FreeBSD on the go...

[drhowarddrfine]

Meh. My first mobile phone was in 1998 or so and I still haven't had any issues.

 

[Espionage724]

So beyond GPS nobody is running FreeBSD mobile?

I haven't tried, but I don't think it'd really be able to do as much as I wanted in a vehicle.

Depending on how far I was going, I'd want the car mechanics itself integrated with the infotainment; I'm thinking that requires an OS that can read the car's various sensors. I'd want minimal stuff in-between (less than: car -> proprietary-box -> converter-box -> infotainment OS).

I looked briefly into open firmware for EVs like Nissan Leaf and saw battery BMC stuff. For something like this I'd be more into flashing the main car firmware itself vs the infotainment initially, and depending on how changelogs look I might opt to stick with what others are mainstream testing for software (likely not FreeBSD). But if the car stuff is easy then the infotainment OS can be messed around with for fun

I kind of like the idea of my phone handling GPS more than my vehicle. I'd be more into running mobile apps on car infotainment, and I'm thinking something like bare-bones AOSP or LineageOS and sideloading whatever + F-Droid would be more than enough; bonus points if the infotainment can interact with Android Auto or Car Play from phones (phone can handle GPS while doing navigation VOs/calls/etc over car infotainment).

I could have a full-on DE and mouse for infotainment, but I don't think I'd really use it that heavily in a car, and I have a laptop

 

[Phishfry]

Nissan Leaf I have researched them too. They are dirt cheap with low miles.
Battery replacment real expensive so people cling on to them until they only get 40 miles out of a charge.

Open Source on it would be another good reason to look at them. I see them frequently around DC area. ~$5K


So now I have a recipe for my vehicle.
Touch10 for Front End. I am going to do power consumption tests first.
APU2/3 for backend. I know these run off battery. I have made some GPIO chassis already for APU1/2/3/4.
POE power injector to Touch10 behind seat with networking split off to APU.
APU slots: MSata,GPS, Wifi

This is almost a continuation of a prior project. Mobile Mifi. Ever Evolving.
I don't want to pay for a Cell Plan for this; but a Lojack feature needs it.
GPSd sending data to a Linode instance for logging would be nice.

Straight Talk tablet plan is what I used in the past. That is cheapest easy option for testing. There are now some interesting IOT plans for cheap.

 

[astyle]

Yeah, try typing in a /bin/look --for-fries | grep -v donald on a physical Bluetooth gaming keyboard while doing 100 mph on I-90 in a 1970 Ford truck.

"But, Sir, this is NOT a cell phone, I was NOT texting and driving!".

 

[Phishfry]

2.4ghz media player keyboard and 1987 Ford F150 but yea that looks right.

Really low gearing means I top out at 85mph. Not a roadtrip vehicle.

 

[Phishfry]

Anybody know of any simple xorg menu programs like misc/pdmenu ?

 

[Phishfry]

Found one in ports:
x11/9menu

The point of this being what astyle alludes to.

I need a menu with big buttons. Maybe fullscreen on x start. Maps/Music/Desktop

 

[Phishfry]

What desktop whould you use for this project?

Openbox is usually my go-to for kiosk appliance...

 

[Phishfry]

Is Wayland ready for the task?

I don't need xforwarding on this one so excuses are slim.

 

[Phishfry]

Back to Beastie7 suggestion of Arm64 I think it might have trouble with rendering X11 or Wayland with scfb driver???
Thoughts?
Can I do this with scfb? Mostly limited to lower screen rez.. Is hardware video accel needed for mapping on the fly.

I have been suprised how performant the scfb driver is. It can playback single stream of video just fine.

 

[Phishfry]

The Wayland OpenBox clone is x11-wm/labwc.

What would be menuing suggestion?

 

[ralphbsz]

I don't understand the concern over this tracking. And they're not really "tracking". No one's looking for you I would hope.

If someone is really looking for you, and that party has the access that the law enforcement or national security has, then turning off GPS receivers is the least of the problems. Because every cell phone (or cell modem) is a very good tracker, whether with or without apps. That comes simply from triangulation using cell base stations; and cell phone carriers (being companies with low morals and running on razor-thin margins) have been known to sell all data to location brokers.

