I am a long term GrapheneOS user and would like to talk about it. r/privacy on the redditland blocks custom OS discussions which I think is very bad for user privacy, and I hope this post will be useful to anyone who are in the hunt for better privacy.

Nowadays smartphones are a much bigger threats to our privacy and Desktop systems, and unfortunately manufacturers has designed them to be locked down devices with no user freedom. You can't just "install Linux" on most smartphones and it is horrible. And most preloaded systems spy on us like crazy. That was why I specifically bought a pixel and loaded GOS onto it.

According to https://grapheneos.org/features , they start from base AOSP's latest version, imptoves upon it's security and significantly hardens it. There's hardened_malloc to.prevent against exploitation, disabling lots of debugging features, disabling USB-c data, hardening the Linux kernel and system apps etc. They even block accessing the hardware identifiers of the phone so that apps cannot detect whqt phone you're using. That means with Tor and zero permissions given, apps are anonymous.

Compatibility with apps are best in Custom ROMs but there are still that can't work, especially if they enforce device integrity. Very few apps usually enforce that tho. Also their community isn't the friendliest but you can get help. Just don't try and engage too much or have too many debates.

Anyone else here use GrapheneOS, or any other privacy ROMs? What is your experience? Do you disagree on any point? Let's have a discussion!

I have an Acer Nitro 5, it's motherboard got fri3d the other day. Thankfully it was under warranty. But I wonder is acer laptops generally more unreliable than others?

Basically which laptops are reliable?

I've heard multiple issues with 5G, like range and stuff, effectively sacrificing range and reliability for even more speed just so that companies can market it better. Do you think 5G is a downgrade compared to 4G?

Obviously I can understand why mysoginists are hated upon, As their belief is all women are trash or men are superior etc. But why are incels also generally hated upon? They are lacking in a way that makes them unable to gey in a relationship, but that shouldn't necessarily mean they are mysoginists, right?

What am I missing here? I haven't ever had a relationship with a woman, but I don't hate all women either. I just consider myself unlucky. Does that make me an incel?

I was looking to buy a new laptop for some time (have even asked your help), and finally I went with an Acer Nitro 5 . I got it 2 days ago and so far, I'm fully satisfied.

Specs:

Intel core i7 12650H (only goes to 4.0GHz due to thermals), an 150W RTX 3070ti (which does go to full 150W, no thermal issues there), a 1Tb SSD, 1440p 165Hz display that looks super good, 57Wh battery(yeah).

In setting up the laptop I did face some visual glitches when I installed Intel graphics drivers from Intel's official website... Had to reinstall Acer drivers to fix it (weird). Otherwise no bugs. Even installed Linux. Got 4hrs battery life that way.

I tried running 3dMark Time spy and have added the results in the post. modern games are yet to test.

What do you guys think? Should I check anything else? Would you like to see something else running on it?

Time spy:

Hi, I've recently put some posts asking what laptop should I buy. I got some quality advice, so thanks for that guys. I've finally bought (well, paid, it's not reached yet) the acer Nitro 5.

https://www.amazon.in/Acer-i7-12650H-Graphics-AN515-58-Keyboard/dp/B0C5R13NGB

I know the battery is shit, planning to check the thunderbolt port to use an external power bank. But other than that the specs seem awesome, the reviews also say the same. There's just no other deal that gives a display like this with the specs. I hope the build quality is good, I've bought an external extended warranty, so the risk is minimised (I hope).

What do you guys think? This is my first gaming laptop. Is there anything I should do first on receiving? Any ideas how to extend the provided battery's life? Is Win10/11 better for this hardware? Can I use it for like the next 4 years?

I'm looking to buy a laptop, and found some deals, among which the most I liked is this Dell G15 at. ~1200$.

https://www.amazon.in/dp/B0BHYQJLN9/?psc=0

Is this a good deal? I like how it looks, and the reviews say only battery is bad. But I hear Dell is not good unless it's XPS. Should I buy it?

Other good deals I found, which one is the best?

Lenovo at ~1300.. (Good package with good battery) https://www.amazon.in/dp/B09NP4W2PC/?psc=1

Acer at ~1000$ (this one is very good but battery is way worse) https://www.amazon.in/dp/B0C5R13NGB/?psc=0

I use wire (wire. com) for daily chatting. I like it but I couldn't find any good communities in wire. In session, or simpleX, there are privacy (and other) groups in which anyone can participate.. Can we start a privacy group in wire so we folks can also hang around?

I've been using skiff. com for sometime, as they claim to be a fully privacy preserving app suite like GApps or proton. One thing I like is they provide 10GB storage even for free accounts, where proton eventhough much bigger provides only 500MB.

But that got me wondering... Are they trustworthy as proton? Is there a chanve they end up being a honeypot? Does data actually gets encrypted before sending to the servers in a trustworthy way?