8 ms·

A stripped-down smartphone has quite a few advantages over a dumbphone. Notice which apps are installed: Google Maps, subway maps, Rdio, Uber, Instacart. As he

by ggreer 12y ago

A stripped-down smartphone has quite a few advantages over a dumbphone. Notice which apps are installed: Google Maps, subway maps, Rdio, Uber, Instacart. As he says, these things are like living in the future.

dredmorbius 12y ago
It's still really hard to get around the privacy invasions of a smartphone, though. I'd like something without GPS and for which I can completely control the OS and environment. CyanogenMod seems to be as close as I'm likely to get to that at present.
- kissickas 12y ago
  Any phone's location can still be tracked by cell tower. From whom are you trying to get privacy?
  - dredmorbius 12y ago
    If the phone's off, that's going to be less useful. And the tower-tracking location granularity's much lower than GPS Though I don't know what the reporting intervals are. Some smartphones (or their apps) were reporting location data every 10 seconds, with accuracy measured within a few feet. Can't find that article at the moment, though another reports that location information is logged "at least several times an hour": http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748703983704576277101723453610 http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405274870398370... Here: "In a six-month period — from Aug 31, 2009, to Feb. 28, 2010, Deutsche Telekom had recorded and saved his longitude and latitude coordinates more than 35,000 times." http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/business/media/26privacy.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/business/media/26privacy.h... That's every 7.5 minutes. I only wish I knew who I was hiding from ;-)
    - kissickas 12y ago
      While it is obvious that turning off the phone helps, it's good that you make that point as I cannot remove the battery from my smartphone, a problem most "dumb" phones don't have.
      - dredmorbius 12y ago
        I can (and occasionally do) remove the battery as well. One "feature" of the HTC Incredible (my earlier smartphone) is that the battery is also fairly accessible and can be removed if desired.
    - at-fates-hands 12y ago
      Except in certain situations when you're probably pretty lucky to have it on. I had a friend who ran off the side of a mountain in Colorado. He called 911, but had no idea where he was (he was from the Midwest). Within about 40 minutes, they had triangulated his location and had a tow truck and emergency vehicles routed to get him out. Without his phone and the ability to locate him, he was pretty sure he wouldn't have made.
      - dredmorbius 12y ago
        If he's called 911 then ipso facto 1) his phone is on and 2) all location features are activated (on pretty much any phone of recent memory), as dialing 911 enables just this. The fact that the exception proves useful doesn't mean my phone should transmit and the telco provider, app manufacturers, and others record, possibly indefinitely my location data every few seconds. If you haven't read Maciej Cegłowski "The Internet with a Human Face", do. It's quite simply one of the best and most completely cogent arguments against the advertising-supported services model I've seen ever and anywhere. He's "idlewords" here on HN. http://idlewords.com/bt14.htm http://idlewords.com/bt14.htm
- ghshephard 12y ago
  Richard Stallman, as usual, was quite ahead of the curve on this topic when he noted that he didn't carry a cell phone of any kind because of the privacy considerations associated with logging your location, accurately with triangulation, against cell towers. The instant you start using a cell phone consistently, you've effectively handed over a log of your location history to whoever can convince the sysadmin in your cellular carriers NOC to to give them the data. And that's a pretty big list.
  - dredmorbius 12y ago
    Quite and absolutely. The man has an outstanding record for predictions. I wish he weren't so good.
    - w1ntermute 12y ago
      And yet he continues to be mocked on sites like HN.
      - pyre 12y ago
