The EFF had just released a blog spotlighting the Calyx Institute.
At least from first glance, it seems like the Calyx Institute is very well-funded and have multiple purposes beyond Calyx OS.
Of course, Calyx OS is more well-known here for not having feature-parity with Graphene OS, but the organization also offer mobile hotspots as part of their membership tiers. In addition, Calyx hosts a Tor exit node and provides a free VPN service. They also give grants to support the development of privacy tools and to help grassroots organizations that fight against surveillance.
Do you agree that they should be a “model” for other anti-surveillance projects like the EFF claims they are? Or should another organization deserve this spot? Perhaps, these projects should focus on one good service rather than a bunch of projects.
EFF didn’t say that in the linked article. If you ask me, it’s not clear what is admirable about Calyx. Their OS is pretty much pointless next to GrapheneOS. Their hotspot plans are just T-mobile resells with uncompetitive pricing.
I really have little patience for non-profits that say the right things to get revenue but fail to solve real problems. Source: worked for one.
They don’t and never have supported Galaxy phones. I’ll grant there’s a couple Motorolla and Fairphone models they support that GrapheneOS doesn’t, but I don’t think that’s a clear demonstration that the OS has much of a point, which is all I said.
I was looking at their stated goal of “bridging the digital divide with affordable internet access” juxtaposed by their expensive mobile plans, for one thing. I’m not in the mood to break down all the dubious claims they make about their OS too. Granted, I can’t claim to know their intention in making misleading claims is just to get revenue.
Pointless non-profits that don’t solve real problems are bad. There’s a real opportunity cost to the donations, grants, and work hours put into them.
I’m curious how exactly Calyx “serves their niche decently enough” to justify their existence and revenue. Genuinely, I want to know.
It’s kind of tragic in my opinion because Calyx has the resources to meaningfully compete with GrapheneOS. For whatever reason they would rather lean on false marketing than developing a solid product.
This is inaccurate. Yes it uses tmobiles network but It’s actually all handled through MobileCitizen and each hotspot line costs calyx about $5/mo. So yes, if you remove the hardware from the pricing, you basically pay about $41 USD/mo. However, it’s completely unlimited, uncapped, and unthrottled. At worst, you get deprioritized if a tower is overloaded but I’ve never had any issues in the 3 years I’ve been using them. The rest of the money goes to their fundraising efforts.
Also, if you live in the US and your library rents hotspots it’s likely the same mobile citizen ones.
How is it only $5? It’s a long story but dates back to when the US gov sold spectrum to Clear under the agreement that nonprofits/gov or something got it use it free of charge for x years. That stipulation got passed to sprint when they bought clear and now Tmobile. I can’t recall but I think it ends sometime in early 2030.
TL;DR a hotspot plan through calyx is an absolute steal and work incredibly well. I’m going on 3 years of service
I don’t see this information anywhere on their website, but if true it makes more sense. Thanks for sharing.
Having uncapped speeds is pretty good. Other T-Mobile resellers have cheaper unlimited plans but they actually lower speeds after about 35 GB, so I see it wasn’t a fair comparison on my part.
Providing a better-privacy OS for Fairphones, which are very appealing for folks with certain ethical and environmental goals.
Privacy-respecting hot spots
I know someone who works at EFF; apparently they frequently work collaboratively with Calyx on various privacy advocacy matters and find them really helpful and great to work with.
That explains some of the other miscellaneous things that the institute does, like providing a number of high traffic TOR exit nodes.
Other things I’m sure I’m forgetting
There are also circumstances where one may want an alternative to Grapehene for whatever reason. For instance: five years ago when I was first considering privacy-respecting OS’s I joined both Graphene and Calyx’s Matrix communities to lurk and figure out which one to use. I hadn’t even posted anything yet when, soon after, I received a message from the moderators of the Graphene server saying that I had to leave the Calyx server or I would be banned. I wrote a message in the community asking what the hell that was all about and the founder himself responded to accuse me of being part of an organized harassment campaign and saying he had the receipts and screenshots to prove it. He didn’t provide them.
This, naturally, put me off of Graphene until he stepped away. I hadn’t installed a custom ROM in a over a decade and needed a place to ask questions. The Calyx community was wonderful.
Just because something isn’t as good as something else doesn’t mean it’s terrible, pointless trash. Graphene is the better OS and is what should be recommended on PG, but more options is a good thing. CalyxOS has its niche and the institute apparently does some good work on other privacy matters.
Not really more privacy respecting than a normal mobile plan.
Let me put it this way: GrapheneOS is a superior OS, you agree. The only thing CalyxOS has going for it is that it supports a couple more devices—that’s all anyone brings up. Why not fork GrapheneOS with the goal of porting it to more hardware? GrapheneOS has suggested the idea.
This is what I mean by opportunity cost: CalyxOS puts all that effort into making their own OS and end up duplicating a lot of work done better by GrapheneOS. That is a waste, and I really don’t like non-profits that waste time and money.
I heard you the first time. I’m not saying it’s terrible trash. I’m saying there’s an opportunity cost when time and money is spent on something that isn’t as good as something else. That’s just true by definition.
Yeah tbh my experience with the Graphene community has always been on and off putting.
