Do I really "need" Google

Sector11 · 2016-11-18 20:57:53

@ BLwillbegreat!

Just got back ... yea, 5 days is something ... guess I shouldn't tell you our's last's about same huh.

MIND YOU! there's a reason for that - it has been regulated to "phone call's and SMS messages" only.

90% of the phone calls will be to the house if I'm out, other than that SMS messages to and from my wife's friends.

Now here's why: Shortly after starting this thread, she said to hell with it, created an account and started downloading apps - read games - and wallpaper and ringtones. She was fighting with the tiny screen ...

Sooooooooooo , having a few U$ saved here, for the past 15 years, hidden away she didn't know about ... I took her to a store to buy her a tablet. Had it all picked out and she said "Which one are you getting!" - "I'm not getting one!"
"Then I'm not either." Poor salesman thought he lost a sale as we walked out. We had a discussion just outside, which she won, she got a cheaper 10" tablet that left enough for me to get the only 8" one they had.

Now we've both created Google accounts - neither of them the same as on the phone and she does her gaming on the 10"er. And mine, Google account that is, bears little resemblance to "me" as far as personal data is concerned - or maybe I'm lying and it's exactly who I am - who knows! The butler did it, so he knows!

Anyway, she's happier then a pig in mud and I'm using mine to 'learn' about Android. Reminds me more of Windows than it does Linux even though it is 'nix based. It's so obviously a cash cow for Google - like they were really so poor before Android but then ... they created it to make $$$ so not a lot one can say.

So yea, I guess we got the Android bug, bit infected. She's blowing things up and cooking burgers and building up a farm. I'm reading books, have a couple of calculators and converters and offline translation dictionaries and - I must admit: two tower defence games. FREE, no in app purchases

BLizgreat! · 2016-11-19 00:11:50

^ Excellent ma friend,

Don't really have enough experience with Android to really have any solid conclusions about it yet. Just installed a terminal emulator app from the Play store. Hmmmmm makes it somewhat seem more gnu/Nixish.

Though am getting a wee bit ticked off trying to figure out a simple way to get root w/o having to mess with adb, fastboot and all that. Was hoping there was a simple admin password or that perhaps su would work ! Oh well, think it's interesting stuff and eventually do plan on seeing what's out there for dev'ing mobile nix.

Last edited by BLizgreat! (2016-11-19 00:12:20)

Sector11 · 2016-11-19 00:35:41

I don't know a lot either but I know this. There is no such thing as "sudo" or "su" as we know here in Linuxlandia, it has to be rooted ... and until I know a lot more about the system, I'm not going to 'brick' my tablet. S12, the Mrs., would probably ram it someplace sideways if I did. OUCH!

BLizgreat! · 2016-11-19 00:54:57

^ You are and have ever been a wise man fellow nixer.

Yeah me either, regretting not spending more time researching the topic before purchase though. Live and learn eh. All the lean and mean custom ROM goodness out there and so far it's a no go. Five dys battery ! Arghhhhh, well at least HOAS is Android pimpin.

Vll!

Head_on_a_Stick · 2016-11-19 11:26:40

OK, who turned the babble filter off...

Only joking, great to see you again SeaBiscuit!

BLwillbegreat! wrote:

Five dys of battery life !!?!?!?! Arghhhhhh, green with envy, blue with envy.

Yes, the battery life is a bit freaky but the phone itself is quite broken -- I've lost root access and can't install anything beyond the base CM applications so it's now a smartphone with less functionality than a dumb phone...

I should really re-root it properly but I just can't be bothered

Sector11 · 2016-11-19 12:34:59

@BLwbg!

If anything it started with HoaS's post and the fear of it going in somewhere sideways if I bricked it. And continued with other comments from other "wise people". Add a few extra U$ unknown to her and the phone is regulated to do the "ET phone Home" thing.

Now if that makes me a wise man I can live with it.

BLizgreat! · 2016-11-20 05:15:12

Definitely agree Hoas,

It seems to have a learning curve involved but for whatever reason trying to learn to optimize android has reawakened the obcessive software tweaker in me. Spent alot of time lately dorking around with the subject. Kinda a pita in ways. This phone probably gets all of 5-6 hours screen time, if I were to let it run down that is, tend to try to keep it charged to 50% or more to promote better battery life. Have read lith-ion batteries don't like full discharge/charge behavior.

