3 ms·

Seems you have to compromise on HW openness and ethics vs paranoia.

by jampekka 29d ago

Cider9986 29d ago
It's paranoia to want ≥ security than an iPhone or stock Pixel?
- eloisant 29d ago
  It depends who you are. If you're Edward Snowden, or even a high ranking politician, it's a sane precaution. If you're just a rando like me yes, it's paranoia.
  - MostlyStable 29d ago
    I think this has historically been true and is still approximately true now. But I think in the relatively near future (less than 5 years) there's a really good chance it won't be true anymore. Once open models catch up to the current frontier in vulnerability exploitation, the cost to target people will go way down. In the past, the cost to hack a random individual person was generally high enough that if there wasn't some special reason to hack you in particular, it wasn't worth it. That may no longer be the case in the near future. The floor of what is acceptable security for the General Public probably needs to rise quite a bit over the next few years.
    - DaSHacka 29d ago
      Why would you assume Google, Apple, and defense-oriented agencies like CISA wouldn't also have access to those same models, but using them to fix issues? Its just raising the bar across the board, I don't see how only attackers would benefit.
      - upboundspiral 29d ago
        Attackers only need to win once, defenders need to win every time. The game is skewed in favor of the attackers, and AI only exarcebates this.
  - OneDeuxTriSeiGo 29d ago
    I think it heavily depends. If you are concerned cops or CBP are going to try to take your phone and search it then wanting a phone like GOS is a very reasonable precaution. Even if you haven't done anything "wrong", you may have engaged in speech or activities that the current US admin has deemed problematic and will try to punish you for if they can find any evidence.
  - grapheneos 26d ago
    GrapheneOS provides massive privacy and security benefits to regular people. That was always important to regular people due to regular devices being nowhere close to good enough to protect people well enough against common threads to their privacy. However, it's far clearer now that exploits have been made so widely available without having expertise. There are many publicly available Android local root exploits on GitHub usable on these devices.
- tcfhgj 29d ago
  those who give up freedom for security will end up losing both
  - grapheneos 29d ago
    The quote wasn't talking about personal security from governments and corporations. You're warping the meaning into a situation where it doesn't fit at all. Fairphones are closed source hardware with closed source firmware and closed source userspace drivers. Fairphones are less open than Pixels, not more open. It isn't truly known how a Fairphone compares to an iPhone or Pixel when it comes to environmental impact or fairness to workers. Fairphones are designed and built by T2Mobile since the Fairphone 4. T2Mobile barely has any public information available about it. There isn't information on the working conditions, pay and other aspects of of it. The same applies to the rest of the supply chain. Fairphone provides a list of companies involved in the supply chain without details.
palata 29d ago
> vs paranoia I really would like to mention that many times, using /e/OS or LineageOS (or the likes) means that you get worse security than Stock Android. It would be fine to run /e/OS or LineageOS on a Pixel, assuming those Android systems are not too slow with updates (my experience with my /e/OS phone was that they were 4 years behind as compared to Stock Android). But really, if you have a Pixel, it doesn't really make sense to use something other than GrapheneOS IMO. So to me it's really: - GrapheneOS if you can - Stock Android vs an alternative otherwise
- grapheneos 29d ago
  > It would be fine to run /e/OS or LineageOS on a Pixel Both /e/ and LineageOS lag far behind on current security updates on a Pixel. Neither is based on Android 17 yet which was released in June 2026. Neither has the June 2026 or later Pixel firmware, kernel, driver and HAL patches. Both also roll back the standard security of AOSP but /e/ does so much more than LineageOS.
  - Vax- 28d ago
    As you can see at pixel 9 pro's (https://download.lineageos.org/devices/caiman/changes https://download.lineageos.org/devices/caiman/changes)[los changes], it was updated around Aug 18th (or at least that's when the string bump happened), so although ~2 weeks late (assuming the security patch was released at August 1st, which I'm not sure if it really works this way), it's not as bad as you said. But yeah GOS is probably the better choice for pixels, depending on the user's prefs of course. Btw I noticed similar pattern for other devices that support los, like xiaomi ones.
    - grapheneos 27d ago
      Your response doesn't address what we said. You linked to a page showing LineageOS had a release in August 2026 which does not show it has shipped all the recent standard Android and Pixel security patches, which it hasn't done. The latest releases of LineageOS for Pixels do not provide the June 2026 and later updates to the firmware, kernel, drivers and HALs because those have only been provided for Android 17 since it was released and LineageOS isn't yet based on Android 17. Separately from that, since Lineage is still based on Android 16 QPR2 it also doesn't include the many privacy and security patches not backported from Android 17. Android ships many security patches as part of the QPR2 and yearly releases which are not backported to older releases. The backports to older releases are increasingly incomplete. Years ago, they stopped backporting any Low and Moderate severity patches to older releases and more recently they've been scaling back the amount of High and Critical severity patches which are backported. An official policy announcement was made to OEMs that they'd no longer backport many High and Critical severity patches where an LLM discovered the vulnerability internally due to the large volume of patches. Pixels move to the latest OS releases and that means the firmware, kernel, driver and HAL code is only provided for those. It's most difficult for the major yearly releases due to the new API level but it's not trivial for QPR1, QPR2 and QPR3 either.
grapheneos 29d ago
Fairphones are closed source hardware with closed source firmware and closed source userspace drivers. Fairphones are less open than Pixels, not more open. It isn't truly known how a Fairphone compares to an iPhone or Pixel when it comes to environmental impact or fairness to workers. Fairphones are designed and built by T2Mobile since the Fairphone 4. T2Mobile barely has any public information available about it. There isn't information on the working conditions, pay and other aspects of of it. The same applies to the rest of the supply chain. Fairphone provides a list of companies involved in the supply chain without details.
- warrantisall 29d ago
  Pixels are not as close repairable as Fairphones.
  - grapheneos 26d ago
    iPhones and Pixels have similar replacement parts available and much longer term support. It's harder to replace components but the phones last longer due to better hardware and updates.

