Android

SuperTuxKart

Posted on by Paolo Redaelli

SuperTuxKart

SuperTuxKart is a 3D open-source arcade racer with a variety characters, tracks, and modes to play.

It’s a beautiful game, with a little glitch: to join a multiplayer you have to push the “Select” button which usually is the “Fire” or space on a keyboard. Well, on Android… where is the “Select” button?

Of course, there’s no “select”. You must use a gamepad to play SuperTuxKart multiplayer on Android.

At least until version 1.0

I’m downloading version 1.1 right now, I’ll let you know if it does change anything…

Use Briar instead of Bridgefy!!!

Posted on by Paolo Redaelli

Hong Kong Protesters Using Mesh Messaging App China Can’t Block: Usage Up 3685% – Slashdot:

An anonymous reader quotes Forbes: How do you communicate when the government censors the internet? With a peer-to-peer mesh broadcasting network that doesn’t use the internet.

That’s exactly what Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters are doing now, thanks to San Francisco startup Bridgefy’s Bluetooth-based messaging app. The protesters can communicate with each other — and the public — using no persistent managed network…

Too bad that Bridgefy is proprietary software. Luckyly there are free-as-in-freedom alternatives: the first entry is Briar:

Briar is a messaging app designed for activists, journalists, and anyone else who needs a safe, easy and robust way to communicate. Unlike traditional messaging tools such as email, Twitter or Telegram, Briar doesn’t rely on a central server – messages are synchronized directly between the users’ devices. If the Internet’s down, Briar can sync via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, keeping the information flowing in a crisis. If the Internet’s up, Briar can sync via the Tor network, protecting users and their relationships from surveillance

It has a nice website, it’s available on both Google Play “walled garden” and in the free-as-in-freedome F-Droid repository: Get it on Google Play

  Get it on F-DroidAnd the sources are readily available as a git repository.

Eh che stufita!

Posted on by Paolo Redaelli

Dear Facebook,

I’ve been accessing your social service using Frost an free-as-in-freedom Android app.

Why? Because I don’t trust you. You already far too much about me. And knowing your ways of handling and selling the data you collect I’ve decided to confine you as much as possible and this means that I will never install your proprietary client to access your services.

I want to keep you confined into softwares that I can trust, such as the Firefox web browser or the Frost client.

But you keep thinking that my usage of Frost is “suspicious” and keep locking me out. I’m fed up.

Google Play Store Now Open For Progressive Web Apps – Slashdot

Posted on by Paolo Redaelli

Google Play Store Now Open For Progressive Web Apps – Slashdot

Chrome 72 for Android shipped the long-awaited Trusted Web Activity feature, which means we can now distribute PWAs in the Google Play Store! I played with the feature for a while, digging into the APIs and here you have a summary of what’s going on, what to expect and how to use it today. Chrome 72 for Android is now shipping from the Play Store to all users and this version included Trusted Web Activity (TWA), that in a nutshell is a way to open Chrome in standalone mode (without any toolbar or Chrome UI) within the scope of our own native Android package. Let me start saying that the publishing process is not straightforward as it should be (such as “enter your URL” in the Play Console and it’s done). It’s also not a way to use the currently available WebAPK and publish it in the store. It’s a Java API that communicates through services with Chrome and seem to be in the early stages, so there is a lot of manual work to do yet today.

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.