Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah it's the judge.
I think you missed the point that judges aren't part of the legislative branch. They're in the judicial branch.
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Android developer verification: Early access starts
601–610 of 694 posts
Re: Android developer verification: Early access starts
#602Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In most cases, F-Droid couldn't know either. A developer transferring their accounts and private keys to someone else is not easily detected. 1. The Android OS does not allow installing app updates if the new APK uses a different signing key than the existing one. It will outright refuse, and this works locally on device. There's no need to ask some third party server to verify anything. It's a fundamental part of…
You have to trust somebody. Who is F-Droid? Why should I trust them? How do I know they aren’t infiltrated by TLAs? (Three Letter Agencies), or outright bad-actors. Didn’t F-Droid have 20 or so apps that contained known vulnerabilities back in 2022? Who are all these people? Why should I trust them, and why do most of them have no link to a bio or repository, or otherwise no way to verify they are who they say they a…
I trust them, at least a lot more than I do Google, which is a known bad actor, and collaborator with "TLAs". F-Droid has been around for a very long time, if you didn't know. They've built and earned the trust people have in them today.
> Didn’t F-Droid have 20 or so apps that contained known vulnerabilities back in 2022?
Idk what specific incident you're referring to, but since they build apks themselves in an automated way, if a security patch to an app breaks the build, that needs to be fixed before the update can go out (by F-Droid volunteers, usually). In that case, F-Droid will warn about the app having known unpatched vulnerabilities.
Again, this is above and beyond what Google does in their store. Google Play probably has more malware apps than F-Droid has lines of code in its entire catalog.
Re: Android developer verification: Early access starts
#603Earlier quoted context omitted.
eh, think this is a bit much to ask. Are we going to educate a majority of the baby boomers who just never got a feel for how technology works? Yeah, my Dad also just got scammed by a phishing scheme on his PC (and if a scammer had walked him through how to install an apk on his phone, he'd probably do that too). In my humble opinion, in the design of a UI or any type of system, kind of have to go where the users tak…
Should we ban refilling your own cars oil because some idots keep filling coolant into it? I worked in IT support and I am deeply aware with the issues people are having. Some issues are systemic (aka bad design) and those should be fixed. Other issues are human. It may not seem like it, but I have the patience of an angel, because I remember when computers where new to me. I like people to understand. Understanding…
Well, yeah, everything has limits and this issue seems like a very practical one. Seems like it depends on how much work would be needed to teach the user base, which, at least to me, feels out of reach. As your being in IT, you may agree that teaching a large majority of 60+ year-olds standard things on something like Windows is difficult and extremely slow. Feels like it would take at least a month of dedicated training, where they are full on board. Having helped my older friends out, don't see that happening anytime soon (a half hour here and there is all they seem willing to do).
But you know, if there is a method that you know that can teach the masses these skills, then am all for it (maybe barrage them with youtube commercials teaching basic tech skills?:)
Re: Android developer verification: Early access starts
#604Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can sideload, I mean INSTALL, software on any linux desktop. Yet there are still tons of people saying that desktop linux has gotten good enough for most of everyone's grandma to daily-drive.
When everyone's Grandma is running Linux then the Indian scammers will know how to trick Grandma into thinking dmesg spam is "a virus" and just install this totally-not-malware, just like they do with the windows event viewer. In other words, it's not any quality of Linux other than how niche it is.
It's an excellent example of the fruitlessness of technical solutions to people problems. Some people are just destined to get scammed, and it isn't worth throwing away General Purpose Computing to try to help them. Be present in Grandma's life and she won't be desperate to trust the nice man on the phone just to have someone to talk to. If it weren't this it would be iTunes gift cards, or Your Vehicle's Extended Warranty, or any number of other avenues.
Re: Android developer verification: Early access starts
#605Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In most cases, F-Droid couldn't know either. A developer transferring their accounts and private keys to someone else is not easily detected. 1. The Android OS does not allow installing app updates if the new APK uses a different signing key than the existing one. It will outright refuse, and this works locally on device. There's no need to ask some third party server to verify anything. It's a fundamental part of…
> F-Droid compiles all APKs on its store, and signs them with its own keys. Apps on F-Droid are not signed by the developers of those apps. They're signed by F-Droid, and thus can only be updated through and by F-Droid. F-Droid does not just distribute APKs uploaded by random people, it distributes APKs that F-Droid compiled themselves. For most programs I use, they just publishing the developer's built (and signed)…
Can you give some examples? I've heard that's a thing, but I'm not familiar with any apps that actually pull it off (reproducible builds are difficult to achieve)
Re: Android developer verification: Early access starts
#606From the very first announcement of this, Google has hinted that they were doing this under pressure from the governments in a few countries. (I don't remember the URL of the first announcement, but https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/08/elevating-... is from 2025-August-25 and mentions “These requirements go into effect in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand”.) The “Why verification is important” s…
I don't buy this argument at all that this specific implementation is under pressure from the government - if the problem is indeed malware getting access to personal data, then the very obvious solution is to ensure that such personal data is not accessible by apps in the first place! Why should apps have access to a user's SMS / RCS? (Yeah, I know it makes onboarding / verification easy and all, if an app can acces…
>Why should apps have access to a user's SMS / RCS?
can you imagine the outrage from all the exact same people who are currently outraged about develeloper verification if google said they were cutting off any third-party app access to SMS/RCS?
Re: Android developer verification: Early access starts
#607Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, it's all about control. Control the platform. Control the access to the platform, and the world is your oyster. And the political and legislation system are their friends. It is the establishment. The only way to fight is to indoctrinate the next generation, at home, and in school, to use FOSS. People tend to stick to whatever they used in childhood. We the software engineers should volunteer in giving speeches…
Really its probably the dumbass judge that told Google "The apple app store isn't anti-competitive because they don't allow any competitors on their platform" when google asked why the play store was ruled a monopoly and the app store wasn't. I cannot think of a more detached and idiotic ruling than that.
Hmm, having read that, I am starting to sympathize with Google if they are going to be punished for being open.
No one seems to care that Apple has never allowed freedom on their devices. Even the comments here don't seem to mention it. Google was at least open for a while.
Or maybe no one mentions it just because the closed iPhone is a fait accompli at this point.
Re: Android developer verification: Early access starts
#608Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not a win. This is having independent distribution shut down and controlled. We no longer own our devices. We're in a worse state than we were in before. Google is becoming a dictator like Apple.
It's not being shut down though. The article says that there will be a way to install unverified apps.
You'll have to sign if you wish to distribute. That's an easy way for them to control you.
Re: Android developer verification: Early access starts
#609Re: Android developer verification: Early access starts
#610Earlier quoted context omitted.
> F-Droid compiles all APKs on its store, and signs them with its own keys. Apps on F-Droid are not signed by the developers of those apps. They're signed by F-Droid, and thus can only be updated through and by F-Droid. F-Droid does not just distribute APKs uploaded by random people, it distributes APKs that F-Droid compiled themselves. For most programs I use, they just publishing the developer's built (and signed)…
Can you give some examples? I've heard that's a thing, but I'm not familiar with any apps that actually pull it off (reproducible builds are difficult to achieve)
Reproducible builds may be hard to achieve, but that doesn't mean you don't have a list of such builds long enough to crash your browser: https://verification.f-droid.org/verified.html