And honestly? I mostly agree with them? Like this:
ABC ordered to pay Antoinette Lattouf another $150,000 for unlawful termination over Gaza Instagram post.
But a company faced with enormous threats wielded by fascist officials who demand that certain views be suppressed will treat such penalties as the normal cost of sucking up.
The [Israeli] army says that HAMAS is using apartment buildings for “surveillance”, and has bombed some of those buildings to destroy them. Based on this logic, the army might bomb every tall building in Gaza City with the large bombs that the US is providing
He has some questionable beliefs as well, though for unusual reasons. He accepts non-binary people but refuses to use they/them pronouns because he doesn’t like the ambiguity of singular/plural pronouns. So he has invented the neopronouns per/pers to refer to singular non-binary persons. I genuinely think no other person on this planet could hold this opinion.
primrosepathspeedrun@anarchist.nexus
on 29 Sep 10:52
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Okay that’s all cool or cool-and-stubbornly-autistic. But he has some other opinions that are not, about consent and age.
So the blanket ‘fuck yeah, stallman!’ Doesn’t really fly anymore.
yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de
on 29 Sep 10:58
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Hasn’t he admitted to changing his opinion after learning about the effects on children? I’m not in the loop about this.
But yeah, you definitely shouldn’t treat his words as gospel. A lot of questionable-at-best stuff in there.
kami@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 29 Sep 11:13
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Ok, let’s say he’s right only when he talks about software.
That should do it. I hope.
EDIT: well and hardware too I guess.
EDIT2: oh and paid public toilets.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
on 29 Sep 14:56
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I genuinely think no other person on this planet could hold this opinion.
Eh, I’m pretty close to this opinion.
A family member came out as non-binary, and I don’t like to use they/them (for the same reason as Stallman), but I also think creating my own pronouns is more offensive, so I just use their first name, unless I can’t easily avoid it (like this sentence). I’m not trying to be offensive, I just don’t like they/them as angular pronouns. I also don’t like “you” as both singular and plural, but I’m also not ready to use “y’all”, so I refer to second person groups without the pronoun (if feasible).
On a related note, I also think gender is a social construct and not actually “real.” Sex exists because it’s a biological thing, but it shouldn’t be directly tied to your role in society. To change my mind, I need empirical evidence that there’s some unique difference between men and women (brain wave patterns?) that aligns groups of non-binary people or aligns trans people with people of the opposite sex. I personally don’t think this exists, and gender fluidity is more a symptom of a culture that isn’t well equipped to handle people who don’t nicely fit into a bucket. I think gender is a useful metaphor for what’s going on, and I absolutely support people fighting for using it to get the recognition they need, but I don’t think it’s an actual, scientifically proven thing.
The only real difference is that I use first names to refer to non-binary people’s first names more frequently than to binary people. I hope that doesn’t offend anyone, I just really don’t like using the same pronoun for both singular and plural.
UnpledgedCatnapTipper@piefed.blahaj.zone
on 29 Sep 21:12
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As a trans person, my gender dysphoria is not something caused entirely by social gender roles. Medical transition has greatly alleviated the majority of it. Anecdotally, within the first week of hormone therapy, my dysphoria improved dramatically while only being out of the closet to 2 people outside of my therapist and the medical professionals who prescribed my hormones. It has continued to improve, although I’m still waiting for the surgery that will resolve the remaining things that hormones can’t fix.
Perhaps you should believe people when they tell you who they are, and get past your discomfort drawing arbitrary lines in grammar regarding pronouns, when singular they predates the fall of the Byzantine Empire by 75 years.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
on 30 Sep 00:10
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Singular they is over 600 years old by the way
Sure, and “you” used to be exclusively plural. Language changes, and now you is exclusively singular in some parts of the world (e.g. the US “South” where “y’all” is the plural).
I want separate singular and plural pronouns. Some languages do this properly and don’t even have gendered pronouns, such as Tagalog:
he/she/singular they - siya(possessive = niya)
plural he/she/they - sila (possessive = nila)
singular you - iyo (possessive = niyo)
plural you - inyo (possessive = ninyo)
there are studies around brain structure differences between men and wome
Sure, but sample sizes are small and many times they don’t seem to control for hormone therapy.
That said, this one looks interesting:
A 2009 MRI study by Luders et al. found that among 24 trans women not treated with hormone therapy, regional gray matter concentrations were more similar to those of cisgender men than of cisgender women, but there was a significantly greater volume of gray matter in the right putamen compared to cisgender men. Like earlier studies, researchers concluded that transgender identity was associated with a distinct cerebral pattern.
And this one:
Rametti et al. (2011) studied 18 trans men who had not undergone hormone therapy using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), an MRI technique which allows visualizing white matter, the structure of which is sexually dimorphic. Rametti et al. discovered that the trans men’s white matter, compared to 19 cisgender gynephilic females, showed higher fractional anisotropy values in posterior part of the right SLF, the forceps minor and corticospinal tract". Compared to 24 cisgender males, they showed only lower FA values in the corticospinal tract. The white matter patterns in trans men were found to be shifted in the direction of cis men.
And this review of other studies:
A 2021 review of brain studies published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior found that “although the majority of neuroanatomical, neurophysiological, and neurometabolic features” in transgender people “resemble those of their natal sex rather than those of their experienced gender”, for trans women they found feminine and demasculinized traits, and vice versa for trans men.
This suggests there may be developmental differences between trans and cis individuals, and there seems to be a correlation between trans people and the sex associated with the gender they identify as.
The body of available science certainly indicates more researchis needed and could lead to answers that show exactly what differences exist between cis and trans people. I sincerely hope that happens. But as it stands,the research isn’t conclusive.
Perhaps you should believe people when they tell you who they are
Let’s be extremely clear here, my support for policy will not be impacted whatsoever by the scientific research, regardless of the outcome. If you feel like hormone therapy or gender reassignment surgery or whatever other treatments will help you, you should be able to get them. Full stop. If you want to be treated as a man or a woman, I’ll do that. If you want to be called by different pronouns, I’ll do my best to do it, I just don’t like pronouns that are both singular and plural because they can lead to confusion. That’s it.
If there was a generally accepted gender-neutral set of pronouns (like in my example), I’d use them nearly exclusively. If the scientific evidence was clear cut, I’d admit as much. Neither is the case, so I’m left to find a happy medium that works for my and others in my life.
When I consider changes to language, I try to start from a prescriptivist position rather than a descriptivist, which to me means assuming language should stay static to ensure a common understanding rather than fragmented meanings that lead to misunderstandings. If there is a change in language, it should justify itself through simplifying terms or adding a new meaning that other words lack, while avoiding harming the meanings of pre-existing words.
I use they/them pronouns for non-binary people as an example of this mindset in action because I think the benefits far outweigh any cons. With a greater understanding that non-binary people new language was needed, and they/them seems to me a very natural fit as I would already think to use it when asking about a stranger even before I knew of non-binary as a concept (“oh your friend is coming? What’s their name, are they a boy or a girl?). In my experience having a very close non-binary friend I have found that context tells whether I’m using they as a singular/plural pronoun ~90% of the time, and when it fails it adds maybe 20 seconds of clarification to explain I was referring to person’s name.
I think what you’re saying should be taken as inspiration for further evolving how we use those terms to better separate between singular and plural use rather than try backtracking on how it has already evolved in common use, and I think the answer (for me at least) lies in your very comment. Much like “you” vs “you all”, going forward I’ll put a little effort into using they/them in a singular context and use “them all” or “they all” as a plural. Maybe it will catch on and 30 years from now we’ll be saying “theyal” and “theyal’ll” as shorthand for “they all” and “they all will.”
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
on 30 Sep 17:47
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“theyal” and “theyal’ll” as shorthand for “they all” and “they all will.”
Oof, “they’ll’ll” sounds awful.
I wish we could use “it” instead, but unfortunately, that’s offensive since it has connections to inanimate objects and non-human animals. If we could somehow break that meaning, maybe we’d get somewhere w/ a gender-neutral, third person singular pronoun. Or maybe we can use one of the created ones (though per/pers is awful IMO). But we also have words that don’t have gender-neutral terms, such as uncle/aunt, but for some reason we do have many others, like cousin.
It’s an annoying nut to crack, which is why I tend to use people’s names more and only use they/them when there is no reasonable alternative.
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au
on 01 Oct 07:49
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“They” as singular was really only made for when you didn’t know the sex of the person you were referring to, not as a pronoun for someone who you do. It had nothing to do with “gender identity” because that wasn’t a thing. Gender and sex were synonyms, 2 words for the same thing.
Eg
“can my friend come to the party too?”
“Yeah sure, what do they like on their pizza so I can make sure there is one they like?”
Not
“Can John come to the party?”
“Yeah sure, what do they like on their pizza?”
In this instance you’d always have used “he” because you know with pretty much absolute certainty that John is male on account of being a male name.
It has only very recently been used as a choice that people tell people they want to be referred to by, because some people now believe in a “gender identity” being a separate thing to sex.
It existing as a singular pronoun doesn’t mean that it was used in the same context as it is now.
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au
on 01 Oct 10:43
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Also the “gendered brain” stuff you’re saying……wouldn’t that mean that gender isn’t a social construct and isn’t “fluid”, and is in fact a binary?
_cnt0@sh.itjust.works
on 29 Sep 16:27
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I criticized singular they/them for increasing language ambiguity and suggested replacing it with something new like xe/xer multiple times. The reply is usually a shitstorm and downvote tornado. I’ve given up on that front.
UnpledgedCatnapTipper@piefed.blahaj.zone
on 29 Sep 21:19
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Probably because singular “they” predates singular “you” grammatically. Should we go back to using thou and thee instead of the singular you as well?
waddle_dee@lemmy.world
on 30 Sep 00:14
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I always found this argument funny because how would you use pronouns for someone whose gender you do not know? They. It’s they. E.g. you are given the sentence: Jordan went to the store to buy apples. And you want to ask a followup question regarding how many, you reply: How many apples did they buy? It’s not that complicated. They has been used for gender ambiguity in everyone’s lives since grammar school. People just have an inherent bias towards trans folks and it’s incredibly depressing and sad.
_cnt0@sh.itjust.works
on 30 Sep 06:18
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I always found this argument funny because how would you use pronouns for someone whose gender you do not know? They. It’s they. E.g. you are given the sentence: Jordan went to the store to buy apples. And you want to ask a followup question regarding how many, you reply: How many apples did they buy?
And that’s not how English was taught to me or 99℅ of the population (including English as a second or third language) 20+ years ago. Singular they was only used for situations where the gender (read as superficially visible sex) was factually unknown. You see a forgotten umbrella and never saw who forgot it: “Somebody forgot their umbrella.” As soon as you only got a glimpse on the person forgetting it you would make a guess about he/she.
They has been used for gender ambiguity in everyone’s lives since grammar school.
If you’re younger than ~30 and from Great Britain, maybe. GB were the first to formalize and teach it like that less than 2 decades ago (if I recall correctly).
People just have an inherent bias towards trans folks and it’s incredibly depressing and sad.
That’s bullshit projection.
I, a non-native speaker, complain about increased ambiguity of the language because of singular they as a personal pronoun and make a proposal about new pronouns for the purpose.
You: Ah, must be transphobe. Let’s ignore everything he said (which doesn’t relate to transphobia at all).
It’s so frustrating not to be able to have a discussion about stuff making a language harder than it needs to be without people invoking transphobia, like, instantly.
But hey, I called it: can’t have a discussion about it and I’ve given up on it.
edit: tiny add-on. I was still taught gender-neutral he and only heard about they later while being discouraged to use it in writing.
I always found this argument funny because how would you use pronouns for someone whose gender you do not know? They. It’s they. E.g. you are given the sentence: Jordan went to the store to buy apples. And you want to ask a followup question regarding how many, you reply: How many apples did they buy?
And that’s not how English was taught to me or 99℅ of the population (including English as a second or third language) 20+ years ago. Singular they was only used for situations where the gender (read as superficially visible sex) was factually unknown. You see a forgotten umbrella and never saw who forgot it: “Somebody forgot their umbrella.” As soon as you only got a glimpse on the person forgetting it you would make a guess about he/she.
You’re contradicting yourself here. You’re saying you were taught to use singular they when gender is unknown, yet claim that “How may apples did they buy” is wrong based on how you were taught English.
Does it matter whether gender is unknown or just unresolved? Not really, singular they is clearly intended to be a gender neutral pronoun and works in any situation where gender is ambiguous. It’s not wrong for people to adopt it as a pronoun to refer to themselves any more than it is for a trans man to adopt “he/his” or a trans woman to adopt “she/hers.”
At best your refusal to use it makes you sound like one of those people who gets offended at the word “literally” gaining a colloquial meaning that differs from its original definition. At worst, it presents as transphobia to claim “language purity” as the reason to be so adamantly against something that the trans community has largely adopted.
Thank you for agreeing with me! Singular they is only used for gender ambiguity! So, trans folks, or non-binary folks, who choose to go by an ambiguous pronoun, use it. You got it! Unfortunately, I am older than 30, my knees might be older, haha. Also, I’m not from GB/UK. I know grammar school nay have caused some ambiguity there, but grammar school is used in many English speaking countries. Usually, to refer to elementary, primary, or grade school.
Regarding your last diatribe, I didn’t even invoke transphobia. For someone so adamant on literal, linguistic definitions, you seemed to overlook the word bias. You have a predispositioned outlook towards trans people, because of your feelings on linguistic definitions. You inherently disregard hundreds of years of evolution in the English vernacular. Words have changed, evolved, and adopted different meanings throughout time. Do we need to cast out the word gay, because it now also means homosexual, when it originated as happy? Do we need to cast out the word terrific? You know, the word that was a synonym for horrific? I understand that you are ESL, but every language has different dialects, vernacular, and idioms. It’s why a thong in Australia is vastly different, than a thong in America. You can either adapt your knowledge of the language, or choose to emotionally hurt people on the premise of being “right and literal”. There is no need to create something new when society has deemed it acceptable. Just because you don’t, doesn’t mean everyone else is wrong. The question you must ask yourself is, “Do I care more about being right, or emotionally supporting another human being?”. If you have trouble answering that, well, we all have our answer then, don’t we? Cheers, mate. Hope you find, or have found, peace, love, and happiness.
