Posts by NOCARRIER@hackers.town
(DIR) Post #9wcp6R0ygzWarIUqdk by NOCARRIER@hackers.town
2020-06-30T23:41:07Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
I was going to write about how my decision to install Ubuntu was almost always about proprietary wifi drivers and not wanting to handle it manually. Then I realized that the reason I installe Pop!_OS is because of proprietary gpu drivers and not wanting to handle in manually. Even in the FOSS areas of my life, I'm largely at the whim of proprietary pressures.The otter is cute though. That's true
(DIR) Post #9wcz65MyAUQ3GiFsfo by NOCARRIER@hackers.town
2020-06-30T15:32:01Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
Today, in #PinePhone #DistroHopping adventures, I'm exploring #Mobian, a mobile-focused debian-based distro that uses purism's posh (PHone SHell, if you're curious.)Because it is relatively mature, with regard to working phone features, I'm going to stick with it as a daily driver for a few days at least to get a real feel for it. So far, I'm actually surprised by its maturity.Though it lacks the cumulative advantage of a pre-existing platform like Ubuntu Touch, it bridges the gap by bringing with it a more modern foundation. I'm not incredibly impressed with phosh, though. Apart from feeling like it's stuck in the worst part of 2007, cosplaying as a bumbling Android 2.3, it also has some unusual UX decisions under it. They don't get in the way of usability, but I definitely feel like I'm using a legacy interface, devoid of the arcane, wizard-like swiping gestures of modern smartphone interfaces, opting instead for a clunky tap-heavy solution. I want to be a wizard, phosh. Get it together!I'm curious how that 1st impression will feel as I become more familiar with it.UNRELATED: Jumpdrive is fantastic.
(DIR) Post #9wdVBEDvsAw4i7WZAO by NOCARRIER@hackers.town
2020-07-01T01:12:17Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
You are the light that they cannot dim.
(DIR) Post #9wepj5J9iiNf97Lg3s by NOCARRIER@hackers.town
2020-07-01T23:41:49Z
2 likes, 0 repeats
@ultem If I argue that is some kind of confirmation bias, does that reinforce the thought or challenge it? I can't tell...
(DIR) Post #9weyRPAy0owb8lAAGO by NOCARRIER@hackers.town
2020-07-02T01:11:45Z
1 likes, 1 repeats
There are some really interesting characters here.
(DIR) Post #9wjHEbImIBQskGGR1M by NOCARRIER@hackers.town
2020-07-04T03:08:16Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
I <3 Toxic Waste
(DIR) Post #9wkPUwDZHwnd2W5Xhw by NOCARRIER@hackers.town
2020-07-04T16:03:44Z
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In today's #PinePhone #Mobian #DistroHopping #SuperAdventure....I've been using Mobian for a few days now as a daily driver and for the most part I really do like it. I'm warming up to phosh, but I'm still somewhat critical of its UX. I'm also still having issues here and there. So, let's get into it!MOBILE DATA still does not work for me. It appears to be an underlying problem with how the modem manager ui is handling APN information and registering the cellular connection. It's making some assumptions that aren't true and causing it to fail to register or connect properly in a mode that can handle data -- it works for others because their carrier is expecting what the modem manager is doing. Mine, unfortunately is not. It could also be related to the carrier network search timing out due to an aggressive timeout configuration making it look like there are no carriers.BATTERY DRAIN for some reason, I'm getting wild battery drain while the system is supposed to be off. This is not the Braveheart pinephone bug, but rather a bug in how mobian is shutting down. SMS and CALLS are working (and audio routing) but they're buggy just like every other distro right now. You'll get failed delivery notification on messages that are correctly delivered and you'll miss messages that come when the phone is having issues and they won't show up. They'll be in your modem manager's spool, but forwhatever reason, you won't know about them.OCCASIONAL CRASHES happen periodically. It's to be expected at this stage of development, so yeah. expect it.GPS works but is painfully slow to load the almanac. Like SLLLLOOOWWWWW. It does however work. I can query it directly and get raw gps data. It's partitioned in such a way that webapps cannot use it and a number of map apps are apparently actually webapps under the hood. Who knew!PHOSH. Ok. There's a lot to unpack in my phosh feelings. This UX is not built around what's best for the user, but rather around what people think is standard for the user... but like in 2009. It looks like it's hellbent on emulating an Android 2.3 interface and not actually trying to make the user's life better. The icon placement for the hot-bar is awkward at best. It appears at the top, under the search bar. No one holds their phone in a way that those are quick access -- especially if they use their phone one handed. There's a reason that this is on the bottom of iOS home screens and such. Also, the app drawer is alphabetized. Which is great if you're using an app drawer like a library, but that's just not how we use home screens. Why does the archive tool have a permanent place on your home screen, for example? It's built to look like a smart phone from a decade ago, but not built to be used by a human.phosh isn't actually all that bad, but there's a lot to be desired in it, right now. I don't like feeling this critical of projects like this that have fantastic developers working on it to solve incredible problems. Unfortunately, it's a really common problem with a lot of software like this, especially in FOSS circles.anyway, these are my personal feelings on it and some of it is more about me and what I like in software, but hey that's what you're here for: My BS. :)Wall of text hits for 5 damage.
