Author: Paolo Redaelli

ASynK – Awesome SynK

Posted on by Paolo Redaelli

https://asynk.io/

Well, that’s interesting:

ASynK CmdLine is a powerful open source Contacts synchronization program that works with a variety of Contacts software such as Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Exchange Server, Google Contacts, Any standards compiant CardDAV server, and Emacs BBDB.

Some of the key features of ASynK are:

ASynK allows two-way sync of Contacts across any two supported sources. For e.g. you can use this to copy contacts from one Google account to another, or from your Google account and your official MS Exchange account etc.

And the author says it’s “open source”. Well writing than an AGPL3 program is “open source” is a gross underestimate of the freedom its author is giving to the users! Kudos

Like a drug

Posted on by Paolo Redaelli

I naïvely thought that I wasn’t so reliant on the “we have shun our don’t be evil motto” organization (hint G00gle).

How fool I was. I didn’t even have the phone number of my wife saved into my own CardDav address book.

She phoned me to ask about my sprained ankle and my phone didn’t even recognised her call.

The tittle of this piece maybe excessive. I suspect that many proprietary services are similar. Until a few days ago I shunned the golden prison of Apple. Google is no better. Android may be Free Software but being released with a non persistent license it is only instrumental to give Google more power.

Posted on by Paolo Redaelli

Not only WhatsApp is proprietary software but it doesn’t even like to run on a pure Android release which I have to remind you is Free Software.

Sadly its freedom is not persistent so it can be turned and it is too often turned into proprietary.

Telegram happily runs on many terminals at the same time. You can move your SIM from a phone to another and it doesn’t have anything to quarry about. WhatsApp instead insists on having one and one only terminal to control. And it keep losing data unless you backup it on a proprietary service (aka Google Drive) and no, it doesn’t allow you to download it. Unless you “voluntary” choose to lock yourself into the golden and sweet prison of proprietary services.

It took me years to acknowledge it: Google’s walled garden is the same as Apple’s: a golden and comfortable prison.

Escaping those prisons is not easy neither fast.

I will escape. I will be free.

Sticking to FairPhone Open is one of the required steps. It shows how pervasive, sweet yet subtle are the shackles of the great G which by the way has shunned its choice not to be evil some years ago.

I’ve been mainly using Free as in freedom software since 1997. Now the time has come to really stick to freedom even in mobile.

Until my Puri.sm Librem5 will come. Then things will get serious.

Oltraggioso

Posted on by Paolo Redaelli

Sono cliente TIM da quasi vent’anni, da quando la mia fidanzata mi regalò una SIM per chiamarci a basso costo.

Sono alla fine approdato all’attuale fornitura da ben 5Gb/mese con 200 minuti, alla “modica” cifra di 10€/mese.

Sono arrivato alla conclusione che essere un cliente fedele è una scemenza di questi tempi perché sei considerato solamnete una vacac da mungere.

Alla stessa cifra, oggi, la stessa TIM dà 50 GB e minuti illimitati. Ma solo se arrivi da un operatore virtuale (tranne Kena, ovviamente, son sempre loro!).

Anzichè premiare chi letteralmente da decenni continua a dar loro danari in cambio di servizi, con formule del tipo “se rimani più di x anni, bonus di y” continuano il giochetto di rubarsi i clienti.

Francamente, mi sfugge il senso di tutto ciò.