I am a long term GrapheneOS user and would like to talk about it. r/privacy on the redditland blocks custom OS discussions which I think is very bad for user privacy, and I hope this post will be useful to anyone who are in the hunt for better privacy.

Nowadays smartphones are a much bigger threats to our privacy and Desktop systems, and unfortunately manufacturers has designed them to be locked down devices with no user freedom. You can't just "install Linux" on most smartphones and it is horrible. And most preloaded systems spy on us like crazy. That was why I specifically bought a pixel and loaded GOS onto it.

According to https://grapheneos.org/features , they start from base AOSP's latest version, imptoves upon it's security and significantly hardens it. There's hardened_malloc to.prevent against exploitation, disabling lots of debugging features, disabling USB-c data, hardening the Linux kernel and system apps etc. They even block accessing the hardware identifiers of the phone so that apps cannot detect whqt phone you're using. That means with Tor and zero permissions given, apps are anonymous.

Compatibility with apps are best in Custom ROMs but there are still that can't work, especially if they enforce device integrity. Very few apps usually enforce that tho. Also their community isn't the friendliest but you can get help. Just don't try and engage too much or have too many debates.

Anyone else here use GrapheneOS, or any other privacy ROMs? What is your experience? Do you disagree on any point? Let's have a discussion!

I have an Acer Nitro 5, it's motherboard got fri3d the other day. Thankfully it was under warranty. But I wonder is acer laptops generally more unreliable than others?

Basically which laptops are reliable?

Obviously I can understand why mysoginists are hated upon, As their belief is all women are trash or men are superior etc. But why are incels also generally hated upon? They are lacking in a way that makes them unable to gey in a relationship, but that shouldn't necessarily mean they are mysoginists, right?

What am I missing here? I haven't ever had a relationship with a woman, but I don't hate all women either. I just consider myself unlucky. Does that make me an incel?

I was looking to buy a new laptop for some time (have even asked your help), and finally I went with an Acer Nitro 5 . I got it 2 days ago and so far, I'm fully satisfied.

Specs:

Intel core i7 12650H (only goes to 4.0GHz due to thermals), an 150W RTX 3070ti (which does go to full 150W, no thermal issues there), a 1Tb SSD, 1440p 165Hz display that looks super good, 57Wh battery(yeah).

In setting up the laptop I did face some visual glitches when I installed Intel graphics drivers from Intel's official website... Had to reinstall Acer drivers to fix it (weird). Otherwise no bugs. Even installed Linux. Got 4hrs battery life that way.

I tried running 3dMark Time spy and have added the results in the post. modern games are yet to test.

What do you guys think? Should I check anything else? Would you like to see something else running on it?

Time spy:

Hi, I am looking to buy a new laptop for both gaming and productivity loads.

Which brands are generally reliable for laptop? Say for a 1000$?

We are starting to see for quite some time big tech trying to get the internet under their control. We have seen half of the internet starting to block proxies. Tor is not usable in the normal internet anymore. More and more services require a government issued id for their account.

And now Google went ahead and did the final blow by announcing WEI. If that gets integrated on all popular sites, there will be no more open web. We try to fight back as much as we can, but the bitter truth is most people are already 'good little pets' of these giants.

Most of the people, are not just okay, but want these big brothers to handle everything for them. They want to get their finances, entertainment, social medias, government services all done for them by these giants without them even knowing. They are ready to live as big brother says. Half of them already don't have individual opinions.

Although the fight still continues, It's time to think about plan B. What if most of internet is blocked for us privacy conscious people? We need alternatives. It's time to build an ecosystem that we people can use without the help of popular services. There are already a lot of softwares, but we need to fill the gaps fast. We need an open hardware, accessible and a fully open software stack including everyday apps for most of our needs and entertainments. On PC it's almost there. Mobile terribly lacks in the lowest levels, but have some apps that can help.

PC

For PC, we can still install linux on most devices, so linux. For browsing, we can use firefox or any forks of that. Proton and skiff are good alternatives for basic email, storage etc. For social media we have federated systems like lemmy, services like odysee, mewe etc. Share services that you think should be in this list

Mobile

For mobile, we miss variety in hardware section. One option might be pinephone or other linux phones. Other option might ironically be Pixel. For OS, we can use graph eneOS, cal yx OS, linux based OS etc. But setting it up is currently very hard. For browsing, firefox for android is good (I use it) which also has extensions support. Above mentioned services like proton, skiff, lemmy, odysee, mewe etc. has android apps. For IM we have briar, Session, simpleX etc. Share services that you think should be in this list

Help me document a full recommended ecosystem. Maybe we can have a recommended guide. Maybe there are better options. Discuss.