F-Droid version of KDEConnect uninstalled by PlayProtect • Hacker News Board

Re: F-Droid version of KDEConnect uninstalled by PlayProtect

#141

Post by wkat4242 » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 10:03 PM UTC

2Gkashmiri wrote: post #125

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m saying that, if people who use it aren’t careful, they could end up like the university kid. There was a university that received a bomb threat over Tor. They found one student who used Tor on the network at around the right time, and because he was the only Tor user, he’s in jail for a very, very long time. That kid was at Harvard, his persuer the FBI. If you are going to use GrapheneOS, don’t be naive and think…

I remember seeing that news on arstechnica or some tech publication I was following at the time. It actually put a little fear in me because I look around and not a lot of internet users in my small hell hole of an open prison I call home and i was like "dude. You're like a alert beacon screaming here is a tor user, check him out". I was using tor at the time and that is the last day I used it because this use case f…

I always connect to tor over VPN first for this reason. But I guess it makes me even more suspicious lol

Re: F-Droid version of KDEConnect uninstalled by PlayProtect

#142

Post by wkat4242 » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 10:06 PM UTC

grishka wrote: post #42

Related to this, I really dislike how Google Play acts like it owns your device. Installing an apk? Hey, I'm Google Play, I exist, how about turning Play Protect on?

I agree but millions of users are ok with Tim Cook deciding what they may use on their own phone. We're so screwed.

Re: F-Droid version of KDEConnect uninstalled by PlayProtect

#143

Post by creatonez » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 10:26 PM UTC

tortoise_in wrote: post #73

HansHamster wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LineageOS unfortunately dropped support for my Moto G4 relatively quickly after I installed it and it only was supported up to Android 7.1. I have been running an unofficial build of 8.1 ever since, but that is also horribly outdated by now.

Dude buy something new

Moto G4 was released in 2016, only 7 years ago.

Re: F-Droid version of KDEConnect uninstalled by PlayProtect

#144

Post by dessant » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 10:28 PM UTC

Zambyte wrote: post #70

ensignavenger wrote: post #52

Happened to me, I had to disable Play Protect scanning... interestingly, in ghe deacription in Android settings, it claims Play Protect will scan and WARN, not remove, apps. That is clearly a lie.

My phone forces me to reject "Play Protect" every single time I want to install an app. If I have to explicitly reject it more than once, it is obviously malware. Once is already arguable.

The constant nagging when you tell Google "no" shows how little respect they have for their users. Messages by Google, which is primarily an SMS app, is asking me every 1-2 weeks to enable RCS chats. The link for declining the request is small and easy to miss, while the AGREE button below it takes up 25% of the area of the popup.

Dear Google UX designers, the way you present your little "decline" links is illegal in the EU. I'm sure you've got these design directives from a product manager, but you can still say "no" to breaking the law.

Re: F-Droid version of KDEConnect uninstalled by PlayProtect

#145

Post by gerdesj » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 10:32 PM UTC

Brian_K_White wrote: post #127

throwaway914 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only acceptable phone for me has been a Pixel phone, with GrapheneOS installed. I do wish the permission to install/uninstall were separated for something like this (I may be naive). I have everything installed to a work profile in Android (using the Shelter app). I can globally pause all work-profile apps. It's not the best, because when unpaused I'm not getting some notifications. I need to figure that out.

Graphene is not acceptable either, since it requires putting trust in someone who does not exibit enough stability or rationality to justify that kind of trust. I mean it's only the keys to your whole life, no big.

"I mean it's only the keys to your whole life, no big."

It's a telephone, with a computer on it in your pocket with a shit load of sensors. The computer part involves components from many parts of the world, with many opaque subsystems. The OS is sort of Linux with knobs on and a lot of opaque parts - the first layer "belongs" to a prolific ad slinger hell bent on knowing everything about you. Then if it isn't a Google jobbie, it will have another layer of software, lots more shiny and a lot more data gathering (eg Xiomi/Samsung/whatevs). Then your "TSP" gets to put their spin on it. All three layers can sell out to eg MS for yet more data gathering and ads and profiling and so on.

