Google, out of all companies, also decided to partially walk away from the Chinese market in 2010 over censorship concerns [1].

Nobody is forcing Apple to do business in China, or the UK. They actively choose to do so, and because of that also put themselves in a position where they have to comply with these laws, presumably because it makes them more money.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/23/technology/23google.html

Don't fool yourself into believing Apple cares about your privacy. They care about money.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgj54eq4vejo

[2] https://www.reuters.com/article/technology/apple-moves-to-st...

Why wouldn't they? Google is notorious for making marginalized people's lives harder if it can make them money. Some examples:

- Hosting Palantir's ImmigrationOS, used by ICE to track immigrants

- Actively removing tools marginalized people use to protect themselves against ICE, such as ICE-tracking apps on the play store

- Intentionally aided Israel in committing genocide as part of Project Nimbus

- LGBTQ creator censorship on YouTube

Cutting off a small group of people they've repeatedly shown not to care about in the first place is a small price to pay to further cement their position as gatekeeper of the internet.

So it seems that you will need a modern Android device with Google Play Services installed or a modern iPhone/iPad to be allowed to browse the web in the future.

No mention of device integrity verification yet, but the writing is on the wall.

https://www.eppgroup.eu/newsroom/socialists-are-responsible-...

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47410844

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

It seems they consider only coal use in the 21st century in mainland Europe + UK (i.e. not Greenland, Iceland, Svalbard, etc.).

Never used coal power:

  Albania, Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Switzerland, Norway

  2016: Belgium
  2020: Sweden, Austria
  2021: Portugal
  2024: United Kingdom
  2025: Ireland

  2026: Slovakia, Greece
  2027: France
  2028: Italy, Denmark
  2029: The Netherlands, Hungary, Finland
  2030: Spain, North Macedonia
  2032: Romania
  2033: Slovenia, Czechia, Croatia
  2035: Ukraine
  2038: Germany
  2040: Bulgaria
  2041: Montenegro

Your LLM forgot that SMS exists. Even a 0.01% success rate on tens of thousands of messages can be lucrative.

Almost half a year after the controversy started, they added a consent dialog (https://gitlab.e.foundation/e/os/murena-voice-to-text/-/comm...). A few months later, they actually made the consent dialog function as intended (https://gitlab.e.foundation/e/os/murena-voice-to-text/-/comm...). Mistakes happen, but initially Murena:

1. sent voice messages to OpenAI

2. did not anonymise said voice messages, only their origin

3. did not ask the user for consent

4. ignored the user's consent after they started asking for it

That is not a good look for a privacy-focused OS. There is now a working consent dialog before using this feature, and audio is actually anonymised (random pitch shifting + filtering + noise), but it took them nearly 8 months to address all of this after getting called out.

This is what that auditing actually reveals:

* /e/OS sends user speech data to OpenAI without consent [1], and thought this was ok until they got caught [2].

* /e/OS massively delays security patches, and calls this a "standard industry practice" [3]. Meanwhile, GrapheneOS' opt-in security preview releases provide early access to security updates prior to official disclosure [4]. Also see [0] (Security update speed) and [7] (WebView being 40 security updates behind).

* microG downloads and executes proprietary Google binaries in a privileged environment [5] [6]. You can obviously not audit these, nor should this count as "degoogled".

* microG still phones home to Google by default (android.clients.google.com for device registration check-in, mtalk.google.com for FCM push, firebaseinstallations.googleapis.com for SIM activations) [7].

[0] has a comparison of popular privacy and security-focused Android-based OS, which paints the whole picture. Privacy-friendly does not necessarily mean secure, but in this case "privacy-friendly" is quite a stretch already.

[0] https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm

[1] https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114880528716479708

[2] https://community.e.foundation/t/clarification-about-voice-t...

[3] https://community.e.foundation/t/e-os-and-security-updates/7...

[4] https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/27068-grapheneos-security-p...

[5] https://github.com/microg/GmsCore/blob/e19a9985204ec8329c1d9...

[6] https://github.com/microg/GmsCore/blob/e19a9985204ec8329c1d9...

[7] https://www.kuketz-blog.de/e-datenschutzfreundlich-bedeutet-...

https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm is a fairly complete comparison. One of GrapheneOS' biggest features is that they sandbox Google services (if you choose to install them), whereas e/OS gives them privileged access by default (via microG). Calling it a "degoogled" OS while microG uses Google's proprietary blobs is... a choice.

The GrapheneOS developers are very sceptical of e/OS (https://xcancel.com/GrapheneOS/search?f=tweets&q=e/os), but you should obviously take biases into account here. Murena's CEO occasionally participates too: https://xcancel.com/gael_duval/search?f=tweets&q=grapheneos

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47206517

Points: 30

# Comments: 7

Lead times are long, and Kinesis products are expensive. It gets a little more bearable if you take into account that you're using this tool 8 hours a day for years and years, but still. Cheaper options exist.

Here's an example of what that might look like: https://kinesis-ergo.com/wp-content/uploads/KB360-GBR_FRONT-... (though in the default configuration, shift is still on your pinky; you can customize this on most keyboards, or on OS level).

The rabbit hole goes very deep. Another option is home row mods: https://precondition.github.io/home-row-mods. A combination of thumb clusters and home row mods can reduce your finger strain a lot.