Use a dumbphone as a starter phone, or maybe even wiphone, an open source VoIP variant that you can also use as walky talky.
Discussion
So that sounds like good advice, dunnit? But what exactly is a starter phone? And what of the use cases I outlined would that really work for? And what about the annoyance of potentially having two phones to maintain, keep charged, etc. for different purposes? Whenever I really start digging in to the realities involved, it starts to feel like digging in quicksand, and I don't get very far.
At one point, I mentally walked through the steps needed to actually get a proper burner phone, as an early part of a larger exercise to create a full second "burner" identity (probably not a legal one, granted). It was a huge mess, and just creating enough geographic separation was going to take a lot of time (and gas money). It would also either piss off or alarm the wife, or both. In practical steps, I got as far as having a couple prepaid visa cards sitting around, that might not be easily traced back to me.
The one charges once in 3 or 5 days, its smaller and sturdier, isnt addictive and just does its simple job. Altough this would mean that in dome way the phone will give away your location via nearest cell tower "triangulation"(kinda like cornering). Keep that in mind.
Then you need some else stuff. Relying on sms also is inherently not privste because of dependance on a central identity host and relayer aka phone service.
SMS is garbage, agreed. Err - actually not. SMS actually has some great use cases, but privacy isn't one of them. The best use case I've found is getting a message out to a monitoring party when I am in very poor coverage areas. SMS has usually done a good job of trying to send out whenever the phone detects even its most basic carrier connection. I think this has actually gotten worse, because now I see messages come back as "not sent", and I have to manually try and resend them.
Most messaging isn't very private. That doesn't mean it can't be anonymous. But relying on SMS - well, you'd have to be more precise on what you're relying on SMS to do.
Yeah true. I wondered if there might be opensource equivelants to those technologi
Ugh. This feels like programming. When faced with a confusing and mentally taxing situation, we look to see if anyone else has solved it for us. And then, especially in the bitcoin/nostr world, I think we've been programmed to hope that the solution is open source, like any one of us is going to go and read the fucking code, or make changes to it. It's a virtue signal. If I say I want an open source solution to problem xyz, then the bitcoinbros will like me, and the nostrgirls will think I am a dev.
Dude, this really isn't personally aimed toward you, I promise. Just something that sparked a fucking short circuit in my brainwaves.
Fuck this. I hope someone has the solution, and kept it themselves, and wants me to pay for it, and doesn't want to share at all. Then I can tell them to fuck off, and go about my day figuring out my best path forward, which probably isn't a solution to my SMS problem, that I don't even have!
Well, let me clearify my point of view here.
#Open-source is first of all important to see if there are no malicious codes in there. Indeed, not everyone is going to read the code (altough there should be special programs DESIGNED for inspecting and sniffing trough code) but it is also about being able to proof IF a corporation is doing shady stuff. We cannot easily prepare on how to get privacy on microsoft windows because we don't know what is in it. If we have strong suspicions that microsoft is installing crap in windows, like an AI (cortana) that listens to you, we cannot prove that Microsoft is actually doing that, they can just deny it or ignore it. With FOSS #Linux, we can actually prove to everyone if something is happening, giving the users a stronger position.
Secondly, being able to set up a program or utility without having to go trough the repeating process of asking for a license, or asking for knowledge, is more efficient. We don't have to pay a corporation to access an app or service, if we can just scroll trough the open-source code itself and duplicate that. Advancements can be made faster, like setting up independend networks.
Third, it is just a moral decision that decentralizes the abilities and knowledge of anything. It is more transparant, it is free, it is innovation focused and if it goes rogue, we can fork it.
And it also is less enslaving and less addictive.
I think most of that, for most people, is cope. but if it works for you, great. This last bit is nonsense, unless maybe you are saying that OSS isn't built with the intent to enslave and addict, and arguably other code is.
I like OSS too, but I think its strength is in its contributor group and the diversity it represents, and not every OSS project has a large diverse contributor group. For something like an operating system, you would hope that would attract many contributors - but for simple tools, perhaps not.
The other thing about Open Source that I like is even more philosophical - in that I don't think intellectual property should be a thing. Thoughts and ideas should be freely shared, rather than hoarded and protected and hidden. But on the flipside, I think the opposite about physical property. And source code is somewhat there in the middle. It is an idea that has been implemented into something, and someone did work to produce that product. So I would say my mind on this aspect of open source isn't entirely made up at this point; I could be convinced to see this a different way.
At the end of the day, I think I want convenience and utility. These are tools, we expect them to do something for us to improve upon the experience of doing similar tasks without. Often OSS is not the best of these things. Linux is inconvenient in how long it takes to learn, set up to your liking, etc. Other OSS tools are developed to optimize a specific utility, while a more general closed-source tool has broader utility (more features). I've found this especially true with map software. There is a convenience to working with one software, or one software company, across a broad suite of tasks, instead of having separately developed and packaged tools for each use case. Like for my automotive repair, I tend to buy tools from one supplier, and perhaps in larger kits. I haven't acquired each socket and wrench independently, although I definitely have some specialty tools. I might start with Craftsman, or a store brand like Kobalt, and then specialize into DeWalt or Snap-On.
Corporate closed source software tends to have a lot of utility and convenience because they are looking to attract the broadest market of people, so they add value by adding features for everyone. OSS doesn't tend to do this, and rather focuses narrowly on features, because the incentive to sell to broad markets isn't there, in most cases.
Ultimately I don't need the best tool for each use case, just something that gets the job done easily enough with the least amount of bother, and unfortunately, OSS isn't really aligned with this, at least not today.
I understand your viewpoint.
In my opinion, FOSS software empowers the user when they need it. And people who dont care about it being foss, might still care that their cpu is sucked up by a game that has gigantic amounts of background ads data collection. And then they can turn to people who are willing to check it out and be able to prove stuff if its open-source and otherwise not.
most FOSS software is definitively less bloated, doesnt try to keep you in the app, has no ads, etc etc. It is straight to the point and offers much choice.
On your opinion about source code being in the middle of the free for all and absolute ownership spectrum: I think that sourcecode is just information shared in a standardized package. It doesn't cost much to replicate it, like digital books and whatsoever. But it is information that is being shaped and constructed on a set of many many many many rules.
Also, digital things can almost always be replicated and thus be automated. Maybe there even are already programs that automate the interaction of other programs. Programs are in itself just automation codes for computer codes.