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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: April 19th, 2022

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  • as much as I wish it were spontaneous, it seems organized (many cases happened right on the first day of elections; (nearly?) all of the perpetrators were women across like 5-10 cases that I’ve read about; they all immediately started taking photos as if to show proof to someone), it seems like either Russia or Ukraine is behind that (the former would want it to discredit the opposition, the latter to discredit the Russian state, either option sounds plausible to me). Of course, the Russian police says Ukraine-linked scammers promised money for doing it.

    honestly with how much some scammers can achieve at times (I’d rather not say, I’ve seen some abhorrent cases in the news) I tend to believe the official Russian version



  • applications from the Play Store or App Store are something people have to get and use everyday

    I haven’t made the full switch to mobile Linux yet, but my Android phone has 0 proprietary apps besides the firmware and it’s 100% usable

    in my country, if you exclude browser-based banking no bank will work

    Well, the question is why are you excluding web banking? While it’s less convenient at times, banking apps collect every piece of info about you they possibly could collect, they try to prevent you from “messing” not only with the banking app, but with the phone itself - they are one of the most egregious cases of “normalized privacy invasion”, so web banking is much preferable to banking apps. If you’re allergic to webapps for some reason (which would be a very weird thing to say for someone who installs banking apps), fine, switch to a bank that allows doing operations via SMS (that’s the only feature I miss from Sberbank).

    the NFC / contactless payment system here requires either Apple Pay, Google Wallet or a proprietary app develop by a banking alliance

    Why are you using contactless payment? Unsatisfied with the amount of data your bank collects, you want to give the same data to Apple/Google? What’s the problem with just carrying a card with you? I genuinely don’t understand. This certainly isn’t a “100% unavoidable requirement”, but just a fad you didn’t even think whether you could do without

    Govt provides electronic versions of your identity card, driving license and a ton of other cards related to the govt that also require an Android/iOS app they make…

    That’s absolutely true, which is egregious. You should petition your government to open-source those apps (public money = public code), you should reverse engineer those apps to get their functionality without the proprietary code (if they just show a barcode/qr code/picture, it’s easy, but it gets harder if it uses NFC). Either way, this isn’t something you “need”, as carrying your documents around really isn’t a problem… for me, anyway, YMMV I guess

    Even something simple like setting up a TP-Link Tapo wireless security camera will require an app these days.

    …first you buy an IoT device that connects to “the cloud”, then you say you need proprietary software to access it. Of course you do, that’s the kind of device you bought - the vast majority of IoT devices are made with zero regard to the user’s privacy and security, to hackability or right to repair.

    That said, it’s very easy to find hackable devices if you do the bare minimum research. Examples from my home - Valetudo (FOSS robot vacuum firmware) on Viomi V2 Pro, Tasmota (ESP32 firmware) on an AiYaTo light bulb. This is not a problem with mobile Linux, but rather you choosing a device that’s made to collect data from your phone.

    In conclusion, everything you listed so far isn’t a problem with mobile Linux, but a problem with your approach to software/hardware freedom. Chances are, you aren’t a hacker, and by extension aren’t a part of the target audience of a Linux phone. That’s fine, but don’t pretend there’s some insurmountable barrier preventing anyone from using it - it’s just that you don’t need it. Waydroid exists, which makes all of the claims in your comment invalid (besides maybe banking apps which may detect Waydroid), but you won’t consider Linux phones viable anyway - because, again, you don’t need it.



  • The nuclear attack on Japan wasn’t intended to defeat them - they were already essentially defeated, just trying to find a more favorable way to lose. The nuclear attack’s purpose was to intimidate the USSR, as a power flex. The reason nuclear weapons are a deterrent isn’t because a couple of nukes hitting your country is a problem - that’s just a minor inconvenience when it comes to war. The reason nuclear weapons are a deterrent is because the countries that do have them have a lot of them, and can destroy not just a couple important cities, but cover your entire country in radioactive waste.

    Not only will your “plan” not achieve its goal, but it will also hurt hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of civilians. I know it’s popular to associate a people with a government, and that’s not completely baseless, but - and I can’t believe I have to say this - that’s absolutely no reason to launch a nuclear attack. That’s just genocidal nonsense. There’s a reason countries at war don’t kill civilians, and it’s not “good will”.



  • sway with tabs (i usually dont use actual tiling)+4-5 workspaces

    waybar for status display and on mobile also for menu access

    rofi as the app launcher (i also plan to write a proper rofi menu for my phone for quick access to useful commands/config but it’s heavily wip)

    i patched sway for push to talk because wayland spec doesnt support keybindings in a way required for push to talk for now

    i also plan to patch it on the phone to completely forbid fullscreen apps (as they hide the menu which i use for workspace/window switching) and show the window bar on all windows (for example, firefox extension/downloads popups)