[HN Gopher] F-Droid Board of Directors nominations 2026
___________________________________________________________________
F-Droid Board of Directors nominations 2026
Author : edent
Score : 157 points
Date : 2026-02-27 10:27 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (f-droid.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (f-droid.org)
| scrollop wrote:
| Will F-droid continue when Google bring in their changes, soon?
| duskdozer wrote:
| As of now, Google isn't destroying non-Google android installs,
| so F-droid will still work there (correct me if wrong). So
| until Google takes android fully closed or succeeds in getting
| popular/necessary apps to blacklist non-Google-verified
| devices, F-droid still has a role
| riedel wrote:
| I hope so. The changes can mean two things: people can only use
| it easily in custom roms (I guess there is an overlap there) or
| they actually would play with Google: i guess technically they
| could as well register and sign the stuff with a Google key as
| the software is all FOSS and would allow defining another
| responsible developer (otherwise Google would have to through
| out all FOSS without CLA from their playstore). I guess
| quitting would be an option, but IMHO the outrage outside the
| bubble would probably be hardly noticable, so what would be the
| point?
| microtonal wrote:
| Even with Google's changes, F-Droid will continue to work with
| Android phones that do not use Google GMS.
|
| If you care about your actually owning your device, install
| something else than stock OS. I would recommend GrapheneOS,
| since the security of some/most other alternatives is pretty
| bad.
| scrollop wrote:
| Would love to ditch google and use grapheneOS, however have
| so many banking and (stupid) outlook for work.
| sheiyei wrote:
| Apparently a lot of banking apps work with the sandboxed
| Google malwares. Not sure though, I'm not a user (wrong
| hardware)
| wafflemaker wrote:
| can confirm. And there are even some pages that list
| banking and other apps working on GrapheneOS. It's
| actually very few that don't work with sandboxed Google
| Play API.
|
| edit: https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-
| applications-compa...
| microtonal wrote:
| Correct. I am using my Dutch bank and credit card apps
| without any issues. Someone linked the curated GrapheneOS
| banking list already. If your bank does not support it,
| you could either contact them. If they require remote
| attestation, this can be implemented for GrapheneOS as
| well:
|
| https://grapheneos.org/articles/attestation-
| compatibility-gu...
|
| If the bank is very hard-nosed about it, you could
| consider keeping an old iPhone or Pixel (because long
| security updates) for banking if it is practical to do
| for you. 95% without big tech is also a big win. Of
| course, if you need to have it with you at all times,
| that might not be a worthwhile option.
| TobTobXX wrote:
| The outlook webapp is quite decent. I've never used their
| native app, but I've manahed to get by fine with their
| webapp, even though notifications don't work (I just check
| it regularily). IIRC K9/Thunderbird also has support for
| exchange now.
| amelius wrote:
| You can check banking app compatibility here:
|
| https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-
| compa...
| CorrectHorseBat wrote:
| Even if it works now, how can you be sure the next app
| update doesn't break it in the name of security?
| amelius wrote:
| Because it would cause public uproar.
| ninjasmosa wrote:
| The outlook app works for me on GrapheneOS, is there
| something about it that doesn't work for you?
|
| Many banking apps do work on GrapheneOS, the list had
| already been linked to by others
| kgwxd wrote:
| Can you not setup your work email through a regular email
| client? I thought the days of being locked into Outlook
| specifically went away with Exchange. Everywhere I've
| worked since has been able to.
|
| Also, what kind of banking are people doing that requires
| an app? I genuinely don't know what it could be.
| wafflemaker wrote:
| It's way more comfortable to login with fingerprint and
| not going through a longer login to the website.
|
| Especially since in many countries it requires a national
| e-ID that is an app on your phone.
| duozerk wrote:
| > Also, what kind of banking are people doing that
| requires an app? I genuinely don't know what it could be.
|
| Close to every bank in the EU requires their user to have
| an app, for MFA (both for logging in and for validating
| transactions - transfers, payments). They use the
| smartphone's TPM. I have yet to see one that allows you
| to use your own MFA app.
|
| The few I've seen that don't _require_ it will validate
| the same through text messages (not everyone has a
| smartphone); though if you associate their app even once,
| you 're screwed - the app it is from now on.
| bluebarbet wrote:
| >Close to every bank in the EU requires their user to
| have an app
|
| Possibly this was hyperbole but in any case it's not
| correct at all.
|
| Anecdotally, of my two EU (massive legacy French) banks,
| neither requires a mobile app. SMS all the way.
|
| Even Wise, a cutting-edge neobank, does not require you
| to use its app. And its website accepts standard TOTP
| authenticator for 2FA.
|
| Revolut is app-only, which is why I never use it.
| microtonal wrote:
| Here in The Netherlands banks used to offer authenticator
| devices, which they are phasing out (you can still use
| them, but they wont replace them once they run out of
| battery). Pretty much all banks switched to app-only.
|
| No SMS at all (which is not surprising, because SMS is
| not secure).
|
| Also, IMO fingerprint/face-based authentication is much
| nicer/quicker, especially for online payment flows like
| iDEAL (Dutch predecessor to Wero). And banks here work on
| GrapheneOS, so not much is lost.
| bluebarbet wrote:
| >And banks here work on GrapheneOS
|
| Until they don't.
| duozerk wrote:
| > Anecdotally, of my two EU (massive legacy French)
| banks, neither requires a mobile app. SMS all the way.