Haven't managed to learn enough yet to really feel confident about modding the thing. Atm stuck on finding the most effective ways to backup the stock firmware on the thing. At the very least the stock boot.img, recovery.img and system.img anyway and getting familiar with all the ways/tools and techniques there are available to flash/reflash these things. Haven't really settled on one, so remain at an impasse for now.

Many oem's have software available to download, which should include the stock firmware for peoples phones. Downloaded LG's and haven't yet dug through to confirm my devices stock firmware is present or not. A pita subject but an interesting one if only for the novelty involved. Will get a handle on it eventually ( hopefully). A smart phone with more limitations than a dumb one ? Arghhhhhh, unacceptable ! Though you know better about the subject than I do.

OT: Lol ... looks like yeah, google seems to come along with the bargain of having many android based devices. Seems it can be a beneficial thing in many ways, for many folks. For me ( and many) mostly for convenient access to the app store. Looking forward to the day when some better alternatives emerge to compete with the mighty Goog Inc in terms of available appage. Looks like it's happening too. Googles app store is said to have 1mil+ apps on offer, Amazon supposedly has 300+ thousand or more and other sources are coming out.

So yeppers atm googles a necessity here. Though that's not going to stop me from learning/trying to restrict their or anybody elses efforts to be overly invasive on the mobile platform or any mobile devices I use. Mostly for performance reasons more so than concerns for privacy invasion. No shortage of ways to make your self a ghost online but for day to day usage just don't think it's practical to care too much about it. In ways google tracking someone can help improve their lives. ie: You really like fishing, google knows you really like fishing and starts presenting ads and info on the subject based on that. Could be a good thing, if you really like fishing eh.

I don't use many of their services, so turn them off, disable or remove the suckers as long as it doesn't adversely affect the devices performance. When comes to modding, think the usual applies, takes time, effort, experimentation and hopefully someone employing common sense and intelligence while doing so. Once a person gets an effective backup/restore solution, it's game on. Someone can really dig in and start tweaking android with a good safety net should things go wrong. It's amusing overall though, installed a terminal emulator to android v 5.1.1 and ran the top command to see whats running etc. Several of the gnu/nix commands work on it and several don't but can be added to via things like installing busybox or whatever.

End of the day out of all the current mobile options and contenders Android gets my backing. Think the same spirit and skills that made open source so kickbutt will continue to make android the best option and likely will always be more options on the platform vs proprietary.

Hope all you gals/guys are having a kickbutt day. On and offline.

PS, Hoas ... yep you guys really need to put that babble filter in the shop. Look at this mess I've added in just two dys dude.

Last edited by BLizgreat! (2016-11-20 05:36:49)

ohnonot · 2016-11-20 09:01:57

BLwillbegreat! wrote:

Five dys of battery life !!?!?!?! Arghhhhhh, green with envy, blue with envy.

just the other day i had a talk about phones with someone.
not 10 years ago, 5 days of battery life under usage was normal, the standard.
2 weeks on standby.
while we were talking, we were holding this baby. :-)

BLizgreat! · 2016-11-20 09:54:42

^Lol ... cool.

There's alot people can do, tweaks etc blahblahblah to get much better battery life but it requires time, effort, skills and a mod friendly device to do much of them I think. Still can uber tweak default settings to conserve w/o real loss of functionality.

My device is crap on battery and I feel sorry for people who have those devices with batteries that are built in. Don't get me wrong, they still have the option of learning to crack the case and reinstall a new one if their's burns out themselves, take it to a shop to do it or send it back to the oem and pay out the nose.

Believe a lot of it is people's reluctance to learn. Most folks just have no interest in it, push the on button and call it good enough. For me, one of the big reasons, is oem locked bootloader on the device. They make it hard to mod the phone. Though still planning on rooting it. Then would/should be able to tweak alot I can't get to on the device now.

