
New company called Eelo will give you de-Google-ized Android for your privacy - nuand999
https://www.phonearena.com/news/New-company-called-eelo-will-give-you-de-Google-ized-Android-so-that-you-can-keep-your-privacy_id101011
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unicornporn
[https://copperhead.co/android/](https://copperhead.co/android/) is already
doing amazing work and sell devices if you want to support them. I've been
running it for close to a year and I can't praise it enough.

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FussyZeus
Am I the only person who thinks Google specifically and the mobile app market
in general combined with previously subsidized by carriers phones have
completely destroyed the consumers perception of the value of software? It’s
getting near impossible to find quality apps (even on iOS, but less so)
available for a premium price, I have to constantly settle for IAPs to disable
ads, or just free apps that are littered with ads, tracking, and god knows
what else when if much rather just pay like $49 for a properly made
application with a permanent license.

~~~
addicted
One of the consequences of iOS was the drop in quality Mac apps (this may
possibly be my perception. I wonder if others feel the same). It seems to me
what started happening was indie Mac shops who would sell their apps for
$20-80 had to now support an iOS app as well and could not charge much, if
anything, for it. So it was just an additional cost to be supported by their
Mac app.

Further, Apple released the Mac App Store and dropped the price of iWorks apps
to $19.99 (or 9.99?) thereby reducing the perceived value of Mac apps as well.
Pre MAS, when Apple included iWork and iLife for free with your Mac you looked
at it as Apple throwing in several hundred dollars worth of software for free
with the Mac. By changing the structure where you now downloaded those apps,
they assigned a value to them that was really low affecting the entire eco
system.

Considering the massive growth of the Mac eco system, that the state of Mac
software is at best as good as it was 10 years ago with a much smaller market
is disappointing.

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selectodude
I think the drop of Mac OS X going from $129 to zero probably had as much, if
not more, to do with that.

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Operyl
So, I’m sorry if I misunderstand: they’re taking LineageOS, installing it on
preexisting devices they did not engineer, and are taking a rather large
profit? They’re just reselling? Why can’t someone just do this themselves for
significantly cheaper...

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djaychela
I'd think most tech-able people would be able to; I've had Cyanogenmod on most
of my Android phones, and it's been fairly straightforward to install. It's
not too difficult to install LineageOS (on which this is based, the successor
to CyanogenMod) on most phones - indeed there are step-by-step guides to do it
which don't require too much skill to complete - and it's possible to run it
without any of the Google Apps.

Not sure what this project is going to provide that isn't already available
after an evening's search, but they seem to be charging a fortune for it.

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mr_spothawk
i’m probably able to, but that doesn’t mean i want to... or that i want to
spend the time to potentially brick my shiny new i/nexus/pixel

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kevin_thibedeau
My shiny new Nougatized phone doesn't have the LineageOS privacy guard or file
manager and I'm thinking of switching just for that.

~~~
mr_spothawk
I support privacy focused upgrades!

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mlinksva
The founder's blog is a bit more interesting
[https://www.indidea.org/gael/blog/eelo-io-holiday-season-
lat...](https://www.indidea.org/gael/blog/eelo-io-holiday-season-latest-
updates/) with several posts prior on the project.

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IgorPartola
How does this compare to the Purism ([https://puri.sm/](https://puri.sm/))
stuff? It seems that Purism is supposed to completely wall off the baseband
processor. Does Eelo?

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avckp
Collaborating with xiaomi makes it rather fishy.

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iamdave
Pardon my ignorance, but why's that?

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UncleMeat
They were caught including a whole lot of additional bloatware that was
collecting user data.

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awiesenhofer
$1-2k for a lineageos phone? A new Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 costs about 5-700 USD. What
are they doing with the other 1300 USD?

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basicplus2
For a ridiculous price

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nugi
Unfortunately, privacy is turning out to be quite the luxury.

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659087
See Zuckerberg buying the houses that surround his and building himself a
massive walled-off privacy compound in Hawaii for examples.

"Privacy is dead.. unless you're the one trying to destroy it"

~~~
Fnoord
Reminds me of this story where Zuckerberg's laptop is on a photo showing he
uses tape on his iSight camera and audio jack. [1]

You can also read in the same article that he had 5 bodyguards whilst jogging
in Berlin.

My point is: _" Some precautions are expensive, some are cheap."_ Or, put more
extensive: _" Some precautions are out of reach for the masses, some are
within reach."_ Although more factors than price define whether something is
within reach for the masses, such as ease of use.

Your example is obviously (very) expensive, same with 5 bodyguards. That's
reasonably expensive. Using tape on your laptop isn't though. That is cheap.
Using cryptography or TorBrowser, for example, is also cheap.

[1] [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3653442/Paranoid-
lit...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3653442/Paranoid-little-Mark-
Zuckerberg-covers-Macbook-s-camera-audio-jack-pieces-tape.html)

