u/lukmly013 💾 (lemmy.sdf.org)

He would put himself at risk to avoid admitting he needed help

Are you sure he just doesn’t feel bad about potentially bothering someone (as I do)?

Well, I do fuck up a lot.

Does that count?

OH, least favorite.

I was wondering why everyone is so sarcastic.

Well, buggy software (MIUI) and the surveillance. I mean, there’s a higher chance MIUI bricks itself during an update than with any Alpha-release custom ROM (so I don’t update… [But it’s also due to Android often removing features from API and breaking niche apps]).
E.g.: Wallpaper bug (stretched or awfully upscaled after changing brightness), brightness slider not working, broken screen rotation, battery drain, swapped L/R microphone audio channels, FM radio cutting out, system crashes and waves of killed apps, camera app in landscape has some buttons off-screen, MIUI screenshot tool occasionally breaks and stock screenshot tool is used (with full-blast audio sound effect no matter current volume settings), notification access service needs to be manually reset for each app after the app is restarted, 120Hz gets laggy after toggling battery saver on and off and needs to be manually reset, dark mode is forced on all apps but the setting to change this sorts all apps in random order,… Also, the Poco X3 Pro motherboard has a tendency to die. I am on this phone’s third motherboard currently.

Also… the volume buttons can get stuck. Xiaomi phones have issues with dust particles making their way into buttons and activating them randomly.

Linksys WRT54G WiFi router.

The WiFi router DD-WRT was originally designed for.

This legend is older than me:

But I am an adult already (at least on paper…).

Hear me out, the entire universe is most likely temporary, so technically all the code you write is in fact temporary.

Still works for me.

I use the default WebUI in a browser.

I prefer landscape mode, haven’t found any suitable apps for that.

the pharmacist had to call the doctor to work it out.

Oh god, that must have been better than AES256 if even a pharmacist couldn’t decrypt it.

There’s also some official groups for normal projects. I know for example PixelExperience ROM used to have a community over there before shutting down.

What are you talking about? It clearly flips it inside-out.

Well, because it doesn’t flip anything. The light just bounces off, thus light from your right bounces back to your right.

Ooof, that’s hard. There’s no single favorite.

Xiaomi and similar (like Poco) I like because of their higher performance and usually including both headphone jack and IR blaster. Currently have X3 Pro.
What I do not like about them is the tracking. Ads I don’t mind, honestly, but data collection kinda bothers me. You also need a Mi account to unlock the bootloader with a proprietary Xiaomi tool, plus there’s a waiting period. Yuck. Also, the software feels like unfinished rushed project. I am pretty sure Alpha releases of most custom ROMs are more stable. Anyway, I kept the stock ROM on this one anyway.

Moving on…

Google. Yes, you read that right. They not only allow easy bootloader unlocking, but also relocking with a custom key, thus being the choice of Graphene OS.
What I outright hate is no headphone jack and Micro SD card slot. Otherwise, I’d just get one of the Pixels pretty damn quick.

Lastly…

Pine64. Easy to obtain spare parts, pogo pins for hardware expansion (like a keyboard or LoRa module), possibility to communicate directly with the modem over internal serial interface because that’s possible too, built mainly for GNU+Linux distros.
But the whole idea is very much experimental.

Could have been Nokia up there if they kept it up with N900.

Also requires a phone number for registration…

Can you get a burner phone and SIM in your country? (Separate phone because of IMEI. Of course, purchased offline without registration in cash.)
I happen to live in a country where every phone number has to be registered with a government ID…, so that’s not a possibility here, but perhaps it is for you.

You know these routers are sus so buy another brand.

Or flash it with custom firmware if supported.

The travelling itself. Destinations are never my main interest. It’s being in a moving vehicle. I enjoy buses and trains. Just sitting in the hum and watching the scenery zip by.
I hope that counts as travelling.
Usually that ends up looking as following: Start -> Train -> Waiting for a train back -> Train -> Back to start destination. If there’s more ways to travel though, I’ll join them. That means going there and back via different routes. So I may go into some city by train, and back by a bus or vice versa. Bonus points if I have to use city transport.

Even then, I still need preparation the 1st time. Looking through street view and learning the streets I’ll have to go through, searching for backup transport options, finding what bus companies I’ll use, reading their ToS (seriously), checking their fees, checking whether they are in TransCard system, checking photos and videos of how people get in and pay (details like “do I have to just tap the card, or press something on the screen?”, which doors are for entry and exit, do the doors use “open” buttons or are they driver-controlled, etc… Sometimes buses show up in backgrounds of local news reports, and that’s what I look for.), what are the buses’ license plates, what bus models the company uses and their colors, what route the bus goes through (on map - the longer the better, more distance between stops preffered), it shouldn’t be on Mondays and Fridays due to increased number of people.
And with my laziness that can take some time. But after the 1st time, I can just more or less spontaneously go there any time. Just need a few minutes to check whether the timetables and fees were updated, or if there’s something else important different (e.g.: closed roads that could result in skipped stops). If it isn’t obvious, I am not necessarily looking for anything new, just longer routes with less stops. The same route is still as enjoyable for me after taking it every work day twice for past 3 years just as it was the 2nd time.

Oh, but I really like temporary railroad blockages. The replacement bus still needs to take me to the same destination at (more or less) the same time, but via a different route.

Oh god, I’d die of anxiety. Unless being guided by someone, and by guided I mean just being given commands on exactly what to do and exactly where to go, I need them details.
Even then, going somewhere for the first time is not the most pleasant. 2nd and more is fine though, once I had at least a bit of experience with the place.

You can use DoT or DoH.

But you will still leak SNI.

Consider it non-secure for personal stuff. Consider the possibility of full monitoring. They may not see the contents of encrypted traffic from the VM, sure, but there’s still a possibility of keylogging and even screen monitoring, possibly something else.

To answer your question, the guest OS should reject the security software’s certificates, should it attempt MITM. Otherwise there wouldn’t be much of a reason to use HTTPS over plain HTTP.
It can still do blocking I guess.

Secondly, it’s a work device, and that software is there for a reason. Trying to get around it may have different results. Your employer might not care much, or they could assume something malicious on your side, and fired you are.
So don’t use it past work-related use cases, don’t borrow it to kids nor anyone else. That bit of hardware is most likely not worth the risk.

I mean, it is old. Can’t blame it.