|
| My wording was bad, sorry; but try to install their app
| just once. After that, I'd bet you won't ever be able to
| go back to SMS validation (which is what I was talking
| about at the end of my comment).
|
| If not, I'd be curious to know the banks you're talking
| about (to consider switching to them, for one thing).
| What I said above is true of Caisse d'Epargne, HSBC, CCF,
| among others.
| bluebarbet wrote:
| >I'd be curious to know the banks you're talking about
|
| Fortuneo (internet-only subsidiary of Credit Mutuel) and
| LCL. I have had both their apps installed at points in
| the past. In both cases they defaulted back to SMS 2FA
| upon uninstalling, though I remember worrying I would
| have the problem you describe.
|
| Ultimately I can't see how a bank could get away with
| forcing (rather than just pushing) _existing customers_
| to install an app. This would surely be a breach of
| contract.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > _though if you associate their app even once, you 're
| screwed_
|
| Can you go in branch and get that fixed?
| scrollop wrote:
| It's nice to have widgets.
| rkagerer wrote:
| I don't much like the official Outlook app. Been using Nine
| for ages, it does everything I've needed.
| ekjhgkejhgk wrote:
| > Would love to ditch google and use grapheneOS
|
| grapheneOS only works with google phones.
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| I would rather pay a one off ransom to google, than have
| them harvest all my data and profit from them in
| perpetuity.
|
| Better yet, you can buy a used pixel phone.
| burningChrome wrote:
| Pixel 9 Pro handsets are going for around $500 on the
| secondary markets like ebay. That's a only a single
| generation off from their current Pixel 10 models and you
| still get OS and security updates until 2031.
|
| Not a bad deal and pretty crazy how fast smartphones
| depreciate now.
| microtonal wrote:
| Indeed and Pixel 10 was 549 Euro here just a few weeks
| ago and Pixel 9a as low as 338 Euro.
| kruffalon wrote:
| For now[0].
|
| And I don't really think that people mean using google
| hardware but rather being mined by google software.
|
| May I ask, if you (a) just want to be technically
| correct, (b) don't see the difference or (c) are trying
| to make a point I don't understand and if so would be
| willing to explain?
|
| ---
|
| [0] https://piunikaweb.com/2026/02/02/grapheneos-non-
| pixel-hardw...
| ekjhgkejhgk wrote:
| Why do people need banking on their phones though? Banks
| have websites too.
| gyulai wrote:
| > Why do people need banking on their phones though?
| Banks have websites too.
|
| 2FA. I was a smartphone hold-out for longer than anyone I
| know, but banks mandating 2FA with no options for doing
| it in a standards-compliant way or any way that doesn't
| involve the app stores was what finally broke my
| resistance.
| pmontra wrote:
| This is asked again and again. Apparently you guys in the
| USA or in other parts of the world are still lucky, but
| in Europe banks must be compliant with regulation that
| more or less force them to do 2FA through their app with
| the biometric authentication of either an Android or an
| iOS phone. There are other ways (eg giving a hardware OTP
| generator to customers,) but apps are the cheapest
| solution.
| fsflover wrote:
| You can still find banks in Europe that do not force
| Google and Apple on you. They may ask you to use their
| own security devices for instance.
| kruffalon wrote:
| Do you have a link with information about this?
|
| I'm just wondering since I'm currently using 3 different
| European banks without any biometric authentication to
| unlock my phone, password manager or provide a 2FA.
|
| I'm asking so that I can adjust in time to any new
| regulations I'm not aware of.
| pmontra wrote:
| This https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_customer_authen
| tication
| zipping1549 wrote:
| My bank has no website or physical branches. They're
| mobile-only, but their app is leaps and bounds ahead of
| the competition.
| zwarag wrote:
| Theres e/OS where you can have a locked bootloader with
| some phones
| echelon wrote:
| This piddly open source effort pales in comparison to what we
| should really be doing:
|
| Horizontally splitting Google into multiple companies.
|
| Not division via department splits, but equal partitioning
| across the company into multiple horizontal businesses that
| compete on the same offerings.
|
| The EU and next DOJ/FTC need to force this.
| microtonal wrote:
| I agree, but the probability that this is going to happen
| anytime soon is near-0. The current US administration is
| not going to rein in the tech broligarchy and if they did,
| it would be done out of spite and the pieces wold sold to
| administration-aligned oligarchs (e.g. Ellison), which
| might end up being worse.
|
| The EU is not going to force this, because it has enough
| fights to pick with the US, and this is not the hill that
| they are willing to die on. It would be far more likely for
| them to financially support an AOSP-based OS.
| lukan wrote:
| The EU simply is not (and should not) be able to split up
| google who operate international. But they can regulate
| the EU market and declare that a monopolist cannot
| operate there as a monopolist and introduce any arbitary
| rule achieving it.
| microtonal wrote:
| Yes, though I think that is what echelon was aiming at -
| the EU saying either you break up or you cannot do
| business here.
| burningChrome wrote:
| Not sure if you know this, but both Biden and Trump (in
| his previous admin) had their DOJ file lawsuits against
| Google. "United States v. Google LLC," which was filed in
| 2020 and focused on Google's dominance in search and
| advertising markets. A separate case was filed in 2023
| targeted Google's monopolization of digital advertising
| technologies. The State of Texas also sued them in 2020.