        Things that don't help: - When people want to point out that "Stallman predicted this X years ago," they phase it as, "Richard Stallman was right, as usual." Richard Stallman is not infallible. Overstating one's case doesn't win any new friends. - There are many of Stallman's "followers" that are very aggressive at promoting the GPLv3 over all other open source licenses. While this might not be Stallman's personal position on the matter, if definitely doesn't win many people over (and probably pushes many away). - Richard Stallman isn't necessarily the most lovable and charismatic figure. While people shouldn't factor that in to things when evaluating his message, they do.
        Angostura 12y ago
        When people take the phrase: " Stallman was right, as usual." and suggest that this is a claim of infallibility. Overstating one's case doesn't win any new friends. The claim is that on these issues Stallman is more usually right than wrong. Do you have anything that suggests otherwise?
- halfcat 12y ago
  >It's still really hard to get around the privacy invasions of a smartphone, though. I'd like something without GPS... I have only ever wished for the opposite, an app/feature that will log my location, frequently. I don't particularly care if it's stored in the cloud, as long as it's also stored on something of mine in a portable format (CSV, etc). I am thinking of this in terms of potentially catastrophic events where proving my location at some given time would be incredibly helpful, say, when the spouse/boss/police need to know, and the stakes are risking my marriage/job/freedom. Even more helpful would be if the app integrated with the fingerprint reader, to help prove that not only was my phone at this location, but with very high probability, so was I. Why are people so interested in destroying this information about themselves? Is it "because freedom"? Or is there a real, practical threat that we open ourselves to when this information is out there? I am genuinely interested in knowing.
collyw 12y ago
Dumbphone plus a GPS device, mp3 player could so the same. I still prefer my Sansa clip to my phone for music (I never even set the phone up for music). Small, battery lasts a while, and I basically don't need to worry about it. I even put one through the washing machine and it worked after a couple of weeks. As a side note, I find my Android phone a serious step back in usability. I would say I hang up rather than answer close to 50% of the calls. Can't I just get a physical green answer button back, rather than stupid swipe gestures.
- maccard 12y ago
  That's terribly awkward to carry around. Also, a GPS device doesn't tell me when my next bus is due (there's about 45 minutes between my buses). I also now only require one charger for my GPS and MP3 player. I can also look at cat pictures on the bus.
  - jarek 12y ago
    > I also now only require one charger for my GPS and MP3 player. microUSB?
    - maccard 12y ago
      Well, my MP3 player is my phone. No, it's a 30piin (iPhone 4S)
  - collyw 12y ago
    The point in the article was to remove as many apps as possible, particularly the cat picture ones.
- w1ntermute 12y ago
  > I would say I hang up rather than answer close to 50% of the calls. Then you're an outlier. Through common sense, it should be obvious that the vast majority of people don't run into such problems, or it would be a much more widely talked about problem. Hell, people made a huge fuss about "antennagate" when it was really only encountered by a fraction of iPhone 4 users.
lifeformed 12y ago
Regarding maps: is there an app that lets you save out Google Map info offline? I'd like to be able to type in a city and have it save all the data. I was thinking of having my setup just be a dumbphone plus a wifi-only tablet. The tablet would have utility apps, including this offline-map app. I'd just need it when I'm lost or need to find something nice to eat. It should also have Yelp data on it, and have the ability to update the map and Yelp data when I'm wifi connected. If I'm travelling to somewhere, I can preload the tablet with the new city info at home.
- codfrantic 12y ago
  You can cache maps in google maps for android. https://support.google.com/gmm/answer/3273567?hl=en&rd=1 https://support.google.com/gmm/answer/3273567?hl=en&rd=1

