The best thing about Pixels for me is the no-fuss bootloader unlock, but an unlocked bootloader is already a prerequisite for running LineageOS.

With Magisk and Play Integrity Fix, mostly yes. As it comes. mostly no.

In this context, I think two operating systems are in the same family if software for one can be recompiled for another with minimal changes without heavyweight compatibility libraries.

In that sense, I would put BSD and traditional desktop Linux distributions in the same family even though they don’t share low-level code, and I would exclude Android even though it uses the Linux kernel.

This is a forum.

Forums and blogs could be classed as social media, but they predate widespread use of the term, and are fundamentally different from the corporate social platforms.

It’s the combination of an individualized engagement algorithm and user-generated content that defines modern social media.

What is wrong with people.

Several studies have found that women prefer men their own age or slightly older, and men prefer women in their early 20s regardless of their own age. It’s not hard to explain that with evolutionary biology, as that’s when women are most likely to successfully bear children.

Of course evolutionary biology can explain behaviors like rape and dueling, which are serious crimes in modern societies.

Your “very young” might mean younger than early 20s though, and we do have a crime for that most places if the number gets low enough.

Wafrn might be worth a look. I’ve been meaning to try it myself.

Mastodon’s character limit is pretty easy to change when self-hosting, but it has other limitations like a lack of even basic formatting and images inline in posts. I think that’s true of several of the others as well.

There is a risk Google could tamper with the app for specific users if they’re installing it from Google Play. I think it’s likely security researchers would discover that if it was widespread, but there’s a chance Google could do it undetected if they targeted it selectively enough.

People who are concerned about this can download the APK directly from Signal and check its signature before installation.

Signal uses reproducible builds for its Android client, and I think for desktop as well. That means it’s possible to verify that a particular Signal package is built from the open source Signal codebase. I don’t have to trust Signal because I can check or build it myself.

If I don’t have extreme security needs, I don’t even have to check. Signal has a high enough profile that I can be confident other people have checked, likely many other people who are more skilled at auditing cryptographic code than I am.

Trusting the server isn’t necessary because the encryption is applied by the sender’s client and removed by the recipient’s client.

I’m still using a phone from 2020. It’s fine. If I got something new, it would probably be bigger and lack a headphone jack.

A new phone would have a better camera than my old one, but it would not be as good a camera as my Olympus, which I use when I care about the result.

The airline probably owes you money under the EU 261 passenger rights regulation.

Thus, a seatless bus. A what?!

That’s pretty common at European airports. It’s rare in the USA, but I’ve seen it.

I had four overnight delays in three round trip transatlantic flights in 2025. The airline was at fault for three of them.

When the airline is at fault for a delay of four hours or more on a long flight that starts or ends in the EU, they owe the passenger 600 Euros, a hotel room, and meals, so those were long delays but not exactly terrible experiences.

Getting stuck for 20 hours in the Newark airport due to weather wasn’t as pleasant. The airline did not owe me anything because weather is not their fault. There were hundreds of other delayed travelers sleeping on cots in the halls of the airport. They did not have a cot for me.

Here are some more options:

• Individualism vs collectivism
• Essentialism vs constructivism (are important traits of people fixed, or mutable?)
• Belief in conspiracy theories vs skepticism (people who believe one conspiracy theory usually believe many, also predicts mistrust in institutions like traditional media and scientists)

It’s worth thinking about whether dimensions like these are cause or effect, and political or personality traits. zlatiah points out that there are techniques for identifying which ones cause political behavior.

• Reasonable: prevent downgrades when the bootloader is locked
• Sketchy: prevent downgrades when the bootloader is unlocked
• Unhinged: hard-brick the device when a downgrade is attempted

Let’s clarify some terminology.

Android is an operating system, not hardware. Android uses the Linux kernel, but differs greatly from desktop-oriented Linux distributions. Most phones are designed for Android, a bit like most PCs are designed with Windows in mind.

Desktop-oriented Linux distributions have a semi-standardized software stack with Linux, GNU libraries and utilities, a shell, X11 or Wayland, some sort of window manager or desktop environment, etc…

Other comments have explained how the hardware makes it difficult to have generic operating systems that install easily on any phone like we do for PCs, but they do exist. Ubuntu Touch and PostmarketOS are examples of desktop-like Linux distributions for phone hardware. It’s possible to install and use these on certain phones, but there’s usually a feature or two without a working hardware driver. Desktop Linux on laptop computers used to be that way too, but far fewer laptops have missing drivers now than a decade or two ago.

I have PostmarketOS installed on an older phone. I don’t think the user experience is quite ready for most people to use as their primary phone, even for me, and I’ve been running Linux on laptops for most of my adult life.

I have a .com for like $19.99 but pay to have my info redacted from whois stuff, an email address, all cones to like $42.99

Porkbun charges $11.08 for a .com with whois privacy. $30/year for email hosting might be worth it if you’re getting very good service, but I think you’re overpaying.

$11.08 for a .com. Source: just renewed.

A different Wallet/Pay implementation is a possible outcome, but I’m thinking of a bigger picture where Android phones are more like PCs: no non-unlockable bootloaders, no remote attestation anywhere, barriers to root detection at the OS level, third-party ROMs encouraged.

The early days of Android were like that. I wonder if things had developed along that path, would we have a paradise for power users? A security nightmare for mainstream users? Both? Neither?

I wonder what an alternate history where Google chose not to become evil would look like.

What if they had looked at Microsoft’s Palladium proposal and thought, as pretty much everyone outside institutional IT departments did that locked devices with remote attestation was a nightmare scenario best forgotten, refused to build it, and made an effort to prevent anyone else from doing so on top of Android? Safetynet didn’t appear until 5-6 years after Android launched to the public. What if it never did? Android already had enough momentum by that point I don’t think the financial sector could refuse to be on it no matter what risk management said.