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au
on 01 Oct 07:57
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It hasn’t been used for “gender” ambiguity, but sex ambiguity, because the separation of sex and gender is only a recent thing and it’s not even unanimously accepted.
Oh my gosh, you’re being pedantic. It has been used for “gender” ambiguity for quite some time. If you choose to be ignorant, then that’s your dill, pickle. At the end of the day, you get to choose whether you make someone happy, or sad. Why is that difficult? Why can’t you comprehend the concept of providing joy to someone? Why can’t you just be nice? That’s what this whole thing is about, right? You can either choose to be nice, or not. And I’m so tired of arguing with people to be nicer. Why can’t people get it through their thick skulls, that people just want to live and be considerate of each other. That’s what we all want, right?
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au
on 01 Oct 14:09
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Is calling an extremely underweight anorexic person healthy, a good weight, and encouraging them to keep losing weight the right thing to do? Is that good because it’s providing joy to someone?
Are you arguing that using the pronoun, they, is equivalent to someone harming themselves? Friend, you need to argue better. You are arguing like a college dropout. You’ve re-contextualized the argument in it’s entirety. Try again, or don’t. But stop coming at me with your weak ass, bullshit talking points. In the illustrious words of our dear leader, SAD!
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au
on 01 Oct 22:03
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Well, I guess we’re done debating. It’s a shame, I hate ending debates in a draw. That’s on me, though. I got too emotional, because this is a topic that is deeply personal to me. Oh well, win some, lose some, and draw some. I enjoyed our debate, no matter what it may have seemed like. I really am shameful that I came out the gates smoking. There were much better ways to argue my point and I failed in that regard. Hope you have a great day and rest of your morning!
Doesn’t feel like you want to have an honest argument when you ask how far we should go back on a proposal about going forward and don’t address the single motivator ambiguity.
UnpledgedCatnapTipper@piefed.blahaj.zone
on 30 Sep 13:25
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Correct, because there is no argument to be had. Intentionally refusing to use someone’s pronouns is unacceptable, every time, with 0 exceptions. If there’s a dire need to be explicitly clear you’re talking about a single person, you could just use their name in that instance.
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au
on 01 Oct 08:01
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You don’t get to decide how other people refer to you. I’m sorry but you don’t have that authority. You can dislike people using the “wrong” pronouns, but you cannot compel the usage of the ones you want to be called because of your beliefs. If I say my pronouns are “your majesty” it’s not unacceptable if you don’t use them.
He accepts non-binary people but refuses to use they/them pronouns because he doesn’t like the ambiguity of singular/plural pronouns.
I agree with this criticism, but the entire English language is full of bullshit so you might as well consider using Esperanto
protogen420@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 30 Sep 10:59
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as someone who is not a native english speaker when I first encountered people people prefer they/them I also found the same problem of ambiguity, and took quite a while to get used to it
rob_t_firefly@lemmy.world
on 29 Sep 11:04
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TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
on 29 Sep 11:38
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Unless he’s championing paedophilia and bestiality, which he has done on a number of occasions. Or being an absolute creep with women, which he’s also done.
primrosepathspeedrun@anarchist.nexus
on 29 Sep 10:50
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ook@discuss.tchncs.de
on 29 Sep 09:53
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I am really glad to see these articles popping up now. Since the news broke a week back or so it was suspiciously quiet about this, despite lots of negative comments here.
WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
on 29 Sep 10:13
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This is why I didn’t bother switching to GOS, Lineage, Calyx etc despite being sick of Apple’s anti-foss monopoly — marketed as Privacy™️ and Security™️ — for years.
The late stage capitalism of western oligarchies indicated that Google’s rug pull of AOSP was an imminent inevitability. After already having to change my services and workflows multiple times over the last 2 decades — despite careful analysis and forethought — due to services ever changing value propositions, acquisitions, and all other forms of enshittification, I’m at the point where I won’t bother wasting energy on 99% of digital products unless they’re open source and I can run them indefinitely on my own Linux server.
The more dependent you grow on digital products, the more interdependent they become, and the more time and effort is required to replace or substitute them.
This is why I didn’t bother switching to GOS, Lineage, Calyx etc despite being sick of Apple’s anti-foss monopoly — marketed as Privacy™️ and Security™️ — for years.
Bullshit. If you liked so much your freedom and privacy you would have many opportunities to use open source ROMs. You chose to stay on your iPhone because it was easy.
Also absolutely not believing you when you say that you anticipated the rug pull and chose to “not bother” for that reason. What a poor excuse for staying and supporting the closed ecosystem of Apple.
After already having to change my services and workflows multiple times over the last 2 decades
I can’t believe someone who has been for years on an iPhone would pretend they are an ardent defender of freedom and open source.
feinstruktur@lemmy.ml
on 29 Sep 16:04
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Sure thing, buddy. Nice gate keeping high horse ya got there. FOSS is sure to attract more users with humble geniuses such as yourself antagonizing them. Do you also use Arch, btw?
“If you don’t spend hundreds of hours switching from big tech corp controlled platform A — you’ve used for almost 20 years — to switch to big tech corp controlled platform B, you obviously don’t support freedom and open source”
I actually contribute to the development of open source projects. Do you create/give value, or are you just a taker/user? … Or are you just salty you couldn’t see this highly predictable result coming a mile away?
baggachipz@sh.itjust.works
on 30 Sep 00:39
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The never-ending purity tests are so exhausting. “You’re not a real vegan, you eat fermented food which kills the yeast!”
What stops those open source projects having that same rugpull? AOSP was open source and for a long time could be installed on one’s phone indefinitely.
You could argue ownership, but if Audacity can be bought then so can nearly anything.
I’m out of the loop, what’s that about Audacity? Looks like they still have a github repo with very recent activity and Wikipedia says their trademark was acquired by a company in 2021.
As far as I remember, Audacity’s maintainers, previously just some volunteers with no organisation, decided to sell the ownership of the project to a company with some guitar platform. Nothing changed at first, they employed the maintainers to work on the same project they were already working on.
Then they started adding controversial telemetry and some soft forks appeared. I vaguely also remember hearing that there’s some contract that the company owns the source code, so relicensing to a proprietary licence is easy and possible in future. All the new software the company launches is proprietary, and there’s signs they want to tie it all together into a single suite.
Nothing majorly bad has happened to Audacity, yet. But decisions are no longer community driven, as shown by the telemetry drama. I fear it’s a matter of time.
I should probably add: if it becomes proprietary, the remaining soft fork will likely die. Turns out very few people have the technical knowledge for Audacity.
I remember feeling a bit bad for the maintainers. There’s a lot of complaining for a minor and optional change, but at the same time it’s interesting that they added telemetry anyway. (Not unmodified however)
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
on 29 Sep 16:23
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This is why I didn’t bother switching to GOS, Lineage, Calyx etc despite being sick of Apple’s anti-foss monopoly — marketed as Privacy™️ and Security™️ — for years.
I’m at the point where I won’t bother wasting energy on 99% of digital products unless they’re open source and I can run them indefinitely on my own Linux server.
but… this doesn’t make any sense. the roms you brought up can be still used indefinitely, they will still be able to install any apps. maybe except when they have installed the official google suite, but that’s always a user choice in the popular android rom world, none of these preinstall it, and microg users are not affected
Hopefully they go to court to get an injunction. Hopefully, they also go to the powers that be in the EU, those same powers have been so focused on the Apple App Store they failed to take into account Google can do something like this with the Play Store. It would be a shame for the F-Droid project to end but it is completely avoidable.
primrosepathspeedrun@anarchist.nexus
on 29 Sep 10:54
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Complain without doing something is worse than doing something like the other person suggested, though.
primrosepathspeedrun@anarchist.nexus
on 29 Sep 13:46
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Complaining tells yhe company this isn’t popular. Complaining while talking about alternatives is helping others towards doing something, and giving the idea that it will be a net negativeove for their hegemony,even if you don’t do shit.
unknownuserunknownlocation@kbin.earth
on 29 Sep 12:05
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To be fair, up until recently, there was no clear indication that Google would do this. Google made it so that installing non-play store apps was slightly more difficult, Apple made it pretty much impossible. So Apple was a pretty logical target at that point (and honestly, up until then, they had pretty much gotten a free ride - think of the default browser issue in Windows, no one every bothered with Apple).
cronenthal@discuss.tchncs.de
on 29 Sep 11:25
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There’s never been a more urgent time to switch to Linux on pretty much every device.
cronenthal@discuss.tchncs.de
on 29 Sep 11:53
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Beats me! I’m in the process of moving banking and payment off my phone in preparation for a Linux one. These things will very likely not work on non-proprietary devices.
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Mobile apps should only ever be used for check-scanning or for features that the online banking simply doesn’t allow (which would be messed up of the bank to do); same with mobile wallets.
SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org
on 29 Sep 12:18
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Very cool! I’m thinking of going for ubuntu touch, seeing as Android has proven that it’s no longer worth the time investment. Also, Fairphone 5 is my next phone if the current one dies, so it works out.
Could you share what do you really like about it? And what is your biggest gripe or letdown with it? Thanks!
It’s using Hallium, which is still using Android kernel and drivers, hopefully they can keep that up while vendors are getting increasingly antagonistic.
It is private.
If you want to run some android apps you can use waydroid, but it torches the battery.
If you want to run arm linux apps, you need to dork around with containers as the root os is RO.
I’m sitting on the fence of shelling out for a decen FP
It’s still Android kernel and drivers :/ but it is private. For Linux you’d need postmarket or one of their derivatives and they are fighting to get cameras and power under control.
prob the best we have at the moment.
edit: to be clear, I’m saying Halium is the best we have at the moment, real linux is trucking along but it’s still a long way out.
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
on 29 Sep 15:57
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and what’s the problem with android other than google’s fuckery?
Obv, they can’t take what we have, which is why for now we’re OK. The winds are shifting, though. I expect at some point, I expect android will require a deal with the devil from manufacturers. Start actively combatting linux phones.
For now, it’s a quick path to privacy, long term, we’re going to need friendly hardware
mfed1122@discuss.tchncs.de
on 30 Sep 17:18
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I think the big problem with this, as far as I know, is that this code needs pretty rapid security updates that require a fairly huge and experienced team of people to both find, understand and implement the security changes. Otherwise it becomes very insecure very quickly. So yeah we can always use 2019 Android, etc. But it would just put you at a huge security risk.
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
on 30 Sep 19:56
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doesn’t the same apply to any operating system, including the linux phone distributions? android has security measures that may be breached, but mobile linux has much fewer security measures at all
mfed1122@discuss.tchncs.de
on 30 Sep 21:51
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Yes, it does apply to every operating system - hence, the differentiator becomes whether the operating system has hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on dedicated security development. This is why a lot of companies now don’t even let you use Android devices for BYOD aside from Google or Samsung, because they’re the only companies with the resources to keep their security really up to date.
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
on 30 Sep 21:59
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my point is that if the open source community cannot figure out just maintenance of an android system, there’s no chance of creating a real mobile linux distribution, as it would need the aforementioned maintenance and the development of additional features
mfed1122@discuss.tchncs.de
on 30 Sep 23:28
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Ahhh I see, I was confused about what you were getting at. My mistake. And yes that’s very true…hmm. More dire than I was even thinking then…
Honestly this is exactly the kind of thing that taxes and governments are supposed to be good for handling. Failures within failures I suppose!
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
on 01 Oct 01:43
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no worries. but that’s why I think android would be a much better base for a free software mobile operating system than a current linux distribution. lots of engineering work and experience went into making it, both on the technical sides and in the UX, with lots and lots of feedback. it has largely solved permissions, inter-app communication, power saving, things like these, and I mean all in the AOSP project, forgetting about the proprietary google mobile services.
not everything is perfect, lots could be improved, and there are things we don’t like, like how app background activity is handled is not too transparent and neither customizable, etc, but those would be much easier to fix and maintain then reimplementing everything. hardware drivers are a problem, but it is anyway, and with android we at least have a working system with which reverse engineers can analyze the drivers in operation. certainly android is not the cleanest codebase but its not so bad either to warrant throwing it away. in the parts of the code I looked over the years, it’s quite organized, but of course I have only seen very little.
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au
on 01 Oct 08:30
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By “Google’s fuckery” you mean “Google doing all the updates and giving it to them” though, right?
Until these alternative AOSP-derived OS developers stop relying on Google and start doing their own stuff, Google will have the ability to break their OS’s. This isn’t a Google issue, it’s a OS developer issue.
we need banking, government apps, all sort of garbage that won’t be allowed with a ten foot pole on these. rooted androids are barely allowed as it is.
unless they change their mind on this, android will soon be a walled garden like the iphone is.
EonNShadow@pawb.social
on 29 Sep 12:09
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My job doesn’t allow me to use a jailbroken/rooted device
So if/when this goes through I’ll be switching to iOS.
Given the choice between two closed platforms, I’ll pick the one that ostensibly says they’re privacy focused instead of the one actively enshittifying their product.
I obviously don’t know your situation, but using your own phone for work is a bit of a red flag. If you’re required to use a phone for work, ideally the job should provide you one that meets their requirements.
Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world
on 29 Sep 12:36
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Yeah, a mandatory work phone (where the employer can define requirements) should be purchased and funded by the employer.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
on 29 Sep 16:28
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Exactly.
My work only requires that I have their MFA. They don’t care if it’s rooted, it just needs to allow me to login. I’m guessing if I pushed back enough, they’d find an alternative.
I must assume they mean no use it for their business that they own. Otherwise I’ll just be sad.
