play" world in which the goal is addiction and microtransactions. There are plenty of benefits of smartphones, but culturally we're exceedingly bad at looking at the opportunity costs of new technology, and they're increasingly becoming harder to ignore. If you can honestly evaluate the device and decide it's a net positive, great. But I know an increasing number of people, myself included, who are evaluating them and saying, "You know, never mind. They're not worth the downsides."
      - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
        Unfortunately, we’re so far down the path that I no longer have a choice. I’m starting graduate school in the fall. A few weeks ago, I went in to pick up my new college ID card. The security guard would not let me into the building until I downloaded an app called “Everbridge” on my phone and used it to answer a series of health screening questions (ie, have you tested positive for COVID in the past 14 days). The app was for iOS and Android. There was no web version. There was no option to fill out a paper form. I was not warned in advanced. But I guess it wasn’t a problem for anyone (including me), because who the heck doesn’t have a smartphone? It’s like having a wallet now—an expected requirement for modern life, even in situations when an analog solution could have worked just as well.
  - Syonyk 5y ago
    Indeed. For the past week (entirely related to this being a kicker of a motivation on top of a bunch of other simmering long term concerns over Apple and the tech industry in general), I've been carrying around a Nokia 8110 4G - also known, for very understandable and valid reasons, as "The Bananaphone." It's quite literally curved and bright yellow. The world hasn't ended yet... It's a bit less of a step for me than other people because I'm already pretty cell-phone hostile. My iPhone (I regret buying a 2020 SE to replace my 6S under the assumption that the 6S wouldn't get iOS 15, which it's getting... maybe...) was pretty well nerfed to start with - very few apps, literally the only apps on my homescreen were person to person or group chat apps (Signal, iMessage, Google Chat, and the Element Matrix client, plus phone, browser, and camera in the bottom). Everything else had to live in the app library thing, which increased friction to use it, and I really didn't have much on there. But that has been shut down except for a few 10-15 minute windows the past week, and I've been trying, very hard, to work out the transition back to a "dumbphone" (or, as we used to call them, a cellphone). The main pain point so far is that all my messaging apps used to come to a central point on my phone - so if someone wanted to contact me, it didn't matter what they used, it would ping me if I had my phone on me. Now, that's split (my wife is the main party impacted, I'm pretty high lag on other platforms anyway). If I'm out and about, I can get SMS, but not Matrix/Signal/Chat. If I'm in my office, I can get all of them, but would rather not have a long conversation over T9 - except some of them don't do a great job of notifying me, depending on what machines are running and muted at any given time. Etc. I'm still working this out, and some of it is simple enough - add audio notifications to my "Chat Pi" by wiring in a speaker instead of relying on my phone to chirp if I get a message in Chat or element. That my M1 Mac Mini is going out the door at some point gives me added motivation to solve this. When out and about, I do at least have the option of tethering to the banana - so I could carry some other device that handles more than the phone does (which seriously isn't much). I'm debating between going back to a small tablet (2nd gen Nexus 7 would be a perfect form factor), or something like a YARH (http://yarh.io http://yarh.io) of some variety - a little Pi based mobile computer thing that is exceedingly "We didn't invent smartphones"punk. I'm at a point in my life (professionally, socially, culturally, etc) where I can happily do "You're weird... whatever..." sort of things with regards to technology, and I'm going to pull the thread until I either figure out alternatives, or determine that they simply don't exist and I can't live without them.
