Nicro

joined 2 years ago
[–] Nicro@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 2 weeks ago

A thing that popped up in corporate space is IgelOS. It's an immutable image meant for linking to a VM workstation on a company network. Seems worth checking out.

[–] Nicro@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I don't disagree with owning your hardware. I'm saying that a regulatory body can pose rules on where critical software can run. Part of this is data exposure: A banking app running in a tampered environment makes some malwares possible, which is the side you want an "I know what I'm doing"-button for. But it also creates risk for the bank. In letting you look into network-traffic and memory-dumps, you may discover ways to manipulate an unrooted instance or the backend server. This is security through obscurity and I'd much rather have everything open-source, but it's what we're dealing with.

On the other hand, the bank promises to cover damages, whenever they do mess up. You could give them an easy excuse by taking on that responsibility. But regulations don't allow that, much like they don't allow you to do your own high-voltage, high-current electricity. And frown upon you breaking load-bearing walls in a housing complex to have a more open kitchen. There is a line where "let me do what I want" becomes anarchy.

Now bringing DRM into this, misses the point. There is telemetry in these apps. But there is no piracy or copyright infringement to be had. The bank doesn't fear you giving yourself a million dollars by changing your balance in memory. It's all about responsibility in case something goes south. They would love to shift it all onto you, but they're not allowed to do that. Attestation was never about protecting you, it's about protecting them from being blamed.

There is a bunch of parties making guarantees and complying with rulesets. Domino-ing all of them would make you extremely vulnerable. Which is why I opted for "tamper-proof containers running in a unproven host", rather than signing an unlimited waiver.

[–] Nicro@discuss.tchncs.de 21 points 1 month ago (6 children)

Well the idea of having attestation isn't the problem. The problem is that apps requiring attestation (banks, insurance providers, ID-systems) use the most convenient solution. Slapping on Googles prebuild attestation. Graphene for example, provides alternative attestation for their OS and offers docs for anyone to implement a more fitting set of checks.

There are two approaches here: If you're upset that your hacked-to-bits, rooted, unlocked and/or unencrypted device is failing checks: I'd say, tough luck. Until we can create provably untampered app-containers, that level of access genuinely breaks TOS on apps and regulations on handling personal data. Breaking those checks is then breaking those compliances in an unsafe way.

If you believe your setup is actually secure and compliant, just not in a way the allmighty Google intended: Try and get an attestation module for your setup. Fight for these apps to accept non-Google attestation and fight for devices that don't artificially limit what can pass as secure.

[–] Nicro@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 1 month ago

I feel there are plenty of local activist/independent servers all over the EU. As long as you mind the encryption/anonymization, you can even round-robin them. Having a central EU authority is better than Google/Cloudflare and should be safe, if the implementation is sound. But there is a lot of room to meddle.

[–] Nicro@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 month ago

By LeOS? Any GSI-Treble enabled Android phone. So most any phone with an unlockable bootloader. You can use the treble info app to check or search online.

https://gitlab.com/TrebleInfo/TrebleInfo/

[–] Nicro@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

LeOS isn't very popular, because it's a passion-project by one guy, with little marketing. Said guy is a somewhat opinionated Woodstock-era hippie, hence the colorful icons (they can be easily swapped via an icon-pack of your choice.) Though he is a friendly person.

To my knowledge it's the only Treble-option with a hard stance on de-googling. Specifically made as an answer to some policies in eOS. There is an interview with him floating about, if you want the backstory. https://nixfaq.org/2021/01/exclusive-interview-with-guntram-lead-developer-of-a-popular-custom-degoogled-android-rom-called-leos.html

[–] Nicro@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Hey there, for starters A-GPS, stun, secure DNS, and several other preconfigured servers default to Google. Some of these can be changed with ADB. Check out a guide on de-googleing LineageOS for a more complete list. It's not AOSP, but close enough. There are also Google servers configured in the sources. How valuable those connections are, depends on your threat-model. If you'd like a paranoid GSI, check out LeOS. It's probably the most complete treble-compatible option. AOSP by default, isn't very private.

[–] Nicro@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

And have a script to secure erase the key material. Much faster and will prevent forced/coerced unlocks.

[–] Nicro@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Good to hear. Having a raspberry and kodi focused base with an open Linux backend sounds good. Will try that later.

[–] Nicro@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

There is sendtokodi, which uses yt-dlp. I'm a bit surprised that there are no newpipe-extractor clients for Kodi, since there should be hooks for everything you'd need. Then again, I don't know how well it works outside of Android.

