51–60 of 185 posts
I'm already banned from publishing Android apps through Google, but apart from that, what would stop me making a server you can upload any app to and sign it with my certificate?
While it is technically feasible, it is not a good idea to try and find a technical solution to a people/organisation problem. Do not accept the premise of assholes. I hope we can get the EU to fund a truly open Android Fork. Maybe under some organisation similar to NL Labs. --- edit --- Furthermore, the need for a trustworthy binary to be auditable to a certain hash or something would make banning this a simple task…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can use any country's SIM card in any other country, regardless of its registration status.
… if you have roaming coverage. And even in that case, doing this for a long period of time violates most roaming policies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_roaming_regulat...
I think this means we need to rely on web technologies more. PWAs are looking pretty good on mobile devices these days and you can publish any web app you want with no reviewing authority. The web has a bunch of crazy APIs now that let you build crazy things and for everything else you're a hosted server away somewhere that can run more complex jobs. I believe devices I own should let me do whatever I want with them…
I thought Brent Simmons did a great job laying out why PWAs don't work: https://inessential.com/2025/10/04/why-netnewswire-is-not-we... The tl;dr is that a PWA implies an app which is based in the cloud. So suddenly you need a server, and you need to store user data, which means costs and dealing with privacy and security.
If something could be built as a native app without depending on a central server, it could also be built as a PWA without a central server. You don't need to store user data centrally at all, just because it's a webapp. You can just have the clients use localStorage or IndexedDB or whatever.
You still have to host the static files for the webapp itself, but that can be made very cheap.
Of course, API feature parity between native and web apps is a separate issue. But the argument about server costs doesn't seem like a good one.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought Brent Simmons did a great job laying out why PWAs don't work: https://inessential.com/2025/10/04/why-netnewswire-is-not-we... The tl;dr is that a PWA implies an app which is based in the cloud. So suddenly you need a server, and you need to store user data, which means costs and dealing with privacy and security.
That explanation doesn't really make sense to me. If something could be built as a native app without depending on a central server, it could also be built as a PWA without a central server. You don't need to store user data centrally at all, just because it's a webapp. You can just have the clients use localStorage or IndexedDB or whatever. You still have to host the static files for the webapp itself, but that can…
While it is technically feasible, it is not a good idea to try and find a technical solution to a people/organisation problem. Do not accept the premise of assholes. I hope we can get the EU to fund a truly open Android Fork. Maybe under some organisation similar to NL Labs. --- edit --- Furthermore, the need for a trustworthy binary to be auditable to a certain hash or something would make banning this a simple task…
What's wrong with lineage?
Edit: Google could ultimately use that as a lever in licensing deals with manufacturers. It'd marginalize everything.
While it is technically feasible, it is not a good idea to try and find a technical solution to a people/organisation problem. Do not accept the premise of assholes. I hope we can get the EU to fund a truly open Android Fork. Maybe under some organisation similar to NL Labs. --- edit --- Furthermore, the need for a trustworthy binary to be auditable to a certain hash or something would make banning this a simple task…
The same EU that's doing Chat Control?
I think this means we need to rely on web technologies more. PWAs are looking pretty good on mobile devices these days and you can publish any web app you want with no reviewing authority. The web has a bunch of crazy APIs now that let you build crazy things and for everything else you're a hosted server away somewhere that can run more complex jobs. I believe devices I own should let me do whatever I want with them…
I'd imagine Google would plug any major holes in their soon to be closed garden, assuming that is their intention. So this and any other fix to the problem of 'install app through not-Google Play' that goes via technical means that Google can just cover up after a month or two doesn't actually move the needle any meaningful amount.
In the same vein, using adb isn't a real solution to that same problem for most people, since having to use adb is a massive jump in required effort that's going to leave all the normies behind, with only the super-dedicated willing to go through the hassle, and an equivalent amount of developer effort is going to be left behind as well, since their audience just got decimated, and they themselves might not even bother to develop something that even their dad or sister is going to bother/be able to install. Anything that's much more complicated than 'go to website, download thing, run thing, click your way through' doesn't solve for this.
The actual problem is to have Google not be knobheads about it, and the only way that's realistically going to happen is through the law, but that's not looking all that likely in my view.