AmbitiousProcess (they/them)

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 6th, 2025

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  • all android devices have been using file based disk encryption since several Android versions now.

    All Android devices are supposed to support it, but not all do. (or at least, not all do effectively without compromising the cryptographic root of trust by not implementing proper hardware security chips)

    I’ll grant it to you on the scopes, PIN changes, etc, but realistically I just don’t think anyone can justify GrapheneOS being something that should be supported on Fairphone given how absolutely desolate the phone looks with regard to any attempt at all to hardware security.


  • It really depends on what security level you want out of a phone

    It does, but that’s exactly my point. GrapheneOS will provide you essentially no more security than any other alternative Android operating system, should it have to operate on a Fairphone with all those features not supported by a Fairphone stripped away.

    Unless Fairphone adds more hardware security features that are standard on most other phones, and highly supported on Pixels, installing a heavily crippled GrapheneOS on a Fairphone would get you essentially none of the benefits of GrapheneOS in the first place.


  • Entirely lacking disk encryption for typical users due to not having a secure element is a pretty major flaw.

    It’s also missing hardware accelerated virtualization which is necessary for much of GrapheneOS’s sandboxing, has weak security for other keys in the OS keystore, is missing hardware memory tagging which makes it much easier for apps to use overflow attacks, doesn’t have proper verified boot support once a custom alternative OS is flashed, and leaves exposed debugging APIs even when the phone is locked.

    This breaks:

    • Secure app spawning
    • Memory corruption protection
    • Integer overflow protection
    • Most of Graphene’s kernel hardening
    • Much of Graphene’s attack surface reduction abilities
    • Hardware-based attestation and security monitoring
    • Quick tile protection pre-unlock
    • Debugging access prevention
    • Verified Boot
    • The security of your PIN against any automated attack

    At that point, GrapheneOS can’t physically provide you essentially any security anymore.







  • Still WAY cheaper than phone manufacturer upgrades though.

    For example, on the Pixel 10 Pro it’ll cost you $120 to add 256 GB of storage (going from the 256 GB option to 512 GB option), and on the iPhone 17 it’ll cost you $200 for the same jump.

    A name-brand Sandisk 256 GB micro SD card costs about 60 bucks right now, or anywhere from half to less than third of the upgrade price. You could buy a 1 TERABYTE Micro SD card from Sandisk for less than Apple charges for 256 GB, and even if the $120 price from Google was your limit, you could still buy 512 GB of additional storage and have money left over.

    And of course as someone else already mentioned, you don’t have to get rid of your old storage media when you swap phones if it’s on a portable Micro SD card, so you don’t have to pay more money for storage every single time you get a new phone. Not only is it cheaper on its own, but it’s also a less frequent purchase.





  • For the USB one I don’t think it even has the ability to use WiFi in any way, but it seems you might need to install their drivers to then locally be able to set the label size within a system dialog. In my experience, at least for the wireless one, it doesn’t necessarily require its own drivers to work, as it works with Windows’ built-in printer drivers, and worked well enough for me on Fedora Linux. (But you might have issues with stuff printing in the wrong orientation and have to account for that by rotating your files before printing)

    For the wireless one, I think you’ll need at least some form of network no matter what, at least for setup. (I do want to clarify though that you can still use the wireless one with a wired cable to send files to print to it, and as far as I can tell that works even if WiFi is off) They really want you to use the app, but since it really is just another way to access the web UI, they do also just have a guide on how to do it without the app.

    I set mine up on my WiFi network that does have internet access, but theoretically since the UI is on a local IP it should be able to work on an isolated VLAN or something similar where no actual link to the Internet exists and it’s just a LAN, but I have no clue if it tries to connect to a server anywhere on startup before allowing anything else to happen, so your mileage may vary. It’s unfortunately not something I’ve tested for.

    It also has an option to check for updates, I presume to fix any bugs or future potential exploits, but I’ve never seen my printer update once in nearly a year of owning it. (As far as I can tell this setting can’t be disabled, all you can change is if it prints a label to tell you when it updates)

    Regardless, as mentioned previously, it should be able to function in terms of just the printing itself with just a cable and no access to the internet afterwards, so you could always set it up on WiFi, add all the page sizes you want, then disconnect it from your network and only use it over USB and it should work fine :)

    You can change its IPv4 and IPv6 address/netmask/gateway/prefix length, DNS servers, and hostname in settings, install a custom TLS certificate, etc if any of that helps.

    Also, you can change the default print settings, which I personally very much recommend. Depending on what you’re printing, you might want to increase the print quality or darkness, particularly if you print a lot of labels in succession that might otherwise start printing a little more faded on the lighter settings.

    That’s all the info I can think of that would probably be relevant, but if you’ve got any more questions that I somehow missed I’m happy to answer them too lmao


  • It’s a Rollo! (refurbished)

    I have the white wireless-capable one, but the USB-only model should theoretically operate the same in all other respects.

    To manage the wireless one you use the app, or just go to the web URL for the management portal… because all the app does is just redirect you to that exact URL in-app 💀

    I know a lot of cheaper models do still work well, but Rollo is just a much larger, more well known brand that also just has a lot more troubleshooting info behind it. (not to mention better printer driver compatibility)

    Definitely don’t buy the overpriced official Rollo labels, though. They’re no better than any other thermal labels on the market!






  • Isn’t that no different than the millions of open source projects that have few authors, little interest and are abandoned for the next shiny thing?

    The end result isn’t inherently different, but the basis is.

    Someone who programs a FOSS project with their own programming skill is, by definition, more invested, and more willing to spend time making that project exist. Someone who is mostly just willing to tell the LLM to do it for them is, by definition, less invested in the project.

    It is more likely that someone less invested in a project will abandon it.

    At least in my mind with the current state of LLMs, if there is an open source project that you want to update for yourself, you should be able to do that pretty easily.

    Sure, that’s possible, but the main concern is that most people either don’t have access to more capable models (which will otherwise require them spending money for their software to keep getting things like security patches, vs projects that have maintainers that are more invested in them that aren’t abandoned in the first place which are effectively free unless you choose to donate), and you get forks in development path. It might fit one user’s goals, but now you have, say, 100 people who all tried reviving abandonware with their own LLMs, all with different features, security, import/export mechanisms, etc.

    That’s not to say it’s bad that people can use LLMs to “revive” abandonware, but I don’t think we should be encouraging people to create and publish software that’s highly likely to be abandoned in the first place.