Yes, I am aware of such technology - they announced similar capabilities in our existing surveillance system. I know that it is most likely not as advanced as China’s, because that’s how it usually is here. However, it is not clear just how good it is in practice - at least in some cases, they’ve been overselling it (at least in regards to recognizing obstructed faces). So I am not sure just how dangerously accurate said gait recognition is, especially since they have much better facial recognition to depend on.

Yeah, but I don’t see the point of driving here at all.

Depends on how advanced the surveillance systems are. Yeah, I would consider driving to be impossible to do anonymously - but when it comes to walking or using public transport, depends. I am not sure just how well they can track a person with a covered face on those.

I wouldn’t trust them not to store the initial one as well tbh. Nothing technically stops that and it’s in their interests.

From the context of your previous comments, it seemed like you were talking not about not having a mobile phone in general, but rather a SIMless phone. Using it over Wi-Fi only is indeed doable - but you’d need an Airplane Mode on an OS you can trust, just having no SIM would not be enough.

Also no, I did not have such a job - I don’t understand how this question relates to the conversation.

Yeah, but the operator would see an identifiable IMEI.

I also have not seen Zcash accepted as payment nowhere nearly as frequently as Monero.

An IMEI moving around.

You’re just shifting trust though - may be good in some cases, but not universal. Aldo does nothing about the cell tower connections tracking the location.

In a lot of places, cell carriers enforce KYC too though.

Ah, then I can sleep calmly I guess. There are some group pictures with me, but none have me tagged specifically so I guess that’s not as bad.

Well, everyone had their photos taken for their IDs, and these photos might’ve easily been stolen or leaked… Wonder if this would be enough for such a system.

While I do use crypto for digital purchases, for physical ones I would much rather pay cash. I either shop in-person or order delivery to the online store’s physical office where cash can be paid, which is usually the only delivery method without extra cost anyway. Our big Amazon-like marketplaces only accept prepayment, but pretty much all others with a physical office accept payment on delivery.

I doubt any FOSS restriction is doable at all. As for the supply chain - xz showed this is indeed possible… But no one can guarantee that every encrypted client would be able to get such a well-hidden backdoor, and that it will stay undiscovered, and that it wouldn’t be invalidated with an update… But yeah, the only way this can be combatted is having more eyes on such software.

If a backdoor is forced to be added into any project, wouldn’t someone be able to fork it and go on without the backdoor? Maybe even the original dev incognito…

That is one hell of a donation, because no way unlimited data costs $50 a month :/

Excuse me, what kind of overpricing this is? ~$50 a month is insane for phone service, what kind of perks do they add on top to justify THAT? Cheaper to just buy a truckload of anon simcards and change them like gloves.

I recently got a 7a for $300, quite expensive for me but imo worth it. Maybe 8a, after the release of 9/9a, would also fall into a similar price, with 7a getting to $200 eventually.

Yes, absolutely. Having to use a dongle for my earbuds sucks :( SD is something I don’t really notice tho because 128 gigs is pretty much bottomless for a phone.

And from what I’ve seen, Pixels are probably the friendliest to other custom OSes as well.