My country had a complete economic collapse in the 90s and people could barely afford food, so mileage varies.
As an oil exporter country we were saved in the 00s by oil prices ballooning to the moon, so that was the golden decade for us instead (relatively speaking, and mostly in the big cities).
I've resigned to the fact that I'll need to use two phones, one with locked down Android/iOS for banking applications and government services (those require strong bank ID around these parts), another with some kind of a Linux or unlocked Android for literally everything else. Oh well, such is life, most people don't care enough about this to pressure Google/Apple/banks/governments into yielding.
A big reason why a non-locked-down OS is absolutely vital to me is that sometimes I (reluctantly) have to travel to places where I need to install obscure VPN/proxy services to be able to access international internet. Most services present in app stores have been banned for years now, and the government sometimes even succeeds in making Apple/Google remove the more effective ones from the stores.
What we need to push back on is making a phone a requirement to do routine banking and conducting other necessary business. There is no reason I should be required to have a phone in order to query my balance or transfer money to someone, when I have a perfectly good computer sitting here.
The physical keys, like Yubico, help with that. However, I have not been convinced that a password manager with unique, strong passwords on all my accounts shouldn't suffice. I don't know why I have to be penalized because other users don't use best practices.
Bank apps in India don't run on rooted phones, need developer mode and adb disabled. At the same time, their website works fine on Firefox on Linux where I can literally go through all their front-end source, attach and run debuggers.
What even is going on? Why are banks doing this security theatre when all their apps are doing is calling some backend apis?
> anybody who does banking on their phone is taking a big and unnecessary risk
It is not necessarily a matter of choice. Besides what the other commenter notes about 2FA, in some countries banks have been removing functionality from their online-banking website, and you can only do certain things in the phone app.
> in some countries banks have been removing functionality from their online-banking website, and you can only do certain things in the phone app.
The most infuriating I've seen, is a bank which removed the anual tax report (which you need to do the anual income tax) from the online-banking website, requiring you to use the phone app... to download a PDF file, which you then have to transfer to the computer anyway so you can print it!
This annoys me to no end. I have an old phone that I boot up occasionally because it holds all the apps that I only need once per year for a niche feature that is only accessible in their app. I don't need 200 apps on my main that I would otherwise never open.
See, the thing is, here you can't use banking on your computer without having a bespoke authentication app on your phone. There used to be a system of one-time codes sent via paper mail, but even that has been scrapped by now, so using bank ID apps is literally the only option across all of the local banks. In my bank the ID app and the bank app are even different apps, and it's the ID app that's the truly important one to have (and that, of course, hates rooted/modified phones with a passion).
The government services also go through these ID apps, although there is a poorly supported alternative that uses USB smart card readers. I have not seen a single person actually use it, probably for a reason, though I'm planning to get one just to have a backup...
At least in Finland's Nordea bank you can order a physical code calculator, they used to be small enough to keep on your wallet but the new one is the size of an old small phone. It even has a QR scanner. So I just keep it at home.
I live in a "developed" country and don't have a banking app on my phone. It's a choice. Sometimes it's a choice of which bank you bank with. Sometimes it's a choice to stick with more traditional means of interacting with that bank and not even checking your account using a website, but it's absolutely a choice.
Real Linux on phones is a thing. They're usable, but most hardware is getting old. E.g. PinePhone still works fine, but they recently announced that it's unlikely that we see a new version. They mention that it's hard to be competitive with hardware when people can install PostmarketOS and SailfishOS on cheap old Android Devices for a similar experience.
Only if your threat model is equal to the one from the GrapheneOS crowd, and only if you value freedom less than maximal security. It's fine if this is your choice, just don't say this is the only reasonable choice.
Concerning "usable", Librem 5 is my daily driver. I have no backup phone.
Also, after skimming your link and seeing "Hardware kill switches are nothing but marketing frills", I can state that this is nothing else than FUD. Kill switches can protect me, when GrapheneOS can't. You have to trust that your proprietary modem never spies on you. I don't have to. Also, here is a couple of nice discussions of this article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37507414 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28500824
I think this is the only long term solution, even if cumbersome.
