I have a really hard time understanding why we as a society (or various societies) are okay these kinds of things.
Sure, I understand that there is little I can do about it, but why are powerful people okay with their car company or phone company knowing everything about them?
Are people in California and the EU at least covered by data privacy laws?
There are clear financial reasons for governments and vehicle manufacturers to want this to happen.
From the consumer standpoint, what’s the alternative? Every new vehicle has one of these devices (recently mandated in USA by 20XX). If you want to buy a new vehicle, there’s no option but to have a telematics device installed.
If you think you’re competent enough to rip the component out yourself, hopefully it’s not integral to the functioning of the vehicle. If it isn’t, your warranty will be void if you do
What are the financial reasons for governments to want mass surveillance? I can understand some other reasons, which I think are illegitimate, but I cannot think of a financial reason.
At any rate, governments are all made of people who are also tracked at all times. Just because some parts of government would like mass surveillance, why would legislators who can do something about it be okay with having their car be constantly monitored by private parties or the police or anyone?
Why would legislators, donors, and lobbyists be okay with their own location data (and in some extreme cases like with Nissan their "sexual behaviors" etc) being sold to data brokers, for example?
Is this true though? Can't you insist that the dealer or manufacturer disabled telemetry? I've wondered about if there are guides for disabling telemetry at a circuit level on various models.
But it is trivial to allow js per website using ublock. My default is no-js, and if there is some website I really want to use that requires js, then I enable it. If I find myself using that website regularly, then I make the permission permanent. It is literally zero burden.
I am not some no-js evangelist or javascript hater or anything, but a huge amount of the web really does work fine (sometimes better even!) without js enabled by default. I don't think it has to be strictly either-or.
Thank you for that. I really enjoyed it. It resonates with me. I have lived in three different countries, and in my two non-native countries, I have enjoyed my life much more. I think part of it is that there I have been somewhat oblivious to the news and current politics of the new places I have lived. I get some of news and politics from my friends, but I do not follow it like I used to in my country of origin. I have also dramatically reduced my news consumption in my native country, because I am not there very often, and it does not preoccupy me so much anymore. Though I have not given up the news entirely, either in my home country or in my adopted countries, but less is, I feel, much better.
I understand, fully and deeply, why news and current events are important, but they are also a cancer. At least in the way that they are sold to us. I also get a sense that the negative effect that the news has our mental health is quite widespread around the world. As in, it is not unique to America or Britain or European countries, etc.
Looking back on some of the comments from this thread^, especially those claiming that TSMC building a factory in the US was infeasible/impossible, was entertaining in light of the current thread.
With fairness to those commentators, Taiwan will still have a process lead on US fabs until 2030 at least. It's entirely feasible that an American TSMC fab will get beaten on both density and price by Intel and Samsung in the immediate future - these fabs won't be manufacturing flagship nodes.
There was no art, poetry, craftsmanship, skill, talent, fame, friendship (or relationships of any kind), flavor, joy, celebration, or creativity before the Industrial Revolution. Gotcha.
CalyxOS is another option, though I haven't tried it personally.
If you need Google services and just want an OS closer to ASOP, I'd recommend Lineage. If you want a de-Googled device and are okay with the limitations that comes with, go with Graphene.
I've been using Graphene for a few years now and have always been happy with it.
Honestly except occasional location service/embedded maps not working in some app that only implemented google maps APIs - I have like one app that actually doesn't work (is not usable) and I am using grapheneOS as daily driver for at least 3 years now.
Been using it for almost 2 years myself, and I can say the same. Everything just works pretty much. For the couple Play Store things I need, I just get them via Aurora Store. So the actual Play Store app isn't even installed on my phone.
On the maps topic: other than finding locations via address, OsmAnd+ is better than Google Maps in my opinion. Even tells you what lanes to be in ahead of time when driving. I'm pleasantly surprised by it. Sure, you also lose out on the traffic heatmaps, but that's an acceptable loss to me as it means my phone isn't part of a spyware botnet anymore. Plus my state runs its own traffic heatmap website. If I need to see it, I can go there.
I guess it depends a bit on your definition of "phone" and "realistic". I have a pine64 phone I mean to revisit - probably with a version of https://postmarketos.org/ .
I think we might get there unless fuchsia and google abandon the Linux kernel completely - for a more apple like lockdown - but I don't think we're there yet.
I used CyanogenMod/LineageOS for the better part of a decade and switched to GrapheneOS a couple years ago and haven't looked back.
When it comes to security (and privacy), GrapheneOS blows LineageOS out of the water in pretty much every way, e.g.:
- Arbitrary-length encryption passphrases
- General security hardening: Memory hardening, sandbox hardening etc.
- Non-rooted (i.e. much higher security barriers for malicious apps to take over control over your phone)
- No userdebug mode (LineageOS ROMs are often development builds which weaken the security of the OS, see e.g. https://github.com/GrapheneOS/os-issue-tracker/issues/284#issuecomment-690417436 )
- Fully secured boot chain (in other words: A thief won't be able to do much with your phone)
- Sandboxing of Google services (*if* you want to use them), i.e. Google no longer has admin access to your phone
- Being able to restrict internet access for certain apps (that's a huge one in my book)
- Being able to grant apps access only to select contacts from your contact list (contact scopes), and only select files/folders (storage scopes)
Now that I'm thinking about it, some of the above features have become so natural to me, that I find it wild that other AOSP-based ROMs (including Google's) don't have them. Moving away from GrapheneOS would be incredibly painful for me.
Depends on where you stand. I could always build GrapheneOS myself and enable root again but I just don't have any need for it and prefer the stronger security guarantees disabling root comes with.
I understand not wanting to. I have been compiling my own kernels since about 2008, I think. I have occasionally thought about switching to something else, but really it has only gotten better (faster) over time.
When I was young and spry, I used to compile them with every new minor revision. Now, it is just maybe a couple times per year. I think that cooling it on how often I do it has helped it not become annoying.
Sure, I understand that there is little I can do about it, but why are powerful people okay with their car company or phone company knowing everything about them?
Are people in California and the EU at least covered by data privacy laws?