DarkAri@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 29 Sep 12:29
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You should just get a cheap phone to use for work. No reason to have their software on your own device. That will undoubtedly be used for creepy purposes.
cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca
on 29 Sep 14:00
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And the obvious annoyance of having two phones
DarkAri@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 29 Sep 14:22
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Still worth it. The amount of time you will save by not having junk on your phone slowing it down will make up for it.
I don’t find this applies. I have an email account and chat app for work. I’m using a 4 year old phone. It’s not slow.
Also having stuff consime your disk doesn’t really slow it down.
DarkAri@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 02 Oct 11:43
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That’s not really company imposed spyware though. If I thought in any way that my boss was trying to make me install spyware I wouldn’t the very least install it in shelter, something that has been disappeared during the Google play store purges. You can still find the apk online atleast until Google kills android soon with their ban on user installable software outside of the play store.
Work profiles exist for this reason. A completely separate environment that is isolated from the rest of the phone and can be turned on and off on demand.
Some manufacturers, like Samsung, make it difficult to access, but it’s there.
DarkAri@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 30 Sep 11:39
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Yes i never saw this feature until I discovered shelter which uses this to protect your personal info.
sexy_peach@feddit.org
on 29 Sep 14:09
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Your job can say what phone you have? I don’t get it
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
on 29 Sep 16:29
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The moment my work says what phone I need is the moment I demand they provide a phone for me.
Regulatory and competition authorities should look carefully at Google’s proposed activities, and ensure that policies designed to improve security are not abused to consolidate monopoly control. We urge regulators to safeguard the ability of alternative app stores and open-source projects to operate freely, and to protect developers who cannot or will not comply with exclusionary registration schemes and demands for personal information.
If you are a developer or user who values digital freedom, you can help. Write to your Member of Parliament, Congressperson or other representative, sign petitions in defense of sideloading, and contact the European Commission’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) team to express why preserving open distribution matters. By making your voice heard, you help defend not only F-Droid, but the principle that software should remain a commons, accessible and free from unnecessary corporate gatekeeping.
I can’t believe how useless the EU regulations are.
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au
on 01 Oct 07:31
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It’s because they regularly overstep their bounds and force overseas companies to do things they have no right to make them do, which actively hurt their business. Of course companies are going to do their very best to comply while making it have as little impact as possible!
Technically, third party app stores are allowed. Developers “only” register with google to receive a developer certificate. Isn’t apple doing the same thing in response to the EU regulations and that has been allowed?
If you have a Mac, have you ever tried installing an app and have it refuse because it’s not signed by Apple, and then you had to go into settings and click “allow anyway?”
This is that, except without the allow anyway feature, like iOS. It doesn’t matter if it comes from the play store or elsewhere, as this story originally had us believe.
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
on 29 Sep 14:38
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I will literally go without a smartphone if Google does this, this is insane I would have bought an iphone if I wanted a junk device I don’t actually own.
The crazy part is this may make iOS the better alternative when considering the emergence of third-party app stores and Apple’s loosening grip on their ecosystem.
LineageOS is still a good option too, for anyone who would prefer to keep the phone they have
iOS would be the better alternative, if it wasn’t for the hardware they run on. After all, Apple is infamous for their blatant planned obsolescence on their iPhones since the iPhone 6. Unfortunately, Google seems to be following Apple in this way as well since they launched an update that made the Pixel 6a’s battery so much worse than before. Therefore, we must all have a dumb phone + Linux phone set up…or something
Apple is infamous for their blatant planned obsolescence on their iPhones since the iPhone 6
They learned from it. The phone toggles itself when the battery health is at 80% max capacity, but this is toggleable. Also, the iPhone 11 still runs smooth.
enumerator4829@sh.itjust.works
on 29 Sep 17:26
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I can agree on Apple not really having a properly supported hardware repair ecosystem, and actively working against third party repair.
But the software? When Samsung and friends had 2-4 years of security updates, Apple had almost twice that. The iPhone XS still has support, 6 years after end-of-sale, 7 years from release. Normal people can’t be expected to flash their phones with LineageOS. The situation is slightly better nowadays, but Samsung still seems to be depreciating 3 year old devices: endoflife.date/samsung-mobile
To add, Apple has actually been making amends regarding repairability. It’s small steps, but leagues ahead of what’s offered for popular android manufacturers, while still maintaining their IP68 ratings on most devices.
I can’t speak to how they make their parts available to third parties (seems to be a grey area), but there has been a reasonable focus with the last couple generations of iPhones that ensures the device can be repaired from either side.
Overall, the tide seems to have shifted. If you’re going to be at the mercy of a corporate giant in order to keep up with modernity, then Apple is currently holding the dimly lit torch of consumer rights.
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works
on 29 Sep 21:32
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iOS would be the better alternative
Already can’t “sideload”. iOS will be just as restrictive as Android in 2026-2027.
Apps immediately gets killed in the background. Can’t even transfer data to a USB Drive without needing to downloading a separate app, and need the app in the foreground.
iPhones cannot multitask
Developer account costs $99 **per year. On Google its only a $25 one time fee (for the near future, at least, I can’t predict what they will do in like 2035)
Yeah, if Android effectively kills fdroid, then it essentially becomes like iOS. Whilst you can technically still sideload, apps must get certified by Google themselves and there’s no way they’ll allow 90% of fdroid unless its their Google Play versions.Tbf though, I didn’t know the background thing, which just goes to show that neither of them are ideal. Especially since Apple locks down their devices really hard which turns things like transferring files without a cloud service into a challenge. Therefore, in the future, I might just use a dumb phone for basic phone calls and text messages (meanly just for things like job applications or services like pharmacies) and a Linux phone for everything else. That’s assuming Linux phones have evolved just enough to be usable alongside a dumb phone for what it can’t do, which is SMS.
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au
on 01 Oct 08:11
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Apple, with the longest software support on the market, and planned obsolescence don’t go in the same sentence together. Sorry but they are literally the best in the industry in this regard.
Also I assume you’re talking about the “batterygate” thing with the iPhone 6 where they slowed the device down? That was a giant overreaction - the alternative was the phone crashes and reboots constantly.
PinkiePieYay2707@pawb.social
on 29 Sep 15:54
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LineageOS is not really an alternative though, as it will still be hit by this. Please see the comment here: lemmy.world/post/36621884/19652276
cley_faye@lemmy.world
on 29 Sep 15:57
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They both go for the least open option. If asking for all devs registration and validation from google is viable and legally sound, apple will do the same if that’s not already in the pipe.
Both “stores” are targeted for the same issues.
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works
on 29 Sep 21:36
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Not really. They are converging onto the exact same thing. 3rd party stores are allowed, but needs [Google/Apple]'s approval.
If you are big and have teeth (like Epic Games), you will (probably) be allowed, if you are small like a single open source developer, the can shut you down city dubious “security”/“ToS” issue, and you probably don’t have the money to sue.
It won’t. This is for 99% of users with their Google enabled devices. It’s still shit and it will effect the 1% indirectly by the reduction of available software outside the play store.
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au
on 01 Oct 08:08
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Owning a phone doesn’t give you control over what the operating system can do. You can so what the OS they give you allows you to do, or you can find a way to put a different os on it - but they don’t need to provide a way for you to do that easily.
Not really sure why this is a hard concept for some people to grasp?
goatinspace@feddit.org
on 29 Sep 15:59
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Yea… I’m really disappointed with the timing of FuriLabs new phone which is mostly a downgrade over the previous one. I’ve been window shopping phones for a couple of months and am at a loss for what to do. Even spent some time considering a dumb flip phone that can work as a wifi-hotspot and use a small linux tablet or something for the more involved stuff, but couldn’t find a good tablet option that wasn’t huge (would still want it to fit in my pocket) or come with the same problems.
As far as I can tell, it’s just de-googled android… It is going to have the same eventual problems as any LineageOS, e/OS/, or GrapheneOS phone will have.
Unfortunately we need to come to terms with the fact that 1) Android is not Linux after all of the bastardizations Google has done to it and the control they maintain. 2) We need hardware mfrs on board for fully Open Source drivers for mobile hardware.
Basically all of the Linux phone options I’ve looked at have been disappointing. You’ve got people making open source OS like Sailfish or PostmarketOS or UbuntuTouch, but they only work for pretty narrow (and old) hardware and they don’t get 100% functionality on basically any of the hardware. FuriLabs was the first one I’d seen claiming you could use all of the features of the hardware, but even then it is using a bunch of (basically) compatibility layers to trick android apps into running, so I don’t even know if that will work after Google gets done with their plans.
AmericanEconomicThinkTank@lemmy.world
on 29 Sep 16:48
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Best part: the better names in the alt os and device scenes don’t sell in us markets.
Unless you do the legwork of flashing your own device, most of us are out of luck.
twice_hatch@midwest.social
on 29 Sep 21:55
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What should anyone have done different? Not built for one of the largest platforms with the most users?
DarkSideOfTheMoon@lemmy.world
on 29 Sep 22:29
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Android is so big because the community let them embrace it. Since the beginning the community should have worked in a true open solution. Now it’s really late to try to make a Linux phone
Luddite. I’ve let AI manage my finances and mortgage for about a month now. Hold on, there’s a knock at the door, some dudes with a big van or something
Linux would suck on a phone. Sorry it is barely usable on a laptop. We get worse battery life hardware less supported. Sure we put up with it but most people just want stuff to work.
DarkSideOfTheMoon@lemmy.world
on 01 Oct 05:40
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This is because the community did not spent too much time optimizing for this goal. This is what I am saying, the open source community should invest more on Linux phone.
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au
on 01 Oct 07:11
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It doesn’t need to be Linux though - AOSP is still open source. Companies like graphebe using it just needed to not depend on Google to provide them the hardware and software to keep their OS viable. It’s entirely on them.
DarkSideOfTheMoon@lemmy.world
on 01 Oct 17:20
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Google start with open source so they can use open source tools and get a lot of work for free.
But they use the famous Elbrace, E tende and Extinguish. See the things they are doing with the web with Chrome.
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au
on 01 Oct 07:07
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Anyone that builds their entire company and/or product around being reliant on a multi-billion/trillion dollar company providing them with their source code for free so you can use it to get around using their services is only setting themselves up for disaster.
If you rely on Google giving you their source code, you need to have a backup plan ready at all times for what to do when Google don’t give you their source code.
ZombieMantis@lemmy.world
on 29 Sep 18:13
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“Year of the Linux Phone” has a nice ring to it.
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
on 29 Sep 22:44
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Not for me, no. I love the sandboxing and permissions of android (GrapheneOS). Honestly, desktop OSs should learn from it. Also, android is a lot easier to use, especially on small form factor devices.
Idk about GrapheneOS in particular but I find the sandboxing solutions for GNU/Linux like bubblewrap to be much more granular than standard Android.
“give us access to manage phone calls or we won’t you me answer internet calls (which have nothing to do with actual SIM calls)”, “give us access to all your files or we wont let you share that file via the share function (which doesn’t need fs access to work)”.
On GNU/Linux I can only give a program exactly the resources it needs, I can disallow dbus, I can block it from accessing potentially troublesome things like /dev/dri, can overlay filesystems and pretend that’s my real home dir. Or can just mount the whole / to some other system.
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
on 30 Sep 06:04
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I am not saying android is perfect, but too granular is also bad. I have better things to do then tweaking SELinux policies.
It seems to me that part of the problem is overreliance on phones as computing devices. A lot of things, like banking, are best done on an actual computer. We have become too dependent on phones.
hkspowers@lemmy.today
on 29 Sep 21:49
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Yep I absolutely refuse to put any banking apps on my phone. The only thing that has access to my bank is me physically going there or logging into their website via my own computer. Fuck any app that asks for access to my bank account including autopay services thorugh third parties.
The only third party serive I use for payments is paypal and that only goes to my credit card.
Yeah guess what happens when access starts to be app-only?
twice_hatch@midwest.social
on 29 Sep 21:54
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Yeah but it’s “we” as in everyone not “we” as in “Lemmy commenters”.
So the network effect will keep the average person on a locked-down phone that can’t run anything anti-regime
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
on 29 Sep 22:41
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Your phone has likely much better security for your banking apps than your computer, unless you run really niche setup like QubesOS.
traceur402@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 30 Sep 00:21
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We as a society should be rethinking the term “security”, if it’s come to mean submitting to being jerked around however best suits some private company’s interests instead of our own. If there’s a central platform for its security benefit it should be democratically controlled instead of controlled by what are effectively feudal lords, or perhaps even an occupying force
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
on 30 Sep 06:10
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The security I am talking about has nothing to do with being locked down. Linux could easily implement the same, but it probably never will, because it requires a bit of central management and vision. And Linux really struggles with that.
You’re responding downthread of QubesOS being mentioned
Sure it’s hard to get that kind of security onto mainstream distros. But it exists.
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
on 30 Sep 07:02
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Yeah, I was the one mentioning QubesOS. Since I tried it and didn’t last a week because of how bad the user experience was. I am not a CIA spy, I am looking for a balance of security and usability and android is amazing at that. Sure, some things could be more secure. Sure, I can’t do some things because GrapheneOS can’t be rooted. But the balance is excellent. At least for me.
pycorax@sh.itjust.works
on 30 Sep 00:49
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I’m not sure how it works the way where you live but where I live, the way the banking apps are implemented completely violate MFA. They rely on SMS verification which is absurd since if you’re phone is already compromised, no doubt your SMSes are too. There’s no true multi-device authentication in place and this has led to a huge number of victims being scammed after their devices get compromised by a phishing attack.
The desktop and phone are both insecure, proper security should not have all your eggs in one basket.
The phone is not insecure because of all eggs on basket.
Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world
on 30 Sep 04:31
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Yeah, SIM swaps are a concern too.
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
on 30 Sep 06:13
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Well, yes. But then again, I would trust my GrapheneOS phone not getting compromised over 3 linux devices. MFA is not some ultimate solutions and it is a pain to use.
