OppressedBread

hi gang

so I've been working on this fully arm based homelab project and one of the things I decided to do is compile myself a Linux kernel with specific adjustments that suit my needs after building my own dtb.

I kept running into errors and went into the troubleshooting rabbit hole for 3 days to no avail until I decided to try it In a different distro (Ubuntu) and it just worked?!

I know I'm being very vague here but I'm curious if anyone faced a similar issue like this and I'd love to hear why

I knowww I know save your forks and torches but I'm in the middle of a fully 3D printed homelab project and I can't afford to start learning FreeCad just yet.

Everytime I even begin to think about using windows on my second laptop makes me kick and scream, its genuinely vomit inducing and its keeping me from finishing my project.

I stumbled upon this website (there are others like it too) and I found it somewhat helpful, it gives you a grade on how much respecting their terms of service is while giving you bullet points of the good and bad.

It doesn't tell the whole story but its a good reference if I wanted to get a good glance at policies without the legal jargon, they also allow for contributions which is good.

Dude I remember when pcsx2 was struggling to run on my computer unless I heavily tweak some settings, now it just works.

Even more amazing and jaw dropping is that I could now emulate these games on my phone, I tried ARMSX2 and it was stable enough that I 3D printed myself a phone holder that snaps onto my controller for on the go ps2 gaming.

I really dislike their new DRM update even if its "testing the waters" , after being a fan for so long I'm set to completely drop them by the end of this year (yes I'm waiting for gta6).

I managed to convince my normie friends to switch with me to PC gaming by being their IT support 😂

Hey everyone, Hope you all having a good day today, I apologize in advance for this long read but TLDR will be at the bottom.

There's this potential issue I'm facing right now and I need some opinions on how to go about this or maybe I'm overthinking this situation.

Context: I'm Running a google pixel phone with grapheneOS for about a month now, without any sandboxed google play services, the experience has been amazing and so freeing, this switch was overdue since all of my services are open source / privacy respecting or self hosted solutions, this was the last step to finally be "free" and I just got up one day and decided to bite the bullet, buying the phone with cash.

BUT i made the rookie mistake of not checking banking app compatibility and as luck would have it, my banking apps outright blocked GOS users and no settings would work

Luckily with some patience and a bit of RE magic, I managed to come up with bypasses for 2 local banking apps in a little over 3 hours, it was laughably easy and any user could pull it off without changing any settings or installing anything.

issue: Here's the potential problem.

Now we may all know the Privsec GOS banking app compatibility list at first I was over the moon to make a useful contribution ESPECIALLY to a list like this.

And then it dawned on me, I'll be potentially shooting myself in the foot and here's how:

1-I live in a relatively small country that isn't mentioned anywhere in this list, I'll be the first one in my nation to make a contribution, while yes we do have wiggle room for internet freedom, the local government showed that it will not tolerate moves that will encourage the masses to take privacy routes, basically "if you're gonna do it, shut up about it or we're gonna come after you" it did happen before.

2-The population pool is small, to make matters worse, Google pixel phones aren't even a thing here, I had to REALLY dig around to find someone that sold these brand new, the second hand market is just as bad, no one is selling these phones so I imagine that people who actually have these phones here can be counted on my fingers.

3-The bank I'm using most probably already logged the phone type, It wouldn't be so hard for them to connect the dots if they got alerted about my bypass solutions, The privsec fill out forum needs me to include my phone model name and build number, potentially leading to a full OPSEC compromise.

Verdict / Thoughts:

I'm split on this issue, part of me things I'm over thinking the shit out of this situation and I'm over estimating their capabilities.

The other part is telling me that I'll be destroying my opsec and I should stop.

I'm thinking of falsifying Device name / model on the forum to avoid this but I don't know if this is even enough and I don't want to mislead other users.

TLDR: Local Banking apps blocked GOS, came up with a bypass but not enough people use Google pixel phones locally and this may lead to a full OPSEC compromise if I posted about it.

Hello everyone, nice to meet you all.

This question was probably asked around here but is it really possible to be your own mail provider?

I think I'm experienced enough when it comes to homelabbing that I could take on something like this.

I THINK im aware of the technicalities, I did some research but it still begs the question, is it really worth it? would it be hard to build up a reputation so that your emails don't land in spam folders?