Not really, they’ve all had telemetry for probably 20 years.

The cars with satellite radio are even worse (which isn’t saying much, since they put modems in cars about 20 years ago)

Jeep/Chrysler have always been banned from my life.

Garbage. Worse than any other American car company. They even managed to screw up cars made for them by Mitsubishi.

Which is why adding Tailscale to this KVM is a killer solution

Excellent, thanks for the link!

I like your thoughts on runtime and recharge time.

That four hour limit really outs things into perspective for someone just starting out. Most people don’t understand the constraints at first.

I believe mailbox.org is all renewable, and I’m pretty sure it’s solar.

But you need a massive battery bank to run stuff, batteries have a limited lifespan (especially the crap used in a UPS).

It’s not cheap, you generally want to overbuild everything, and there are ongoing costs (hardware failures, batteries, etc).

But it can be done. Just have to do the math for your max power draw, then how much uptime you need determines the size of your battery bank and number of panels (which is influenced by how much sun you get/how consistent it is). You need enough panels to run your system and charge batteries, given the limitations of sun availability.

It’s really frustrating there’s no proper backup/restore without root - that’s my primary reason for having root.

Yea, Syncthing-Fork is still maintained, though there hasn’t been an update for a while. The company that makes Möbius Sync for iOS is a big supporter of Syncthing, hopefully they’ll help in some way. Alternatively there’s Resilio Sync, but it’s hard on phone ram - I’d have to manage it a lot more often. Though it has Selective Sync - I can browse a shared folder from my phone and tell it to sync specific files. This is great for my media server - I can grab any movie/music anytime.

I like Syncthing-Fork better because it moves sync conditions to within each folder. So my DCIM folder syncs on any network or battery condition (so I don’t lose photos), but NeoBackup folder only syncs on wifi and while charging.

Pretty much all folders now sync 2-way, and I export the Syncthing config on the phone whenever I change something. That export folder is also synced, so when I switch phones I just install ST, import that config, and after a couple hours the new phone has all the same stuff as the old phone. Then I launch NeoBackup and start restoring.

That’s fucked up

Wow, install Tailscale or Wireguard and you’ve got a killer remote support solution.

Weird people would downvote this. I usually don’t care (still don’t, lol) but someone downvoted the idea of installing a mesh VPN on this KVM, yet it’s already been done.

I’ve used Folder Sync since about 2011. Killer app.

I run rooted just so I can backup/restore apps, using NeoBackup. It backs up to a local folder.

That folder, along with pretty much every folder on my phone is synced to a server at home using Syncthing-Fork. This way new data (photos, downloaded files, etc) are always replicated, and I can effectively manage the phone file system by moving files around at home. Any changes I make will sync back to the phone.

Not just Europe, everywhere. Look at all the breaches, every day.

Until those breaches cost companies serious money, they won’t do anything about it.

“too”

I recently switched my cell service to JMP.chat, which pipes your SMS into XMPP (it’s brilliant, SMS is no longer tied to a physical device or SIM). I still get spam sms, but it’s far less an issue.

Plus I can pop any Sim into my phone and it has no affect on my phone number that’s with JMP. That all remains in XMPP, and the new SIM would just provide a different data connection (and it’s own number with its own voice and SMS).

Have you ever used Yet Another Call Blocker?

I’m curious how it compares to Carrion (I’m not sure they’re directly comparable, looks like Carrion does a little more than YACB).

I’ve used YACB for years, just to keep my phone from ringing for unknown calls, and only allow contacts to ring through.

There’s still Lineage (which is what DivestOS is based on), and Graphene for Pixel.

I’m currently running DivestOS on a 2017 flagship, it’s really good there (I also run it on some Pixels).

I’m really hoping someone (preferably a team) will pickup DivestOS. Makes me wish I had the leadership skills to pull a team together.

I dunno, laptops have gotten tremendously better - can run most of a day without power anymore. I certainly have charged my phone 3x as much as my laptop. And I already carry an external 10k Wh battery for my phone.

OP actually raises a good point about power consumption that I hadn’t considered in a while.

NeoBackup only works if rooted, unfortunately. Well, unfortunately users don’t have full control over iOS and Android without having to sidestep stuff.

Laptops are arguably potentially far more secure. Most mobile apps collect every bit of data they can (and have internet access for no reason) , and mobile devices have standardized ways of enabling it - how often other apps are launched, what other apps are installed, etc, etc. PC OS’s don’t have that stuff built in, and apps rarely have that kind of code. Plus they’re just easier to firewall (as much of a nuisance as it is to do. Hell, GCM was built to do most of this stuff.

Paid $150 for a Pixel 5. Pixel 7 is $200.

I don’t waste money on new phones, or new cars.

*syntax

(Just an FYI, I’m guessing autoincorrect got you).

Great notes too, good point about the device name vs device ID.