(2024-03-04) Android and several other things this week
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This one won't be long either. Not gonna lie, I didn't get much inspiration
throughout the week to write about something exciting. I was emotionally 
exhausted and whatever I'd been feeling was totally counterproductive. I 
did, however, manage to focus on one particular thing, and that is, 
"reviving" my Gemini PDA (by Planet Computers), i.e. preparing it for some 
active use.

Alas, there is no ready fully degoogled firmware for this device, although
I'm thinking of preparing one. But the software I have installed there is 
pretty much all FOSS. Starting with app sources themselves: F-Droid, 
Obtainium and FFUpdater. And I found myself using Obtainium more and more, 
as it allows to directly tap into the repos that have release publishing 
enabled. Of course, my minimum list includes KISS Launcher, Amaze, Aegis, 
Termux, Mull, Tor Browser, Orbot, K-9 Mail, LibreTorrent, OnionShare, VLC, 
Xmp Mod Player, Lagrange, Unstoppable Wallet, Monerujo, Aves Libre and many 
other interesting things. Yes, there already is a version of Lagrange for 
Android, so I can browse Gemini while on Gemini. But why did I dig it up in 
the first place?

Well, the answer is simple. I'd even say, eSIMple. This device was the first
or the second one in the world including a eSIM module (whose IMEI, I 
reckon, also is editable via the root shell AT commands), and here, this 
module is configured via a separate "eSIM Wallet" application with quite a 
lot of config, including (I think) IMEI/TAC spoofing on the module level, 
which is even better. And I also found a bunch of providers out there who 
offer global eSIMs anonymously for cryptocurrency, including Monero. Of 
course, usually they are data-only, but Gemini isn't much suited for voice 
calls anyway, I guess, so that's fine for me.

Another reason is that Gemini is the best one to use Termux on. I mean,
nothing beats physical keyboard, even such a relatively small one. All the 
netbook/thin client scenarios I've been thinking about are much more usable 
there than on my main smartphone, Pixel 6. And speaking of Pixel 6, I'm 
still thinking on how to back everything up so that I could put GrapheneOS 
there and then restore all this properly.

In a nutshell, doing what I can with what I got. Well, as always.

--- Luxferre ---