(DIR) Post #9wkSU10CJZLfS15OUq by NOCARRIER@hackers.town
2020-07-04T16:28:34Z
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@Kamui You're welcome! I hope it's helpful (as opposed to discouraging). My favorites so far are Mobian and Ubuntu Touch, though I lean toward Mobian because I enjoy the community they're building more.
(DIR) Post #9wmWeG4dvC0xDvE0FU by NOCARRIER@hackers.town
2020-07-05T16:38:13Z
0 likes, 2 repeats
When we last left our #Mobian #PinePhone #DistroHopping hero...I'm about 5 days into the Mobian experience and I'm really enjoying what mobian is bringing to the table. Today, I'm going to be spending a bit of time trying to understand the software pipeline. It looks like I'm just plugged straight into the arm64 debian firehose with some prioritized custom repositories for mobian/pinephone specific software and libraries. I'm not 100% sure, but that's today's mission.MOBILE DATA is now working for me, but not out of the box. If you're thinking about trying it, the vast majority of people have LTE data working by just making sure their APN is in the list on the settings panel. My situation required some extra attention and I'm gathering my info up to push it to the correct parties for a patch. Basically, the Network Manager UI is doing something unusual causing the connection to not establish correctly with your modem. It gets put into a state that even from the command line I can't recover without a reboot. So it's interesting. It's also not the common experience.FIREFOX ESR is working fantastic. I'm actively able to use 78, with all the bells and whistles, straight from the mozilla arm64 repositories. My addons work. I can watch YouTube videos and read websites without my bandwidth being soaked by ads. The latest version had a UI tweak that might require some client-side manipulation, which brings us to:CUSTOM APP SCALING. Mobian has a feature (others might too. I don't know) that allows you to specifiy specific apps to scale to your view port. This allows running apps that work on your hardware, but are built for monitor layouts. This includes things like the calendar app and a few older apps. This is a life saver and dramatically increases the number of applications you can use.KEYRING use is interesting. It works great. It also sometimes butts heads with PHOSH, displaying the unlock dialog over your pin entry login prompt. It does this because it's trying to unlock your wifi password. One option is to null it out, setting it to blank (or your actual login, i'm told) otherwise you can just deal with it. It's not the end of the world. Just be aware. A lot of things use the keyring, so it can become inconvenient fast.STUFF I USE: My chatting is primarily on Fractal and Telegram, both of which work fine. I use Firefox ESR to access mastodon and protonmail and YouTube. I listen to music via Lollypop, which is ironic because it's my favorite music player out there and I always have to install it -- but it's default in Mobian. Super excited about that.WISHLIST: I'd like a good discord client. I haven't looked for it yet, so I don't even know if it's available, but the build on mainline linux doesn't have a reactive design. I might get stuck with the web interface. It might be a good chance to try out the new FireFox ESR ssb stuff. I dunno. CONVERGENCE: I'm just not seeing that happen any time soon, except to say that most of the apps are in some way reactive to the screen resolution and aspect ratio. So maybe all that needs it is phosh?Ok, that's about all for now. I'm going to look into the software pipeline and figure out what magic is and isn't happening there. My hope is that I'm drinking from the glorious mainline firehose and that app dev is basically just like normal, but with different build targets.As always AMA. I might not know, but I'll try to answer -- even if it's just to say I don't know.Wall of text casts magic missile into the darkness.
(DIR) Post #9wmkphBer2QVrCr0eO by NOCARRIER@hackers.town
2020-07-05T19:16:14Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@ultem is that an m1 garand?
(DIR) Post #9wmlsjMjJL1jR92mgq by NOCARRIER@hackers.town
2020-07-05T19:36:27Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@ultem @p that makes sense
(DIR) Post #9wtBJRDyWytInIXZIW by NOCARRIER@hackers.town
2020-07-08T20:57:18Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
It's 109F here and we haven't hit the hottest part of the day, yet. We haven't even hit the hottest part of the month.
