yore

  • Joined Sep 3, 2023

  • An anonymous GrapheneOS user

  • In PIN Ordeal

    @sha0 ,
    While I appreciate the time you've taken to respond to folks, there is a reason the general consensus around the responses is what it is.

    The current understanding of your position is:

    • The “update or bust” approach fosters planned obsolescence.

    • The assumption that if you never update your system or your apps, “what worked once should always work,” so long as you do not rely on new server features.

    • The idea that security updates and UI changes are always bundled together.

    • You want an old TWRP-like dd approach for image backups.

    The problems with these are as such:

    • Modern phone apps/services change rapidly on the server side. An old OS release inevitably breaks or cannot fetch new Google apps. No project, especially a security-focused OS, can keep older Android versions patched forever. Once the official upstream stops delivering monthly patches for the OS or firmware, or once a release is years out of date, it is unsupported. That is not malicious, or “planned”, or fostering obsolescence; it is simply how open-source projects operate within practical resource constraints.
    • The AOSP monthly security bulletins land on top of new releases that typically also tweak or rework parts of the UI. GrapheneOS can patch or strip certain parts, but it cannot easily “freeze” every single UI aspect while merging everything else. It is an infeasible expectation. Additionally, as @yore said:

    GrapheneOS has one of the most stable UIs considering it's based on AOSP and not Google or any vendor's additions to the UI (those tend to change their UIs far more often)

    • The methods and tools like TWRP and dd backups are inherently at odds with a mobile OS and device with locked-down firmware, verified boot, a hardware-backed keystore, etc. It would undermine secure/verified boot and hardware-bound encryption keys. It is simply a different (better) design from a security perspective.

    None of this includes any comments on your "inner-state", what your requirements are with UI changes, etc. These are just the reality of each of the individual situations.

    • In Apps are disconnected as soon as they are minimized

      @yore Unfortunately I do not have multiple Pixel 9 XL Pros to test with, only the one that I own.

    • In GrapheneOS version 2025011500 released
    • In Google photos unlimited storage

      Kevin719 straight from the source and it is not a new thing

      https://blog.google/products/photos/storage-changes/

      You'll have to make sure your uploaded photos are not in original quality, i.e. less or equivalent to 16Mpixel, FullHD videos up to certain size to not count towards total allowed storage. Make no mistake, all media gets scanned so Google can present you with suggestion for deletion of "imperfect" media (I bet AI is hard at work there).

      @yore although your statement about overall privacy using GrapheneOS with sandboxed Google Play may be true, this advance as opposed to stock is marginal at best. Many new users (and they don't seem to be shy to voice their opinion regarding this on here) may wish to skirt using it altogether to maximize privacy benefits GrapheneOS brings.

      • In Forum account anonymization and data export is now available
      • In Chatgpt FOSS and Offline alternative?

        000000 Is there an AI i can use on Grapheneos? Privacy friendly offline on my device?

        No, unfortunately not. Even smaller models like 8B or 14B models require like 10 GB of RAM to run, and a very strong CPU. Or a similarly sized GPU. This is generally not possible to run on phones yet. For one, if the CPUs or GPUs in phones were powerful enough, you would still drain your fully charged battery by just asking 3-5 questions. And model sizes below 8B are generally worthless, too stupid for anything.

        But you can run 8B and 14B models on most modern computers. To get started, download LM Studio, and then install Gemma 2 8B, Qwen 2.5 14B, Llama 3.1 8B or another top performing model in that parameter range. LM Studio does not leak your chats, it runs entirely locally on your computer, and works perfectly even if you disconnects the internet. All while being beginner friendly.

        And as @yore said, you need to go all the way up to 70B models or the like to be competitive with GPT4, and now we are talking about a computer with 128 GB RAM and four serial connected 24 GB VRAM GPUs. The 8B/14B models are comparable with the original ChatGPT version, not GPT4 or other modern ones.

        • In My phone number comes up as "No Caller ID" when calling people.