added new blog on grapheneos

Signed-off-by: Avinal Kumar <avinal.xlvii@gmail.com>

.github/workflows/builds.yaml

@@ -29,7 +29,7 @@ jobs:
       - name: Setup Hugo
         uses: peaceiris/actions-hugo@v2
         with:
-          hugo-version: '0.124.1'
+          hugo-version: '0.134.3'
           extended: true
       - name: Install elm-land and node packages
         run: npm install

blog/content/posts/blogs/privacy-is-the-new-black.md

@@ -0,0 +1,246 @@
+---
+category: blogs
+date: 2024-09-22T05:47:00
+description: Privacy is just like hope. It is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously
+  the source of your greatest strength and your greatest weakness. This post outlines my switch
+  to GrapheneOS and my experiences so far.
+image: /images/grapheneos-kill-bloat.webp
+tags:
+- grapheneos
+- privacy
+- degoogle
+- android
+- pixel
+- google
+- security
+title: "GrapheneOS Saga: The Privacy-Centric Midlife Crisis"
+---
+
+In **The Matrix Resurrections** Morpheus says *Not all seek to control. Just as not all wish to be
+free*. The ever-increasing cases of privacy invading technology and the number of people sprinting
+to adopting them reflects the quotes in its entirety. It is true that in the modern world it is
+nearly impossible to have control of your complete data. But with few changes you can decide how
+much one has access to your data. Do remember once anything is on internet, it is forever.
+
+## My Smartphone Journey
+
+I got my first smartphone in 2014. It
+was [Samsung Galaxy Star Pro](https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_star_pro_s7260-5749.php), a
+very basic budget smartphone with Android 4.1. I used it until mid 2019, then for a few months I
+used ASUS ZenPhone Go. It belonged to my friend. This also means I have never used 3G on smartphone.
+It was a direct jump from 2G to 4G.
+
+My first good smartphone
+was [Nokia 6.1 Plus](https://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_6_1_plus_(nokia_x6)-9178.php). Excellent build
+quality, clean OS with decent performance. Camera quality was surprisingly excellent considering
+that it had almost no AI based processing. Nokia can be a market leader in smartphone, but it seems
+either they don't care much or they aren't putting much effort. I had to leave this phone in a year
+because of severe charging port issue. Other than that it is still one of my most favorite
+smartphone.
+
+Then I bought [Google Pixel 4a](https://www.gsmarena.com/google_pixel_4a-10123.php) in January
+of 2021. First gadget bought with my first earning. Pixel 4 and 5 series are my most favorite
+smartphones still. These are ergonomic and handy phones without many bells and whistles. The
+design is nice with good performance and clean OS. After these things started going bad.
+
+My current smartphone is [Google Pixel 7a](https://www.gsmarena.com/google_pixel_7a-12170.php)
+bought in 2023. It is good but for the price I would expect a little more. Takes excellent photos
+and the performance is decent. The stock OS is unfortunately not as clean at it used to be.
+
+## Why GrapheneOS?
+
+Before I can explain why I choose GrapheneOS, I should explain what I need. It can vary person to
+person and phone to phone. But the keywords are same, privacy, security, performance and control.
+
+### What I Do Not Need on My Smartphone
+
+This is a very opinionated list of things I do not want on my phone. This is in part inspired by
+privacy and performance concerns. A lot of it comes from my way of interacting with smartphone.
+
+- AI: It is awesome in quantities in which Wine can be enjoyed. Too much of it and the phones
+  behaves exactly like a drunken, too much talk but very little of it makes any sense.
+- Apps I will never use: Every smartphone comes with some set of preinstalled applications. Some of
+  them as crucial for the phone to function normally. Some of them are useful but may have an
+  alternative. And others neither crucial nor useful. And on most phones you cannot even
+  uninstall/disable them. It makes no sense to keep two apps with same functions or apps with no
+  functions.
+- Spyware/Malware/Adware/Bloatware: On many smartphones these are intentionally installed. Ok, maybe
+  not the first two, but definitely the next two. Most of the Chinese smartphones are riddled with
+  Adware and Bloatwares, probably the reason why they are so cheap. They are privacy nightmares and
+  eat up your performance and battery.
+- Inability to control permissions: A smartphone is a huge data generator and gatherer. If wrong
+  entities have access to it, they may use it for nefarious purposes. One of the shocking example
+  is [How Facebook was able to track location using accelerometer](https://www.cpomagazine.com/data-privacy/facebooks-use-of-alternate-location-tracking-methods-to-circumvent-apple-privacy-protections-expands-to-accelerometer-data/).
