How dare you!

Yes, you must have missed it. And so it begins.

Google is moving to make Android less open source. I’m not sure more devs following suit is going be good for them or their users. The G doesn’t give an F.

What we need is an OS fork that gets maintained. If not that, some other workaround that fools the Google servers. Because you can bet money that nobody made from flesh and blood is going to look at this inside Google.

Maybe devs can band together and form Middle Finger Corp. and designate one willing person as their contact to serve as registered dev for a gazillion apps. Follow the letter of the law, not the misguided spirit of it, in a manner of speaking.

If you are sitting on a mobile OS and you were afraid to fail like Windows, maybe now is the time to give it a go?

I wouldn’t buy these type of glasses either. I have neither the money nor the need so I’m not in the target group anyways. And if I had money, I would under no circumstances give it to a company like Meta.

I don’t think the huge privacy concerns are going to hold. There is all sorts of equipment people can buy that is less obvious to film you surreptitiously. Always scan your air b’n’b, people. We are virtually all okay with strangers filming shit in our vicinity with their smartphones as long as we feel it isn’t us they’re filming. I think this will over time translate to an unbotheredness w/r/t smart glasses. And after a while even the LED light altering others to a rolling camera will disappear. These devices become main stream by their usefulness. The HUD for directions or names of acquaintances is one useful aspect. The immediate way to record your toddler’s first steps or the funny face they pulled. An interaction with the law. Over time, this will outweigh the creepiness that we have perceived since the Google glasshole days.

This is another cut, among thousands. It’s bad because we can see the motivation behind it. Free speech only for one team.

I don’t want to be victim-blaming when I say expecting any big US corp to protect your privacy is futile. I know they want the reach of Insta and that’s of course not a bad thing. But it’s a threat considering who runs it. Another threat is editorializing the content. Don’t put music on it, don’t opine on the shamefulness of what the jackboots are doing, just post it. It’s the best chance of this dying in the courts before the independence of the judiciary has completely gone. Constant dripping wears the stone and the MAGAs are pissing on it full force.

Another consideration must be at this point to host or mirror your content on servers outside the US. Countries that already didn’t give an eff about the US or cooperating with its authorities. If you run your digital opposition on US-run/controlled infrastructure, you’ll be shut down soon.

No 12-key, only qwerty input.

I’m using FCITX5 via F-Droid and it’s very much full keyboard. It’s originally from the Linux side and was never built for phones as far as I know.

“Nambia”

I fear you either misunderstand my comment or what martyrdom means. I’m no fan of the man who got shot. And for me he’ll never be a martyr. But those who did like him can now hail him as such, make him a hero - for all the other people who liked him. Martyrdom is in the eye of the beholder.

When and where did you go to school? That capital A that looks more like the lowercase one I’ve only ever seen from people from North America.

Whoever wrote this was probably still in school and I would guess in a North American one because of the cursive they wrote in. I think they also copied the text, badly, and that explains the mistakes.

I fear it will the shooter’s legacy that we will all remember the name. He may have otherwise continued his life as a weird, argumentative footnote in history. Now he will be a vessel of martyrdom that will fill itself with content poured in by those who instrumentalize his unfortunate death.

No, no, no, and no. If you see nothing but hateful and negative content, then you have been badly served by algorithms where they roam or you’ve been bad at building your feed on the fediverse.

Define civility.

I find nothing helpful except exposure. Reading and hearing it cements the oddities of counting.

Is this happening even for their premium subscribers?

I think your definitions don’t quite match common use. When people think about sideloading, they think about installing apps from a third-party source that are not approved by the primary vendor. That’s precisely what Google is going to block.

See the end of my pervious comment. The fact that we call that “sideloading” in common parlance is a magic trick Google has already played on us and we ate it up. Resist.

The way I understand sideloading is installing an app through a way that isn’t Play. So F-droid - as one example - is sideloading because you need to go through the overly dramatic warning messages to enable the install from unknown sources. If all the devs in F-droid’s repository theoretically registered with Google, nothing will change. The only difference is that Google wants to know who made it. They make it harder and shittier and thus limit our choices, yes. But they don’t block everything outright.

The problem arises for apps, whose developer doesn’t want Google and by legal extension the American judiciary to have access to their information. That’s a privacy concern that I find very concerning too. I’m not defending Google’s choices here. I hate it. I also don’t like the inevitable hyperbole going the other way.

Not defending Google but I have a but (no typo - although I’m the proud owner of a double t version as well. But I digress.)

Google is not getting rid of sideloading. They are implementing a registration process for devs and then do a check if they have the info on record before allowing an app to be installed. It is possible for you to download an APK from wantsomalware dot com and install it as long as the developer registered with Google - as all the malware dipshits will manage to do on burner accounts, which will not curb the spread of malware, which is their stated aim. Technically, your bank could distribute its app on its website as long as they registered with the Goog. But it will render abandoned projects uninstallable and that’s the rub.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like this either. Twisting their words though isn’t helping either.

Corey Doctorow pointed out that it is mad that we call it sideloading. Installing an APK is the same, whether it’s coming from Play, F-droid, or the dark web. There should not be this distinction. Lobby your politicians on this matter. G will not GAF about this petition - it’s PR for the cause at best. Only the tag team of legislature and judiciary can set this right.

I think there will be fork and there will be fork. A company like Samsung will continue to take what Google churns out, put their more proprietal stuff on it, and ship it. Probably not as Tyzen any more but who knows. I suspect a FOSS fork will never go back to Google after the last version that didn’t require this dev register check. They will find a way to maintain feature parity with it but it will be delayed.

Forks haven’t worked that well for Samsung Tyzen or Amazon because they never gained enough users, nor probably contributed they enough to the bottom line given the investment. It remains to be seen whether the more privacy conscious people can move the needle enough for a FOSS version.

It’s always nice to read Corey eating at the buffet of corporate shenanigans and leaving no crumbs.

If this developer registration really comes to pass and/or has staying power, I suspect there will be eff it we will just fork it movement. A FOSS Tyzen or Fire version of Android that would then not go back to whatever Google does with their Android updates. That would probably work better if all the privacy-friendly Android devs banded together, which probably won’t happen.

At the same time, I don’t think the last word has been spoken on Google’s plans here. They haven’t implemented it yet. And even if/when they do, I suspect there will one or two courtrooms that will hear about this shit in excruciating detail. If European devs could rally behind this flag there is a good chance the EU will use its golden formula of 50% good intentions and 50% wanting to eff American tech giants to intervene on privacy grounds.

A dult R ecording S urveillance E nforcement

would be a better acronym if you ask me.