Pixel 11 doesn't yet meet the GrapheneOS security standards and may be skipped(discuss.grapheneos.org) |
Pixel 11 doesn't yet meet the GrapheneOS security standards and may be skipped(discuss.grapheneos.org) |
The much more interesting recent news IMO is that Google is not allowing (non-Samsung) OEMs to sell devices with GrapheneOS:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49946698
See the last paragraph.
For example, non-Samsung Android OEMs aren't allowed to directly sell devices with GrapheneOS and Google will only permit it within a quota. It can and is being worked around and there will be devices sold with GrapheneOS as the stock OS without Google restricting how many can be sold.
My guess is that the workaround is that Motorola sells them with Google-certified Android. A third-party (non-OEM) buys them in bulk and preinstalls GrapheneOS.
But this is really end-90s/begin-00s Microsoft levels of anti-competitiveness. I'm surprised that (particularly non-US) regulators are not investigating them yet.
Every company is nice until the monies they earn is not guaranteed anymore. They were closing the doors they have intentionally left open in the name of security for a couple of generations.
Now they're being more open about why they are limiting user choice. Because like Chrom(e/ium), Android is designed to be a large data sink for Google to feed The Machine.
Also maintaining the monopoly over the app market and getting a good cut out of every transaction within. A non google controlled device in the mass market can introduce new markets independent of google (and not paying them).
They would not like that.
how is that legal??
that sounds like a very clean cut case of thinks companies aren't allowed to do under fair market lawes
Was this ever the deal with Moto? They announced something recently, but it didn't read like Moto would be distributing devices with preinstalled GOS. Just that it would be able to run GOS.
This seems similar to wanting to follow the advice of "only buy bottled water on your trip to India", but the bottle you're buying has the cap removed so they could put a straw in it for your convenience.
But never, never has the EU sanctionned Microsoft for signing OEM deals that prevent companies from installing other OS than Windows.
You mean like the Skyhook vs Google 2014 lawsuit? (look it up) Settled before it could go any further.
[1] https://fightchatcontrol.eu/chat-control-overview
[2] https://waag.org/en/article/european-digital-id-wallets-are-...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU_Kids_Act
[4] https://www.androidauthority.com/why-i-use-grapheneos-on-pix...
Google was found guilty by the EU antitrust investigation and payed a 4 billions euros fine (and Google has changed nothing since then, they only increased the pressure).
GrapheneOS is especially annoying for them as it destroys their blanket excuse that it's ""for security""
Absolute anti-competitive behavior. "Android is open, but not really"
Because corporate managed phones are required for all the id crap governance franchises intend to foist on people.
To be That Guy, Apple is not allowing anyone anywhere to sell any devices with anything but MacOS/iOS.
> But this is really end-90s/begin-00s Microsoft levels of anti-competitiveness.
It's not even the most anti-competitive in the market of 2026!
Apple doesn't allow Apple selling Apple devices with other operating systems.
Google doesn't allow other OEMs selling the OEMs' devices with other operating systems.
Big difference.
(Yes, pedantics: I know that OEMs could sell devices with other OSes, but not being able to sell GMS Android devices would lose them most of their customers.)
Google made the choice to announce that Android was open to all, in an attempt to take market share from Windows Phone.
Now they want to go back on their word.
It's an emotional discussion about Google not supporting MTE on Pixel 11 (old news of August, GrapheneOS had to roll back that statement in September [0]).
Now the question is whether MTE will be enabled by Google as part of a future OS-upgrade, to which there is no definite answer AFAIK
Still means that currently the phone has no support for MTE.
I have bought too many things on vague promises that did not happen.
It's not there now -> it's not supported. EOL.
MTE but slow
It has no MTE right now, okay. Is there any evidence on the rest?
This reads like “your front door lock is the perfect place for security services to have a master key.” True, but not strong as an argument against having a lock.
If you're doing comms for a serious project, it's probably best not to speculate on the justification of an internal decision at a different org, even if you're reasonably sure.
I think at this point is too late for complicity, they are actively fighting against GrapheneOS anyway. You either fight back, or wait until you loose all the leverage
Edit: Maybe you replied to the wrong comment? I didn't say anything about complicity and neither did the GrapheneOS announcement in the part I quoted.
Because? The obvious implication is you're saying Google will abuse their monopoly to hurt you if you upset them. Is that what you're implying? Or is it user trust, or something else you think is improved by avoiding such speculation?