- mapgrep 5y ago
  /e/os seems reasonably good for phones. It’s far from an iPhone or even stock new Android but not an order of magnitude worse and none of this file scanning.
- godelski 5y ago
  Honestly what do you need in a smartphone? Good camera? IDK about you but all I use it for is texting, calling, taking pictures, and maybe checking Hacker News while I'm standing in line. 100% of phones above the $500 mark are going to fit 100% of peoples needs for people like me. Let's be honest, those needs are camera and battery life. What do you need that is the latest and greatest? I am willing to bet that this is fine for 90% of people, including us here. And we're on Hacker News. People know about ROMs and how to use them. Get a Pixel and throw Lineage onto it. It'll be at minimum $100 cheaper and the specs are pretty damn close (minor trades in either direction).
  - laserlight 5y ago
    Integration between Apple devices makes the experience greater than the sum of its parts. If someone switches from iPhone they'll lose the ability to use iMessage on their phone, to receive SMS messages on their Mac, to sync Notes, Calendar, Photos, etc. That's why the alternatives are an order of magnitude worse for me.
    - godelski 5y ago
      What? I can do all this without Apple. I mean I might have to browse photos.google.com instead of opening up my photos folder on my desktop but that's not meaningfully different. I have all these things between an Android phone and a linux computer. It may be in different locations than what Apple has them, but everything does sync if I want them to. I can even sync all these things without Google if I want to and have them go into the corresponding folders on my desktop. How is this an order of magnitude? The same services exist.
      - laserlight 5y ago
        Have you used the Apple ecosystem? I haven't used others and I am telling you how it looks from my point of view. I will have to invest resources to discover the things you talk about. And there are lots of assumptions in the things you suggested, like that I am fine with using Google or Linux, or not using iMessage at all.
fsflover 5y ago
Here you go: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5 https://puri.sm/products/librem-5 and https://pine64.org/pinephone https://pine64.org/pinephone
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  You write a comment like this in every single discussion about privacy on smartphones. And I upvote you every time. Keep up the great work!
  - fsflover 5y ago
    Thank you! Still, too many people do not know about the alternatives.
dunnevens 5y ago
I am too. I haven't pulled the trigger yet, but I'm thinking about one of Google's Pixels. The reason for that specific product line is because they are well supported by a wide range of de-Googled Android variants. I'm leaning towards CalyxOS, which seems to have the best mix of privacy, security, and ability to use apps from the Play Store. But GrapheneOS looks tempting too. I already own a Pinephone but it's not at a point where I'd want to use it as a daily driver. But they're only $150-$200, so worth taking a chance if you don't want an Android alternative. You may end up liking it. I do know people who are using it daily. It's just not for me. Not yet. If you want to look into the Android alternatives further, this HN discussion about CalyxOS went into some great detail about that OS, and about other alternatives too. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28090024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28090024

