So does this mean FDroid cannot be used with just any Android phone?
They’ll push the update through Google Play Services, so if your phone is Gapps free, you’ll probably be able to continue to use F-Droid.
Yes.
Huh?
They stated that there will be a bypass and to just wait 24 hours until you can install APKs as usual. Permanently without additional cooldowns.It’s another story how long this will stay but for now,your answer is false information.
Ok, technically you’re right. You can still install apps from f-droid with any Android phone for now. The issue is more that most Android uses will not perform those steps so f-droid will not be able to reach them. People that are already using f-droid and understand what’s going on are file (for now).
I am so confused about these changes, I thought I downloaded Jerboa through Fdroid. What does this message mean? The only option to continue using Jerboa is to root my phone?
Is this completely unrelated?
I means that to continue using Jerboa you will have to do what is described in my comment (the 9 step process).
so - yes, there is a bypass for an indefinitely enabled apk installation with the annoyance of 24 hour wait when you first get the phone.
not great though, I agree.
Exactly what I said.
Authenticate, wait, unlock indefinitely and then have fun.Like I said. It’s only a matter of “how long” that will stay but it’s as of right now false information that it’s completely impossible to bypass it on stock android.
and two years later they’re gonna announce that according to their telemetry, not enough people are perfoming all those acrobatics to make maintaining it viable, and will close it off completely.
I think the bigger problem is though that all this talk is leading to developers abandoning plans for android apps. Not very attractive if you never intended to sign up for the Play Store.
Was it really ever?
Hopefully this pushes Linux on Mobile devices to be a more daily drivable platform at least. Otherwise, guess we’re fucked since there’s no way Google will give in to the backlash since if memory serves me correctly they NEVER have. It’s almost like they’re basically a monopoly and can be as anti-consumer as they want or something…
As a person who uses a few sideloaded apps, this is sad news.
Well, as far as I know the current idea is that you’ll have to toggle a setting in developer options and wait 24 hours (once). After that you can sideload unverified stuff as much as you like. So it’s not horribly sad, I´d say.
I actually kind of think that’s a reasonable change. It improves safety for the clueless majority, but it still gives those that know what they are doing a free reign with a minor initial inconvenience. And I kind of feel like articles still claiming how horrible this all is are mostly just outrage farming. Unless the plans have changed to something more fucked up, that is.
Publicly traded companies are soulless entities that are legally bound to 1 and only 1 goal, short term profits. Any time you see a company do something stupid, ineffectual, completely pointless, ect., then what you are seeing is step one in a plan. It is costing them money and future profits to make these changes that they know will be wildly unpopular just to maybe, sort of, possibly could, but won’t really, protect a very small number of the dumbest people on the planet? No, companies ruin, poison, make homeless, and kill people constantly while being completely aware of what they are doing. They do it and continue to come up with new ways to do it because they have just the 1 goal, profit. So, if this is not altruism then what is it? That’s what people are upset about. Because there are a lot of reasons for them not to do this, but the only reasons for them to do it are all bad in addition to violating their 1 goal. And they are still doing it anyway.
No, it’s not reasonable. Fuck the clueless majority. Stupid people should be prevented from hurting others, but they should not be prevented from hurting themselves. If you manage to download malware that’s on you, no big brother should ever be controlling what you can and can’t install on your personal fuckin devices. I’m a fucking adult and I do not need or want some bullshit fucking kid mode imposed on my personal shit because Google went full fucking nazi. Companies have no business dictating how you use your own purchases property. Imagine your fucking car saying nah you’ve already driven twenty miles today it’s not safe for you to drive more and just shutting the fuck down. Every motherfucker making these decisions in every industry need to be publicly gruesomely executed. The owner class needs to remember who they’re accountable to.
Don’t cut yourself on that edge there, bro.
You know why we first called malware computer viruses, back in the day? Because they spread.
Every infected computer makes the botnet stronger and more effective at infecting future computers.
Every personal email account that’s hacked and exploited is a treasure trove of information against all that person’s friends and relatives and contacts, and a vector of attack against everyone that person has ever emailed.
So yeah, we need security controls for the same reason we need vaccines. Because public health protects everybody.
If that’s the case, then Google really needs to fix the play store because you can absolutely get malware from there. This change is mostly to start locking down the ecosystem to force users to only be able to pay Google a cut of all revenue on the platform (apple already does this). It’s bullshit, and it hopefully backfires for Google.
