Tᴀᴋᴀɴᴀsʜɪ Hᴏʀᴏ @[email protected]

If I were the leaders of Huawei I think now it is a great time to engage more in the open-source community. Worried about backdoors? Make all the firmwares FOSS. Being cut off from Google proprietary apps? Just fork AOSP and use micro-G instead. I am sure there are many people that would buy a fully open-source and free mobile phone, regardless of what country that phone came from.

But Huawei won't do this. On the contrary, they have stopped providing Linux kernel source code of their devices. I couldn't really understand their move but all these moves just seem to self-confirm Trump's accusations, which doesn't seem to be wise at all. Maybe they are really spying on people? Or maybe they are just dumb?

The fact that Android users all around the world are SOOO dependent on Google proprietary apps is itself a very dangerous thing that hasn't be mentioned at all by mainstream media. Android is open-source, but Google can still basically screw up any phone manufacturer by simply cutting off their stupid CTS licensing, because all the consumers want freaking Google Apps on their phones. Thankfully the Trump Administration now reminds everyone of this possibility. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-huawei-tech-alphabet-exclusive/exclusive-google-suspends-some-business-with-huawei-after-trump-blacklist-source-idUSKCN1SP0NB

First attempt to contribute some code to AOSP https://android-review.googlesource.com/c/platform/frameworks/base/+/964275

Trying to fix a bug in AOSP

If this is true, I might really consider buying a Chinese-made x86 CPU, just because it can run Coreboot. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Hygon-Dhyana-Coreboot-First

We are finally back online. Our server went down for 1-2 hours during the morning due to a network problem. Now everything should have been fixed.

I actually think hackathon are pretty dumb. You could do much more meaningful things in 48 hours.

Finally on my custom-built ROM. Say goodbye to a ROM that doesn't even have open-source device tree

And also, yeah, upgrading. From Android 5.0 to now Android 9.0 they change the scheme dramatically every freaking time they make a new release. Unless your vendor really cares about upgrading, you are essentially doomed because many of these encryption may rely on some hardware stuff. Yes, they may also rely on proprietary firmware and libraries. Even if they don't, well, then there is still not a high chance that the encryption won't break for newly-ported custom-ROMs from a higher version, especially when you have already encrypted your device with the old scheme.

The encryption scheme used by Android is such a mess. Imagine an encryption scheme that is incompatible even within its own ecosystem -- the AOSP one is not compatible with the Qualcomm modified one. If your device is encrypted, then you have to make sure every freaking time that you don't mess up the encryption scheme, or your device may get FORMATTED.

I've resorted to non-encrypted mode for a long while. Although this doesn't feel good at all, at least I don't need to worry about my data going missing every freaking time I upgrade or change my ROM. I enable LUKS on all my computers and it works completely fine without this much nonsense. In a well-standardized ecosystem, things like the incompatibility of AOSP and CAF encryption scheme should never happen -- or is it that these vendors never consider their users installing custom-built ROMs?

The best thing when hacking in the Android source code is that you have to train your brain to context-switch between multiple tasks. Otherwise you would have nothing to do in the hours of building process.

A $1000 phone of some brand:

- Cannot run custom software
- No third-party application store
- No headphone jack
- Fake advertisement
- Planned obsolescence (software-enforced)
- Proprietary charging / data port
- Sells the same phone 1000 times

Almost any sub-$500 phone:

- Bootloader can be unlocked
- Third-party application store allowed
- Headphone jack
- Standard charging / data port
- Innovative design

WTF the ROM for my new phone I downloaded yesterday did not make the device tree open-source. WTF. This is the first custom-ROM I've ever used that doesn't even have an open device tree. I'm now feeling extremely bad and pulling the LineageOS source code to build my own. I shouldn't have trusted other 'developers' in the first place.

I vaguely remember that the US have been declaring "national emergency" every few months recently.