by ggreer 12y ago

dredmorbius 12y ago

It's still really hard to get around the privacy invasions of a smartphone, though. I'd like something without GPS and for which I can completely control the OS and environment. CyanogenMod seems to be as close as I'm likely to get to that at present.

kissickas 12y ago
Any phone's location can still be tracked by cell tower. From whom are you trying to get privacy?
- dredmorbius 12y ago
  If the phone's off, that's going to be less useful. And the tower-tracking location granularity's much lower than GPS Though I don't know what the reporting intervals are. Some smartphones (or their apps) were reporting location data every 10 seconds, with accuracy measured within a few feet. Can't find that article at the moment, though another reports that location information is logged "at least several times an hour": http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748703983704576277101723453610 http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405274870398370... Here: "In a six-month period — from Aug 31, 2009, to Feb. 28, 2010, Deutsche Telekom had recorded and saved his longitude and latitude coordinates more than 35,000 times." http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/business/media/26privacy.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/business/media/26privacy.h... That's every 7.5 minutes. I only wish I knew who I was hiding from ;-)
  - kissickas 12y ago
    While it is obvious that turning off the phone helps, it's good that you make that point as I cannot remove the battery from my smartphone, a problem most "dumb" phones don't have.
    - dredmorbius 12y ago
      I can (and occasionally do) remove the battery as well. One "feature" of the HTC Incredible (my earlier smartphone) is that the battery is also fairly accessible and can be removed if desired.
  - at-fates-hands 12y ago
    Except in certain situations when you're probably pretty lucky to have it on. I had a friend who ran off the side of a mountain in Colorado. He called 911, but had no idea where he was (he was from the Midwest). Within about 40 minutes, they had triangulated his location and had a tow truck and emergency vehicles routed to get him out. Without his phone and the ability to locate him, he was pretty sure he wouldn't have made.
    - dredmorbius 12y ago
      If he's called 911 then ipso facto 1) his phone is on and 2) all location features are activated (on pretty much any phone of recent memory), as dialing 911 enables just this. The fact that the exception proves useful doesn't mean my phone should transmit and the telco provider, app manufacturers, and others record, possibly indefinitely my location data every few seconds. If you haven't read Maciej Cegłowski "The Internet with a Human Face", do. It's quite simply one of the best and most completely cogent arguments against the advertising-supported services model I've seen ever and anywhere. He's "idlewords" here on HN. http://idlewords.com/bt14.htm http://idlewords.com/bt14.htm
ghshephard 12y ago
Richard Stallman, as usual, was quite ahead of the curve on this topic when he noted that he didn't carry a cell phone of any kind because of the privacy considerations associated with logging your location, accurately with triangulation, against cell towers. The instant you start using a cell phone consistently, you've effectively handed over a log of your location history to whoever can convince the sysadmin in your cellular carriers NOC to to give them the data. And that's a pretty big list.
- dredmorbius 12y ago
  Quite and absolutely. The man has an outstanding record for predictions. I wish he weren't so good.
  - w1ntermute 12y ago
    And yet he continues to be mocked on sites like HN.
    - pyre 12y ago
      Things that don't help: - When people want to point out that "Stallman predicted this X years ago," they phase it as, "Richard Stallman was right, as usual." Richard Stallman is not infallible. Overstating one's case doesn't win any new friends. - There are many of Stallman's "followers" that are very aggressive at promoting the GPLv3 over all other open source licenses. While this might not be Stallman's personal position on the matter, if definitely doesn't win many people over (and probably pushes many away). - Richard Stallman isn't necessarily the most lovable and charismatic figure. While people shouldn't factor that in to things when evaluating his message, they do.
      - Angostura 12y ago
        When people take the phrase: " Stallman was right, as usual." and suggest that this is a claim of infallibility. Overstating one's case doesn't win any new friends. The claim is that on these issues Stallman is more usually right than wrong. Do you have anything that suggests otherwise?
halfcat 12y ago
>It's still really hard to get around the privacy invasions of a smartphone, though. I'd like something without GPS... I have only ever wished for the opposite, an app/feature that will log my location, frequently. I don't particularly care if it's stored in the cloud, as long as it's also stored on something of mine in a portable format (CSV, etc). I am thinking of this in terms of potentially catastrophic events where proving my location at some given time would be incredibly helpful, say, when the spouse/boss/police need to know, and the stakes are risking my marriage/job/freedom. Even more helpful would be if the app integrated with the fingerprint reader, to help prove that not only was my phone at this location, but with very high probability, so was I. Why are people so interested in destroying this information about themselves? Is it "because freedom"? Or is there a real, practical threat that we open ourselves to when this information is out there? I am genuinely interested in knowing.

collyw 12y ago

Dumbphone plus a GPS device, mp3 player could so the same. I still prefer my Sansa clip to my phone for music (I never even set the phone up for music). Small, battery lasts a while, and I basically don't need to worry about it. I even put one through the washing machine and it worked after a couple of weeks. As a side note, I find my Android phone a serious step back in usability. I would say I hang up rather than answer close to 50% of the calls. Can't I just get a physical green answer button back, rather than stupid swipe gestures.

maccard 12y ago
That's terribly awkward to carry around. Also, a GPS device doesn't tell me when my next bus is due (there's about 45 minutes between my buses). I also now only require one charger for my GPS and MP3 player. I can also look at cat pictures on the bus.
- jarek 12y ago
  > I also now only require one charger for my GPS and MP3 player. microUSB?
  - maccard 12y ago
    Well, my MP3 player is my phone. No, it's a 30piin (iPhone 4S)
- collyw 12y ago
  The point in the article was to remove as many apps as possible, particularly the cat picture ones.
w1ntermute 12y ago
> I would say I hang up rather than answer close to 50% of the calls. Then you're an outlier. Through common sense, it should be obvious that the vast majority of people don't run into such problems, or it would be a much more widely talked about problem. Hell, people made a huge fuss about "antennagate" when it was really only encountered by a fraction of iPhone 4 users.

lifeformed 12y ago

Regarding maps: is there an app that lets you save out Google Map info offline? I'd like to be able to type in a city and have it save all the data. I was thinking of having my setup just be a dumbphone plus a wifi-only tablet. The tablet would have utility apps, including this offline-map app. I'd just need it when I'm lost or need to find something nice to eat. It should also have Yelp data on it, and have the ability to update the map and Yelp data when I'm wifi connected. If I'm travelling to somewhere, I can preload the tablet with the new city info at home.

codfrantic 12y ago
You can cache maps in google maps for android. https://support.google.com/gmm/answer/3273567?hl=en&rd=1 https://support.google.com/gmm/answer/3273567?hl=en&rd=1