Brave now part of the Decentralized Web

On January 19, 2021, the Brave browser released version 1.19.86. A MAJOR feature was added:

IPFS support

Now, if you enter an IPFS URL, such as:

ipfs://Qmf93BEm2UsgEm949QY3uSrXxn5UfDH83ZFSvQsBGyxPRt

It will resolve the reference and deliver to you the file.

The method in which it resolves this depends on your local settings and whether or not you’re running a local IPFS node, the IPFS browser plugin, or neither. In all 3 cases, it will still resolve the URL and find and deliver the file.

In addition to that, it will give you the option of running an IPFS node on your PC. I highly recommend doing that, IF you’re not low on resources. All it takes is a single button click.

Then YOUR PC becomes part of the global InterPlanetary File System network, increasing the geographical distribution of files and speeding up the global performance of the entire network, in addition to speeding up YOUR use of it. Any file, DAPP (distributed application), or decentralized website (which is just a DAPP, BTW), will load for you much faster the second time you access it AND it’ll be available to you even when you’re offline!

IPFS is a critical part of the infrastructure of the new world wide web, which is being built out as fully decentralized and censorship resistant. Unlike centralized websites that get bogged down and slow down when more people use them, DAPPs actually get FASTER as more people use them!

This is a BIG deal that IPFS is now fully supported in a browser.

Go get the Brave browser here. It’s build from the Chromium source code, so it looks and feels similar to Chrome and all Chrome extensions work in it. It also strips out all the Google spyware and has an ad blocker built in, so browsing is faster without all the page loading delays caused by the ridiculous amount of ads loaded in most web pages these days.

This is what the Decentralized Web 3.0 will look like

The Decentralized Web 3.0 will bring you the following benefits:

  • The end of ISPs and governments spying on your online activities.
  • The end of big tech collecting all your private data.
  • The end of email providers being able to see your personal email.
  • Encryption of EVERYTHING.
  • The end of social media censoring you.
  • The end of demonetization.
  • The end of spam.
  • The beginning of making money by receiving marketing email (if you choose to).
  • The end of censored banking.
  • The end of domain name confiscation.
  • The end of web hosters shutting you down.
  • The end of registrars shutting you out.
  • The end of app stores removing your apps.
  • The beginning you YOU being in FULL CONTROL of your personal data.

Here’s how, but first a short history…

Internet 1.0

introduced the world to the idea of everyone being a publisher.  Unfortunately, there was no security designed into the architecture and it was mostly static and difficult to have interaction.

Internet 2.0

was a more structured way of creating websites, with more user friendly user interfaces and lots of interactive content, in addition to improved security models.

But something went wrong.

Something went HORRIBLY wrong!  As individuals started becoming effective communicators across geographical and political boundaries, they started being silenced for multiple reasons… sometimes by anti-competitive companies with deep pockets, but usually political reasons by tyrannical regimes in back-assword countries, then in first world countries, by corporations (Twitter, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Instagram, etc…) and so-called “educational” institutions, and in some cases, even first world governments, themselves.

Anti free speech campaigns began successfully shutting out an entire class of voices via social media outrage mobs demanding voices they didn’t like be silenced and for some reason, the big social media companies complied and shut them down by shadow banning, removing them from search, suspending their accounts, or deleting their accounts altogether, frequently with no warning and no explanation.

Then they went after their income.

YouTube began demonetizing video creators.  PayPal began killing users’ PayPal accounts.  It even spread out to the real world.  Credit card companies began shutting down people’s accounts and even BANKS started deleting their OWN CUSTOMERS!  All for political ideological reasons!

They rewound the freedom clock back to the early 90s, and in some cases, back 100 years or more.

