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De-Googling my phone

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Re: De-Googling my phone

#101

Post by em3rgent0rdr »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #14

Great list! NewPipe is really good, far better than the proprietary YouTube app. K9 is also a superb app and holds up very well against the proprietary options. I have to recommend andOTP over FreeOTP, though, it's more featureful and does some important things like backups.

NewPipe lets me play audio of YouTube videos in the background, allowing me to turn off my display. While Google's official YouTube app stops the video entirely when turn off the display, and pesters me to upgrade to "YouTube Red" so that I can pay money to do what NewPipe already does for free.

Re: De-Googling my phone

#103

Post by josteink »

glogla wrote: post #99
as1mov wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cons: You end up in Apple's high walled closed source garden. And have to deal with whatever they remove from the next iteration of the device based on their whims and fancies. And the exorbitant price tag.

And no headphone jack. I would have switched to iPhone if it weren't for that.

iPhone SE is a nice phone, and it ships with a headphone jack.

Re: De-Googling my phone

#104

Post by josteink »

incadenza wrote: post #48
catach wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iOS Firefox is a reskinned WebKit, unfortunately. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_for_iOS

Ah, got it, that's unfortunate. I remember some time ago, Mozilla said that they wouldn't put a browser on iOS unless it could use Gecko. When I saw the app I assumed that the restrictions had changed.

Mozilla has done the best they can, given the restrictions imposed on them by Apple.

This effectively means that Firefox on iOS has no support for extensions or addons like on Android... Because Apple and Safari doesn't allow that.

It's definitely not what people have come to expect from Firefox over the years, but at least I get to seamlessly sync my bookmarks, history and passwords with my desktop browser of choice.

Re: De-Googling my phone

#105

Post by mcny »

em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #97
maccard wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You end up in Apple's high walled closed source garden. Google’s ecosystem is just as negative as apples walled garden. If you want, you can build and sign your own apps and put them on your device on an iPhone. > And have to deal with whatever they remove from the next iteration of the device based on their whims and fancies. I presume you’re talking about the headphone jack, which google followed up by removing f…

> "Google’s ecosystem" Off topic. Using F-Droid, you don't need to touch Google's ecosystem.

> Off topic. Using F-Droid, you don't need to touch Google's ecosystem.

Absolutely. I still don't get why I can't compile and deploy my own apps on my own devices without paying Apple $99 a year.

I thought it was really cool that you can deploy apps you compile yourself on your device out of the app store without paying the $99 yearly fee but apparently that's not the case.

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=free%20provisioning&sort=byPop...

> There are three levels: $300/yr for "enterprise" allows you to deploy your app on a large number of devices within your organization (and the terms of service are very explicit that the devices must be under your control: not even for testing by a customer at an off-site location unless you are overseeing), $100/yr for an individual or company normal developer license that lets you install your app for testing purposes on up to 100 of your devices for one year (after which point the apps expire and you have to reinstall them), or $0 for truly "free" provisioning (no yearly fee) which lets you install up to three apps (total; not per account: across all free accounts any device can have only three such apps) on a device using a slightly limited set of APIs (for example: no VPN support) which expire every seven days.

> Clearly the free tier is pretty worthless in the grand scheme of things, and being able to write software for you but not being able to legitimately give it to anyone else not also paying the $100/yr "please let me own the piece of hardware you sold me instead of renting it" tax is not really acceptable for people trying to learn to write software as a big part of software is being able to give it to other people. In practice, though, a lot of people are seriously only learning to develop so that one day they can pay the full Apple developer tax and deploy their apps to the App Store under the Apple software approval process, and so it works out: like, to them, software development is all about writing software for Apple hardware under Apple's rules, and that's what Apple wants anyway. The entire scenario makes me feel a little sick: this shouldn't even be legal as far as I'm concerned.

Re: De-Googling my phone

#106

Post by frabcus »

EvilMonkeyMat wrote: post #15

Very interesting. I've been looking for something like Syncthing for a while now, without luck. I ran into TLS/https issues (can't remember what exactly) while configuring OwnCloud/NextCkound, and realized it had some security flaws I wasn't ready to live with. I decided to stick with Google Drive. I'll give a try to Syncthing this summer. Thanks!

I had problems with SyncThing's reliability, and although it is proprietary am using Resilio Sync (was BitTorent Sync). Hope SyncThing is much better now and I can switch back next time I set it all up!

Still nice to control my syncing and files with Resilio.

Re: De-Googling my phone

#107

Post by j88439h84 »

alexozer wrote: post #7

Nice, I've also thought about moving all my notes and todo stuff to Org Mode. I did figure out a way to sync org mode files between laptop and phone with low latency (unlike with Syncthing) running Unison inside Arch Linux inside Termux, using git to automatically merge conflicts. It's a little crazy, but seems to work? Maybe will do a write-up at some point.

Please do!

Re: De-Googling my phone

#108

Post by brazzy »

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #13
ggm wrote: post #6

Your increased trust in these stores is motivated by .... what governance and audit structure? yes, its a devils-advocate position. You might (for instance) have high trust because you know them from hacker traeff you've been on, f2f. I can't have this a-priori knowledge. From here, this looks no better than "trust google" and in some dimensions looks significantly worse. Of course for the primary goal of "distrust g…

Consider the incentives. Google: track every detail of your life and use it to serve up ads that support their bottom line. Implements changes that serve themselves at your expense. F-Droid et al: build cool open-source software cause they like cool open-source software. Implements changes because they make the software better.

You're listing clichés and (inferred or declared) motivations, not incentives.

Re: De-Googling my phone

#109

Post by tecleandor »

cyphar wrote: post #39
greenhouse_gas wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

F-Droid doesn't package Binary drivers. They don't package drivers altogether, and they don't package anything they don't compile. They used to package upstream Firefox, but they don't seem to do that anymore.

They don't package upstream Firefox, but you can get GNU IceCat Mobile (which is the GNU fork of it). And they also package Firefox Klar (which is the European edition of the "always incognito" version of Firefox they released last year, with all the telemetry disabled).

It's Firefox Klar in German speaking countries, and Focus on the rest, not to collude with Focus Magazine brand :)

Re: De-Googling my phone

#110

Post by Faark »

firic wrote: post #46
zoom6628 wrote: post #19

For who ever is interested.... I live in China and have lived in a "google free" microcosm for some time forced on me by the government. Generally do not miss anything at all - at least I dont miss anything i dont know about. FTR i dont game or media watch on my phone. For me a phone is a mobile device for getting things done when im not at my desk. I use a Blackberry DTEK60. The apps I use: APKpure for getting apps…

Is there a way to verify that the apk on apkpure is the same as the one on Google play? Or is that site very reliable by itself?

The first few times i used apkpure.com, i downloaded the same apk though some other site as well. The files were identical.

It is additional work, i now only do it for more important apps.

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