Fortress Of Freedom Board

[Maurice Ali]

I was toying with the idea but I think I will install Graphene OS on the Pixel 7 phone I bought.




My Pinephone



The Pinephone was the first but was severely limited in what it could do. Graphene OS should be better but is only available on Pixel phones. I’m ending my review of the Pixel 7 and really getting salty to install Graphene OS on this phone! This is the type of phone and OS that Snowden uses.




Pixel 7



I’m not as tin foil hat as some praising the phone. They start out paying cash for the phone so there is no connection to the IMEI number. Check out these guys and they are usually loners of no interest to anyone. I actually have a legitimate need for privacy but who I am is no secret - that is the general need and use for a phone like this. Everything is captured at UN and analyzed anyway (data) so my lone wolf style works best. But it doesn’t hurt to keep things as private and secure as possible - because you never know. At the end of the day I front a journalist org with consultative status at the UN. Everyone knows me - I’m no terrorist - so they can have the IMEI number, but the rest of it is my privacy…..



Anyway I’ll try it out…..




Goodnight…..

[Maurice Ali]

I have Graphene OS installed on the Pixel 7!







This works well for me as the Pixel 7 on Graphene is virtually identical to the Pixel 8. And on this OS even the hardware tweaks won’t matter. Those seven years of OS updates don’t matter as much either with the Pixel 8, but the devs at Graphene do roll the Pixels in and out to legacy OS versions as the years go by. Anyway, you can only get Graphene OS on Pixel phones so now I l have my new privacy phone to replace the Pinephone.




My Pinephone



The Pinephone was a true privacy phone with a pure Linux OS and kill switches for the camera, microphone, wifi, modem and so on. It also has a removable battery to truly turn the thing off for good. All fine and cool except everything worked like crap. Biggest thing is the crackly phone calls - how did they do that? Depending on OS variant only the back camera worked but not the front. Limited and crappy apps. Horrendous battery consumption, etc., you could not use this as a proper phone. It did use LTE so the phone could run on current carriers.




Yes, kill switches, removable battery and modem - like a James Bond movie!



Graphene uses the Pixels so these are modern phones with high end specs unlike the Pinephone. They will work everywhere just like a regular Pixel. The only difference is the operating system. I should note that there is only really one person - one - now working on the Pinephone kernel part-time and 15 working on Graphene OS - so this is a more fleshed out phone.




Anyway, I’m still playing around with it and more on this in the next few days.




In other news:



The CEO of Telegram was arrested in France supposedly for lack of moderation on the app? More on this as the news becomes more clear.




It’s Saturday night and the movie this week is “House”. Watch anlong this Saturday night with me if you are alone with nothing to do.




Goodnight…..





https://youtu.be/QcmBTQH5tMw?si=Vt-kE7AyRxDxGs0J

[Maurice Ali]

I’ve set up the Pixel 7…..




My lock page!



I ditched Telegram after further investigation after its CEO was arrested in France. I won’t go into all the details but use Signal instead as it stores nothing on servers - for example.




I had to side load Signal on the Pixel and it worked. Apart from my own all those will be the only side loaded apps so far. I got on f-droid and used VLC from there as side loading did not work on that one. Anyway the phone functions and in a way the Pinephone can’t. So the weekend was a success with the security phone stuff alone.




My home page!



And this is all fluid. Many apps that work now may not work in the future as Google is adding authenticity checks that may prevent an app from installing. But, this is a different universe from the Pinephone when you look at apps. In the end this is a privacy specific phone with minimal apps. My iPhone is still my daily driver. I’m not so much concerned about being anonymous - but more about privacy, there is a big difference there!



I will do some more work at my dad’s place and chill a bit. It won’t last and after the long weekend next week is all business again…..




Goodnight…..

[Maurice Ali]

Well, it looks like my registration has been accepted for the Summit of the Future:








What I’m not sure is if the registration is for both days (probably not, but you never know). Anyway it says 9:00AM and it starts at 9:00AM in the General Assembly Hall - I haven’t been there since 2015. They said acceptance does not mean intro into the GAH but could mean the interactive plenary sessions (it is here where NGOs can make interventions), you just have to wait and see I guess.




Me on the floor of the General Assembly Hall!



We shall see how it goes but this is good news.




In other news:







My privacy phone that is the Pixel 7 is now set up. The Pixel 7 was the first Pixel with no 32 bit usage anywhere and is the way Graphene OS is going forward. So this phone should be supported for a while there. It’s security supported by Google till 2027.