Enter Decentralization…

Decentralized services were already being created before “the purge” started, but decentralization started to accelerate because of this.  The FIRST popular decentralized service to hit the scene was #BitCoin, which is a fully decentralized, global currency.  What makes it so powerful is that there’s no central point of failure, and more importantly… no central point of attack.  It’s a BRILLIANT system that prevents double-spending, prevents counterfeiting, and gives control of assets back to the people.  Governments CANNOT control it!  It first rolled out in 2008 and has grown exponentially since then.  It’s been so successful, than many millionaires have been made because of it and thousands of other cryptocurrencies have been created.

The technology behind it can be used for so much more than JUST money.  In fact, all the strangle-points (or censor-points) of the current (or “legacy”) internet can be censorship resistant using the same or similar decentralized technology that BitCoin uses:

  1. DNS
  2. File Storage
  3. EMail

DNS

is the Domain Name System that allows you to type in human readable names into your browser like https://BitCoin.org or other sites you’re familiar with.  The reason this works is because your browser takes the name you enter into your browser’s address bar and looks it up in a publicly distributed database to find the actual IP address of the computer you’re really wanting to connect to.  Even though the database is decentralized, there’s a centralized authority that authorizes the names AND they are beholden to governments, so when a government demands control of your domain name, then you lose your domain name and all your visitors and paying customers, and there’s nothing you can do about it.  Domain name registrars can also take your domain names away, and this has been happening due to political reasons.

There are now several decentralized DNS replacements.  One of which is https://NameCoin.org  This is an open source project designed to have NO central authority.  It’s controlled by a blockchain (the technology that drives BitCoin).  In fact, it’s copied directly from Bitcoin, using BitCoin’s source code.  When you register a domain name on THIS system, you do it with a cryptocurrency called NameCoin.  Once registered, you own the domain name like you own your cryptocurrency.  It CANNOT be taken from you.  For now, there’s a problem in that current (legacy) browsers are unaware of this technology and so those names can’t be used with regular browsers unless you install plugins for them.

File Storage

Another weak point for censorship on the legacy 2.0 web is web hosting.  The way it works is you rent space and CPU capacity on someone else’s servers to host your websites.  If the hoster doesn’t like your politics, you’re GONE!  This has been happening at an accelerating pace.

The solution is decentralized file storage.  One of the most popular at the moment is https://IPFS.io which is a fully decentralized file distribtution system.  IPFS stands for InterPlanetary File System.  The genius behind this is that you don’t request content via a URL with a domain name and a path and file name.  Instead, you request it from the decentralized IPFS network via the HASH of the file you want.  (A “hash” is a mathematically generated number based on the CONTENTS of a file.  IPFS hashes are unique for every file).  If you’re a web publisher, you publish your files to the IPFS network.  Users can request your files (like website HTML pages) via the unique HASH of your file.  The IPFS network goes into action, looking for any node that has that file, and if found ANYWHERE on the network, delivers it to the user.  As a file is requested more often, it starts to spread across the globe, becoming more and more decentralized and faster to load.

Decentralized DNS systems, like NameCoin can be configured to return an IPFS file.

EMail

Your EMail will radically change too.  From your usage point of view, it will still look and feel similar to what you’re using now, but it’ll have the following, drastically different and improved features:

  1. Censorship-resistant, meaning no one can shut down your e-mail account.
  2. Decentralized.  There will be no central server that you connect to.
  3. Encrypted.  By default, ALL of your email will be heavily encrypted, without any effort on your part.
  4. Spam-Free:  NO ONE will be able to send you email unless you authorize them to.  You’ll also be able to set prices that spammers must PAY YOU in order to send you spam, should you elect to even receive spam.  The global system will prevent any email going to you unless you’ve authorized it AND that it includes the proper amount of cryptocurrency you’ve specified.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, the dark forces trying to silence you or block you from seeing speech that THEY do not approve of are coming to an end.  No websites will be blocked by other people deciding what you can see.  Your sites will not be blocked.  Your web hosting cannot be blocked.  Your social media will not be blocked.  Your videos will not be blocked.  Your content will not be demonetized.  Your banking will not be stopped.  Your web browsing cannot be spied upon.  Your email cannot be read by third parties.  Spam will be a thing of the past.  Censorship will be much more difficult for the censors.  And everything will be encrypted all of the time.  AND you’ll even MAKE MONEY by receiving marketing email and ONLY if you choose to do so.

