Lol, open source isn’t even the start of it. Paying thousands of dollars to wear 1kg goggles around your head all day so you can clumsily tap at virtual buttons while getting a headache isn’t an easy sell for the average person.

They can’t eliminate busywork, otherwise 90% of the company would be fired.

Nah it’ll take at least 5 years for that to happen. They have to wait until most people have Android 14 to use the feature.

It’s pretty electronic sounding to me.

It seems like it’s limited to electronic music without vocals.

Maybe I could just remote desktop into my home computer and use GIMP? Idk

Photos are pretty much indistinguishable from the Google app. However it does has a fewer number of features, and I have found that videos on the Google app are less choppy.

You just need an OEM unlocked Pixel and a web browser that supports webUSB. You literally just click the buttons on the installation web page and it does everything for you in your web browser.

https://grapheneos.org/install/web

You can even install GrapheneOS using another phone, no desktop computer needed.

There are options now that allow you to remove phone bloat/ads/spyware without rooting and without breaking the security model of the device. GrapheneOS and CalyxOS have made rooting obsolete IMO.

OK but I can still use it if the company goes down right?

I thought Cryptomator was for cloud services only, but I’ll check it out.

I kind of want one just to see what it’s like. But for the same price I could buy both a good tablet and a phone, so it’s not really worth it.

OpenStreetMaps though?

I agree, there is a noticeable difference between those who went into tech for $$$ and those who are passionate about it.

This is why we need everyone to use encryption, so that it won’t be seen as abnormal or suspicious.

Very cool. This will also increase viewership for Lemmy.

Maximum cope

This is a very informative post, thanks for sharing. Although Signal is still way better than SMS and probably also closed source apps like WhatsApp, the leakage of metadata on a centralized server is a problem that needs to be addressed.

That being said, there is some evidence that Signal isn’t collecting metadata based on the fact that it has published its responses to subpoenas and did not provide that information.

Get a phone mount for your car and an aux cord.

That is an abomination of an ad, shame on them.

Use something like netguard to block access to the internet for apps that don’t need it. It doesn’t matter if your home launcher collects data if it can’t send it anywhere. Netguard does take up your VPN slot so that’s the downside, and one of the reasons GrapheneOS is the gold standard.

Another thing you can try is putting apps in their own profiles. Some apps can communicate with others and installing them in separate android profiles can prevent that. Also lets you use multiple instances of that app which can be useful if you have several accounts.

As for browser, I’d use either Brave (with all cryptospam disabled) or Tor browser with JavaScript disabled. Brave seems to be the only browser with decent privacy and timely security updates. Avoid using Samsung browser, it 100% spies on you.

Duckduckgo is a little more private than Google but there are even better options. I would use a SearxNG instance like search.disroot.org instead since they are usually run non profit and are not incentivized to steal your data.

For maps, check out OSMAnd, which is an open source alternative. It’s a little cumbersome at first but you get used to it, I use it for everything now. You can even download maps and use it completely offline which I have found extremely useful on multiple occasions.

One last thing. Even on GrapheneOS your location can be tracked by the cellular network. This data is routinely collected and sold in most countries. Its’s also used for emergency services to find you when you call. If you don’t want to be tracked this way, you’re better off putting your device in Airplane Mode and using WiFi only. Unfortunately there is no other work around to that. If you’re on the network your location is recorded.

I remember reading about when Google ended the Nexus line and started doing the pixels. It feels like yesterday that was a new phone.