July 2022 – Let's Build Robotics with Shadow

July 25, 2022July 25, 2022

My Phone is Sadly Not ROM-Flashable (Stylo 5)

Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472, and today I am exploring my options when it comes to making good on Degoogling my LG Stylo 5 smartphone. Let’s get started!

Not a Feasible Project?

I tried. I really tried. The plight of someone awakened to Big Tech’s abuses of power is near-hopeless in the face of Android and iOS. Google and Apple’s duopoly is thanks to their extensive walled gardens. Google’s open gates admit smartphone manufacturers the world over who all but worship the search giant for money. Users who wish for an existence free from the oppressive “quality control” rules of these gardens are left to brave a harsh, digital wilderness.

Unlike the more traditional desktop platform, the smartphone wilderness is still in its pioneer days. Special preparation must be undertaken before embarkation. Like the wagon trains of old, safe passage is limited to groups. There simply aren’t enough people interested in a free (as in freedom) smartphone experience for groups with technical experience to blaze trails for every model. Few people are talking about the Stylo 5.

I may have enough experience to produce a working custom ROM, but it’s been an exhausting topic to research. Even if I did produce a working ROM, keeping it updated would monopolize the rest of my time. This project direction is not for me. For the experience I really want, I need to pick a ROM and buy hardware based on that.

Just because I’ve abandoned hopes of ROM flashing the Stylo 5 doesn’t mean I can’t re-evaluate my short and medium term plans. Whatever I do, I will need a tool called Android Debug Bridge (ADB) for administrative access to the unit.

I teased an update issue last week on my Manjaro workstation. It looks like there were some significant changes to package names. I had to uninstall a conflicting package to proceed [1], but I lost Prusa Slic3r in the process and had to reinstall it from another source. Afterwords, I found the packages for ADB had already been installed. I played with them a little, but nothing conclusive has come of it yet.

What Do I Actually Want?

I took my project to Reddit’s r/degoogle and got a reality check [2]. User Bubba1601 confirmed my researched suspicion that the Stylo 5 cannot be flashed. Between users Lisse2000 and cd109876, I learned that updates are secure against custom ROM’s for security reasons. Others recommended a Google Pixel as a way to get away from Google because it’s the only line GrapheneOS supports – again for a good reason: the Pixel is one of the few phones that lets you re-lock your boot loader, reducing the possible attack surface.

I was additionally cautioned against thinking too much of the Librem 5, an open-hardware/software Linux phone with an American-made option. Follow-up research showed that while it’s well on the way to being a viable alternative, it’s only enthusiast grade at best so far as I can tell. The premium $2,000 price tag is a bit above what I can afford with pocket change, so this is one project for the long-term dream board once I finalize monetization without compromising my values.

Given that I have to work with the Stylo 5, what CAN I do? User qUxUp was the only one to actually stay on the original topic – and I quote:

1. Use as many as possible FOSS apps instead of google play apps (you can get most from fdroid).
2. Disable what you don't need with adb.
3. Use nextdns to block the services that you don't want to interact with your phone.

I have heard of all of these in one shape or another. ADB is a bit more invasive than I want to wield on a system I care about, but the DuckDuckGo Privacy App (not sponsored) has a VPN to stop unwanted trackers from leaving the device. I’ve been fairly careful since growing sour towards Google, but DuckDuckGo’s app has helped me identify and remove an innocent-looking app or two when they phoned home despite me not interacting with them anymore.

r/degoogle moderator BlueJayMordecai gave the following advice in a pinned post:

“It's okay to change [how you want to DeGoogle] at a later time if you feel you want to go further into repalcements [sic] or go lighter if you realize there's that one tool that can't yet be replaced. [3]”

My threat model is shaped by my understanding of how Biblical end-time prophecy is playing out. I see large companies developing schemes to mistreat their positions for profit. Left unchecked, I can see these being used to more efficiently persecute Christians who disobey future civil laws requiring worship contrary to what the Bible plainly teaches. That and the 2020 political ads on YouTube were aggressive enough to move me to action. In short: I am wary Big Tech intrusion in the short term, but I expect government abuse of the same or similar technologies to slowly grow in the coming decades.