All of your data will be 100% in YOUR control.

Your data will be stored, fully encrypted on your end, across multiple, replicated hosts (or locally only on your hardware), readable ONLY by YOU!

Decentralized Resources in the making (or already made):

The list keeps growing and is far far bigger than this list.  Check out all the decentralized apps on https://Blockstack.org as plenty of examples.

SANS DIGITAL Raid Tower Four Years On

SANS DIGITAL MobileSTOR MS4UT+B

Almost 4 years ago, I bought a Sans Digital MobileSTOR MS4UT+B four drive bay RAID tower.  Here’s how it’s stood up so far:

The reason I’m writing this article today, is because this past week was the first time one of my drives in the ARRAY failed.  To be clear, this is not a complaint.  ALL drives fail.  That’s WHY I bought a RAID tower, so that when one eventually DOES fail, I have the redundancy in place to keep going while I get a replacement drive, with zero down time and zero data loss.

Before reading further, if you don’t know what RAID is or a RAID tower, please click the link below for a straight-forward explanation:

When I bought the tower almost 4 years ago (this model is not available for sale anymore), I also bought 4 of these drives.  Click the image to see it on Amazon.

Seagate 4TB NAS HDD SATA 64MB Cache 3.5-Inch Internal Bare Drive (ST4000VN000)

for $149.99 each in December 2014.  They were the cheapest 4TB drives I could find at that time.

All 4 have been running 24/7 until 2018-10-29, when one of them finally failed.  To be honest, I expected the first failure to be years ago, considering my track record of at least 1 failed drive a year.  I bought the cheapest drives I could find too, so I expected more frequent failures.  The front panel of the RAID tower indicated that my drive #3 had died.

The computer was completely unaware of the failure.  This is a good thing.  That means the RAID tower’s seamless drive failure was working.  I immediately ordered a new, replacement drive.  I ordered the cheapest, 4TB drive I could find.  Why?  Because reliability of individual drives is not all that important when you have them in a RAID tower.  The redundancy of the whole system dramatically improves overall reliability, even when using low reliability drives.  I should also point out that just because a drive is inexpensive, doesn’t mean it’s also low reliability.

Here’s the drive I bought in late October 2018 for $79.99… nearly half the cost from 4 years earlier.  Click the image to see it on Amazon.

WL 4TB 7200RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5″ Hard Drive (For RAID, NAS, DVR, Desktop PC) w/1 Year Warranty

What did I do?

When it arrived 3 days later, without shutting anything down, I opened the front panel of my RAID tower, pulled out the bad drive (with the whole system still on and running), unscrewed the 2 screws holding the handle onto the bad drive, screwed them and the handle onto the new drive, and plugged it into the RAID tower.

What did the RAID tower do?

The RAID tower immediately recognized the new drive and started replicating data to it.

What did the PC do?

My PC never knew anything ever happened.  As far as it was concerned, there was a working 12TB drive that it continued to actively use throughout the whole process.  There was never any downtime.

How long did it take?

Swapping the drive took about 5 minutes or less.  The replication, however, began on the night of Tuesday, October 30th.  It was still replicating when I left the PC on Saturday night, November 3rd.  However, Sunday morning, when I got back to it, it had finally finished.  So, it took it about FOUR DAYS to complete the replication.  Much longer than I thought.  I figured it would take between a couple hours up to maybe 1 day.

What does this mean?

It means that my data was vulnerable to disaster via a SECOND drive failure from the moment the drive went bad on Saturday, October 27th, through when the data was finally, fully replicated onto the new drive somewhere between the night of Saturday 11/3 and the morning of Sunday, 11/4… a total of a few hours more than 1 solid week.

