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Samsung embeds IronSource spyware app on phones across WANA

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Re: Samsung embeds IronSource spyware app on phones across WANA

#481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a lot of bad, but GPS maps (Google Maps for business reviews and public transport info and OSMAnd for hiking tracks) is extremely valuable to someone who travels a lot. And as much as I hate sending all the data to Google, their Translate app is indispensable for communicating in non-English speaking countries.

Marble-QT works fine for OSM maps on Linux, if you run gpsd you can even use a GPS receiver and have the pin move around with you, I used this to help survey some land I bought recently. Google Maps's search/review works fine on the web, I'd imagine the experience is probably nicer on the web than mobile. Qwen and gemma both run locally on Linux and are excellent for translation.

That's good to hear. I've been meaning to see how far I can get using a setup like that. What device do you use?

Re: Samsung embeds IronSource spyware app on phones across WANA

#482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brother you cannot be serious with this racist take

is it racist to wonder why I rarely see a chinese restaurant with inspection score above 80? culture differences are a real thing (if you don't have your head buried in the sand that is).

Depends on what you attribute the score to.

I've worked in many restaurants and a lot of the health scores are stacked against ethnic restaurants and how they prepare foods.

Your score gets knocked down if you have soups simmering for too long, but in Chinese cuisine it's often times common to have the broth cooking for more than 12 hours.

Re: Samsung embeds IronSource spyware app on phones across WANA

#483
post #8

The "unremovable" part is inaccurate. While you can't completely remove it because it resides on the system partition, you most probably can still disable it with an adb command: adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.package.name This command is very powerful as it works for any app, even those that have "disable" greyed out in the settings. I disabled the Galaxy Store on my S9 this way for example.

This does not work on all phones. Some OEMs (like Motorola) leverage the 'nodisable' feature to prevent this and other APKs from being disabled. On my 2025 Motorola RAZR 5G, in /product/etc/nondisable are a series of XML files listing carrier and activation apps for Dish Wireless, Tracfone/Verizon Value, T-Mobile, the Amazon App Manager, and two apps provided for finance providers PayJoy (who lock and disable phones…

These affect the "disable" button and the "pm disable" command, I believe. The "uninstall" command can't be prevented from working to my knowledge.

But then I haven't had any experience with carrier phones. We just don't do that where I live, all phones are sold unlocked for full price and all plans are prepaid.

Re: Samsung embeds IronSource spyware app on phones across WANA

#484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Changing from SK to CN is a trade from intentional vulnerability to unintentional vulnerability. I’ve yet to see a secure piece of software come out of China in my 30+ years of coding.

Supermicro IPMI comes to mind. If it was compromised we would have known by now.

Many vendor IPMI is so fiendishly hard to isolate from untrusted networks (or even networks in general) that it almost has to be an intentional backdoor.

Re: Samsung embeds IronSource spyware app on phones across WANA

#485
post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wut? Besides that you can uninstall whatever you don't want or even replace the operating system with a bare android or whatever else you want, you're forgetting about Fairphone, Murena, and probably others. I had an apple phone for work once and it's not like it doesn't come with a lot of bloat preinstalled and tries to get your permission to snitch on where you are and what you do. It has toggles for some of the th…

Just an example. WhatsApp on Android force me to give it the contact permission. Without it, I can’t write to someone or call. On iPhone, I can use the app without giving it the permission because if meta were to put up the same bullshit, they would get their app rejected from the store. Now, you say you can install barebones Android ? Ever tried it ? It suck, lineageos and other have security issue, often poor batte…

> Without it, I can’t write to someone or call.

It works just fine with OpenContacts.

Re: Samsung embeds IronSource spyware app on phones across WANA

#486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marble-QT works fine for OSM maps on Linux, if you run gpsd you can even use a GPS receiver and have the pin move around with you, I used this to help survey some land I bought recently. Google Maps's search/review works fine on the web, I'd imagine the experience is probably nicer on the web than mobile. Qwen and gemma both run locally on Linux and are excellent for translation.

That's good to hear. I've been meaning to see how far I can get using a setup like that. What device do you use?

I use a gpd win max2. I think they have a smaller device with an optional built-in LTE card now although it has worse battery life (this one isn't great.)

In retrospect I think I would have preferred something with a small celleron CPU to the AMD.

Re: Samsung embeds IronSource spyware app on phones across WANA

#487
post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Putin didn't want bribery to go rampant he would set the example, and force other top leaders to do the same, but instead he flaunts his properties, yats, women that he enjoys; but it's probably a price too high for him to pay. I bet Xi Ping enjoys similar privileges but in much more private manner.

if you think you can stop bribery in communism regime then i have some news for you

Russia is not a communist country (anymore).

Re: Samsung embeds IronSource spyware app on phones across WANA

#488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, online banking has been a thing for so long on PCs which never had that kind of remote attestation. I also do not believe the security argument, but I believe that the banks believe it.

