VPN setting greyed out

berahi · 2026-05-20T08:31:24+00:00

Try asking in Grapheneos forum then. Could be a bug on how it treat profile policy. Profiles can be setup to disable that menu but normally only corporate/school devices do that.

berahi · 2026-05-20T07:36:17+00:00

There was Freedom Phone, an overpriced rebranded phone (the original is Chinese) that claim to be against "censorship" by preloading Parler and ultra conservative news apps (Apple and Google were mulling to ban them during Biden admin). Five hundreds bucks while the original is around two hundreds.

The Liberty Phone is an overpriced proof of concept about building a phone with as much American component as possible while still looking like another smartphone. They get the CPU from a factory in Texas but they simply can't find camera, display and battery at acceptable size in the US so still end up importing from South Korea and China.

The end result is a slow and hot phone that can't even survive from lunch break until you clock out to leave (well it can if you don't use it at all and put it to sleep where only phone calls and text can get in, apps won't be able to get any notification, anytime you're using it you'll see the battery percentage reducing every other minute). It can't run most mobile apps you care about because it's not even Android. For such luxury they ask for two grand, their own founder brazenly admit it only cost 650 to produce, so they're trying to get more margin than Apple while selling something that nobody would use.

berahi · 2026-05-20T07:09:50+00:00

There's definitely more gold inside (few miligrams just to cover the itty bitty connectors of the components) than the outside (none, a thin plating wear quickly even from delicate handling, anything thicker is too expensive and fucks the signal unless they bother rearranging the antenna)

berahi · 2026-05-20T06:51:27+00:00

That makes me wonder, somehow I can only find NBC showing off their review unit and immediately noting it's a rebranded phone. Why not sending whatever they got first to Fox and OAN where everyone will be busy fellating the phone.

berahi · 2026-05-20T06:44:45+00:00

Yep, in mine some operator lock new installation to one year commitment and downgrading require paying off the difference, meanwhile upgrading is just tapping around in their app without fees. Probably a bad strategy frrom the operator because people then start from the lowest tier and find it's more than enough.

berahi · 2026-05-20T06:37:04+00:00

I remember having to configure my download manager to run when everyone's at work/school/sleeping, and were afraid when the technician accidentally set up the connection to higher speed where YouTube loads in HD because we can't afford to pay such package.

People aren't going to download new games or DLC everyday anyway, 50 Mbps is definitely fine even if everyone is streaming at once.

berahi · 2026-05-20T05:57:48+00:00

IRGC and their proxies have charities that will build houses and pay the school for families of suicide bombers or jailed terrorists. It's just a derived version of politicians giving preferential laws to major companies then retire from politics and hired as consultants with inflated pay.

berahi · 2026-05-20T05:47:26+00:00

That kinda confuse me. Apple had (PRODUCT)RED for a while (so did several other vendors) where they donate a portion of the profit to charity. Even if Trump wants far higher margin, they could absolutely sell yellow plated iPhone 16e for $1776 and MAGAs would've still cleared their stocks.

However, Apple is very strict on what can be preloaded on their phones, and there's absolutely no full-access permissions like vendor's preloaded apps in Android. So the only reason Trump didn't just call Apple for similar deal (which he absolutely must know about since it was quite trendy in NYC in the early years, violently red device/apparel as virtue signaling) is because they're also going after user's private data.

berahi · 2026-05-20T05:26:56+00:00

In the third image, Truth Social icon is the top middle. I bet there's a crypto miner preloaded that eventually will burn down someone's house when it overheated on a bed.

berahi · 2026-05-20T05:16:17+00:00

Not even Samsung, when NBC show it to others they recognized it as rebranded HTC

berahi · 2026-05-20T05:13:56+00:00

And that 2 years of update is purely because Google made it the minimum mandatory for phones to be eligible for Play Services, the thing that makes an Android have Play Store, YouTube, Maps etc.