If any other drive had died during that time, my 10TB of data would have been hosed.

The good news is that if I were NOT using a RAID tower, I’d be in that same risk ALL THE TIME!  I was only at risk for 7 days.  The BAD news (for YOU) if you’re not using RAID, you’re at that risk 100% of the time.

Conclusion:

This RAID tower performed as designed and is still performing.  The vulnerable replication period is much longer than I expected.  But, in the end, it all worked.  This is the first drive failure I’ve had where I didn’t lose a single bit of data.

My recommendations:

Whether you need speed or reliability, you SHOULD be using a RAID array.  I highly recommend buying a RAID tower and let it handle the complexities of configuring the system.  Software RAID solutions are available, but they are much less reliable and consume resources on your computer, slowing you down.  With an external hardware solution, it’s literally just plug and play, like any normal, single external drive.  But with the capacity, speed, and reliability of a RAID solution.  RAID towers can be found for under $100 and there’s no upper limit to how much you can spend on one.

So:

  1. Buy a RAID tower.
  2. Configure it to the configuration that best meets your needs.
  3. Have a local backup using a low cost, external USB hard drive of equal capacity as your full RAID array’s configuration.
  4. Have a cloud backup of your data too, AND MAKE DARN SURE IT’S ENCRYPTED ON YOUR END BEFORE BACKING UP!!!
    1. There are a lot of decentralized, peer-to-peer, cloud backup services coming online like:
      1. Sia
      2. FileCoin
      3. StorJ
      4. and others.  None of them are great solutions as of this writing YET!  But that’s changing.  Keep an eye on them and read EDUCATED reviews of them.  That includes keeping an eye on my blog because I’m watching them with intense interest, in addition to testing them myself.  I’ll ring the alarm bell when it’s time to jump on.  They WILL BE the ultimate backup solution.

Encrypting the Non-Encrypted Cloud Drive Services

EncryptedCloudDrive

In this article in my series of “Encrypt All The Things!”, I’ll show how to fully encrypt your files on popular cloud drive services that do not support zero knowledge encryption.  Such services that do NOT support zero knowledge encryption are:

  • Google Drive
  • Microsoft OneDrive
  • DropBox
  • Box.Net
  • Amazon Cloud Drive

That is obviously not a comprehensive list.  Some that DO support zero knowledge encryption:

  • Mega
  • Spider Oak

That is also not a comprehensive list.  The problem with Mega is that it’s closed source, so you can’t confirm that everything’s on the up and up.  In fact, Kim Dot Com, the creator of Mega, was/is wanted by the United States government for hosting pirated material.  That’s why he created Mega, so he’d have zero ability to decrypt the data, which was a great big middle finger to the U.S. government.  He’s since left the company and now claims it can’t be trusted, but we don’t know if that’s just sour grapes from him, or if there’s a legitimate reason for him to say that.  At any rate, it’s closed source, so there’s no way to confirm.

Spider Oak is also closed source AND it costs money.  It’s not a free service.

But, there are plenty of free cloud drive services (listed above at the top of this article), but none of them support zero knowledge encryption.  But, there’s now a fairly easy way to encrypt those.

Download and install the free, open source software called Cryptomator.  You can get it here:

https://cryptomator.org/

As of this writing, they only have a Linux, Windows, and Mac version, but they are actively working on Android and iOS versions.

How it works

Once you install CryptoMator on your PC, you configure it to access each of your cloud drive services.  At the time of this writing, Cryptomator supports 4 of the popular cloud drive services.

  • Google Drive
  • Microsoft OneDrive
  • DropBox
  • (I can’t find information on the 4th one)

But, it should work with any cloud drive as long as you have a synced folder on your PC to that cloud drive service.  It doesn’t have to directly support your cloud drive service AS LONG AS your cloud drive software provides a local sync folder that other apps on your PC can access.

