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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: January 28th, 2023

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  • obscure corporate jargon like KPIs (key performance indicators), KRIs (key risk indicators) which, after having thrown them at me during an interview for a college intern position, made the interviewer wonder why i got so flustered. i would hesitate to throw any acronyms around in any interview, let alone for a college student.

    by the way, i got the internship. the acronyms weren’t even used in my position.



  • A decent blender. Not anything industrial like a Vitamix, it’s a Magimix which was about half as much but still durable and has replaceable parts. It’s fine for what I need and is lasting much longer than the pile of crap I had before.

    Vacuum pack bags for clothes is another one. I like to keep my wardrobe seasonal but I don’t have much space, so packing it down helps.

    Also anything reusable: PTFE/silicone baking sheets, rechargeable batteries, reloadable floss handles. All of these have saved recurring purchases, money over time and reduced waste (which made me feel good.)





  • Absoutely. I mostly use Firefox because I’m so familiar with it by now but the privacy is generally much better and it doesn’t have a massive monopoly on the web. I’m just a lot more comfortable with it.

    When I have to, I use ungoogled-chromium on desktop and Bromite on mobile. I recommend those to anyone familiar with Chrome.




  • These two form a “mesh VPN” which use direct encrypted links between any number of devices. You can think of it as forming a virtual LAN where you can communicate with devices, including open ports. A lot of them have clever tricks to overcome CG-NATs, which you seem to be struggling with.

    Another option is to just rent a server. You can get massive storage space for less than some VPNs cost and you don’t need powerful hardware if your device supports the codecs you’re using. You could even get a cheapy VPS and reverse proxy to your Jellyfin server through an SSH tunnel or similar. Lots of options here.



  • Has anyone independently verified that this is the case for the FP4? It’s well known that the FP3 accepts testsigned ROMs, but all discussions regarding the FP4’s trusted keys points back to the same FP3-specific thread on Fairphone’s forum.

    It seems so.

    I don’t know, it does make flashing custom ROMs easier but I would rather have to install my own signing keys or signing keys for the ROM as this way renders a part of the device security completely useless. I’d at least like to have known when I bought it.

    I’m not paranoid which is why I’m still using the device but these three points were each huge disappointments which make me not want to buy another Fairphone.


  • I think it’s a Qualcomm Snapdragon SM7225.

    It’s not really about better, it’s more knowing what I’m getting. It’s not their fault that Qualcomm’s support is only 3 years (at the time) or that it takes them 10 months to develop support for the chosen SoC which eats into part of that 3 years. Still, I got the phone thinking I would have a reasonably secure device for 4-5 years which wasn’t entirely accurate.

    I love the idea and, if you’re willing to sacrifice some security for sustainability, that’s great. I just want people to know what they’re getting into because I didn’t.


  • As the owner of a Fairphone 4, don’t get one.

    It’s sold as a 5G phone but crashes intermittently if you actually enable 5G. I bought a 5G phone and I’m still on 4G. I wish I could say that’s the most of the problems, I could live with that.

    The software support, in my opinion, is falsely advertised. You do get 5 years of kernel and Android updates but the system-on-chip updates, which aren’t made by Fairphone, end October of this year. That’s a whole important part of the updates which cease only 2 years into support.

    Then, there’s the real kicker; the hardware root of trust has the (publicly available) AOSP test keys installed. This means anyone can sign and flash a verified ROM if they have access to the unlocked phone. That’s perhaps not too important for most people, but it screams incompetence and it means you cannot trust a second hand device.

    When the SoC support is up, I’m moving to a Pixel. I’m done rolling the dice on Android phone manufacturers and I want a well implemented device.