it won't take long for someone to build a Wamazon Linux distro with all the features and none of the crap.
I don't know what "features" Amazon would include that aren't somehow directly tied into their store and ease of shopping...aka "crap." It's not like they would build a better video/audio driver or something. It would all just be more...advertising and analytics, probably on a cheap platform as hardware has never been their largest source of income, to include Kindles (AWS is, last I checked). Strip those two out of their build and we have essentially an untouched kernel lol, at least that's how I see it happening.
Which sadly hasn't had a stable realase in over 2.5 years, isn't available for modern phone CPUs, and doesn't support RCS. The RCS and E2EE is the main reason I use Messages.
The worst part is it barely works. I'll get more unable to deliver over RCS than I've ever seen on Signal, Telegram and WhatsApp.
Maybe for you. I've never had it not work, with the exception of Airplane mode, but that's by design.
As soon I switch back to SMS it delivers straight away. The fact it doesn't switch automatically further frustrates me because it'll leave messages hanging, when you expect the text messaging app to send texts.
There's a setting under Message's RCS chat to auto resend as SMS if RCS can't send. Have you tried enabling that? I personally haven't because I also use RCS for E2EE for those who don't use Signal. And I'd be irritated if my E2EE app sent it in plain-text/SMS without my explicit consent, which you're implying you want (but can enable with that setting, which would be a blanket consent).
I just know that unlocking a pixel voids the warranty
And how do you "just know" that? Any sources? Everything I've read and even done with my Pixel says otherwise, though I do return to stock and relock before returning.
Is there a way to lock the bootloader and keep a ROM different from the one the device shipped with?
That might depend on the device. I used to tinker and switch a lot, but haven't in years. I do however have GrapheneOS (which is not a ROM, but "a privacy and security focused mobile OS with Android app compatibility developed as a non-profit open source project") on my Pixel and it gets regular updates. Most times weekly/every-other-week, but at worst monthly with the monthly security patches, often before Google releases them...all with the bootloader locked, per GrapheneOS' recommendation.
I say all that to say...not 100% sure outside of my personal and recent experience with GrapheneOS on Pixels, and I haven't had enough coffee yet to do research into phones I don't have.
No one offered to? Not even the business who runs the site nor the departments within said business who do the testing? From the link:
What we test - Canonical’s QA team performs an extensive set of over 500 OS compatibility focused hardware tests to ensure the best Ubuntu experience. Every aspect of the system is checked and verified.
Regular testing for up to 10 years - Roughly every 3 weeks, Ubuntu releases Stable Release Updates, ensuring a secure and reliable experience. These updates are carefully tested by the Hardware Certification team to make sure that systems work well with Ubuntu.
Our laboratories - Canonical conducts tests in dedicated laboratories, located around the world. The “Ubuntu Certified” label is applied to systems that have been verified and are continuously tested by Canonical throughout the Ubuntu release life cycle.
Sounds like it should be someone's job at Canonical to update the list/site.
If you wanna boil it that down that much, sure. It's also run by a non-profit with publicly available source code. And it's not just "encryption," but end-to-end encryption (E2EE), meaning the server and company don't know what you're messaging.
Avoid using mirrored consolidated lists, if possible; it deprives the original list maintainer of visits (meaning they may be less inclined to keep it up to date!)
https://firebog.net/
I ended up getting a few alerts, and each time I tested negative...but I do wonder how accurate the exposure determination was, since for me it was always false positives.
How are you determining you got a false positive? The app alerts you if you were exposed to someone with COVID while out and about in your day. Just because you didn't catch COVID from your exposure does not mean the app gave you a false positive. Just that you weren't close to them long enough and/or your immune system, hygiene, or luck fought it off.
Only way you could really say you got a "false positive" was if you got an alert, for a certain day but knew that you had 0 interaction with people (you never left the house and no one came over during your alert).
Being able to command a device to send you info or perform tasks is different than the device sending info of its own accord.
In this context, where it's implied to send without the owner's knowledge (ignoring the fact it's documented), not really. The article screams "gotcha!" when in reality it didn't, so they're trying to backtrack and downplay their initial response. But I do appreciate their update, it's just got a PR spin to it.
Edit: if the article was initially written as more of a "did you know" and/or expanding on existing documentation, wouldn't be an issue. It's the "it's secretly stealing" that implies malice which is part of the definition of malware... that'shares a category with backdoor. So splitting hairs in the name of PR.
Sounds like you had a faulty unit. Surprised they didn't offer you a one-for-one replacement with another 7P as that sounds like a hardware issue at this point.
With Unbound, you can set it up as a recursive DNS server. Hence, cutting out the middle man. https://docs.pi-hole.net/guides/dns/unbound/