Hmm. OK, I’ve been using AdAway (not AdGuard) as DNS and/or VPN, experimenting with both) under Pixel 9 stock OS, and it mostly works… but some apps and websites still get ads through.

LineageOS w/Adaway root /etc/hosts blocklists was 100% perfect on my older phone… that’s my main quibble with trying LineageOS vs. GrapheneOS.

I know some people recommend against rooting, but I’ve never had security issues doing it and it seemed to offer more bulletproof ad-blocking.

Can you tell me how the ad experience is with GrapheneOS? As in, do apps which try to insert ads in screen transitions (or anywhere) still do so? Or websites which put in AdSense popups?

GrapheneOS doesn’t recommend AdAway or other adblocking solutions, so does it do so itself?

Hmm, I wonder if it’s Firefox specific then?

Really? I haven’t experienced such delays. I am also on 1gbps and videos start within 1-2 seconds max, usually less. I’m on Devuan Linux, Vivaldi with uBlock Origin.

I read somewhere that GrapheneOS devs have a strategy which they believe will work – they strip out something or other about app/device attestation (?) from APK files before installing occurs, or the enforcement code itself from their spin of the OS, so sideloading (ie., user-controlled installation) can still work.

I sure hope so… I think everyone in their respective country needs to scream at their local regulators about this.

Of course, this will only help those whose devices GrapheneOS can run on.

As of today at least, I can still download video/audio from YT on my android phone with NewPipe…

Rogers in Canada has pixels that allow unlocking the bootloader (just got a pixel 9, and once I have some time I’m going to try putting a custom build on it).

A wild ‘D’ suddenly appears! (that’s about all I know about Pokemon…)

“AI” hallucinations are not a problem that can be fixed in LLMs. They are an inherent aspect of the process and an inevitable result of the fact that LLMs are mostly probabilistic engines, with no supervisory or introspective capability, which actual sentient beings possess and use to fact-check their output. So there. :p

Search for v2.79 (if memory serves) on oldversion.com for the last ‘good’ version of classic winamp, and the streamripper plugin is still floating around somewhere on the 'net…

Yeah but is it as bad as Illinois Nazis? I hate Illinois Nazis.

An absolutely ancient tool I used to use was WinAmp (v2.x) with the Streamripper plugin. It would save out each song from a shoutcast or icecast station to a file with the artist/album/title/track like a champ. Maybe not quite what you want (won’t do youtube) but there are a ton of great indie stations on the vorbis icecast network…

Perhaps someone could write an ‘adb loopback’ app – get that into the official app store, and said app would then squirt other .apk files through adb on the phone to itself, thus sideloading it.

Couldn’t they just use a Windows VM on Linux to run the build tests?

Not that I care, the only vim I use occasionally is under MSYS64 (I think… maybe it’s just plain vi).

No, the 5T doesn’t sadly. The 128gb model I find roomy enough… but if you absolutely need an SD socket I guess that rules it out.

They’re not new, but if you can get a Oneplus 5T or some models after that, they run LineageOS fine. With Magisk even my banking apps work. All save the finerprint reader work well. Sadly I hear OnePlus is going to stop allowing unlocking in new models.

We already pay with all of the personal data they steal from us (adblocks or no), and all the lifetimes wasted watching ads for those who don’t or can’t block them (and the ad revenue paid to them by corps who buy those ads) so no, Google doesn’t deserve our money for Premium.

Same thing as when cable TV was new, they said paying for it was to require fewer ads… how long did that last?

Or, listen to the “Better Offline” podcast for another viewpoint :p

I feel your frustration… though a decent phone w/o locked Android shouldn’t require global thermonuclear war I hope!

I stress about what phone, if any, I’ll be able to install a non-bloatware, rooted, vanila OS on once the models my wife & I have become too ‘obsolete’. (OnePlus 5T with LineageOS).

WTF kill this with fire.