Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services, is endangering the health of the American people now and into the future. He must resign.
Mr. Kennedy and the rest of the Trump administration tell us, over and over, that they want to Make America Healthy Again. That’s a great slogan. I agree with it. The problem is that since coming into office President Trump and Mr. Kennedy have done exactly the opposite.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services, is endangering the health of the American people now and into the future. He must resign.
Mr. Kennedy and the rest of the Trump administration tell us, over and over, that they want to Make America Healthy Again. That’s a great slogan. I agree with it. The problem is that since coming into office President Trump and Mr. Kennedy have done exactly the opposite.
Welcome to Lemmy.zip's September update! How time flies eh?!
This month is pretty important update, so I will be sending it out to everyone via the bot too (sorry in advance!).
Server Updates
Error 451 (Unavailable for Legal Reasons)
Many of you will have seen all of our images were taken down on August 28th due to Cloudflare restricting access via their automated CSAM scanning tool. The most important thing is that this was a false positive, there was no CSAM involved.
Unfortunately, Cloudflare did this by pattern matching all requests to https://i.lemmy.zip/api/v3/image_proxy - which is all of our proxied images, instead of one particular image. This in effect took down any image we don't host locally or is served by the proxy, so almost all of them. Some things like community icons are served via https://lemmy.zip/pictrs/ rather than the proxy, but this is relatively few things these days - so for a short period most images just failed!
So the obvious affect was that we couldn't serve any image via i.lemmy.zip as this would fall under the proxy and therefore be pattern matched by cloudflare and blocked. Not really what we want. So for now, we've swapped back to serving images directly via lemmy.zip, which bypasses the block (but reduces our capacity to cache things a little bit)
Despite the image being a false positive and me flagging this to cloudflare not long after the block, we are still waiting on them to review and remove the block, 4 days later. Not good. For now I've disabled the tool so it can't accidentally take down the whole site, but I will look for a way to prevent this happening again.
Thanks to everyone who messaged me or let me know what had happened!
Mod Tools update
Last month I talked about our Mod Tools and how this was a work in progress for community mods to be able to better manage their communities. I'm glad to say that this is now released in early alpha, and can be access via modtools.lemmy.zip. If you do try it out, I would appreciate any feedback via DM or in the Matrix chat. And thank you to the mods in the Matrix chat who helped me to debug and improve it so far 😀
(Please note, if you do use it, the OTP code can take a little while to be sent if Zippy is doing something else at the time you request it. Please be patient, especially if you try to use it within half an hour of this post being made, as Zippy will be busy annoying everyone with a link to this post!)
Current features are: - Create, edit, and delete RSS feeds for your community - Create, edit, and delete welcome messages for anyone subscribing to your community* - Set and view scheduled posts for your community - View the communities you currently moderate. - View any giveaways you've set up**
*Currently subscribers from Piefed doesn't work but we are aware
**Can't create them via the UI yet but that is WIP.
I'll be doing a lot more work to this over the next few months to expand the features available to mods. I am also taking any requests 😀
IMPORTANT - Lemmy.zip Ownership Update
Lemmy.zip is now part of DotZip Ltd, a non-profit company set up to run and maintain the various .zip services we host (including Piefed.zip and Mastodon.zip).
What does this actually mean? In practice, it’s a way of putting into writing and into law my commitment that these sites will never be run for profit. Donations can only ever be used to cover the running costs of the services, and never for personal gain. This principle is written into the company’s memorandum and is legally binding.
DotZip Ltd is wholly owned by me, so I still ultimately own and manage the sites. But by taking this step, I want to show that we’re here for the long term and that I stand firmly by the ethos of the project.
Even if I bring someone in to run DotZip Ltd alongside me (Or I'm hit by a car tomorrow and someone else has to take over the running) this ensures that this ethos must continue. Long term too, there is an asset lock in place - this means that the site can't just be sold off for profit down the line.
I'm happy to answer any questions below. Just to be clear, I don't stand to gain anything from this (other than getting to put "Director" on my CV 😉) - I have just given myself more paperwork to do as a result. However the trade off for confirming that we're operating as fairly, transparently, and legitimately as possible, makes it totally worth it.
The company is registered in the UK with company number 16625751.
I have updated the legal stuff with this detail, and you can find the company details on the mini-site, dotzip.ltd. (I still have a lot of work to do on this!)
Please don't be a lurker!
If you’re new to Lemmy.zip - WELCOME! I hope you’re enjoying your time here 😀
It really is true that the easiest way you can support Lemmy.zip is to actively engage with content here: upvoting content you enjoy, sharing your thoughts through posts and comments, sparking meaningful discussions, or even creating new communities that resonate with your interests.
It’s natural to see fluctuations in user activity over time, and we’ve seen this over the wider lemmy-verse for some time now. However, if you’ve found a home here and love this space, now is the perfect opportunity to help us thrive.
If you want to support us in a different way than financially, then actively interacting with the instance helps us out loads. If you’ve gone to the trouble of creating an account, then come and be part of the Fediverse! Please don’t be a lurker! 😀
Donations
Lemmy.zip only continues to exist because of the generous donations of its users. The operating cost of Lemmy.zip is over 60 euros a month ($60, £50) and is mostly funded by the community!
We keep all the details around donations on our OpenCollective page, with full transparency around income and expenditure.
If you're enjoying Lemmy.zip, please check out the OpenCollective page, we have a selection of one-off or recurring donation options. All funds go directly to hosting the site and keeping the virtual lights on.
We've also put up a link to our Ko-Fi page where you can donate via paypal instead of using a card. All Ko-Fi donations will be totalled up and added to OpenCollective each month for transparency. I've added a link in the sidebar, but you can also click the image below to go there:
We continue to have some really kind and generous donators and I can't express my thanks enough. You can see all the kind donators in the Thank You thread - you could get your name in there too!
Please remember, traditional social media is only "free" to you because they sell your data. We don't do that - if you want to support independent social websites like this one and you value your privacy, please consider a small donation. It really does help.
Graphs!
I know you skipped all the above and came straight here for the pretty pictures.
CPU use over last 30 days:
RAM over 30 days:
Lemmy DB growth:
Image storage:
Cloudflare stats over 30 days: (Yes, I swapped to dark mode)
Requests:
Bandwidth:
Visitors:
Country traffic:
So, that is it for this month.
Have a lovely September - before we know it, it'll be 2026 😱
Good to see that you moved the ownership to a company. At the very least it limits your own personal liability. With how UK has been going downhill it's a wise move.
Thank you for the continued transparency and often underappreciated work you and team are doing to run things smoothly.
I woke up one day and Fennec wouldn't browse any web page. Like, if I do a search, which goes to DuckDuckGo, I get a loading bar that never goes anywhere. (See screenshot).
If I disable all of my extensions, it'll work again. Then, if I enable them one by one to try to find the culprit that was making Fennec not work, it doesn't break! Until it does, randomly. I basically can't easily reproduce it working or not working.
I switched to IronFox, and installed all the same extensions, and have had no problems for two days.
This Week in F-DroidTWIF curated on Thursday, 28 Aug 2025, Week 35F-Droid coreF-Droid’s push for decentralization means not only having multiple repos, but a...
I got the magazines that came with BASIC programs printed in them, you could pay extra to get a subscription that included a tape with the code so you didn't have to type the whole thing in and risk typos.
That early foray into BASIC was essential for my early involvement in technology, in spite of what Dijkstra said that one time....
I was given a bunch of old Compute!'s Gazettes by an uncle who'd moved onto PCs from his Commodore 64. I did not get the benefit of the tape or disk option unfortunately, but as a result, many of those magazines are bedaubed with felt-tip where I marked my progress whiling away hours typing in those programs.
I learned so much about the Commodore 64 from those magazines.
By the time I got my C64C in the '90s, magazines had long since stopped publishing code listings due to cost. If they'd continued to do so, magazines would have been twice the price, and less than half as many people would have been able to afford them. As it was, the magazines were, by that point, at least partially subsidised by game companies who wanted to get a demo out on the tape or disk.
I'm still annoyed my subscription to one of those magazines ran out the month before the last ever issue. I could probably get one on eBay for a reasonable price, but it's the principle, dammit.
many of those magazines are bedaubed with felt-tip where I marked my progress whiling away hours typing in those programs.
I got into computers in the mid 70s with the advent of the Altair. Reading your comment was like a flashback. I remember you'd finally get through, meticulously typing in all the pages of code. So your cross your fingers and ran it and got an error. But I was hooked. I still have my Altair, Timex/Sinclair, Ti 99 & 994a. I had/have everything imaginable for the Ti. You needed a kitchen table to spread all that out on.
Later on, as you say, demos became a big thing, I loved the demos. I would write just about anyone giving away a demo of something. Game demos would at least let you play one or two levels.
So your cross your fingers and ran it and got an error.
And eventually we learned to understand the programs we were typing in, knowing what those errors meant and how to fix them without looking back at the listing. Magical.
Similar to laws passed in Vermont and New York, the legislation would require major oil companies to pay for past greenhouse gas emissions. But New Jersey municipalities haven’t rallied around the bill, and the Trump administration is strongly opposed.
More than two decades after victims of the 9/11 attacks began trying to hold the government of Saudi Arabia responsible for helping the Qaida terrorists who carried out the plot, a federal judge has ruled that a civil lawsuit against the kingdom can go to trial.
Despite the efforts of a small group of FBI agents to pursue the case, it was eventually closed by the bureau. The civil lawsuit nearly died in 2016, when President Barack Obama vetoed legislation to carve out an exception to the sovereign immunity of foreign governments and permit the families to sue the Saudi kingdom. Congress overrode that veto, however, allowing the suit to go forward.
President Donald Trump later blocked the families from obtaining classified government documents on the 9/11 investigations, claiming they were state secrets. President Joe Biden later reversed that stance and declassified documents that included reporting confirming that Bayoumi was a part-time agent of the Saudi intelligence service.
Information uncovered by plaintiffs has already undermined the FBI’s conclusion that two U.S.-based Saudi officials “unwittingly” helped al-Qaida hijackers after they arrived in America.
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
very seamless, official lineage builds work amazing.
only hiccups ive had are play integrity, i really didnt want to root but i have to in order to hide authy and similar apps that throw a fit. ended up installing magisk and im all green for now
other issue is losing sony sidesense, since i have an Xperia 5 III and it's 21:9, being able to pull down the notification drawer without reaching all the way up there was great. ill live with the alternatives that come with android for now though until i find out what is a real replacement
Sure, but the problem is the ecosystem of alternatives stores effectively collapsing or falling under Google's control. That will affect everybody who uses them, whether on GrapheneOS, LineageOS or certified devices.
We currently sell and ship Jolla C2 within the European Union, the United Kingdom, Norway, and Switzerland.
From a cursory glance, they don't ship to any of the largest smartphone markets. That's likely why you don't hear much about them as opposed to any of the global distributors.
It actually looks decent, and their C2 phone looks reasonable though not premium (8GB RAM, 4G LTE, a 1600x720 screen and no fingerprint reader are not brilliant specs, though they'll do the job and it's a nice looking phone). The OS subscription might put some people off though: you get one year of updates and then have to pay about €5 per month.
I'm pretty curious about the C2, as well, but don't live in their market, and don't want to pay 100% of the phone cost in shipping fees, etc. And after all that, I have no guarantee of support. As for the €60 per year, my latest phone is an S22 Ultra, half of whose features I no longer use due to the updated Samsung TOS. I can absorb that cost for the sake of updates, if they'd let me.
The forums suggest there are quite a lot of bugs and the device is slow. I hope Sailfish OS continues to improve but for a daily driver I'm leaning towards Graphene OS as the best option for now.
For my next phone it will be between a used Pixel with Graphene OS and the Fairphone 6 with the de-Googled e/OS option. A modern Pixel would be a little better for CPU, camera and RAM, but the Fairphone has decent hardware specs and tries to be more ethical about the environment and its suppliers, and it has a replaceable battery. The Fairphone is expensive in the USA though.
Recently a user here did the math on that and the fair/eco part of fairphone is really miniscule (they spend less than 5$ per phone and a big part of that are fairwashing credits). Unless you need the repairability or the specific specs, you might be better off to buy a cheaper phone and just donate money to a good cause.
How fair is a Fairphone? (Or, how much of the sticker price does Fairphone spend on fair/eco?)
This is a short analysis of the official Fairphone 2024 impact report.
Fairphone is kinda cagey about how much money they exactly spend on fair/eco initiatives, giving only very little information on what exactly it spends in these departments.
For a good reason, it is not a lot.
Specifically, these numbers are given in the report for 2024:
The workers assembling the phones get $1.20 of "living wage bonus" for each phone assembled. This bonus is spread over all workers in the factory, no matter if they worked on fairphones or not, coming out to a yearly bonus of $60.67 per worker.
$3000 was spent on gold fairwashing credits for some artisanal gold mine in Tanzania
$13000 was spent on fairwashing credits for 2.5 tonnes of cobalt (that's 20% of the raw world market price of cobalt).
That's everything. They do talk about a few other fair/eco initiatives in there, but if you read about what they are doing there, it's usually very little and mostly marketing speech. We can safely assume that if any other initiatives would cost more than the ones mentioned above, they would have put these values into the impact report.
They sold 103 053 phones in 2024, so the credits mentioned above come out to just $0.155 per phone.
So to account for the rest of their initiatives and credits, let's be ultra generous and assume they paid 10x of that for all of these initiatives and credits, bringing this value up to $1.55 per phone plus $1.20 in living wage bonus, which gives us a total of $2.75 per phone.
To double check how realistic these numbers are, lets look at their use of fair materials using the Fairphone 5 as our example.
On page 42 they claim "Fair materials: 76%", but with the disclaimer "Average across 14 focus materials" next to it.