+  So I would like to be in charge of what permissions each application has.
+- Gimmicks: IYKYK
+
+I still want my phone to be usable and have regular updates. I want it to perform close to what it
+was designed for.
+
+### It just makes sense
+
+Once you are clear that what you do not want on your smartphone, GrapheneOS immediately makes sense.
+I can achieve everything listed above and more. I actually researched and planned for almost a year
+before I finally installed it. Now that I have done it, I think there is no going back.
+
+## Installing using Fedora
+
+GrapheneOS can be installed using WebUSB or via command line. Both are simple, but WebUSB is
+simpler. Since Fedora is not in
+the [supported OS](https://grapheneos.org/install/web#prerequisites). WebUSB may not work, for me,
+it didn't. So I opened my favorite tool, the terminal and started
+typing. [Installation via CLI](https://grapheneos.org/install/cli) works flawlessly as long as you
+follow it step by step. There are few extra steps you might need for Fedora, that I will be
+explaining here:
+
+1. Install these packages:
+
+  ```bash
+  sudo dnf install android-tools
+  ```
+
+2. Follow the official instructions up
+   to [OEM unlocking and booting into bootloader](https://grapheneos.org/install/cli#booting-into-the-bootloader-interface)
+3. Check if fastboot can detect your device
+
+  ```bash
+  sudo fastboot devices
+  ```
+
+4. After that you can continue following the instructions. Use `sudo`.
+
+Wait patiently as it takes some time and there is not much interactive response. Be sure that the
+process has ended successfully before you disconnect your phone.
+
+## First Impressions
+
+The onboarding was short and clean. No account logins, no spooky agreements to accept. Once you set
+up your phone, it should feel like a minimal installation of any Linux distros, few necessary
+pre-installed apps and nothing else.
+
+In GrapheneOS all apps are sandboxed, no matter what is its origin. They have similar permission
+scopes and no app is treated as royalty. On stock Android, some Google apps have system level
+access, which they absolutely don't need for function. Unlike most custom OS available, GrapheneOS
+is a completely de-Googled OS. You can see a detailed
+comparison [here](https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm). This means you should be just
+fine without any Google Apps at all.
+
+## Getting It To Speed
+
+I wanted to retain my ease of use and most of previous apps. Some of them may be privacy invading
+but with newly gained superpowers, I should be able to control them. I do use a fair share of Google
+Apps as well as FOSS applications.
+
+![Fully Configured GrapheneOS - Lockscreen, HomeScreen and Apps Menu](/images/grapheneos-looks.webp)
+
+### My daily drivers
+
+These are everyday applications, like calendar, payment and banking apps, maps, messaging, phone,
+contacts, browser, email etc. To install apps from Play Store you will need to install Play Services
+first. This is easy, just go to the App Store and install them.
+
+### Enhancers
+
+There are few apps, mostly FOSS that I use to improve my experience. In no particular order (its
+alphabetic):
+
+- [AdGuard Home Manager](https://github.com/JGeek00/adguard-home-manager): An AdGuard Home client
+  app, that lets me quickly control and manage my self-hosted AdGuard Home installation.
+- [Aegis](https://getaegis.app/): Probably the best 2FA apps that is also FOSS. Compared to popular
+  options like Google Authenticator, it encrypts your token at rest, lets you import and export as
+  well as take encrypted backups.
+- [Immich](https://immich.app/): A FOSS and self-hosted Google Photos replacement. Except editing,
+  it has everything you may need in a media backup app. Even more features are being added
+  regularly.
+- [Insular](https://secure-system.gitlab.io/Insular/): I use this to enable a separate work profile
+  where I keep all my less used or data hungry applications. When not in use I can just pause them,
+  and it saves battery as well as enhances privacy.
+- [Lawnchair](https://lawnchair.app/): To be frank, I am unable to find a launcher that fits to my
+  liking. My favorite launcher is still the OP Nokia Lumia launcher. Lawnchair is a Pixel launcher
+  replacement with a lot more features and customizations. I use it
+  with [Arcticons](https://arcticons.com/).
+- [ServerBox](https://github.com/LollipopKit/flutter_server_box): I use this to keep an eye on my
+  servers and even make small updates via ssh.
+- [Tailscale](https://tailscale.com/): Three of the apps mentioned above will be unusable if not for
+  Tailscale. In layman terms, it is a p2p VPN that tricks all the participating devices like they
+  are connected in same local network. So you can access your remote servers and data without ever
+  exposing them to internet. Additionally, it also redirects your DNS request to a custom server (