Apple does the same but manages to be layers 1 and 2 and be a bit cooler about the whole thing.

You worry about Graphene?

I don't advocate for full Luddite (I run an IT company) but please get some perspective. If you are concerned about Graphene, I suggest a burner feature phone or smoke signals.

EDIT: I have F-Droid and KDE Connect wired up to both of my Arch (actually) boxes on my Samsung Invasive Intruder ... sorry Galaxy S23. I'll try switching out the Play version of Connect for the F-Droid one and see what happens.

Re: F-Droid version of KDEConnect uninstalled by PlayProtect

#146

Post by eks391 » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 10:32 PM UTC

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #139

eks391 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is precisely one of the perks of rooting. Unless you mean as a right, without needing to root? I'd disagree (from a corporate/warranty perspective), but I'll bite

> This is precisely one of the perks of rooting. Rather, it's a benefit of an unlocked bootloader; you can root a device with a locked bootloader, and you can use an unlocked bootloader to install an unrooted OS (or, for that matter, you can unlock the bootloader without rooting, depending on the device). > Unless you mean as a right, without needing to root? I'd disagree (from a corporate/warranty perspective), but…

> otherwise there's no reason for modifying software to affect a warranty on hardware.

I think you bring up a really good point. Except for extreme cases, such as a software that is designed to be self destructive on the physical components in which it resides, the hardware should mostly be unaffected by the software. Mostly that some components get used more or less than they were before, changing efficiency of some functions. Then we get into the grey area of whether or not the unorthodox use of components caused damage.

> if the manufacturer can show that damage resulted from the user modifying the device then fine

Here you are putting the burden of proof on the manufacturer, which seems a little unfair. If anyone can make a complaint (make use of warranty), and you the manufacturer are guilty as charged automatically unless you can prove the software caused the damage, then there will be an insurmountable amount of work to thoroughly review all software not sourced from one of your already-vetted approved sources.

Then again, if burden of proof falls on the accuser (warranty holder), it is a catch-22 because you can't prove that a software is without any issues. Companies are constantly creating patches not because they intentionally want to have a fault until x day, but because they genuinely thought the software was good until y vulnerability was found/exploited.

I think this is why companies take the 'any usage outside these specific approved usages voids the warranty' approach. In application to this conversation, this means while you may change your OS, it doesn't shock me that a manufacturer wants to keep their hands away from those consumers

Re: F-Droid version of KDEConnect uninstalled by PlayProtect

#147

Post by Brian_K_White » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 10:38 PM UTC

meristohm wrote: post #87

HansHamster wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why waste the money? I intend to use this thing until it breaks...

Same here. I've benefited from hand me down devices for a long time, and I wish I could still be using the Samsung S3- so light, I have several spare batteries, it fit in most pockets, and it has a 3.5mm headphone jack. The iPhone SE from 2015 that recently I gave to one of my parents was nice, too. My laptop is also from more than a decade ago, and I'm happily running LMDE 6 on it.

This is all correct and valid.

Everyone doesn't have to live like this, but it's utterly valid, and no one has any right or justification to try to tell anyone else not to.

I can buy anything any time, but I miss swappable batteries, headphone jack, sd card. These were all basic utility features than made a device interoperable and more generally functional. Removing them only benefits the people selling new phones, wireless headphones, and cloud storage.

My old vaio 3 laptops ago is actually still perfectly fast enough at what I do today, it just only has usb2 ports, which eventually became too big of a pain point. But it also had a real docking station that you plop the machine into, not the stupid "docks" we have today that are not docks but just mega-dongle-hubs where you connect a usbc cable. I miss that dock every day since 5 years ago. I could easily still be using it today even though it must be 15 years old or more by now. And if I were, no one else would have any justification for trying to say that I shouldn't, and no software or service provider would have any justification for artificially creating some incompatibility that only serves their goals instead of mine.

