Category Archives: technology

Big Cell Phone Won This Round

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I hate to say it, but I need to go back to a stock ROM for my cell phone. I had rooted it last August to put LineageOS on it, because then I was able to get access to Android 15 and all the whiz-bang security updates.

Y’see, Google stopped updating my Pixel 4a in September of 2023. The phone is still good, though, unlike my wife’s Pixel 4a which they effectively killed with the battery issues (which started this whole NAS situation). Mine was still good, and last summer I tried a couple custom OS’s, one was GrapheneOS and the other was LineageOS.

GrapheneOS was ok, but it was REALLY locked down, so much so that few of my apps were working, and it tended to be a pain. So I switched to LineageOS, and I loved it. Weekly security patches, Android 15, pretty much similar to the new Android devices.

The problem, however, was that the boot loader needed to be unlocked. Not a big deal, says I, as only one app wouldn’t install and that was Coinbase. Oh well, that’s what they make the browser for, amirite? So, for the last year it’s been great.

Until.

End of June. Mint Mobile starts ramping up to get RCS on all devices (RCS was working on my device)…but to get RCS working, they need to work with the great Google. Well, the great Google doesn’t like devices that they can’t control…and since I don’t have a boot locker on my device, well it flagged…and google messaging just auto-kills RCS messages for devices like mine. They do this update a couple times a year, from what I understand, just to kill this option.

You must understand: they’re doing it for us because so many spammers are using unlocked devices. And spammers are bad, see, because they’re not paying google the advertising fee that good spammers are paying…spammers like facebook or amazon or other advertisers. They’re good, because google gets money. They’re not bad like people like me, who didn’t want to pay hundreds of dollars to update a perfectly good phone.

I was ok with losing some access to apps, but I was starting to not get messages from my wife, from mom and family, from other important entities that I needed to communicate with. That won’t fly, and dagnabbit, I’m not dropping hundreds of dollars for a new phone when this one is working just fine…and I’ll just deal with the security hassles.

This is what planned obsolescence looks like folks. It’s not your fridge stopping two months before the warranty is out. It’s the massive amount of control these companies have over our technology and data…and the way they can manipulate us away from making our own choices. Choices that work for us and make our lives better, but may cut out some sliver of profits.

I used to support capitalism. Capitalism used to be about making money. But I really think American Capitalism is starting to be more about control…control over everything.

So I’m back on my pixel 4a running android 13. I’ll look into updating security measures as I go, but if I’m careful, then I should be relatively safe. I hope. Who knows though.

EDITED ABOUT AN HOUR LATER: Some of you may think it wasn’t Google that was blocking RCS messages, even though they’ve been doing it since 2021 according to some sources. Honestly I don’t care if you believe me…my proof came in via RCS chats on Google Messages as soon as I signed into the reinstalled stock version of my Pixel 4a. Every message since about June 13th that they’ve blocked.

PDF Convolutions and TrueNAS Scale

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If you’ve dealt with either the government, businesses, or obnoxious forms online, you’ve probably ran across a PDF that isn’t really set up for editing…or if you applied for a job that required letters of ref/transcripts/resume/CV but only allowed one file upload, you’ve probably ran into problems with trying to get the PDFs to work well.

Which is EXACTLY what Adobe wants. They want you to be in pain so that you pay them to allow adjustments to files you already own and have created. And they require a subscription, which as I’ve already stated, I find really obnoxious and stupid.

Well, I ran into some merge difficulties tonight because I had to upload like 6 files, but they only allowed four files to be uploaded. Because, y’know, storage? Bad coding? Outright jerkishness? Any and/or all of the above really. And yeah, there are sites that will merge files for you for free on the internet…but I don’t like sharing personal data with rando sites.

So, with the NAS, I decided why not? Let’s look for a PDF editor. And right away, in the TrueNAS community apps section, was Stirling PDF. It is now self-hosted and running in a docker container…and it was free, does everything I need it to, and is only available on my network.

Highly recommend, really easy to use.

Plex vs. Jellyfin

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So I started with Plex because Jellyfin was a bit more of a pain to set up. But I REALLY got tired of it constantly having me sign in and register different emails for different devices, and then not seeing that the account had access to the folder because it was on my home network and I didn’t appreciate it trying to shove things down my throat.

That being said, it handled the library pretty well (though its cache refresh was astoundingly slow for reordering movies after editing metadata and having it refresh the list after metadata had been put in). Roku had an app, which was good.

However, I got sick of the nonsense, to be honest. It was slick, sure, but it was also yet another corporation trying to sell me something.