+  like AdGuard Home) or even make one of your devices act as exit node.
+
+## Things I Loved
+
+New OS, new experiences and new things to love. There are many things that made me say _**Wow**_,
+but I will point out the biggest changes in my smartphone experience.
+
+### Game-changers
+
+- Google Pixels are known for churning out good performance out of comparatively less powerful
+  hardware. With recent AI outbreak, Google and other organizations are putting too much of it even
+  in places that makes little sense. GrapheneOS is clean from all that bloat, not even the
+  Assistant. If I really need it, I can install specific applications.
+- Battery life improvement is the biggest visible change I observed. I am not getting around 25%
+  more screen time than before with similar uses.
+- I can now decide what permission each app has as well as stop their access to network completely
+  without relying on a third party apps. You also get fine control for your location data as well as
+  activity indicator.
+- As I mention in my first point, Pixels have good performance, but GrapheneOS takes it to another
+  level. My phone feels significantly faster. This should be expected since you no longer have bloat
+  apps running in background.
+
+### Little things
+
+- You can archive any installed application instead of removing them. This makes sure that you don't
+  have to set up again but still get rid of them in practice.
+- Ability to install apps in user profiles without any App Store installation.
+- The usual things, you can see the complete list of improvements/new things
+  on [GrapheneOS features](https://grapheneos.org/features) page.
+
+## Things That Went Wrong
+
+Yes, not everything is great with GrapheneOS. There were some downsides, some failures as well loss
+of data. I backed up all my data before making the switch and still got few things wrong.
+
+### Horribly Wrong :(
+
+- I lost my WhatsApp data completely. I am still a bit sad about it. This happened because WhatsApp
+  couldn't detect active backup on my Google Drive and decided to start new. This is a scary example
+  of how dependent everything is on Google, if WhatsApp had allowed independent backup, this would
+  not have happened. I did find a probable fix, but after I lost my data. You can use _Transfer
+  Chats_ feature of WhatsApp to transfer between phones. But you need two phones with latest
+  versions of WhatsApp so not possible for me anyway. There was a lot of not-important data, few
+  important and some which I wanted to remove but couldn't. So the destiny decided it for me, it
+  seems.
+- GrapheneOS doesn't have a great backup solution. It uses an implementation of Seedvault, which is
+  secure but not reliable at all. Most of the time it simply doesn't work. Except USB backup,
+  nothing worked for me. That also means you have to regularly take manual backup.
+
+### Manageable
+
+- All banking apps worked, except PayTM. After some research I found that it is not GrapheneOS
+  fault. It seems PayTM hardcoded application used for webview. The usual _Android System Webview_
+  is not available neither installable on GrapheneOS since it uses its own implementation. It is
+  okay because I always use a different payment app.
+- Getting location to work was a little tricky. First few attempts completely failed. GrapheneOS
+  uses something called _Reroute location request to OS_ which limits when and how Play Services can
+  access location. A great privacy feature, but it took some time to work.
+
+## Things I am missing
+
+- Reliable backups would be a major missing. The GrapheneOS seems to be working on it, but it may
+  take time.
+- Some of the features are not latest compared to Stock Android or even completely missing i.e.
+  Wallpaper Chooser, Extreme Battery Saver, Digital Wellbeing, pausing of apps. I understand that
+  these may not be a priority for the team, so it's okay.
+- I loved _Now Playing_ feature on Pixel, it is not available.
+- Although GrapheneOS is extremely minimal, there are still apps you cannot remove. The preinstalled
+  apps for dialer, contacts and cameras are simple and do the work, but the UI is pretty outdated,
+  and they do not have many features. So I installed alternatives but I cannot remove them. Some of
+  them can be disabled though.
+- There are few UI issues that needs fixing. Not anything critical but sometimes it bothers.
+
+## References
+
+- [GrapheneOS Website](https://grapheneos.org/)
+- [Comparison of Android ROMs](https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm)
+- [Installation using Fedora - Forum](https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/359-fedora-to-install-grapheneos/4)
+- [The Matrix Resurrections](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10838180/)

netlify.toml

@@ -13,4 +13,4 @@
     # status = 200
     
 [build.environment]
-  HUGO_VERSION = "0.124.1"
+  HUGO_VERSION = "0.134.3"