This change is the opposite. It makes it possible for a user to install the Epic Games Store from their website without seeing a scary warning, and Google won’t get a cut of any of the revenues from that store. The same with any other company. Netflix can now offer their app from their website, and people can install it without any warning, and Netflix won’t have to send any revenue to Google for people who subscribe in the app.
Uh, no it’s not. Quite literally the opposite actually. You can get apks for your apps outside of the play store currently, just have to install them yourself (yeah, you need to check a box to install third party apps once, but that’s it). The proposed change from google is mostly to make that harder, and make most users locked more into the play store ecosystem so that Google gets their cut from everything.
Uh, no it’s not.
It is. As a result of the Epic Games v. Google, Android builds with the Play Store are required to allow users to install apps without any warning at all. They obviously can’t allow any app to be installed without a warning because this would be a boon to malware authors, so this is now enabled with verification. You can now even share apps you build with your friends without requiring them to go through an unverified apps flow with a scary warning. Additionally, Google is not allowed to take a revenue cut from those installs.
You’re confused because the install process for apps that are not verified (a path that didn’t exist before at all) or installed from a system app store has changed. This now has to be done with adb, which takes effect immediately, or via an on-phone process that takes a day to complete. Once it is done, this setting is copied to new phones, so the process actually becomes easier for most people who do this because they don’t have to go through the process repeatedly.
Google also allowed malware ads, and phishing ads since its existence
I have some bad news for you about cars…
boooooo
If that’s the plan that is perfectly reasonable to me. Thank!
It will kill off projects that rely on sideloading. Slowly, but if you need to do the dance, fewer and fewer people will use them.
I’m not sure that’s true. Fewer, sure, although not necessarily that much fewer. But “fewer and fewer”, I don’t think so. It’s not big enough of a hurdle to dissuade anyone who has already done it once.
We need go start talking about the year of the GNU/Linux phone
PostmarketOS isn’t GNU
Anyways it’d be interesting to see more niche OSes on phones (there’s a mobile port of Genode/Sculpt OS for example)
Or the year of free (as in freedom) pocket computers, since the global telephony system goes against the freedoms.
If AluminumOS takes off and overtakes Windows and Mac marketshare, desktops are headed in the same direction as mobiles.
As long as you can build a computer from off the shelf parts we are fine in that regard. They can’t stop FOSS OSs from working.
Gross, combining Chrome OS with Android? NO thanks! Another OS to harvest data to the max! “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” does not apply to Google at this point.
On top of desktops getting turned from the last remotely open platform into existence into locked-down black boxes fully controlled by Google if AluminumOS actually succeeds, and Google’s positioning it in a way that it might just succeed, positioning it in between Win10 getting deprecated and Win11’s continuing enshittification, Google could just severely undercut the cheapest Win11 PCs and the Macbook Neo and gain marketshare by selling AluminumOS devices as a significantly cheaper option than Win11 PCs or Macs. If that happens, and that tactic actually works and PCs and Macs get overtaken in the desktop market by AluminumOS devices, it’s game over for desktops as an open platform.
Keep dreaming! Chrome OS and Chromebooks in general are nearly as expensive as actual windows PCs with 5%the functionality. Just go straight up Linux at that point!! Free, open source, EASY to install or dual boot even. It is far better than anything Google would put out.
If you’ve never tried it, follow any one of the million guides for Ubuntu or Mint and you’ll be amazed. Even Steam OS, CachyOS, ZorinOS, or other gaming oriented systems.
I forget this isn’t the privacy thread, but you can’t just “hope” Google’s going to fix everything wrong with Windows when they’re doing the same exact thing as each other. You want to break free, you want functional, you want privacy, get Linux.
I’m calling AluminumOS out as the threat that it potentially is if it actually gains traction. If AluminumOS takes off and overtakes Windows and Mac for desktop marketshare, desktops will be guaranteed to end up being locked down like mobiles. I’m actually scared about AluminumOS and how it’s being positioned.
Oh, and I’m on Artix right now.
…you can’t just “hope” Google’s going to fix everything wrong with Windows when they’re doing the same exact thing as each other.
- I’m not, I’m hoping AluminumOS doesn’t actually take off and succeed because Google’s gonna make things even worse than they already are with Windows. Like, at least you can still uninstall Windows, you can’t really uninstall Android anymore, and if AluminumOS takes off and overtakes Windows for marketshare, that same restriction will be applied there too. Like I said, if AluminumOS takes off and becomes the dominant desktop OS, Google is going to lock down desktops like they’re about to lock down phones.
Ohhh OK! My bad, I misinterpreted that as excitement not alertedness.