These 76% do not consider materials that are not "focus materials" (and aren't acquired fairly at all) and it also doesn't take into consideration the different distributions of the materials in the phone. Some materials (e.g. iridium) are only found in trace amounts in the phone, while other materials (e.g. aluminium or plastics) make up a large part of the weight of the phone.
On page 67 they go into more detail. Here they claim that only 44% of the materials by weight are "fair". To make this even worse, 37% of these 44% are recycled. Specifically, the materials they use in recycled form are metals, plastics and rare earth elements. These are materials that are cheaper to recycle than to mine, which means these 37% of "fair" materials cost nothing to Fairphone and might even save them money. You will likely find similar shares of recycled materials in any other phone too.
Of the 7% "fair" materials that are left, only 1% is actually mined fairly, the remaining 6% are fairwashed using credits. As we have seen above, these credits are really cheap (adding maybe 20% to the price of the material).
On top of that comes the fact that the raw materials make up only a tiny fraction of the manufacturing cost of a smartphone. The expensive part is turning a pile of minerals, metals and plastic into chips, PCBs, screens, batteries and assembling all of that. So even if they paid fairwashing credits for all materials in the phone it would likely not cost more than a few dollars.
TLDR: Less than $5 per phone are spent on fair/eco.
So where does the money go? In 2024 they had an EBITDA of just €1 745 840, or €16.94 per phone. That's not a lot at all, so it's not like they are pocketing huge sums of money.
Their main problem is that they are a tiny company with low sales figures that has to outsource almost everything they do. On their website they claim to have "70+ employees". That's barely enough for supply chain management, sales and marketing. They don't have an in-house production and likely not even in-house development. They don't have any economies of scale on their side and they certainly don't produce screens, batteries, chips or PCBs in house, like other major manufacturers like e.g. Samsung can do. Their development cost is spread over far fewer sold units.
All of this costs a lot of money.
So when you pay an extra €200-300 to buy a Fairphone instead of a comparable mainstream phone, you are mostly paying for a boutique manufacturing process that can't benefit from economies of scale.
Which is ok, that's nothing bad to do. Just be aware where that extra money is going.
Buying a Fairphone is hardly fairer than buying a regular phone and it is certainly not more eco friendly than buying an used phone.
Reclaim your smartphone with Jolla C2 The Jolla C2 isn’t for everyone. It’s for those who believe their privacy is their own to control, who value trust over shortcuts, and who have the courage to make their own way.
Reclaim your smartphone with Jolla C2 The Jolla C2 isn’t for everyone. It’s for those who believe their privacy is their own to control, who value trust over shortcuts, and who have the courage to make their own way.
It works well enough to use as a daily driver on Bookworm and Trixie (and some other distros) but would only recommend if you're ok with Linux, and either are a developer or don't mind some rough parts around the edges.
E.g. some carriers uses 2 APNs, one for internet and one for MMS. You can send/receive on both, but the router is not yet complete, so if you send/receive media or use a group chat via text, need to switch to MMS mode in settings to do so first, then switch back to internet. Not an issue on most carriers as they only have 1 APN, but an edge case for the ones that do have this configuration.
Purism scams their customers left, right, and center and have for effectively their entire existence. They should not be trusted, and their phone specs are basically from 2013 sold for $800.
So even if you're idealistic enough to pay $800 for a phone that'd be in a landfill if it didn't have hardware privacy features, Purism will take that trust you have in them and screw you over – delay you for as long as they need to/can/want with no recourse for a refund outside of maybe the courts. After which you hope you either get a functioning product or get good luck with a disorganized, opaque, scumfuck company like that.
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
You're not being honest. They struggled to deliver their ambitious mainline Linux phone on time during Covid yes, but they eventually delivered. The fact that they did is a huge win for the mobile Linux ecosystem becoming a real contender just when we need it. All their other products are just fine.
NXP i.MX family debuted in 2013; Intel i7 family in 2008. Their phone uses a 2017 i.MX 8M Quad, the same year they crowdfunded their phone. 2017 i7 computers are equally not from 2008..
It still today remains one of the best ARM processors with open source drivers without an integrated baseband. It means basically any flavour of Linux can install on the device, with a significant layer of protection from carrier conduited attacks. Other modules have similar tradeoffs between performance and interoperability/security.
Want better specs? We either need SoC companies to release more of their drivers open source, or more people to patiently reverse engineer closed source ones.
They struggled to deliver their ambitious mainline Linux phone on time during Covid yes, but they eventually delivered.
And for the people who requested refunds who waited months if not never received them? Despite them moving back their timeline literal years with repeated delays? I don't care what challenges they faced; they knowingly took people's money and refused to give it back to them when they couldn't deliver. It's their responsibility to be prepared for challenges. And in some extreme edge case where they couldn't have been prepared, it's their responsibility to be transparent about that to the people who gave them over a million dollars (let alone purchased the product after the Kickstarter was finished). I suppose too that the pandemic affected Purism in January 2019 when they were supposed to deliver their product?
The fact that they did is a huge win for the mobile Linux ecosystem becoming a real contender just when we need it.
The Librem 5 is not a contender for shit. It's so overpriced that it can only be successfully marketed to people who care so deeply about their privacy that they're willing to use an inconvenient mobile OS, get completely boned on hardware specs, and deal with a company notorious for fucking over its customers. Purism's behavior is a fucking embarrassment to the Linux ecosystem.
NXP i.MX family debuted in 2013; Intel i7 family in 2008. Their phone uses a 2017 i.MX 8M Quad, the same year they crowdfunded their phone.
That CPU is based on the ARM Cortex-A53 and Cortex-M4, launched in 2012 and 2009, respectively.
2017 i7 computers are equally not from 2008…
When I say "2013", I'm not talking about the debut year of i.MX. I'm talking about the fact that you can compare this phone side-by-side with a Galaxy S4 or S5. 3 GB of RAM, 32 GB of eMMC storage, a 720 x 1440p IPS display, no NFC, USB 3.0, an 8/13 MP front/back camera (which they inexplicably call "Mpx"; good job, guys), 802.11n Wi-Fi, no waterproofing, and a shitty-ass i.MX 8M CPU. I still remember watching a trailer for the Librem 5's continuing development, and as they were scrolling through a web browser, it was noticeably stuttering. This was years and years ago; I can't even imagine it today.
It still today remains one of the best ARM processors with open source drivers without an integrated baseband. It means basically any flavour of Linux can install on the device, with a significant layer of protection from carrier conduited attacks. Other modules have similar tradeoffs between performance and interoperability/security.
I do not give even the slightest inkling of a shit try to confirm or deny this, so I'm just going to assume it's 100% true, because it's not relevant to the point that the spec is absolute trash and being sold for $800. If you are not absolutely married to privacy, this is not a sellable product in 2025.
Want better specs? We either need SoC companies to release more of their drivers open source, or more people to patiently reverse engineer closed source ones.
Actually, if I want better specs, I'm just going to go out and buy a phone that isn't from Purism. It really sucks that it's not open, private hardware, but Purism is such a scummy company that so wantonly fucks over their customers that I wouldn't touch the Librem 5 even if I could justify spending $800 for that spec just for privacy's sake.
Everywhere I talk about some corporation removing features you bought and paid for, someone says that "they personally would never used that feature", or "serves them right for buying from that company".
And it's not surprising he has that answer. I don't think I've seen but one video from this guy but it was him talking about how that lead Dev from graphene was harassing him. And up to that point he was super big into graphene apparently.
Child slaves labored to make raw materials for the device you're holding. Your purchase kept the market rate for raw materials high, encouraging the continued use of slave labor. Don't you feel bad?
We do the best we can with the decisions we have available to us.
From a practical standpoint it’s secure enough for me, and I value the fair sourcing of components and labor a lot more than the little I am losing on security.
Plus their mission to try to make a phone with fair materials and compensation in their entire production chain. Is it perfect, of course not, but a lot better than all other brands.
Pixels are inferior to even the cheapest android phones out there. I have a two year old Motorola stylus that cost $100 and battery life is still over two days and I've dropped it a million times. Evey pixel I've owned had major issues with screen or battery life not worth the price when google can't handle making reliable hardware. Plus I have a headphone Jack.
I mean everyone has anecdotal evidence to "prove" their point... I have a Pixel 7a that still lasts 2 days and I've dropped it a million times and the screen hasn't cracked. It's also 2+ years old.
We had a 4a (battery life) and 5a (sudden screen failure). Both failed just after warranty lapsed. The 5a made it just outside the extended screen warranty period. These are well documented issues and I've read about issues with newer gens as well. It just doesn't make any sense not to support cheaper phones when it comes to custom roms because you're voiding the warranty on it. With the pixels track record of poor quality I'd rather not risk $1k+ just to run custom firmware.
Their arguments are kind of lame. To install APKs from outside the store is already an involved process that generally makes it harder for the uninformed to sideload. Make sideloading a bit harder, but possible. My xiaomi makes me wait and read warnings before installing APKs, for example.
Side loading will still be possible but the apps themselves will need to be signed by the developer through Google, so Google ultimately still controls what can be installed. Maybe someone will crack it.
It's a great way to workaround them being forced to open the ecosystem a little and allowing alternative stores and that stuff. It only took more than a decade, they obviously not happy about it, so gotta screw people in another way.
[Installing software] will still be possible but the apps themselves will need to be signed by the developer through Google, so Google ultimately still controls what can be installed. Maybe someone will crack it.
With this shift and other control based decisions Google has been making, does Apple devices start to make more sense? Neither platform offers true control over there device you "own", but Apple at the very least isn't a marketing company.
I can't believe a company hasn't swooped in and eaten Apple and Google's lunch.
Microsoft was already an established player in the smartphone market when the iPhone came out. It was Apple who came into the market and ate the lunches of MS and Blackberry.
I kind of feel like MS tried three distinct times, first with their WinMo products pre-Apple, then with their Nokia partnership, then finally with one last push through the mid-10's before Intel finally made x86 on mobile an impossibility (nuking the Atom line, selling their 5G modem business to Apple, etc) and before there just weren't any paths forward for MS.
Amazon and FB having their own phone product lines felt like the weirdest me-too-also-ran Android reskins to extend their own walled gardens, but also felt like both threw in the towel after like 18 months?!?
MS had to be a loser for more than a decade before they gave up. They were really great at being a big loser.
It's just .. apparent that nobody is going to do this for the love of the game, and that they can only get minimum market presence by financing their way to launching yet another walled garden ecosystem. Which is exactly what we all want to avoid in this group.
Honest question - why not fork android which already has all of the infrastructure needed for things like 5G handling, power management, and a widely supported ecosystem of components and vendors?
I would try a Linux phone, absolutely, but why not just Android instead?
The issue is current and future vendors for current and future Android phones are largely tainted and lockstep with Google.
But wouldn't developing off yesteryear Android still be leap years ahead of just reinventing the wheel around Linux? I kinda thought Android was Linux for our devices.
I'm mostly saying this just because I'm jealous to bring all of my APK's with me into that future.
I don't want to give up my reddit app and my current trio of browsers.
If Reddit Old would play nice with said device, and doesn't have a native app, I probably will settle on that when my ReVanced 3rd-party-Boost finally dies. (I also use the same developer's Boost for Lemmy app).
I already use Amazon in one browser instead of its app, and Facebook in a whole separate browser on my device, even.
But there are apps on in daily, like my brokerage account and my budget/financial app (Monarch Money is worth the subscription, for me).
Apple isn't a marketing company? Wow, if anything I would say that singularly defines what has made them successful. They put out solidly mid hardware, but are the best marketers in tech and always were.
The hardware is absolutely not mid. It is inflexible. Compare the entry level MacBook Air to any comparable Windows laptop and you’ll be spending much more to get close to the same performance/battery/build quality. The thing that makes them successful is creating a unified ecosystem that is hard to leave. People don’t pick Apple because they are a bunch of idiot clones who are enamored with TV ads.
Until a few months ago I was all-in the Apple ecosystem. iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV. Seeing them launch things like Universal Control was amazing.
Then I jumped out, got a Pixel, put Graphene on it, and started messing with Linux.
... Only to discover that Universal Control is essentially just Input Leap, which can trace its history back to 2001 and the launch of Synergy.
Apple are absolutely a marketing company. Don't get me wrong, they add some much-needed polish, but they essentially just rejig existing tech and lock it down so it only works on their devices sold in the last few years.
They aren't a marketing company; they're a tech company that knows how to market. Hate them all you want, and I do, but let's be honest. Also, the M series SoCs are technological amazing. They are efficient and powerful whereas in the standard PC world Intel is just pushing more electricity through their chips to try and keep up with IPC and AMD isn't far behind, plus ARM outside of Apple just isn't nearly the same.
Android is all of the downsides of Apple now with none of the upsides. I prefer the company selling a walled garden over the one selling my internet activity.
Please Europeans, please stop buying American goods, using American social media, and ffs do not come here. If there is no profit to be made, they'll stop bothering you.
There isn’t barely any good alternative for smartphones. Tech companies and CEO’s are now what the Church and the Pope were in the Middle Ages. Both keep the masses dumb, ignorant and hateful.
Carriers usually make it more difficult to unlock the bootloader on their versioned phones. Iirc with some you have to submit a form or something similar to the carrier to be able to unlock it
Same, though I think this will be the push the community needs to really launch a good Linux phone. It'll suck for awhile, but I'm looking forward to debating phone distros with all of you.
I use Debian as my daily driver and am disappointed to see that the best-supported devices under Mobian within my budget are the Pinephone (which has shockingly low specs) or the Pinephone Pro (recently discontinued, no longer sold. Also had poor specs).
