Probably the last one I’ll get…

… at least on the Pixel 4a device (and no, I’m not going to buy a newer one). Android 13 is out since yesterday, and in case that is of any interest to you (because you also own a Google Pixel device >=4), the media is full of it. So I checked, and mine is upgrading to it right now:

upgrading to Android 13

So in a year or so I’ll have to decide which other system to upgrade to, most probably it will be MicroG for LineageOS.

… and done for now:

finished for now

As always, thanks for reading.

Counter measures

I’ve decided not to use some sites with my regular desktop anymore, both local sites in Germany and also some international ones. Here’s why:

heise.de
zeit.de
spiegel.de

Or, as an example of an international offender:

theverge.com

Basically, these are opt-in only – you either pay with money, or – in case you’re poor and can’t or don’t want to afford it – with your data.

And that is *not* acceptable, guys – this should be reported to the EU government because it is at the very least highly unethical to let the poorer ones pay with much more than money – with their privacy.

Why in the world should we have to allow 200+ third party advertisers and money-makers to track, spam, and follow us everywhere we go? To hell with you all!

I showed you these pages in a Tor browser from Tails (I wrote about that and can highly recommend it, search my blog for it) – but I’ll never visit them again from my normal environment. Plus I’ll report them to the EU myself. The GDPR or as we call it the DSGVO (Datenschutzgrundverordnung) should protect us against sharks like these.

So use this to browse morally questionable sites:

tails

Never forget – it is our human right to protect ourselves. You can do almost the same network-wide (in case all of your family members or room mates agree) using something like Pi-hole. Thank me later.

As always, thanks for reading.

Syncthing

Currently trying out Syncthing on both my mobile phones and on my machine. And it works beautifully on all devices; now photos taken with one of the phones are sent to my machine automagically…

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Cookie’s pic transferred with Syncthing, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2022

As always, thanks for reading & viewing.

Trying out /e/

So starting this morning, I’m trying out /e/ on my Google Nexus 5 phone. Haven’t tried much so far, but set up a few contacts, email – the provided mail program is a fork of k9 which is nice, and I took some screenshots:

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Trying out /e/ 1/2, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2022
Screenshot_20220808-121101
Trying out /e/ 2/2, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2022

Of course the battery of my older phone isn’t as good as a new one, still have to see how long that will last between recharges. And the geolocation – see weather widget – is also not very precise, but that isn’t the phone’s fault, every other machine here which uses IP based geolocation based on the router’s address would show the same. The weather by the way is drawn from OpenWeatherMap, same as the weather widget in Gnome on Linux – very nice.

And yes, it looks like an iPhone, doesn’t it? But it’s an ePhone instead, with only free and open source software. So far I like it, even if it hasn’t (yet) all the bells & whistles of a modern Android, but let me explore more about it first…

As always, thanks for reading.

Update, from 13:49:

Not missing much so far… I’ve downloaded my own albums into the /Music folder on the phone, and the app shows them nicely:

Screenshot_20220808-134414
Music app on /e/OS showing my own albums, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2022

So far, this all looks like a fully functional mobile phone. Have to interrupt for now, so more later…

Update2, from 16:11:

Just sent Mitchie to work, taking only the Nexus instead of my Pixel phone. And I had installed OsmAnd for offline navigation:

https://osmand.net/

And what shall I say? That older phone with /e/OS connected to our Yaris Hybrid with Bluetooth, it played my music over the car stereo system and told me the route via OsmAnd, warning me about every pedestrian crossing (you can silence that if they’re too many). Perfect, and all of that without even inserting a SIM card into the device! Wonderful.

Again, thanks for reading – and more later.

An experiment in de-Googling

A week ago, we swapped some phones. Mitchie got a new one, Zuleikha got her Pixel 4a 5G, and Zuleikha’s 3a went to my brother Willi in Cologne after packing it like this:

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Google boxes, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2022

Which means that by now, I have the oldest phone in the household. Mine will still be supported until August next year, and by then I’d have to decide what other system to put on it. I wanted to test some, but not on my working phone – instead I grabbed for the much older Nexus 5 which we still have:

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A testbed for de-Googling, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2022

This isn’t supported even by LineageOS anymore, except if you’d install some unofficial custom ROM or even build one yourself. But that is currently a bit too much even for me, so I checked and found a supported environment in the e.foundation which looks like this:

So this afternoon I first charged that device, and when turning it on I first got a bist nostalgic, seeing that cute animated robot during the boot process, but anyway, it had to go. And now I have /e/OS on it:

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/e/OS on a Google Nexus 5 device, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2022

What you can also see in case that you know /e/OS is that I already installed two more apps, namely F-Droid and Zapp (and by now, also Firefox Focus).

So – it will be interesting to see how this goes with no Google services on board. The installed MicroG fakes some of them, so that you can still get notifications, or run Google Maps if you’d need that – but I’ll try to keep it safe and simple. Will be interesting… and who knows, maybe I’ll even prefer this newly found privacy? And there’s no reason to dump a perfectly fine phone which isn’t even 10 years old… and it has a screen of under 5 inches which is FullHD and beats the current iPhone SE, go figure…

Anyway, like always, thanks for reading.

Cookie from my phone’s camera

Yesterday I’ve been watching a video on my phone when Cookie decided that he wanted some closer proximity, so he came and laid down with/beside me:

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Cookie, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2022

This is straight from my phone’s camera, no editing whatsoever:

picture info like shown on Flickr

As always, thanks for viewing.