Linux-fueled Thoughts Unhinged

If you spend any time reading GrapheneOS's CLI instructions, then you may have noticed the insistence of using “the high quality standards compliant USB-C cable packaged with the device” as a sharp reader.

This seems a little nickpicky, but there is a reason why the GrapheneOS “community” (in which most of the vocal ones behave like a clique of socially ostracized children — unsurprising for those making an attempt of a “community” around security, which inevitably devolves into virtue signaling on non-negotiable threat models and goals) keep regurgitating how one should not use a “broken” USB-C cables to install GrapheneOS on supported devices like human robots.

This is because those dabbling in non-Google Play Service'd alternative Android OS's have been burned before (i.e., LineageOS before GrapheneOS came along).

Specifically, I'm talking about how the OnePlus 2's USB-C cable was not actually made to whatever was the current standard for USB-C existed back in 2015. The OnePlus 2 was a really weird device in and of itself, but I'm not here to talk about that part. This was documented on the Wikipedia article for OnePlus.

(Honestly, the fundamental issue with USB-C; Thunderbolt, which is another optional technology that can be “placed on top of” USB-C; and USB4 need to sort out their bullcrap. I didn't understand this until I made many returns to Micro Center for USB-C cables, only to discover that I don't actually know the definitions of any of these terms like a false mathematician.)

(The way that these cable standards and what the physical port looks like IRL is a surjective function in the worst time and place possible. The domainhere is the cable standard and the image is what the cable plug looks like IRL — which might as well be the codomain at this point. But enough with abstract algebra, or just “the” (generalized) algebra if you're in grad school for mathematics.)

Benson Leung is a Google engineer that ensures USB-C cables are compliant for Chromebooks... so, it's not too much of a stretch that Leung would be sitting in a few meetings to make sure that the Google Pixel's USB-C cables (since the Pixel 1 in 2017) was compliant with the USB-C standard. Also, Leung makes sure that there are necessary upstream contributions to the Linux kernel so that USB-C functions properly.

I'm not going to go on Leung's Twitter again to find the tweet where he said he bought a machine that cost $15,000 to test USB-C cables, but apparently that happened.

Yet, somehow I can't get the DP-capable USB-C cable for the ThinkVision M14 Portable Display Monitor to work with the non-Thunderbolt capable USB-C port on the Raspberry Pi 4B...

This also explains why Robert Baptiste kept finding security vulnerabilities in OnePlus devices, starting with the OnePlus 3/3T. Android smartphone manufacturers only ensure that each of their respective “skins” of Android are compliant with Android standards (sometime badly — looking at you, Samsung in February of 2022); but only the Google Pixels, starting with the Google Pixel 2 series, are the most prepared and intentionally designed to allow alternative Android OS's to be installed over the stock Android version.

Hence, that is why I referenced the earliest Google Pixel model that could install GrapheneOS back in 2019. However, the GrapheneOS support for Pixel 2 series didn't last too long...

Anyways, I hope that the plan for a GrapheneOS prioritized device comes out sooner rather than later...