I mean sure, but that’s not the case for the majority of the user base of these banking apps. Is it the most secure? No but it’s way better than it is right now.
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
on 30 Sep 15:29
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So what is the case for most users? Are normal android phones getting compromised (in a way true 2FA would help) often enough it is an issue? I honestly haven’t seen any statistic regarding this and anecdotally I don’t know anyone whose internet banking was compromised. Whether on phone or desktop.
Maybe we have this view because when we refer to computers we see a more open ecosystem that’s not found in the mobile phone era. I want that same liberty with my phone.
When the word “sideloading” has disappeared, I think then we have known something has changed.
And of course the motto should have been, “Don’t do evil.” That would have been a respectable goal. But it wasn’t, because even back then they only wanted to be slightly better than Microsoft.
GreenKnight23@lemmy.world
on 30 Sep 01:04
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Right now the only decently speced phone with mainline Linux support is the Oneplus 6, and the only one I can find is being sold for $2000
spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works
on 29 Sep 21:54
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Damn, I was hoping my Oneplus 6T was worth a couple grand. Nope. Someone has one on Swappa unlocked and in mint condition for $180. A Oneplus 6 is listed on Ebay for $130.
It means you can use the regular Linux kernel instead of fucking around with a custom kernel (like Asahi) or with some sort of Android layer (like Halium). So running whatever distro you want shouldn’t be too difficult.
OrteilGenou@lemmy.world
on 30 Sep 02:12
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I am perfectly ok with android apps being required to be signed by not just a certificate (they always were just it could be self signed and just needed to match to upgrade without removing data) but a list of trusted entities.
As long as:
I can install my own key on my phone (I’d I am trusted)
major distributors like fdroid and have a key installed without friction (like web CAs)
Google let’s me mark their key as untrusted (I probably won’t but I should be able to refuse things they trust (at install time, not disabling preloaded apps like settings)
Without this it feels too much extending the monopoly despite being forced to allow 3rd party stores.
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
on 30 Sep 04:35
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The justification is simple, I don’t see the confusion, they want absolute power and for all alternatives to wither and die ? What is there not to understand ?
Wispy2891@lemmy.world
on 30 Sep 05:00
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What pisses me off it that they say they do this for security. It changes absolutely anything.
They really think that malware developers will say “oh no! I need to submit a picture of an id card to sign my malware! It’s literally impossible to submit a jpg of a stolen id card, I’m ruined and out of a job!”
What does it change? Waste 20 minutes of some malware developer while they register under a stolen id? They already have a system that scans for known malware and automatically remove it.
Of course they know that. It’s about power and money. After all, they already have a security program that filters out malware. If we believe their stated reasoning (which we don’t), they’re tacitly admitting that their current security program is a complete failure, and also that they will not try to fix it.
fading_person@lemmy.zip
on 30 Sep 05:35
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It’s always security when someone wants to take our freedom away. Always security…
Not really, it’s more about children not being exposed to things usually. Hence starting with age requirements for porn and they move forward to other things.
“Protecting the children from harmful content and predators”, “protecting people from terrorists and criminals”, “protecting users from hackers” are all forms of security, and are all used as arguments to erode freedoms.
It all boils down to: just give up this bit of freedom so we can keep everyone safe.
keegomatic@lemmy.world
on 30 Sep 16:31
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Both things can be true. It definitely is better for security. It’s pretty much indisputably better for security.
But you know what would be even better for security? Not allowing any third-party code at all (i.e., no apps).
Obviously that’s too shitty and everyone would move off of that platform. There’s a balance that must be struck between user freedom and the general security of a worldwide network of sensitive devices.
Users should be allowed to do insecure things with their devices as long as they are (1) informed of the risks, (2) prevented from doing those things by accident if they are not informed, and (3) as long as their actions do not threaten the rest of the network.
Side-loading is perfectly reasonable under those conditions.
JeremyHuntQW12@lemmy.world
on 01 Oct 01:52
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Most Android owners don’t even know they have Android phones.
They are not informed.
It’s pretty much indisputably better for security.
I dispute this. While adding extra layers of security looks good on paper, flawed security can be worse than no security at all.
Android packages already have to be signed to be valid and those keys already are very effective in practice. In effect these new measures are reinventing the wheel as to what a layperson would think this new system does.
Adding this extra layer in fact has no actual security benefit beyond posturing/“deterrence”. Catching a perpetrator is not the same thing as preventing a crime. Worse - catching a thief in meatspace has the potential to recover stolen goods, but not so in digital spaces - either the crime is damage or destruction of data for which no punishment undoes the damage or the crime is sharing private data which in practice would almost certainly have been immediately fenced to multiple data brokers.
And were only getting started with this security theater:
Nothing prevents an organization from hiring a developer for long enough to register before being flushed (or the same effect with a burner account on fiver)
Nothing in this program does anything to get code libraries vetted - many of these developers may accidentally be publishing code from poisoned wells that they have no practical knowledge of.
None of these measures make scams less profitable.
None of this addresses greyware - software that could technically qualify as legal (because the user agreed to terms of service for a service of dubious value)
All of this costs time and resources that will likely inevitably be shouldered on low paid engineers that could have put that effort to better uses.
Metrics and statistics may likely be P-hacked to reflect that the new system as a success (because there’s internal pressure to make it look good) this turning-security-into-press-releases would have collateral of making accountability overall worse.
But you know what would be even better for security?
While we’re at it we could add the tropes of removing network connectivity, or switch to using clay tablets kept in a wooden box guarded by a vengeful god. Both of those would be more secure, too.
Users should be allowed to do insecure things with their devices
100% agree with you here - it’s fundamentally the principle of “Your liberty to swing your fist ends just where my nose begins”. Users should be given the tools and freedom to do as they want with their property - up until it affects another person or their property in an unwanted way.
I think we mostly agree. And I do agree that “flawed security can be worse than no security at all.” I think, though, that this doesn’t make security worse, just that it doesn’t make it that much better.
But even simple filters can make a significant difference: maybe you remember the early-ish Lemmy debacle of turning off captchas for signups by default, ostensibly because captchas are now completely defeated… which led to thousands and thousands of bot accounts being created pretty much immediately across a bunch of instances, and the feature being turned back on by default.
And I also think that there’s no way I trust Alphabet (holding company of Google) to be the sole arbiters of who gets to run code - neither in a philosophical sense nor as a gatekeeper to one top five compute platforms used by a substantial chunk of the world population.
It absolutely does not justify creating a policy that would wholesale obliterate F-Droid, arguably one of their larger competitors.
brucethemoose@lemmy.world
on 30 Sep 18:01
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Thing is, Play Store is already filled with malware or near-malware from seemingly verified developers. I ran into several scam clone apps just today. It’s even snuck in through OEM apps.
Same on iOS, which supposedly verifies devs.
If ‘verification’ and curation is their idea of security, well… It appears their system is already overloaded, yet they want to expand it?
brucethemoose@lemmy.world
on 01 Oct 02:52
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It’s absolutely insane that anyone pretends Google Play and the App Store are fine though.
Has anyone scrolled through any search and not seen a sea of heavily marketed scam apps?
JeremyHuntQW12@lemmy.world
on 01 Oct 01:53
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They really think that malware developers will say “oh no! I need to submit a picture of an id card to sign my malware! It’s literally impossible to submit a jpg of a stolen id card, I’m ruined and out of a job!”
Which is irrelevant.
They can block any malware - now impossible to do with sideloading of apps during pop-ups.
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au
on 01 Oct 05:39
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I don’t think it’s going to be as simple to verify as uploading a pic of an id
If it’s like the play store verification, it’s quite simple. The main problem is that once “verified”, Google publicly doxxes individual devs by publishing their residential address + private phone number + private Gmail on their dev page, and this is unacceptable for anyone except who used stolen identities
Let’s hope that the rest of the world, specifically Europe smash this ridiculous proposal apart for what it is. Europe has already sorted out USB-C etc. Its not perfect and they don’t get everything right, but certainly big enough to make stuff right.
Yep. The E.U. has allowed itself to be dominated for too long by the US megacorps. It has the talent, ideas, and manufacturing to tell US firms to bugger off … and the sooner, the better for us all.
ghosthacked@lemmy.wtf
on 30 Sep 09:45
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Unless you want hillbilly outrage slop destabilising your continent, you better get control away from American tech companies.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
on 01 Oct 04:36
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they are also going hard on surveillance, private info too, backed by RU of course.i think russell vought is behind the anti-porn verifications in the EU
SpaceCadet@sopuli.xyz
on 30 Sep 09:38
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They’re too busy forcing chat control and age gates through our collective throats.
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au
on 01 Oct 05:24
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At this stage the EU probably pushed Google to do this. They’ve taken a sharp turn to authoritarianism.
I think the European leadership has changed and we need to watch our elected officials. However don’t think Google was pushed into anything. They’re now he company that does the opposite of their original manifesto. They’re evil don’t need that.
seraphine@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 30 Sep 13:08
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Why do you need the google Authenticator? Proton has it too. Which (from searching) looks like it’s compatible for the Ubuntu systems. But that’s just from the search. I ‘m personally just using it with a android right now. I am currently eyeing up the fairphone Ubuntu as my next phone
Systems at work use google authenticator for 2FA. Prior jobs have used Duo.
punchmesan@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 30 Sep 15:28
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Google Authenticator is merely a generic TOTP token storage app. The person you’re replying to was pointing out that Google Authenticator, specifically, isn’t necessary. There are alternatives, and unless you’re using a company-owned device that restricts the apps you can use there is no way for work to dictate which app you use for TOTP tokens.
Duo, Okta Verify, and other 2FA apps that use push notifications and such, are a different beast altogether.
Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
on 30 Sep 17:36
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My work has me using 3 different 2FA apps depending on what service I’m accessing. It’s great! Especially with the noticable battery consumption increase after setting up 2 more 2FA apps than I had before
they are interchangeable. you can export from google to use in proton. I’ve set all my google logins to proton too. I’ve not experienced this ‘locked in’ situation if you’re using your own phone to run the app.
Same reason collectivist people like social media censorship and gun control, to make them feel “safe” even though all it does is centralize power. Besides hi ow many people have the tech skills to even know what third party app repositories are?
Lots of jobs require BYOD today (like, most F500 companies) and they limit to non-rooted OSs. I use Aegis for personal apps but I cannot escape microsoft as long as I want to keep paying my mortgage.
We had a few good Linux phones back in the day but Nokia / Microsoft killed them trying to compete with iPhone OS and Android: Maemo / Meego were great but did not get a proper chance.
Jolla continued the legacy and Sailfish OS is still something worth checking out if you can find suitable hardware, or idk how complex it is to port it.
Right, because side-loading is called “installing” on Linux
General_Effort@lemmy.world
on 30 Sep 14:21
nextcollapse
European devs: Our laws will protect us!
Meanwhile, our laws:
Article 30
Traceability of traders
Providers of online platforms allowing consumers to conclude distance contracts with traders shall ensure that traders can only use those online platforms to promote messages on or to offer products or services to consumers located in the Union if, prior to the use of their services for those purposes, they have obtained the following information, where applicable to the trader:
(a) the name, address, telephone number and email address of the trader;
(b) a copy of the identification document of the trader or any other electronic identification as defined by Article 3 of Regulation (EU) No 910/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council (40);
How is trader defined? Is it a developer that’s selling apps or also one that’s just providing it for free?
General_Effort@lemmy.world
on 01 Oct 12:43
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Bear in mind that an open source license is a contract and it usually involves some form of reciprocity, like crediting the dev by name. That’s in principle not different from a sponsorship deal, where some sports stadium gets the name of a corporation.
The actual definition is even wider, though. I don’t see who you get out of that.
Trader defined in the DSA
>‘trader’ means any natural person, or any legal person irrespective of whether it is privately or publicly owned, who is acting, including through any person acting in his or her name or on his or her behalf, for purposes relating to his or her trade, business, craft or profession;
eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/En/TXT/HTML/?uri=…
If F-droid ever has more than 50 employees, annual turnover over EUR 10 million, or over EUR 10 million on the balance sheet, then they will have to collect the same information.
I’d be more worried about having to send gov ID docs - more creepy control by Google.
Johnny101@lemmy.world
on 30 Sep 15:28
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Google’s developer verification will only run on mainstream Android with play services. It’s not supposed won’t be running in standard AOSP so the easiest solution would be to switch to a custom ROM like GrapheneOS.
Yes, banking apps, streaming apps, even some shopping apps. This has been a problem for a long time. Sometimes its for “security” reasons and sometimes its simply because the app uses Play Service APIs. Another issue on de-googled systems is push notifications, though that is often fixed through alternates like Unified Push
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
on 01 Oct 04:34
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even the OP is softlocking thier newer phones(arbitrary online application to unlock it) in the near future, i expect a full lock sooner or later
Tattorack@lemmy.world
on 30 Sep 17:13
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Like other people have suggested, maybe get a second phone (one of those really cheap ones with play Services) and use that for that stuff, and keep your main personal phone google-free.
They are also working to similarly kill custom ROMs. Just recently the GrapheneOS team mentioned that Google is no longer making their hardware drivers Open Source, and so compatibility with new phones means reverse engineering their own drivers - which is a big reason that custom ROMs support such narrow hardware options already and very often come with limitations and/or features that just don’t work. At best, they figure out how to make it work, but it takes time and updates can lag significantly behind.
We have a lot of options on the software side for avoiding google (or android), but very limited options on hardware. We need open source mobile hardware support ASAP.
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au
on 01 Oct 03:56
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They’re not so much working to kill custom roms as they are just not giving away their code anymore, going closed source for their own hardware.
Why do you think they’re making this arbitrary change?
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au
on 01 Oct 21:41
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Because Google have been wanting to be closed source for years, which is why nearly all their new features since they released the Pixel have been PixelOS exclusive and not in AOSP.
They don’t care about killing custom roms, that’s just a side effect of them going closed source for their Phone.
