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Comment by batou | Hacker News Reader

Not happening. Sorry this has gone on long enough.

Closed both Microsoft accounts and cancelled my MSDN and AP subscription renewals.

I do a big chunk of my work on a CentOS desktop machine already. There's not much of a push to chuck everything in an 8.1 VM and start moving it all over. The MSDN licenses I need persist past the sub so that's enough for me.

I've been on the verge of doing this for a couple of months already anyway for ref.

Edit: Also, I'm really not happy about the pro-Microsoft spin all over the media recently. It appears to be covering up a number of nasty changes behind the scenes and lacking in critical analysis.

Edit 2: Proof: http://imgur.com/a/ZYWZM

Edit 3: does anyone know of a decent 4G modem for a laptop, preferably one that works in Linux. I can then skip my phone as a tether and use a dumbphone.

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The thing is, "our" data is abused by all big companies at the very least, regardless of what they publicly tell us they're doing.

I appreciate the sentiment there, but you'll have to close pretty much everything if you really want to protest the abuse.

Don't use any stock/operator/manufacturer version of Android either, by the way. They're full of spyware.

Yes I agree entirely; you're 100% right. The only 3rd party service I now rely on personally is my domain registrar and an IMAP box which is unavoidable to participate in the world now. I've closed most of my online accounts with services over the last year already. I moved my code from github to local fossil instances about 3 months ago as well. Everything I use is hosted by reputable companies in the EU.

I'm not touching Android. Too many bad experiences there about a year ago for me.

I meant to research this aspect: what would you suggest to do if I still wanted to use Android, but want to avoid spyware/etc?

I've got a Nokia 106 for voice/SMS floating around already and intend to use just my laptop with a tether or 4G card.

i.e. no smartphone at all.

The best solution is to run Replicant on a compatible device.

Short of that, you can just load CyanogenMod or another AOSP-based ROM on most devices. It's entirely possible to use Android without the proprietary Google Apps bundle.

Which IMAP service providers do you recommend? I've been looking to setup my own mail server but the maintenance has put me off.

I'm using http://gandi.net/ who incidentally handle my domain registration.

I ran my own mail server (postfix, dovecot) for a few years so I agree with you entirely there!

That's a great deal. I've been looking for an email setup for the family that doesn't cost a fortune and this is the best I've seen. I am tired of running my own mail stack, what a PITA.

Indeed. Works out at £12 a year for me including domain. I tried loads of shared hosting before and it was all expensive and unreliable. You get 5 free boxes per domain as well which is enough.

If they did some static hosting included that'd be nice too but I can't complain.

Just for the record, this article seriously paraphrases the shit out of an actually very specific part of the ToS.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement/default.asp...

"Finally, we will access, disclose and preserve personal data, including your content (such as the content of your emails, other private communications or files in private folders), when we have a good faith belief that doing so is necessary to: 1.comply with applicable law or respond to valid legal process, including from law enforcement or other government agencies; 2.protect our customers, for example to prevent spam or attempts to defraud users of the services, or to help prevent the loss of life or serious injury of anyone; 3.operate and maintain the security of our services, including to prevent or stop an attack on our computer systems or networks; or 4.protect the rights or property of Microsoft, including enforcing the terms governing the use of the services - however, if we receive information indicating that someone is using our services to traffic in stolen intellectual or physical property of Microsoft, we will not inspect a customer's private content ourselves, but we may refer the matter to law enforcement."

Definitely close your accounts if you want to protect your data, no fault there :) But make sure you know that this article doesn't actually tell an accurate picture.

Yep. I read the actual agreement first, don't worry :)

You created an account to post this twice?

Here's a list of cards supported by ModemManager which works in conjunction with NetworkManager on Linux:

  https://wiki.freedesktop.org/www/Software/ModemManager/SupportedDevices/

It doesn't explicitly call out 4G support so you will have to work backwards.

fyi: some laptop firmware, such as thinkpads, have a whitelist of supported WWAN cards. If you can't find a suitable internal card you can use a USB dongle without restriction.

Thank you. Much appreciated.

I've got a ThinkPad X201 with a built in Gobi 3G card already. Just used to 4g speeds :)

Looks like some people are binary editing the Lenovo supplied BIOS to hack in the PCI ID of their WWAN cards.

Your X201 has decent support in the free coreboot BIOS, so if you fancy a weekend project you can ditch the WWAN whitelist altogether:

http://www.coreboot.org/Board:lenovo/x201

Yeah I did this when I had a T61 so I could enable SATA2.

Thanks for the heads up with CoreBoot

You could use a Mifi device to setup a wireless network. Will be platform independent.

Thanks - much appreciated. That's a good solution I hadn't thought of.

Annoyingly my ThinkPad has a Gobi 3G card in it but I've got used to 4G speeds now.

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