|
| Google lost all three cases. The DOJ in all three
| recommended the company be broken up, but the judges
| disagreed. If you want to blame someone, then blame the
| judges, not the current admin or Bidens DOJ - both of
| whom said Google should be broken up.
| microtonal wrote:
| Trump 2 is very different from Trump 1 though. Trump 1
| still had competent, less corrupt people in many
| positions. Grifters are going to grift.
|
| Anyway, I am going to stop here, since this will probably
| derail in a non-productive political discussion
| otherwise.
| miroljub wrote:
| GrapheneOS works only with Pixel devices, which doesn't make
| it much useful for the vast majority of Android users.
| microtonal wrote:
| Indeed. Sadly the reality is that most other Android
| devices are simply not secure enough. Many Android phones
| do not have a separate secure enclave (outside Pixel and
| IISC Samsung flagship and A5x range), so they are
| vulnerable to breaking PIN-based unlocking, side channel
| attacks, etc. Besides that they often only provide old
| vendor kernel trees, old firmware blobs, etc.
|
| So, you have to wonder whether you want such a phone anyway
| if you care about security and privacy. If you don't care
| about security anyway, you could as well run /e/OS, etc.
|
| Above-mentioned Samsung phones could perhaps make the cut,
| but don't support unlocking anymore (and when they still
| did, would blow a Knox eFuse).
| RealStickman_ wrote:
| Perfect really is the enemy of good when it comes to
| GrapheneOS
| handedness wrote:
| It really isn't; the project acknowledges numerous
| existing compromises. Take a look at their roadmap or any
| number of threads if you think they only ever implement
| perfect features.
|
| That's also an unfair take when one considers how many
| improvements they've upstreamed to AOSP and how many
| quality of life features they've implemented.
| saintfire wrote:
| Reduced security has always annoyed me a bit as an
| argument. Sort of in the same way as signal deprecating
| SMS because it's insecure.
|
| I get all or nothing when your threat model is state
| actors. However, for most people, the benefit is just
| freedom from corporate agendas.
|
| Not everyone _needs_ kernel hardening, or always E2EE (as
| with signal). Personally I just like the features it
| provides (e.g. scoped storage, disabling any app
| including Google play services, profiles etc etc
|
| Its also an easier sell to people who are apathetic to
| security when the product is just better _and_ more
| secure, the same way apple does (for whatever their
| reasons may be).
|
| All that said, I get they're limited in funds and
| manpower, plus the things mentioned at the end there, so
| I can only be so peeved they chose a target and stuck
| with it. They typically cite security as the reason, not
| those other ones, however.
| Novosell wrote:
| Oh man, I am still annoyed about Signal removing SMS
| support. Had to add another app to my phone and I can now
| no longer accidentally discover that someone I'm texting
| has Signal, which happened more than once to me!
| hagbard_c wrote:
| I only just installed Signal in some abandoned corner of
| one of my devices to be able to communicate with my
| 'highschool' classmates (in reality a Dutch Gymnasium so
| a totally different school system and age group but you
| get the idea) and had to get the blasted thing working
| without Google services on a device which for some
| specific purposes sometimes enables these but mostly has
| them disabled. As soon as Signal gets a whiff of even a
| stub of Google services is refuses to work without a
| fully fledged Google services implementation. To fix this
| I had to add 'disable Signal' to my 'enable rudimentary
| Google services' script and to do that I had to find the
| package name: org.thoughtcrime.securesms
|
| So yes, they're still called 'secure SMS' even though
| that is no longer part of the deal.
|
| I'll only use it for the specified purpose since I far
| prefer my own XMPP server with OMEMO encryption - which
| is based on the same 'double ratchet' keying as Signal
| uses.
| microtonal wrote:
| _Reduced security has always annoyed me a bit as an
| argument._
|
| Security is one of one of the main selling points of
| GrapheneOS, I can fully understand that they don't want
| to weaken that by supporting fundamentally insecure
| devices.
|
| I think a nice side-effect is that they only focus on a
| small number of devices (Pixels) and support those really
| well. I have followed the /e/OS forums for a while and
| many devices have constant regressions because it is hard
| to validate each release on tens of devices.
|
| _I get all or nothing when your threat model is state
| actors._
|
| People do have different thread models, though I think
| up-to-date software should be the baseline for everyone
| and where pretty much every phone outside iPhone, Google
| Pixel, and a subset of Samsung phones fail. Also, I think
| having a secure enclave should be the baseline, since
| phones do get stolen.
|
| _Its also an easier sell to people who are apathetic to
| security when the product is just better and more secure,
| the same way apple does_
|
| That's really a weird example though for supporting the
| argument that GrapheneOS should support more devices.
| Isn't Pixel + GrapheneOS then pretty much iPhone + iOS?
| Privacy-respecting, secure, not pushing AI subscriptions
| all the time (though iOS is getting worse in that
| respect), offering useful functionality?
|
| At any rate, I understand if you have another phone, you
| wouldn't buy a Pixel for GrapheneOS, but it does make
| sense to buy your next phone for running GrapheneOS.
| Pixel covers a pretty wide price range to, e.g. the Pixel
| 9a was 349 Euro here recently, all the way up to the
| Pixel fold.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > I can fully understand that they don't want to weaken
| that by supporting fundamentally insecure devices.
|
| Except that there is nothing fundamentally insecure about
| them, they just don't support a specific convenience
| feature. You can straightforwardly support PIN-based
| unlocking by encrypting the PIN in ordinary persistent
| storage using a longer passphrase that only has to be
| entered during boot.