I also know that technology shifts can be disruptive. If I focus primarily on new hardware and software before relying on it, my preexisting technology becomes an already deployed backup when the new stuff breaks. If I do not understand something and it’s my only copy, I leave it as status quo. This has led to the awkward situation of using a tablet I know has junk left deep in its OS, while being downright paranoid of a phone over the same exact junk with maybe only minor differences.

My main focus has been on restricting Google from my desktop experience because that is what I have had the resources to experiment with enough to understand. I am rapidly approaching the point where I will need to accept those bitter terms of service before further study will be of benefit to me. It’s just a matter of time before I’m out of excuses.

Takeaway

While researching big or important topics, I sometimes find myself with topics that stall, take sharp turns, or any one of an array of surprises that result in an unsatisfactory state when it comes time for my writeup. I took my phone to the carrier’s store, and while they are more than willing to unlock a phone so it can go to a different carrier, they either don’t have the tools or aren’t allowed to unlock the boot loader or assist in enabling Developer Mode (needed for ADB) without consenting to Google Services’ terms. At least the store was mostly empty, because I had to try.

There is much to be said about having hardware sitting on your desk, staring you in the face every day. The Stylo 5 has driven me to at least think about custom Android every couple months or so. Perhaps one of these times, I will finally allow this project to rest in deployment.

Final Question

What are your choices when it comes to reducing Big Tech’s influence on your life?

I look forward hearing your answers on in the comments below or on my Discord server.

Works Cited

[1] A. Rojas, “wxWidgets 3.2 update may need manual intervention,”archlinux.org, July 14, 2022. [Online]. Available:https://archlinux.org/news/wxwidgets-32-update-may-need-manual-intervention/ [Accessed: July 25, 2022].

[2] u/Shadow_8472 and others, “No known degoogled ROM for my phone and I’m not ready to maintain one. What CAN I do? (LG Stylo 5),” reddit.com, July 22, 2022. [Online]. Available:https://www.reddit.com/r/degoogle/comments/w5hmq2/no_known_degoogled_rom_for_my_phone_and_im_not/ [Accessed: July 25, 2022].

[3] u/BlueJayMordecai, “Why You Should DeGoolge & Intro DeGoogleing Techniques,” reddit.com, July 20, 2020. [Online]. Available:https://www.reddit.com/r/degoogle/comments/huk4rp/why_you_should_degoogle_intro_degoogling/

July 18, 2022July 18, 2022

My Manjaro Melted Down

Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472 with a side project of the week. Let’s get started!

Surprise! Bad Manjaro update. I seem to be getting them once a year. I rebooted some time last Wednesday, seemingly to a black screen. My first thought this time wasn’t, “Oh, no! What am I going to do?” so much as, “Ugg, I need to refresh my memory on chroot and manual updating with pacman, skills I’ve only used once or twice before.”

No need to go through all the trouble if it’s not actually necessary. Manjaro has a feature where you can boot from one of an installed list of kernels, and I was seeing that list. Every option failed though – the most I ever got was an emergency shell that didn’t aknowledge the keyboard enough to toggle number or caps locks. This install wasn’t going to fix itself.

My first thought was to grab the Debian drive from ButtonMash, but I’d rather not mess up the only known working drive for scanning pictures. Instead, I riffled through my thumb drive collection and located one with Debian 11 install media. I got on Derpy Chips, my other daily driver workstation, and installed balenaEtcher special to safely make a new Manjaro live USB/install media.