Could babble for days, errrr ... well can babble for dys on just about any topic I'm interested in. Can babble forever when it comes to tech stuff.

PS, sighs more babble about this. I've long since considered it "built to break" and it applies to everything nowadays, cars to blenders, for sure cell phones. They build the battery in, say it voids the warranty if anyone but them or an approve tech works on the device. Things that are built to burn out or seriously break in a set period of time by manufacturers.
They know phone batteries have a avg lifespan of xyz. So if/when that devices battery goes to chit. Time to buy a new one for most folks. Wasting a perfectly good piece of equipment. Or forced to take the road less traveled and breathe new life into it yourself. If they don't discontinue making a compatible bat that is. In which case, still options for folks just harder to do. DIY and keeping your stuff in good working order for longer. Pissing the oem's off. Imo tis foul play and bad business but $ is king I guess.
Sad and something that should hopefully someday change. One person at a time is good enough I guess. Vll!

Last edited by BLizgreat! (2016-11-20 10:12:32)

g33zr · 2016-11-20 16:45:51

Greetings all and especially to Sector11 and BLwillbegreat,

Many thanks for the great laugh I've had reading these posts, but sorry to hear that good old S11 may be caught between a rock and a hard place with his e-mail woes with odd font changes. BTW, I have the same problem when I receive an e-mail in German on my now-aging Samsung mobile. The umlauts and other characters appear garbled, but when I check on my PCs all's well.

I'd babble more but it's almost lunch time and then I've got to take the GSDs for a walk after.

Meanwhile good luck with Google and e-mail. Maybe it's Trump's fault?

BLizgreat! · 2016-11-20 17:09:32

^Thanks G33zr,

Noticed you lurking a couple times. It's good to know you're well fellow nixer.

Sector11 · 2016-11-20 18:17:58

Nice site ... the first two are approximate as models here differ slightly
My first phone: was similar to this Nokia 6110

My wife's first phone, was a SartTac similar to this Motorola StarTAC 85

And our shared phone for the past ±8 years that just died recently (not on the site above): Motorola v-172. 12.5 days battery life on standby and 6:40 conversation time. It was perfect ... it made phone calls! and had speed dial to the few numbers we needed

Also I see it had 3 games - never knew that!

martix · 2016-11-22 02:01:12

Well, if someone tries to monitor the connections of an Android system, it becomes obvious very soon that Android is nothing else but a spying device designed by google and for the profit of google. There is a great forum, xda-developers, with many different custom ROMs and all kinds of stuff. Actually Android is not the problem and the basic system is great (which goes back to linux), so there is nothing wrong with using googlefree Android (there are such ROMs). A phone is perfectly usable also without GApps - google apps - and CyanogenMod is a good starting point. I believe Linux users should manage to flash ROMs and change the system after a short period of learning. Some older, cheaper device is always a good starting point and they work often brilliantly with new custom ROMs.

BLizgreat! · 2016-11-23 17:20:26

^Don't totally disagree, definitely a solid basis for what you say there. Though imo, end of the day, it's still the best thing going on mobile. Not like M$ or apple arent doing same or worse to people. Without giving them all the options and opportunity to get around it. If people really want to they can do a ton of things to nullify any potential for intrusion on their devices.

Though it's up to people to develop the skillset or at least have the common sense to use one of the projects out there provided by people who already do. With M$ and iOS, don't think it's even an option. Not to mention for the vast majority of the people of the world. There's no real reason to worry about it anyway.

Who cares if google knows I sometimes enjoy watching naughty nuns ? That is of course, even worst case if as many have said, I just didn't exercise some common sense and feed da mighty goog a line of crap via the device. Also I hate to break it to folks but there's a metric gazillion ways entities like Google can and do collect data. Adsense, google analytics, flashplayer this, super cookies that. They have world class data centers directly patched into the internets backbone all over the world.

Per chance peeps have heard of data brokers ? Your phone carrier probably sells interested parties your call logs, same for your ISP. Or heard of demographics companies, have been people for long and long, whose profession is compiling a list of one legged middle aged midgets and selling said lists to whoevers willing to pay for that info. Could babble on n on about this topic but nah. Sorry ... been awake too long.

