That’s awesome. Is it as simple as adding the microG repo to F-Droid and installing from there?
That’s awesome. Is it as simple as adding the microG repo to F-Droid and installing from there?
Adding to that, there’re builds of LineageOS with microG preinstalled, which should be relatively similar to CalyxOS.
(Of course, not realistic if you have 500GB of music and no SD card slot in your phone)
That’s the problem right there. SD card storage is so cheap, but the manufacturers don’t include a slot for it.
It’s a sad day. E.g. former MEP Felix Reda did incredible work around the time of the 2017 EU copyright reform and helped the protests through transparency.
Now with the risk of badly written laws enabling (atm. restricted) surveillance, we’d have needed them more than ever. Luckily there’s still MEPs from the Czech Republic in the EU parliament.
Torrents are based on the idea that everyone using them pays for it with their bandwidth and hardware cost. Except for those leechers who don’t share.
I’m paying more for my seedbox than for my usenet subscription. If I used my own hardware I’d pay with stress on my hardware, e.g. the disks aging and failing earlier because of seeding. The power consumption is also not negligeble, altough the server is also used for other purposes.
With private trackers this idea of an equal exchange is more obvious because of ratio requirements.
Edit: I’d say it’s similar to open source in that no single individual has to pay for it, but someone does have to, for it to exist. Most often with their (valuable) time and knowledge. If no one helps out and does their part (through money or time+knowledge), a project won’t survive for long. Same is true for torrents.
I will be surprised if Spotify won’t announce a new more expensive HIFI subscription with their support for lossless audio. Imo this still makes it less interesting than Tidal/Deezer/Qobuz since it’ll still be impossible to permanently download music from Spotify.
Nonetheless it’s great that Spotify will provide lossless audio for those who want it.
You’re right, thanks for correcting me.
You’re right, my apologies for confidently spreading misinformation and thank you for pointing it out. Material You colors are available on LineageOS and GrapheneOS, probably CalyxOS too.
With Android 12 GrapheneOS and CalyxOS choosing different colors was not possible, maybe because they didn’t implement something at first, but with 13+ Material You works as intended.
I’ve edited my parent comment accordingly.
Google has always been able to remove installed apps remotely, although I believe they only use it for malicious apps, not for apps that simply get removed from the Play Store.
But I’ve also been mislead by the headline.
Clickbait makes me appreciate my preferred small tech news outlet, which has been doing serious journalism without sensationalism for over 25 years. The authors even interact in their forum, which is still active because of how the site actually cares about the community.
My mental list of sites I try to avoid is longer than the list of actually good sites. Sadly those thrash sites get pushed up in rankings of Google News and similar aggregators because clickbait clicks well.
It’s important to note that Android ≠ AOSP (Android Open Source Project). Most of the actually interesting features advertised in a new Android release won’t be available to you if your not installing Google Services.
E.g. heavily advertised features like Android 12’s “Material You” adaptive themes aren’t even available on AOSP and thus GrapheneOS, CalyxOS or LineageOS.
New privacy features often already existed for years on custom ROMs like LineageOS.
This is why since around Android 10 I’m not even following new Android releases, at least not beyond reading glancing over an article. I didn’t even notice my phone updated to from 12 to 13 (GrapheneOS) until I noticed the new background apps menu, which is pretty much all of the changes.
Edit: Being able to set a language per app is a great feature of Android 13.
Edit 2: As pointed out in comments below, my Material You example was wrong.
A better example are heavily advertised translation and image editing features, which are sometimes locked to Pixel and definitely locked to installs with Google Services. Same is true for apps like “Digital Wellbeing”, which don’t work on AOSP but its features are advertised as Android features.
tl;dr
Android updates are even more uninteresting if your using a custom ROM, because most features won’t even be available in open source Android.
As a former LineageOS for microG user I’m happy to say that it’s no longer necessary to use it instead of official LineageOS because they finally added signature spoofing to upstream LineageOS [1].
As far as I understand, this allows microG to work perfectly fine with any app on official LineageOS, without any patching of the ROM needed.
I haven’t tried it and there’s no reason to switch of LineageOS for microG, but I’ll definitely give it a shot on a future device.
[1] https://review.lineageos.org/c/LineageOS/android_frameworks_base/+/383573
The 13T Pro, as well as the standard 13T, come in two versions - dual-glass design and glass front with vegan leather back, both featuring plastic frames with matching colors and metal-like finish. [1]
The Xiaomii 13T Pro is available with a vegan leather back (plastic) which won’t break from a drop. Instead vegan leather likely deteriorates in look and feel over the years, but I’d prefer it over broken glass.
Glass backs were already popular on Android phones when Apple started using them. Previously they used metal backs, but they aren’t compatible with wireless charging so manufacturers have to choose between plastic and glass — guess which one is more popular with reviewers?
Huaweii’s HarmonyOS is also based on Android, just like other manufacturer’s Android reskins.
They might’ve hard forked AOSP without incorporating newer changes and over time farther deviate from upstream AOSP, but at least three years ago they basically just replaced all mentions of Android with Harmony.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/02/harmonyos-hands-on-huaweis-android-killer-is-just-android/
Or they do it like their e2e-encryption: proprietary extensions to RCS without any compatibility with other RCS apps (not that there’s any, given it’s necessary to partner with Google to do so).
What happens if you start the torrent client without the VPN already running?
Bind your torrent client to the VPN interface, then you won’t even need a killswitch.
Sadly I find myself opening up Stealth (open source reddit client without any login) more than I’d like. There’s just more content for some topics. No longer supporting reddit by commenting is largely good enough for me, but it makes me understand how most people never left reddit.
At the same time I spent more time on social media than I should, like typing this comment.
Banks were able to create their own NFC payment app, which can be set as default payment provider.
I’m not sure what else Google Wallet is able to do, but I guess this might be about being able to have a default wallet with tickets for events and similar.
Hopefully there’ll really be open-source wallets. With banking/nfc pay this isn’t possible for service ands security reasons.
I’m pretty sure microG isn’t installed by default because of how it’d conflict with installing MindTheGapps (Google Apps).
It’s great to see LMFG continuing for a while because its users would have to wipe their device to switch to LineageOS + microG.