Online banking doesn't need remote attestation. Some additional locked down hardware with its own minimal display is enough. My banks force me to use devices like those made by Kobil or ReinerSCT.

I didn't know about these, but I think they look great. I am not against locking down hardware if that hardware has a very specific and tailor-made purpose for security, and this seems like a really good and fairly cheap solution. I wish my government offered them as an alternative.

You could also imagine having them integrated directly into the phone, but with a physically separated button or fingerprint reader to authenticate. The TAN generator could even have the ability to override the display to replicate the UX of authenticator apps.

Re: Samsung embeds IronSource spyware app on phones across WANA

#489
post #315
post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 30 milligrams of high explosive is enough to open your daughter's skull, or, more relevantly, your commanding officer's daughter's skull, and there are a thousand ways to deliver it While we are talking about flying drones, we are not far off from Slaughterbots becoming reality.[0] Why bother with surgical assassinations if you can blanket entire regions with with swarms of autonomous seek-and-destroy explosives? A…

>After all, as last two years have so amply demonstrated: people are fine with genocide. Last two years? Try last few decades at the very least. People only care about the war in Gaza more because it's controversial. For non-controversial cases people just agree it's bad but shrug their shoulders. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…

In many European countries people do care about the Bosnian genocide - I mean the geographical distance is not that far from where they live.

This also explains the more prevalent ignorance concerning the other two genocides of your list: they are simply for away from the place the respective person lives.

Re: Samsung embeds IronSource spyware app on phones across WANA

#490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Oh you like phones? Well our phone companies require us to directly or indirectly create proxy wars in this region in order to acquire the raw materials necessary. I think that is the will of the masses. I've got this fairphone in my pocket that has a replaceable cobalt-free battery and a replaceable OS for a reasonable price. But people by-and-large don't want fairphones, they want iphones. The third worlders fight…

> The third worlders fighting over cobalt don't want peace, they want wealth for themselves. They are enabled into fighting by big, huge interests. They ship them weapons and rationales. Who are the customers in the end? Western nations. They create the abject poverty, they use poor governments to exploit and enslave their own people. There is no "poverty" in the world only exploitation. All poverty is fabricated and…

>They are enabled into fighting by big, huge interests. They ship them weapons and rationales.

Weapons and rationales don't fight wars themselves (yet).

>Why is it that Mali is one of the poorest nations on earth but is also one of the top 10 exporters of gold? How does that work?

Gold is just a shiny rock. No one needs gold to survive and it has few industrial uses. If your only asset is a resource like that, you are going to be stuck digging it out of the ground and trading it for everything else you need (including protection).

The wealthiest nations in the world are industrious. Not those built on top of some natural resource that they are incapable of defending- that's a recipe for instability. Look at taiwan, japan, ukraine, even isreal. These little nations can leverage greater nations to fight on their behalf by using their industrial capability, even when they are surrounded by enemies. The "divide and conquer" principle is not only used by larger nations to control smaller nations, but also by smaller nations in dealing with larger nations.

>Capitalism is not voluntarism. That is the myth of philosophical liberalism.

>To say that someone who owns as much wealth as a few million people is equal to those same millions of persons who directly own nothing except credit(debt)? It's a myth.

You are conflating voluntarism and democracy. Capitalism is voluntaristic, but democratic insofar as wealth is well-distributed.

>The "silent majority" has no real way to speak.

You vote with your dollar. Most people in the USA are not willing to pay for the premium associated with ethical production. Hence, iphones dominate while fairphones lag behind. You see this everywhere you go. At the supermarket, there is a premium associated with organic foods. Actions speak louder than words.

>IE. The majority of people dont want to use plastic materials for anything related to their consumption. But plastic is cheap and easy to produce. I'm sure that if given a choice people would rather their society work a bit more, spend a bit more of human-energy if it means we dont have nuts full of microplastics.

I would make this tradeoff, but I wouldn't be so sure others would, in the large. There are some things that only plastics can do, so it would be a slippery slope of what applications would be allowable.

>It is how we produce that determines what choices we have, and how we produce is determined by market dynamics which are reduced to sustainability of production and profits. It is profits that determines production, not consumers' will

>So tell me: if we dont directly control the options we have, but you say we are making a choice, what is that?

The only way you could directly control the options you have is by producing goods and services yourself. Farm your own food, build your own smartphone. The economies of scale and capital costs are not a result of any specific economic system, they are often the result of the realities of production and logistics. These tradeoffs exist even within communist command economies.

The only difference is that in capitalism, it is voluntaristic enough that you have the ability to choose what you do with your own wealth and time. You can affect change gradually, on a small scale.

>I dont want child soldiers killing for control over resources or kids mining for 12 hours a day, I want a good, cheap phone. It is not the same.

Then buy a fairphone or something. You have some options.

>In capitalism the heads of production and their profits determine the directions of our societies.

If you don't buy their product, then it won't be profitable. Boycotts are an effective political tool. Divide and conquer!

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