Just recently taken an interest in mobile and from what I've discovered Android has some massive potential to be killer. Consider it a challenge, I will not get my butt kicked by a lil green robot dude.

*Android ... go make me a sammich.

Last edited by BLizgreat! (2016-11-23 20:30:57)

martix · 2016-11-24 01:25:21

Well, indeed, as it was just pointed out above: Data brokers, phone carriers, ISP, social sites or DeathStarEvilGoogle: They are all greedy for our data - the point is: Why should we make it easy for them to - basically - sell "us"? E.g. it's easy to set up a VPN, so the ISP does not receive many useful data. And there is a good alternative for every google service too - this is why googlefree android works fine.
Why should be someone so careless to use gmail and reveal all kinds of private communication if there is an email provider like protonmail? (btw proton has an android app too) Or search engines like startpage, searx.me, unbubble.eu, metager, etc. (there is also a new one called swisscow.ch) work just fine. I suppose it's not only about naughty nuns, but more about the way of life and society vs. corporations in general. I like android but I would never ever use vanilla android made by google because of the issues mentioned (of course no M$ or iOS either). And - again - the point is: There are brilliant alternatives (without data exploitation)! CyanogenMod (again, without google), Jolla, some custom ROMs...

ohnonot · 2016-11-24 05:49:19

martix wrote:

(btw proton has an android app too)

what's so special about proton that you need an app for it?
why not just use K-9 Mail?

martix wrote:

There are brilliant alternatives (without data exploitation)! CyanogenMod (again, without google)...

i'm not sure how youmean this, but people should be aware that cyanogenmod is just as much google as android.
it's "cooler" than stock android, and carefully grooms its image of somehow representing software freedom, but it's just the same. just read the first paragraph. (edit: um. the wikipedia article seems mostly outdated. i did some reading on this a while back, i'm not making this up, cyanogenmod is much closer to android/google proper these days)

also be aware of cyanogen inc.

Last edited by ohnonot (2016-11-24 05:55:12)

martix · 2016-11-24 12:09:45

ohnonot wrote:

martix wrote:
(btw proton has an android app too)
what's so special about proton that you need an app for it?
why not just use K-9 Mail?

Protonmail has a two step log-in process and it's one of the few e-mail providers that has no access to the users e-mails (that was one of the main goals when the campaign to launch this e-mail service was started). Because of the special architecture, a protonmail account cannot be used with e.g. K9 or Thunderbird.

Otherwise that's correct about CyanogenMod, if someone uses it with google-services. What I meant was CM without GApps. There are also some great custom ROMs based on CM, which can be flashed without GApps. I forgot to mention that there is also Ubuntu Touch. On some devices it's even possible to make a dual-boot OS with e.g. Sailfish and Ubuntu.

BLizgreat! · 2016-11-24 14:00:17

There's nothing wrong with exercising your rights or making whatever choices someone makes in terms of software. Just saying some people take it to extremes imo. Ironically many of these people appear to be totally oblivious to the reality of Earth 2016. Not just how easily tracked they are by frontline network admin's, govt's and any number of other interested parties with the resources and skills to want to watch peoples online travels. Or offline of course too.

Satelites, camera's, cell tower signals ( yes, even without location services or by switching to a provider you think is more privacy friendly, that carrier can fairly accurately and easily follow your movement patterns anyway) ... this, that a gazillion other things.

Not going to babble on and on about this. People should use whatever makes them feel happy and satisfied. You can take stock Android ROM's and optimize all hades out of them, strip out whichever services, disable, freeze, hibernate ... outright uninstall etc etc. Tweak the system at all levels and install better alternatives. Drastically improve performance and reduce overhead, skin or rice it and radically customize the looks and it goes on and on.

Though of course that'll take time, learning, research and experimentation. Like someone above said, installing a customized ROM from an outside party doesn't so much mean you're getting what you think you are. It's trusting in some unknown group to do for you. Sure to come with it's own pros and cons clearly. Truth of the matter is skies the limit, if you develop the knowledge and a customized stock ROM can be better and more private than anything else.