 

Heya, I'm currently running Libreelec 12 on an Argon One RPi 4B, but hit a snag when I wanted youtube playback. The "official" youtube addon needs an API key, which just adds complexity when you don't use a google account. I'm fond of Newpipe on android and thought it would be a nice addition but there is no flatpack support. I've hit the limits of LEs atomic nature a couple times and so, wanted to check out alternatives. My requirements are:

  • working Argon One integration (remote and power signaling)

  • Kodi autoboot

  • docker/podman

  • waydroid/flatpack for Newpipe

  • ideally backed by an unrestricted Linux install for background services

Obvious contender would be OSMC, but whenever I search for setups and experiences, people just complain about all the stuff that doesn't work, and there is no listing available for what comes included in the appstore/repo.

I could also go manual with RPiOS/Debian/Ubuntu, but I would like a set-and-forget kodi-box and taking a more generic distro might complicate things.

Can I get some opinions on OSMC, as well as what you are rocking on your Kodi-setups. Thanks in advance.

[–] Nicro@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 5 months ago

Depends on how far you want to go. From what I've been able to tell, they pedel a lot of flashy metrics and still had a bunch of google calls. Some of which you can manually remove, same as LOS. I would avoid buying into their cloud and keeping an eye on things yourself, if you want to install it. I saw them rebrand a bunch of OSS tooling as their own products back then. Don't know if things changed since then, but I don't trust the marketing.

[–] Nicro@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I'm on Tuxedo now, really nice so far. Thanks.

 

Heya, I'm currently on Opensuse Slowroll with KDE-Wayland and came from Leap for more recent updates. Even if Slowroll promises monthly big updates, the rolling snapshots still seem to replace most of the system weekly with ~4GB downloads. I don't like that. I looked at Fedora, but found that I would like .deb-compatibility, if I'm already switching. Debian stable is as stale as Leap from what I can see. Debian testing is in flux, and people don't agree on stability. Kubuntu has built-in reliance on snaps, which makes me hesitant to switch. I'm currently trying Mint-Xfce with post-install KDE, it doesn't seem to have wayland support.

Are there any good daily-drivers with sane updates and good support, I should try? I'm not willing to do proper Arch yet, never mind that that would be bleeding-edge-rolling. ^_^

Edit: I'm now on TuxedoOS, it's snapless Ubuntu with official KDE-wayland support. It handles Nvidia automatically and only corrupted it's home-partition once, so far.

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submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by Nicro@discuss.tchncs.de to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
 

I bought a monitor since the smarts in my smart-tv died, making the entire display unusable. Now I wanted to use a separate SBC for smarts in the "dumb" monitor. I would have gone for a modded fire-stick, but Amazon in their infinite wisdom, sunset all versions except the 720p potato and the smart-speaker-cube. I'm currently using a RaspberryPi 4 and looking at argon one for a remote control case. Googles widevine does limit the DRM on some content I "own" though. With Amazon on course to EOL the more sane sticks, are there any well-moddable streaming-sticks/boxes, that bring the relevant codecs and DRMs?

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submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by Nicro@discuss.tchncs.de to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
 

The EMMC on my PC-TV finally broke down and I'd like to replace it with something that doesn't run an OS or will predictably fail with a countdown. But dumb TVs are hard to come by and monitors come at a premium at that size. I want to run a PC (DP/HDMI) and an SBC (HDMI) with it. I also have an S2 satellite cable, but that's secondary. I'd like to have ~43", 16:9, 4K but without an embedded smart-hub, ideally running of eeprom-firmware, or just anything independent of write-cycles. But I can't find any good options online. Are there companies for this. Comments and recommendations welcome.

Edit: I'm EU, hence the DVB-S2 cable. Scepter would be great, but doesn't run on EU power.

Edit: I've pretty much settled on a philips 439P1/00. I'll give it another day, but it seems good. The PC over DP is my main focus and I can connect my own SBC for streaming. It lacks freesync but has adaptive sync and basic HDR. Being an office-monitor, it has no smarts and at ~600 bucks with consumer warranty and support it fits what I'm asking for well. Industry-signage wasn't really an option.

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submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by Nicro@discuss.tchncs.de to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
 

Hey there,

Due to having an unlocked bootloader, I fail safetynet. So Google-Pay is locked out, even if I wanted to use it. I find cash or cards to inconvenient, since my dexterity is impaired.

So I looked into getting an nfc-token to pay with and found that my bank is partnered with Fidesmo. This would allow for mobile-pay without an extra party involved. They seem fine from what I found online and they do publish some client-code on Github, but I had never heard of them.

Does anyone have any info on them?

 

Heya, Looking for an app to track tasks I need/want to do and then immediately forget about. I've tried diary-apps but those don't really work

So I'm looking for a private Kanban/task organizer, preferably f-droid or Github and offline. I have a public Nextcloud account, if that helps, but don't really need this to be cloud-dependant.

Thanks in advance.

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