|
| This is arguably even _more_ secure because it allows the
| PIN to be dumped from active memory and require the
| longer passphrase again after a timeout, a limited number
| of bad attempts or in response to a panic button on the
| lock screen. Then the device doesn 't contain the long
| passphrase whatsoever, instead of having it permanently
| stored inside of an opaque enclave that itself could (and
| often does!) have its own vulnerabilities.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| > I get all or nothing when your threat model is state
| actors.
|
| The problem for those of us in the USA, that labels
| anyone who disagrees with the current administration and
| ICE as a domestic terrorist, means that now everyone's
| threat model is a state actor.
|
| The threat model of every citizen that dares to exercise
| their first amendment rights now escalated beyond
| corporate agendas to "How do I make sure Israeli &
| Palantir spyware doesn't end up on my phone? How do I
| make sure if my phone does get confiscated, Cellebrite
| can't image it or access the data?"
|
| Even if that weren't the case, I see no valid reason to
| be lax with security in 2026. There's no excuse anymore,
| I mean we still have OEMs selling phones that they do not
| issue security updates for after purchase. That's just
| gross negligence.
| microtonal wrote:
| _How do I make sure if my phone does get confiscated,
| Cellebrite can 't image it or access the data?"_
|
| In this context one super-nice feature of GrapheneOS (do
| check the legal ramifications though, IANAL) is that it
| supports a duress PIN. It's an alternative PIN that
| immediately erases your phone (probably throws away your
| FDE keys?) and clears your eSIM.
|
| Besides that, it also supports configurable time to
| reboot after no unlocks. This is relevant because it is
| typically much harder to exfiltrate data BFU (before
| first unlock) than after. iPhone also supports this, but
| only does it after I think 3 or 4 days. On GrapheneOS,
| this can be set as short as 10 minutes when there is a
| risk of your phone getting confiscated. Of course, you
| can also manually reboot, but that's not possible in
| every situation.
| limagnolia wrote:
| Graphene is OSS, so if you want to create a fork that
| supports other phones, you are free to do so. The
| maintainers have limited amount of resources, why
| wouldn't they focus those resources on the most secure
| hardware if that is what aligns with their goals? If you
| have different goals, create or fund a fork to support
| more hardware.
| ysnp wrote:
| > _Not everyone needs kernel hardening, or always E2EE
| (as with signal)._
|
| If application processors and hardware crypto
| accelerators are good enough to make this invisible to
| the end user, then why not? Why not have everyone be on
| hardened kernels by default and let them opt-in to
| insecure ones instead of the other way around?
| CivBase wrote:
| Imagine if the Linux project had this same mentality.
| Thank goodness they don't.
| microtonal wrote:
| Imagine if Apple had this same mentality, they would
| never be where they are.
|
| (/s in case it is needed.)
|
| As a smaller project, choosing a small set of hardware
| and supporting it really well (aside from security
| reasons) seems like a much better strategy than
| supporting tens of devices badly (go to e.g. the /e/OS
| forums to see what regressions people are dealing with
| after monthly updates).
| CivBase wrote:
| Indeed. Apple is financially successful, but they're
| ultimately a minority player in pretty much every market
| they engage with - including desktop/laptop computers and
| even mobile devices globally. And for me they are just as
| inaccessible as GraphineOS.
|
| But for Apple that is not necessarily a bad thing.
| They're a company. Their goal is to make money and they
| are highly successful at it. GraphineOS is not a company.
| They don't make money. Which begs the question of what is
| GraphineOS's real goal and is it valuable? Creating a
| maximally secure mobile OS seems valuable on its face,
| but that value is undercut by its inaccessibility.
| microtonal wrote:
| _that value is undercut by its inaccessibility_
|
| You are saying this like GrapheneOS only runs on some
| unobtanium hardware. I can literally hop on my bike and
| pick up a phone that runs GrapheneOS in 5 minutes, every
| day of the week. Also, it's available in pretty much all
| price classes except maybe a 100-200 Euro phone that runs
| on a Unisoc CPU. Pixel 9a regularly goes for 350 Euro
| here and you can go all the way up to an expensive
| flagship with a Pixel Fold (or anything in between). Even
| in the 100-200 bracket you can probably pick up a
| refurbished 8a that should still be supported until 2031.
|
| I know that they are not sold in every country, but worst
| case it should be possible to get your hands on one
| second hand or refurbished.
| CivBase wrote:
| The Pixel hardware does not have the capabilities I
| consider to be essential for my personal phone.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Which leads to things like laptop sleep working
| inconsistently. Instead of having a good reputation,
| Linux's reputation gets hurt by all the random devices it
| allegedly supports.
| fsflover wrote:
| Devices designed for Linux work flawlessly, just like it
| happens with Mac and Windows.
| tjpnz wrote:
| Every GrapheneOS proponent I've seen has claimed that
| other devices are inferior to Pixel security wise, and
| that's why they're not supported. That always sounded a
| bit odd to me and certainly seems to have a bit more
| nuance based on your comment. Thank you for adding some
| clarity here.
| izacus wrote:
| There's really nothing odd that company that runs Project
| Zero also builds devices that are well secured.
| fsflover wrote:
| Qubes OS, operating system designed for security, doesn't
| prevent its installation on computers without VT-d. It
| will just warn you.
