exactly right. positioning the solution as "buy different hardware and swap OSs’ is short term thinking that solves the problem for the individual and exactly nobody else.

privacy should not be niche, it should be standard. go to city council meetings and make your voice known during flock safety hearings. write your legislators to make your stance known on OS DOB registry. its not nearly as cool as a de-googled phone you can show your friends. its not technical. but we’re sliding backwards because we’re distracted from tried and true solutions.

absolutely. we all have to individually decide our priorities in an era where our choices are incredibly limited.

my choice is to have as rock solid of a foundation as possible, so that every step afterwards is harder to compromise. that choice will not be the same for everybody depending on their starting motivations and end-goal posture.

simply sharing where my experience has informed my opinion.

I’m putting that first sentence in my back pocket lol

without going too in depth:

Google and apple have the most money, they create the best hardware (relevant in this case for the hardware root of trust)

A privacy focused individual should also be concerned about security to some degree, making the hardware root of trust a high priority.

Apple locks down their boot process too rigidly to load a new OS without compromising that security.

that’s why we’re left with Pixels as the only option. Apparently Motorola will be on the table soon. I have no experience with their chip design so I’m curious to see what they release.

If the post is getting deleted on one forum, they should post the findings somewhere else. that thread smells FUDdy to me

hey there, this is really cool. please keep us updated if you have any developments on how you solve the problems, and what else you discover

I checked gadgetbridge and it doesn’t look like there’s a solution for omnipod. That’s about as far as my knowledge can take me.

As far as workarounds: does the app require an internet connection? Could you buy a used android, go to a place with public WiFi to make a throwaway google account, download the app, never reconnect the phone to WiFi again?

my repos are NOT going to make their code less sloppy let me tell you

It’s my rocket fuel, and it was either the safe or the toilet, alright

I want to read it. Go write it.

Anecdotally, I haven’t run into a single Mikrotik deployment since university.

this service exists mostly for people who can’t purchase a pixel directly. nitrokey ships internationally

hardware vulnerabilities undoubtedly exist, whether intentional or not. its simply the nature of designing these complex semiconductors.

that said, if one company intentionally creates a backdoor, won’t they all? what phone do you buy at that point?

any startup or small phone company may not have intentional backdoors, but I can guarantee their hardware security on all other levels pales to what apple and google can accomplish. I think the question then becomes are you more worried about google having a backdoor, or about third party compromises?

im not a fan of our choices, there is no silver bullet.

I got around it by registering a new number with phreeli.

granted, this is not something most people can go and do, phone numbers are hard to separate from. however, you might agree that privacy minded individuals are more likely to find that workaround acceptable.

I do like Dessalines post regarding alternatives, I’ll have to do more research.

personally, my bet is that they don’t have anyone qualified enough to pull off an exploit like that (on me).

the problem with my bet: what we’ve seen is that they won’t care, and accuse individuals of terrorism based off the color of their clothes.