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Comment by lumberingjack | Hacker News Reader

I just want a phone that has a manual physical toggle button that kills the power to the cameras if any apps need the camera they can just notify me to please toggle that switch. One of the nightly build that I put on my note 8 turns on the edge screen notification flash when the cameras are on every once in awhile I see that thing on no reason.

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The Librem 5 will have 3 hardware kill switches -- for WiFi, Cellular, and Camera/Microphone.

This is perhaps the most compelling reason to get that phone. Once it launches, I'll be watching reviews to see if it's usable as a phone.

It's a really exciting project and I hope other phone manufacturers integrate some of those ideas.

I pulled the trigger, and I'll be sure to blog about it once I've used it for a while. I will admit I was a little worried how choppy the demo video of the dev-kit looks[1], but we'll see how it works once I get it.

I'm a little bit worried that their "Chatty" messaging app[2] (which is what the default Matrix client will be) is based on libpurple -- which is a library that has a pretty gnarly history of security issues[3]. It is using a plugin that the Matrix developers wrote[4], which I trust more -- but I'm still queasy about it.

I'm currently working on a Matrix-Signal bridge so I can continue using Signal once I switch to it (it won't have a native Signal app out-of-the-gate and I don't really want to run an Android emulator).

[1]: https://puri.sm/posts/massive-progress-exact-cpu-selected-mi... [2]: https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/chatty [3]: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/qkve5v/secure-mes... [4]: https://github.com/matrix-org/purple-matrix

> that kills the power to the cameras

And the microphones, please :)

Apple seems to be taking steps in that direction

https://www.apple.com/mac/docs/Apple_T2_Security_Chip_Overvi...

All Mac notebooks with the Apple T2 Security Chip feature a hardware disconnect that ensures the microphone is disabled whenever the lid is closed. On 13-inch MacBook Pro and MacBook Air computers with the T2 chip, this disconnect is implemented in hardware alone, and prevents any software—even with root or kernel privileges in macOS, and even the software on the T2 chip—from engaging the microphone when the lid is closed. (The camera is not disconnected in hardware because its field of view is completely obstructed with the lid closed.)

I'd much rather just have the simplicity of a hardware switch than a bug-prone implementation like this. Not to mention that this is anti-user in the sense that it gives the user less control, not more.

I highly doubt Apple will ever implement a basic hardware switch, because of it's dead-simple nature. I find it highly annoying that Apple at times is like a German car manufacturer that likes to over-engineer shit.

Can you make physical toggles which are very unlikely to break due to wear and tear? I've had several phones that have developed problems with physical buttons within a year, which feels weird when you consider how complex the internals must be in comparison.

The "Oppo Find X" has a pop-up camera, so it sort of does this.

> every once in awhile I see that thing on no reason

Being a nightly build could be a very plausible reason for this.

Downvoted for suggesting a nightly build could have bugs. Who knew...

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