| limagnolia wrote:
| Graphene doesn't really try to stop you. They just don't
| spend their own efforts on making it possible. It is OSS
| so, your free to spend your efforts where you want to.
| fsflover wrote:
| This is however not their main argument. I doubt they
| would accept such pull request.
| limagnolia wrote:
| No pull request necessary, forks don't require approval.
| handedness wrote:
| It would require a significant commitment of limited
| resources to broadly support insecure devices with very
| little upside, and to do so would constitute gross
| mismanagement of the project.
|
| Meanwhile, others are completely free to fork numerous
| GrapheneOS improvements or benefit from their upstream
| improvements (as some have, including Google).
|
| Why can't you understand that?
| fsflover wrote:
| I never mentioned any commitment except accepting pull
| requests, did I? Qubes can do that and doesn't require a
| fork. Are you saying they have much more resources?
| handedness wrote:
| As one who has lived out of both operating systems for
| years, I struggle with the way you invariably make value
| judgments about GrapheneOS every time it comes up in a
| thread, based on your (justifiable) appreciation for
| Qubes OS. The same thing happens in reverse on the
| GrapheneOS forums, by the way.
|
| Both lines of thinking are faulty, and attempting to
| directly extrapolate from one project to the other (in
| either direction) mostly only conveys a lack of
| understanding of both projects, even (especially?) one's
| favored project.
|
| Joanna Rutkowska herself admitted that the difficult
| nature of trying to contain the PC hardware stack made it
| ultimately feel like she lost the war. Qubes OS is
| inherently vastly more vulnerable than GrapheneOS, in
| large part precisely because of their different
| approaches to hardware. Some of this has been mitigated
| by developments made since she stepped back from the
| project, but some of it will always remain. How to deal
| with this inherent conflict is not a simple matter and
| the two projects have taken two distinctly different
| approaches.
|
| In the cases of both projects, I think they made
| justifiable decisions in their approaches. I use and
| contribute to both projects.
|
| If you've been using Qubes OS long enough, you'll
| remember a time when trying to run it on anything that
| wasn't essentially identical to the ThinkPads used by
| Qubes OS devs often presented a major challenge.
|
| GrapheneOS is a fundamentally different project in scope,
| and each project has a subset of users which seem unable
| to do anything but evaluate the other project based on
| the criteria set by the one they like.
|
| "The goal of the project is not to slightly improve some
| aspects of insecure devices and supporting a broad set of
| devices would be directly counter to the values of the
| project. A lot of the low-level work also ends up being
| fairly tied to the hardware."
|
| GrapheneOS achieves significantly more security on the
| hardware level than Qubes OS, in very large part
| specifically due to the nature of the project. It's also
| an infinitely simpler OS to get up and running with, on
| both current-gen flagship hardware and current-gen value-
| prop hardware available in just about any store which
| sells cell phones.
|
| In addition to all that, by the nature of the respective
| code bases it presents a significantly smaller attack
| surface than a computer running Qubes OS.
|
| Securing a single device type with excellent hardware
| security is simply much more viable a project than
| securing a broad range of devices with hardware security
| that is, at best, pretty terrible.
|
| Repeatedly criticizing one project without significant
| familiarity with both is not just pointless, it's
| counterproductive to aims of FOSS privacy and security.
| fsflover wrote:
| > In addition to all that, by the nature of the
| respective code bases it presents a significantly smaller
| attack surface than a computer running Qubes OS.
|
| I critisize precisely because I don't understand what
| you're talking about. The last relevant VM escape was in
| 2006, discovered by Rutkowska herself. Since then,
| nothing could access my secrets in an offline vault VM. I
| would appreciate a clarification, how GrapheneOS can be
| more secure without reliable virtualization.
|
| AFAIK Xen security relies on 100k LoC. And this is in
| addition to the virtualization. How many LoC does
| GrapheneOS require to provide its security? How can it
| have less attack surface than Xen? Developers replying to
| me here never provided an understandable reasoning, only
| keep repeating that it's "very, very secure", without
| even mentioning any threat model.
|
| Doesn't GrapheneOS rely on closed Google's hardware to
| provide its security? I would never trust Google with
| that. How can I not critisize such approach?
| upboundspiral wrote:
| The problem with laptops is that UEFI is a shadow
| operating system that keeps running after boot, with a
| bunch of security vulnerabilities. Furthermore all Intel
| / AMD chips have a microprocessor state called SMF which
| if you trigger it basically gives you carte blanche to do
| whatever you want.
|
| "Trusted Boot" is a meme on x86. If you really want
| something like that you need to do what Oxide Computer is
| doing and rip out UEFI for good and implement your own
| secure boot chain.
|
| Qubes is great but at the end of the day cannot protect
| against evil maid attacks to the level that pixel or
| apple phones can. Its great at making sure a browser
| exploit cannot steal your banking credentials you have
| open in a different virtual machine but cannot overcome
| the limitations of the platforms it builds off of.
|
| So I understand why the GrapheneOS folks do what they do.
|
| See also: "X86 considered harmful" by the founder of
| Qubes OS (posted in 2015!)
|
| https://blog.invisiblethings.org/papers/2015/x86_harmful.
| pdf
| fsflover wrote:
| I use Qubes with TPM and Heads and with a hardware key.
| All based on FLOSS, so its possible.
| bwoah wrote:
| See their list of device requirements:
| https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Sadly the reality is that most other Android devices
| are simply not secure enough.