Below, I give general instructions.  The exact steps are clearly outlined in the CryptoMator documentation.  This will give you the basic idea of what you’re trying to accomplish…

Once installed, you add a “vault” to Cryptomator, create a password, and point CryptoMator to your local sync folder.  It will then create a virtual drive (using an unused drive letter) and store some encrypted files in your local sync folder.

Now, with your new drive letter, just put any files you want encrypted into there and NOT directly in your local sync folder.  If you put anything directly in your local sync folder IT WILL NOT BE ENCRYPTED!!!!  If you put files in your virtual drive that CrytpMator created for you and gave it a drive they, those files will appear as unencrypted to you as long as you have the “vault” unlocked with CryptoMator.  The actual encrypted bytes of the files are stored in the local sync folder associated with your cloud drive service.  If you open the sync folder, you’ll see meaningless file names and meaningless folder names with encrypted files in them.  That’s the encrypted data.  To have an unencrypted window into that encrypted data, simply open the new drive letter that CryptoMator created for you when you unlocked the vault with your password.

Since the encrypted bits are stored in your sync folder, they get synchronized with your cloud server and it’s those encrypted bits that are stored on the cloud drive servers.

Once you get that working, it’s a good idea to drag and drop all your previously existing NON ENCRYPTED files and folders from your local sync folder into your vault virtual drive.  Once you’ve confirmed they’re in the vault, BACK UP YOUR FILES, then you can safely delete them from your sync folder, which will delete the unencrypted files from your remote cloud drive, leaving only the encrypted bits.  Cryptomator will automatically encrypt them and store the encrypted bits back into your local sync folder, which your cloud drive software will then upload to your cloud drive service.

Caveats

  • Errors with large folders: I have about 64GB in my Microsoft One Drive.  When I tried moving my camera roll folder into my Cryptomator virtual drive associated with OneDrive, it kept failing.  I presume it wasn’t designed for folders with that many files or that many bytes.  After many days of effort, I finally did get it working.  I do not know if it was a OneDrive problem or a Cryptomator problem.  I had no issues encrypting my Google Drive nor my DropBox, but neither of them had as much data.
  • No Mobile (yet): Right now, there’s no mobile access to your encrypted data.  They’re actively working on both Android and iOS apps, so that may change by the time you see this.
  • No browser access: Since the web interfaces of these cloud services simply show you the files as they are on their services, after you encrypt your files and folders, when viewing them with a web browser on those services, you’ll only see the encrypted data.  This makes sense because the cloud drive services are unaware of the encryption switch-aroo you’ve done.  Don’t expect this to change.
  • Your Key: With zero knowledge encryption, you keep your key locally, but Cryptomator stores your key ON your remote cloud drive.  Don’t fret too much though.  It’s encrypted with your password that you made when you created your vault.  Technically, your password is your key.  In my judgment, it’s fairly safe.  Though, I wouldn’t be storing my archives of my classified State Department e-mail on any of these public cloud drives, even with Cryptomator. Winking smile
  • Meta data: The contents of your files are encrypted as well as the file and folder names, but the timestamps are NOT encrypted and neither are the number of files, the number of folders, nor the sizes of the files.  The timestamps are left as is in order for your cloud drive software (OneDrive, Google Drive, DropBox, etc…) to know when things have changed so it can sync properly.  The file sizes are a result of how many bytes you’re encrypting.  The number of encrypted files will be roughly equal to the number of files as they were before they were encrypted (but the contents will be fully encrypted).  This too is a side effect of how the syncing works.
  • Mobile still unencrypted: You should probably turn off or uninstall the cloud drive software on your mobile devices because you won’t be able to see anything but encrypted data.  Also, any files you have locally on your mobile device that you have set to sync will be uploaded UNENCRYPTED.  Then you’ll have a mix of both encrypted and unencrypted files on your cloud drive.  Remember, CryptoMator is actively working on Android and iOS apps.  When they’re available, you can install those and follow Cryptomator’s recommendations on what to do with your cloud drive provider software.