I’m curious what secondary devices people are using. I have a second hand Surface Go running Fedora 43 with Gnome, it’s a bit big but it’s doing its job well.
How well does it work with Godot? Engines like Unity and Godot are very focused on using the editor UI, so I've always wondered if there's any better workflow than generating code snippets. Unless you're going full .NET/GDExtension...
In my experience, it tells you to do the necessary clicks in the editor if it can’t be coded. Gives you step by step instructions. It kind of makes it a bit more hands on than just letting the agent run free. I tried once to let it take control of my device so it could do those clicks itself but couldn’t get it working, I’m amateur at best with this though so I feel like it should be possible even if it had to do it by running selenium code it wrote.
Russian too. There is a subset of words which are referred to as "it", but for most words "he" or "she" are used regardless of whether these are living things or not. With loanwords we just decide by similarity to other words. Claude is definitely a "he" as the word is the same as a common male name.
This trips me up occasionally when I'm translating things into English. Once, when I referred to an indefinite gender player character in a gacha game as a "he" (because the word "player" is a "he"), quite a few people got mad! Even though in my head I was never trying to imply one way or the other.
For future reference, in this case you could use the singular "they" to refer to an ambiguously-gendered person or character. "<MC> drew their sword, for they would not tolerate such vile deeds."
This is just par for the course in Russia. Government has telcos track people, and that data ends up available on the black market for anyone to purchase, for a fairly modest fee. The government has been recently trying (with uncertain degree of success) to crack down on the latter, as this was frequently used by the opposition journalists and investigators to uncover the details of the government's own nefarious plots.
The data is cross-referenced with other telcos, other SIM cards, Wi-Fi hotspots (anonymous public hotspots are outlawed), street cams, and many other databases, so it's basically impossible to avoid being tracked.
Probably inevitable to become the norm everywhere in the world.
The Russian leaked ones have proven to be legit many times over by investigative journalists cross-referencing those with other databases (e.g. flight tracking or leaked food delivery databases).
In Russia case no, they are not fake. Navalny tracked his killers by analyzing flight and train travel data identifying people who always travel with him. They used data sold in the black market.
> ... as this was frequently used by the opposition journalists and investigators to uncover the details ...
Seems like Ukrainians assassins targeting Russian VIP's would be the most compelling motive for a crackdown.
Or perhaps Mr. Putin provides a feed of "currently in favor" VIP's to the black market folks, who know better than to sell intel on anyone on that list?
nice deflection there, ofc bad russia! you did surely notice that this article is about the uk? oh, and (big surprise!) israeli cell and surveillance companies ...
it's ok, the occasion offered an interesting glimpse on the crowd in here.
btw, that was another deflection right there, just saying ;-)
worse how? are you aware of the real sorry state of privacy, freedom of information and civil rights all around the globe today, and very specially in our shiny western democracies? that's getting considerably worse, i recommend you pay a bit more close attention instead of chasing tired clichés and ghosts abroad.
Ah ofc I forgot. But iirc not everything works and battery life will probably suck, no? So not really a consideration in this case of price comparison. It is an option though :)
Personally I also can't stand the exterior design, albeit overall hardware of MBP is good. Guess if I land an old MBP this is what I'd do with it.
If only I knew how to have full non-interrupted restorative sleep. It seems that my body started losing that skill about 20 years ago, and lost it altogether about 6 years ago. The falling asleep time is a lottery and I'm always waking up after the first stage, often a few more times after that.
Tried all kinds of sleep medication, but by now I've forgotten what it's like to not be half-asleep and unable to concentrate throughout the day (with loud tinnitus and a soupy feel in the brain to boot). Really sucks out any and all enjoyment from life, I can't even find the energy to watch TV shows anymore, let alone read books. I haven't learned anything fundamentally new at work for years too (inertia helps with daily routine).
I've been struggling with early waking for a few months, and recently experienced improvements by meditating before bed. Have you ruled out sleep apnea?
As an oil exporter country we were saved in the 00s by oil prices ballooning to the moon, so that was the golden decade for us instead (relatively speaking, and mostly in the big cities).
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