This sent me down a rabbit hole for a moment because I’d never heard of Yoti (fucking dystopian shit). A Reddit post caught my eye because it had to do with PlayStation. It’s in the r/privacy sub & turns out it had been removed by a mod for breaking their rules regarding any mention of alternative OSes.
Say what?!?
Alternative OSes are a major option for privacy. Ho my gawd, Reddit has truly turned into completely useless bullshit. Un. Fucking. Real.
Droid-ify - much nicer F-Droid replacement front end that also works with Shizuku to automate installing updates in batches. Also supports many other repositories like izzy-On-Droid (which some of my items below may come from instead).
Shizuku - gives elevated powers to apps written to take advantage of it. Not quite root, but definitely helps give abilities that make life easier.
Kompact Image Compressor - I work with scanned documents a fair amount, and this new app has already saved me significant storage space.
Key Mapper - I mainly use this for emulation, but there are plenty of other uses.
URL Check - powerful sanitizer with the smallest footprint of those I’ve tried.
DropCount - my latest game addiction
Keyboard Switcher - sometimes I just gotta use a different input method, and this provides a consistent easy way to switch
Hail - group apps to freeze all in one shot with Shizuku
Insular - de-Googled Island app which makes working with the work profile feature easier
FFUpdater - keeps my collection of browsers & Thunderbird up to date automatically with Shizuku
Huh, you’re right. Guess I just assumed it no longer had them since I dismissed getting one because it was such a downgrade in terms of other hardware. I’d only just found out about the FLX1 about a month before they switched them out, and was pissed about the downgrade because I was saving up to get the original. They lost some sales over that.
Could you be a bit more specific - is what true?
Which are no longer for sale.
Where did the money for all that come from? Where will it come from in the future as the wealth transfer to the few continues apace?
Yeah, no - I’m not inclined to rest easy. Just because more complex methods are available for use doesn’t mean the old standbys are forgotten.
It’s far too easy to change the software that drives that. For example, in order to minimize blatant power drain the trigger mic could easily become a switch that activates the main mic only when human voices are detected (or even specific voices). With authoritarian governments on the rise — along with the more than willing corporations backing them — I don’t think a bit of paranoia regarding the possibility is unwarranted.
ETA: Also there’s nothing saying the hardware can’t be updated for newer capabilities without anyone on the outside knowing. It’d be pretty easy to get away with once everyone gets lulled into a false sense of security regarding how they work.
While a response of “yes” means you need to find more entertaining friends.
Only marginally, IMHO - software is vulnerable to remote hacks, but physically breaking the electrical connection is pretty effing hard to overcome remotely.
Didn’t Fairphone or some other Linux phone maker include switches in some relatively recent model?
EDIT: According to (embarrassed for having to mention source) Google’s AI summary, yes:
Murena 2: Features a dedicated physical privacy switch that physically cuts the circuit for the microphone and camera.
Purism Librem 5: Offers physical toggle switches on the side of the phone to mechanically sever power to the microphone, camera, and baseband.
Pine64 PinePhone: Includes built-in hardware DIP switches under the back cover that allow you to completely disconnect the mic, cameras, and modems.
Especially those of us who prefer to read over watching videos.
For those tired of being nickel & dimed, you can hop the wall here.
At this point, it feels like there’s very little left that isn’t malicious.
I dunno… “Holes” doesn’t seem like it’d be all that boring…