|
| This seems like a bad reason for not supporting a device.
| If the device doesn't have a hardware feature then the OS
| it came with can't be doing it either, and then all
| you're doing is leaving the user with all of the _other_
| security problems in the OEM OS that otherwise could have
| been improved by replacing it.
| ysnp wrote:
| The point of GrapheneOS isn't improving a generic
| device's security, it's about setting an example for a
| highly private and secure OS. It's a FOSS project, so
| nothing stops a committed individual or community from
| using other device targets, but the main project chooses
| specifically to use their smaller resources to pursue
| excellence rather than mediocrity.
| hypercube33 wrote:
| Huge opportunity for Lenovo/Motorola here who have been the
| quiet Linux favorite for a while but we shall see if they
| even bother.
| _emacsomancer_ wrote:
| GrapheneOS is working with a manufacturer to change
| this:[0]
|
| > We're working with a major OEM and the devices will be
| the future versions of existing models they have now. The
| devices will be priced similarly to Pixels. The initial
| devices will have a flagship Snapdragon SoC for the best
| security and support time. Snapdragon flagships have
| significantly better CPU and GPU performance than Pixels.
| Snapdragon provides high quality Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GNSS and
| cellular support as part of the SoC. eSIM and other
| functionality is also provided by the SoC. Snapdragon has
| decent image processing functionality included too, and
| good neural network acceleration.
|
| [0]: https://old.reddit.com/r/GrapheneOS/comments/1o32gpg/d
| eleted...
| hagbard_c wrote:
| That "major OEM" seems to be Motorola, i.e. Lenovo.
| ysnp wrote:
| I hope HMD reach out next: https://www.hmdsecure.com/
| jasonfrost wrote:
| Sounds like a consumer problem for their own choices of
| vendor lock in
| jona-f wrote:
| AFAIK every popular Android phone uses a qualcomm modem chip
| with a separate OS that has complete access to ram. NSA most
| certainly has a backdoor there and such complete access to
| any Android phone. This was common knowledge after the
| Snowden stuff. I don't think this has changed at all since.
| Only few niche phones (pinephone) separate these systems or
| have a hardware switch to disable the cellular system.
| roblabla wrote:
| > NSA most certainly has a backdoor there and such complete
| access to any Android phone.
|
| Citation needed?
|
| > This was common knowledge after the Snowden stuff.
|
| Not to me, it isn't? As far as I'm aware, most of the
| Snowden stuff were centered around PRISM, which allowed
| widescale wiretapping of internet backbone, as well as
| agreements with big cloud providers to allow tapping into
| their data.
|
| I haven't seen anything indicating that there was
| widespread compromise of personal computing devices at such
| a deep level of the root of trust. I haven't seen any
| indication that the NSA has a backdoor in the earlyboot CPU
| of any device, whether that is the Qualcomm boot processor,
| the Intel Management Engine or the AMD Platform Security
| Processor (which all have similar capabilities and hidden
| firmware).
|
| If I missed anything/have links to research into these
| backdoors, I'd like to see them!
| ysnp wrote:
| > _I don 't think this has changed at all since._
|
| There is common knowledge to suggest that it is not the
| case (or maybe is no longer the case):
|
| > _Mainstream smartphones do not provide DMA access from
| the baseband to the application processor 's memory... Yes,
| getting baseband access then lets you monitor regular voice
| and SMS comms. But no, it does not instantly compromise the
| AP so using the Signal app would still be secure._
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10906488
|
| > _Apple mitigates baseband processor vulnerabilities by
| putting it behind what 's essentially an IOMMU._
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29440154
|
| > _This is false FUD that keeps being repeated. It 's not
| true. No iPhone ever has had a baseband with DMA access to
| my knowledge, and modern Qualcomm devices have advanced
| IOMMU systems to firewall away the baseband from the rest
| of system memory. I'm sure some phones somewhere existed
| where the baseband was privileged, but it's not the norm._
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30393283
|
| > _Connecting a cellular radio via USB provides far less
| isolation than the approach of a tiny kernel driver
| connected to an IOMMU isolated cellular radio on mainstream
| devices. USB has immense complexity and attack surface,
| especially with a standard Linux kernel configuration.
| Forensic data extraction companies mostly haven 't bothered
| using attack vectors other than USB due to it being such a
| weak point. Many of the things people claim about cellular
| radios in mainstream smartphones are largely not true and
| they're missing that other radios are implemented in a very
| comparable way._
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46841004
| izacus wrote:
| Is there a KDE/GNOME/kernel-like group forming to take over
| Android AOSP development and provide free alternative yet?
| brador wrote:
| You always start open source at the kernel.
|
| Linus knew this day 1 and it bows to no one.
| iberator wrote:
| what do you even mean?! start what at the kernel?
|
| kernel is locked and most phones can't be rooted anymore
| ZeroCooly wrote:
| Just recalling from memory, Linus Torvalds wasn't making a free
| and open source kernel at first. He was making a kernel yes,
| but he attended a Richard Stallman speech where Stallman
| introduced GNU and expressed that he needed a kernel cause AT&T
| was cracking down on Unix clones. And Linus was moved by that
| enough to change gears and renamed the project to Linus Unix
| aka Linux. Anyone who remembers better or has sources, correct
| me below, I'm writing from memory. My point is though that
| Linus wasn't originally intending to make a free and open
| source kernel.
