Bristol Digest, Vol 642, Issue 1

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Today's Topics:

1. Re: Mailer for Android (Zaniyah)
2. Re: Mailer for Android (Colin M Strickland)
3. Re: Cloud backups (Colin M Strickland)


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Message: 1
Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2016 07:49:46 +0100
From: Zaniyah <zan@zaniyah.org>
To: Bristol and Bath Linux User Group <bristol@mailman.lug.org.uk>
Subject: Re: [bristol] Mailer for Android
Message-ID: <5714838A.6020502@zaniyah.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252

On 13/04/16 13:52, jpff wrote:
> Maybe a little off-topic but I am slowly trying to join the last decade
> of the 20th century. Current task is to be able to send email from
> my phone which is NOT html (which is an abomination). So far I have
> tried gmail and typeapp but both send html and I could not find any way
> to turn it off.
> Wish there was a sane emacs to use...
> ==John ffitch
>

For the brief period during which I played with this, I just installed a
SSH client, but I didn't/don't require X. I'm not sure how usable the
no-X version of emacs is, but perhaps alpine or mutt would be sufficient.

** RANT ALERT **

I created a few apps before deciding I didn't like Android's security
"model", if it can even be called that. I have since lobotomised my
phone, re-building Android from source after pruning so it is completely
sans google, and it is only used for voice and SMS. Too many services
randomly trying to phone home all the time for my liking in any case.

Infuriatingly Android does come with it's only version of iptables, but
you often find that the manufacturer has made it impossible to use if
you've the factory-installed OS still. Various suggestions for this
cross my mind, especially given the penchant for collecting stats on
everything we do. I find it very strange that no one is complaining
that manufacturers withhold root access on these computers. Any one
buying a desktop, laptop or server would be horrified to find that
they're not allowed to reinstall or have root on their own machines.
Why is no one protesting about phones? The number and complexity of the
hoops that must be jumped through to reinstall and to get root are
ridiculous, especially if you don't like the idea of just downloading
some unknown binary created by a stranger on a forum somewhere and
executing it on a device you use so heavily for so many sensitive tasks.

As for viruses on Android, I do see some interesting things, watching
network traffic. It seems that a bigger problem (at the moment) is
spyware. A LOT of android phones on the network I help to look after (a
large unversity), and a lot of them seem to be afflicted with
something. I find it very interesting to cross-reference the calls home
with geoip data. You probably won't notice if your phone or tablet is
reporting on you, or taking part in click-fraud or DDoS. For some of
the more badly written Android malware you might notice a drop in
battery life, but generally it has to be very badly written for you to
notice that if you're the sort of person who likes to leave wifi and/or
mobile data switched on.

Unfortunately my brief look at Android anti-virus suggested that none of
the free options (the only ones I liked at) were very good at picking
anything up or preventing infection. My own strategy is to keep minimal
data on the phone, back up anything new that I need to (eg new
contacts), and reinstall periodically.

For those who want some horror stories, I suggest you look at Samsung
GSM modem separation (or lack thereof -- the GSM modem can pass commands
to the OS, and you have no control or visibility of it) and Motorola
spyware, to name just two. Then there is the stuff that your connection
provider (eg Orange/EE) puts on the phone ..

By the way, has anyone worked out how to opt out of location tracking
yet? I have yet to find any practical information on it, and the
customer support monkeys don't seem to know anything about it.



------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2016 10:44:06 +0100
From: Colin M Strickland <cms@beatworm.co.uk>
To: Bristol and Bath Linux User Group <bristol@mailman.lug.org.uk>
Subject: Re: [bristol] Mailer for Android
Message-ID: <87inzfb660.fsf@hob.home.beatworm.co.uk>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8


James Cownie writes:

> > Wish there was a sane emacs to use?
>
> I am fairly sure there is an emacs for Android, (yes, https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.zielm.emacs <https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.zielm.emacs>) but it seems hard to enter control characters without a proper keyboard, which makes using it non-trivial, since my left little finger sits on ctrl when using Emacs!
>

I think termux is the more practical emacs - the android app builds
don't even work on any of my android devices. Termux has an emacs 25 in
its repos. Hacker's keyboard brings all the necessary keys to a soft
keyboard, I can emacs with this combo about as well as I ever have been
able to on a phone ( fine for irc, TODO.txt, notes, but not
going to be writing code or reading mail on it, but YMMV )

--
Regards,
Colin M . Strickland, cms, 'that guy'



------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2016 10:47:45 +0100
From: Colin M Strickland <cms@beatworm.co.uk>
To: Bristol and Bath Linux User Group <bristol@mailman.lug.org.uk>
Subject: Re: [bristol] Cloud backups
Message-ID: <87h9ezb62w.fsf@hob.home.beatworm.co.uk>
Content-Type: text/plain


nick robinson writes:

> There are some really good amazon s3 clients which are free.
> Personally i've been wanting to try rsync.net. you can use either standard
> rsync or combine it with zfs for an amazingly quick backup. bit more
> expensive but no usage fees.
>

if it's cost-sensitivity, and cloud archival services you are
interested, you should probably evaluate Amazon Glacier alongside S3

--
Regards,
Colin M . Strickland, cms, 'that guy'



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