One example .. Newer versions of Android come with SElinux installed and active in enforce mode default. I learned to put it into permissive mode in a couple mins (via google search) but as soon as I reboot my device ... nope it's back in enforce mode. It's easy to do on any rooted device supposedly. Install a terminal emulator, use su to get root and type in "getenforce" into the term + Enter. If it returns a value of either 1 or says enforce, then SElinux is in enforce mode. If it returns a value of either 0 or says permissive, it's in permissive mode. To change it just type "setenforce 0" and hit enter, then run the above getenforce command again. Wham ... to check if it's in permissive mode for that session. Reboot and wham ... nope.

Well this is where taking the time to learn comes in handy. Someone with the skill can enable an @boot crontab or put an init script onto the system so that when the device boots SElinux is kept in permissive mode indefinitely. Haven't done this yet though. So can't say it'll be 100% effective. One of the things on the Android 2do list. Not so much because I'm concerned about the NSA invading my privacy. Mostly because it gets in the way of my ability to tweak and mod things how I want on my stuff.

Babble edit:
Do disagree about them selling "us". Yeah google and others employ a model where the users are a type of product, more people, more chances to monetize profitably. Same time they provide a lot of services that many people find enjoyable or beneficial in exchange. Some folks user experience is improved with the default choices made in Android ... some, like myself. Want to try to tweak it to better suit my tastes.
Personally know, Google inc doesn't truly live up to it's do no evil motto. Same time they aren't some evil empire who sits around plotting the total annihilation of everyone's privacy. They leave that to your govt's.
Point of fact Google Inc knows the power of opensource and I don't believe they could've grown to where they are today without harnessing much of the goodness opensource devs have given the tech world. How far would they've gotten paying M$ for software licensing and support ? What do you think is running most of their backend ? If ya guessed gnu/Linux and much opensource, then congrats.

Am all for the projs and individuals out there, which are trying to improve opensource and fight the powers that be. There are no doubt tons of awesome people involved and I'm grateful to them for all the opensource contributors efforts. So am not trying to down you, insult or anything of that nature martix. Nor saying you don't have valid knowledge and skills. Support your outlooks and views fellow nixer. +1 on why not try to make things better.

Last edited by BLizgreat! (2016-11-24 22:03:32)

martix · 2016-11-24 22:30:05

Oh, yes, tweak and tinker like there is no tomorrow! @BLwillbegreat! Nothing like a making down in sight. On the contrary, it seems both of us like to think and chat about these kind of tech-things. Generally non-tech folks mostly do not care/do not have any knowledge about these issues, so it's great to have a conversation and exchange interesting ideas/opinions.
If anyone is interested in a dual boot device like mentioned above, here are some more info (and the list of supported devices as well): https://github.com/MariusQuabeck/magic-device-tool

Sector11 · 2016-11-25 18:07:45

@BLwillbegreat! Awesome stuff as always ... and so true!

#41 2016-11-18 20:57:53

Re: Do I really "need" Google

#42 2016-11-19 00:11:50

Re: Do I really "need" Google

#43 2016-11-19 00:35:41

Re: Do I really "need" Google

#44 2016-11-19 00:54:57

Re: Do I really "need" Google

#45 2016-11-19 11:26:40

Re: Do I really "need" Google

#46 2016-11-19 12:34:59

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#47 2016-11-20 05:15:12

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#48 2016-11-20 09:01:57

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#49 2016-11-20 09:54:42

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#50 2016-11-20 16:45:51

Re: Do I really "need" Google

#51 2016-11-20 17:09:32

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#52 2016-11-20 18:17:58

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#53 2016-11-22 02:01:12

Re: Do I really "need" Google

#54 2016-11-23 17:20:26

Re: Do I really "need" Google

#55 2016-11-24 01:25:21

Re: Do I really "need" Google

#56 2016-11-24 05:49:19

Re: Do I really "need" Google

#57 2016-11-24 12:09:45

Re: Do I really "need" Google

#58 2016-11-24 14:00:17

Re: Do I really "need" Google

#59 2016-11-24 22:30:05

Re: Do I really "need" Google

#60 2016-11-25 18:07:45

Re: Do I really "need" Google

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