Still on my standard issue 11. Few scuffs and scratches on the edges but otherwise still working great.

Totally with you, we run them into the ground before replacing.

I’d wager the root CA certificates on the device are expired since it hasn’t been updated in ages. So it can’t trust certs signed with the new root CAs.

Haha, it’s all I do. Anything I spend time or money on takes away from something else, be it sleep, chores, or enriching hobbies.

I’m no better as I’m using iCloud mail included in my Apple subscription. But I have my own domain there so I can move to another provider such as Soverin (had my eye on this one for a while) or something.

I can’t be bothered self-hosting email servers and having delivery issues etc. because it’s not a major provider. There are other tech projects I’d rather spend my free time on.

Vendor lock-in with email is thankfully minimal when using your own domain. All domain-related configuration is outside the email provider’s control so as long as you back up your important emails they have no leverage over you.

Another sign to get your own domain for important email adresses (not to make the assumption that you know how or can afford it). If my email provider blocks me I will just take my domain and find a different one.

Been seeing so many creators getting locked out of their gmails because of YouTube suspensions etc. Feels too precarious to leave it all in one company’s hands when all your important logins and contacts are tied to it.

This really sounds like it’s by design. The American prison system is designed to keep people in.

Perhaps there is some tech using flash storage that can be read/written by a floppy drive, but I doubt the prison would let it in if it looked odd.

Don’t VPN services usually require you to pay through means only available to adults? Isn’t that age verification enough?

Ah but nobody ever writes 50GB of data continuously. /s

Yeah now how will we give all the AI crawlers exemptions from uploading their ID and proving they are of age?

Do you have some community around you? The US looks like a sad place to be any kind of minority right now. I’m certain there are many others feeling the same things as you. You’re not alone.

Yeah, I can’t pretend to know what you’re going through. We want you around though, that I can say for sure.

Don’t let the fascists decide your destiny, directly or indirectly.

I don’t know you but I want you in the world. I’m sorry that you’re going through that.

Oof, Windows 11 is really needy as far as an OS goes. I forget that the machine is supposed to serve me, not demand things me from the all the time.

The grass really is greener in the Linux world. Hope more people get to experience that soon.

/e/OS looks interesting too and can be delivered from Fairphone with it pre-installed. I’m kinda lost since there are so many privacy-focused OSes based on AOSP. They could probably achieve more by merging some projects, but I imagine there are different philosophies separating them like in most OSS.

In any case, lots of great info here. Cheers again for the insight.

Wow, thanks for sharing. I appreciate all the practical info. So you tried Calyx, Copperhead etc. too?

The biggest thing turning me off most of these security-oriented roms is having to buy a Pixel. I kind of don’t want to go from one American big tech phone to another.

Thanks this is very detailed! Don’t feel compelled to answer any follow-up questions (but you are welcome to!). Just wanna discuss with whoever has opinions and knowledge about it.

One question about lockdown mode on Android though. This means you can’t unlock using biometrics, so you can’t be forced to unlock? On iOS it means it won’t render a lot of scripts and images with tracking on websites, emails, SMS, apps etc. as to make it much harder to exploit anything remotely. I’m wondering if such a feature exists on Android too. I don’t care that lots of websites look janky, I just feel safer knowing most exploits won’t work.

I used LineageOS before my last phone crapped out on me. Ironically I needed to root my phone and use Magisk to hide root in order to make banking apps work. Because the bootloader had been unlocked it failed some google checks or something. Original software support was a pitiful 18 months, so kind of had to go custom rom too.

Agree with everyone here saying to bank it. Biggest risk to smaller communities likes this is shutting down due to running out of funds. Have experienced that with Mastodon instances before and it’s a shame.

With this money set aside you can all but guarantee to keep the site up for the next 1.5 years given hosting price increases and user growth. Probably won’t mean that donations stop, but at least it won’t be a race against bankruptcy and shutdown every month.

Also excellent work, everyone on the team! I don’t like social media but always enjoy coming to read articles and discuss with the fine people here.

Not in the market to change phones now, but always considering options in case I urgently need to replace it due to catastrophic failure (and fear of making an uninformed choice due to urgency).

With that said, I have an iphone 11 right now with lockdown, stolen device protection, cloud encryption, and FIDO keys enrolled and it feels very secure whilst still letting me use banking apps normally etc. How does /e/OS compare to something like that and how vulnerable is it to being plugged in and downloaded or wormed by malicious actors, zero-click SMS attacks etc?

Same. Unless it stops getting security updates or has been dropped to the bottom of the sea, I’m holding on to the phone I have.

Oh so that’s what happens when you give the most talentless, bigoted imbeciles, that couldn’t dedicate two hours to learn a little image/video editing, the tools to generate content.

No, not downplaying the effort it takes to master these skills. This is just how long I imagine it takes a normal person to learn how to splice a few clips or make some memes/shops in gimp.