I was toying with was getting an SBC with an LTE/5G hat & 7in touch screen, plugging it into a portable battery, and 3d printing a case for it.
Fast, performant and cheap. You wanted all 3? Now you got it! The FLX1 from Furi Labs runs a fully optimized system called Furi OS, packing a lightning fast user interface, tons of storage, and a …
I have the PinePhone Pro in a drawer somewhere. It's just a fun toy, not even remotely usable as a daily driver. But I might have a look at it again and see how many tasks still remains before I could theoretically use Mobian as a daily driver.
My main problem with linux phones is that many apps only exist only for android or ios.
Sure some apps are basically a website that you can acess by web browser but many apps cant be replaced able (banking, tickets, public transport, games)
My main problem with the current crop of Linux phones is, or at least it's my impression - is that they still struggle with the basic phone part. As in network connectivity (at least in the US), making and receiving calls, SMS & MMS, and VoLTE support. If there's a Linux phone where that stuff is solid and works, I'd buy one. I don't really care about the whole app ecosystem - I barely have any apps on my Android phone now.
I think I'd be willing to let go of the handful of things that are exclusive, given that I could probably do more with a proper Linux system. It's the basic phone functionality (as others have mentioned) that keeps me from switching.
Waydroid works really well to run Android apps on mobile Linux, even for games. Doesn't help for banking apps though as they'll usually lock you out due to not passing Google safety checks.
I thought so too, but over the years I have migrated so much of my life away from apps in order to see if it's possible and apart from games I find that with a browser and an email client I don't really need apps. Still use apps though, they are way more convenient.
Banking is tedious without apps, but works with browser and an MFA-dongle in my country.
Something kind of concerning I just found - there's an option for "limited distribution" which is "Intended for 'students, hobbyists, and other personal use.'" One of the differences is the following:
Has "capped number of apps and installs"(specific limits not disclosed)
Doesn't this imply there's going to be global tracking of what apps people are installing even through sideloading or APKs? I can't think of any other way to enforce this. They would have to know how many times people installed an app even when its not through any kind of app store or even from the internet at all.
Could be, but that could also just be done locally. Like your phone checking the apps you have installed and seeing if the same ones are on the play store. Having an install limit for an app - assuming that means that the app can only be installed some total number of times globally (a local install limit wouldn't make any sense I think) - necessarily implies that when you install an app through an APK, it has to tell Google that you installed that app so it can track how many people have installed it and not approve installation of the app if it's over whatever the limit is.
Probably. But that might be under the umbrella of optional usage statistics/reporting that you can opt out of. Since this new tracking would be "necessary" for their "security" feature to work, there's no chance that it could be avoided.
That's interesting. I was just checking to see if Cromite showed up there but couldn't find it, is there a menu you found yours under outside the update tab? If something as simple as a browser I use is going to be blocked from installs/monitored I can't see why I'd stay in this ecosystem.
That has just always been the case as long as the app in both stores uses the same package string. (Like org.blitzortung.android.app or org.videolan.vlc)
What will happened now when Google stop let us install app's outside of Google play store?
Google want to became Apple?
Really is there a change Google stop let us install apps from .apk files...
It's been the case ever since I started using Android (and modded APKs such as old versions of apps re-signed to not update) in about 2011.
Some of the root apps back then such as Titanium Backup had features to "unhook" an app so it wouldn't appear as installed in the store, but my experience was that it never lasted long enough to be worth doing.
They provide the OS, what makes you think that kind of tracking isn't already happening? App stores provide the apks but then you'll use your phone's installer to actually, well, install the apks.
Soon privacy minded folks will have a burner phone for calls and sms (I need those for work) and carry some sort of phablet for smartphone functionality (gotta have my navigation app, for sure)
edit: but I'd take MacOS or Windows over either iOS or Android at this point. I suppose a toughbook mounted in my truck would do the job also. Cops rotate those out on a fairly regular basis.
This should read that google is screwed, as android users flock to alternative phones. But no, so many would rather just keep on bending the knee to daddy data scrap.
Android users will have no idea it's happening because only a tiny minority even knows what sideloading is. I don't think I have done it in my last 3 phones, so maybe a decade or so. It's definitely not enough of a reason even for someone like me to switch, let alone an average user.
Well, I use Obtainium to install all my FOSS apps directly from the repository.
I also built a game for kids (available publicly) and then made a plugin just for my kid which includes some licensed characters, for obvious reasons I can't put that onto the Play Store, so apk installation it is.
I get what you're saying and you're definitely right. I don't side load things all that much but the times I have was because there was no other viable way to get what I needed and it worked amazingly well (not to mention testing something before it's available on the app store).
It's one of those things like a fire extinguisher that you might not need but you are very grateful it's there just in case you ever do.
What is blocking it? I haven't done much research yet but was hoping to find a new OS if this goes through. Wouldn't it be the same as putting a sim card into a tablet/laptop? Or is there something specific to your country that stands out?
Probably they need to pay for an IMEI fee their government wants. I know because it's the same here. I got PinePhone for $200 and had to pay for $250 IMEI fee. What did I do? Changed the IMEI to my old dead phone's.
Nice, that makes sense. Doesn't is store more data than just an IMEI number though, like make/model, did you have to spoof that as well or was that easily ignored
Normally, yes. As for my government concerns, I'm using Nexus 5X. They probably would notice if they investigate but as long as there are no more than 1 active phones with the same IMEI, they most likely won't notice.
If your phone isn't manually approved, its assumed your phone doesn't support 4g/5g, therefore, blocked.
4G/5G phones have already been blocked
Fairphone isn't certified in Australia, Pinephone also isn't, nor Librem 5.
Custom ROMs on an approved phone might work for now, but they could potentially start verifying OS in the future if the autocratization trend continues. Also, manufacturers could starts start locking the bootloader.
The best realistic way forward is have two devices, one is the "normie" phone, the other is your own pocket PC running a Libre OS.
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
Nearly 100% of the development for handheld Linux is Steam OS / Steam Deck. If Valve moves to ARM at some point then you might see useful improvements that benefit the mobile use case.
the collaborative world works off of demand. Pocket laptops and linux phones have been a nice distraction for long enough. They may soon become more of a saving grace.
I'm not saying you'll be able to run Spyware Simulator 2000 on PostmarketOS. I'm more saying that any secondary device you use for foss software will be more focused upon as an actual decent alternative for getting work done without being spied on by capitalist nazis.
These devices can run web browsers. That's 80% of your needs already taken care of and we haven't even left Firefox.
It seems like fewer people care about being spied on, “I have nothing to hide”, and many people don’t even change the settings to prevent sharing contacts, photos, and location with privacy hostile apps like Facebook.
Attach some dangling USB modem with a data SIM, or just keep a mobile router with a data SIM in your backpack, for 3G/4G/5G data connectivity over WiFi. Then, use some VoIP provider if you actually need a phone number as well.
This defeats the entire purpose of me having android
Like I'm just going to switch to an iPhone now. Not because Apple is any better, but because I have more family with them.
They took away our SD cards, they took away our removable batteries, they took away our headphone jacks. Now they're taking away side loading apps, and that's it. I'm done. The death of android.
I just get a flipphone, and try to build some portable computing device from a Raspberry Pi CM, even if they made it 5V, for "industrial purposes" (read: likely some industry people wanted to stop people from building their own portable devices), which is less ideal for battery operation.
Removable batteries are coming back, as they become mandatory in the EU in 2027. Or you can already get one with a Fairphone (which also has SD card slot). As for the headphone jack, I'm afraid it won't come back. Bluetooth alternatives are far better these days (I got both, so I know from experience), and good adapters (like Apple one) are barely more than $10.
Disputable. * they are cable-less, thus need to be charged separately * they are cable-less, thus it is easier to lose them * bluetooth implementation is a potential security vulnerability * transmission by radio will always be less energy efficient than transmission by wire
they are cable-less, thus need to be charged separately
I'll give you that, but my bone conduction headset lasts a few days with the amount I use
they are cable-less, thus it is easier to lose them
Meh. I've put corded earbuds in my pocket and probably worn them out faster that way. Bluetooth headsets I tend to leave on (much to my wife's annoyance) and that makes them last longer in my experience.
bluetooth implementation is a potential security vulnerability
Aha, that van outside must be tapping into me listening to The Dandy Warhols! I knew it! (In all seriousness, if security is that critical you probably shouldn't be doing whatever it is over WiFi, which is pretty much unavoidable with a phone)
transmission by radio will always be less energy efficient than transmission by wire
Are we really talking about saving energy here? That's like... Moisture in the bucket levels. Not even a drop in the bucket
I agree with you, even if you are downvoted. I've wrecked more in-ear buds by (non-replaceable) broken cable than i can count, while i'm on my 3rd bluetooth headphone in about 10 years - i lost none of them, and the second one is still around as backup.
The security is a thing that can be patched if it pops up and is only an issue if your OPSEC differs strongly from the common citizen, and the energy argument comes across like a purity test - the light in my fridge probably uses more energy.
I would never go back to cable, especially since noise cancelling doesn't work without a battery anyway - and i am very unhappy without noise cancelling.
Also, i have a power bank where i can use 21600 Li-ion Battery cells as power source (and it doubles as charger for those cells) - on travels i take a few batteries with me, and even if i find myself for weeks without power, i will have it whenever i need it.
they are cable-less, thus need to be charged separatel
If you wish for ANC you'll need a battery anyway, and most people do want ANC these days
they are cable-less, thus it is easier to lose them
I'm loosing my wired headphone far more often, for a simple reason: wireless ones having a battery allows me to make them beep, given they are near, of course.
bluetooth implementation is a potential security vulnerability
Sure, and so are wired headphone as they act as an antenna, broadcasting to anyone with an appropriate receptor anything you say and/or hear. As for the implementation vulnerabilities, at least it can be patched.
transmission by radio will always be less energy efficient than transmission by wire
Sure, but is it that much of a problem? It would take years (if not decades) of constant listening to even use a dollar of electricity for wireless headphones. Even if you factor the data transmission from the phone into that. And wired headphone are not energy neutral either. They works by pulling energy from the phone battery.
I prefer the wireless headphones ease of use to headphone I have to untangle every time I want to use them. I keep my wired ones for home uses.
BT 6.1 introduced Randomized RPA (Resolvable Private Address) which should help with some of the security issues. That said I wouldn’t expect to see headphones implementing 6.1 for quite some time. It just came out in May.
I have two devices, one is my phone, and one only plays music. I only ever use my phone as my phone, and my music device as my music device in my car, and both run over Bluetooth.
It is a crapshoot as to which role my car will assign to which device. Sometimes I have to put my phone in airplane mode so that the car won't try to assign it the media player role in Bluetooth settings. I'm not impressed.
That aspect did pop into my head but I am not qualified to comment as I never use any wireless headsets, nor are my ears trained enough for fully appreciating hi-fi quality.
they are cable-less, thus need to be charged separately
Not a major drawback, IMO.
they are cable-less, thus it is easier to lose them
True, but I haven't lost any in the something like 6 years I've been using them.
bluetooth implementation is a potential security vulnerability
What's your threat model? Who's going to be attacking your security via your headphones? What happens if they succeed?
IMO this is a pretty ridiculous drawback, it's like saying "wired headphones are worse because the wire can be used as a garrote", which is true, but not an actual drawback for 99.999% of people.
transmission by radio will always be less energy efficient than transmission by wire
So what?
IMO the drawbacks of wired headphones are:
The cable often gets tangled, and it's a pain in the ass to untangle it
The cable can often get snagged on things, and if that happens the best thing that can happen is that the headphones can go flying out of your ears. The worst thing that can happen is that the phone goes flying out of your pocket and smashes on the ground.
The cables can get dirty and frayed, and if they get too frayed they can break or get worn down so they have an iffy connection.
Even when the cable isn't tangled, just arranging the wire so it's out of the way, long enough to get to your ears, but not so long it gets tangled can be frustrating.
Trying to use your phone for anything else while your headphones are attached can be a problem. Say you want to take a picture of something, or pay for something using NFC, you have to be careful of the cable. If you had the cable tucked into your shirt or zipped up in your jacket so it's out of the way, now the cable might not be long enough anymore.
Because of the wire, you're limited in where you can put your phone, and your head has to always be within a short distance to your phone. With a wireless headset you can choose to put the phone in a knapsack if that's more convenient, and when you put down the knapsack you can take a few steps away from it without losing your connection and interrupting whatever you're listening to.
If you're doing something like working in the kitchen while listening to music or a podcast, you can't put your phone down on the counter and use it to look at a recipe, because as soon as you have to move to go get another ingredient, or to move from the cutting board to the sink, you have to pick the phone up again. And that can be a real issue if you have goop on your hands and you're moving to the sink to wash them off.
In cold weather / winter you might want to have your phone in a jacket or something. If you go inside and take the jacket off you either have to pause things while you transfer the phone to another pocket and rearrange the wire, or you have to do this complicated dance where you clear the wire and move the phone without accidentally yanking the wire out of the phone or out of your ears. With a wireless headset you just take the phone and move it to a new pocket whenever that's convenient.
~~The headphone wire is a potential personal security vulnerability as a ninja can use it to garrote you.~~
The drawbacks for a wireless headset are:
They tend to have batteries that can't be replaced, so eventually they lose their ability to hold a charge and need to be replaced. It can get really annoying to use them when the batteries are starting to fail and they hold less than an hour of charge.
They tend to be much more expensive than wired headphones.
Wireless buds are easier to lose, and easier to drop. If you drop them they can bounce and roll under things, or into the street or who knows where.
They do eventually run out of charge, and you do have to charge them, and sometimes they can be low on charge / out of charge when you want to use them.
There's a fair amount of lag, which can be annoying when you're trying to skip commercials on podcasts and so-on.