(DIR) Post #9xHdTpzujwn726kUls by NOCARRIER@hackers.town
2020-07-20T16:46:46Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
less talk, more action.
(DIR) Post #9xI6MgDRbisxL515xw by NOCARRIER@hackers.town
2020-07-20T22:12:49Z
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I've been daily driving #Mobian on #Pinephone for a while now. Partly because it has felt largely complete. PHOSH is growing on me, but I still prefer the Ubuntu Touch shell. I just wish I could install that shell on Mobian. I hear that decoupling that shell and making it an installable package elsewhere is on the roadmap, though. #PostmarketOS and Mobian are playing well together, sharing lots of code. So I'm looking forward to some updates coming out way.Right now, basically everything works, though some things are a bit buggy. The two big issues I face are related to the modem coming out of deep sleep. 1) Sometimes it wakes up but doesn't init the modem properly and you have to reboot the machine to get it into a state that works. and 2) it wakes from sleep when it gets a call or something, but the notifications don't actually show up, so it just looks like it wakes up.There are some bugs here and there. Cut and paste between apps is a mixed bag and the text selection/manipulation stuff is wonky at best, for example.Audio routing works fantastic (I've done phone calls via headset, listened to podcasts and such) but I'd like background audio when in sleep mode to be a thing. In deep sleep, I get probably 10-20 hours or so. It's hard to measure that for me, but it will last overnight without issue and have 50% in the morning.The camera is working, but not the finest quality yet -- partly driver, partly software manipulation, huge partly potato hardware.GPS is working. I went for a drive the other day through the desert and it was fine. Map directions is... very open source lol.Right now, I'm able to daily drive it without really much concern. I can't recommend a linux phone (like this) for anyone that isn't super interested in a LINUX PHONE. Like, if you don't know what that is, I wouldn't suggest it. Every now and then apt and dpkg get in a pickle and that's not super friendly for the average phone user.I'll be popping over to PostmarketOS soon to check it out and maybe Sailfish, though Sailfish has a skeleton crew working on it (and isn't open source) so their progress runs at the speed of underfunded capitalism.
(DIR) Post #9xIMvT9hkv98EdsW00 by NOCARRIER@hackers.town
2020-07-20T22:43:27Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
oh hey, you can hook right up to the kali repositories without conflict in #Mobian on #pinephone. IN CASE YOU'RE INTERESTED IN STUFF LIKE THAT.
(DIR) Post #9xKBVISGCws8L3nL2e by NOCARRIER@hackers.town
2020-07-21T22:29:32Z
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@ParadeGrotesque The "I'm so disappointed in you" sign is epic.
(DIR) Post #9xOdaxcUutrjbJO4I4 by NOCARRIER@hackers.town
2020-07-24T01:36:24Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
The one tool everyone should have isn't a hammer or a dremel or a socket set. It's a Pulaski. That's my hill for the night.
(DIR) Post #9xPwicPZkHo2QafTkm by NOCARRIER@hackers.town
2020-07-24T16:51:29Z
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my inner nihilist really wants to live forever to witness the inevitable heat death of an uncaring universe.
(DIR) Post #9xUn32QfHeDiHLvXu4 by NOCARRIER@hackers.town
2020-07-27T00:59:07Z
1 likes, 2 repeats
You may not realize this, and probably won't be surprised, but most metropolitan areas area already using artificial intelligence to perform crime prediction in their crime data centers. Like... this isn't a future thing. It's not even a now thing. It's a last 3-5 years ago thing.One of the big systems used across the U.S. is built at the University in town where I've been staying for a while. In addition to being horrifying, it's also completely fascinating.One of the things that's interesting about it is that it uses a hodge-podge of surveillance signals from all over (body cameras, traffic cameras, and such) and because they also use drones with surveillance technology, they're able to fine tune otherwise static types of video signals.What's MORE interesting, to someone with my particular wiring, is to consider the types of infosec tomfoolery that can be done with drone tech and video streaming to create illusory situations that cause the AI system to behave in not only unexpected, but predictably bad ways. Bring into that the notion of deep fakes, but you can actually imagine a system where AI/ML systems can be weaponized against each other, scaling to the size of your network/botnet/etc... Subvert a rootfold-like project to make the LTT Army crunch real-time deep-fake streams? Incredible power that even the smallest APT can wield, should that actually hit.Obviously more complex than the typical skyjack or remote root exploit floating around, but it's an incredibly sexy attack vector to ponder.Sunday thoughts.
(DIR) Post #9xaGjpeaWjRnZNztHU by NOCARRIER@hackers.town
2020-07-29T15:56:08Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
"Don't be evil. Make evil things and let people be evil on your behalf." -- Google