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Comment by fidotron | Hacker News Reader

This isn't going to happen.

You won't have modern mobile banking or cellular communications in a device without binary blobs or "trusted" compute modules you cannot inspect.

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That's a lie. Banking apps work fine on desktop browsers with dedicated security tokens such as smart cards or code displays. My banking app runs on GrapheneOS, but my national identity app which it uses for authorization and authentication doesn't. Luckily the national identity supports hardware tokens, so it just means I have to scan an NFC token in my pocket instead of scanning my fingerprint in the identity app.

Banking apps also work fine on rooted phones which mask most common "detect root" schemes. Don't install sudo for instance, my banking app barked when I did that, removed it and it was fine again (they use the cheap package from one of the many obfuscation firms)

There are billions of computer users across the world, but only 100 or so technobarons who want full control over our computers. Full ownership absolutely can happen. It was the standard for a couple decades in the past, and it can be the standard again in the future.

It was the standard when it didn't matter and was just a hobby thing for nerds or academics. Now it's "serious stuff" with billions of regular users who use it for real life stuff.

Without having evidence, for or against your point, I'll confidently say both that you're wrong (about the just for nerds/academics thing), and that mainstream computer use makes demanding full ownership even more important.

You wrote "It was the standard for a couple decades", I'm saying that was so because the stakes were lower, it didn't reach the attention threshold of important enough people who can lobby effectively. Also the zeitgeist is no longer where it was in the 90s and 00s.

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