I wouldn’t say it is irrelevant when there is a worldwide push towards authoritarianism and countless examples of unreasonable search and seizure.

Plus, everyone has their own threat model. It’s almost a meme in the privacy community, but there’s a reason threat modeling and prioritization is step #1. It may not be a big concern to you (in your opinion), but imagine if it didn’t exist for someone who needs it.

Depends on what features you need. For some people the whole idea is that you can take and make calls on your watch, as well as messaging. Sometimes the health tracking stuff requires a proprietary app instead of Gadget Bridge.

The most private watches are glorified notification machines. I got my wife a Garmin Venu and she uses their app. It’s not perfect but they’re fairly private as far as smart watches go. She needs all the bells and whistles so that’s the best I was able to find that is high end.

Remember that time you trusted a fart that you shouldn’t have while doing a presentation in front of the class? IT WAS ME BARRY! I WAS THE SHART IN YOUR PANTS!

That sounds wildly unnecessary and resource intensive tbh. You’re already trusting their software, but you don’t trust…what? Their server security? Their signing process? Their honesty about the open source code being what you’re downloading? I’m really struggling to understand your thought process here.

But then I wouldn’t have been able to make this meme.

I get you, I wasn’t being sarcastic. Going through something difficult has a way of bringing people together, especially if you still love it after the effort.

Hm yeah that blows.

It’s not that they have a deal with Google, it’s that Google’s hardware security is best bar none except maybe iPhone. And Graphene is the best way to degoogle, as counter intuitive as it may seem. They are working with other manufacturers to get these security requirements for new phones so Graphene can be put on them.

Yes. It is hardened a lot though, easily the most secure and private. Ubuntu Touch is maybe more private because Linux but it’s barely functional. iOS in lockdown mode is decent, better than stock Android.

I wish Ubuntu Touch wasn’t the main player because I dont want to give Canonical money 😭 Better than Google or Microsoft though.

What messages would be unencrypted in this scenario if it is E2EE? I’m not sure what you’re trying to say.

GrapheneOS :)

I love how encouraging the self hosted community is.

I hope they’re not ending the project. They were pretty comfortably the best Graphene alternative but you’ll need security updates.

Gives me a jumpscare when I apply updates, not gonna lie

A lot of it is hitting critical mass too. Reddit used to be tech enthusiasts and stem students the same way Fediverse is currently. Now any town idiot yahoo from the sticks will angrily yell at you on Reddit for no reason.

But yeah the algorithm is a lot stronger than it would seem.

Ah yes, organic rage bait instead of Ai swirls fancy wine

Mint is pretty legit. Their Cinnamon desktop is looking a lot prettier these days too.

I landed on Fedora KDE because I need gaming features like VRR, and still wanted features like Secure Boot & a distro with a lot of users and documentation.

I’m working on it and avoid it when I can as I mentioned. The only reason I mentioned it is that it’s one of the last vestiges of apps I don’t fully trust. I treat it like SMS or email, I don’t send anything I don’t expect could be audited by the government with the right subpoenas.

But sometimes I’m in a weird position. If I need to order food in my wife’s country, I am not going to be able to contact the restaurant without WhatsApp. Then I, as a white American who doesn’t know them, am going to explain to the delivery guy the reasons why they shouldn’t support American fascism, in their native language that I am not 100% fluent in?