If you don’t like the bloatware… unlock the bootloader and install a custom rom! Luckily Xiaomi allows you to unlock the bootloader if you have a global variant.

Oh jeez, enshittification is so fast with today’s companies…

I have the TP-Link UB500 V2 and it works flawlessly on my PC with Fedora. I use it to connect my phone for making phone calls, and also to connect my wireless headphones and my dualsense. No problems whatsoever. It supports Bluetooth 5.3 and has the aptX HD codec.

The only problem I noticed is that if I do bluetooth tethering with my phone, the audio (from my phone to my computer) lags a lot, but I guess that’s normal because the tethering uses up bandwidth meant for the audio transmission.

Or better yet, use tiktok in your web browser. It has far fewer permissions and access to your system because of the browser sandbox and how the web is built.

That’s why companies constantly push users to download the app while using the web app, because they can track users more effectively (Android’s sandbox is shit and allows apps to fingerprint users very easily).

Shouldn’t this post have a NSFW flag? Because of the torture…

I like this community but mods truly don’t do anything about enforcing nsfw flags.

https://support.torproject.org/tor-browser/security/tor-browser-for-android-no-trackers/

The trackers detected are:

• Glean (Mozilla telemetry service)
• Sentry

You can inspect them in App Manager if you have root, and disable the specific activities and providers from the app if you care about this.

Tesseract: https://tesseract.dubvee.org/

It’s a webapp, and I fucking love web apps. Also has quality-of-life improvements like making it easier to see modlogs or checking the account age of new accounts.

It’s also actively maintained.

Thanks for the heads up

You’re welcome

There is something in the quoted Masto thread that suggests realtime video is inherently insecure?

Well, to keep it simple: Voice/Video Calls on SimpleX are private. The point Sarah (from Cwtch, another private messaging platform) was making in that toot is that it is hard to be truly anonymous on a video call due to network level limitations on how the app route calls. But that is mostly about having privacy from a state-level adversary, I mean don’t even worry about this.

The info from SimpleX reads as though they are using crypto donations rather than more traceable cash

The criticism on the Privacy Guides forum is about the SimpleX team implementing a system based on crypto and NFTs to pay server operators, aiming to incentivize people to host more servers. But the catch here is that server operators get a 60% cut and the SimpleX team takes 40%, raising concerns about a possible enshittification, SimpleX will be more inclined to generate revenue instead of improving the app and bla bla bla.

Also on the other thread that the highlighted comment linked, a developer I respect called ignoramous points out that because SimpleX is based in the UK, it could be subject to the IPA law and there are transparency concerns about the SimpleX team not even caring to warn about it (if you care about that stuff).

And also SimpleX advertises as not having user identifiers but that’s a lie because by default if you don’t do anything about it the servers have your IP address (and your IP is a user identifier).

It’s these little things that make me distrust the project. Personally I don’t like Web3/crypto stuff, so I tend to avoid services that implement it.

This is just for family chat, so total black box security is not a priority.

Yeah i mean, for your use case, using SimpleX is totally fine. I just wanted to share the criticisms that exist around SimpleX.

Wow, I thought it was the opposite! That the majority of users are on Linux.

Or maybe it is the case, because the stats have a very limited dataset.

Just for transparency reasons, you might want to see this: https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/simplex-chat-is-now-a-crypto-project-selling-tokens-and-nfts/32490/9

I prefer Delta Chat, but sadly video calls are experimental :(

And also there is no support for group calls.

You could just unlock the bootloader and install a GSI. Problem solved. That’s why I still buy Xiaomi phones, because they have great hardware and software freedom’ish

If you cannot unlock the bootloader, it’s not truly your phone, and Honor has a tendency to block bootloader unlocking

Mullvad Browser for the win!