What do you think the benefit of closing sourcing their software is if not to stifle competition?
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au
on 02 Oct 08:31
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It means they can do way more features without giving away precious IP, and it also just reduces their workload. They don’t need to keep giving out their code for free. It makes their job harder.
AOSP projects are not and never have been a threat to Google. They aren’t trying to stifle them - that’s just a byproduct of not giving away their code anymore. Giving it away gives literally zero benefits to them. It might only save them 0.01%, but that’s a lot money.
As someone whose job runs several FOSS projects, I think you’re making up the fact that it adds meaningful workload.
I think that, for all intents and purposes, protecting IP is equivalent to stifling competition.
I think giving away code benefits the entire Android ecosystem, which might be the largest data mining operating Google has. I fully believe that’s of nonzero benefit.
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au
on 02 Oct 23:06
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It doesn’t have to be meaningful extra workload for it to cost them millions/billions of dollars because of their size.
But remember, unlocking bootloader is harder and harder for many devices. And Google’s Play Integrity and API changes makes removing trace of unlocked bootloader harder. Many apps not just banking, ChatGPT, games, some of social media is completely unusable in that scenario.
JeremyHuntQW12@lemmy.world
on 01 Oct 01:50
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You can just install Android.
Only certified vendors will have the blocking activated.
So when this happens, can’t fdroid just make a PC side installer that syncs apps to the phone through adb? Sure it sucks that you can’t just tap to install now but at least people could still use their 600 dollar phones for as long as they were supposed to by plugging in every now and then when your PC fdroid client tells you there’s updates. Heck on the meta quest I used adb only with the quest headset once I got it configured, it was some self hosted adb server and let me do all the sit I needed a computer for in the first place without one, maybe fdroid could change the client to use a “remote adb” solution like that?
threaded - newest
Have we ever lived in a more stallmanwasright.jpg time?
I never wanted him to be wrong more than right now. Except for tomorrow, it’s probably going to bé worse, tomorrow
Stallman has never been and never will be wrong.
Except when it comes to women and girls, he’s absolutely wrong
Don’t forget about his views on sex with animals!
Wait, what?
He said it’s unfortunate that the US government doesn’t allow sex with children or animals.
Or his views on seemingly eating toe nails right off of his feet in public.
I feel that’s a personal matter though. Stallman can have whatever opinion he wants on that one.
I sometimes like to read his political posts:
www.stallman.org/archives/2025-jul-oct.html
And honestly? I mostly agree with them? Like this:
He has some questionable beliefs as well, though for unusual reasons. He accepts non-binary people but refuses to use they/them pronouns because he doesn’t like the ambiguity of singular/plural pronouns. So he has invented the neopronouns per/pers to refer to singular non-binary persons. I genuinely think no other person on this planet could hold this opinion.
Okay that’s all cool or cool-and-stubbornly-autistic. But he has some other opinions that are not, about consent and age.
So the blanket ‘fuck yeah, stallman!’ Doesn’t really fly anymore.
Hasn’t he admitted to changing his opinion after learning about the effects on children? I’m not in the loop about this.
But yeah, you definitely shouldn’t treat his words as gospel. A lot of questionable-at-best stuff in there.
Ok, let’s say he’s right only when he talks about software.
That should do it. I hope.
EDIT: well and hardware too I guess.
EDIT2: oh and paid public toilets.
Eh, I’m pretty close to this opinion.
A family member came out as non-binary, and I don’t like to use they/them (for the same reason as Stallman), but I also think creating my own pronouns is more offensive, so I just use their first name, unless I can’t easily avoid it (like this sentence). I’m not trying to be offensive, I just don’t like they/them as angular pronouns. I also don’t like “you” as both singular and plural, but I’m also not ready to use “y’all”, so I refer to second person groups without the pronoun (if feasible).
On a related note, I also think gender is a social construct and not actually “real.” Sex exists because it’s a biological thing, but it shouldn’t be directly tied to your role in society. To change my mind, I need empirical evidence that there’s some unique difference between men and women (brain wave patterns?) that aligns groups of non-binary people or aligns trans people with people of the opposite sex. I personally don’t think this exists, and gender fluidity is more a symptom of a culture that isn’t well equipped to handle people who don’t nicely fit into a bucket. I think gender is a useful metaphor for what’s going on, and I absolutely support people fighting for using it to get the recognition they need, but I don’t think it’s an actual, scientifically proven thing.
The only real difference is that I use first names to refer to non-binary people’s first names more frequently than to binary people. I hope that doesn’t offend anyone, I just really don’t like using the same pronoun for both singular and plural.
Singular they is over 600 years old by the way:
https://www.oed.com/discover/a-brief-history-of-singular-they/?tl=true
As a trans person, my gender dysphoria is not something caused entirely by social gender roles. Medical transition has greatly alleviated the majority of it. Anecdotally, within the first week of hormone therapy, my dysphoria improved dramatically while only being out of the closet to 2 people outside of my therapist and the medical professionals who prescribed my hormones. It has continued to improve, although I’m still waiting for the surgery that will resolve the remaining things that hormones can’t fix.
Also, there are studies around brain structure differences between men and women, and transgender people tended to have brain structures in line with their gender, not their assigned sex at birth:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_gender_incongruence#Brain_structure
Perhaps you should believe people when they tell you who they are, and get past your discomfort drawing arbitrary lines in grammar regarding pronouns, when singular they predates the fall of the Byzantine Empire by 75 years.
Sure, and “you” used to be exclusively plural. Language changes, and now you is exclusively singular in some parts of the world (e.g. the US “South” where “y’all” is the plural).
I want separate singular and plural pronouns. Some languages do this properly and don’t even have gendered pronouns, such as Tagalog:
Sure, but sample sizes are small and many times they don’t seem to control for hormone therapy.
That said, this one looks interesting:
And this one:
And this review of other studies:
This suggests there may be developmental differences between trans and cis individuals, and there seems to be a correlation between trans people and the sex associated with the gender they identify as.
The body of available science certainly indicates more researchis needed and could lead to answers that show exactly what differences exist between cis and trans people. I sincerely hope that happens. But as it stands,the research isn’t conclusive.
Let’s be extremely clear here, my support for policy will not be impacted whatsoever by the scientific research, regardless of the outcome. If you feel like hormone therapy or gender reassignment surgery or whatever other treatments will help you, you should be able to get them. Full stop. If you want to be treated as a man or a woman, I’ll do that. If you want to be called by different pronouns, I’ll do my best to do it, I just don’t like pronouns that are both singular and plural because they can lead to confusion. That’s it.
If there was a generally accepted gender-neutral set of pronouns (like in my example), I’d use them nearly exclusively. If the scientific evidence was clear cut, I’d admit as much. Neither is the case, so I’m left to find a happy medium that works for my and others in my life.
When I consider changes to language, I try to start from a prescriptivist position rather than a descriptivist, which to me means assuming language should stay static to ensure a common understanding rather than fragmented meanings that lead to misunderstandings. If there is a change in language, it should justify itself through simplifying terms or adding a new meaning that other words lack, while avoiding harming the meanings of pre-existing words.
I use they/them pronouns for non-binary people as an example of this mindset in action because I think the benefits far outweigh any cons. With a greater understanding that non-binary people new language was needed, and they/them seems to me a very natural fit as I would already think to use it when asking about a stranger even before I knew of non-binary as a concept (“oh your friend is coming? What’s their name, are they a boy or a girl?). In my experience having a very close non-binary friend I have found that context tells whether I’m using they as a singular/plural pronoun ~90% of the time, and when it fails it adds maybe 20 seconds of clarification to explain I was referring to person’s name.
I think what you’re saying should be taken as inspiration for further evolving how we use those terms to better separate between singular and plural use rather than try backtracking on how it has already evolved in common use, and I think the answer (for me at least) lies in your very comment. Much like “you” vs “you all”, going forward I’ll put a little effort into using they/them in a singular context and use “them all” or “they all” as a plural. Maybe it will catch on and 30 years from now we’ll be saying “theyal” and “theyal’ll” as shorthand for “they all” and “they all will.”
Oof, “they’ll’ll” sounds awful.
I wish we could use “it” instead, but unfortunately, that’s offensive since it has connections to inanimate objects and non-human animals. If we could somehow break that meaning, maybe we’d get somewhere w/ a gender-neutral, third person singular pronoun. Or maybe we can use one of the created ones (though per/pers is awful IMO). But we also have words that don’t have gender-neutral terms, such as uncle/aunt, but for some reason we do have many others, like cousin.
It’s an annoying nut to crack, which is why I tend to use people’s names more and only use they/them when there is no reasonable alternative.
“They” as singular was really only made for when you didn’t know the sex of the person you were referring to, not as a pronoun for someone who you do. It had nothing to do with “gender identity” because that wasn’t a thing. Gender and sex were synonyms, 2 words for the same thing.
Eg “can my friend come to the party too?” “Yeah sure, what do they like on their pizza so I can make sure there is one they like?”
Not
“Can John come to the party?” “Yeah sure, what do they like on their pizza?”
In this instance you’d always have used “he” because you know with pretty much absolute certainty that John is male on account of being a male name.
It has only very recently been used as a choice that people tell people they want to be referred to by, because some people now believe in a “gender identity” being a separate thing to sex.
It existing as a singular pronoun doesn’t mean that it was used in the same context as it is now.
Also the “gendered brain” stuff you’re saying……wouldn’t that mean that gender isn’t a social construct and isn’t “fluid”, and is in fact a binary?
I criticized singular they/them for increasing language ambiguity and suggested replacing it with something new like xe/xer multiple times. The reply is usually a shitstorm and downvote tornado. I’ve given up on that front.
Probably because singular “they” predates singular “you” grammatically. Should we go back to using thou and thee instead of the singular you as well?
I always found this argument funny because how would you use pronouns for someone whose gender you do not know? They. It’s they. E.g. you are given the sentence: Jordan went to the store to buy apples. And you want to ask a followup question regarding how many, you reply: How many apples did they buy? It’s not that complicated. They has been used for gender ambiguity in everyone’s lives since grammar school. People just have an inherent bias towards trans folks and it’s incredibly depressing and sad.
And that’s not how English was taught to me or 99℅ of the population (including English as a second or third language) 20+ years ago. Singular they was only used for situations where the gender (read as superficially visible sex) was factually unknown. You see a forgotten umbrella and never saw who forgot it: “Somebody forgot their umbrella.” As soon as you only got a glimpse on the person forgetting it you would make a guess about he/she.
If you’re younger than ~30 and from Great Britain, maybe. GB were the first to formalize and teach it like that less than 2 decades ago (if I recall correctly).
That’s bullshit projection.
I, a non-native speaker, complain about increased ambiguity of the language because of singular they as a personal pronoun and make a proposal about new pronouns for the purpose.
You: Ah, must be transphobe. Let’s ignore everything he said (which doesn’t relate to transphobia at all).
It’s so frustrating not to be able to have a discussion about stuff making a language harder than it needs to be without people invoking transphobia, like, instantly.
But hey, I called it: can’t have a discussion about it and I’ve given up on it.
edit: tiny add-on. I was still taught gender-neutral he and only heard about they later while being discouraged to use it in writing.
You’re contradicting yourself here. You’re saying you were taught to use singular they when gender is unknown, yet claim that “How may apples did they buy” is wrong based on how you were taught English.
Does it matter whether gender is unknown or just unresolved? Not really, singular they is clearly intended to be a gender neutral pronoun and works in any situation where gender is ambiguous. It’s not wrong for people to adopt it as a pronoun to refer to themselves any more than it is for a trans man to adopt “he/his” or a trans woman to adopt “she/hers.”
At best your refusal to use it makes you sound like one of those people who gets offended at the word “literally” gaining a colloquial meaning that differs from its original definition. At worst, it presents as transphobia to claim “language purity” as the reason to be so adamantly against something that the trans community has largely adopted.
Thank you for agreeing with me! Singular they is only used for gender ambiguity! So, trans folks, or non-binary folks, who choose to go by an ambiguous pronoun, use it. You got it! Unfortunately, I am older than 30, my knees might be older, haha. Also, I’m not from GB/UK. I know grammar school nay have caused some ambiguity there, but grammar school is used in many English speaking countries. Usually, to refer to elementary, primary, or grade school.
Regarding your last diatribe, I didn’t even invoke transphobia. For someone so adamant on literal, linguistic definitions, you seemed to overlook the word bias. You have a predispositioned outlook towards trans people, because of your feelings on linguistic definitions. You inherently disregard hundreds of years of evolution in the English vernacular. Words have changed, evolved, and adopted different meanings throughout time. Do we need to cast out the word gay, because it now also means homosexual, when it originated as happy? Do we need to cast out the word terrific? You know, the word that was a synonym for horrific? I understand that you are ESL, but every language has different dialects, vernacular, and idioms. It’s why a thong in Australia is vastly different, than a thong in America. You can either adapt your knowledge of the language, or choose to emotionally hurt people on the premise of being “right and literal”. There is no need to create something new when society has deemed it acceptable. Just because you don’t, doesn’t mean everyone else is wrong. The question you must ask yourself is, “Do I care more about being right, or emotionally supporting another human being?”. If you have trouble answering that, well, we all have our answer then, don’t we? Cheers, mate. Hope you find, or have found, peace, love, and happiness.
It hasn’t been used for “gender” ambiguity, but sex ambiguity, because the separation of sex and gender is only a recent thing and it’s not even unanimously accepted.
Oh my gosh, you’re being pedantic. It has been used for “gender” ambiguity for quite some time. If you choose to be ignorant, then that’s your dill, pickle. At the end of the day, you get to choose whether you make someone happy, or sad. Why is that difficult? Why can’t you comprehend the concept of providing joy to someone? Why can’t you just be nice? That’s what this whole thing is about, right? You can either choose to be nice, or not. And I’m so tired of arguing with people to be nicer. Why can’t people get it through their thick skulls, that people just want to live and be considerate of each other. That’s what we all want, right?
