normal window user who don’t know what a terminal is. Most of them even freak out when they see “the black box with text on it”.

Good point! That being said I’m wondering how we could help anybody, genuinely being inclusive, on how to transform that feeling of dread, basically “Oh, that’s NOT for me!”, to “Hmmm that’s the challenging part but it seems worth it and potentially feasible, I should try”. I believe it’s important because in turn the “normal window user” could potentially understand limitations hidden to them until now. They would not instantly better understand how their computer work but the initial reaction would be different, namely considering a path of learning.

Any idea or good resources on that? How can we both demystify the terminal with a pleasant onboarding? How about a Web based tutorial that asks user to try side by side to manipulate files? They’d have their own desktop with their file manager on one side (if they want to) and the browser window with e.g. https://copy.sh/v86/ (WASM) this way they will lose no data no matter what.

Maybe such examples could be renaming files with ImagesHoliday_WrongName.123.jpg to ImagesHoliday_RightName.123.jpg then doing that for 10 files, then 100 files, thus showing that it does scale and enables ones to do things practically impossible without the terminal.

Another example could be combining commands, e.g. ls to see files then wc -l to count how many files are in directory. That would not be very exciting so then maybe generating an HTML file with the list of files and the file count.

Honestly I believe finding the right examples that genuinely showcases the power of the terminal, the agency it brings, is key!

I recommend letting content creators about this and suggesting alternatives, e.g. PeerTube instances, Vimeo, etc.

The general consensus amongst the Android community is that rooting is detrimental to privacy. In a sense, I agree with them since privilege escalation because of human error becomes a much bigger threat if the user has root access.

No, that’s BS. It entirely depends on your “threat model” just like security.

Namely if you go full OSHW/FLOSS and yet you volunteer your data on Facebook.com (or whatever that website is called today) then you have no privacy. It’s not a technical problem, it’s a behavior problem.

If your threat model is about government hiring dedicated staff to know what you are up to, or that the infrastructure you rely is can’t be trusted, then rooting is the last of your problems.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t worry but I don’t see the relevance of rooting Android in that situation. Root or not does not somehow change how your modem behaves, you’re still at the mercy of the drivers.

I recommend you check projects like Precursor (at https://precursor.dev/ redirecting to the CrowdSupply page) which try to tackle, if I understood correctly, the kind of worry you have, namely actually understand the entire stack.

That being said, even in such context, you still rely on some infrastructure to relay messages to others so you need that and the recipients to also respect your privacy. If not (which would be a fair assumption) then at least you must understand the cryptographic primitives you rely on… and if you don’t (which most people don’t, me included despite my interest in the mathematics behind that, in particular one-way functions) then you have to some trust in the public research in the domain.

So… I do have a Precursor, tinker with it, PinePhone and PinePhone Pro, had an iOS phone until recently, switched to (rooted) /e/OS and my personal position is that while interacting with others (and a mobile is 100% about that) one has to make pragmatic about their choices.

1. email, everybody has that, if they can’t use it, well up to them to offer an alternative but anyway with DeltaChat I can get notified instantly.
2. Web. Sure the app does provide some convenience but most banks do have a working website that do not need an app as usually SMS 2FA works.
3. Real taxis do have phone numbers… but they also have apps and most do not required Google Services AFAIK
4. OpenStreetMap and CityMapper and (I know I’m going to sound nuts) but actually road signs or asking people
5. No but same, plenty of apps on F-Droid that don’t require Google Services, otherwise… a .txt file? .ods spreadsheet with visual? Same on NextCloud so you can share with others even though nobody cares? (sorry)
6. PinePhone, PinePhone Pro, Purism Librem, and (ahem…) Apple iPhone if you want a compromise between privacy and still convenience?