Well, it’s 2017. Really. Yes, Really. I KNOW. Another trip ’round the sun.
This will be my first full calendar year as an editor and not just a commenter. I tend to post sporadicly, sometimes just a deal that I can dash off between diapers, work, dog, life, yeah, life, man; life.
To put myself out there and layout what I plan to cover this year, I am publicly stating my personal list of topic and ides of things I would like to test and/or cover. I have a little one, and only one daily driver phone at the moment, so the ROM stuff will be well timed, and may just be at the mercy of the calendar and current emergency statuses. But here we go:
App Stores:
- F-Droid (THE #FOSS Software Market)
- XDA Labs (XDA Developer releases)
- /r/Android App store (Reddit Android App Market; Thread)
- APKMirror Application
- YALP (Reverse engineered Play Store)
- Round-Up/Comparison Post
ROMs I am interested in:
- The Onion Router (TOR) Rom: Mission Improbable Blog Thread; built on Privacy and Security first
- MaruOS (AOSP + Debian, your phone is your desktop with BT keyboard and mouse and a monitor by USB3 or cast)
- Installation hiccups
- Development updates and Ports
- Docking stations
- Ethernet/USB hubs
- Known good peripherals
- CopperheadOS: Security minded ROM
- How I run CyanogenMod on a 2015 7” Amazon Fire (Ford), it’s shortcomings and HUGE advantages
- This is a very inexpensive Tablet
- only 1GB of RAM
- Supports 128GB uSD among them (Think Plex, Kodi, viewing, serving, and casting)
- locked boot loader but hackers do what hackers do: tinker, tinker, pipe (that’s the “|” type), zip-ties, and duct tape, oh yeah and use ADB/Fastboot.
Messaging (Security is the Word Bird):
- Signal / LibreSignal (Package Repo; note that this is SMS only no voice currently)
- Wire
- OTR, Off The Record, which isn’t always true…
- WhatsApp (Owned by advertising company Facebook)
- Ring (Play Store; F-Droid Repo)
- Why iMessage is scary (yes, it’s “Messages” now)
Apps:
- Ad-blocking in a more difficult realm; metered bandwidth; fewer people rooting, less open internet, more app usage, aka “The Walled Garden“.
- IP and DNS name blocking can help cut down on ads on web pages AND in applications; and how to do this.
- GasFlow (live Bandwidth Monitoring: F-Droid & PLAY)
- Sleep As Android (amazing) (I posted a deal on the full unlock here)
- CUPS/IPP printing from your phone!
- FTPd on your phone makes file transfers wicked easy
- iFixit fits on your phone! (F-Droid & PLAY)
- Automating Backups
- Data
- Settings
Security:
- AndIodine: HTTP tunnel over DNS (slow but great for things like email over paid APs in airports)
- Ripple: Panic Button for your phone (also on Play)
- Tor Project, which implements “The Onion Router“:
- OpenVPN, if you’re reading this #YesYouCan (the client I have been using for years; the NEW “offical” OpenVPN APK)
- Stingray Detection: AIMSICD (interesting to walkd around DC with)
- PGP/GPG (is it dying, but why you might want it anyway), and the only version I would trust on Play
- Metasploit on your phone (Pentesting with cSploit)
- Tools list:
- Good
- Bad
- Ugly
- Ugly but wicked good
- getChromium (OpenSource/Upstream base of Chrome web browsers)
- Wifi Analyzers, WakeOnLan Tools, Wifi WEP breakers, nmap frontends, GPS/location spoofing
- The Guardian Project in General