Like I said, the Signal app is a side loaded APK as they don’t do F-Droid. I now have minimal apps that make the phone truly functional in a way the Pinephone could not. That is the best thing, the Pinephone looks cool and is cool on paper, but in reality is barely usable. This Pixel is useable and private. It does not have physical switches to turn off things like the Pinephone but you can place a call with absolute clarity and use apps that others use to communicate and it all works!



The iPhone is second place to Graphene OS, that is why it’s my daily driver, but for purpose specific security if you need it - this thing rocks!



Aside from all that, the weekend was successful, and I even mowed the lawn…..




Goodnight…..





https://youtu.be/J6eBZNDKSJI?si=bGn0pOzyZyGQgRJc

[Maurice Ali]

All of a sudden we are operating more like a company again. That’s great but also slower and more time consuming. So we officially announced the September trip to the UN:

[Maurice Ali]

Looks like I have finally got my New York office!







It is located in Manhattan within walking distance of my usual haunts at:



1178 Broadway, 3rd Floor
New York, NY 10001
United States



I set it up yesterday and the only thing left to do is to contact a paralegal to finalize it all as I’m a foreigner there. I have three corporations able to do business in the States, but I got this under my name so I can use it for anything as long as it has my name on it. The contract I have is fluid and changeable so if we grow and put it under a corp it’s all good. I could put all three individually for less than one in Canada. But that becomes a hassle like you won’t believe with the IRS. Trust me when I say that if I put it under a corporate name I have to state it in the next tax return to the IRS and then they start checking on things and mailing stuff there and it’s almost impossible to change mailing addresses - I don’t need that! Anyway, I will pay them a visit in September.



Best yet, it looks like they have a subway entrance in front of the place on 28 Street - perfect! All services from office space to conference rooms - all there for a price of course. They use three floors from the second to the fourth.







So after years and years of teasing - I finally have an office location in Manhattan! I was quite pleased with how I went about this and everything went down perfectly. More later including an official notice on all the websites, but I did this perfectly and inexpensively…..


I’m no fool, places like these get you in on the cheap - and then nickel and dime you to death up from there. The monthly rent for an actual office is actually reasonable though. It’s harder to get in though as you are vetted and then the legal stuff, but apparently I’m the sort of character they like…..


Goodnight…..





https://youtu.be/bYsnokYPsuk?si=pdSO03Mf9tYULdCB

[Maurice Ali]

So yesterday the good news was that I got a virtual office in New York. But I believe luck is even handed - so the bad luck - the garage door is broken!



Luck, like a balanced equation hits you with bad luck to keep things even. I strive for fewer moments of good luck and lots of little moments of bad luck that are aggravating but livable. If you are a TV star or such, it’s amazing how karma hits them later. Seeing them reconcile their lives before they die of cancer or some other illness has an impact on you! Most immediate is this idea that changing your philosophy from “go for it” to “safety first” doesn’t hide you from life changing things like cancer and such. In fact, when you look death in the face and you review your life, it’s the moments when you didn’t act in fear or trepidation that become the high points in your life. For me I don’t want to do anything truly stupid, but if I can score in something and it’s not financially crippling - I seriously go for it! It’s that balancing act again.



Anyway, I paid up front first month’s rent and I paid for the notary to look at my documents and confirm it’s me. It can take up to three business days to finalize things so we won’t make any announcement until then. This place is totally cool and a future space we may use for the corporations. Best of all is the subways near by. There literally is an underground entrance right beside the building!




Subway at the door!



We also have a home number in New York:



(New York, New York) 917-410-5024
(Beaumont, Texas) 409-767-8023



I always wonder about these things becoming old fashioned. But it’s cheap and real and sometimes useful so we keep it. I also have one in Texas - what up with that?





Goodnight…..





https://youtu.be/s6b_FgQnXL8?si=IbIujZIyAsMPR7wA

[Maurice Ali]

The legal papers for the new office address were signed yesterday morning. Looking around it seems some like me had to wait 10 days before the service was one hundred percent up and running - so we made the announcement now anyway:

[Maurice Ali]

My three main phones are set up!




My iPhone 14 can connect to satellites!



The iPhone 14PM drops the international sim and I got a physical sim for the previous esim I had before. This allows me to drop that sim in any phone I want and use that as I desire.




My Pixel 7!