I for one am looking at alternatives.

by pgt 5y ago

I for one am looking at alternatives.

Bud 5y ago

Good luck with that. Every alternative is an order of magnitude worse and also less honest about it.

formerly_proven 5y ago
Maybe a smartphone is not worth it if the price is so high.
- 3000000001 5y ago
  The price being what exactly? That you’ll get caught for storing CSAM in the device makers cloud? I think the pros list stays longer than the cons list.
  - aesh2Xa1 5y ago
    Your rebuttal is, at best, a specific, straw man instance of "If you were doing nothing wrong then you have nothing to hide." I needn't be holding child pornography to be concerned about a third party viewing my photos, writing, or other media on a device that is just mine and not published, public content.
    - mrzimmerman 5y ago
      CSAM is a hash database. The images are converted to a hash and then compared to the hashes of known pornography of children, not directly viewed. The weirdly less discussed aspect of this is that anyone who is storing their images of any kind on someone else’s computer and network thinks that nothing could have been viewed before. If Apple or Google or Amazon want to scan the data you store with them they could be doing it, so if that was a concern for a person from the get go then they wouldn’t have been storing their data with third parties to begin with.
      - JohnFen 5y ago
        > The images are converted to a hash and then compared to the hashes of known pornography of children, not directly viewed. I honestly don't understand why this is a relevant point. It's still surveillance. > that anyone who is storing their images of any kind on someone else’s computer and network thinks that nothing could have been viewed before I don't think that's the confusion. I think a huge part of the issue is that the surveillance is not taking place on someone else's computer, it's taking place on your smartphone. Yes, Apple says it only happens if you're uploading to the cloud -- but that's just Apple saying "trust us". If they did the scanning on their computers instead of yours, it wouldn't be necessary to trust them on this point.
        mrzimmerman 5y ago
        That’s true of any software you’d use anywhere if you accept the updates of the creator. Linus Torvalds could accept an update tomorrow that surveils people’s data and YES people might notice but plenty of people just accept updates and move on (if you’ve done code reviews you know how arduous multi-hundred or thousand line contributions can be to review). My point is we've already been taking the same risks and the only reason it’s something now is because it’s a transparent process. It’s always a “trust us” scenario unless a person routinely scans all software they is and all updates for malicious server calls or some other kind of recording of data and maybe opening of a back door.
  - Syonyk 5y ago
    It's not just this. This is a major push, certainly, but... as we come up on about a decade of smartphones being more than "that weird nerd phone one person I know has" it's worth stepping back and looking at the benefits and costs. Where you put these will depend on your view on a lot of the issues, certainly. But, in the past decade: - Every interaction with your primary device is now, by default, an opportunity for aggressive data collection, often in ways even the people who write the software don't know (because they rely on tons of other libraries and toolkits that are doing this quietly under the hood). - The default is now that you use a smartphone for everything, with the desktop experience limited or turned into a crappy version of the smartphone version (Image! Video! Scroll, scroll, scroll, never stopping, always seeing more ads! Text, who cares about that ancient stuff?) - The default has gone from "If you're alone in a social space, you talk to other people" to "You stare at your phone." Certainly was a trend before, with the Walkman/iPod/etc, but it accelerated dramatically. - Everything has been turned into either a subscription service, or a "Free-to-play" world in which the goal is addiction and microtransactions. There are plenty of benefits of smartphones, but culturally we're exceedingly bad at looking at the opportunity costs of new technology, and they're increasingly becoming harder to ignore. If you can honestly evaluate the device and decide it's a net positive, great. But I know an increasing number of people, myself included, who are evaluating them and saying, "You know, never mind. They're not worth the downsides."
    - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
      Unfortunately, we’re so far down the path that I no longer have a choice. I’m starting graduate school in the fall. A few weeks ago, I went in to pick up my new college ID card. The security guard would not let me into the building until I downloaded an app called “Everbridge” on my phone and used it to answer a series of health screening questions (ie, have you tested positive for COVID in the past 14 days). The app was for iOS and Android. There was no web version. There was no option to fill out a paper form. I was not warned in advanced. But I guess it wasn’t a problem for anyone (including me), because who the heck doesn’t have a smartphone? It’s like having a wallet now—an expected requirement for modern life, even in situations when an analog solution could have worked just as well.
- Syonyk 5y ago