Is calling an extremely underweight anorexic person healthy, a good weight, and encouraging them to keep losing weight the right thing to do? Is that good because it’s providing joy to someone?
Are you arguing that using the pronoun, they, is equivalent to someone harming themselves? Friend, you need to argue better. You are arguing like a college dropout. You’ve re-contextualized the argument in it’s entirety. Try again, or don’t. But stop coming at me with your weak ass, bullshit talking points. In the illustrious words of our dear leader, SAD!
…tenor.com/…/missing-the-point-over-your-head.giF
Well, I guess we’re done debating. It’s a shame, I hate ending debates in a draw. That’s on me, though. I got too emotional, because this is a topic that is deeply personal to me. Oh well, win some, lose some, and draw some. I enjoyed our debate, no matter what it may have seemed like. I really am shameful that I came out the gates smoking. There were much better ways to argue my point and I failed in that regard. Hope you have a great day and rest of your morning!
Doesn’t feel like you want to have an honest argument when you ask how far we should go back on a proposal about going forward and don’t address the single motivator ambiguity.
Correct, because there is no argument to be had. Intentionally refusing to use someone’s pronouns is unacceptable, every time, with 0 exceptions. If there’s a dire need to be explicitly clear you’re talking about a single person, you could just use their name in that instance.
You don’t get to decide how other people refer to you. I’m sorry but you don’t have that authority. You can dislike people using the “wrong” pronouns, but you cannot compel the usage of the ones you want to be called because of your beliefs. If I say my pronouns are “your majesty” it’s not unacceptable if you don’t use them.
I agree with this criticism, but the entire English language is full of bullshit so you might as well consider using Esperanto
as someone who is not a native english speaker when I first encountered people people prefer they/them I also found the same problem of ambiguity, and took quite a while to get used to it
🪴
🥗
Unless he’s championing paedophilia and bestiality, which he has done on a number of occasions. Or being an absolute creep with women, which he’s also done.
Ah. Well. About software.
.
Enlighten me.
arstechnica.com/…/richard-stallman-returns-to-fsf…
I am really glad to see these articles popping up now. Since the news broke a week back or so it was suspiciously quiet about this, despite lots of negative comments here.
I’m frustrated that the article didn’t link to the “decree.” Do you know where it is?
EDIT: nvm think I found it
…googleblog.com/…/elevating-android-security.html
This is why I didn’t bother switching to GOS, Lineage, Calyx etc despite being sick of Apple’s anti-foss monopoly — marketed as Privacy™️ and Security™️ — for years.
The late stage capitalism of western oligarchies indicated that Google’s rug pull of AOSP was an imminent inevitability. After already having to change my services and workflows multiple times over the last 2 decades — despite careful analysis and forethought — due to services ever changing value propositions, acquisitions, and all other forms of enshittification, I’m at the point where I won’t bother wasting energy on 99% of digital products unless they’re open source and I can run them indefinitely on my own Linux server.
The more dependent you grow on digital products, the more interdependent they become, and the more time and effort is required to replace or substitute them.
Bullshit. If you liked so much your freedom and privacy you would have many opportunities to use open source ROMs. You chose to stay on your iPhone because it was easy.
Also absolutely not believing you when you say that you anticipated the rug pull and chose to “not bother” for that reason. What a poor excuse for staying and supporting the closed ecosystem of Apple.
I can’t believe someone who has been for years on an iPhone would pretend they are an ardent defender of freedom and open source.
Nice nick!
Sure thing, buddy. Nice gate keeping high horse ya got there. FOSS is sure to attract more users with humble geniuses such as yourself antagonizing them. Do you also use Arch, btw?
“If you don’t spend hundreds of hours switching from big tech corp controlled platform A — you’ve used for almost 20 years — to switch to big tech corp controlled platform B, you obviously don’t support freedom and open source”
I actually contribute to the development of open source projects. Do you create/give value, or are you just a taker/user? … Or are you just salty you couldn’t see this highly predictable result coming a mile away?
The never-ending purity tests are so exhausting. “You’re not a real vegan, you eat fermented food which kills the yeast!”
What stops those open source projects having that same rugpull? AOSP was open source and for a long time could be installed on one’s phone indefinitely.
You could argue ownership, but if Audacity can be bought then so can nearly anything.
I’m out of the loop, what’s that about Audacity? Looks like they still have a github repo with very recent activity and Wikipedia says their trademark was acquired by a company in 2021.
As far as I remember, Audacity’s maintainers, previously just some volunteers with no organisation, decided to sell the ownership of the project to a company with some guitar platform. Nothing changed at first, they employed the maintainers to work on the same project they were already working on.
Then they started adding controversial telemetry and some soft forks appeared. I vaguely also remember hearing that there’s some contract that the company owns the source code, so relicensing to a proprietary licence is easy and possible in future. All the new software the company launches is proprietary, and there’s signs they want to tie it all together into a single suite.
Nothing majorly bad has happened to Audacity, yet. But decisions are no longer community driven, as shown by the telemetry drama. I fear it’s a matter of time.
I should probably add: if it becomes proprietary, the remaining soft fork will likely die. Turns out very few people have the technical knowledge for Audacity.
If you want to read the telemetry controversy/drama, I found this one I’d read years ago: github.com/audacity/audacity/pull/835
I remember feeling a bit bad for the maintainers. There’s a lot of complaining for a minor and optional change, but at the same time it’s interesting that they added telemetry anyway. (Not unmodified however)
but… this doesn’t make any sense. the roms you brought up can be still used indefinitely, they will still be able to install any apps. maybe except when they have installed the official google suite, but that’s always a user choice in the popular android rom world, none of these preinstall it, and microg users are not affected
Hopefully they go to court to get an injunction. Hopefully, they also go to the powers that be in the EU, those same powers have been so focused on the Apple App Store they failed to take into account Google can do something like this with the Play Store. It would be a shame for the F-Droid project to end but it is completely avoidable.
What we can do is complain. Loudly.
Degoogle where possible. Fuck these assholes.
And i guess prepare.
We can also do that.
Complain without doing something is worse than doing something like the other person suggested, though.
Complaining tells yhe company this isn’t popular. Complaining while talking about alternatives is helping others towards doing something, and giving the idea that it will be a net negativeove for their hegemony,even if you don’t do shit.
To be fair, up until recently, there was no clear indication that Google would do this. Google made it so that installing non-play store apps was slightly more difficult, Apple made it pretty much impossible. So Apple was a pretty logical target at that point (and honestly, up until then, they had pretty much gotten a free ride - think of the default browser issue in Windows, no one every bothered with Apple).
There’s never been a more urgent time to switch to Linux on pretty much every device.
.
Beats me! I’m in the process of moving banking and payment off my phone in preparation for a Linux one. These things will very likely not work on non-proprietary devices.
Reverse the question:
Which bank can be used with a linux phone?
Depends on your bank. Most work on alternate OS (like GrapheneOS), and of course some don’t. privsec.dev/…/banking-applications-compatibility-…
If an app (especially bank) doesn’t work, I forward them this and try to ELI5 that their current method is flawed and less secure: grapheneos.org/…/attestation-compatibility-guide
Which is fine and all, but then you still have to run a release built and signed by the grapheneos devs.
Go on… How are you doing so?
Going for plastic when paying instead of using a digital wallet, using the banks’ websites for transactions instead of the app.
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Mobile apps should only ever be used for check-scanning or for features that the online banking simply doesn’t allow (which would be messed up of the bank to do); same with mobile wallets.
Ubuntu Touch works well on my fairphone.
Very cool! I’m thinking of going for ubuntu touch, seeing as Android has proven that it’s no longer worth the time investment. Also, Fairphone 5 is my next phone if the current one dies, so it works out.
Could you share what do you really like about it? And what is your biggest gripe or letdown with it? Thanks!
It’s using Hallium, which is still using Android kernel and drivers, hopefully they can keep that up while vendors are getting increasingly antagonistic.
It is private.
If you want to run some android apps you can use waydroid, but it torches the battery.
If you want to run arm linux apps, you need to dork around with containers as the root os is RO.
I’m sitting on the fence of shelling out for a decen FP
The stepping-stone would be de-googled Android like LineageOS or GrapheneOS. I think Linux is the end-game though.
The mobile options for Linux are years out from being ready and the hardware vendors are locking them out as fast as possible.
So it would seem.
There’s generally been positive reviews for FuriLab’s FLX1 model:
Their new one, the FLX1s has 2GiB more RAM (for 8GiB, in total). I’ve heard battery gets 2 days without charge even with Android emulation.
It’s still Android kernel and drivers :/ but it is private. For Linux you’d need postmarket or one of their derivatives and they are fighting to get cameras and power under control.
prob the best we have at the moment.
edit: to be clear, I’m saying Halium is the best we have at the moment, real linux is trucking along but it’s still a long way out.
and what’s the problem with android other than google’s fuckery?
Assuming google’s fuckery doesn’t affect them, nothing.
But we’re relying on google to keep up that code and not see them as a threat. Right now AOK, but in the future that makes longevity questionable.
It’s something to be noticed and understood so there’s no surprises when the company that did no evil now does all the evil.
they can take down the code today and not much will happen, as the code is mirrored elsewhere.
Obv, they can’t take what we have, which is why for now we’re OK. The winds are shifting, though. I expect at some point, I expect android will require a deal with the devil from manufacturers. Start actively combatting linux phones.
For now, it’s a quick path to privacy, long term, we’re going to need friendly hardware
I think the big problem with this, as far as I know, is that this code needs pretty rapid security updates that require a fairly huge and experienced team of people to both find, understand and implement the security changes. Otherwise it becomes very insecure very quickly. So yeah we can always use 2019 Android, etc. But it would just put you at a huge security risk.
doesn’t the same apply to any operating system, including the linux phone distributions? android has security measures that may be breached, but mobile linux has much fewer security measures at all
Yes, it does apply to every operating system - hence, the differentiator becomes whether the operating system has hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on dedicated security development. This is why a lot of companies now don’t even let you use Android devices for BYOD aside from Google or Samsung, because they’re the only companies with the resources to keep their security really up to date.
my point is that if the open source community cannot figure out just maintenance of an android system, there’s no chance of creating a real mobile linux distribution, as it would need the aforementioned maintenance and the development of additional features
Ahhh I see, I was confused about what you were getting at. My mistake. And yes that’s very true…hmm. More dire than I was even thinking then…
Honestly this is exactly the kind of thing that taxes and governments are supposed to be good for handling. Failures within failures I suppose!
no worries. but that’s why I think android would be a much better base for a free software mobile operating system than a current linux distribution. lots of engineering work and experience went into making it, both on the technical sides and in the UX, with lots and lots of feedback. it has largely solved permissions, inter-app communication, power saving, things like these, and I mean all in the AOSP project, forgetting about the proprietary google mobile services.
not everything is perfect, lots could be improved, and there are things we don’t like, like how app background activity is handled is not too transparent and neither customizable, etc, but those would be much easier to fix and maintain then reimplementing everything. hardware drivers are a problem, but it is anyway, and with android we at least have a working system with which reverse engineers can analyze the drivers in operation. certainly android is not the cleanest codebase but its not so bad either to warrant throwing it away. in the parts of the code I looked over the years, it’s quite organized, but of course I have only seen very little.
By “Google’s fuckery” you mean “Google doing all the updates and giving it to them” though, right?
Until these alternative AOSP-derived OS developers stop relying on Google and start doing their own stuff, Google will have the ability to break their OS’s. This isn’t a Google issue, it’s a OS developer issue.
i don’t think niche devices can save us though.
we need banking, government apps, all sort of garbage that won’t be allowed with a ten foot pole on these. rooted androids are barely allowed as it is.
Sure; but we won’t close that gap immediately. Intermediate progress can be helpful for further progress.
sure, but ownership is something they are actively trying to block. i say that as a linux nerd.
and they won’t be available in my country for a while i bet.
wish it would have support
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How does google plan to enforce this? Will they disable side-loading for any app that isn’t registered with google?
That is their intent, yes. arstechnica.com/…/google-will-block-sideloading-o…
that’s exactly what they are going to do. on every device released by certified partners.
https://www.android.com/certified/partners/
unless they change their mind on this, android will soon be a walled garden like the iphone is.
My job doesn’t allow me to use a jailbroken/rooted device
So if/when this goes through I’ll be switching to iOS.
Given the choice between two closed platforms, I’ll pick the one that ostensibly says they’re privacy focused instead of the one actively enshittifying their product.
I obviously don’t know your situation, but using your own phone for work is a bit of a red flag. If you’re required to use a phone for work, ideally the job should provide you one that meets their requirements.
Yeah, a mandatory work phone (where the employer can define requirements) should be purchased and funded by the employer.
Exactly.
My work only requires that I have their MFA. They don’t care if it’s rooted, it just needs to allow me to login. I’m guessing if I pushed back enough, they’d find an alternative.
I must assume they mean no use it for their business that they own. Otherwise I’ll just be sad.
You should just get a cheap phone to use for work. No reason to have their software on your own device. That will undoubtedly be used for creepy purposes.
And the obvious annoyance of having two phones
Still worth it. The amount of time you will save by not having junk on your phone slowing it down will make up for it.
I don’t find this applies. I have an email account and chat app for work. I’m using a 4 year old phone. It’s not slow.
Also having stuff consime your disk doesn’t really slow it down.
That’s not really company imposed spyware though. If I thought in any way that my boss was trying to make me install spyware I wouldn’t the very least install it in shelter, something that has been disappeared during the Google play store purges. You can still find the apk online atleast until Google kills android soon with their ban on user installable software outside of the play store.
Work profiles exist for this reason. A completely separate environment that is isolated from the rest of the phone and can be turned on and off on demand.
Some manufacturers, like Samsung, make it difficult to access, but it’s there.
Yes i never saw this feature until I discovered shelter which uses this to protect your personal info.
Your job can say what phone you have? I don’t get it
The moment my work says what phone I need is the moment I demand they provide a phone for me.
