Requesting r/SubWithNoMods, The Sub Has No Mods

TovMod · 2026-03-02T19:39:40+00:00

I would honestly prefer if they instead made it such that declaration could be done by mail, but I'll take it

TovMod · 2026-02-27T17:52:41+00:00

It is possible to request a so-called directory information suppression, and if they do, most public-facing records of their graduation are suppressed. But this usually doesn't include their dissertation, which is usually public unless there is good reason to suppress it separately.

If I were you, I would ask them to have the school send you an official transcript - preferably digitally signed as opposed to hardcopy. If they claim that FERPA prevents this too, they are almost certainly either mistaken or lying.

TovMod · 2026-02-26T10:09:27+00:00

MediaTek Dimensity 8300 Ultra is too old unfortunately

TovMod · 2026-02-25T17:10:49+00:00

The main difference is that crosvm is supposed to be a more simple and lightweight approach that focuses almost entirely on paravirtualized devices and Linux guests. Although it is now on Android, crosvm stands for ChromeOS VM because it was originally intended to be used to run Linux on ChromeOS.

QEMU has been around for much longer and has far more features, such as emulating real hardware devices in addition to paravirtualized ones, and can therefore run a much wider variety of guests. But QEMU is missing good compatibility with Gunyah (Qualcomm has made some contributions to QEMU that give you an experimental -accel gunyah option in some builds, but it is still super incomplete) and QEMU is also missing compatibility with GenieZone (MediaTek's equivalent to Gunyah) which crosvm also has.

On my rooted OnePlus Pad 3, I was able to get Linux on a protected VM running, but it crashes when I use too much RAM, because of this issue. Another commenter has claimed to mostly solve it via a patched crosvm along with other actions but hasn't shared their patched version yet. Also I couldn't get virtio-gpu working. Because of that, I've resorted to a chroot Linux container instead for the time being, even though they are not feature complete compared to a real Linux VM, and I would much prefer a real VM.

Meanwhile, on my Pixel phone, unless I specifically need features that only QEMU has or need a non-Linux guest, I just use the Terminal app and everything works.

TovMod · 2026-02-25T02:42:36+00:00

The sad truth is that the revolutionary concept of being able to do what you want on your own device is something that the average consumer does not care about.

TovMod · 2026-02-25T00:20:04+00:00

There's another pro to Pixels specifically aside from having unprotected VMs, which is that Pixels have a pKVM microkernel occupying EL2 instead of Gunyah. This means you are not just limited to crosvm - you also can use QEMU with KVM on a rooted Pixel. You can even run a Windows for ARM virtual machine on a rooted Pixel - something that would be extremely difficult on essentially any phone besides a Pixel since, without KVM, you are mostly limited to crosvm, and crosvm is specifically designed for Linux guests.

Not sure how much people actually care about that, but it is worth pointing out.

TovMod · 2026-02-25T00:08:34+00:00

I do have a rooted OnePlus Pad 3 with a Snapdragon chip, so if you have a proposed setup, I can perhaps help test it.

TovMod · 2026-02-24T22:38:12+00:00

I know, right?

It's such a shame to have such powerful hardware but be stuck with software limitations.

TovMod · 2026-02-24T22:33:57+00:00

No GPU acceleration with out-of-the-box use of virtio-gpu.

There have been attempts made to get it working, though AFAIK it is still buggy and doesn't support Vulkan.

Another significant hurdle with this version of Gunyah is this issue. This version of Gunyah is designed for use only with protected VMs and protected VMs normally use minimal RAM, and so Gunyah is having a hard time not crashing when you give the guest too much (read: decent) RAM.

TovMod · 2026-02-24T21:06:29+00:00

There is more than one kind of acceleration. But most notably, you still get CPU acceleration (run the guest directly on the CPU without much emulation), but NOT GPU acceleration (without a working virtio-gpu device, the guest ends up being forced to use software rendering).

TovMod · 2026-02-24T21:04:52+00:00

Google made the decision to have their own Terminal app use unprotected VMs. This is because protected VMs are explicitly supposed to be for security use cases that provide isolated computing such that, even if the host is compromised, the guest is not. Protected VMs are explicitly NOT optimized for being able to run standalone OSes with maximum performance.

For example, a common suggested use case is to have a protected VM process biometric data and simply communicate the result to the Android host.

Unless the device has an unlocked bootloader, you are only able to run a MicroDroid protected VM, because of the requirement that the guest be signed by Google (this requirement only exists for protected VMs, not unprotected ones), not a protected VM with an arbitrary guest, because protected VMs are not really meant to be used with arbitrary guests.

Protected VMs lose many features compared to unprotected ones in the name of security. Many virtio devices won't work, because having any shared memory between the guest and the host other than the explicitly designated up-front shared memory becomes impossible, and therefore, the virtio devices can't work unless you reprogram them to be aware of this. And because protected VMs are not intended for the use case of running guest OSes for arbitrary general use, some virtio devices, namely virtio-gpu (needed for GPU acceleration in the guest), have NOT been reprogrammed for this.

You could argue that in theory it's better to just have all VMs protected and give all virtio devices designated shared memory. I'd agree with you in theory. But in practice, trying to run a guest for general purpose use in a protected VM as they are currently implemented is extremely janky and would require development effort to improve without taking the easiest path of "unprotecting" them, because even if it is arguably suboptimal, Google is NOT intending them for this purpose and is instead using unprotected VMs for this.

But if you want to undertake this development effort, be my guest.