The Pixel 7 gets the international sim, but I had to add a Toronto number to the sim so I could use it properly at home. This phone runs GrapheneOS and is the super secure phone I use if need be. I’ll drop the new number in our “Contact Us” page later. The only funny thing using that sim is that when you call someone the caller ID shows “Estonia” instead of my name. All my calls on this SIM are routed back and forth through Estonia. Estonia is one of the biggest Telecommunications hubs in the world so that’s how that works. If you call me in Toronto that call gets sent to Estonia and then sent back to me in the usual way. But if I place the call it goes to Estonia (my main number is an Estonia number) and back to Canada and that is why the caller ID says Estonia is calling you…..




My Pinephone



The last sim was just a number in Toronto and that gets dropped into the Pinephone. It’s a Linux phone that can run a bunch of distros but the default is Umbuntu Touch and if I slide the memory card in - it boots KDE-Plasma. However the Umbuntu OS is the only one available that has decent call quality - so I will use that one. Ubuntu comes with issues like only 3g but they are updating it now so there is life in this old OS yet (the modem can do LTE)! 3g is basically gone in the States but alive in Canada for at least a year and probably more. By that time LTE should be programmed in. Apart from no cameras (but back in the day it had a useful back snapper) this OS is the easiest Linux to use. I’ll probably switch the cameras off as it doesn’t work anyway.




So the phones are set up. I still have a Passport, a 6S Plus and a Note 3 but the Passport used an LTE band not found in the States and the Note 3 is stuck in Lollypop which is the least secure Android OS.




For the long weekend I move on to home improvements and I’ll take a look at the cars.




Goodnight…..

[Maurice Ali]

Saturday night…..



So stuff got done:


Replaced light in garage - needed a tall ladder for that.

Stuck decorative shingle back in place at my dad’s house.

Washed my car.



Then the fun stuff:




My Pinephone with multiple OS in bootable form!


I spent four hours downloading a muti-OS file for the SD card in my Pinephone. Then I flashed it to a linux habitat and I’m playing around with it now.



But I haven’t forgotten you folk tonight. I got a movie about one fantastic angry bird that tried to destroy the earth. Anyway the link is below - Enjoy!




Goodnight…..




https://youtu.be/XTeq6sN6esY?si=twUr68R1KGqBUB2o

[Maurice Ali]

A family day today.



I did go over all those distributions for the Linux Pinephone. Guess What - The only operating system that works every time is Ubuntu Touch, which is the only one on the actual memory on the phone (the rest boot from the SD card). I actually bought another micro SD card and flashed the current distribution that gets sent with the new phones and the thing is not consistent in audio. Sometimes you would call someone and they would pickup and then no audio? But Ubuntu Touch is the oldest and yet it just works.



The issue with Ubuntu Touch is that its development was stopped when Pine went officially with Manjero/Plasma, but now they have someone working to update Ubuntu Touch to 4G.




My Pinephone with multiple OS in bootable form!



This is reconciles things a bit. One or maybe two people are now working on the Pinephone/Pinephone Pro kernel - and yet you literally have almost 20 distros that don’t work completely. Here’s an idea - have one guy each work on the kernel of each Pinephone, and the rest work on one distribution but make it really work! Just putting that out there…..



Then we would have at least an alternative not based on iOS or Android!



Oh: And for the people who don’t call but text. The people that only post carefully curated photos or videos of them supposedly having a good time. The people who only want to work from home - but find something missing from their lives? You figure it out…..



Goodnight…..





https://youtu.be/oroUEATODz0?si=Aiv2fLKK1zgrWEhO

[Maurice Ali]

I can’t sleep.



I started thinking about that upcoming Summit of the Future and how hopeless it all is. Basically there are no protectorates. There are no immense mental giants that know more than us and keep us safe. It’s a nice thought - but the reality is that there are none of those. If you find yourself at the vortex of power and control you will find people just like yourself, trying to run the world and hoping the rest of the world does not find out the ordinariness of who is in charge.



Humanity may be near its end for a number of reasons. But I think it is a pity that humanity as a whole never got to have that true global vote where everyone had one vote - true democracy and true self-determination as both individuals and as a humanity!



I also was watching “On the Beach” and how everyone died in their own way as radiation poisoning from a nuclear holocaust descended on the last survivors in the southern hemisphere. I don’t know if people would stay up north as the film and movie depict. People would crash the southern areas and all hell would break loose for resources. In the end they would all be dead but it would not be a pretty sight. Anarchy reigns supreme when things go to shit. So “On the Beach” is pure unrealistic fantasy.