I’ve been deGoogling things at home already, and. DeMicrosofting as much as one can at home and work too. I’ve been relying heavily on Non-US tech a lot lately and got to alleviate some additional issues, by migrating away.
It’s really worrisome to think about the worsened mass surveillance than what it already is.
Love that some megacorp can just make decisions like this that affects billions of people.
Really just feeling the fucking freedom. I hate everything.
And just manage to push it unilaterally too. This shit must be opposed.
The megacorps can do anything they want with their product. The chef can change the menu anytime and he can refuse you service - it’s his restaurant. Our problem is that it’s a duopoly and there’s nowhere else to go.
The only way out is open standards and platforms, enabling true competition.
Real quick.
Just imagine you order a plate of pasta. You’re only two bites in, and it’s DELICIOUS.
Then here comes chef. While making full eye contact, he tips your plate and dumps all of that pasta in the trash.
Chef proceeds to take a giant wet shit onto the plate. He brings a new set of silverware and a fresh napkin right before your server comes back with the check.
You insist that you didn’t order a giant wet shit, but they won’t take it off the bill.
Let’s stop pretending this is an inevitable oopsie. This shit is egregious.
More like you go to the restaurant every day and eat your favorite meal and one day its just not on the menu anymore.
I am not buying a new phone every day. I have already purchased the phone and now the functionality is being changed.
You could technically stop updating. But thats not feasible since it would put your device security to peril. Until or only if we were to use a FOSS system would we be able to chose which parts of the updates we don’t accept. It sucks but google can basically do anything they want to android and if you’re on a proprietary vendor you’re stuck with that patch
Daddy Googs won’t be happy until it’s a walled garden just like iOS
“Fascist oligarchy of capitalist dictators continue to implement totalitarian surveillance apparatus. Majority of talking chimps sleepwalking into dystopia.”
Don’t overstretch my analogy like that. How about this:
Google has standardized The Restaurant. The kitchens all have the same tools and ingredients and are open to anyone. Seating and billing is standardized, and you can easily order and pay at your table, and the food is delivered straight to you via pneumatic tubes and nicely packaged. The food might be expensive or cheap, tasty or revolting, but the experience is always the same.
There are a lot of hobby cooks that like to cook in the Google restaurants. If you want to eat their food, you might have to pick it up straight at the kitchen, or nicely ask the hobby waiters. The food is good and free, so some people tip the cooks or waiters directly. The cooks have been there for years and really whipping up nice creations - mostly for free, beacause the ingredients and tools were free, and they really like to cook.
Now Google introduced a new rule: everyone has to use their billing and pneumatic delivery system, citing improved food safety. The hobby cooks and waiters are infuriated, and even some of their customers, and they demand that everyone can still come to the kitchen or the waiters. But Google just says: look, my restaurant, my rules. If you don’t like it go make your own.
Except that google’s "standardized, “packaged” food is just as unsafe or even less safe than the hobby cooks’, and they’re only using “food safety” as a pretense to capture the market and hold clientele hostage.
And this change has also been preceded by buying out every other restaurant chain in town, except for the “Apple Restaurants,” which are already a walled garden, which Google is now trying to emulate even though most of its user base came to it specifically to avoid Apple’s business model.
And there are a few other smaller chains based on Google’s standards, but they’re considered niche and don’t all support every feature (“sorry, no ATMS”). Also, since most of their equipment comes from Google, Google likely has a killswitch and can cut off their stoves and refrigerators at any time.
It’s clearly an anti-trust issue, but since Apple has already set the precedent and the US is pro-corporation and anti-consumer, everyone is kinda just screwed.
The point is that Google’s head chef can come out and shit on your plate, and if you don’t like it then it sucks to suck because there aren’t really any viable alternatives.
as much as i despise microsoft, at least windows phone was competition.
Android was an open standard and platform, a LONG time ago. Then Google did a rug pull with all new features of android requiring 100% of their services to function.
No, it wasn’t ever. It always belonged to Google who benevolently open sourced parts of it and retains control.
Safetynet and PlayIntegrity are under Google’s control. The PlayStore is Google’s. All of the APIs are Google’s! Hardware blobs are closed and belong to the manufacturer.
Just because some of the stuff shows up on GitHub doesn’t make it an open platform.
Android was out for at least five years before Safetynet was a thing. I’m surprised people weren’t louder in their objections to that then.
Trouble with this analogy is the pasta they serve you eat for about 2 years and they can change what’s on your plate at any time.