So I also installed Jellyfin. I like it a lot more, to be honest. Similar style of movie/tv show display as Plex, but without the corporate spying overlord requiring you register with them off network in order to use the app.

The biggest problem was where to add the storage, and what network address was required. Once that was figured out, then it was great. Easily edited, almost immediately reordered, and easy to use. Plus, it ALSO had a Roku app…that we got before either the wife or I got used to the way the Plex app operated.

Now I’m just getting all our DVDs up on the server…of which I’ll have to upgrade my storage (right now the images are on the mirrored hard drives, while the videos are on a usb external drive not mirrored, which TrueNAS absolutely hates). I’m going to probably upgrade to two 8TB hard drives to set up in mirror mode.

I’ll get those once I sell a bunch of the old computer equipment I’ve got laying around here to pay for them.

TrueNAS Community Edition: Awesome

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So, this was really easy to set up, especially if you’re already used to assigning DHCP addresses in your router. I downloaded the ISO, burned on a DVD (because really, what else am I going to use those for?), and installed it on my old system, replacing Windows 10.

I then used the “App” to add Immich to the system. I am REALLY impressed with this app. I realize it’s beta right now, but it’s stupidly easy to use, and very similar to how photo apps are set up (like Google Photos), it allows users to share images, allows auto backups of images on the phone, and…AND…it checks for duplicates when uploading, so if you’re uploading from downloads you’ve made before, you’re not duping them. It’s really fantastic.

10/10 would recommend. Now I need to try and get media sharing going, perhaps on an old external hard drive.

To update in the future is to add larger drives and recreate the mirror setup. At the moment, I only had a 320gb drive and a 500gb drive. So TrueNAS isn’t too happy that I’m mirroring drives of different sizes, but since the 320 is primary, I’m not worried.

But yeah, highly recommend doing this if you don’t want Google to start nickel/diming you to death.

RIP Original Zycarus Computer

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It is with heavy heart that I’m putting to rest my first computer I built myself (without Jon Hatch’s help). I built it back in 2013, it was top of the line components (except for the GPU, which was only a 770).

It was awesome, and did great until I swapped out for new mobo/processor/hard drive/PSU a year and a half ago.

It was still holding a bunch of my FroydTech data, and it had 24gb of RAM. It’s the RAM I’ll miss the most, I think.

Luckily I’ve got an old MOBO that is newer than this one with a celeron processor that should do the trick for the NAS. Only 8gb of RAM, which is sad.

But I’ll part out the old computer and sell off the components, and maybe make enough to buy some more RAP for the NAS. ANnd maybe a used processor? Who knows!

GOOGLE *shakes fist* (Or how I stopped worrying and learned to love a NAS)

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So we updated one of our phones to a Pixel 9a (one of our Pixel 4a phones was the earlier one, that GOogle deployed a “fix” that completely tanked the battery). We then noticed that the Google Drive account with that was dangerously pushing the 15gb limit…and we could update to Google One for a low monthly cost.

It was then my wife made the astute observation of “No wonder they were giving such a large trade-in value on the pixel 4a…now they don’t offer unlimited photo storage.”

That, plus a lot of other things, has made us seriously reconsider the pixel 9a. But, being the annoying tech person I am, I decided to say screw it and find a photos solution myself. The 9a is probably the best midrange phone out there considering the camera and the like. It was less expensive with the trade in and the store credit that they gave for screwing up the Pixel 4a, and so it comes to figure out how to remove us from the Google ecosystem (at least when it comes to photos).

So today begins my setup of TrueNAS Scale and Immich. Following a solid setup instructional from XDA, I’m turning in one of the computers I’ve got around the house (that was slated for recycling) into a NAS and backup for our photos.

Because there are few things worse to my mind than being forced to pay a subscription cost when I can do it myself for much cheaper and much easier.

Might throw jellyfin on the NAS too, dependent on how things go.

Is this thing still on?

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I’m embarking on a new project, and want to start writing more…and I want to get away from the social media empires enriching people and companies that I personally do not agree with. .

The last few months I’ve been hitting the exercise hard. I’ve done the entire run of the TRAVR Training Ops game on the Original Virtuix Omni Treadmill (not the Omni One) several days a week, and have also been using a rowing machine.

About a month ago, my wife and I got a home gym machine with the cables and everything, so I’ve been doing that as well.

All this to lead up to my new project: I’m going to be programming a game for the Omni. I spent this evening getting unity installed on my desktop machine and on my handy dandy Chuwi Minibook X. I’ll post more about that later, but it’s basically a 2-in-1 with a form factor of a notebook. I love it.

My goal is to have 1,000,000 steps by the 10 year anniversary of getting the beta version of the Omni. Wish me luck.