First of all, you're forgetting that the actual problem is that the headphone jack does not require you remove bluetooth from the device. The issue here is giving user less options and more costly "solutions".
The cable often gets tangled, and it's a pain in the ass to untangle it
Git gud. It's not that hard to roll up the cable so that it doesn't tangle. Worst case scenario, you can buy a small case.
The cable can often get snagged on things, and if that happens the best thing that can happen is that the headphones can go flying out of your ears. The worst thing that can happen is that the phone goes flying out of your pocket and smashes on the ground.
Run the cable through your shirt. Problem solved.
The cables can get dirty and frayed, and if they get too frayed they can break or get worn down so they have an iffy connection.
Use headphones with a replaceable wire. That way you can use a cable with or without a mic or use different lentghs. Hell, you can even make your own and they're cheap. Even if the wire isn't easily replaceable, most headphones can be fixed with a bit of patience and a soldering iron.
Even when the cable isn't tangled, just arranging the wire so it's out of the way, long enough to get to your ears, but not so long it gets tangled can be frustrating.
You're just doing mental gymnastics at this point.
Trying to use your phone for anything else while your headphones are attached can be a problem. Say you want to take a picture of something, or pay for something using NFC, you have to be careful of the cable. If you had the cable tucked into your shirt or zipped up in your jacket so it's out of the way, now the cable might not be long enough anymore.
Or you can, I don't know, unplug the headphones for 2 seconds.
Because of the wire, you're limited in where you can put your phone, and your head has to always be within a short distance to your phone. With a wireless headset you can choose to put the phone in a knapsack if that's more convenient, and when you put down the knapsack you can take a few steps away from it without losing your connection and interrupting whatever you're listening to.
Redundant. Also, put your phone in your pocket and stop whinin'.
If you're doing something like working in the kitchen while listening to music or a podcast, you can't put your phone down on the counter and use it to look at a recipe, because as soon as you have to move to go get another ingredient, or to move from the cutting board to the sink, you have to pick the phone up again. And that can be a real issue if you have goop on your hands and you're moving to the sink to wash them off.
My man, are you allergic to speakers? You're cooking in a kitchen. Lose the headphones.
In cold weather / winter you might want to have your phone in a jacket or something. If you go inside and take the jacket off you either have to pause things while you transfer the phone to another pocket and rearrange the wire, or you have to do this complicated dance where you clear the wire and move the phone without accidentally yanking the wire out of the phone or out of your ears. With a wireless headset you just take the phone and move it to a new pocket whenever that's convenient.
Skill issue. Run your wire underneath your jacket and you won't have this """problem""".
New problem created. Now when you want to take your phone out of your pocket to take a picture of something or scan it for an NFT sale you can't do that easily because you have this wire running through your shirt connecting your phone to your headphones. Also, if it's winter, now your phone has to go in an inner pocket not an outer one so you can't easily access it anymore.
Or you can, I don't know, unplug the headphones for 2 seconds.
And start blasting whatever you're listening to to the whole world? Well, you could pause what you're listening to first. Don't you see how this is much less convenient than wireless headphones where you don't have to make all these compromises?
Redundant. Also, put your phone in your pocket and stop whinin'.
Ah, accept a less convenient alternative because of the limitations of the wires. Sure, sounds great.
My man, are you allergic to speakers? You're cooking in a kitchen.
You're cooking in a kitchen. There are loud fans, loud kettles. Why would you use a speaker that you have to turn way up to blast over all that noise? What's wrong with you. Use headphones, you're in a kitchen!
Skill issue. Run your wire underneath your jacket and you won't have this """problem""".
Now you have the other problems with your phone being inside an inner pocket and not easily accessible for doing things like taking pictures or doing NFT transactions. You really haven't thought this through, have you?
Well, the reason not to have both options if you're a phone manufacturer is that pesky port. Every port is a headache for them. There structural weak points, they're places that can get dust and dirt in them, etc. As a user, I want as many options as possible, but if I can get a phone that's $100 cheaper because it doesn't have a headphone port, I'll definitely choose that option.
As a user, I want as many options as possible, but if I can get a phone that's $100 cheaper because it doesn't have a headphone port, I'll definitely choose that option.
You're the one that implied headphone jacks add cost to phones. I'm saying that they don't, and whatever cost they do add is minuscule. The implication that any cost savings is being passed to you is laughable.
Look, they killed the jack because they could save a couple bucks of design time and get a few cubic millimeters of space, but most importantly they could softly force their users to buy wireless headphones (maybe even the ones they sell and bundle?!). The former outcomes being happy accidents in order push the latter. It's win win for them, and lose for the customer.
They know that their price concious customers are still using wired headphone and unlikely to take them up on their bundle, so they keep including it there. The affluent ones are the ones with cash to burn and little care for this issue. I get you like BT headphones, so do I, but there's simply no good defense for the 3.5mm removal other than shilling.
You're missing the point again. It's not one or the other. We used to have BOTH. I use BT headphones day to day because I like the convenience, like you. However there plenty of times I wished I had an aux out or forgot my BT buds and wanted to use a pair of headphones I had at the desk.
Now when you want to take your phone out of your pocket to take a picture of something or scan it for an NFT sale you can't do that easily
Sure you can. Just unplug the headphones.
And start blasting whatever you're listening to to the whole world?
You're either trolling or you've never used wired headphones. Playback stops automatically when you unplug a wired headphone. It's the same thing when you disconnect a bluetooth headphone.
You're cooking in a kitchen. There are loud fans, loud kettles. Why would you use a speaker that you have to turn way up to blast over all that noise?
Wtf? Lol. If you're kitchen is that loud, something's wrong with it.
or doing NFT transactions. You really haven't thought this through, have you?
Yeah, you're either trolling or a very special kind of person.
First you have to stop whatever you're listening to or you start playing it on a speaker for everyone. Doing that is an annoyance that you don't need to put up with if you just use wireless headphones.
Playback stops automatically when you unplug a wired headphone
Maybe it does today, I don't know, I haven't used wired headphones in many years. Back in the day it didn't.
Wtf? Lol. If you're kitchen is that loud, something's wrong with it.
If you are kitchen is quiet, you really should be using the fan to get the smoke and food smells out of the kitchen. Maybe if you're just making pop-tarts then it isn't a big deal, but if you actually ever do any serious cooking you'll discover that it gets loud.
Yeah, you're either trolling or a very special kind of person.
Why are you so scared of the modern world? Is it that you're too confused by it all? Can't handle touchscreens? Scared by https? It's ok man, just take a course. You'll learn to live in the present, not the past.
The Apple adapter is very good. I used one on my Linux machine that had a finicky built in port. Obviously works great on a phone. If you need one in a car at least MagSafe/qi is available now but not ideal.
I don’t love the idea of “removable” batteries being mandated if that means like the batteries in an old flip phone. We needed them then because the capacity was so bad and power banks didn’t exist. I would prefer that manufacturers require them to be third party replaceable instead.
They have to be user removable, not hot-removable. Take a FP6 as an example, you have to remove a couple of screw to get to it, then another couple to remove it. What are forbidden will be glued batteries and back panels.
That’s convenient to swap a battery but I feel like my phone is more likely to get soaked than need a battery swap at any time in the next two years. The FP6 is IP55 rated.
Looks like FP6 battery is £45 and iPhone 14 is £60-£90 depending where you buy it. I know I can get that done in the next hour or two where I live, so I don’t see it as a big deal.
The replaceable camera feature is more compelling because a broken front iPhone camera can effectively brick the device.
My phone is IP68 and you can replace the battery. Does require removing some screws to get the case off but I think that would pretty much be required to waterproof it anyway.
A replaceable usb-c port is great too. My previous Nokia 8.1 died because of that, and my previous FP5 needed a replacement after 2 years of use.
But I agree that Fairphone have work to do on waterproofing their phones. It was hard with the previous hand removable back panel, but now that they added screws to the back panel, it wouldn't be that much of a a stretch to add some o-rings to further waterproof it. I'm sure they could get it to IP66 rather easily, maybe IP67 with a little more work.
I have a fp4 and it is VERY annoying to not have jack(I don't wanna use bluetooth because jack works, doesn't need a battery and is low tech), so now I only listen to music on my computer, but I'm planning on making an mp3 player with a raspberry pi pico.
Fast, performant and cheap. You wanted all 3? Now you got it! The FLX1 from Furi Labs runs a fully optimized system called Furi OS, packing a lightning fast user interface, tons of storage, and a …
Hmmm. Then I would need to figure out how my authenticators would work. I have like 3 different ones for a total of like 18 accounts. It's annoying as all hell
or 2027. Or some Chinese variant of android on Chinese/Taiwan phone that allows sideloading, perhaps with alternate playstore and maps. I don't yet understand how draconian this actually gets implemented, but death of android/google (to me) is possible. If hardware is good enough, then android emulator will be fine for legacy apps.
Bluetooth alternatives aren't better, that's laughable.
You cant buy beyerdynamics DT-990s with Bluetooth, you cant get Sennheiser HD 490 Pros with Bluetooth, you cant buy Audeze LCD-5s with Bluetooth. I could go on and on but you get the point. Good headphones don't use Bluetooth.
The nice headphones a lot of us have had for years, well before the headphone jack was removed don't have Bluetooth.
So when you say they're better 1. You're wrong. And 2. You're missing the point.
If you prefer Bluetooth, fine, but phones with headphone jacks still have Bluetooth. You're only ok with it because it doesn't effect you and I think that's appalling.
Imagine phone manufacturers remove the ability to use Bluetooth headphones and I say "that's fine, wired headphones are better anyway". It's not about that, it's about removing your freedom to choose and it should NOT be tolerated
I work in IT and pairing bluetooth is sometimes so finnicky i give up for a few days. I can accept that I'm not that great at IT but I don't think 99% of people don't have these problems.
And it's not a thing you do one time, most of these gadgets need re-pairing every sone time for whatever reason.
Oh I'll agree that sometimes Bluetooth pairing can be finicky.
But the person I replied to was talking about how Bluetooth is not good enough for audiophile quality headphones. But most people don't care and can't even notice the difference.
There are a lot of very good Bluetooth headphones from Bose, Sony, and the like. If you take a look at lab tests, most of lf them got a frequency response pretty close to the ideal curve, and ANC helps a lot to isolate outside noises that would drown out the music on wired headphones.
But I do agree about choice, just not on the blind refusal of using USB-C adapters. That's unfortunate that they removed it, but it has some good reasons. A headphone jack wasn't made to be waterproof, and if some managed to make some of them waterproof-ish, it is often by enclosing it into its own little sub-enclosure, with a good short-circuit protection (because even a tiny water drop in there mean a short), both of which takes place. Same goes for the DAC, we got so far into miniaturizing it, and inside interferences are so high now with new technologies, it probably wouldn't be viable anymore to have it inside the phone itself. Even larger device, like the Steam Deck, have problems preventing interferences on the headphones jack, so that must be an even bigger problem on something as tinny as a phone 😅
I trust in independent reviews, reproducible tests and hard numbers, not in brand cultivated images and subjective choices. I don't care if it comes for Audeze, Sony, or a Chinese Knockoff, numbers doesn't lie.
Hell no. I'm well aware it is a good audio brand (german I think, but may be mistaken)
What I wanted to say here is that I prefer an objective good quality product, adapted to my needs, to a brand name. Even well known brands sometimes make bad products.
As an example, I have a Sony WH-1000XM3. But if I'd be interested in an XM4, there is no way in hell I'd buy an XM5, because of some shitty choices they took (no more foldable design, forced adaptative ANC). Maybe the XM6 will end up of interest to me, I did not yet check its specs, but considering I recently changed my current XM3 battery, I won't be back on the market until the XM7 or XM8.
I never had one of my wired earbuds fall off the platform at the train station and disappear in the gravel, nor did I ever have isues with forgetting to charge them, let alone their case being brolen and not charging at all. And if I want to switch my favourite headphones over from my PC to my phone, I'm really glad my old phone still has a jack.
No, bluetooth is not better. Bluetooth has latency which is bad for anything that needs realtime audio, like video games or any kind of live performance. It also runs on 2.4 like every other electronic Wireless devices making it prone to interference. And it's yet another device to keep charged all the time.
USB C is also inferior because you need dongles which increase complexity of your setup, it's more prone to failures. Like audio cutting off every x minutes because connection is just slightly loose or other electronic gremlins. I'm saying this having just had a gig and the MD's phone we relied on for the metronome started acting up during the performance not recognizing the dongle until a reboot.
Audio jacks were simple, analog, worked perfectly fine and delivered high quality audio. What we have now is overengineered slop that is less reliable and more expensive.
The removable batteries coming back would also impact the iPhone, which actually respects user privacy because Apple is not a marketing company. Apple is a products and services company, they sell tech devices and make a lot of money on services like Apple Music and TV+ and such. It's expensive for a reason; you can even take the encryption keys out of Apple's hands for iCloud so you genuinely are fully protected
Tbf, you can a very cheap android phone for around $100 USD, the cheapest iPhone starts at around ~~$400~~ (edit: Actually I got curious and looked it up, apparantly the iPhone SE is gone and the cheapest new iPhone right now seems to be the 16e which start at $600). Also, Apple developer account cost $99 per year, Google developer account cost $25 one time fee, so the cost is gonna trickle down to the user, sometimes you find free apps on google play and then you look at apple and it cost a few dollars, its most likely due to the recurring costs to maintain a developer account.
Also, Apple doesn't allow torrent clients, You can't use firefox with ublock origin on iOS.
(But then again, these advantages could also go away in a few years... 👀)
There is a "firefox" but its just a re-skinned safari basicly, because Apple has some weird requirement of using their "webkit" or whatever, and no extensions allowed on the "firefox". I used an iPhone before (because I was a young adult and iPhones looked shiny) and I was so sad to find out I couldn't use uBlock Origin on it. And then finding out torrent apps are non-existent just made me cry.