Ah yes the invisible hand will fix it
After all it’s the invisible hand’s job
It’s more like:
There are 2 grocery store chains in your city and zero restaurants or other ways to get food not owned by those chains. One already has a supply of only expensive, big-brand products, with nothing organic and very few healthy items The other chain has more independent items that are healthier and more reasonably-priced, as they allowed smaller companies to sell there. Now they are closing the door to these smaller companies, making them appear as a clone to the first chain.
this is a reply from further down that is actually correct
This is being presented as more doom laden than is warranted. Ostensibly it is an effort to stop less technically able users from installing malware, certainly there will be unspoken ulterior motivations but such is the world we have allowed to grow around us. As far as overarching evil plans go this is quite a benign example.
Which is bullshit. You already had to enable external downloads this is just them even farther encroaching on our ownership of our devices.
Get that boot out your mouth, you don’t know where it’s been.
it’s never been your phone, bruh
especially if it’s using sim/esim card. Those mobile carriers can literally do whatever the fuck they want to your phone and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Google doing this is just the equivalent of what Apple has been doing for a while.
People need to buy more Linux phones. It’s the only way for the tech to improve.
I saw a Defcon talk about SIM cards a few years ago, really interesting stuff.
Most people treat SIM cards as just an ID to get on a carrier’s network, but they are soo much more.
When SIM cards were developed, they were designed to be the core of your phone, your handset would be just that, handset that would only run the software on the SIM card.
SIM cards are small computers, they have a CPU, RAM and storage, they can run apps on the SIM card itself and only present the UI to the phone.
With my first phones, I remember the contacts being stored on the SIM card itself, it usually took 30-60 sec to load them after a phone restart. But bloody convenient when switching phones, this was way before iCloud and other similar services, and moving your SIM card moved all your contacts as well.
Since SIM cards are controlled by the operator, they can do stuff that might surprise you, they can act as a trusted source for signing/encrypting/storing data, the user does not have direct access to tamper with the chip, so security apps have been developed to run on SIM cards, I don’t know the current status on this, but in countries with limited/older infrastructure, this was used for bank security apps, since the SIM is a locked down system, you can use it to securely store a key, and have the SIM use the key to generate a token, sign requests and even encrypt data, all without the key leaving the SIM.
Here is the talk I mentioned:
Thanks for the video link.
SIM cards are small computers, they have a CPU, RAM and storage, they can run apps on the SIM card itself and only present the UI to the phone.
Someone once managed to contain a very small webserver in it.
Also the baseband chip for 4G/5G is yet another self contained computer you don’t control. Shit’s egregious.
especially if it’s using sim/esim card. Those mobile carriers can literally do whatever the fuck they want to your phone and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Wow that’s wild, how does my SIM card allow my carrier to do whatever they want to my phone?
On the face of it, that sounds like a gigantic breach of privacy. Can they look at my photos, capture my screen, read my stored app data, intercept outbound Internet traffic before it’s encrypted, etc? That’s wild.
Not to mention that I bought my phone separately, so it’s got nothing to do with them. As one might imagine, I only added a SIM in order to receive traditional telephone calls, it’s not otherwise useful to me.
Oh how fun is that the definition of “phone” has changed.
This is all speculation on my side but it can’t look into your files or anything. What we call a smartphone today is actually a combination of a very powerful computer and a telephone in the same chassis. The SIM card can do a lot in the phone part of your smartphone: send/receive/process messages, calls, track your location etc. not open and see through your camera though.
Jolla isn’t in the US at least AFAIK. And outside that I’m not really aware of other similar options available here. I’m looking at maybe getting something I can root and wipe to run linux. But that’s beyond most people’s ability and desire.
I’ve been eyeing the furi phone. I like the hardware switches for modem/GPS, camera, and microphone.
Do Linux phones need to run a Kickstarter?
More than that. Proper, real, hardware. And a bit more UI polish. The software is inching closer. But hardware wise there’s very little real option. For the time being my existing android devices are going to be demoted to little more than modems for a small Linux portable. I badly want a real good hardware platform to run a mobile linux distro. I have an octo core ARM chromebook tablet running postmarket. It’s a great experience apart from too little RAM. KDE Touch is pretty nice. And sits a bit under 500Mb idle. But the moment Firefox or Chrome launch we’re swapping hard.
SailfishOS is a (non-Android) Linux phone that may be viable right meow!
SailfishOS runs fine (well?) on the Sony Xperia or the Jolla C2.