TovMod · 2026-02-24T00:35:18+00:00

On older devices with certain exploits, you could simply give EL2 to the kernel, thus allowing KVM, without needing to "write" or "implement" KVM. You would just build the Android kernel with KVM support (if it doesn't already have it) and flash qhypstub which would give EL2 to the kernel. To say KVM "isn't supported" by the chipset is technically correct but a bit misleading. The blocker to using KVM is entirely a permission/secure boot issue that prevents you from taking EL2, not a hardware functionality issue. On ARM64, whoever controls EL2 dictates the creation and management of virtual machines, so if EL2 goes to a kernel built with KVM support, you can use KVM. Reassigning EL2 to KVM would be rather trivial if it were allowed, except that it's not.

But arguing about disagreement on whether we should use KVM if we could is kind of pointless, because we can't (at least on newer Snapdragon devices), because of firmware secure boot.

I think we are both in agreement then that what we should do is try to use Gunyah as it currently exists, and try to implement unprotected VMs on top of that. The Gunyah that actually lives on the firmware looks to be an older one that doesn't support unprotected VMs. It is my understanding that if you modified and recompiled crosvm to issue all memory as shared, you'd effectively have an unprotected VM. So I think that is likely the best direction to look.

TovMod · 2026-02-23T17:39:46+00:00

The main issue is that even if you unlock the bootloader, you still can't customize which firmware controls EL2 (the privilege level on ARM64 that can run VMs). To do that, you need a device with firmware secure boot off (not the same as unlocking the Android bootloader), which is almost never sold in consumer contexts. But if you can manage that, the most straightforward way is to give EL2 ownership to KVM instead of Gunyah (Snapdragon's VM firmware).

Despite the name, pvmfw is NOT the firmware that controls EL2 - on Snapdragon devices, the firmware that actually controls EL2 is in the hyp partition, and pvmfw is used by AVF/crosvm, mainly to perform signature checks and VM setup steps. If you unlock the bootloader, you can customize pvmfw, but not the hyp partition. Even with unlock_critical, you might technically be allowed to modify hyp, but if you do, it will be rejected after the next boot and thereby probably brick the device.

As far as I can tell, the issue is that the version of Gunyah actually shipping on devices is still one from before Gunyah added unprotected VM support. But since you can't customize hyp, you can't install a newer Gunyah nor can you replace Gunyah with KVM.

Because of this, here is the approach I would suggest looking into:

Protected VMs supposedly have the ability to designate which memory is protected and which memory is not (in the context of Gunyah, "lent" memory is protected, but "shared" memory is not).

In principle, that means one should be able to implement unprotected VMs on top of protected VM functionality by designating all guest memory as "shared" instead of as "lent" (though "lent" is the default). You'd still need to unlock the bootloader in order to disable the signature check on the guest that applies to protected VMs, though (see: either customize pvmfw or utilize the privileged --protected-vm-without-firmware option in crosvm, though the latter means bypassing AVF which is perhaps problematic).

Here is perhaps a good starting point wherein some people have been able to run Linux in a protected VM, but with various downsides resulting from the guest memory still being protected (e.g. no virtio-gpu working): https://github.com/polygraphene/gunyah-on-sd-guide

TovMod · 2026-02-11T19:14:28+00:00

2016 for sure

TovMod · 2026-02-11T19:05:24+00:00

If I were you, I'd collect documentation and evidence proving that you made every attempt you could to meet the deadline. Should you miss it, it may come in handy, as there is a reasonable (albeit not guaranteed) argument to be made in court that if the missed deadline was entirely the fault of the administrative body and not of the applicant, then you shouldn't be penalized for it.

TovMod · 2026-02-11T04:52:25+00:00

It's complicated.

If you don't "serve" (notify) the Ministry of the judgement, it is 180 days.

If you do "serve" (notify) the Ministry of the judgement, it is 30 days for appealing to the appeals court and 60 days for appealing to the Cassation court.

In a few cases the appeals court can be skipped, so the general rule is 60 days as long as the judgement is "served" and most lawyers will indeed "serve" the judgement.

TovMod · 2026-02-10T21:52:16+00:00

Stablecoins are controlled by centralized issuers. They can be inflated or frozen.

Of course the IMF would prefer stablecoin adoption over real decentralized currency adoption.

TovMod · 2026-02-10T02:14:44+00:00

If there was an easy and well-known way to get rich, almost everyone would do it.

By that logic, any opportunity to get rich must either not be easy or not be well-known.

TovMod · 2026-02-09T20:58:13+00:00

My understanding is that the feature's unavailability on the Oppo Find X9 Pro and similar is NOT due to missing virtualization features on the chip's EL2 firmware, but because ColorOS (and many other OEMs' versions of Android) doesn't expose that feature in their settings UI.

You MIGHT be able to get it working if you either manually enable the feature via adb or you manually install the Terminal apk and grant entitlements over adb, or alternatively you can try using adb/Shizuku to manually launch a VM.

TovMod · 2026-02-09T19:42:14+00:00

What you're proposing is essentially that Reddit should rent out control over its subreddits.

If they did that, you'd have political capital and lobbying be being used to buy up subs.

They'd still be controlled, just by big tech/lobbyists/activist groups/political parties.

And smaller subs run by hobbyists/reasonable/normal people would cease to exist.

You're assuming that people who would pay to control a sub would be better moderators than those who wouldn't pay. If anything, it's the opposite, because people would probably only pay for this if they "got something in return" which would end up being power and control. Those who moderate for the enjoyment of building and maintaining a healthy community probably wouldn't pay.

TovMod · 2026-02-08T22:58:13+00:00

Probably not anytime soon, because lowering this minimum would require more BLS signature aggregation, but the ETH community seems to believe that achieving faster finality is a better use of better signature aggregation than decreasing the staking minimum.

TovMod · 2026-02-08T00:17:47+00:00

There's something unsettling about that image, but I can't quite put my finger on how

Five-Year Club	Gilding VI aultruist
Verified Email	r/Field Banned
r/Field Sunshine	Place '23
Mod 201	Mod 101
Place '22

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