Yes they do have "adblockers" like Brave or those Adguard thing on safari, but those are dogshit and they broke like half of the time, and many ads get through anyways, especially on youtube (where as uBlock Origin only break sites like 5% of the time).
Friend you can buy a much cheaper android phone, which is why I don't really care much about this, though it is still obviously bad. I hate my phone, I hate cellphones in general, they're shitty feature locked mini laptops with a subscription so I can, what, make and receive 12 phonecalls a month? Download half a gb when I'm out of wifi range? Use google maps, the literally only truly useful thing my cellphone does for me?
Anyway, because of my disdain I buy the absolute cheapest cellphone on the market that has no attached plan, once every three or four years. I got a new one last month.
It cost thirty bucks. My monthly unlimited talk and text and data plan comes to about 22$ a month.
It's a piece of shit, obviously. But if all you're doing is begrudgingly using it to make a couple calls, send some texts, scroll Lemmy while you're pooping and occasionally use a map the price is appropriate.
(non-Android) Linux phones aren't really ready for daily driving even for relatively advanced users - but it looks like we're gonna have to deal with it anyhow
My problem with this is when I now don't have freedom from surveillance in my country because I mainly use F-Droid to install my privacy conscious apps.
I added, "if I can't find a linux one that is suitable for my needs". And I mean it, I will spend the time and energy for due research when the time comes to change it. I am a long time linux OS user in my personal computer so I won't shy away from using a phone if the OS feels different to android.
All I am saying is after this consideration, if I am left between iOS and android, I will go iOS because of how blatantly disrespectful google has become of it is base users in the last 5-10 years.
Not really, it is more like saying "I am going to move to another dictatorship". In both cases, lose enough of your "members" and your organisation becomes significantly weaker.
Also iPhone has been quite constant about its motivations and priorities quite from the start (even if did not announce it publicly lol). Android however was a product of a company who started its life with the motto "don't be evil" and is now trying to monopolize the shit out of everything, including its users free time. I am not even sure this can even be classified as a lesser of two evils scenario anymore.
Is there other alternatives to Apple and Google phones? If you can pay for shipping a and 2 phones compared to a Google or Apple phone then why not use other manufacturers?
You could also move most of what you do to a tablet or laptop if you're willing to carry that, and just use the phone as an Internet access device and for phone calls.
EDIT: Or use a cell modem for data and SIP service for phone service and texts, though then you need to have a device that you'll keep on if you want to get incoming calls when they come in. Cell phones are pretty optimized for low idle power usage.
Yes, learn the truth and be enlightened. Both Microsoft and Google have been secretly scheming for a while now, with the sole intent to get girthero closer to Linux
Windows 12 phones are going to come. Microsoft will have their own RISC chips to run mobile platforms. Their relationship with Intel has limited them too much while the rest of the Tech giants grew too powerful with their own branded chips and devices.
It's time the community open source movement starting gaining a lot more traction on mobile. We need better hardware support and standards for a streamlined non-Google/Apple/MS platform. Something not beholden to any single company or country
In theory it will just be another Linux able to run on everything Linux supports + Android hardware. Honestly I don't know if it will ever run on common modern phones but it should at least be possible to run it on more "open" phones like Fairphone or PinePhone.
These are the most supported devices, maintained by at least 2 people and have the functions you expect from the device running its normal OS, such as calling on a phone, working audio, and a functional UI.
If the above is where we are at still with PostmarketOS, it will be a decade or more before it is anything more than a curiosity. The table stakes of what people, even us tech nerds, expect from a smartphone fit for daily use is so much more than "it can make phones calls and the UI works" it is not even funny.
As I said, I don't think we can expect PostmarketOS to work on normal phones but looking at the table they have PinePhone figured out. My hope is that we will soon see something like PinePhone but with proper specs that will actually be usable and that some phone makes like Fairphone will help make PostmaketOS run on their phones. Couple of properly supported models is all we really need and I hope it's couple of years away, not a decade.
Can you just refuse to upgrade your 2021 or previous (nothing on their device list applies to models released after 2021) to not be affected by this policy change? I have never noticed a useful feature in android version upgrades for quite a while now.
Don't worry as the current OEMs continue to lock down bootloaders and lock required drivers behind copyright and other restrictive licensing schemes they will ensure nice things like PostmarketOS at best remain fringe and never able to replace modern phones for daily usage.
I do support the PostmarketOS project, but it has much further to go before it’s friendly enough for regular people. Short of Valve releasing a Steam phone, I think UBports is better positioned to bring genuine linux to mobile.
A friendly cross-platform Installer for Ubuntu Touch. Connect a supported device to your PC, follow the on-screen instructions, and watch this awesome tool do all the rest!
It’s a full version of Linux. It also has a desktop mode if you want to use it with an external monitor, keyboard, and mouse. You have all the same control you would have on other Ubuntu-based flavors. You do need to keep your device’s architecture in mind.
Yeah I agree. I've used PMOS as well as Lineage and Graphene. The latter was the best experience and PMOS was the one that needed the most work, at least to reach any sort of side adoption.
I'm actually looking at something running SailfishOS as my potential happy mid-point, but currently the Jolla phone - which would be my preferred device for this - doesn't seem to shop outside Europe yet.
No one here is talking about regular people. Regular people will keep using stock Android.
UBports still relies on Android kernel and services. Custom ROMs are such a small part of the Android ecosystem that I didn't think Google will go after them yet they did. Can we be sure in a couple of years they will not try to destroy Android based distros like UBports?
I also don't really like the entire idea behind UBports. It's so heavily modified you can't even easily run native Linux apps so you're limited to Ubuntu Touch apps. As a developer I'm not really interested in learning completely new framework that supports only one platform. We have solutions to create cross platform Linux-Android apps so I can move my apps from Android phone to PostmarketOS without any work, they already work there.
So I'm supporting PostmarketOS and I really hope it will be usable when my Pixel phone dies. If not I will switch to something Halium based. What else is there to do?
Does anyone know anything about Furi Labs phones? I saw a comment about them on another post about Android alternatives midwest.social/comment/1956866…
I'm probably going to spam this around a bit, since most people don't seem to know about it, but a reminder that FuriLabs has a (GNU+)Linux phone with decent spec.s and the ability to run Android app.s (from what I've heard) pretty decently: furilabs.com/
Biggest drawback is it's based on Halium. Usual growing pains of a new product/company apply but apparently the company is pretty responsive and their dev.s have worked with customers to get things like calling working with the carrier and bands of their country where it hasn't worked before so improvements move pretty quickly.
I don't own one, myself, so I can't give any personal experience but I've seen it around for a few years now but most people don't seem to even know about it. Maybe there's a reason for that? But none I've ever seen anyone say.
It used to be a pocket computer, now its just a mini-prison-cell.
If anyone is using currently using a flagship phone, when your phone dies and you need a replacement: consider just getting a cheap $100 android phone then spend the rest of the money you would've spent on a flagship on a portable PC instead
This is the route I went years ago. Not only do i not feel like lugging around an obnoxiously long buttonless 1kg remote control, within two months the display will be shattered because I sneezed, and I will have to buy a new one because replacing the screen costs as much as a new phone.
I know they do that shit by design. Why would the back side of the phone need to be made of fucking glass? It's literally the only reason I ever buy new phones, the screen is the only thing that ever breaks, and they never survive long enough to be "too old" to use.
I think I am just done with the whole concept of the convenient prepackaged tech product, and especially staying "connected" with them.
For example, I stopped wearing a smart watch this summer and it's been a positive. I was the type to wear it 23 hours a day and track my sleep with it and everything. It turns out that not instantly seeing every notification or knowing the exact minute of the day are not a big deal, sans are even good for me.
Part of what I've also done is use my phone a lot less and my linux desktop a lot more. I use it as a mobile communication device and not my computer for everything. I guess the next time I need to replace it I'll either get an iphone since everybody in my family has one, or I'll see where these wonderful Linux phone projects end up.
I'm wearing my smartwatch as a wristwatch. All notifications are off, but I see the temperature, UV index, step and calorie counters, which is nice. And if I ever want to review my sleep data, pulse, sPO2 saturation and location history, I got it available just in case. And for the very rare case that my phone is charging and I want to access messages from another room, I can do that manually.
In all fairness to smart watches, mine is what turned me on to regularly checking the UV index. That's an important thing for all people, but especially me because I have an increased skin cancer risk due to unrelated medical stuff. And it was extra-extra important this year because I have done a ton of good work outside this summer.
And to be more specific about my watch situation, there's more going on than just avoiding notifications. I have been minimizing the amount of stuff I keep on my person in general, right down to finally getting my wedding ring tattooed on this year. There are various reasons ranging from abstract introspective life improvement stuff to the practical where that outside work I mentioned was constant and pretty rough on anything on my hands/arms.
So even if I wore a nice mechanical watch, I'd probably still be going with the double bare wrists right now.
In all fairness to smart watches, mine is what turned me on to regularly checking the UV index.
Can't you just do that on your phone? Surely if the UV is high, you just plan accordingly for the day? Sunscreen, wide brim hat, stick to the shade where possible, etc. I can't imagine what benefit constantly checking the UV on your watch gives you. Even if it did happen to fluctuate for some reason, you would be wasting so much time constantly ducking in and out depending on what your watch says at any given moment.
Yeah you are absolutely right. I do just check it on my phone or PC now.
But having it constantly visible for the months or years I had it on my watch face etched the habit into my ADHD brain. It also gave me a feel for how weather and time of day affect it. But not in a way where I try to vibe measure the UV index. It reminds me to check the weather data. 😀
If Google is going to lock down my device to the point where I can't install apps without their permission, I might as well dump Android and go straight to Apple. I sacrificed my phone being good for the openness of the platform, but if Google loses that openness, why shouldn't I go with Apple?
I already tend to buy the expensive flagship models of phones. I buy unlocked and it lasts me ~5+ years, so I get the best phone I can get at the time and make it last, so money isn't as much of an issue if I were to move to an iPhone.
I'm just saying Apple doesn't make anything close to a cheap stripped down $200 model.
I made the comparison based on feature set. For that you need an android flagship phone. Android DOES make cheap phones....but therexs no 1:1 comparison for Apple.
Apple hardware has always been a generation ahead. Even when android/qualcom catches up, next generation is out already. The reason to avoid apple was it being a closed system money grab.
What is the difference between Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite and Apple A18 Pro? Find out which is better and their overall performance in the mobile chipset ranking.
a18pro beats M3 max in single core. Compared to 7840hs, it has 40% high single score geekbench 6, though 50% less multicore. Even beats ai395max at single score. Android competition catches up to even in gaming/gpu, but single core/responsiveness is still light years ahead. a19 next month, likely. M3 ultra has competitive aspects to xeon and epyc. Apple definitely has a lead on arm implementations.
Because the cheapest new iPhone is $600 and you can get a cheap new android phone for around $100-$200 and get 6 years of security updates (Galaxy A16 for example)
If a smartphone is no longer a computer where you can install whatever you want, why bother investing so much money on a very locked-down phone? You can use the hundred of dollars you saved to spend on a small portable PC or something to run any software you want.
$600 is pocket change for a phone these days. And for that $600 you're getting a flagship phone. You couldn't pay me enough money to put up with a non-flagship. Been there, done that. They're too slow and frustrating, and apps keep closing due to lack of RAM. Never again. I much rather spend $600-800 on a high-end device that's a couple of generations old.
I have used tracfone since 2012 and only bought phones from their store, sub $150. The budget phones today are so much better than the last 10 years.
I just can't wrap my head around sinking that much into a phone when you replace it every year and it cost as much as a decent budget computer, but worse.
I just can’t wrap my head around sinking that much into a phone when you replace it every year
Usually the people who replace their flagship phone every 1 - 2 years aren't paying full price for it, or at least not upfront. They are receiving trade-in and pre-order discounts, or spreading the cost out over a 12 - 24 month period through a plan with their telco.
I used my last phone for about 4 years. At that point the battery life was getting worse, and the coating to prevent smudges and make your finger slide easily had worn off in the middle. Even then it's still perfectly usable, I just wanted an upgrade and to get away from Samsung.
I don't understand the people that upgrade every year or two. In the last 5 years basically the only new development has been higher refresh rate displays and faker looking (more processed) camera images...
I don't think people are doing it because the new phones have better specs. It's more a social status flex or because tech consumerism (buying new toys) is a default hobby now for many.
That's unfortunate. Personally I can barely tell all the black rectangles apart. It's a utility for me, not a fashion accessory. Maybe if it was, I'd have an iPhone
Surely cost relative to income is more relevant than cost relative to the rest of the market? Something doesn't magically become cheap just because everything else is ridiculously expensive.
Yeah but my banks don't support my small portable PC, nor does my mobile phone provider. If I wanted a small portable PC I'd get a small portable PC. What I want is a smartphone.
Openness isn't just a nice to have. It is essential.
The difference between general purpose computing and gatekept walled garden computing is night and day.
Identifying the devs is not in the "need to know" for Google. Google sells or helps to sell a general purpose open device where it is on us to exploit that device however we will.
Now Google wants to switch to a walled garden, moderated development model.