  Indeed. For the past week (entirely related to this being a kicker of a motivation on top of a bunch of other simmering long term concerns over Apple and the tech industry in general), I've been carrying around a Nokia 8110 4G - also known, for very understandable and valid reasons, as "The Bananaphone." It's quite literally curved and bright yellow. The world hasn't ended yet... It's a bit less of a step for me than other people because I'm already pretty cell-phone hostile. My iPhone (I regret buying a 2020 SE to replace my 6S under the assumption that the 6S wouldn't get iOS 15, which it's getting... maybe...) was pretty well nerfed to start with - very few apps, literally the only apps on my homescreen were person to person or group chat apps (Signal, iMessage, Google Chat, and the Element Matrix client, plus phone, browser, and camera in the bottom). Everything else had to live in the app library thing, which increased friction to use it, and I really didn't have much on there. But that has been shut down except for a few 10-15 minute windows the past week, and I've been trying, very hard, to work out the transition back to a "dumbphone" (or, as we used to call them, a cellphone). The main pain point so far is that all my messaging apps used to come to a central point on my phone - so if someone wanted to contact me, it didn't matter what they used, it would ping me if I had my phone on me. Now, that's split (my wife is the main party impacted, I'm pretty high lag on other platforms anyway). If I'm out and about, I can get SMS, but not Matrix/Signal/Chat. If I'm in my office, I can get all of them, but would rather not have a long conversation over T9 - except some of them don't do a great job of notifying me, depending on what machines are running and muted at any given time. Etc. I'm still working this out, and some of it is simple enough - add audio notifications to my "Chat Pi" by wiring in a speaker instead of relying on my phone to chirp if I get a message in Chat or element. That my M1 Mac Mini is going out the door at some point gives me added motivation to solve this. When out and about, I do at least have the option of tethering to the banana - so I could carry some other device that handles more than the phone does (which seriously isn't much). I'm debating between going back to a small tablet (2nd gen Nexus 7 would be a perfect form factor), or something like a YARH (http://yarh.io http://yarh.io) of some variety - a little Pi based mobile computer thing that is exceedingly "We didn't invent smartphones"punk. I'm at a point in my life (professionally, socially, culturally, etc) where I can happily do "You're weird... whatever..." sort of things with regards to technology, and I'm going to pull the thread until I either figure out alternatives, or determine that they simply don't exist and I can't live without them.
mapgrep 5y ago
/e/os seems reasonably good for phones. It’s far from an iPhone or even stock new Android but not an order of magnitude worse and none of this file scanning.
godelski 5y ago
Honestly what do you need in a smartphone? Good camera? IDK about you but all I use it for is texting, calling, taking pictures, and maybe checking Hacker News while I'm standing in line. 100% of phones above the $500 mark are going to fit 100% of peoples needs for people like me. Let's be honest, those needs are camera and battery life. What do you need that is the latest and greatest? I am willing to bet that this is fine for 90% of people, including us here. And we're on Hacker News. People know about ROMs and how to use them. Get a Pixel and throw Lineage onto it. It'll be at minimum $100 cheaper and the specs are pretty damn close (minor trades in either direction).
- laserlight 5y ago
  Integration between Apple devices makes the experience greater than the sum of its parts. If someone switches from iPhone they'll lose the ability to use iMessage on their phone, to receive SMS messages on their Mac, to sync Notes, Calendar, Photos, etc. That's why the alternatives are an order of magnitude worse for me.
  - godelski 5y ago
    What? I can do all this without Apple. I mean I might have to browse photos.google.com instead of opening up my photos folder on my desktop but that's not meaningfully different. I have all these things between an Android phone and a linux computer. It may be in different locations than what Apple has them, but everything does sync if I want them to. I can even sync all these things without Google if I want to and have them go into the corresponding folders on my desktop. How is this an order of magnitude? The same services exist.
    - laserlight 5y ago
      Have you used the Apple ecosystem? I haven't used others and I am telling you how it looks from my point of view. I will have to invest resources to discover the things you talk about. And there are lots of assumptions in the things you suggested, like that I am fine with using Google or Linux, or not using iMessage at all.

fsflover 5y ago

Here you go: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5 https://puri.sm/products/librem-5 and https://pine64.org/pinephone https://pine64.org/pinephone

dane-pgp 5y ago
You write a comment like this in every single discussion about privacy on smartphones. And I upvote you every time. Keep up the great work!
- fsflover 5y ago
  Thank you! Still, too many people do not know about the alternatives.

dunnevens 5y ago

I am too. I haven't pulled the trigger yet, but I'm thinking about one of Google's Pixels. The reason for that specific product line is because they are well supported by a wide range of de-Googled Android variants. I'm leaning towards CalyxOS, which seems to have the best mix of privacy, security, and ability to use apps from the Play Store. But GrapheneOS looks tempting too. I already own a Pinephone but it's not at a point where I'd want to use it as a daily driver. But they're only $150-$200, so worth taking a chance if you don't want an Android alternative. You may end up liking it. I do know people who are using it daily. It's just not for me. Not yet. If you want to look into the Android alternatives further, this HN discussion about CalyxOS went into some great detail about that OS, and about other alternatives too. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28090024 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28090024