Snapdragon 4 Gen 2

I dislike my apps being dropped by the OS at 8GB, so I personally think a 2GB upgrade is worth it. 128GB would be enough for me too, though. Overall, I think 6GB is usable, but I personally would upgrade.

Thanks for sharing, but I don’t know since I don’t own it.

Since webp is Google’s, I wouldn’t be surprised that everybody is using Google libwebp’s derived code to display webp images. There was an advisory to check updates for ALL your browsers on ALL platforms. Edge also had a recent update.

Regarding the US reception, I don’t know. 🤷‍♂️ But,

The 4G has this Xioami spec:

• 2G: GSM: 850 900 1800 1900MHz

• 3G: WCDMA:1/5/8

• 4G: LTE FDD:1/3/5/7/8/20/28

• 4G: LTE TDD:38/40/41

The 5G has this Xioami spec:

• 2G: GSM: 850 900 1800 1900MHz

• 3G: WCDMA:1/2/4/5/8

• 4G: LTE FDD:1/2/3/4/5/7/8/20/28/32

• 4G: LTE TDD:38/40/41

• 5G: n1/3/5/7/8/20/28/38/40/41/77/78

So, for connectivity, 5G is the way to go.

If I were to buy my own cheap phone, from my preferred local store, I would be limited to pretty much Samsung, and Chinese phones such as Xiaomi.

From experience using an extended Wifi (open area, multiple routers and extenders), Samsung models seem to have the most problem on the edges. People with Chinese phones (and in general, iPhones) don’t seem to have this problem. So, Samsung is out for me. I would consider Samsung if my regularly-used Wifi signal is strong.

These damn phones last more than 3 years. Having a 2-3 year update policy (normal for cheap Chinese phones) are pretty wasteful. Therefore, the phone should be likely to support custom ROMs. For this purpose, Xiaomi is it.

Xiaomi models come with either MediaTek or SnapDragon CPUs. Since phones are often used a security device (2nd factor and such), having a hardware-backed storage is something to be desired. For this purpose, SnapDragon is it.

Two models I end up with:

XIAOMI Redmi Note 12 4G (8+256) ~USD$ 172

• CPU : Snapdragon 685 (Octa-Core 2.8GHz)
• RAM : 8GB LPDDR4X
• ROM : 256GB UFS2.2
• Display : 6.67" AMOLED 120Hz
• Back Camera : 50.0MP + 8.0MP + 2.0MP
• Front Camera : 13.0MP
• OS : MIUI 14 (Android 13)
• Battery : 5000 mAh

XIAOMI Redmi Note 12 5G (8+256) ~USD$ 245

• CPU : Snapdragon4 Gen 1 (Octa-Core 2.0GHz)
• Back Camera : 48.0MP + 8.0MP + 2.0MP
• OS : MIUI 14 (Android 12)
• Rest same as above.

Sorry about no price ranges. This store usually sells phones on the lower half of the spectrum, though. So, let’s say they are mid prices.

I would personally would grab the 4G version. Faster CPU. Possibly newer Android. I am on Wifi most of the time. Don’t need 5G.

No, unfortunately, I haven’t. Maybe sometime…

You are right. The EMUI outside of China is still based on Android with its own eco-system, although the other EMUI is also based on HarmonyOS which may/may not be compatible with Android, especially in the future. It seems, the phone has disappeared from some international markets altogether, the countries being friendly to China or not, probably because consumers are worried that their phones wouldn’t be supported by critical apps.

Well, you squeeze them, and they squeeze you back. Typical. Like, the US is not expecting that.

Besides the chips, there are still the OS. It’ll take a while yet, if ever, for Huawei phones to gain traction again outside of China. What would you buy: Qualcomm/MediaTek/Huawei(SMIC) chip? What would you buy: Android/Huawei OS?

If your account is that sensitive, generally no. Fastmail wouldn’t escape the court order to turn over some email account’ IPs either. Plus, for accounts that are not e2e encrypted, the law may just demand the contents of the account.

If you have the state actors as enemies, you have to dial up your securities to a different category altogether.

I migrated to ProtonMail out of curiosity after more than a decade, but when they turned over the IP address of a fucking CLIMATE ACTIVIST to police, I decided to halt that process

The police was able to get just the IP addresses. Hide your IPs with Tor for political activism, etc.

It’s cool. It’s hip. It’s Blockchain! Come on, folks, let’s invest in boring and colorful monkeys. You WILL be rich beyond imagination!

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I totally agree with you. They probably missed a few. Thx for adding one more.

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“That momentum is surely gathering pace in the age of generative AI, which we believe presents a remarkable opportunity to create a new stream of revenues, while allowing us to reduce costs across the business” …

News Corp recently reduced staffing costs through widespread redundancies.

How exciting!

And the arms in this case.

No kidding. The email itself is smooth. But now, I bet you would have caught it by the sender, though, the paper mentions using gmail addresses for the from field.

When I was a student, if someone gave me free stuffs, I wouldn’t have thought too much about it. People nowadays have to have 0-trust policy for their online comm; this is pretty dystopian.

Sorry it’s not clear. It’s the example phishing letter sent to the student, in the GPT-V-triad email case.

You don’t need admin access to do a lot of damage on a windows system. From the user space, a malware can:

1. Exfiltrate files
2. Read memory of other processes
3. Read all user credentials from the credential store, including from TPM
4. If the malware can fool the user to authenticate using Windows Hello, even the password managers that store encrypted secrets in credential stores aren’t safe:

See this same class of malware at (unfortunate link, but you can see the detailed discussions there): https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitwarden/comments/14r29p6/meduza_stealer_will_steal_on_windows_browser/