If Google promises it won't use those dev IDs to moderate development, their promise is only worth the wind it moves and the sound it makes.
now while at first view, your sentiment is understandable, i actually kinda differ.
when you buy any product at any store, i believe that there has to be a legal entity behind the store that sells you this product, and the legal entity needs to be identifiable. i.e. if you run a shop and give packages to people, you need to show ID to open up that shop. i believe it is the same for charity organizations which give away packages for free.
now, why would it be different for apps? apps are software packages, and if they're given away, there should be a legal entity behind it that is identifiable. this isn't to surveil or suppress people, it's just how business has always been done, and for good reason so. businesses need legal representatives to operate, even if it's a charity, because otherwise there's nobody to "talk to" when there's issues, and also imposters would have an easy game.
that doesn't mean that you can't donate packages away on the streets. just put it in front of your front door and wait until somebody passes by and takes it, or give it directly into the hands of your friends, you don't need to open a business for that. just, if you do it regularly, interacting with people you don't personally know, there is a legal entity that represents that recurring activity, like a business or charity.
If i understand it correctly, even with the new changes, what can be done is that open software distribution sites like F-Droid can sign the packages instead of the original developers and therefore circumvent the identification of the original developers, and also you can still install unsigned third-party apps if you enter a command on the command line to disable ID certificate checking. it's just an extra step, not a block-all.
This change requires you to attach your real name when publishing software. That's all. You can still publish to and install packages from anywhere. This doesn't come close to Apple's complete control.
Google already scans packages you're installing for malware and alerts you and allows you to install them anyway. This gives that scanner one more tool to identify bad actors.
I haven't watched the video --- I would generally rather have text form content --- but if Rossman is announcing the same thing that I just read about elsewhere, it's not a removal of sideloading. It requires that a developer register and provide Google with personal information for Google to let them create packages. Assuming that Google is willing to let the F-Droid developers register an account (which I assume they have) and sign the F-Droid package, it should not restrict installation of the F-Droid package.
However, you wouldn't be able to use F-Droid to install any packages that didn't conform to Google's new requirements.
I doubt that the restriction is at the store app level, but at the package installation level. That is, I would expect that the F-Droid or Google's store app or whatever says "install this package" and the OS refuses.
Starting in September 2026, Android will require all apps to be registered by verified developers in order to be installed on certified Android devices.
Step 1
Verify your identity
You will need to provide and verify your personal details, like your legal name, address, email address, and phone number.
If you're registering as an organization, you'll also need to provide a D-U-N-S number and verify your organization's website.
You may also need to upload official government ID.
Step 2
Register your apps
You'll need to prove you own your apps by providing your app package name and app signing keys.
And especially any youtube app that blocks ads. OF COURSE Google will never allow Newpipe, Revanced, FreeTube and so on to be installed on Android phones ever again.
Hey don't mind me, I'm just gonna whip out my steamdeck (that I already have) to watch a youtube video using the desktop firefox. (Yes I know its 720p, but whatever lol, its good enough for gaming, its good enough for youtube)
I have no idea if this shit is coming to android tv, but i turned updates off just in case as I use SmartTube Next on it to watch ad free youtube. Ugh. Fuck google.
Just think of it: you are the author of the ICE tracker app. You want to release the app as anonymously as possible, right? Well, not with this move in place. You will need to upload your govt. Id to their website. If the pigs come knocking, you bet your ass GOOG will gladly hand it over to them and off you go to Florida.
As a user, you should be upset that a private company is controlling how you are allowed to use your device that you paid for with your money.
This would be like if Microsoft decided you could only run Microsoft-approved code on a computer you purchased, in some cases with a locked bootloader so you can't even change your OS.
Also, Google is (imho) already operating unethically when it comes to the app store (See Google v. Epic). I don't care about Fortnite, but Google really shouldn't be able to take a cut of random services just because it's running on Android.
Doesn't upset me, why? Because it's not about controlling what app I install, but who wrote the app I might install. If my understanding is not correct of this change , I'm happy to be shown I'm wrong.
I think that other guy's comment about the ICE tracker app really highlights the most important problem: If only signed apps can run, governments can pressure companies to remove access to certain apps. Even if Google allowed posting the app, the author would have to de-anonymize himself, and Google would have to comply with the law if they were subpoenaed. They would definitely give up the author's name. It is an issue of freedom, freedom of speech, freedom to do with your device what you choose to do with it. You might not have a use for it (right now) but it's not necessarily something you'd want to give up.
And, honestly, I would personally be affected by this, eventually. I use an app called NewPipe to watch youtube. It already isn't available on the app store (violates google's ToS), and I doubt they'd let people install this even if the author properly identified themselves, because I use it to avoid watching adds and to be able to "subscribe" to channels without an account. I could just borrow my husband's premium subscription, I guess, but I really only use NewPipe to watch certain things, and it lacks the algorithmically driven feed (which I am actively avoiding, Google tends to suggest things that make you angry for clicks).
I don't know about America or to be honest at all what ICE tracker does, but if I was to assume that it somehow tracks government agents where they go, there might be laws against that.
I don't want to drag this conversation into American politics, but I will say ICE has been doing things against USA law. Things are not great here. Even noncitizens have rights that need to be respected, and ICE is failing to do that. They have also arrested lawful residents, citizens too, in their sweeps.
The ICE tracker app is a protest app/ direct action sort of thing, not a tool for criminality. Surely you can see the value of being able to use technology to resist a tyrannical government?
By the way, do you want the USA government to potentially control which software can be installed on your phone? Google is an American company. USA courts could decide (international company) is violating (American IP law or something else) and instruct Google to disallow their app from being installed entirely.
They can pull apps off the app store now, and they do that, but currently you can still side load stuff.
If the ICE app is breaking the law, and ICE itself is breaking the law, two wrongs don't make 1 right. There are legal ways to protest.
Like I said, earlier if you aren't breaking the law then if someone asks you to ID yourself , what's your fear? Loss of privacy?
You can't use privacy to hide the act of breaking a law.
Unless you're a developer it doesn't affect you anyway, you can still sideload apps. You just can't use a public highway like the internet to break the law and expect nothing to happen. I know it's not what any of you want to hear.
Tbh I'm not even sure the app is breaking any laws at all. Reporting on the presence of law enforcement is (not always but sometimes) protected speech here. I don't use the app, and I haven't heard that they are trying to arrest anyone in regards to it.
Honestly though... Have you thought through everything you're saying? Sheltering Jewish people during the holocaust was illegal in Germany.
I'm not a lawyer , but common sense dictates if you are going to make an app that's possibly illegal, you won't do it unless you are satisfied that it is legal. As far as comparing the sheltering of Jews illegally who were facing extermination and people who entered a country illegally is like saying I broke all the speed limit rules to attend an exam because I saw a person doing the same for a valid emergency. I'm not saying what Trump is doing is right at all, it's reprehensible, but don't try to equate it with the attempt to delete Jews from existence. It's absolutely fucking ridiculous .
That's interesting, where did you grow up? I grew up believing everybody had the right to privacy. And to not provide your identity to strangers on the internet
It's like gay marriage. If you don't want to do it, you don't have to. But don't support restricting the freedom of others because it won't effect you
I grew up in Czechoslovakia and Australia, more Australia really. There might be a genuine reason why google is doing it or not. Most things require an identity these days. You cant drive without an identity , you can't purchase alcohol without an one, of open a bank account. Where does your privacy feeling stand there I suppose you don't have any of that? I'm actually amazed with so much fraud on the internet governments don't require an ID to open a browser on your PC. Isn't internet like a network of highways really ?
You need an ID for those activities because it is required by law. Apples and oranges. Your argument is a logical fallacy of false equivalency.
A government dictating what you can and cannot do by law is a completely different thing than some random company telling you what you can and can't do with a device you own.
And again, if you're uncomfortable with that - then you still have the option of only downloading apps via the play store where identities are already verified.
So again, it's the gay marriage argument - do you support the freedom of others to do something you may not want to do? Or would you rather restrict others freedom when it doesn't effect you? If it's the latter, then I think you're an objectively bad person.
Owning device is not the same as owning the right to the software that runs on it. Google is well within their rights to say if you want to code on android, show us your ID, it's not your ethical right to do as you wish with someone else's software. There may or may not be a valid reason (ie. Too many suspicious apps that have no ownership). You need a license to drive on a public road owned by government , you need a license to code on Google's Android . I can open up a restaurant that serves no alcohol and request people for ID when they walk in because it's my right. No law that says you show me your ID but there's also no law that says I have to let you in.
I want privacy and freedom. You want Google to dictate what apps you can use even though it doesn't effect you.
You don't give a shit about people who rely on apps that aren't from the play store. You cant seem to understand why it's bad because it won't effect you. It's selfish
You've put a whole lot of words in my mouth I didn't say. I just don't see it "necessary" as a bad thing, you can still install apps via side loading, but now you can feel comfortable that if you install an app that steals all your passwords you can actually point a finger at who did it and hold them to account. Not that I wish that on anyone.
Yeah but don't you have to boot up your PC and connect your phone to iTunes once a week to re-enable developer mode to be able to sideload? Is there a more permanent method that I'm unaware of?
does this control happen with a specific android version release? what number? Can I get a new phone with that version and sideload an alternative OS/ROM?
You can research a phone you like and check if it has an unlockable bootloader, root it, and install something like LineageOS on it. It's fairly straight-forward, not super technically demanding, but it does require some tinkering and time setting up.
xdaforums.com is where the rooting kids hang out, post guides for specific models, upload images et c, you can probably do it in an afternoon with GPT.
The issue is that some apps, notably banking and official type apps, usually don't work as they rely on google services for operation. I solve it by having a cheap secondary phone that I only use for that stuff.
How does this affect "second-party" apps (i.e. apps you have created yourself)? Are you still allowed to go to Android studio, make an APK, transfer it to your own phone, and install that app? If no, this spells the death of experimental indie developers on Android.
yes. from what I understand, you will get a developer key from Google, and then you will sign your APK with your key.
you'll still be able to sideload apps that have been signed with developer keys. the main point here is that Google is forcing the developer to identify themselves.
Same here, got a recent (so not completely new) Xiaomi 13T Pro. Very little crap on it and it has impressive specs like 16GB RAM, 1TB storage and a very good Leica camera.
I'd love putting Linux on it one day, the specs are almost as good as my main PC lol.
I use GrapheneOS on a Pixel tablet without any Google Play so that doesn't affect me. On my Pixel phone Google Play is sandboxed. I expect however that Google will disable bootloader unlocking on future Pixel hardware.
I'll just buy and use decade old phones with unlocked bootloader till I can. There's barely any innovation in phones these days and I'm sure someone will come to fill the gap Android left (hopefully Linux). I'm still using my 5 year old phone degoogled with custom a16 and still going strong. I also have a backup pixel 6 in case the current one breaks. I can easily wait 10-15 years.
Banking Apps in my country doesn't even install on Android version of previous 2 version, because "security" reasons...not because of their incompetence to make their app more secure. I had to buy new phone to use my own money.
This do not depends on bank incompetence, it depends from the regulations the banks need to follow. And for the same reason you cannot install on a rooted phone (or at least, you should not be able to do it)
not necessarily. the developer needs to sign the APK with a key issued by Google. the main issue here is that developers will be forced to identify themselves.
im guessing the two possibilities are: 1. the developer signs the apk with their developer key 2. the user compiles an apk from the source code and signs it with their developer key
Ah, yeah I don't like that trend that's been going on. Or like chatcontrol that somehow seems to find it's way back despite being shot down again and again.
them bringing it up again and again is a very significant problem. Imagine you're spending time with a girl and asking her to have sex with you. She says "no", and you simply keep asking her daily until she says "yes" once, probably because she's just not paying attention to your actual question on that day. Such a behavior would be recognized by most people as being improper, immoral and not in the spirit of "consent".
Now, the same is happening on the EU. They keep asking the same question after they already got an explicit answer, and such a behavior should be illegal by itself. No means No.
Apple allows as much sideloading as google wants to next near.
Yes, you can install from .iPa files, but you still need to pay 100€ a year to be able to sign the IPA files, otherwise you cant run them. as much as with googles new policy you now need to pay 25€ + your full name to get a signature, to sign the Apks with
This ⬆️ Apple has set the lowest bar, and google is simply following the trend of “how to keep your App Store the monopoly while conforming to the dma“
> be me > buy new phone, chose android cause I can install anything on it > get free iphone from work > sell iphone on ebay cause I can install anything I want on my android > google doesnt want me to install anything I want
So in your world, a completely locked down phone is better than a phone that you can easily open up again by flashing a ROM or replacing Gservices for MicroG with adb + Magisk?
not every android phone's hardware even allows installing custom ROMs, as far as i'm aware of. and even if the phone technically does allow it, that doesn't mean that any good custom ROMs are even available for it. so the issue is a bit more difficult than that.
They are both now on the same level. Both iPhone and Android now allow sideloading of apps of "trusted" developers, so developers verified by Google/Apple.
I find it very strange how many people in the comments here think the solution is to buy an iPhone. Maybe you are all just rich and can afford to spend $1000+ based on vibes, but considering the Android market still has a massive value advantage I'm not really sure what the point of switching is. This all feels very similar to how some Westerners decided Chinese tech and even the Chinese government were suddenly problem-free just because Americans elected Trump for a second time.
Relative to what? Better for the planet than what? I'm not really sure what your point is here, you seem to be implying that a secondhand market for Android phones doesn't exist (note: it does, and Android phones are still much better value secondhand because they lose value so quickly relative to iPhones).
If you are American, you should buy Chinese tech because the Chinese government is more interested in spying on and controlling its own people than you.
If you are Chinese, you should buy American tech because the American government is more interested in spying on and controlling its own people than you.
From what I hear you can either 1. Register with Xiaomi and try to unlock it once a month. 2. Slip a service center worker with special access like 100RMB or buy a pre-unlocked one on taobao. 3. Ask said worker to downgrade firmware, then, before they relock it, snatch phone and run out of the store.