If so, it seems odd to cut it back.
Have they introduced some other mitigations, for eg UAF, to improve memory safety?
It seems possible that nixing MTE is to prevent stomping on some TLAs exploits?
In terms of mitigation of UAF, a great deal of new code written for Android userspace these days is in memory safe languages such as rust. Also, a lot of testing with instrumented code sanitizers is still done before release. We don't know how much risk MTE actually mitigates.
at least they went with something with snapdragon - the upcoming moto phone
not Lacker News.
Not tall enough, try again next year.
The GrapheneOS project would have lots of other devices to choose from (or any) if everyone making hardware (besides Google) weren’t so obsessed with selling cheap, insecure trash.
You don’t know what you’re talking about.
If you ever do: you’re free to build the project from source for whatever generic device - but will gain only small details over vanilla AOSP without proper hardware to make use of.
[1]: https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/117194007157499435
[1] https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/41564-pixel-11-doesnt-yet-m...
Can you get arbitrary code execution on the RTOS from another app? No? Then adding layers to protect apps from each other is meaningful.
What you're saying isn't too far from "Well, if the attacker has physical access they can just freeze and decap the memory to read all secrets, so like there's no point in even hashing passwords or fixing XSS"
If you're talking about the baseband, AFAIK it's already isolated on both iPhones and pixels. Not sure about other androids.
Someone high up got tired to pull over every pixel user at the border.
With the new Motorola, TSA line are going to move faster that ever!
If you care about privacy, stay away for the moto release and stick with pixel.
For reference Pixels have about 1% market share, the graphene phones will be the same hardware as normal moto flagships and 99% of TSA agents won't be able to differentiate motorola models
You're off by a factor of 3, unless you count global market share, which includes random brands unlikely to be in the US like xiaomi or huawei.
https://counterpointresearch.com/en/insights/us-smartphone-m...
Moreover motorola flagships (ie. the only model that support grapheneos for now) are likely a fraction of the market share of motorola as a whole, so OP is still correct in that motorola grapheneos phones are more identifiable.
>the graphene phones will be the same hardware as normal moto flagships and 99% of TSA agents won't be able to differentiate motorola models
That argument could be used for pixels as well, which are also just generic black rectangles, especially the "a" models that lack the distinctive camera bump. Also if DHS/ICE really wanted to, they could avoid this problem altogether by requiring travelers to self-declare what phone they have. Sure, you can lie, but then you committed a federal offense by lying on immigration paperwork.
Every Google Pixel model per generation ends up supported.
DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE TSA.
Social hardening is a real problem.
I missed a news story. Context?
Sadly I never, ever put the 8 Pro in any case or protective shell, and the damage of repeated minor drops took its toll. The screen was just cracked a tiny bit around the corners, but eventually the upper-right corner began a creeping black amoeba of darkness, and finally the entire touchscreen became unreliable, I suppose due to that damage, so I decided to bail out. Repairs were exorbitant so I decided to take Google's own trade-in deal.
Don't forget the notorious vertical pink line issue! Luckily that had (has?) an extended warranty programme.
I used the OP15 in the meantime and its ram management and (ironically enough) performance in day to day apps was somehow much worse. It unloaded apps, skipped notifications, apps took longer to open. Google have put in a lot of work into software ahead of the rampocalipse.
You bought arguably the same phone with marginal gains to CPU score and a little better battery. Paying €650 for that privaledge doesn't seem like a great deal to me...
Or, you know, any actual market. Where I can sell whatever I want from my stall but I can't sabotage other people's stalls.
Oh, if you sell in your stall oranges at 10c box, with plenty of stock, you will sabotage the other stall selling fruit. And you can do that because your actual business is another one.
Even that analogy fails because MTE is in addition to existing countermeasures against memory corruption attacks. In the worst case, compromising MTE just means you don't have MTE, not that you get arbitrary code execution.
Bill Gates published that infamous open letter about copying software, and both Bill Gates and Brad Smith said that Microsoft's core pillar is IP: "Microsoft is built upon the idea of having IP and protecting and using it" (paraphrased by me).
The quotes I can find by digging the net:
> Microsoft was founded on the premise that software is valuable intellectual property that people should pay for. --Bill Gates
> Microsoft was founded on intellectual property. Intellectual property is the foundation of our business. --Brad Smith (This is the quote I remember in the first place)
So, Microsoft never wanted to be an open company. They were the epitome of the closed source, behemoth software company, where you get the goods, get to use it, and pay them for the privilege.