| bentley wrote:
| Were any of the current directors or new nominees involved in the
| incident where F-Droid marked Bible and Quran apps as NSFW, hid
| them from search by default, and expressed the intent to remove
| them completely
| (https://gitlab.com/fdroid/admin/-/issues/252#note_2578531026)?
| (Discussed on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45638096)
|
| If I'm charitable, I could assume they intended to make a
| controversial move to drive public attention to the growing
| government restrictions on innocuous apps. As far as I know,
| though, nobody at F-Droid admitted to this; and if they were, why
| didn't they mark other widely used apps like Wikipedia and Reddit
| frontends that provide easy access to much more sexually explicit
| content in the same protest?
|
| If I'm less charitable, and go by what F-Droid admins actually
| said, they took this action out of a sincere belief that these
| apps contained content unsafe for minors that necessitated
| flagging, and sincerely believed that Wikipedia and Reddit
| frontends somehow don't qualify for the same. If they honestly
| believed this, it demonstrates (to me) poor judgment; and since
| the action was walked back almost immediately due to negative
| public response, that indicates further that they never actually
| believed this in the first place, and that instead somebody took
| it upon himself to specifically target religious apps out of his
| own bias.
|
| Either way, it really soured me on the judgment of the F-Droid
| maintainers. After a stunt like that, I no longer trust them to
| fight the battle against oppressive government restrictions on
| operating systems effectively. Formerly an F-Droid user of many
| years, this caused me to switch away completely: I've started
| donating monthly to Accrescent instead, download as many apps as
| I can from there, and switched from F-Droid to Obtanium for any
| apps not yet on Accrescent.
| 9864247888754 wrote:
| She lusted after lovers with genitals as large as a donkey's
| and emissions like those of a horse. 21 And so, Oholibah, you
| relived your former days as a young girl in Egypt, when you
| first allowed your breasts to be fondled.
|
| Ezekiel 23:20
| frenchy wrote:
| I find it funny and sad that this is the sort of thing that
| people like to bring up as somehow bad and not the part where
| the Isrealites are admonished for not genociding the
| Cannanites hard enough.
| jajuuka wrote:
| Yeah, kids need to read this. Totally. /s
| jjmarr wrote:
| In Biblical times, yeah? There was no such thing as birth
| control. If you get pregnant and are unmarried, your life
| might as well get over.
| feature20260213 wrote:
| The irony is this is an allegory for two cities who
| "committed adultery" against the covenant relationship
| with God by becoming bedfellows with pagan authorities in
| a "lust" for power. This isn't actually about sex just
| very strong poetic allegory to raise awareness.
| einpoklum wrote:
| > If you get pregnant and are unmarried, your life might
| as well get over.
|
| Not really. And biblical times does not mean people's
| lives were run according to commandments in the Jewish
| bible (neither in ancient Judea nor elsewhere).
| jajuuka wrote:
| The act of abortion has existed since 1000 BCE with the
| earliest being 1550 BCE. Around the estimated time of the
| mythical Moses. Obviously not as effective, but the
| practice existed. Not to mention sex isn't one specific
| act. There are many ways to have sex, even by biblical
| standards, that do not involve the possibility of getting
| pregnant.
| caaqil wrote:
| Setting aside the context of this quoted verse and how NSFW
| stuff is judged in religious texts, this doesn't address the
| more important point that OP raised: the visuals of this
| verse and more extreme ones can be easily found on Reddit and
| similar allowed apps. So OP's points stands.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The other apps are clients. The apps themselves don't
| actually contain any content, they're just code. An app
| that itself contains an offline copy of a book with NSFW
| text is not the same thing.
|
| Meanwhile Reddit is a doubly poor example because even
| though the _service_ contains NSFW content, it marks it as
| such, and then the client not only doesn 't itself contain
| it but gives the user a separate opportunity to select
| against it when using the app to download pages.
| bentley wrote:
| Bible apps often don't contain the text directly, but
| allow the user to download a preferred translation on
| initial startup. That didn't prevent them from being
| marked NSFW.
|
| And clearly that wasn't the standard anyway. Before the
| introduction of the policy restricting religious texts,
| the only apps F-Droid had marked NSFW were frontends to
| porn sites, even though the apps presumably contained no
| sexual content directly.
| array_key_first wrote:
| I would still say that counts as the app providing the
| content, not users. It's not user uploaded, it's app
| uploaded.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| It should be pretty obvious why porn apps are marked NSFW
| despite not containing any content. Substantially all of
| the content they can be used to access is NSFW, whereas
| it's reasonably possible to access only SFW content on
| Reddit.
|
| Which would also explain the Bible apps without an
| initial copy. Choosing which translation to download when
| substantially all of them are translations of the same
| NSFW text means that substantially all of the users would
| end up with NSFW content on their device by using the
| app.
| bentley wrote:
| Except, of course, that the Bible in any translation is
| not NSFW, certainly in the common usage of the term. It
| contains depictions of violence and sex, yes. But so does
| Fanny Hill, and that hasn't legally been considered
| obscene in the UK or the USA in over fifty years.
| F-Droid's excuse, that they needed to restrict Bible apps
| to protect F-Droid from legal liability, is not
| believable.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Let's consider the two possibilities here:
|
| 1. They have a policy of marking apps as NSFW if using
| them has a high probability of loading NSFW content onto
| the device. We can't easily rule this out. It's a small
| project so they have to be reserved about compliance
| issues because they don't have the resources to defend
| against expensive litigation and they could just be
| exercising an abundance of caution.
