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by scheeseman486 286 days ago
No, those don't mean the same thing.

All phones are insecure to some extent, most phones compared to GrapheneOS/Pixels are less secure and this has largely proven out whenever there's been leaks of the capabilities of law enforcement phone cracking tools.
1 comments
fsflover 285 days ago
I just don't see how it refutes any of my arguments. See the example of Qubes OS in my above reply.
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scheeseman486 285 days ago
QubesOS is an OS for PCs which have a standardized hardware interface. Support for older systems is basically "free". Smartphones aren't standardized in the same way and the amount of effort it takes to properly support other phones has a considerably higher cost on developer bandwidth.

Anyone can fork GrapheneOS and build it for other phones if they want, instead of doing this the developers instead focus their time and effort on the most suitable hardware for their needs. This isn't a part of some agenda or a swipe at Linux, open source or Stallman's cholesterol filled heart, it's just pragmatism.

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strcat 276 days ago
GrapheneOS has to do substantial work on each supported device to integrate the hardening features and fix the issues those uncover. Supporting other devices is not easy and involves a lot of resources. Those devices also need to provide the hardware-based features heavily used by GrapheneOS including hardware memory tagging, pointer authentication, verified boot, etc. which those devices don't provide.
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fsflover 274 days ago
Can you support these devices without listed features with a low effort?
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fsflover 284 days ago
I agree that the lack of resources is a reasonable argument. However this not the argument provided: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30765013
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scheeseman486 284 days ago
Instead there's a bunch of other arguments that are just as reasonable which underline why deploying their security focused OS on such a hardware platform would be a waste of their time. This is your refutation?

It really seems like you're more concerned about hurt feelings than objective fact here. Every link you've provided thus far was framed by you as evidence of poor decisions or behaviour on the part of the GrapheneOS team but you've done nothing to elaborate, and after reading the content of those links for myself there is nothing there that support the things you've been implying.

It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, at least not unless I put myself into the mindset of a child and read any negativity expressed towards FOSS projects as an attack, or taking their choice to not target phones I like personally.

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fsflover 283 days ago
I have no idea where you managed to find any feelings in my replies, and I will ignore the personal attacks.

The linked security-related arguments aren't reasonable at all. They talk about improving users' security but instead the actual result is less security for the majority of people, due to (1) the high price of the supported hardware, (2) reliance on Google hardware not trusted by many users (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45101524).

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scheeseman486 283 days ago
> I have no idea where you managed to find any feelings in my replies, and I will ignore the personal attacks.

Your username is fsflover and your posts clearly have an ideological bias that favours purely open source solutions even if it goes against reason.

> The linked security-related arguments aren't reasonable at all. They talk about improving users' security but instead the actual result is less security for the majority of people, due to (1) the high price of the supported hardware, (2) reliance on Google hardware not trusted by many users

All SoCs are a black box and all of them are made by untrustable companies that are likely already working with the security services of whatever country they're R&D'd or manufactured in. There is no good solution to this, so they picked the best worst option.

Nonetheless, most of the evidence that is available shows that GrapheneOS on Pixels are the most secure phones currently available. So, clearly not security theatre, whereas if they also supported phones that didn't even let you lock the bootloader it absolutely would be.

GrapheneOS isn't to blame for every other phone manufacturer dropping the ball.

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