Seems you have to compromise on HW openness and ethics vs paranoia.

Cider9986 29d ago

It's paranoia to want ≥ security than an iPhone or stock Pixel?

eloisant 29d ago
It depends who you are. If you're Edward Snowden, or even a high ranking politician, it's a sane precaution. If you're just a rando like me yes, it's paranoia.
- MostlyStable 29d ago
  I think this has historically been true and is still approximately true now. But I think in the relatively near future (less than 5 years) there's a really good chance it won't be true anymore. Once open models catch up to the current frontier in vulnerability exploitation, the cost to target people will go way down. In the past, the cost to hack a random individual person was generally high enough that if there wasn't some special reason to hack you in particular, it wasn't worth it. That may no longer be the case in the near future. The floor of what is acceptable security for the General Public probably needs to rise quite a bit over the next few years.
  - DaSHacka 29d ago
    Why would you assume Google, Apple, and defense-oriented agencies like CISA wouldn't also have access to those same models, but using them to fix issues? Its just raising the bar across the board, I don't see how only attackers would benefit.
    - upboundspiral 29d ago
      Attackers only need to win once, defenders need to win every time. The game is skewed in favor of the attackers, and AI only exarcebates this.
- OneDeuxTriSeiGo 29d ago
  I think it heavily depends. If you are concerned cops or CBP are going to try to take your phone and search it then wanting a phone like GOS is a very reasonable precaution. Even if you haven't done anything "wrong", you may have engaged in speech or activities that the current US admin has deemed problematic and will try to punish you for if they can find any evidence.
- grapheneos 26d ago
  GrapheneOS provides massive privacy and security benefits to regular people. That was always important to regular people due to regular devices being nowhere close to good enough to protect people well enough against common threads to their privacy. However, it's far clearer now that exploits have been made so widely available without having expertise. There are many publicly available Android local root exploits on GitHub usable on these devices.
tcfhgj 29d ago
those who give up freedom for security will end up losing both
- grapheneos 29d ago
  The quote wasn't talking about personal security from governments and corporations. You're warping the meaning into a situation where it doesn't fit at all. Fairphones are closed source hardware with closed source firmware and closed source userspace drivers. Fairphones are less open than Pixels, not more open. It isn't truly known how a Fairphone compares to an iPhone or Pixel when it comes to environmental impact or fairness to workers. Fairphones are designed and built by T2Mobile since the Fairphone 4. T2Mobile barely has any public information available about it. There isn't information on the working conditions, pay and other aspects of of it. The same applies to the rest of the supply chain. Fairphone provides a list of companies involved in the supply chain without details.