Seems like I'm fucked. Being Chinese-American means the US government is constantly suspicious of me being a "CCP Spy" and also the CCP has overseas illegal "police stations", I'm getting fucked over by both sides. Just perfect
Im sure the us uses its tech dominance to sway political opinions one way or another in my country (brazil). And spying on people is a requirement for that. It seems like an attitude in line with the history of the relations between the us and brazil (and countless other countries). China probably tries that too, although i dont have a strong historical evidence for that disposition from china.
Also, given that we are almost 10 years afte this article, I'm pretty sure any sane person (by that I mean someone who is not bolsonarist) can see where the (predictive) article agrees or disagrees with reality (past brazilian news and even memory of events):
You trust China more? The State-Capitalist Authoritarian regime? They country that developed the spyware known as Wechat, which is currently monitoring most of the overseas Chinese Diaspora? LMFAO. Spoken like a westerner who never stepped foot on mainland China.
Why are people always being campist lol. Just because you think "your side" is is bad, doesn't mean you should just blindly support the "other side".
If you're in the EU there is now at least one alternative app store. iOS hasn't opened up anywhere else in the world AFAIK, so it's still a pain for everyone else. You used to be able to use the AltStore without jailbreaking iOS (maybe you still can), but the process was annoying and didn't feel particularly secure as you had to provide your Apple account details.
The upgrade cycle on iphones is longer than that on android. $1200 flagship samsung phone turns to shit after 2 years. $1100 iphone keeps chugging for 4-5. The android rot is real. Apple is far from perfect but the phones last way longer on average and end up having a lower cost overtime. That is if youre not buying bottom of the barrel budget phones to compare against.
All of my old phones work fine as the last time they were updated. My 10 year old Sony xperia z3c would be fine except for security updates and it's only 3g, and the storage on it is quite measly. I still use it everyday for playing music, though.
Most of the speed issues are google bloat. Play services are absolute hogs, and anything that needs them will not work on this phone, but everything that doesn't is perfectly fine. So I'm basically stuck with f-droid apps. Which is fine, because it's a glorified iPod at this point
I bought a Pixel recently and for 2 days I tried to make it work. 2 whole days of fumbling pain! And I felt fucking horrible. Almost nothing is customizable and everything coated in a thick layer of AI. Every google app has dark patterns. Don't like it? Well too bad, apps like goog photos keep on asking if you want to upload your life with a recurring popup that tries to trick you. Don't want Google Search Bar? Well... you don't get to say no bitch, don't make me hurt you. It is not a healthy relationship.
So. I just took the plunge and flashed GrapheneOS. Graphene will take a bit of work getting replacements for some of my needed apps like mail and map. But there are lots of neat options and I'm having fun with it. Problem fixed.
I used the graphene web install. I booted up my Pi 4B+ and used gnome-disks to flash a MicroSD with Ubuntu 24.10 then installed the two packages in the web install instructions then I got Brave (I went to the Brave homepage and they have some curl option to download. I needed to install curl, did that then got Brave installed. Once brave is installed you have to disable browser fingerprinting memory reduction and disable the "brave shield" (the little shield near the address bar) for the web installer GrapheneOS page. (It's a fresh install, on a Pi, and I know the site, no real risk)
After this you can just press the big buttons on the page and follow the instructions on the page.
There are many ways to do this. They have lists of compatible browsers and operating systems. I picked (eww) Ubuntu and (eww) Brave because they seemed easiest on the list and I did not virtualize or use containers in any way cause it messes up the webUSB magic the website uses. I like to play it safe as possible when firmware is involved so I didnt speed up the instructions. And also when you buy a Pixel, big thing! Turn on dev tools and toggle your oem bootloader setting off and on again. If it can't do that you need to return the phone because it's locked down by carrier.
Well... I hope my long sleep deprived ramblings help someone else break their chains. Read a bunch about it before starting! Good Luck!
I mean, good on you to go for Graphene, but honestly a lot of stuff you describe is solved with a custom launcher. Search bar and customizability for example. I use KISS launcher on my private phone (Pixel 7) and on my work phone (Pixel 9), no issues with either of these topics.
The one thing I wholeheartedly agree with though is the cancer that is Google Photos and the peddling of backing up stuff.
GrapheneOS comes enirely Google free out of the box, including telemetry. It is also a reasonably secure mobile OS. You don't get all that by just changing the launcher.
You are right but this nothing that the original poster brought up. I totally support moving to Graphene or others if you can, just to be clear. But if you only want to customize the appearance and mess with the search bar, a custom launcher works well enough.
This is about Revanced, isn't it? They failed to kill it via the YouTube backend so now it's down to lock down the os and browsers as much as possible to keep feeding people the juicy ads.
I don't see how the DMA would cause this other than Google preemptively setting themselves up for malicious compliance. The whole point of the DMA seems to be to give users choice not take it away.
I think you're on point with the malicious compliance. Google doesn't want to give up power and control. Requiring all installations to run through them seems to be their workaround.
~~DMA is only partly for choice.~~ Sorry, different act, but same group (EU). But the rest pretty much stands the same, the EU won't see it as malicious compliance, but as a great design choice.
A common set of EU rules that helps better protect users' rights online, bring clarity to digital service providers and foster innovation for online businesses.
This is bigger than "just" Revanced though. It is about using any open source software that could replace a Google app and losen Google's grip on your data.
Yeah, but that doesn't help if you can't make apps that support the hosted services. Google is trying to have complete ownership of what runs on your phone.
If they only cared about thwarting malware they could have just relied on code signing via public certificate authorities, like with binaries on Windows.
Code signing offers slight protection from malware but not as you might think. If a company signs an installer, or executable then it tells you it came from them but not what it does. It could still be malicious, or it could be inadvertently bundled with malware in DLLs or scripts and you wouldn't know. You're just hoping the company has done its due diligence and you trust them to run.
Microsoft does have an antivirus system on top and fingerprints downloads too and applies some kind of trust score that is better if an exe is signed. There is probably no single mitigation that stops malware infection but apply lots of smaller mitigations in in depth and most people will be safe.
The irony is Microsoft still lets people run files ending with .scr way too easily. Much of the malware on torrent websites is a file ending with .scr knowing the OS will hide the extension, e.g. movie.mp4.scr appears as movie.mp4 in File Explorer and people click through and get infected.
The point is so that most people can't or won't figure it out or get discouraged. So that in time, google's "unwanted" software will be starved of attention and funds to continue being developped and these "weeds" in their garden slowly wither and die
The issue is that Android used to be open source but they're moving to closed source under the guise of security as well which will make it difficult/impossible to update the rom
It really should be a 3 level setting, disallow/allow & check/allow. Where the latter option is available but users are strongly advised to only select it if they are sure. Because I would not be surprised if a lot of sideloaded content comes from warez sites and is infested with malware so allowing & checking is still preferable and protects people to some extent.
I'm looking at Fairphone 6. EU based, has an option called /e/os which is basically degoogled Android, and it also has full support for Ubuntu Touch (Linux phone).
"All" you need to do is reflash your phone and reinstall Android/Chromium (soon to be renamed Android). Since you are not a certified supplier, the checking is not activated.
On Chromebooks the setting will be on, since they are used in schools, but since it has a terminal you can remove the block, it won't be simple, probably terminal commands and changing configuration files, but it won't be impossible.
We the people that want a finished product with distribution and a good eco system from day zero. It must be next gen hardware and be priced more than competitively.
It's good to want, and I say that as someone who would dance for joy if an open source phone became viable. If you think starting a new ecosystem and expecting it to be "good, next gen, priced competitively" is feasible via volunteer work anytime soon, I want whatever you're smoking 😀
Dude. On what hardware? My 1 years old AND 4 years old Samsung phones now lock their bootloader.
Random, fly by night China phones won't have enough documentation or enough consistency in hardware to be a viable rally point for firmware devs, will they?
Don't get me wrong. I will buy exactly that Linux Phone for my next device if it gives me three browsers and enough untracked fundamental functionality like calculators and contact lists.
But I'm genuinely worried there won't be a hardware vendor in the game in my market (the land of Y'allQaeda) to sell me a compatible device that plays nice with the three mobile providers that still exist here.
This is the risk of "trusted computing" architectures. Who is governing the "trusted" part of that.
These cryptographic signatures are not as much of a death knell for Android as some would have you believe. The trick is to get a common code signing cert into your device, that is then used to sign any third party APK you want to run. You can avoid the Google tax this way. I assume that's how most sideloading sites and apps are going to handle this.
The question is, how do you add that certificate? Is it easy and straight forward (with plenty of scary warnings), as a user? Or is it going to be a developer options deal? Or will I need root to add the cert?
I'm not sure what that answer is right now.
I just want to finish this post with a few words about trusted computing models. Plainly: Apple has been doing this for years ... That's why you download basically everything from an app store with Apple. Whether on your Mac OS device, your iPhone, iPad or whatever iDevice.... Whether the devs need to sign it, or the app gets signed when it lands on the store, there's a signature to ensure that the app hasn't been tampered with and that Apple has given the app it's security blessings, that it is safe to run. Microsoft and Google have both been climbing towards the same forever. Apple embedded their root of trust in their own proprietary TPM which has been included with every Mac, and iDevice for a long ass time. Google also has a TPM, the Titan security module, I believe that was introduced around pixel 3? Or 4?... Microsoft made huge waves requiring it for Windows 11, and we all know what that discussion looks like. Apple requires a TPM (which they supply, so nobody noticed), Google has been adding a TPM and TPM functionality to their phones for years, and now Windows is the same. None of this is a bad thing. Trusted computing can eliminate much of the need for antivirus software, among other things. I digress. We've been going this way for a long time. Google is just more or less, doing what Apple has already done, and what Microsoft will very likely do very soon, making it a requirement. Battlefield 6 I think, was one of the first to require trusted computing on Windows and it will, for damned sure, not be the last that does. The only real hurdle here is managing what is trusted. So far, each vendor has kept the keys to their own kingdoms, but this is contrary to computing concepts. Like the Internet, it should be able to be done without needing trust from a specific provider. That's how SSL works, that's how the Internet works, that's how trusted computing should work. The only thing that should be secret is the private signing keys. What Google, Apple, and Microsoft should be doing, is issuing intermediary keys that can sign code signing certs. So trusted institutions that create apps, like... Idk, valve as an example, can create a signature key for steam and sign Steam with it, so the trust goes from MS root to intermediary key for valve, to steam code signing key, and suddenly you have an app that's trusted. Valve can then use their key to sign software on their store that may not have a coffee signing key of it's own. This is just one example based on Windows. And above all of this, the user should be able to import a trusted code signing cert, or an intermediary cert signing cert, to their service as trusted.
This was the main reason I have a spare android phone to install whatever I want on it and just factory reset if there’s an issue. Android / Google is really shooting itself in the foot cause there isn’t a point in owning an android after this imo
Similar story here. I've got apps that I need to use from developers that are not around anymore. My old phone only needs wifi and I've disabled/uninstalled everything else. The phones battery last like 7 days now.
This is an android 16 feature, scheduled for sept 2026 "prerelease" and 2027 rollout. I expect/hope some phones will have a setting to disable "the security". If not, there is great opportunty for high end hardware linux first phones, with good android emulation software.
If side loading is actually allowed on iOS it's exclusively because the past few years of lawsuits forced them to, and they keep trying to block it in new ways. Android can only be equally bad as Apple at worst, because Apple is as bad as they are legally allowed to in a given jurisdiction. So picking iOS over Android over that specific issue seems odd. They get brownie points for having blocked it from the start?
Because of people installing malware. Its only recently that most Android phone owners even used the internet features, now you need apps just to park your car. There's nothing stopping someone from having you install malware from a pirate QR code someone puts over the proper sticker.
This will only be effective so long because gradually apps will require greater and greater API levels. Staying stuck in the past is, at best, a temporary solution.
What do you mean ? There is ubuntu touch working in some phone.
I saw that there is some improvements, for the fair phone 5 it seems that it is working but no dual Sim possible and LTE phone calls. You can check it out for your model on this site : devices.ubuntu-touch.io/
Enzy's point is that Linux isn't an OS but just the kernel, so the core part of the OS. That point is technically correct but practically utter bullshit. It's generally only pushed by pedants who have nothing better to do, because all the grown-ups in the room easily understand what's meant when someone refers to an OS called Linux (namely, Linux distributions, which contain a whole OS running on a provided Linux kernel).
Remember everyone…Google never cared about you or your phone or your privacy. They are a marketing company and make money selling your data. Your data is all they care about. They don’t offer a wide range of products, like search and Gmail and all of their office products for free, just for the fun of it.
The openness of Android is the thing that kept me on the platform. Now that the openness is being removed, iOS is now more appealing.
Sadly, I think most of the customers that use Android never sideload a single app at all. I don't expect this to create a mass exodus, but a smaller one with power users.
I didn't get it. EU pushes Apple for sideloading option. Android will come with embedded Linux terminal support and you can even run native Linux apps on your Android phone with Android 15.
I guess some C-Level assholes forcing this change in Google but this does not make any sense...
There's many more Bell peppers still on the plants, but I'm hoping they start turning red before the weather forces me to pick them.
Edit: Apparently the tape measure is weird? I dunno, it looks like a normal tape measure to me? I think it might seem weird because it's upside down? Here's the same pic rotated:
How do one get videos from android apps like we do on web using inspect tools ? I am trying to download some videos from an app before my subscription expires.
I believe VLC can open m3u links (playlists). Not sure about m3u8.
As far as downloading videos from an app, good luck with that. Or if you mean using an app (say, to download from a website), you could probably do it with Firefox?
If you have access to a computer, jdownloader2 is super easy to download from most websites.
I got Macs and an iPhone and I can download stuff so I know you can with Android. (I can also send videos easily between Android and iPhone.)