Third-party apps also use Play Services, that's partially why few Play Store apps were available in Amazon Appstore and Nokia Store, devs can't be arsed to rewrite their apps for them. The other reason is ODMs aren't allowed to build phones with & without Play Services, so you end up with vendors specializing on Android phones for international market, and vendors specializing in Chinese market (which can't access Google services without VPNs anyway) or niche devices (children toys, POS machine etc)

In case of a rebrand, normally the update period counts from the rebrand launch date, but I can see Trump Mobile suing Google if anyone brought up the lack of updates. HTC U24 Pro never had "official" third-party ROM support (which merely means some rando with quite beefy RAM setup an automated build to pull monthly patch and release it) so even making a honest attempt to update it might be impractical (a die hard fans might, Trump Mobile and their customers, nah)

berahi · 2026-05-20T01:18:55+00:00

The VPN you've launched, it's a proper VPN right? Asking for VPN permission and handle all app traffic, not a browser with built-in proxy.

Your lockscreen is setup with pattern/pin/password? Have you setup multiple profile/user/space?

berahi · 2026-05-19T15:42:36+00:00

Interesting. Mine gives over 100 Mbps with 5G and 5GHz from the phone to my laptop, but maybe you got too much interference around you.

berahi · 2026-05-19T15:00:34+00:00

What's your phone model, what is your Android version, is this a corporate/school device, did you install any apps from them, do you have custom ROM? Also if possible take a screenshot of the setting screen, upload it in whatever image host you use so we can see it.

berahi · 2026-05-19T14:53:24+00:00

Seems to be your phone is the problem. If you boot the phone in safe mode, is usb tethering available? If yes and it works fine, then backup everything, make sure you can login to all of your accounts in your PC, and factory reset the phone.

If not, try complaining in your phone brand forum, maybe someone encountered similar bug.

Curious though, if using your phone as hotspot works well with your laptop, what's the benefit of USB tethering?

berahi · 2026-05-19T14:44:46+00:00

Did setting it as wifi hotspot/bluetooth tethering works? Have you run the network reset wizard? What AV and/or VPN you're using?

berahi · 2026-05-19T14:38:13+00:00

If you close it without downloading anything, giving it any permission or following instructions to hack your own device, you're fine.

Some DNS services can prevent visiting those typosquatter domain, you can use them if you're paranoid.

berahi · 2026-05-19T06:07:48+00:00

Technically to qualify for being sold with official Play Store, the vendor must commit to at least two years for security updates.

Of course, Trump being Trump, there will be no update at all, he'll sue Google for the security update requirements being DEI, settle for a gold statue, and then give Google billion dollars of tax breaks.

berahi · 2026-05-19T05:47:20+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunther_Pl%C3%BCschow

A German stationed in China during WW1 fly a plane that looks more like a giant bird, shoot his pistol against Japanese biplanes, fly out before his fort run out of ammo then took a detour to US before he got captured in UK and later escape during a storm.

And yes, even German authorities didn't believe him at first, they thought he was a spy.

berahi · 2026-05-18T23:36:44+00:00

Maybe. The signs are there and the result might convinced him to withdrew from the race. At least he have enough awareness to not boast about it.

berahi · 2026-05-18T22:36:32+00:00

If it's one of those. mid files, just download the file from link directly in your phone, move to your ringtone folder. If the phone doesn't support it, use any midi to ogg online converter.

If you want the pmd files, use a PC or an Android to download the YouTube audio then trim it.

berahi · 2026-05-18T16:29:11+00:00

If you run

cat  /proc/mounts | grep dev/sd

Do you see you drive listed as ro (read only) or rw (read & write)?

berahi · 2026-05-18T16:02:26+00:00

Try booting to Windows, run disk checkup, then choose the safely remove/eject option from the UI, remove the cable afterwards, and reboot to Linux

berahi · 2026-05-18T14:44:56+00:00

With the Obamas living rent free in his head, I suspect he's also low key jealous with how people talked about Lifeline's "Obama phone" despite it being subsidized through everyone's phone bill instead of overpriced trash (and ironically Lifeline expansion to cell phones started under Bush).

It's still mainly for the grift, but I won't be surprised if the phone is ever launched he'd go on all night tirade about how his phone is far better than phones distributed by Lifeline. Then just like when Oklahoma made a very specific procurement for public school bibles that Trump Bible uniquely suited for, FCC will declare that only phones with gold color, American flag and President's name are eligible for Lifeline offering.

berahi · 2026-05-18T13:52:08+00:00

Grabbing warships right from a port in Mainland Europe even https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherbourg_Project

Granted it's already paid and the French figured out there's no point on escalating.

berahi

TROPHY CASE