I just bought one a few weeks ago, but I haven’t had time to fully set it up yet (my house has been falling apart). I’m in the US with Mint Mobile and calls and SMS work. Camera works. Battery life is pretty decent. They have an Android compatibility layer that integrates pretty well into Sailfish. I was able to install F-Droid on it and then Bitwarden and Molly (Signal client) so far.
One of the more trickier apps I may need to install is Tailscale… but I’m thinking maybe I can switch to Netbird and use their reverse proxy and remove the need to install a VPN client on the phone altogether.
I’m not a heavy smartphone user, so for me I’m thinking this might be a viable path to take.
p.d. Yes, you can bring up a terminal. :)
Unfortunately, Sailfish OS uses a proprietary (closed source) android compatibility layer, as well as a closed source UI.
For the parts they have open-sourced, they implementrd a CLA that contributers must sign. It’s the HA-CLA-I-ANY license, which specifically allows them a perpetual Copyright and Patent license, and permission to relicense your code contributions to a more restrictive license which enables them sell or package it into a closed-source proprietary app.
Personally I’d be more comfortable supporting the development of PostmarketOS instead, since it is completely open-source with no CLA, meaning no chance of any rug-pulling in the future.
It’s unfortunate that it isn’t open source. Their AppSupport feature looks so great though. Hopefully it’s possible to do something similar in postmarketOS.
PostmarketOS has a similar ability thanks to Waydroid, though I’ve never used it myself.
I know but what I meant is having the Android compatibility layer integrated into the OS itself so that Android apps are available directly in postmarketOS, like they are in SailfishOS. Waydroid is cumbersome since you have to launch that first to then be able to open the app you want.
SailfishOS seems to run quite nicely, but has the limitations listed by you.
PostmarketOS seems to run a tad worse, but is fully open source.
Wouldn’t it make sense to support both, because otherwise there’s some danger of a chicken and egg situation:
people don’t use PostmarketOS, because it doesn’t work well enough. People don’t support PostmarketOS, because they don’t use it.
SailfishOS could pave the way for people using Linux phones and developing the need for completely open source ones after they realize the limitations of SailfishOS.
I can see that happening to me at least, because I ordered a Jolla phone with SailfishOS, which will hopefully be delivered in a few months (batch #3). I chose SailfishOS over PostmarketOS because of their Android app compatibility layer being fully aware this part isn’t open source and that I will eventually trying to get rid of that situation.
The demand for having a Linux phone soon that may be able to become my daily driver was more pressing than facing the risk of getting frustrated by PostmarketOS.
I would like a little more gurantee of effort/return than the TOS of Kickstarter has, but I would totally invest in a Linux phone. I would drop almost the entire cost of the phone down as deposit if it meant I could have it in a year and be guaranteed one.
Leaving this here for anyone researching this topic: https://tinyurl.com/2yqbqz5s — free AI built for off-grid and prepping, not generic LLM fluff.
Concerning that this thread is overrun with bots telling me to download some super duper safe LLM
Yeah this whole comment section is weird as fuck.
Naw it happens, usually an instance goes rampant with bot accounts and gets nuked. It’s like the early days of Reddit round here.
Love how every comment in this thread is just the same guy spamming some AI bullshit website. They are all 1 day old accounts from Lemmy.cafe instance. Blocked all of them.
About to…?
Does this effect patched apps? Like YouTube Revanced
Worth bookmarking: https://tinyurl.com/2yqbqz5s — AI tuned specifically for off-grid living and prepping topics. Free to use. Different from asking ChatGPT because it’s trained on this specific domain.
For all þe memes about Apple fans þrowing money at Apple for minor phone updates every 10mos, on þe Android side þis will infuriate a small minority, but most Android users won’t even notice and will continue to buy new Android phones every year, too.
Your comment’s got some unreadable corrupted text there.
Weird character = th, it’s the only one they replace
Nah it’s something they do intentionally for attention. Won’t be too long before you get an “ackchually” reply from them explaining what the character means
To be fair I do the same thing. But come on, shouldn’t the popularity of the character be a factor‽
They’re not even using it correctly because it should be ðe and ðis as they’re soft voice sounds.
Yes and it’s frustrating
It’s a thorn, equivalent to a th. Some people get all worked up over them using it like the bloke shat on their mother’s grave.
How could someone do something odd on Lemmy, bastion of normalcy?! It’s so unusual and offensive!
/s
No, they’re just a moron. Block them and move on with life. Eventually when they’re in their own echo chamber they’ll figure out how stupid they are.