With all cell receivers turned off, it gets more interesting. Most modern cars (since about 2005 or 2010) have a satellite / cell receiver (for Sirius radio and car firmware) built in. That's typically a small shark-like fin on the back of the roof, which also contains the FM antenna. I don't know how much that thing communicates in everyday use, and I don't know whether its location can be triangulated like cell phones can. If I really didn't want my location tracked, I would physically remove it, or at least cut all wires. I don't know whether on modern cars, this would cause a "check engine" code to come on (due to lack of ECU firmware supervision), which would then cause the car to fail smog check within a few years.

Since about 2010 or 2015, most cars have tire inflation sensors, which are very low range RF signals, strong enough to go from tire to car. But supposedly they can be read from the roadside as the car goes by; somewhere I've seen research papers using them to study how many people drive on under-inflated tires. But I don't know whether the identity of each wheel is record in any fashion that allows tracing it back to the car or its owner. So for better privacy, one might want to dismount all the tires from the wheels (rims), remove the sensors, and put in traditional rubber valve stems. This is something that can be done at home with some tools; not easy.

And then there is the license plate, and the face of the person driving. With the ubiquity of cameras and plate readers today, any idea that one might have privacy when driving a car is in fantasy land. On the other hand, that data is highly balkanized, and I don't think central access to it exists, so anyone searching would need enormous resources to comb all data sources.

 

[Jose]

If someone is really looking for you, and that party has the access that the law enforcement or national security has, then turning off GPS receivers is the least of the problems. Because every cell phone (or cell modem) is a very good tracker, whether with or without apps. That comes simply from triangulation using cell base stations; and cell phone carriers (being companies with low morals and running on razor-thin margins) have been known to sell all data to location brokers.

It's worse than that. Various law enforcement agencies have deployed fake cell towers designed to track you. They've resisted discovery of the exact capabilities of the technology too:

Cell-Site Simulators/ IMSI Catchers

Cell-site simulators, also known as Stingrays or IMSI catchers, are devices that masquerade as legitimate cell-phone towers, tricking phones within a certain radius into connecting to the device rather than a tower. Cell-site simulators operate by conducting a general search of all cell phones...

sls.eff.org

I agree with you in that a state-level intelligence agency is after you there's precious little you can do to stop them from tracking you and likely getting access to all your Internet-connected devices. However, given the current political climate, I wouldn't put it past government officials buying commercially-available location data to get a list of all persons that attended a protest or rally. Then they could cross-reference that data with immigration databases to round up any who were not natural citizens for questioning or worse.

And then there is the license plate, and the face of the person driving. With the ubiquity of cameras and plate readers today, any idea that one might have privacy when driving a car is in fantasy land. On the other hand, that data is highly balkanized, and I don't think central access to it exists, so anyone searching would need enormous resources to comb all data sources.

Yes, Phishfry lives in Virginia, and has already mentioned Flock cameras. That state that state is becoming a panopticon:

I drove 300 miles in rural Virginia, then asked police to send me their public surveillance footage of my car. Here's what I learned.

Anyone might wonder how often they are caught on police cameras that operate 24/7. I spent a day driving, and over a month trying to get the answer.

cardinalnews.org

 

[Phishfry]

Well back to my flipphone. It has a removable battery. I can control when I am tracked. Another desirable feature to me.

Flock Security Inc. on the other hand has saturated my area which I can not avoid in my daily life.

 

[astyle]

Well back to my flipphone. It has a removable battery. I can control when I am tracked. Another desirable feature to me.

Flock Security Inc. on the other hand has saturated my area which I can not avoid in my daily life.

Just you wait.

There was this joke from anekdotov.net:

A guy receives a call on his cell phone. He picks up, and says, "Hello, is this CIA?"
Pause.
"Uhh, yeah, how did you figure that out?"
"You managed to reach a phone that has no plan, no registered number, and has a dead battery."

Jose : A lot of things are now starting to make sense. Although, if law enforcement catches wind of a protest or a rally, they are not above placing a mole/informant in the crowd, because that is sometimes easier and cheaper than mounting a cam that can capture good info. And this is why such crowds are so hostile and suspicious of newcomers that nobody knows of. Yeah, the excuse that law enforcement has is that they are here to ensure public order/safety and prevent violence.

