In reality they do help superficially, but they very much inflate their numbers on a shiny dashboard, showing you how much they’re helping. All while only hitting a small fraction of databrokers.

I also think, that as a subscription solution to a problem, they could turn into the online version of turbotax any second now. Lobbying for harder self-optouts so that their service stays relevant.

Not to sound stupid, but it really depends on how smart you want the watch to be. From connectionless firmware device to fully-featured Android. +1 for gadget bridge either way.

I have a Fossil Hybrid, that combines physical hands with a 2-color e-ink display. It can’t do apps, but it has standalone timers, notifications, media control, pulse/oxygen and step counter. I personally don’t need more. It’s cloudless and lasts a week.

If you need full Android/WearOS check AsteroidOS and specific ROMs. Hardware tends to be on the older side here.

The only thing that’s hard to do is sleep tracking. That tends to rely on proprietary algorithms and cloud compute a lot.

Well the idea of having attestation isn’t the problem. The problem is that apps requiring attestation (banks, insurance providers, ID-systems) use the most convenient solution. Slapping on Googles prebuild attestation. Graphene for example, provides alternative attestation for their OS and offers docs for anyone to implement a more fitting set of checks.

There are two approaches here: If you’re upset that your hacked-to-bits, rooted, unlocked and/or unencrypted device is failing checks: I’d say, tough luck. Until we can create provably untampered app-containers, that level of access genuinely breaks TOS on apps and regulations on handling personal data. Breaking those checks is then breaking those compliances in an unsafe way.

If you believe your setup is actually secure and compliant, just not in a way the allmighty Google intended: Try and get an attestation module for your setup. Fight for these apps to accept non-Google attestation and fight for devices that don’t artificially limit what can pass as secure.

I feel there are plenty of local activist/independent servers all over the EU. As long as you mind the encryption/anonymization, you can even round-robin them. Having a central EU authority is better than Google/Cloudflare and should be safe, if the implementation is sound. But there is a lot of room to meddle.

LeOS isn’t very popular, because it’s a passion-project by one guy, with little marketing. Said guy is a somewhat opinionated Woodstock-era hippie, hence the colorful icons (they can be easily swapped via an icon-pack of your choice.) Though he is a friendly person.

To my knowledge it’s the only Treble-option with a hard stance on de-googling. Specifically made as an answer to some policies in eOS. There is an interview with him floating about, if you want the backstory. https://nixfaq.org/2021/01/exclusive-interview-with-guntram-lead-developer-of-a-popular-custom-degoogled-android-rom-called-leos.html

Hey there, for starters A-GPS, stun, secure DNS, and several other preconfigured servers default to Google. Some of these can be changed with ADB. Check out a guide on de-googleing LineageOS for a more complete list. It’s not AOSP, but close enough. There are also Google servers configured in the sources. How valuable those connections are, depends on your threat-model. If you’d like a paranoid GSI, check out LeOS. It’s probably the most complete treble-compatible option. AOSP by default, isn’t very private.

I’m currently on Tuta, because I can’t imagine Mail without a free tier. It’s run out of Germany(EU). Its 3€ a month for the normal tier, free takes away most features. Like Proton, you need to use their (OSS)-Client, for encryption reasons. It’s currently growing and I hope they don’t go crazy anytime soon.

I was looking at Posteo, but I don’t want my entire internet identity to be gone, if I ever can’t pay for it.

An advantage of Tuta and Proton is, that there is a basic free tier. Your Mail is a center-point of your online activity. Hoping it to never happen, if you ever can’t afford the (cheap) price, you won’t lose access to your mail. Which would suck, for all accounts linked to it.

Yes, that’s what I meant by “widevine tax”, the certification is done by Google for a fee.

Yeah, it’s kinda telling, if you look at my prime subscription for example. I can either:

• Hook into the web-service with Kodi, breaking TOS and theoretically risking the account. While Google, missing their widevine tax, limits the quality.

• Pirate the same content without an account, at full 4K.

It’s truly a service problem.

I do have a Jellyfin server, this is mainly about being able to use the subscriptions I happen to already pay for. Decoding on the pi is actually quite decent with hvec and x264.

Like others said, banking needs licensing and licensing costs money. If you already have a bank account, you already trust one party. Ask them if they roll their own app-payment or are already partnered with a service. That way, you can avoid google/Apple and minimize spreading the trust to other parties. My bank cooperates with Fidesmo, for example. Fidesmo then sells wearables with nfc-pay.

I would absolutely buy a Pixel, if only they supported sd-cards. I get that Google is pushing cloud-storage. If I smash my phone on the sidewalk, I still want to have a local storage, I can take out and thus make live backups to. There are just some features Pixels lack and privacy shouldn’t lock you out of them.

As stated in OP, I have an S2 dish already. Agreed that it’s better than cable. But not everyone lives in a place they can set up a dish on. Rentals and such. My point was that I wanted to use the display without relying on some buggy vendor-locked OS.

From what I can see, this is still a Tizen based smart TV masquerading as a monitor, Apps and all.

I was eyeing Scepter, but I just saw that their stuff is made with exclusively US standards and EU power and broadcasting is different. Didn’t notice that would matter.

Afaik google-pay is prone to fail even with faked safetynet. Magisk can also fix safetynet, but I don’t want to enable root-access. Kinda dumb that the way to fix overcritical security checks is to break security even more. :)

Thanks for the idea though.

Custom roms with relocked bootloader only work on pixels by design. You’ll have to live with an unlocked bootloader.

As for easy installs, Murena’s e/os exists with support. But I can’t vouch for their cloud ecosystem. Other than that, maybe an officially supported lineage device. You will lose safetynet on both unless you want to root.