Yes I want to download video from android app, its not anywhere else only available inside app.
On desktop windows, I use HLS download plugins in chrome or fireFox to download m3u8 streaming videos or manually find links in network inspect mode.
I want to do same but in the android app. This particular app dont download videos in its private folder but streams it, I tried using PCAPdroid and its mitmproxy addon to inspect but it is crashing , also this procedure is little complicated, i couldnt figure it out, maybe i am doing any mistake, or it doesnt work.
The Future of Accrescent App store: "in 3 months, we will no longer have enough resources to continue ongoing feature development without additional funding"
In our recent post about Accrescent’s financial future and sustainability, we announced that to build trust and transparency with our community, we’d be publishing a follow-up blog post about what we’ve been working on lately and where we’ve been set…
They must have a lot of overhead for just a handful of apps. If they provided a better catalogue, it would be more popular and have a greater chance of garnering more donations.
No, the apps they serve are essential to be secure and safe. I get the ambitions but if you get what they offer now almost guaranteed safe, you can build your installed from that
If only they served essential apps (like they are doing now) so you can ease your mind with a fresh install, to build on top other apps you use. It might not be what we have dreamed, but that is still an unpriceable win.
The Future of Accrescent App store: "in 3 months, we will no longer have enough resources to continue ongoing feature development without additional funding"
In our recent post about Accrescent’s financial future and sustainability, we announced that to build trust and transparency with our community, we’d be publishing a follow-up blog post about what we’ve been working on lately and where we’ve been set…
Ever since F-Droid introduced reproducible builds, there isn't really a reason for Accrescent existance anymore. And there is Obtainium for everything else.
The Future of Accrescent App store: "in 3 months, we will no longer have enough resources to continue ongoing feature development without additional funding"
In our recent post about Accrescent’s financial future and sustainability, we announced that to build trust and transparency with our community, we’d be publishing a follow-up blog post about what we’ve been working on lately and where we’ve been set…
The Future of Accrescent App store: "in 3 months, we will no longer have enough resources to continue ongoing feature development without additional funding"
In our recent post about Accrescent’s financial future and sustainability, we announced that to build trust and transparency with our community, we’d be publishing a follow-up blog post about what we’ve been working on lately and where we’ve been set…
It also brings several downsides. The strong focus on security at all costs means there are no third party app repositories, so if a government entity tells them to take an app down, it's just gone with no repercussions or recourse. Gov tells F-Droid to drop an app and its gone until the dev launches a tor onion repo and then its like nothing happened.
That's unfortunate but at the same time the app store is quite lacking. I want to say its still in test phase but its missing so many basic things to make it functional. No app screenshots that, no app descriptions, not much information at all outside of an install button. Then there is the fact that there isn't many apps in there to begin with.
The benefit of this store was to allow both proprietary and open source apps but without any basic descriptions I find it useless. Its more similar to obtainium but without the flexibility.
I'll be honest, I used this store three months ago, and the most polite compliment I can provide is that it "technically works". It's extremely barebones in its current state. IE the bare minimum for a functional app store is the install button, and that does function. But that's pretty much all the thing it has, at least from a user point of view.
I mean, it's a shame that its future is in question, but you know... Spilled milk and all.
But tech and privacy experts have warned that the laws bring with them some unavoidable downsides, including potentially driving people to seedier corners of the web.
Hmm, if only there was something in history (cough Prohibition cough drug bans cough piracy cough) that could've predicted this. It's almost like people will do the easier thing when the legal thing is harder to do.
You don’t have to go back that far, just look at digital music. People were trading files on Napster, and the music industry was having a fit. Steve Jobs opened the iTunes Music Store and started selling all files for .99, people started gobbling them up, and piracy went down. Then along came Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora, etc., and most people are happy to pay. Why, because it’s so much easier and convenient than trying to pirate it and get it on your phone/player.
Don’t get me wrong, people still pirate, but the percentage is low compared to what it was before these easy legal options. People will always take the easiest route, legal or illegal.
What save person would want to get photographed or provide an ID before viewing porn?
If they truly cared about kids they would introduce mechanism where sites could declare their target audience and provide a way to punish if a company does lie.
Parents could then use parental controls.
This mechanism is more about censorship. They are aware that people are trusting less and less MSM so want to make sure they control Internet too.
If, God forfend, Farage gets into power, do you want him or his idiot flunkies having access to any information that could be used to blackmail or harass you?
I think the current bunch and their idiot flunkies are already the kind of people one would not want to have access to any information that could be used to blackmail or harass a person.
People who have old ladies arrested for demonstrating against mass murder of children due to their ethnicity, are NOT morally upright people who when in power would never abuse information about who watches what porn.
Ironically Farage is the only politician I've heard publically oppose it (probably have been a few others but they won't have gotten the same media attention). I'm sure if he does get elected he'll follow through with repealing it, just like we got that extra £350 million for the NHS he promised after Brexit...
We need to start following politicians with cameras, parabolic microphones, and what-not like gargoyles in Snow Crash. Stream video while out in public, posts of their locations when their not.
When the United Kingdom began requiring thousands of websites to verify their users’ ages last month, one group saw an enormous burst of traffic: pornography sites ignoring the law.
Could you please put a short summary of the article in the post body?
Something like:
Porn sites that ignore age-check laws are getting a flood of traffic - The Washington Post
The age-verification laws rapidly expanding across the United States and United Kingdom are bringing with them some surprising downsides, including bursts of traffic to seedy parts of the web. August 31, 2025 at 7:05 a.m. EDT
Sothat users don't have to click the article to get a quick overview of what it's about. Saves you 5 clicks - open article, figure out it's behind a paywall, go to archive.is, paste the article link, read article.
In our recent post about Accrescent’s financial future and sustainability, we announced that to build trust and transparency with our community, we’d be publishing a follow-up blog post about what we’ve been working on lately and where we’ve been set…
It says that certificate on the website has expired, and returns an error. Apparently they're aware and working on the fix - floss.social/@fdroidorg/115122…
A recently elected mayor has brought to light a costly computer systems deal, which was signed, sealed, and delivered by their predecessor. On her Facebook page, Mayor Sally A. Lopez shares photos and documents confirming that her predecessor acquired a “10 million System Server Package.” Assuming we are talking Philippine pesos, that’s equivalent to about USD $175,000. However, the 16 systems look bargain-basement – at best – being based on old Intel 11th Generation processors, with generic case and power choices. According to our calculations, someone appears to have enjoyed a 1,300% markup.
Iowa Republican Sen. Joni Ernst plans to announce that she will not run for reelection in 2026, a senior Republican official familiar with her decision told ABC News.
Ernst was a focus of major attention during the protracted discussion over Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's confirmation. She ultimately cast a vote for him despite her record as a military sexual assault prevention advocate. Hegseth denied the sexual assault allegations and was never charged.
Der Mann stand mit seinem Partner am frühen Samstagabend in der Obernstraße, als ihn eine Gruppe aus fünf jungen Männern beleidigte und attackierte. Die Täter konnten fliehen.
Falls sich jemand fragt, warum ich diese eigentlich regionale Nachricht hier teile: Bremen ist eine der queerfreundlicheren Städten Deutschlands und des deutschsprachigen Raums. Dass auch hier die Angriffe und Queerfeindlichkeit zunehmen, zeigt wie sich der Hass, die Propaganda und die Normalisierung von Queerfeindlichkeit auch auf eigentlich sichere Regionen auswirkt.
Die Obernstraße befindet sich übrigens nicht in irgendeinem sozialen Brennpunkt-Viertel, sondern mitten in der Innenstadt.
That's a direct result of the unfettered accumulation of capital bumping into obstacles and starting to stall, which in turn is because of a system built on a premise of infinite growth colliding with reality. So very much a part of the same polycrisis. The existing and near future use of AI as an oppressive tool is also a result of this, but Skynet isn't real.
This is LandChad.net, a site dedicated to turning internet peasants into Internet Landlords by showing them how to setup websites, email servers, chat servers and everything in between.
Starting a website is something that can be done in a lazy afternoon and costs pocket change.
Most of the internet’s problems could be solved if more people had their own personal platforms, so the objective of this site is to guide any normal person through the process of installing a website.
This is LandChad.net, a site dedicated to turning internet peasants into Internet Landlords by showing them how to setup websites, email servers, chat servers and everything in between.
Starting a website is something that can be done in a lazy afternoon and costs pocket change.
Most of the internet’s problems could be solved if more people had their own personal platforms, so the objective of this site is to guide any normal person through the process of installing a website.
Questo #agosto pareva partito bene, ma lentamente (o forse nemmeno troppo…) è caduto inesorabilmente agli inferi. E oggi, che è l’ultimo giorno di questo mese, è quindi arrivato il momento di fare il resoconto, perché altrimenti vorrei quasi solo piangere. (E anche perché devo finire un altro post, prima ancora di poter fare un altro […]
marini agostini lasciati bloccati, pioggia forzata e vacanza vietata! (la miseria del meteo terribile di agosto)
Questo #agostopareva partito bene, ma lentamente (o forse nemmeno troppo…) è caduto inesorabilmente agli inferi. E oggi, che è l’ultimo giorno di questo mese, è quindi arrivato il momento di fare il resoconto, perché altrimenti vorrei quasi solo piangere. (E anche perché devo finire un altro post, prima ancora di poter fare un altro post qui, ma lascerò stare i miei disastri personali per questa fottutissima volta, visto che ora c’è piuttosto da prendersela solo coi piani alti.) 🏜️
Sorprendentemente, la profezia per cui dal primo di agosto avrebbe iniziato a fare maltempo tutti i giorni, data la precondizione che per mia madre iniziavano le ferie, non si è avverata; e anzi, soprattutto, la settimanina di vacanza fuori non è stata rovinata dal meteo! Certamente bello, ma in egual misura assurdo… e quindi, avendo i potery forty perso l’occasione buona di rovinarci le ferie in un bel colpo singolo ben piazzato, avrei quasi dovuto prevedere che nei giorni a seguire ci sarebbe stata la grande (ma terribilmente diluita) beffa che ci avrebbe impedito di enjoyare per bene il resto del nostro time. 😫
È infatti in quel momento, a vacanze finite ma ferie ancora in corso, che è partita una tendenza meteorologicaampiamente sfavorevole per dire poco — che, curiosamente, per metà replica quasi perfettamente un agosto di svariati anni fa ugualmente disperante. Con mia madre avente ancora le ferie, ha iniziato a piovere letteralmente tutti i pomeriggi (o quasi, ma io ricordo tutti… incluso ferragosto, per chi se lo è perso!)… ma vabbé che non era proprio la fine del mondo, perché in genere la mattina riuscivamo comunque ad andare al mare. Ecco, la vera maledizione si è piuttosto abbattuta questi due ultimi fini settimana, con il caldo assolato tutti i giorni mentre mia madre lavorava… fino a venerdì pomeriggio/sera, in cui puntualmente ha piovuto… ma mai tanto puntualissimamente quanto sabato mattina e pomeriggio, e quindi non si esce. E #mannaggia al carciofo acquatico!!! 🥦
Ma è assurda, spaventosa, la precisione con cui tutto questo mese è venuto a piovere oppure ha evitato; e loro mi vogliono far credere che non esista alcun complotto??? Possiamo solo ringraziare il cielo (letteralmente, visto che da lì altrimenti cadono le gocce) che, almeno la domenica mattina, stranamente non abbia fatto piovere, e infatti anche stavolta sono sulla spiaggia. Sporca di tutta la roba che il mare agitato avrà portato nella notte di tempesta, ma almeno è qualcosa. Il #mare in sé, però, è parecchio agitato… e io non ho più l’età per fare il roleplay di Goku che provoca le onde, quindi resto fuori. Insomma, grandi troiai da questo lato, e dall’altro (cioè domani) inizia settembre, quindi: se Lvi (il meteo) vuole, forse ci spunta fuori qualche altra mattina, ma il grosso è già fuori dalla finestra (e, se parliamo di pioggia, un po’ anche dentro, se ci si dimentica di chiudere i balconi). 🎻 Marini agostini, rimarrai senza spiaggini! Con la faccia tosta di chi odia le ferie, la furia del mare si abbatte sulle nostre vite. Splash! L’acqua sbatte e si lancia per aria. La pace interrotta con greve periodo non è neanche l’inizio. Whoosh! Le gocce ascendono al cielo preparando la definitiva scarica mortale. Milioni non sono pronti ad accettare le conseguenze antispassose. Plic! Il demonio liquefatto così inizia a sperdersi, e non— PLOC! Precisamente militarmente i proiettili sono sparati giù sopra agli esseri condannati. Risulta impossibile godersi il destino. 💔 #agosto #estate #ferie #maltempo #Mannaggia #mare #meteo
Marini agostini, rimarrai senza spiaggini! Con la faccia tosta di chi odia le ferie, la furia del mare si abbatte sulle nostre vite. Splash! L’acqua sbatte e si lancia per aria. La pace interrotta con greve periodo non è neanche l’inizio. Whoosh! Le gocce ascendono al cielo preparando la definitiva scarica mortale. Milioni non sono pronti ad accettare le conseguenze antispassose. Plic! Il demonio liquefatto così inizia a sperdersi, e non— PLOC! Precisamente militarmente i proiettili sono sparati giù sopra agli esseri condannati. Risulta impossibile godersi il destino. 💔
BrikoX
in reply to Demigodrick • • •Good to see that you moved the ownership to a company. At the very least it limits your own personal liability. With how UK has been going downhill it's a wise move.
Thank you for the continued transparency and often underappreciated work you and team are doing to run things smoothly.
psx_crab
in reply to Demigodrick • • •Will the Online Safety Act affect us?
Thanks for the good work godrick!
BrikoX
in reply to psx_crab • • •