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Heck, if the pay is reasonable, count me in!

No worries, the team Literal is alive and well on HN..

Man, I only understood half of what you were describing, but it sounds fascinating. I you happen to find the time to do a write-up or share your workflow, I would love to read more about it.

The irony of advertising a privacy-enabled de-googled system, and then telling me that my Firefox browser is not support, and that I should use Edge, Opera or Chrome instead....

Browsing:

https://e.foundation/installer/

Reply:

https://imgur.com/a/al1Q9DM


This is related to Firefox unwilling to add support for WebUSB because, I suppose, they believe that a browser is not a general purpose application launcher and the scope of what it can do should be limited. As such, it should not be allowed to e.g. control peripherals like the USB devices.

Which is in my opinion a fairly reasonable take.

But given the current situation, I would assume that the companies providing WebUSB tools like installers would also spend a few moments to create e.g. a Python script that would do the same thing but locally. So that anyone unwilling to use WebUSB within their browser can have a vetted and transparent way to get the same thing done.


> Firefox unwilling to add support for WebUSB because, I suppose, they believe that a browser is not a general purpose application launcher

No, it's security concern.

https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/100


WebUSB Indeed sounds like madness

I am opposed to it for similar reasons as in GP, but it does let you do cool things like installing Android ROMs without touching adb by having a (presumably) WASM-based impl of adb.

And, to counter the arguments that "the site tells you that you need WebUSB support": you get to the https://e.foundation/installer/ when you click "Check device compatibility" on the main page. Personally, I'd expect either a check that works in any browser or a simple compatible device list. Why would I need a special browser just to check if I can use this OS?

This is especially strange considering they have the list of supported devices in their docs https://doc.e.foundation/devices

So I think the issue is that the button on the main page is poorly named


What I currently see:

main page -> download and try! -> browse supported devices

lands on https://doc.e.foundation/devices which is a list of models, while

main page -> download and try! -> check device compatibility

lands on https://e.foundation/installer/ the chromium-only webusb page. It could be a better page; instead of showing a scary "navigator not suppored" modal demanding you install a particular browser, it could say the automated compatibility tester requires one of these browsers and your phone plugged in with USB, otherwise here's the device finder page


Hmmm, It seems to require the WebUSB API: https://caniuse.com/?search=webusb

If the site can detect that it can't use WebUSB, it can give you instructions on how to download and flash the mobile OS, not tell you to fuck off.

Compare: https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/tokay/


That's not an installer, that's a device page.

It's the specific functionality needed here that Firefox lacks that makes the /e/ page show the warning, unlike the lineage page that does not have the problem in the first place.


The fun part is that I got to this installer page by clicking on "Check device compatibility" on the https://e.foundation/e-os/ page..

So I was actually expecting a device page, not a WebUSB program..


Okay, that makes your complaint very understandable.

Absolutely. This is handled very badly, and I was also surprised about the bad UX on that screen.

Same here, they advertise with the duckduckgo browser app on the above page, but it's not supported checking compatibility.

e/OS is not degoogled, only some of the functionality has been rewritten in microG (eg not implementing security checks but instead spoofing them), but still uses Google play sdk and libraries.

Additionally it runs in the privileged mode, so any exploit on that, well, means back luck.


same for grapheneos. only difference maybe that you can choose to also manually install it without WebUSB

The irony of this is that when using Firefox to browse to /e/OS url to check for compatible devices:

https://e.foundation/installer/

I get a pop-up telling me that my browser is not compatible, and I should use Edge, Opera or Chrome. See [1]

[1] https://imgur.com/a/al1Q9DM


I think it's due to the lack of WebUSB API support in Firefox, it is needed for the web installer, both for eOS and GrapheneOS

As I explained elsewhere in this post, I got to this installer page by clicking on "Check device compatibility" on the https://e.foundation/e-os/ page.

So I was actually expecting a device listing page, not a WebUSB program.


yes it is a error on the website. it should link you to this page : https://doc.e.foundation/devices instead it links you to the web installer.

When I clicked "Browse supported devices" it took me to https://doc.e.foundation/devices

That's a bizarre one. 'You need Chrome' is bad enough, which even the bloody NHS are guilty of, but I always assume that's 'just' an assumption that not Chrome means IE or something, and they haven't woken up even to the proliferation of mobile Safari users.

How is it "bizarre" when it even tells you why it needs a Chromium-based browser?

I didn't know it did, the commenter didn't mention it, and Imgur gave me an overloaded error message. (When it doesn't do that, it usually tells me it's not available in my region or that the image has been deleted anyway.)

Anyway, assuming it's for WebUSB flashing, I agree with other commenters it should just explain that's not available and still give the instructions - bonus points for hiding the unusable WebUSB option.


Just allow me to doubt that one (1) programmer is all AMD would need to close up the software gap to NVIDIA...


Are you suggesting that CUDA is the entirety of the "software gap", because it's a lot more than that. That seems like a strawman argument.

Andrzej Janik.

Starter at Intel working on it, they passed because there was no business there.

AMD picked it up and funded it from 2022. They stopped in 2024, but his contract allowed the release of the software in such an event.

Now it's ZLUDA.


Just out of curiosity (not knowing anything about the complexity of adding new devices) what makes the support of a Xiaomi pad 5 and pad 6 possible, while there is not support for the pad 7 and 8?

Are these devices so different that none of the testing and development work is transferable to the newer devices?

And, reversing the question, if one was to be the owner of a such a Xiaomi device, what can be done to help them being supported?


It can rub a reader the wrong way because it is written in a sarcastic tone to self-reflect on things the author did wrong or didn't do.

Every piece of "advice" and patronizing questioning, such as "You did that, right? Right?", is a self-reflection by the author on things she should have done but didn't do, and learned that the hard way. It is not meant to be a patronizing statement to the the reader, but it is rather self-depreciation.


> The proper safe answer to driving in snow is top quality snow tires, not chains. Chains is the worst possible idea. The chain laws are laws created by politicians who live in sunny Sacramento and have never seen snow and have no clue.

Although I understand the sentiment, and agree with the general idea, I must say that living in the mountains, I have encountered snow conditions on uncleared roads where I did not manage to get home due to the icy/slushy/snow depth mixtures encountered on relatively steep sections. I would probably have made it home with chains if I had them, and had bothered to put the on.


That's a pointless comparison.

1) The Michelin is 120 euro tire, vs the 60 euro Barum

2) The test page says nothing about the test conditions in which the tires were tested.

3) The Michelin tire test explicitly states:

     The testers explicitly recommended against standardizing cars with all-season tyres in Sweden, suggesting that drivers would be better served by dedicated summer tyres paired with proper winter tyres when the season changes, rather than this compromise solution that fell well short of true summer tyre performance.


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