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What we talk about when we talk about sideloading

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Re: What we talk about when we talk about sideloading

#611

Post by volemo »

volemo wrote: post #556
fsflover wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not comparable to an iPhone but good enough to be a daily driver for technical people like the HN audience. Yet the latter never even mentions it saying there are no options, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45589096

> good enough to be a daily driver Are they, though? I don’t think I’m the most demanding user [1], but a $2000 phone with 4 & 128 GB, a 720×1440 TFT, and no NFC? I guess I don't want my freedom that much. (Although USB 3.0 w/ DP is a very nice addition.) That’s not to mention the general bulkiness and the fact that, afaiu, the software doesn't support either Bluetooth or GPS — which are the most important functions…

I've spent the day revisiting this issue, and, after some research, I think my next phone will be Fairphone 5 with Ubuntu Touch. It's not perfect — too big for my taste and not waterproof — and I'll need a couple of weeks of trial use before fully committing. However, I really believe it could be not just my phone for the next five years but also an ad-hoc mobile workstation running a more or less usable Linux.

If anyone has experience with this setup, ideas, or suggestions, I would be glad to hear you out (if you are here after the comment section is closed, drop me an email, address is in the bio).

Re: What we talk about when we talk about sideloading

#612

Post by godelski »

grishka wrote: post #601
godelski wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but many people never registered. Which leads to things not getting patched, more bugs, and more computers getting hacked. A great system... I'll also add that if it was a big enough bug that it'd end up on the news and that's how people got informed. Otherwise, like you suggest, good luck. But it was possible. It is baffling to me that we are having this conversation on Hacker News of all places. Aren't we a commu…

> How in the world does any programmer think for a hot second that code is bug free? If you stop bloating the scope of your product by endlessly adding features no one ever asked for, you'll eventually run out of bugs. Also, while it does not make you "omniscient", working with a known stack instead of following fashion does help a great deal with preventing bugs.

I agree that not expanding scope makes things easier but it doesn't solve the problem.

I also agree that knowing the stack goes a long way, but again, doesn't go all the way.

Omniscience is required, by definition. Even if just omniscience about the software you are building. MEANING you know not just all your lines, but all the lines of all the dependencies, the compiler, and the system it is operating on. I have yet to meet anyone that comes anywhere near approaching this knowledge, including many gray beards.

It is utterly foolish to proclaim your code as "bug free". Since you don't seem to be aware of sayings like "software rot" allow me to introduce to you to another one

  There's two types of programs:
  1) Those with bugs
  2) Those that nobody uses
In case it isn't obvious, the joke implies that all programs have bugs, it is just that developers are less likely to be aware of them when few people use them. This is, of course, because there are too many variables for any developer to account for, even in simple programs.

Re: What we talk about when we talk about sideloading

#613

Post by godelski »

grishka wrote: post #604
godelski wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We can come close to that in all other areas of engineering, but somehow not software? I worked as an Aerospace Engineer before I moved to software. What the absolute fuck are you talking about? Physically engineered stuff fails all the time. Look, March of * THIS YEAR* (2025) SpaceX had a rocket * EXPLODE* [0]. Rapid unscheduled disassembly[1] does not indicate we can "foresee all problems and fix all bugs". In fa…

> Look, March of THIS YEAR (2025) SpaceX had a rocket EXPLODE [0]. It's a Starship. It's still in development. It's not a finished product like Falcon. And it's not an unexpected outcome either — after all, SpaceX is doing something that no one has done before, so there does not exist any prior knowledge about the behavior of rockets this huge, and especially reusable. They aren't failing, they are making this knowle…

It was an illustrative example, but this is true for even things that are much more mundane. Maybe you'll come back and say that this is on builders or engineers taking shortcuts, but we could draw the analogy to programmers not using formal verification systems[0].

  > But then again, comparing rockets to software is unfair. Rockets have a finite scope.
You are literally talking to someone who worked in that space and now works in software. How confident are you that you know more about that space than someone with years of professional experience? I'll add that I also have a degree in physics. My shift to software was through modeling and simulation of engineering designs. I'm sorry, I think you are overestimating your knowledge about rocket science. I'm pretty sure even in Russia they have "it's not rocket science" (or some equivalent) jokes.

