81–90 of 316 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand this request? Apps are sandboxed, and there's relatively granular permission control now. What is this referencing specifically?
this applies only to installed apps from the store, not system apps like googles or oem apps. you cant disable background activity of any apps. dont want an always listening ai helper from google? too bad for you.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You know, I'm pretty sure anyone could have built these apps on Android You can overwrite the screen in Android. You can replace the home screen in Android. You can scrape running apps in Android. There's a high degree of flexibility Unfortunately this is probably one of those problems where the cost of building the app is relatively high (because the domain is complicated to get right!) and it would be hard to make…
Building an app is way too much barrier to entry... What I wish is something like, right-click or swipe down to open console , enter some script (or copy-paste/import a highly starred from a public repository), close console, ta-da. If the API was flexible enough, the scripts would mostly be short and obviously non-exploiting (i.e. a script for graying-out the screen shouldn't use the internet API) so they would be v…
It looks dead in that repository though.
... Say you connect your headphones to your device, Android will surface an action to resume your favorite Spotify playlist ... ... but what if we could surface part of the app itself ... What is it with the repeated usage of 'surface' here, instead of the more obvious and common word 'show'? Is it something to do with Android API naming, or something else?
It's corporate lingo. More specifically, PM/UX speak. "I'll ping you on gChat the slides on what to surface when users tap on the map. Then we can ideate together." Only a slight exaggeration, based on my observation of specimens in the wild (many years at Google).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
this applies only to installed apps from the store, not system apps like googles or oem apps. you cant disable background activity of any apps. dont want an always listening ai helper from google? too bad for you.
Root, remove, unroot.
Install something like Netguard (same dev behind Xprivacy) -- which functions as a firewall (vpn) b/w apps and the internet. Turn on logging. Watch all the apps you have installed phoning home and services like graph.facebook.com every few moments.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google already has all your usage history. You can view it yourself by dialing # #INFO# # aka # #4636# # and then selecting "Usage data". You’ll see all apps you’ve used, for how long you’ve used them overall, how many times, and when the last time was. EDIT: *#*#4636#*#* This goddamn markup on HN is utterly broken, I wish it would someday get fixed. But no, of course not.
You can disable google play's access to it by turning off "usage access" in app permissions.
There's a difference between "I want to put a location in my status update" to "I want to upload my location 24/7 to Facebook's servers so they can profile the crap out of me".
iOS makes this difference. Android doesn't.
While I appreciate the concept of learning things like "common next steps" to make a device more usable, going by the history of devices like Google Home or the Google Assistant, I also wonder how much of this is going to depend on "give us all your usage history" settings and simply stop working with those settings disabled. The Google Assistant is already unusable without a pile of search history settings enabled;…
Google already has all your usage history. You can view it yourself by dialing # #INFO# # aka # #4636# # and then selecting "Usage data". You’ll see all apps you’ve used, for how long you’ve used them overall, how many times, and when the last time was. EDIT: *#*#4636#*#* This goddamn markup on HN is utterly broken, I wish it would someday get fixed. But no, of course not.
Ten years ago, when we launched the first Android phone—the T-Mobile G1—it was with a simple but bold idea: to build a mobile platform that’s free and open to everyone. To what quantitative fraction is Android still free and open (as in speech), and how much of it has been moved into closed-source containers?
Since the G1, the following parts are just some of the many that were removed from the open project and replaced with proprietary ones:
Launcher, Dialer (the actual phone app), Contacts, Calendar, Email, on-device Search (last open in 2.3.7), and many more.
Everything that the user touches or sees is closed source.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But they should have. Ending support just one version before basically immortality for the phones is just a bad joke. Especially when the only available alternative starts at 3 times the price. $900 for the smallest Pixel in Germany, fuck that.
> But they should have. Well, sure, but you need to invent time travel before that.
Boy, the gesture based task switcher sure looks familar. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2tkX_zJp-8
And I'm not mad at all. I'm glad that both iOS and Android are implementing one of WebOS' best feature. Using the Android P beta now and it seems to be most of the way there.
If I open a task switcher, I want to see a lot of my open tasks. Not one, not three, not even four, but dozens.
How long am I supposed to be swiping if there's hundreds of open tasks?
And scrolling with the home button is even worse.
Let's hope Android Q quickly gets rid of this again.