 

[Beastie7]

Back to Beastie7 suggestion of Arm64 I think it might have trouble with rendering X11 or Wayland with scfb driver???
Thoughts?

AFAIK, I haven't seen anyone with FreeBSD and working X on a mobile device. Just FreeBSD itself. I can't recall the post here though.

You might be able to find something on the postmarketOS wiki. That's where I'd look at least.

 

[ralphbsz]

There was this joke from anekdotov.net:

It's really too bad this forum only has the thumbs up and handshake emojis. The "laughing diagonally" one would be good here.

(Serious side remark: Experience from other discussion forums shows that emojis can lead to problems with communication style and culture, so I think the forum is actually doing the right thing.)

 

[drhowarddrfine]

Then they could...

But probably won't. Too many "news" articles today speculating about what could happen without talking about the flip of that and that's "probably won't".

 

[drhowarddrfine]

the excuse that law enforcement has is that they are here to ensure public order/safety and prevent violence.

As one whose son is a police officer, I can assure you that it is true and not just an excuse. Some gratitude should be forthcoming.

 

[astyle]

As one whose son is a police officer, I can assure you that it is true and not just an excuse. Some gratitude should be forthcoming.

Yeah, uniformed cops do have a legit purpose of safety and public order. Problem arises when matters go beyond something that simple, though. My take is, public safety is always needed. It will be reliably around - even if someone else exploits that fact for questionable purposes.

As an example of when things go beyond simple matters of safety and public order: How about the infamous PATRIOT Act, which only expired in March of 2020? During Trump 1.0 ? A lot of rallies were about protesting the PATRIOT Act. And a lot of surveillance equipment manufacturers like what Phishfry is venting about in this thread - they got their start thanks to the PATRIOT Act...

It's really too bad this forum only has the thumbs up and handshake emojis. The "laughing diagonally" one would be good here.

I think you meant this one: :rofl:=

 

[drhowarddrfine]

As an example of when things go beyond simple matters of safety and public order: How about the infamous PATRIOT Act, which only expired in March of 2020? During Trump 1.0 ? A lot of rallies were about protesting the PATRIOT Act.

Not going to scroll back to read his other posts but the average cop on the beat had nothing to do with that on a daily basis and it expired five years ago so that's old news.

Protesting is a hot fad now but that's OK. It gives them something to do. My biggest complaint is when it interrupts the daily routine of almost everyone else who have better things to do than their nonsense.

But that's as political as I'm going to get and won't comment further.

 

[Espionage724]

Well back to my flipphone. It has a removable battery. I can control when I am tracked. Another desirable feature to me.

Not directly related, but phones with OLED displays can seemingly be deceptive; I have a Samsung Galaxy S10+ and hit shutdown from Android, and the screen looked off for a good 30-40 seconds. The screen on it is cracked though and when there's some power to the display it lights up the cracked area; the display stayed on that 30-40 secs and then powered off.

If it wasn't for that crack there's no way to know for sure if the phone is off just by the display (LCDs have the backlight glow at least)

 

[Phishfry]

Lets face it smartphones could be placed in a special box to acheive the same results. Tracking free travel. Nothing special about flip phones.
I just like to point out the differences. Removable battery is a desirable feature to me.

GoDark® Faraday Bags for Phones

Stop phone tracking & shield your phone from 5G, GPS, EMF, and EMP (MIL-STD-188-125-2) with our military-grade Faraday bags. Lab-tested & durable. Shop now.

godarkbags.com

 

[Jose]

But probably won't. Too many "news" articles today speculating about what could happen without talking about the flip of that and that's "probably won't".

Fine. Let's talk about what's actually happening:

DHS to Begin Screening Aliens’ Social Media Activity for Antisemitism | USCIS

Today U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will begin considering aliens’ antisemitic activity on social media and the physical harassment of Jewish individuals as grounds for denying immigration benefit requests.

www.uscis.gov

 

[drhowarddrfine]

Jose Well, of course. Any citizen or non-citizen stirring up trouble and assaulting others shouldn't be welcome in any country.

News at 11: Over the weekend, my son the cop, looked through surveillance footage looking for people stealing from a company. AND THEY WERE US CITIZENS!!!! OMG!!!!

But all that misses my point. My point is that you read or hear about "could happen" but never that it might not happen or even didn't happen.