241–250 of 665 posts
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The right to purchase. It's become an issue of defining "purchasing". But companies don't want us to purchase appliances, they would be much happier if we could rent them.
And I would. At much much much lower prices
The rental/do not own anything model is just awful, in my opinion.
> We don't allow apps with any code that could put a user, a user’s data, or a device at risk. If Google thinks the ability to execute arbitrary code puts users' data at risk why don't they go the full iOS route and ban everything, from scripting apps to other JS engines beside Chromium? I am so sick of their behaviour, the only reason I am still on Android because things like F-Droid still exists and iOS is even mor…
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Even as a casual Android dev I've noticed it becoming more and more restrictive over the years, from restricting apps from reading storage, to restring apps from accessing clipboard, to restring apps from running in background, and a ton of other things all in the name of protecting customer. Every time I update to a new phone with a new Android version my hobby apps (which only I use, not published anywhere) are bro…
You can still do things, its just that now the user has to approve it. Maybe a 'let every app have every permission by default' checkbox would make you happy but I'm not going to advocate for it. And you can still sideload an APK without even having to jailbreak the device.
The end state is for apps on Android to be either pointless fluff that basically do nothing useful, or mega apps written by big corps where the rules don't apply. Hobbiest coders are not wanted, or accommodated.
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But for many people, maybe even most people, they're not just "a phone". They're a multi-purpose tool that comes in the form factor of a mobile phone. Camera, chat, web browser, games, social media, music player, access to nearly the sum total of human knowledge... Treating such as tool as merely "a phone" doesn't make any sense.
It’s still a phone actually and colloquially even if I use the Phone App infrequently. The point isn’t what you call it. OP’s point was and I agree that you don’t need to have full control over every device that can possibly run code. Just let it be a device that does its thing. It’s the difference in people that want calm technology vs “power users”. I want the device to exist waiting on my input and even though I h…
I argue that if the device sends data to third parties over radio/internet and/or the manufacturer can remotely push updates that changes the devices behavior then users must have full control.
Something like that should become law.
Then manufacturers can keep devices locked down as long as they stay out of the surveillance game.
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I used to work at Google, and a friend reached out to me for help – his company's app was in a similar situation, with similar communication from Google. This was a good friend from high school, so I pressed the issue using internal channels. The person handling it on Google's side was very assertive about them violating a policy, and after some back and forth I received a _vague hint_ about what was the supposed vio…
Caveat: I work at Google but know nothing about this area and my opinion here is entirely personal. > which would create an unsustainable situation at this scale. Financial sustainability may have something to do with it, but I suspect the larger issue is that providing too much detail essentially trains malware authors to route around the company's defenses. Imagine the Play Store as a castle which has both good tow…
>"Rough consensus, and running code. We are not the Protocol Police."
Half the problems we have nowadays is because we have manufacturers playing "the Program Police", which leads inevitably to the point you just made.
You are now, like it or not, adversarial to any User looking to do anything you find unconformant with your bottom line. You cannot solve these issues by whitelisting, just like you can't solve the problem of crime by whitelisting, and hiding the conformance suite. If you can't know the test, you can spend infinite cycles changing the wrong thing to comply with it, and I do not find that to be a tenable state-of-affairs to push on users, even if intentionally aimed at the malicious ones. This is the same problem we have in meatspace with our overly byzantine legal system; but nobody accepts that secret laws are a good idea because if everyone can read the law, it's a national security risk. At least no one without some serious conflicts of interest.
Do you really think that your company is going to nail down a good solution to a problem that society at large can't even handle reasonably? I mean, think about it. This really is a subset of the general question of how to keep everybody doing something productive. I don't even need an answer. I just want to encourage people to think.
It's seriously time to re-embrace the idea of ownership and control of our devices, and reject Android and iOS altogether. Developing for those platforms has become worse and more restrictive over the years, and this kind of crap is now just everyday news. How good are Pinephones[1]? Are there better alternatives? [1] https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/
So just get serious about using alternate stores, which the platform fully lets you do (f-droid, amazon app store, whatever).
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The second step only happens for a small select group of "things." There are myriad apps, people and organizations that Google has blindly banned with no recourse or reasonable appeal that we will never hear about. The bigger point is the system is clearly broken, but how in the world can you fix it?
The problem is really just a matter of scale and the unwillingness of Google to sacrifice any of it's margins. There are plenty of other companies that have many more humans in the chain where problems like these eventually get resolved once proper appeals are conducted or someone physically walks into a business and participates in whatever verification method is required. The idea that Google is somehow special is…
As well, Google Play pretty much monopolizes the Android market for the general public.
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> Arbitrary code isn't banned on iOS It is. Even mozilla firefox is banned on the premise that it can run arbitrary code and yes, that is the official apple instance. The fact that they apply it when they see fit and allow other times, and that it is totally arbitrary and opaque based on their own private interests , is exactly what everyone with common sense tried to explain when criticizing the walled garden.
My understanding is that what's banned on iOS is not arbitrary code per se, it's arbitrary code downloaded from the internet. Code you enter yourself, like in Pythonista, is just fine.
That's a huge caveat though.
How far does that restriction extend? Can I share or import Pythonista projects from other people?
What's the difference between interpreting a file I downloaded from the Internet and visiting a website?
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Well damn, now I want to download it. I've never gotten into mobile development because getting started always seemed like a chore, but this sounds like it would be fun to play around with.
Try Flutter! Great SDK to get started with mobile development, and dart is a really nice language
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I envy your chill. We all do need to take a deep breath at times and realize it's truly a first world problem. With that said your truck analogy isn't perfect. Your truck will last as long as you keep it going. That can be 20 years or more. It would be more like having a truck that the doors do not lock anymore after 2 years and you cannot fix that you must buy a new truck if you don't want thieves.
Also I think the analogy doesn't quite work because a truck is a truck. You can do some customization, you might (or not be) able to change some parts, or being a mechanical engineer you might even be able to repair it or enhance. But it will always fundamentally be a truck. The difference from phones is that a phone is a computer, and as such it has computer's endless potential. For some it can be just a phone, sure…