Use this information about the caveats

Thank you for sharing this article.  See this image?

image

You’ll find actual working versions of them at the top and bottom of this article. Please click the appropriate buttons in it to let your friends know about this article.

Slow Motion Galaxy S7 Video Tests

I bought a Samsung Galaxy S7 on March 11, 2016 (well, actually TWO of them) and have been testing the features.  Now, this slow motion video is not a new feature.  In fact, I’ve had it on my prior phone, a Samsung Galaxy S4 for almost 3 years, but I’ve had Cyanogenmod installed on it for the the last 2 and a half years, so I’ve been missing this feature.

Details of Slo-Mo

The Galaxy S line of phones since the S4 have had a camera feature where the camera can record video at 240 fps (frames per second) at 1280×720 resolution.

Enough already, let’s see some slo-mo video!

Fine!  Here you go!  This first one is a water bottle connected to a SodaStream, being carbonated.

Next is video of spraying water on the headlight of my car.   I have this uploaded to YouTube, but because of the extreme detail of the thousands of water droplets, YouTube’s video compression really destroys it, so I’m providing it as a downloadable MP4 file instead (46MB).

image

If you want to see the butchered YouTube version, here it is:

Thank you for sharing this article.  See this image?

image

You’ll find actual working versions of them at the top and bottom of this article. Please click the appropriate buttons in it to let your friends know about this article.

Fitbit is a Major Privacy Peeping Tom

I ran the setup for my new fitbit Surge watch and during the Windows 10 fitbit app setup, it showed me this list of fitbit owners from MY PRIVATE CONTACTS!FitBit Contacts cleaned

In this list of fitbit owners:

  • Dude from High School I barely knew
  • Ex girlfriend from Jr. High.
  • Several people I don’t recognize.
  • Bunch of girls I knew from 1-12 grades.
  • A good friend’s cheating ex.
  • Little sister’s friend.
  • Brother in law.
  • Wife of brother in-law’s good friend (dont’ know why she’s in my contacts… probably through a facebook sync from years ago).

Also, everyone else in my contacts that do not have a fitbit account.

Some of these names are NOT in my contacts on my PC, which means they came from my phone.  And for the Windows 10 app to know that these 16 people have fitbits, my contacts had to have been uploaded to the fitbit servers so it could compare them to its database.  At no time was I asked permission to upload my private contacts (from either my phone nor my PC).  And I’m guessing these people didn’t explicitly grant it permission to let me know they have fitbits and they will likely be notified that I have one, even though I’ve given no such explicit permission to notify them nor any explicit permission to hijack my entire contacts list.

Fitbit spying

In addition to this, 100% of all health data that a fitbit collects is uploaded to the fitbit servers, viewable by fitbit employees… all done without notifying you and certainly without asking for explicit permission.  Turns out, the only way to use a fitbit without uploading all your private data is to not use the PC app or the mobile app, but, of course, the fitbit is mostly useless without them.  There’s no technical reason for uploading our data to the fitbit servers.  The PC and mobile software could easily have communicated with the watch without the involvement of the fitbit servers.

While on technical support today trying to resolve why my fitbit won’t charge, I discovered that they have access to all my health information collected by this watch, even though the employee I spoke with said it “only” uploads… then rattled off every thing the watch does… “for the purpose of knowing your fitbit is working”.  In addition to that, they know when we charge them, when we reboot them, and what devices we charge them from.  All this without permission from us.  Sure, some of this is somewhat inacuous data, but I did not give it permission and collected together, all this information can be used against you.  This is your HEALTH information.

Just about any kind of personal information online can be used against you and your _*personal health*_ information is especially vulnerable.  In this article, I list ways that seemingly innocent information can hurt you:

So, HOW do you stop it?