Not a big news person?
£50 for the 8 Plus isn't too bad though
(€150 = £127)
- Suddenly being without a phone while you're travelling or dealing with something important is generally not fun
- Anything stored locally that isn't backed up is gone
- You can't transfer over your eSIM yourself
- Probably going to be a pain in the ass to get into accounts where the now brick was set up for 2FA
Anything complex enough to get over the air updates could lose its trustworthiness at any time. If a device is going to contain your digital soul, it should be simple and pluggable.
Devices need to be considered disposable. Expensive but disposable.
* All photos auto upload to Google photos
* All other important files are in a syncthing folder with at least two other devices (laptop+desktop)
* 2fa in Authy with cloud-sync
* Passwords on Firefox sync
* Google Fi is my carrier, and pulls eSIM when I log in to the app even without my old phone
* Google voice number is my main phone number. I don't lose access to incoming or outgoing sms or voice calls if I lose my phone.
In a pinch, I can buy a cheap prepaid phone and sim while traveling and be fully functional and reachable. I've had to do this before, and while I probably wouldn't go to the trouble for work, I feel compelled to be at least reachable for family.
I've thought about de-googling this further; photos could go straight into syncthing and I could port my # to a generic SIP provider that offers SMS. So far neither have seemed quite worth the trouble.
I've always felt very uncomfortable treating my phone as anything other than a rather overpowered thin-client.
Microsoft doesn't just choose not to release source code; they send takedown notices to projects that redistribute Microsoft's proprietary software (e.g. Ninjutsu OS). They also put clauses in the EULA for Windows to disallow reverse engineering and certain kinds of remote access (something related to if you change who has access too frequently).
Microsoft takes extra effort to prevent people from sharing or modifying Microsoft software, in order to make more money.
I also understand that we need to eat and have bills to pay, and there are many ways to achieve that, incl. Free or Closed Source software.
What I'm against is weaponization of closed source software beyond reasonable point. To EEE, to deprecate otherwise capable and functional hardware in the market, to limit user freedom or to extort money.
I hope I made my point clear.
Furthermore:
> I've worked at software companies - have you?
I didn't work at a software company per se, yet I develop open source software for the projects we work on, and I know what preparing a codebase for publishing entails. I also worked as a tech-lead of a Linux distribution, and a nation-wide one at that. I know what it entails, trust me.
If we're talking about experience in terms of years, I'm doing this for ~20 years, using Linux for ~25 years, and using computers in a level I understand what programming them entails for ~30 years.
So yeah, I'm not that newbie who have seen some Python and tied themselves to a knot of awe.
> causes a lot of risk,
Don't let's get into FUD territory of "Free Software is insecure", shall we? We see how Windows has been breached yesterday and today, and will see it more for years to come, as with other software.
> and provides absolutely no benefit whatsoever so it is simply irrational to do it.
Hmm, I'll agree to disagree here because 90% of the thing your digital stack is living on is Open Source and Free Software.
I don't have time to flesh out the benefit and irrationality aspect of it, because I mean, it's plainly wrong when it's put that squarely. We can find some nuances maybe, but it's limited to certain scenarios.
your comment honestly just sounds like you dislike closed-source software.
for most commercial software projects, releasing the source provides no tangible benefit, aside from people like HNers being happy
but if Microsoft would've open sourced their OS, they would've been vulnerable to their OS being diluted into free versions or maybe even OEM-maintained versions
from a business sense, it makes no sense.
and as for security, closed source software is harder to attack (and was a lot harder to attack before LLMs). like, there's still much that we don't know about Windows internals exactly, and even those who do are a very small group of people.
it'd be a lot easier to find vulnerabilities if the source was open.
yes, it doesn't mean it's automatically more secure, in fact it can be less so if people don't have eyes on it, but I'd say the amount of attacks is less and usually done by more sophisticated attackers
Right now it doesn't really affect me that Ableton Live is closed-source. But it would affect me if the main method of sharing music on the internet was Ableton Live project files. And if Ableton had cultivated that situation on purpose they would be weaponizing the closedness of their software.
Another good reason not to buy an iPhone. As if there weren't enough good reasons already.
Some business models - like OSS, and free-with-ads - are like dimension-folding weapons from Dark Forest trilogy: once deployed, there is no stopping them, they just permanently drop a degree of freedom from the universe, inside a shell expanding at the speed of light.