How about Murena Fairphone/Shiftphone with non-rooted /e/OS and locked bootloader?
EU be like: Really? Didn’t you learn from Apple?
For those in Europe, write your representatives.
Fro me f-droid's post:
https://f-droid.org/2025/09/29/google-developer-registration-decree.html
do we have a contact tool like for chat control?
Ah, you mean https://fightchatcontrol.eu/.
I am not aware of anything yet, apart from what the article suggests. https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/contact-dma-team_en
Isn’t this illegal in Europe? Was that the whole point of forcing apple to allow alternative app stores?
I can’t believe how useless the EU regulations are.
It’s because they regularly overstep their bounds and force overseas companies to do things they have no right to make them do, which actively hurt their business. Of course companies are going to do their very best to comply while making it have as little impact as possible!
Technically, third party app stores are allowed. Developers “only” register with google to receive a developer certificate. Isn’t apple doing the same thing in response to the EU regulations and that has been allowed?
Seems like a weasel around the requirement to get rid of the actual benefit of 3rd party stores.
No, Google is following Apple’s exmaple.
If you have a Mac, have you ever tried installing an app and have it refuse because it’s not signed by Apple, and then you had to go into settings and click “allow anyway?”
This is that, except without the allow anyway feature, like iOS. It doesn’t matter if it comes from the play store or elsewhere, as this story originally had us believe.
I will literally go without a smartphone if Google does this, this is insane I would have bought an iphone if I wanted a junk device I don’t actually own.
The crazy part is this may make iOS the better alternative when considering the emergence of third-party app stores and Apple’s loosening grip on their ecosystem.
LineageOS is still a good option too, for anyone who would prefer to keep the phone they have
iOS would be the better alternative, if it wasn’t for the hardware they run on. After all, Apple is infamous for their blatant planned obsolescence on their iPhones since the iPhone 6. Unfortunately, Google seems to be following Apple in this way as well since they launched an update that made the Pixel 6a’s battery so much worse than before. Therefore, we must all have a dumb phone + Linux phone set up…or something
They learned from it. The phone toggles itself when the battery health is at 80% max capacity, but this is toggleable. Also, the iPhone 11 still runs smooth.
I can agree on Apple not really having a properly supported hardware repair ecosystem, and actively working against third party repair.
But the software? When Samsung and friends had 2-4 years of security updates, Apple had almost twice that. The iPhone XS still has support, 6 years after end-of-sale, 7 years from release. Normal people can’t be expected to flash their phones with LineageOS. The situation is slightly better nowadays, but Samsung still seems to be depreciating 3 year old devices: endoflife.date/samsung-mobile
To add, Apple has actually been making amends regarding repairability. It’s small steps, but leagues ahead of what’s offered for popular android manufacturers, while still maintaining their IP68 ratings on most devices.
I can’t speak to how they make their parts available to third parties (seems to be a grey area), but there has been a reasonable focus with the last couple generations of iPhones that ensures the device can be repaired from either side.
Overall, the tide seems to have shifted. If you’re going to be at the mercy of a corporate giant in order to keep up with modernity, then Apple is currently holding the dimly lit torch of consumer rights.
Yeah, if Android effectively kills fdroid, then it essentially becomes like iOS. Whilst you can technically still sideload, apps must get certified by Google themselves and there’s no way they’ll allow 90% of fdroid unless its their Google Play versions.Tbf though, I didn’t know the background thing, which just goes to show that neither of them are ideal. Especially since Apple locks down their devices really hard which turns things like transferring files without a cloud service into a challenge. Therefore, in the future, I might just use a dumb phone for basic phone calls and text messages (meanly just for things like job applications or services like pharmacies) and a Linux phone for everything else. That’s assuming Linux phones have evolved just enough to be usable alongside a dumb phone for what it can’t do, which is SMS.
Apple, with the longest software support on the market, and planned obsolescence don’t go in the same sentence together. Sorry but they are literally the best in the industry in this regard.
Also I assume you’re talking about the “batterygate” thing with the iPhone 6 where they slowed the device down? That was a giant overreaction - the alternative was the phone crashes and reboots constantly.
LineageOS is not really an alternative though, as it will still be hit by this. Please see the comment here: lemmy.world/post/36621884/19652276
They both go for the least open option. If asking for all devs registration and validation from google is viable and legally sound, apple will do the same if that’s not already in the pipe.
Both “stores” are targeted for the same issues.
Not really. They are converging onto the exact same thing. 3rd party stores are allowed, but needs [Google/Apple]'s approval.
If you are big and have teeth (like Epic Games), you will (probably) be allowed, if you are small like a single open source developer, the can shut you down city dubious “security”/“ToS” issue, and you probably don’t have the money to sue.
Where are the third party app stores on iOS. Apple is delaying and fighting every inch in the EU.
If this effects de-googled android, I will probably start investing in Linux phones.
I would rather have a limited phone than has full freedom than one that makes everyone go through Google.
It won’t. This is for 99% of users with their Google enabled devices. It’s still shit and it will effect the 1% indirectly by the reduction of available software outside the play store.
Owning a phone doesn’t give you control over what the operating system can do. You can so what the OS they give you allows you to do, or you can find a way to put a different os on it - but they don’t need to provide a way for you to do that easily.
Not really sure why this is a hard concept for some people to grasp?
Linux mobile <img alt="" src="https://feddit.org/pictrs/image/9f5c5786-acbd-4126-a1cc-eec30bbd8ddb.webp">
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Yea… I’m really disappointed with the timing of FuriLabs new phone which is mostly a downgrade over the previous one. I’ve been window shopping phones for a couple of months and am at a loss for what to do. Even spent some time considering a dumb flip phone that can work as a wifi-hotspot and use a small linux tablet or something for the more involved stuff, but couldn’t find a good tablet option that wasn’t huge (would still want it to fit in my pocket) or come with the same problems.
Shift phone 8 from murena?
As far as I can tell, it’s just de-googled android… It is going to have the same eventual problems as any LineageOS, e/OS/, or GrapheneOS phone will have.
Unfortunately we need to come to terms with the fact that 1) Android is not Linux after all of the bastardizations Google has done to it and the control they maintain. 2) We need hardware mfrs on board for fully Open Source drivers for mobile hardware.
Basically all of the Linux phone options I’ve looked at have been disappointing. You’ve got people making open source OS like Sailfish or PostmarketOS or UbuntuTouch, but they only work for pretty narrow (and old) hardware and they don’t get 100% functionality on basically any of the hardware. FuriLabs was the first one I’d seen claiming you could use all of the features of the hardware, but even then it is using a bunch of (basically) compatibility layers to trick android apps into running, so I don’t even know if that will work after Google gets done with their plans.
Best part: the better names in the alt os and device scenes don’t sell in us markets.
Unless you do the legwork of flashing your own device, most of us are out of luck.
I just love a good market stranglehold.
But they do: murena.com/america
Open source community keeps trusting Google and they keep using the Embrace, Extend, Extinguish …wikipedia.org/…/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
What should anyone have done different? Not built for one of the largest platforms with the most users?
Android is so big because the community let them embrace it. Since the beginning the community should have worked in a true open solution. Now it’s really late to try to make a Linux phone
Luddite. I’ve let AI manage my finances and mortgage for about a month now. Hold on, there’s a knock at the door, some dudes with a big van or something
Linux would suck on a phone. Sorry it is barely usable on a laptop. We get worse battery life hardware less supported. Sure we put up with it but most people just want stuff to work.
This is because the community did not spent too much time optimizing for this goal. This is what I am saying, the open source community should invest more on Linux phone.
It doesn’t need to be Linux though - AOSP is still open source. Companies like graphebe using it just needed to not depend on Google to provide them the hardware and software to keep their OS viable. It’s entirely on them.
Google start with open source so they can use open source tools and get a lot of work for free.
But they use the famous Elbrace, E tende and Extinguish. See the things they are doing with the web with Chrome.
…wikipedia.org/…/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
Anyone that builds their entire company and/or product around being reliant on a multi-billion/trillion dollar company providing them with their source code for free so you can use it to get around using their services is only setting themselves up for disaster.
If you rely on Google giving you their source code, you need to have a backup plan ready at all times for what to do when Google don’t give you their source code.
“Year of the Linux Phone” has a nice ring to it.
Not for me, no. I love the sandboxing and permissions of android (GrapheneOS). Honestly, desktop OSs should learn from it. Also, android is a lot easier to use, especially on small form factor devices.
Idk about GrapheneOS in particular but I find the sandboxing solutions for GNU/Linux like bubblewrap to be much more granular than standard Android.
“give us access to manage phone calls or we won’t you me answer internet calls (which have nothing to do with actual SIM calls)”, “give us access to all your files or we wont let you share that file via the share function (which doesn’t need fs access to work)”.
On GNU/Linux I can only give a program exactly the resources it needs, I can disallow dbus, I can block it from accessing potentially troublesome things like /dev/dri, can overlay filesystems and pretend that’s my real home dir. Or can just mount the whole / to some other system.
I am not saying android is perfect, but too granular is also bad. I have better things to do then tweaking SELinux policies.
It seems to me that part of the problem is overreliance on phones as computing devices. A lot of things, like banking, are best done on an actual computer. We have become too dependent on phones.
Yep I absolutely refuse to put any banking apps on my phone. The only thing that has access to my bank is me physically going there or logging into their website via my own computer. Fuck any app that asks for access to my bank account including autopay services thorugh third parties.
The only third party serive I use for payments is paypal and that only goes to my credit card.
Yeah guess what happens when access starts to be app-only?
Yeah but it’s “we” as in everyone not “we” as in “Lemmy commenters”.
So the network effect will keep the average person on a locked-down phone that can’t run anything anti-regime
Your phone has likely much better security for your banking apps than your computer, unless you run really niche setup like QubesOS.
We as a society should be rethinking the term “security”, if it’s come to mean submitting to being jerked around however best suits some private company’s interests instead of our own. If there’s a central platform for its security benefit it should be democratically controlled instead of controlled by what are effectively feudal lords, or perhaps even an occupying force
The security I am talking about has nothing to do with being locked down. Linux could easily implement the same, but it probably never will, because it requires a bit of central management and vision. And Linux really struggles with that.
You’re responding downthread of QubesOS being mentioned
Sure it’s hard to get that kind of security onto mainstream distros. But it exists.
Yeah, I was the one mentioning QubesOS. Since I tried it and didn’t last a week because of how bad the user experience was. I am not a CIA spy, I am looking for a balance of security and usability and android is amazing at that. Sure, some things could be more secure. Sure, I can’t do some things because GrapheneOS can’t be rooted. But the balance is excellent. At least for me.
I’m not sure how it works the way where you live but where I live, the way the banking apps are implemented completely violate MFA. They rely on SMS verification which is absurd since if you’re phone is already compromised, no doubt your SMSes are too. There’s no true multi-device authentication in place and this has led to a huge number of victims being scammed after their devices get compromised by a phishing attack.
The desktop and phone are both insecure, proper security should not have all your eggs in one basket.
The phone is not insecure because of all eggs on basket.
Yeah, SIM swaps are a concern too.
Well, yes. But then again, I would trust my GrapheneOS phone not getting compromised over 3 linux devices. MFA is not some ultimate solutions and it is a pain to use.
I mean sure, but that’s not the case for the majority of the user base of these banking apps. Is it the most secure? No but it’s way better than it is right now.
So what is the case for most users? Are normal android phones getting compromised (in a way true 2FA would help) often enough it is an issue? I honestly haven’t seen any statistic regarding this and anecdotally I don’t know anyone whose internet banking was compromised. Whether on phone or desktop.
Which is the point. Why do we need this security when the most virus riden PC can access my banking website.
That’s a good point, time to ban banking websites and only allow people with locked-down phones to bank.
You say “security” I say “a bug that won’t let me log in”. Which is it?
There are no banking apps on my computer.
no it’s not. takes me 2 seconds to log in into my banking up in my phone. anything basic will take a few taps to do (eg transfer money).
Maybe we have this view because when we refer to computers we see a more open ecosystem that’s not found in the mobile phone era. I want that same liberty with my phone. When the word “sideloading” has disappeared, I think then we have known something has changed.
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“Google stands for free and open internet”
blog.google/…/keep-internet-free-and-open/
Aged like milk.
Don’t be evilBe evil when it makes money.
And of course the motto should have been, “Don’t do evil.” That would have been a respectable goal. But it wasn’t, because even back then they only wanted to be slightly better than Microsoft.
aged like a corpse in a bathtub more like it.
Mmmm head cheese
Don’t be something or other, hey check out this week’s doodle!
Right now the only decently speced phone with mainline Linux support is the Oneplus 6, and the only one I can find is being sold for $2000
Damn, I was hoping my Oneplus 6T was worth a couple grand. Nope. Someone has one on Swappa unlocked and in mint condition for $180. A Oneplus 6 is listed on Ebay for $130.
Is it in stock though?
It is, but why does that matter?
There’s the FairPhone 6, running e/OS, Which is a deGoogled port of android, running microG
murena.com/america/shop/…/murena-fairphone-6/
If f-droid doesn’t expect to survive I think the whole stack /e/OS relies on might eventually collapse (microg, lineage, …).
I dunno how viable it is, but linux phones with waydroid is a thing
Also, I’d imagine that a small pocket of custom ROM amd root folks will still exist
Come hell or high water, i will retain control of my phone
Might be - on the other hand, /e/ already supports f-droid out of the box, so there may be a possibility just google play will be going away…
I think that’s the one I have, but please explain what mainline Linux kernel means? Would it be about installing bare Linux instead of Android?
It means you can use the regular Linux kernel instead of fucking around with a custom kernel (like Asahi) or with some sort of Android layer (like Halium). So running whatever distro you want shouldn’t be too difficult.
