Comments on: My Android phone no longer has a Google account

By: Martin Zatroch

Martin Zatroch — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 20:47:37 +0000

One more thing, as for Android/Linux; well you have two options either use Replicant / Cyanogenmod (as in more freed custom ROMs walking on the edge of device warranty) while using safe F-Droid market (http://f-droid.org/) or use just dumb phone (still a tracking device) until FirefoxOS (Boot2Gecko) proves itself a more privacy aware solution.

By: Martin Zatroch

Martin Zatroch — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 20:36:21 +0000

Google Inc. is the only big vendor out there whom I barely trust. I kind of manage healthy balance of their services used – these days mostly just GMail (using modern interface with JavaScript if I have to keep in touch with folks throughout integrated XMPP widget – no I am not by any means a fan of proprietary plugin needed for video conversations; as well as I always deny invitations for Plus social network participation) with GDrive linked together (only minimal amount of school related docs) and their Blogger aquisition (which I link to my own domain, though without any social 3rd party sharing buttons and stuff; as well as I host vast imagery at decentralized GNU MediaGoblin instance). Of course it would be much fairer to use a resource effective LAMP stack e.g. on Cubie board mentioned by you.

Inner voice of mine questions these procedures from time to time, but the brain’s logical reply is as following – see there ain’t much companies supporting FLOSS movement this much. Yes, ads and data is huge business, but who else is doing such a lot community service and public investment?

1.| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/03/new-statistics-about-national-security-letters-google-transparency-report
2.| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/03/hey-google-can-we-have-data-about-fisa-court-orders
3.| http://www.haiku-os.org/news/2013-01-27_google_donates_5000_usd_thank_you_not_enough
4.| http://www.haiku-os.org/node/5087
5.| http://www.haiku-os.org/community/gsoc/2013
6.| http://review.coreboot.org/gitweb?p=coreboot.git;a=commitdiff;h=d6682e88afc31f0d05f74638c28f6cc60fa2ba69
7.| http://review.coreboot.org/gitweb?p=coreboot.git;a=commitdiff;h=49428d840323210433c96740545246296d65b3f2
8.| http://blog.webmproject.org/2013/03/vp8-and-mpeg-la.html
9.| https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/
10. https://code.google.com/p/tesseract-ocr/
11. http://golang.org/
12. http://www.dartlang.org/
13. http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1302.2/02945.html

All I want to express is, that I completely understand you being paranoid, as I know this feeling myself. But let’s face it, sooner or later Google will overcome Canonical in positive commitment and giving back.

PS: What if Richard Matthew Stallman used instead of MIPS-based Yeelong with PMON BIOS & obsolete gNewSense rather X86-based Pixel with Coreboot & Parabola (liberated ArchLinux)? It’s truly hypothetical, but what IF. So man keep up hoping for brighter mornings & consider my recommendation of DuckDuckGo search engine as a drop-in replacement of Google Search. (=

PPS: IMAP & Jabber are far from dead & if only they abandoned necessary pluggable code in favor of WebRTC implementation, that would be a headshot for Skype ← Microsoft ↓ Nokia → Facebook surveillance combo. One would wonder.. if people wake up even IRC might regain momentum! d-_-b \m/

By: Justin Yang

Justin Yang — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 14:12:27 +0000

Well, are apps from Aptoide safe? I’m afraid of that. Currently, I use F-droid to install open source apps I need.

By: Dusty Phillips

Dusty Phillips — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 16:36:37 +0000

Cyphex, I did mean to include that information in my post, so here it is: I am using CardDAV-Sync and it seems to work flawlessly with both OwnCloud and Radicale.

The same author also has a CalDAV-sync connector. I haven’t tried it, but others have mentioned that it works. There is also an Android app called aCal that has internal caldav sync. I believe both of them have been said to work with both Radicale and OwnCloud.

For Thunderbird, there is a contacts connector called SOGo that works well with OwnCloud, but does not currently work with Radicale. I believe there are several calDav connectors for Thunderbird Lightning, but I did not research them.

By: Rubén

Rubén — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 15:05:59 +0000

Instead Ghostery, try adblock plus with Fanboys Ultimate List, wich include Privacylist https://secure.fanboy.co.nz/r/fanboy-ultimate.txt

By: Nameless

Nameless — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 14:20:24 +0000

Whatever we do, we can never fully escape from google’s radar. As most of the people we correspond with have a gmail account, and that means even our most secret information is residing on google’s servers …

By: Cyphex

Cyphex — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 13:44:13 +0000

Hi Dusty,

thank you for this interesting post! I recently started looking into the same problem and already found out about OwnCloud (although Radicale might also be the better solution for me – didn’t know about it until your post, so thanks again). My current problem is to find (preferably free) apps for syncing, so I’d be interested in your choice there. The only free one I found so far is “CardDAV-Sync free beta”.
In addition, I’d like to also sync my calendar, but could not find any free solutions for that yet. If you have come across anything in this field, a pointer into the right direction would be highly appreciated.

Btw, I also enjoyed your other posts (especially the DVCS ones). Please keep up the great work!