> Allying with the CCP instead is an interesting choice.

I'm not here to talk politics, especially for such a loaded statement. "allying"? I "ally" with no one.

Also, my choice is not political but technical: I have a color eink device android where I do everything in the console with tmux and a Lenovo Bluetooth keyboard.

I have root, the device is degoogled, and I have removed from flash (mtd) what I didn't like. I use it mostly offline, but it's firewalled (with iptables) when I need to use ssh for example.

Best of all: it came ready to be hacked!

Maybe you believe your google device is more "protected", but I have a different opinion.

Given the amount of effort companies like google put into trying to insert themselves into our lives, I suggest a healthy skepticism to their claims of "privacy" or "protection".

For the love of god please write a blog post detailing your eink setup.

Good idea, I will hack it deeper this weekend and write about that.

It's my dream setup come true, so others might like it?

What is your colour eink device?

Probably a boox?

The previous one was a Boox.

This time, I got myself a BigMe. You can get one on https://store.bigme.vip/ the URL looks suspicious but don't fall for the official looking bigmestore.com: it's run by a dropshipper called good reader, who apparently impersonates several Chinese companies by squatting the .com domain name and pretending to be them, just to raise the prices and in return generally give you a negative service (slower shipping, not saying the truth about unit in stocks or shipping dates...)

If you need to know more about this dropshipper shady methods, use your favorite search engine with "goodeareader scam" and learn from the various user reports, the BBB ratings or trustpilot.

The difficulty was getting a legit Bigme from the official store, but the hardware is great: I think the quality is higher than the Boox (which I already liked a lot), but unfortunately it seems to have a lot more google software than your usual Chinese device.

OTOH, there's also a 5G module in the BigMe, so I could get data anywhere... it's complicated: I might return to Boox when they have a better lineup, but getting either a Boox or a BigMe is a good decision if you like the slower refresh rate of eink and the "more visceral" feel of eink compared to emissive technologies (TFT, OLED...)

I'll try to write some guide like my previous one for the Lenovo X1 Fold: https://csdvrx.github.io/

I'm responding to the language in the comment I responded to. With your level of technical expertise it seems like you've figured out a safe enough way to be.

Well, I'm even less inclined to "ally" with the CCP, because I have no devices from Chinese companies, I have a laptop from MSI, a laptop from Apple, a phone from Samsung, and a phone from Apple.

I think it's a better choice to use a device from Taiwan or South Korea (perhaps more so than the US), but it's begrudgingly that I deal with the Google stuff on my Samsung, and I have less Google stuff than I would if not for it being Samsung.

I don't think owning an Android phone that requires a Google Account is allegiance to Google, but the way Samsung is providing stuff that requires a Google account kinda is, but I can see why, and hopefully one day they stop. I also don't think buying a phone from a Chinese company is allegiance to the CCP.

That said, I'd be happy to be called an ally to Taiwan. I'm not sure if I've earned that yet, but if anyone has any ideas how, let me know!