  1. Don’t run the mobile fitbit app.
  2. Don’t run the desktop fitbit software.

Of course, without the apps, the fitbit is pretty much useless.  Your only real option here is to stop using your fitbit.  There should be other smartwatches that can do similar or better things that DO NOT send all (or any) of your private data to remote servers.

[Update] I sent my fitbit back and got my money back and bought an Android Wear watch that does everything the fitbit does, and more, but without uploading everything to its owners servers.

Thank you for sharing this article.  See this image?

image

You’ll find actual working versions of them at the top and bottom of this article. Please click the appropriate buttons in it to let your friends know about this article.

Quicken 2016 Riddled with bugs and Errors

I’ve been writing about the bugs in Quicken for years and I’ve been complaining to Inuit about it.  For many of the bugs, they refuse to acknowledge they exist.  For others they simply don’t care.  Don’t expect any of these to be fixed… ever.

Here’s a short list of bugs and problems I’ve experienced with Quicken 2016 in just the first couple of days of use:

  1. Linking bills to online crashes 100% of the time on first attempt of each bill.
  2. App hangs with high CPU% when trying to update online transactions frequently (not all the time).  Must forcibly kill app.
    • image
    • image
  3. I canceled a repeating online payment.  It will never send the instruction and complains that I have a pending instruction to send every time I exit the app (pictured).
  4. No audio (happened before the upgrade and still no sound).
  5. Every time you contact support, they claim your file is corrupt and want you to do a file repair, which never fixes the problem, though that, itself, is both a customer service problem and a serious bug that their software continuously corrupts the data file.  This has been a problem for at least a decade (possibly more).
  6. Redraw routines are incredibly inefficient with too many redraws happening — readily apparent and an actual problem when remoting in to your PC.  Also a problem when moving the app window around the desktop.  It’s very choppy even on high end desktops with high end graphics cards.   This is something a 20 year old PC should handle easily.
  7. Non standard text entries — When you click in it, it auto-selects the text.  This has been a problem for decades.  They seem to think it’s a feature, but to power Windows users, it ALWAYS interferes with our way of doing things.  It’s impossible to get used to it because 99% of all other apps do it right (by not doing this).
  8. [Update 2016-02-16] I changed a password to a credit card, now Quicken can’t connect and asks for the pw every time, instead of storing it in Quicken’s password locker with all the others.

image

Thank you for sharing this article.  See the image below?

image

You’ll find actual working versions of them at the top and bottom of this article. Please click the appropriate buttons in it to let your friends know about this article.

Cyanogenmod 12 Lollipop initial review

image

I just installed CM12 last night on my T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S4.  Here are my thoughts and experiences so far.  Keep in mind, this is only after a few hours of use.  Also, I’m commenting on both Cyanogenmod 12 and Lollipop.

[GARD]

The Good

  • Battery performance seems to be better.  The jury is still out, but so far, it seems like it’s taking longer for it to drain.
  • New stuff… Just… It’s new, and that gets my jollies.
  • Multiple users – You can now have multiple user accounts, just like on Windows.
  • Super SU is no longer needed.  That functionality is now built in (Settings/Developer Options/Root Access
  • More settings options
  • Uses the more efficient and faster DART instead of the old DALVIK.
  • Lock screen can be set to randomly change where the numbers are on the number pad when you enter your PIN.  This prevents people from determining what your PIN is by looking at smudges on your screen (this is a REALISTIC hacking method that actually works… well, it DID until now).
  • Battery screen shows how much estimated time you have remaining and when charging, tells you estimated time to a full charge.