Dare have something like “Aurora store is fine depending on your threat model” or “Firefox is fine {same thing}” and “Use F-droid under certain circumstances” The community will paddle you like a ******* maniac who just came across the street ready to be bullied
Don’t get me started on the FUTO Drama I had, even threatened to mute me and did it. (And trust me, Don’t bring up FUTO or it gets ***** up)
Now it seems that the relationship with the mods I had, tried to say along the lines of making it up to others but honestly their reputation makes it long gone. And even a former mod warning me about “You’ll never know about them” before that. (PG and Techlore)
Honestly they stopped caring where I stand which is a good thing. I was also as far as to be accused by another user for “Being in Techlore”.
The GrapheneOS community can’t even agree on cloud storage for NAS Backup for ****'s sake,
what honestly snapped me the most was the FUTO and the false accusation.
I’ve decided that I was officially done with this community only reserving it as a last resort or rather a technical support. And the irony that people in PG are having the same values as GOS would here yet they actively attack. At some point I considered switching to Calyx because of this bs.
Again love the people that were nice and respectful on GOS, nothing but good love but the rest man.
I’ve decided that until people like PG and/or Techlore still recommend GrapheneOS I’ll keep using it… And this is why as much as I would love to financially support GrapheneOS for making such an OS, these practices makes it off putting that I’m even at the point of outright discouraging financially supporting Graphene until they get it together. (Which I normally don’t want to be but seeing through them they make me wanna be)
I was normally gonna mention about getting banned due to calling them out for their behavior but not gonna get into that and as nice as the independent mods forgave me for. It’s not worth my mental health at all anymore.
I write this anonymously as I want to mitigate the risk of being falsely accused if there was an odd anyway. As some in the community could recognize me for if not.
Longtime lurker in a lot of privacy communities, and my experience has been very different. I have learnt a lot more being in graphene community than anywhere else, simply because they do not tolerate misinformation and pretenders. I am not sure why you are talking about graphene in a calyx thread, but maybe you have your reasons.
I admire this about them. Cookie cutter suggestions without any background are bad There is no best option to settle on.
Not sure what this is. FUTO not being open source? It is true. Rossman being a kiwi farms user and frequent malding personality? Checks out.
Techlore does not recommend them last I checked. It also sell courses and promotes less secure systems like calyx os, which is like grift 101 for privacy space, so not sure why you trust them Same category as rob braxman for me.
I think the issue with calyx and other places has always been: They suck money out of the ecosystem by grifting people unfamiliar with ground truths. This means less money for deserving projects. I also internally puke whenever groups like calyx hide behind privacy advocacy because there is nothing to show for it. Whatsapp has done more for privacy than most of these advocacy organizations combined, except places like ACLU.
Not doing very well on shaking off those accusations
I do not think you should leave such messages here, unless you wish to and moderators wish to allow clothes to be dried in the public regarding all the allegations graphene makes against calyx, techlore, privacyguides, etc. and vice versa, which is not fruitful. I admire seth for acting like an adult about conflict with graphene and hope other groups have the same emotional and intellectual honesty when they realize how they are conning their trusting audience by batting for a substandard solution and splitting funding and efforts.
Hi just wanted to respond about why if that’s okay with you:
I responded to @mika’s post responding about their experience with Graphene, Calyx and their lurking situation and I added an input of my own. (And as I said before, It once made me consider switching to Calyx, making it juust relevant enough for this, and if not, you’re entitled to that opinion!)
Of course My clothes would be unfolded further if I start to say anymore, These are purely my experience with the community and Everyone’s mileage may vary
Honestly I’ve already taken enough mental toll with them I don’t wanna discuss this any further.
One more thing, I said Mitigate, some clever folks could or could not figure it out, I don’t know yet.
Now if possible I’m gonna try taking a fresh sleep to try and have everything ensured I guess (or could be too late who knows).
I think what no one said is that many projects just fail in the end because of different reasons. While it is true that adding 1 option to a pool of, say, 30 good to great solutions would probably be meaningless, having 2-3 options is always good in case something happens.
Kind of like IF FF fails, there are no real contender to a Chromium based browser (for now, at least).
Thank you for sharing your experience. I want to emphasize that your perspective is completely valid. It is best that we avoid too much personal discussion though to avoid off-topic discussion (and any form of harm to your mental well-being).
I’ll allow some discussion on community experiences as long as it doesn’t go too far into that topic. Personally, I am critical of Calyx OS and wanted to discuss the organization itself rather than personal grievances. If there are any debate or discussion, lets focus that on Calyx instead of community members.
You and I find this to be true because our sense of privacy/security aligns with that community’s.
Techlore has its problems, but grift isn’t one of them (may happen in search of virality or marketing or whatever, but I haven’t seen it happen, yet; or, may be, I’m not paying attention).
As for “less secure”, it goes without saying that everything is less secure given a rigid enough threat model.
Calyx actively collaborates with multiple FOSS projects (like F-Droid & Lineage) in the Android space, no? They once had a neat thing going on with Graphene, too (viz “AOSP Alliance”). It all came down due a spiralling set of events.
Graphene and PG are very different communities (with their own set of problems). Not surprising one finds trouble with both, as nothing is perfect and god knows everyone’s list of grievances & grudges runs unto infinity. Digital Privacy is a charged topic with a lot of passionate folks around.
There is no best option to settle on.