Blog log - 2022/2

Last update : 8/6/2023

25/12/2022

Since this post is released right at that date, here's an obligatory Merry Christmas (or Grav-Mass or whatever other holiday you're celebrating at this date). Anyway, here's some personal life changelog:

• Retested /e/, found them to be shit. In an attempt to help users keep data away from Google, /e/ offers a full suite of stuff trying to cover the same stuff Google offers, but with varying privacy issues (most notable example is App Lounge, which directly uses Play Store for apps & submits data to Go-ogle). All recommendations of /e/ will be removed from my site.
• Changed up the index to hopefully better tidy things up.
• Got back into playing Fate/GO again (no thanks to influence from the guy who got my Pixel 3, who I will call Bob in this site as I might mention him more times than needed), unfortunately (with a new account as well; as my old one couldn't be recovered anymore). Hopefully this gives me an opportunity to review it.
Spoiler alert : Regardless of whether I play Fate/GO or not, I will NOT recommend you to play it, as it's an online-only game.


• Speaking of that Bob fellow, last Sunday (11/12/2022) he asked me to tune his old OnePlus 3T to my specs* (simply because he wanted something to remind him of me in the unlikely case he got moved away from town and/or had to replace a coworker who couldn't go to some business trip) & fix his nonfunctional mechanical buttons (lucky him my dead 3T still had working buttons). Suffice to say, it got abused for more stuff before it returned to its owner's hands...
*by specs he means having some kryonaut (a thermal paste, not to be confused with a liquid metal product from the same corpo known as conductonaut) on both sides of the board, as well as some internal cleanups & new components (battery, charging port).


• Played with the unofficial Lineage-microG build he had installed. It was definitely better than stock LineageOS (and Lineage-microG), with some GrapheneOS-based features such as captive portal toggle & secure app spawning; Bromite webview as default prebuilt (though Bromite browser was also stuck on as system app); and a toggle to inject an iptables script to block all Facebook IP & Google IP for most apps (though which apps get these treatment are unknown, unfortunately).
• Re-tried out Battleheart Legacy (fortunately Bob wasn't really a fan of this one) because I kinda missed it, only for it to not work there, causing me to re-test it. Suffice to say, some security patch made the app no longer work properly.
• Nuked the fuck out of the external-corpo page - corpo-hosted content got a bit too boring IMO.
• Shattered Pixel Dungeon pages will no longer be updated. It might be just me, but lately my opinion regarding the game has somewhat soured.
• Played with A13 crDroid for a while (at least 24 hours). On paper, it's not that different from A12, but here are some differences I noticed :
• Disabling touch feedback (Settings > Sound & vibration > Vibration & haptics) now also nukes keyboard vibration for whatever reason (though it does disable vibration for navbar & app drawer). In every previous Android version, keyboard vibrations are independent from this setting, so it's an unneccesary change.
10/6/2023 Update : Rechecked vibration for Simple Keyboard (rkkr) in A13 (alongside Bob, who just happened to found this out on his X3N). It works (even when Android touch feedback is disabled) when vibration duration is set to system default. It's just that controllable vibration duration is now borked.


• Quick Settings shortcuts for settings & power menu now moved to the bottom of the display, just above the navbar. The edit button was also moved to the right, just below the last QS option.
• Not sure if this is specific to crDroid or upstream (6/1/2023 Update : This behavior is actually specific to crDroid.), but there's a toggle for connectivity check (Settings > Network & internet). However, the option for changing the captive portal provider is still absent.
• 11/5/2023 Update : For whatever reason, Goolag thought it is wise to integrate bluetooth, uwb, & sdk sandbox (/system/apex/AdServices/app) as AOSP dependency in /apex; where removing either (and/or all) will cause the OS to not boot. Did not tried out wiping any other /apex stuff since I refuse to bother daily driving A13 (and may not deal with future Android).

17/10/2022

Personal life changelog :

• Got the Thinkpad X220 patched up, & got a M50X as well (by giving up the Pixel 3 - more on that on the next point).
• Giving up the Pixel 3 ended up backfiring in my face. The guy who got it (and helped me with the X220) apparently got involved in some high-commitment job & was unable to participate in some FGO events (and had me blast through the events, after he took 2 hours to set the damn thing up). And here I said I won't be playing FGO again - guess I'm back to the grind I suppose...
Unfortunately, this also delayed my work with the site as I got my hands tied up with making sure his events are cleaned up. Guess this shows how some favors can be problematic, especially with some casuals.


• Converted most (if not all) mentions of PDAs into cellphones, for a more fitting name (though I may still call them phones / devices - consider this part as me just normalizing all mentions of Android devices instead of sticking them into one "PDA" word).
• cell : prison, jail
• phone : snitching, spying
• Finally rushed in the Forza Horizon 5 review. Dear lord was that a long wait. But still - thanks to real life issues, I ended up not being able to fully complete it, so updates will have to be made to the review to ensure it's 100% complete.

Future (unconfirmed) plans for now :

• See if getting the site to Codeberg is not problematic, considering Neocities has some censorship issues (in retrospect, both Codeberg & Neocities has censorship issues). Though here's hoping my Neocities account don't go down before I copy-paste my site anywhere else.
• Finish up the FH5 review - sooner I do, sooner I can get back to stuff I want to actually do (and uninstall FH5 out of my Windows laptop).
• Revise the index page.
• Revise the Android privacy mod guide, with more disclaimers.

8/8/2022

Currently looking for a new launcher & music app for Android as both have some issue.

26/7/2022

The PDA OS page has been fully revised, with some obsolete report removed and/or marked as "retesting required".

16/7/2022

First blog-logpost of the 2nd half of 2022, here goes:

• Forza Horizon 5 review is currently paused, at least until I get a good feel of the latest HotWheels DLC (which comes to Steam on 19/7/2022, and probably getting extended to unknown for repackers). Turns out writing a non-shilled & actually somewhat detailed review isn't that easy, especially for someone who has never actually reviewed a game before. No review on FH4 will be done as the game got too clunky from the beginning for me.
• The PDA OS page will be eventually revised for a more relevant Vanilla / Vanilla/GApps / Limbo / GApps setup instead of the AOSP / LOS / Pixel / Limbo setup, which is actually irrelevant.
• Finally bit the bullet for A12L & made it a daily driver (crDroid for the X3P). So far, blargh. Unfortunately, I am also starting to lose my passion of trying to get an actually "independent & private" Android setup.

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