palata 29d ago

> vs paranoia I really would like to mention that many times, using /e/OS or LineageOS (or the likes) means that you get worse security than Stock Android. It would be fine to run /e/OS or LineageOS on a Pixel, assuming those Android systems are not too slow with updates (my experience with my /e/OS phone was that they were 4 years behind as compared to Stock Android). But really, if you have a Pixel, it doesn't really make sense to use something other than GrapheneOS IMO. So to me it's really: - GrapheneOS if you can - Stock Android vs an alternative otherwise

grapheneos 29d ago
> It would be fine to run /e/OS or LineageOS on a Pixel Both /e/ and LineageOS lag far behind on current security updates on a Pixel. Neither is based on Android 17 yet which was released in June 2026. Neither has the June 2026 or later Pixel firmware, kernel, driver and HAL patches. Both also roll back the standard security of AOSP but /e/ does so much more than LineageOS.
- Vax- 28d ago
  As you can see at pixel 9 pro's (https://download.lineageos.org/devices/caiman/changes https://download.lineageos.org/devices/caiman/changes)[los changes], it was updated around Aug 18th (or at least that's when the string bump happened), so although ~2 weeks late (assuming the security patch was released at August 1st, which I'm not sure if it really works this way), it's not as bad as you said. But yeah GOS is probably the better choice for pixels, depending on the user's prefs of course. Btw I noticed similar pattern for other devices that support los, like xiaomi ones.
  - grapheneos 27d ago
    Your response doesn't address what we said. You linked to a page showing LineageOS had a release in August 2026 which does not show it has shipped all the recent standard Android and Pixel security patches, which it hasn't done. The latest releases of LineageOS for Pixels do not provide the June 2026 and later updates to the firmware, kernel, drivers and HALs because those have only been provided for Android 17 since it was released and LineageOS isn't yet based on Android 17. Separately from that, since Lineage is still based on Android 16 QPR2 it also doesn't include the many privacy and security patches not backported from Android 17. Android ships many security patches as part of the QPR2 and yearly releases which are not backported to older releases. The backports to older releases are increasingly incomplete. Years ago, they stopped backporting any Low and Moderate severity patches to older releases and more recently they've been scaling back the amount of High and Critical severity patches which are backported. An official policy announcement was made to OEMs that they'd no longer backport many High and Critical severity patches where an LLM discovered the vulnerability internally due to the large volume of patches. Pixels move to the latest OS releases and that means the firmware, kernel, driver and HAL code is only provided for those. It's most difficult for the major yearly releases due to the new API level but it's not trivial for QPR1, QPR2 and QPR3 either.

grapheneos 29d ago

Fairphones are closed source hardware with closed source firmware and closed source userspace drivers. Fairphones are less open than Pixels, not more open. It isn't truly known how a Fairphone compares to an iPhone or Pixel when it comes to environmental impact or fairness to workers. Fairphones are designed and built by T2Mobile since the Fairphone 4. T2Mobile barely has any public information available about it. There isn't information on the working conditions, pay and other aspects of of it. The same applies to the rest of the supply chain. Fairphone provides a list of companies involved in the supply chain without details.

warrantisall 29d ago
Pixels are not as close repairable as Fairphones.
- grapheneos 26d ago
  iPhones and Pixels have similar replacement parts available and much longer term support. It's harder to replace components but the phones last longer due to better hardware and updates.