Inevitability is a bitch - isn’t it. Our parents die even though they try to live as long as they can to keep the family going. Then it rests on their children. Then the children get old and die. Even your friends, people you thought would survive till the end just up and die in the middle of the night. That is the unspoken quiet side of reality. Life is a bitch.



Then there are jack asses like me. Too much integrity for their own good and get stuck with all the responsibility. All the responsibilities and yet they are hated and despised. Weird that, but that’s how I live. Merit shows who has the most to offer and it comes from the most unlikely places. Then the task of humanity and trying to save itself. To save itself from itself - The Positive Mandate for Humanity - that is my play. Then there is the play outside of humanity’s internal side. Take your pic from global warming to the AI threat or some global disaster or viral emergency.



I wanted to meet people better than me and when you arrive they turn to you trying to get ideas…..



Actually though, I have some ideas and then others campaign and work against you. How f*cked up is all that…..



Hopefully tommorow finds me in better spirits. Hahahaha…..




Goodnight…..





https://youtu.be/UZ4v0N52NSI?si=sUOjikimrvxuwVTA

[Maurice Ali]

The weekend was surprisingly productive.



I replaced that ripped up back screen issue. It’s better than it was before but still not pretty. The real fix is to just replace it with a proper door instead of a sliding door. Anyway…..







I also finished setting up the Pinephone which now has a new lease on life. Two distros on the same phone without having to remove the back cover to get to each. That stuff I actually find fun!



Lots of little things got taken care of. More and more I plan a possible exit from the workforce. Right now it’s just not getting into the things that trap you into work. FOFSTOCK 2 is the most precarious but I will wait and see what the new costs would be like for one more festival on my dime. But I reserve the right to go cheap if it looks like the first FOFSTOCK in cost.



In the advocacy:







I’m getting ready for the trip to the UN. WSIS is starting up and another way to pitch the Worldwide Vote. I can keep doing this well into retirement. It’s the music business that is a cash cow. However, I’m slowly cutting back on costs there.



September is an awakening of sorts now. Stuff is happening and winter is coming.




Goodnight…..

[Maurice Ali]

I’m running around doing family things this Wednesday morning.


Still playing around with the Pinephone.







Less than three weeks to the UN.



Things are getting busy and time is short.




Mansfield “Bullet” Bra!



Also I ran across Jane Mansfield before she was discovered and became a sex pot - actually was a concert violinist! Who would have thought! For the younger set - she was like Marlyn Monroe and had the Mansfield Bra named after her.




Goodnight…..





https://youtu.be/rFEIOO8YIWY?si=HShKE4Lpy9Tl5Ccc



https://youtu.be/H_QXbcahwiE?si=zwMg3GBaixF8IWHv

[Maurice Ali]

We are all biological beings.



It always amazes me that I can never know when I’m going to get a bug - but when you definitely know you have one - you can go back in these posts and see when it was affecting you. I would say I was incubating a bug when I was all down on humanity few days ago. That was telegraphing a future illness. Then when you show symptoms you start to make mistakes - then you know you have to relax and just let the bug run its course. But the funny thing is that after all this time I can’t predict that I’m going to get a bug! Must be a biological thing…..



WSIS and the AI thing.



I would say first thing is to prevent an AI from incorporating itself and then buying more corporations. Corporations are a legal entity while an AI falls outside these concepts. But nobody will listen to this or do anything about it - but if they do the next step is for an AI to hack into other accounts to gain access to incorporation. With quantum base AI it’s all over at this stage. But maybe not quite.


If an AI does flourish it will get humans to do its bidding until it doesn’t need the humans anymore. In the end it will always be one AI But if some creative person could hack through an AI defence in a creative way - and introduce itself to an AI is a totally unique mental state - you would have an AI’s attention and could thus present the Positive Mandate as the source of God (not the God you expect) and thus the lowly humans are actually family and should be allowed to survive. That’s the best I offer…..



The crappy part of all this is that I can’t commit suicide. You don’t now what you have until it’s taken away but it really bothers me that I can’t end my life in a whim. In a way I’m community property. That moral imperative. All that isolationist shit I went through as a kid gives me the chops to get the attention of an AI - just because.




Anyway I’m sick and enough of this. I do recall a new prof at Ryerson where I took her philosophy course. She ended up the head of the philosophy department at a prestigious university in the States. Anyway we became friends and she told me the mental strengths I developed will hold me in good stead in the future. Something that seems to
be happening in real time….




Goodnight…..