Re: F-Droid version of KDEConnect uninstalled by PlayProtect

#148

Post by gerdesj » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 10:48 PM UTC

gerdesj wrote: post #145

Brian_K_White wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Graphene is not acceptable either, since it requires putting trust in someone who does not exibit enough stability or rationality to justify that kind of trust. I mean it's only the keys to your whole life, no big.

"I mean it's only the keys to your whole life, no big." It's a telephone, with a computer on it in your pocket with a shit load of sensors. The computer part involves components from many parts of the world, with many opaque subsystems. The OS is sort of Linux with knobs on and a lot of opaque parts - the first layer "belongs" to a prolific ad slinger hell bent on knowing everything about you. Then if it isn't a Goog…

I go into F-Droid and search for "connect". The product page says I updated it 15 days ago and offers an Uninstall option. It shows 1.29.0 as the latest version. So far it looks like a second package manager working properly.

I hit Uninstall and within a few seconds the button switches to Install.

I hit install and the app is installed from F-Droid. I open it and pair my phone to my laptop.

One data point. Perhaps a knob has been twiddled in the Chocolate Factory in response to this article. There are a lot of Googlers here.

(EDIT: formatting)

EDIT2:

I've gone into the Play app and got Play Protect to scan apps: "No harmful apps found". KDE Connect is still working

Re: F-Droid version of KDEConnect uninstalled by PlayProtect

#149

Post by berdario » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 10:49 PM UTC

dessant wrote: post #144

Zambyte wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My phone forces me to reject "Play Protect" every single time I want to install an app. If I have to explicitly reject it more than once, it is obviously malware. Once is already arguable.

The constant nagging when you tell Google "no" shows how little respect they have for their users. Messages by Google, which is primarily an SMS app, is asking me every 1-2 weeks to enable RCS chats. The link for declining the request is small and easy to miss, while the AGREE button below it takes up 25% of the area of the popup. Dear Google UX designers, the way you present your little "decline" links is illegal in…

I dislike how there's no complete open source RCS implementation, and after trying it out a few years ago, I now actively avoid it (I instead use QKSMS on Android)...

But I don't see the problem with the decline link and EU law?

AFAIK, most EU regulations are about tracking and consent in using your information...

In this case, you're already using a Google product (the Messages app), and Google is just (aggressively) nudging you to use extra features that they have shipped in their app. It doesn't follow that Google is definitely going to use more information to track you than it would've done before (though it could be possible, of course)

...of course, I fully agree that this doesn't embody their "respect the user" ethos, but frankly... If you worked on new features for your users, I think it's fair to nudge them to try to make sure that what you worked on will end up benefitting them (of course, a company behaves differently than an individual, and it's not guaranteed that the work done might actually have merit... But that's orthogonal to this discussion)

Re: F-Droid version of KDEConnect uninstalled by PlayProtect

#150

Post by npteljes » Sat, Oct 14, 2023, 10:54 PM UTC

BlueTemplar wrote: post #29

neilv wrote: post #2

One way to be a little less constantly violated by your phone is to run GrapheneOS, instead of iOS or ordinary Android: https://grapheneos.org/

It's still based on Android though - so isn't it building on sand ? Isn't it better to focus our efforts on projects unrelated to Android, especially since some viable ones have appeared recently : Librem 5 and especially PinePhone.

It's the regulation that should focus on creating the foundations of alternative systems, not the phone manufacturers. If a bank doesn't have a website, or a govt app doesn't have a website equivalent, then Librem & co is already out of the picture, from the everyday usability standpoint. To provide the citizens freedoms, service providers need to be forced to use open standards, like HTTP & HTML, to serve an standard interface that has all the necessary functionality. No matter how many grassroots initiatives we have, if this is not provided, they are automatically all out of the race.

So really, if anything, I'd like people to focus on regulation.