During this time, I was researching the problem. Other people were talking about it within the past month, but I didn’t pick up the actual reason – just something about most Linux kernel 5.x versions being incompatible with a change. Do not cite me on this. I also learned a bit about the command:

manjaro-chroot -a

This command came in handy. The actual repair consisted of me booting to the live media, mounting my main Manjaro drive (graphically, even), going over to it in terminal, changing root directory per the above command, and updating with

pacman -Syyu

If it actually did anything, I didn’t discern anything. I rebooted to confirm it was still broken to find things seemingly repaired. Was it ever broken? Did I actually fix it? I may never know. In either case, I installed a 4.x kernel listed under KDE’s system settings program on the off chance my successful reboot was a fluke. A further reboot held true.

Takeaway

This fix was only done within 24 hours and no interactive help because I’ve already knew all of the needed skills already. Unfortunately, as I finish writing this post, more update shenanigans appear to be inbound. It appears a new package conflicts with one called wxgtk-common but doesn’t satisfy wxgtk2’s requirements for it.

Final Question

Were you affected by these or a similar Manjaro update?

I look forward hearing your answers on in the comments below or on my Discord server.

July 11, 2022July 11, 2022

I Installed Android (Again, Pi 400)

Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472 with a side project of the week. Let’s get started!

Free, but not Free

Mobile computers are decades to years behind desktops, and usable free (as in freedom) and open source experiences lag behind accordingly. Android may be branded as open source, but Google did not build their Play Store into the platform’s primary draw by allowing a “free” experience. OEM’s (Original Equipment Manufacturers) making Android devices must play by the search giant’s rules or be prepared to start from scratch.

That iron grip on Android –tight as it may be– still affords room for hobbyist level projects. LineageOS will get compatible devices booted to Android without the need to compile AOSP (Android Open Source Project) yourself. Another project, the difficult-to-search-for /e/, takes the concept farther by removing many of the lingering hooks back to Google infrastructure and making an attempt at a cohesive end-user experience.

Raspberry Pi 400 (Tablet Edition)

A while back, I installed an unofficial build of LineageOS on my Raspberry Pi 400 as a precursor to installing a custom AOSP ROM on a phone. This first attempt was accidentally AndroidTV edition, leading to confusion and sadness. I re-installed it for last week’s blog, but even seeing it ask more phone/tablet-type questions than before didn’t feel like enough to base even a short blog on.

I hesitated when sideloading the F-Droid appstore last week. I couldn’t find their GPG keys to verify the download against, but I learned something in the process. Additional research this week still hasn’t yielded their keys, but I’ve learned that it might involve adding a key repository – sort of like how I couldn’t just start downloading images when I installed Podman on my laptop. However, I want to end up with /e/ instead, so I don’t feel the need to be as careful learning how to add a trusted key repository. Instead, I’ll just keep it offline.

About the only large challenge I solved was getting F-Droid’s install file onto LineageOS. Normally, I would just mount it and drop a file where it needs to go. That wasn’t an option here because I didn’t know where it belonged and the directories above it had locked down permissions. The simplest solution was to just move it over with a USB drive. It installed cleanly from there, and I ran out of time from working on long-term projects and shorter projects bloating beyond this week’s scope.

Takeaway

If you ever hit a road block learning to a safety measure, listen to it. Take reasonable alternate actions to remain safe and try to learn a bit about how to pass it correctly each time.

Final Question

What subjects have you had to conquer a chip at a time?

July 4, 2022July 4, 2022

Happy 4th of July, 2022!

Happy Birthday, America from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472, and my side project for this week would have involved installing F-Droid, but it hit a last minute dead end.

I stubborned gpg long enough to [re]learn how to verify the F-Droid .apk download. In short: private key, download, and (optionally) detached signature. While searching for F-Droid’s public key, I found multiple places talking about their public key expiring some time during or before 2019. I expect my larger writeup will instead involve a section where I weigh different alternative app stores against each other.

Between last week’s marathon project and starting this month’s larger project, I’m a bit burned out. Praise God for affording us a measure of freedom here on Earth in the form of America – and that only a wavering flicker of the freedom in the world to come He’s planning for us.

Happy 4th of July and God Bless!