The Bad

  • Gallery app is gone
  • XPosed framework doesn’t work (that’s not CM’s fault… but still, it’s worth noting because that is so very important to many of us).
  • FolderMount doesn’t work.  Again, not CM’s fault, but holy cow!  A power user can’t really use a 16GB phone without it + an external SD card.
  • Bright backgrounds everywhere cause unnecessary drain on the battery on screen types that are more efficient with fewer white pixels.
  • Bright backgrounds hurt my eyes when I wake up and use my phone or have been in a dark room for a while, like watching TV at night.
  • Lots of things still don’t work on Lollipop that did on Kit-Kat.  Again, not the fault of CM… just an issue you have to consider before upgrading.
  • On the battery screen, the most used item is “Miscellaneous”, which doesn’t help me diagnose what’s using the most battery.
  • Lots of apps crashing… many are Google apps.  And yes!  I did, in fact, flash the latest GAPPS for Lollipop!

The Ugly

This is all opinion, of course, so like or dislike whatever you like or dislike.  Don’t get mad… Seriously!  Don’t get mad!  Here are the things I dislike, visually.

  • Flat… flatness EVERYWHERE!  I know!  The people that LIKE it are VERY VERY VERY vocal about it, so much so that people that do NOT like it feel intimidated to mention that they don’t care for the latest craze in flatness that’s not really new anymore.
  • More white backgrounds… Looking more and more like that other phone platform.  I personally prefer dark backgrounds on most things on my phone for aesthetics, less strain on my eyes, and improved battery performance.
  • When I tap a link to bring up a web page, it prompts me for which browser I want to use, which is fine, but that prompt MUST be broken, because it just looks so wrong.  It’s not a card, like most things on Lollipop.  It’s not a popup window.  It’s a half-window that appears to have failed to scroll up all the way.  The 3rd option in the list is only halfway drawn and is cut off at the bottom of the screen.  This is one of the ugliest UI design element I’ve ever seen.  I’m going to give the benefit of the doubt and call this a bug.  [Update: A reader pointed out that this must be a bug since this doesn’t happen on their CM12 install on their phone]
  • image

[GARD]

My overall impression?

While there are many improvements, the things lacking and the crashing, I’ve already decided I need to go back to CM11 KitKat until Xposed framework and FolderMount are working again and fewer things are crashing.

CM12 is still in nightly builds and has not yet released a stable build, so some bugs and missing features are to be expected and CM12 was only made available for my particular phone in the last few days, so it’s still hot off the alpha press, so to speak.

I shouldn’t have to say this, because it’s so abundantly, blatantly obvious, but…

Your mileage may vary depending on how you use your device and which device you have.  Not everyone uses their phone the same way and not everyone has the SAME phone and not everyone uses the SAME APPS.  So, if it works for you, and my overall impression gets you mad… CHILL!  It’s just an OS, dude!  Smile

See these images?

image

You’ll find actual working versions of them at the top and bottom of this article. Please click the appropriate buttons in it to let your friends know about this article.

Check back later for updates too!

Want an Invite to Google’s new InBox service?

How to win an invite?

I’m giving away invites to Google’s new InBox service.  Follow these simple, quick steps:

  1. Click here
  2. Enter your E-Mail address (I HAVE to have that in order to send you the invite!)
  3. Enter an amusing sob story of WHY you need an invite.  Make it short and funny.  You do NOT have to be truthful… at all!
  4. Click the Google+1 button (please) on that form.
  5. Optionally, if you share the page on Google plus, post the link to your share in the last field.  You don’t have to do that last step, but it’ll increase your chances of winning! 🙂

[GARD]

InBoxWhat IS Google’s “InBox”?

“InBox” is Google’s new e-mail user interface for GMail.  You use it with your existing G-Mail service.  It’s a greatly simplified user interface.  Similar e-mail is presented in a “group” and you can mark the whole group as “done”, at which point, it’ll archive it.  It makes handling all your e-mail much easier.  There’s actually more to it than what I described, but in the simplest terms, that what it does.

See these images?

image

You’ll find an actual working versions of them at the top and bottom of this article. Please click the appropriate buttons in it to let your friends know about this article.

Check back later for updates too!