|
| 2. They're trolling Republicans with malicious
| compliance. They don't like the laws being enacted, they
| know the people enacting them like the Bible, so they
| apply the policy in the way which is maximally
| adversarial to the opponents imposing it on them. "If you
| don't like the consequences of your law then feel free to
| repeal it."
|
| Which one of these is even objectionable? It seems like
| you want that if they're doing the second one they should
| admit to it, but in that case they're just maintaining
| kayfabe. The trolling is more effective when it's
| ambiguous. It's obvious that it _could be_ that. If the
| message is to invite their opponents to go eat sand then
| it 's not being lost in translation. But making that
| explicit only makes it easier to dismiss them as
| antagonists, or retaliate against them for being overtly
| defiant.
|
| Whereas if they play it straight, what is someone going
| to say? That it shouldn't apply to this, right? Okay,
| then we need to pin down the rules for how _exceptions_
| work. Exceptions that could then be applied to other
| things. Which is to their advantage to have their
| opponents doing in _this context_ because then they want
| the exceptions to be broad and reasonable instead of not
| caring if _someone else_ is getting screwed by them.
| cxr wrote:
| You're trying to be clever, but the context from the drop
| has been to distinguish "a _sincere_ belief " from this
| sort of rhetorical underhandedness that you are indulging
| in.
|
| Not only is this not going to convince anyone that
| there's anything behind it other than an attempt to
| formulate a winning argument (having set that as your
| goal) irrespective whether there's any actual sincerity
| to the words you're choosing, but it's going to come
| comes across to a healthy portion the world's population
| as the opposite of clever: that anyone who's convinced
| themselves that it really is clever and that no one can
| possibly permeate this forcefield of insincerity is a
| perhaps-delusional, and definitely-insufferable halfwit.
| jajuuka wrote:
| Those points don't connect though. Reddit is a social media
| platform. The Bible is book. It's a static piece of media.
| F3nd0 wrote:
| My reading is they were simply trying to comply with
| regulations. It wasn't about what ideas they believed the
| religious texts were trying to convey, but whether their
| content met a certain definition set by law. The law could be
| poorly written, or it could be poorly and over-cautiously
| interpreted by F-Droid maintainers. But I didn't get the
| feeling they were acting on any kind of moral judgement or own
| belief about what's appropriate for children.
|
| Does the Bible encourage violence or promiscuity? Not really,
| no. Does it mention and describe those things in some detail?
| Yes, absolutely. If that's the kind of content you need to
| remove from your store, then obviously you need to remove the
| Bible from your store. Whether that was really the case seems
| questionable at best, but the stated logic seemed pretty
| coherent to me.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| Which regulations? F-Droid seems to be governed by Dutch law
| (see https://commonsconservancy.org/dracc/0039/ ). Do they
| have laws prohibiting all apps with any violence or
| promiscuity?
|
| (As an aside, if they indeed had to follow some Dutch law and
| remove Bible and Quran apps, maybe F-Droid can be hosted by
| freedom.gov, US govt's new anticensorship portal..)
| bentley wrote:
| > The law could be poorly written, or it could be poorly and
| over-cautiously interpreted by F-Droid maintainers. But I
| didn't get the feeling they were acting on any kind of moral
| judgement or own belief about what's appropriate for
| children.
|
| If F-Droid were being overcautious, they would have blocked
| social media apps too. Social media is explicitly the single
| biggest target of these "think of the children" app store
| laws after outright porn sites. F-Droid left Reddit and
| Mastodon clients unmarked. Am I supposed to believe that
| F-Droid honestly thought the law applied to apps containing
| only ancient religious texts, and not to social media? Has
| _any_ other app store interpreted the regulations the same
| way? And if they truly believed that was a _legal_
| requirement, why did they reverse the policy after only a
| couple days of user complaints?
| tasuki wrote:
| > a sincere belief that these apps contained content unsafe for
| minors
|
| Hey I believe that too. If people are entitled to believe
| whatever is written in those books, surely people _are also
| entitled_ to believe it 's nonsense and actively harmful.
| bentley wrote:
| You're free to believe that. But the topic here is F-Droid
| and its board of directors, along with the context that
| governments are attempting to censor operating systems and
| app stores. The question is, if you controlled an app store,
| would you prevent users from making religious choices for
| themselves? F-Droid is, probably, the biggest and most
| mainstream free software app store for mobile operating
| systems, and is trying to drum up community support ("Keep
| Android Open," etc.) in response to the new laws. But F-Droid
| initiated a sudden change in policy--censoring religious apps
| --wilfully censoring content that's never been illegal by any
| reasonable interpretation of the law. Such decisions
| obviously negatively impact parts of the free software
| community, and bring up questions about how effective F-Droid
| and F-Droid's leaders can be in this fight.
| eikenberry wrote:
| Even mainstream religions are seen at brainwashing cults by
| many people and my guess is it was something along these lines.
| They thought they were contributing to the greater good by
| keeping people from being indoctrinated into a cult. I don't
| agree but I've seen many self-proclaimed atheists make such
| statements.
| behringer wrote:
| Ironic as Governments use religion to oppress. In facts it's
| one of religions primary roles.
| twocommits wrote:
| Why is there a need for whole "board of directors"?
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