Can’t you install graphene on Pixel 6 and later?
www.ebay.com/itm/323852586383?var=0&mkevt=1&mkcid…
I am perfectly ok with android apps being required to be signed by not just a certificate (they always were just it could be self signed and just needed to match to upgrade without removing data) but a list of trusted entities.
As long as:
Without this it feels too much extending the monopoly despite being forced to allow 3rd party stores.
The justification is simple, I don’t see the confusion, they want absolute power and for all alternatives to wither and die ? What is there not to understand ?
What pisses me off it that they say they do this for security. It changes absolutely anything.
They really think that malware developers will say “oh no! I need to submit a picture of an id card to sign my malware! It’s literally impossible to submit a jpg of a stolen id card, I’m ruined and out of a job!”
What does it change? Waste 20 minutes of some malware developer while they register under a stolen id? They already have a system that scans for known malware and automatically remove it.
Of course they know that. It’s about power and money. After all, they already have a security program that filters out malware. If we believe their stated reasoning (which we don’t), they’re tacitly admitting that their current security program is a complete failure, and also that they will not try to fix it.
It’s always security when someone wants to take our freedom away. Always security…
Not always. It can also be about the children.
About keeping the children safe
That’s also security.
Not really, it’s more about children not being exposed to things usually. Hence starting with age requirements for porn and they move forward to other things.
“Protecting the children from harmful content and predators”, “protecting people from terrorists and criminals”, “protecting users from hackers” are all forms of security, and are all used as arguments to erode freedoms.
It all boils down to: just give up this bit of freedom so we can keep everyone safe.
Both things can be true. It definitely is better for security. It’s pretty much indisputably better for security.
But you know what would be even better for security? Not allowing any third-party code at all (i.e., no apps).
Obviously that’s too shitty and everyone would move off of that platform. There’s a balance that must be struck between user freedom and the general security of a worldwide network of sensitive devices.
Users should be allowed to do insecure things with their devices as long as they are (1) informed of the risks, (2) prevented from doing those things by accident if they are not informed, and (3) as long as their actions do not threaten the rest of the network.
Side-loading is perfectly reasonable under those conditions.
Most Android owners don’t even know they have Android phones. They are not informed.
I dispute this. While adding extra layers of security looks good on paper, flawed security can be worse than no security at all.
Android packages already have to be signed to be valid and those keys already are very effective in practice. In effect these new measures are reinventing the wheel as to what a layperson would think this new system does.
Adding this extra layer in fact has no actual security benefit beyond posturing/“deterrence”. Catching a perpetrator is not the same thing as preventing a crime. Worse - catching a thief in meatspace has the potential to recover stolen goods, but not so in digital spaces - either the crime is damage or destruction of data for which no punishment undoes the damage or the crime is sharing private data which in practice would almost certainly have been immediately fenced to multiple data brokers.
And were only getting started with this security theater:
While we’re at it we could add the tropes of removing network connectivity, or switch to using clay tablets kept in a wooden box guarded by a vengeful god. Both of those would be more secure, too.
100% agree with you here - it’s fundamentally the principle of “Your liberty to swing your fist ends just where my nose begins”. Users should be given the tools and freedom to do as they want with their property - up until it affects another person or their property in an unwanted way.
I think we mostly agree. And I do agree that “flawed security can be worse than no security at all.” I think, though, that this doesn’t make security worse, just that it doesn’t make it that much better.
But even simple filters can make a significant difference: maybe you remember the early-ish Lemmy debacle of turning off captchas for signups by default, ostensibly because captchas are now completely defeated… which led to thousands and thousands of bot accounts being created pretty much immediately across a bunch of instances, and the feature being turned back on by default.
I’ll agree to that.
And I also think that there’s no way I trust Alphabet (holding company of Google) to be the sole arbiters of who gets to run code - neither in a philosophical sense nor as a gatekeeper to one top five compute platforms used by a substantial chunk of the world population.
It absolutely does not justify creating a policy that would wholesale obliterate F-Droid, arguably one of their larger competitors.
100% agree
Thing is, Play Store is already filled with malware or near-malware from seemingly verified developers. I ran into several scam clone apps just today. It’s even snuck in through OEM apps.
Same on iOS, which supposedly verifies devs.
If ‘verification’ and curation is their idea of security, well… It appears their system is already overloaded, yet they want to expand it?
That was fundamentally F-Droid’s retort.
It’s absolutely insane that anyone pretends Google Play and the App Store are fine though.
Has anyone scrolled through any search and not seen a sea of heavily marketed scam apps?
Which is irrelevant. They can block any malware - now impossible to do with sideloading of apps during pop-ups.
I don’t think it’s going to be as simple to verify as uploading a pic of an id
If it’s like the play store verification, it’s quite simple. The main problem is that once “verified”, Google publicly doxxes individual devs by publishing their residential address + private phone number + private Gmail on their dev page, and this is unacceptable for anyone except who used stolen identities
I’m starting to think these for-profit companies only care about making money.
gulp You might be right
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.wtf/pictrs/image/7fdfca79-96dc-45cb-93fc-1234dcc5ef63.gif">
Let’s hope that the rest of the world, specifically Europe smash this ridiculous proposal apart for what it is. Europe has already sorted out USB-C etc. Its not perfect and they don’t get everything right, but certainly big enough to make stuff right.
Yep. The E.U. has allowed itself to be dominated for too long by the US megacorps. It has the talent, ideas, and manufacturing to tell US firms to bugger off … and the sooner, the better for us all.
Unless you want hillbilly outrage slop destabilising your continent, you better get control away from American tech companies.
they are also going hard on surveillance, private info too, backed by RU of course.i think russell vought is behind the anti-porn verifications in the EU
They’re too busy forcing chat control and age gates through our collective throats.
At this stage the EU probably pushed Google to do this. They’ve taken a sharp turn to authoritarianism.
I think the European leadership has changed and we need to watch our elected officials. However don’t think Google was pushed into anything. They’re now he company that does the opposite of their original manifesto. They’re evil don’t need that.
we need linux phones ASAP
Does anyone know if existing linux phones can run 2FA apps such as Duo or Google authenticator?
Why do you need the google Authenticator? Proton has it too. Which (from searching) looks like it’s compatible for the Ubuntu systems. But that’s just from the search. I ‘m personally just using it with a android right now. I am currently eyeing up the fairphone Ubuntu as my next phone
Systems at work use google authenticator for 2FA. Prior jobs have used Duo.
Google Authenticator is merely a generic TOTP token storage app. The person you’re replying to was pointing out that Google Authenticator, specifically, isn’t necessary. There are alternatives, and unless you’re using a company-owned device that restricts the apps you can use there is no way for work to dictate which app you use for TOTP tokens.
Duo, Okta Verify, and other 2FA apps that use push notifications and such, are a different beast altogether.
My work has me using 3 different 2FA apps depending on what service I’m accessing. It’s great! Especially with the noticable battery consumption increase after setting up 2 more 2FA apps than I had before
they are interchangeable. you can export from google to use in proton. I’ve set all my google logins to proton too. I’ve not experienced this ‘locked in’ situation if you’re using your own phone to run the app.
Same reason collectivist people like social media censorship and gun control, to make them feel “safe” even though all it does is centralize power. Besides hi ow many people have the tech skills to even know what third party app repositories are?
They can run Keeppass, which does TOTP. It doesn’t do push notifs, like Duo does, though.
Or better apps like Aegis?
What is it with you people trying your best to get away from google but still using the most exchangeable app they have.
Lots of jobs require BYOD today (like, most F500 companies) and they limit to non-rooted OSs. I use Aegis for personal apps but I cannot escape microsoft as long as I want to keep paying my mortgage.
Aegis has nothing to do with rooted OSs.
If you mean Push-2FA, than that’s another story entirely.
I’m talking about MS Authenticator
.
We had a few good Linux phones back in the day but Nokia / Microsoft killed them trying to compete with iPhone OS and Android: Maemo / Meego were great but did not get a proper chance.
Jolla continued the legacy and Sailfish OS is still something worth checking out if you can find suitable hardware, or idk how complex it is to port it.
Seems to be new Jolla phone coming up at some point too: forum.sailfishos.org/t/…/23882
The Jolla was probably my favorite phone, but it broke so easily. I really hope they make something more sturdy this time around.
I think Linux phones will gain some real traction within five years. Last I heard, KDE is putting great effort into making apps for Plasma Mobile
I’ll believe it when I see it.
They exist. People just don’t buy them. But there is a Ubuntu phone port you can install on your phone as an alternative to android.
…ubports.com/…/status-update-on-the-next-noble-ba…
But yeah it can get complicated like any Linux community project and isn’t at all mainstream.
People don’t buy them because they don’t fucking work.
You cannot sideload on Linux.
Right, because side-loading is called “installing” on Linux
European devs: Our laws will protect us!
Meanwhile, our laws:
Article 30, DSA
How is trader defined? Is it a developer that’s selling apps or also one that’s just providing it for free?
Bear in mind that an open source license is a contract and it usually involves some form of reciprocity, like crediting the dev by name. That’s in principle not different from a sponsorship deal, where some sports stadium gets the name of a corporation.
The actual definition is even wider, though. I don’t see who you get out of that.
Trader defined in the DSA
>‘trader’ means any natural person, or any legal person irrespective of whether it is privately or publicly owned, who is acting, including through any person acting in his or her name or on his or her behalf, for purposes relating to his or her trade, business, craft or profession; eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/En/TXT/HTML/?uri=…
If F-droid ever has more than 50 employees, annual turnover over EUR 10 million, or over EUR 10 million on the balance sheet, then they will have to collect the same information.
Contact your representative. And here’s F-droid’s article about it (including how to find your representative at the end of the article): f-droid.org/…/google-developer-registration-decre…
False.
There is no fee.
This article is garbage.
You can send them your info for free, but for them to verify your app you need to pay $25
I’d be more worried about having to send gov ID docs - more creepy control by Google.
Google’s developer verification will only run on mainstream Android with play services. It’s not supposed won’t be running in standard AOSP so the easiest solution would be to switch to a custom ROM like GrapheneOS.
While true, the pool of unlockable devices are dwindling fast.
True…. I heard GrapheneOS is having trouble porting to the Pixel 10
Also, aren’t some critical apps like banking apps starting to ban unlocked / non-stock systems? Heard someone complaining about this a while ago.
Yes, banking apps, streaming apps, even some shopping apps. This has been a problem for a long time. Sometimes its for “security” reasons and sometimes its simply because the app uses Play Service APIs. Another issue on de-googled systems is push notifications, though that is often fixed through alternates like Unified Push
even the OP is softlocking thier newer phones(arbitrary online application to unlock it) in the near future, i expect a full lock sooner or later
I don’t have that choice in Denmark due to NemID.
At this point the solution seems to just be having a second phone for that kinda shit
I don’t like that my neighbours are noisy, guess i should get a second house for when they’re shouting
ah yes because phones are $400,000-$1,000,000+
I’m comparing the impracticality, not the monetary impact
ah yes because those things are completely unrelated
Carrying two massive slabs because a few apps won’t run on one of them
Having a second home because some nights you can’t sleep in one due to noisy neighbours
Where the more simple solution would be:
bro what year are you living in? 1987?
No, I’m 2025 where a “small” phone is now 6x3"
Like other people have suggested, maybe get a second phone (one of those really cheap ones with play Services) and use that for that stuff, and keep your main personal phone google-free.
This is the way for me too
They are also working to similarly kill custom ROMs. Just recently the GrapheneOS team mentioned that Google is no longer making their hardware drivers Open Source, and so compatibility with new phones means reverse engineering their own drivers - which is a big reason that custom ROMs support such narrow hardware options already and very often come with limitations and/or features that just don’t work. At best, they figure out how to make it work, but it takes time and updates can lag significantly behind.
We have a lot of options on the software side for avoiding google (or android), but very limited options on hardware. We need open source mobile hardware support ASAP.
They’re not so much working to kill custom roms as they are just not giving away their code anymore, going closed source for their own hardware.
Why do you think they’re making this arbitrary change?
Because Google have been wanting to be closed source for years, which is why nearly all their new features since they released the Pixel have been PixelOS exclusive and not in AOSP.
They don’t care about killing custom roms, that’s just a side effect of them going closed source for their Phone.
What do you think the benefit of closing sourcing their software is if not to stifle competition?
It means they can do way more features without giving away precious IP, and it also just reduces their workload. They don’t need to keep giving out their code for free. It makes their job harder.
AOSP projects are not and never have been a threat to Google. They aren’t trying to stifle them - that’s just a byproduct of not giving away their code anymore. Giving it away gives literally zero benefits to them. It might only save them 0.01%, but that’s a lot money.
As someone whose job runs several FOSS projects, I think you’re making up the fact that it adds meaningful workload.
I think that, for all intents and purposes, protecting IP is equivalent to stifling competition.
I think giving away code benefits the entire Android ecosystem, which might be the largest data mining operating Google has. I fully believe that’s of nonzero benefit.
It doesn’t have to be meaningful extra workload for it to cost them millions/billions of dollars because of their size.
But remember, unlocking bootloader is harder and harder for many devices. And Google’s Play Integrity and API changes makes removing trace of unlocked bootloader harder. Many apps not just banking, ChatGPT, games, some of social media is completely unusable in that scenario.
You can just install Android. Only certified vendors will have the blocking activated.
Well, fuck. Most of people use F-Droid on “certified vendors” device.
If only. Most people I know have never heard of F-Droid… Only privacy-savvy people have.
Graphene users REPRESENT
Newpipe, now signed by Norman Reedus, verification picture and everything!
So when this happens, can’t fdroid just make a PC side installer that syncs apps to the phone through adb? Sure it sucks that you can’t just tap to install now but at least people could still use their 600 dollar phones for as long as they were supposed to by plugging in every now and then when your PC fdroid client tells you there’s updates. Heck on the meta quest I used adb only with the quest headset once I got it configured, it was some self hosted adb server and let me do all the sit I needed a computer for in the first place without one, maybe fdroid could change the client to use a “remote adb” solution like that?