11–20 of 315 posts
> Sadly, over the years, Android has been steadily walking back that openness. The justifications are always reasonable on their face. Security updates need to be mandatory because users are terrible at remembering to update. Sideloading apps need to come with warnings because users will absolutely install malware if you let them just click a button. Root access is too dangerous because it puts the security of the wh…
I was there, 3000 years ago, when we started ringing the bell about “trusted computing”. Honestly it’s not as bad as I expected
yet :D
> Sadly, over the years, Android has been steadily walking back that openness. The justifications are always reasonable on their face. Security updates need to be mandatory because users are terrible at remembering to update. Sideloading apps need to come with warnings because users will absolutely install malware if you let them just click a button. Root access is too dangerous because it puts the security of the wh…
Exactly: smartphones and tablets are designated safe spaces for 'normies'. If you want to do serious computing, serious machines (laptops, desktops, servers) are still available.
there are plenty of "honestly-pretty-good reasons" we plebs shouldn't have access to general purpose computers, and we're only a few decades away from them reclassified into the equivalent of fully automatic rifles.
> Sadly, over the years, Android has been steadily walking back that openness. The justifications are always reasonable on their face. Security updates need to be mandatory because users are terrible at remembering to update. Sideloading apps need to come with warnings because users will absolutely install malware if you let them just click a button. Root access is too dangerous because it puts the security of the wh…
It's particularly hard to swallow these justifications when advanced by Google considering how much malware there is on the Play Store. I have never once had an issue with malware installed via F-Droid but have had multiple issues with apps from the Play Store. But apparently it's F-Droid I need to be protected from. (Granted, the Play Store malware I experienced was in the nature of "pop up ads on your phone randoml…
The one word answer to this? Linux.
> Sadly, over the years, Android has been steadily walking back that openness. The justifications are always reasonable on their face. Security updates need to be mandatory because users are terrible at remembering to update. Sideloading apps need to come with warnings because users will absolutely install malware if you let them just click a button. Root access is too dangerous because it puts the security of the wh…
The security argument is the best one to shove all this monopoly practices, but I doubt there are real proof of that somewhere. These days, I think I have most trust in a small app developed by a folk in a garage than something produces by Meta or Google
> Sadly, over the years, Android has been steadily walking back that openness. The justifications are always reasonable on their face. Security updates need to be mandatory because users are terrible at remembering to update. Sideloading apps need to come with warnings because users will absolutely install malware if you let them just click a button. Root access is too dangerous because it puts the security of the wh…
Exactly: smartphones and tablets are designated safe spaces for 'normies'. If you want to do serious computing, serious machines (laptops, desktops, servers) are still available.
Then I have raspberry pi and steam deck which I use for messing around with and running whatever weird software.
> Sadly, over the years, Android has been steadily walking back that openness. The justifications are always reasonable on their face. Security updates need to be mandatory because users are terrible at remembering to update. Sideloading apps need to come with warnings because users will absolutely install malware if you let them just click a button. Root access is too dangerous because it puts the security of the wh…
When the software on these locked down devices breaks down, and it does, everyone is helpless.
When a zero day is found, again everyone is helpless.
If we cannot understand how something works on all layers, stability and security are only promises.
> Sadly, over the years, Android has been steadily walking back that openness. The justifications are always reasonable on their face. Security updates need to be mandatory because users are terrible at remembering to update. Sideloading apps need to come with warnings because users will absolutely install malware if you let them just click a button. Root access is too dangerous because it puts the security of the wh…
If this was genuinely about security and UX then they would continue to provide viable "escape hatches", but it isn't and so they don't. That's what's being criticized.