I promise you, your years of expertise in software makes you an expert in software, distinguishing you significantly from other experts. But I also promise you that this is true for any profession. Being an expert in physics doesn't make one automatically an expert in software. But the same is true in the other direction. You need to get your ego checked if you think differently.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_verification

Re: What we talk about when we talk about sideloading

#614

Post by AnthonyMouse »

kuhsaft wrote: post #608
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those are the PC versions of the games. They're not. People crack the console-exclusive versions of a game and then play them on a PC. > There is an incentive to jailbreak Xbox consoles as evident by the Xbox 360 jailbreak. The current Xbox shipped less than a third as many units as the 360. Of the top 10 highest selling consoles ever, the three newest are 8, 12 and 19 years old. Consoles are kind of dying in gener…

> People crack the console-exclusive versions of a game and then play them on a PC. Can you provide an example of a current Xbox One or PS5 exclusive that is available on PC? Why isn't Death Stranding 2, Ghost of Yotei, or Halo 5 available on PC? > Pirates are humans and humans are lazy so when it's easier to get the same game for free and run it on their PC they do that. So should we make it easier or harder to get…

> Can you provide an example of a current Xbox One or PS5 exclusive that is available on PC?

https://x.com/XWineOne/status/1884670205701374063

People make translation layers for the console APIs and then you can play whatever game as long as they've implemented the APIs it uses. It's certainly not because they can't get a copy of the game out of the console.

And then how long it takes depends on demand. If you needed to implement this to run half of all games, it happens fast. If it's for an unpopular console with few exclusives, it still happens, but takes longer.

> So should we make it easier or harder to get games for free?

The real question is, should you willingly enable the likes of Microsoft to insert themselves between you and your customers? Requiring one pirate to do a little extra work isn't worth losing 30% of your income.

> And game studios/publishers will start to demand trusted computing for Steam on Linux.

Which would be useless the same as it is on Windows.

> It's the same reason there's a Netflix app for Chrome OS, but not some random Linux distro. And why the Netflix app doesn't work in an Android Emulator.

Netflix works fine on Linux. It runs in a browser and uses some DRM nonsense that doesn't work any better than it does anywhere else but satisfies Netflix's contractual requirements to use some DRM nonsense. It would also work fine if they would stop requesting that because finding someone to supply you with snake oil when you demand it doesn't mean that snake oil actually works.

Re: What we talk about when we talk about sideloading

#615

Post by iggldiggl »

anticensor wrote: post #501

Why wouldn't F-Droid build their own playless Android fork where this is a non-issue?

Why waste time and duplicate the efforts of LineageOS? They've probably already got enough work maintaining F-Droid as it is, without having to add an additional Android fork (and never mind supporting a variety of devices) on top.

And at the same time, the target audience interested in installing a custom Android fork would be much smaller than the potential target audience for F-Droid in its current form.

(Also, for the time being, a much more minimally invasive and less resource-intensive approach would be some sort of Shizuku-like approach, i.e. using the ADB network interface originally intended for wireless debugging.)

Re: What we talk about when we talk about sideloading

#616

Post by kuhsaft »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #614
kuhsaft wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People crack the console-exclusive versions of a game and then play them on a PC. Can you provide an example of a current Xbox One or PS5 exclusive that is available on PC? Why isn't Death Stranding 2, Ghost of Yotei, or Halo 5 available on PC? > Pirates are humans and humans are lazy so when it's easier to get the same game for free and run it on their PC they do that. So should we make it easier or harder to get…

> Can you provide an example of a current Xbox One or PS5 exclusive that is available on PC? https://x.com/XWineOne/status/1884670205701374063 People make translation layers for the console APIs and then you can play whatever game as long as they've implemented the APIs it uses. It's certainly not because they can't get a copy of the game out of the console. And then how long it takes depends on demand. If you needed…

> https://x.com/XWineOne/status/1884670205701374063

> People make translation layers for the console APIs and then you can play whatever game as long as they've implemented the APIs it uses. It's certainly not because they can't get a copy of the game out of the console.

That's not a current Xbox One or PS5 exclusive. Peggle 2 is an Xbox 360 game. The game data on Xbox 360 discs can only be read from the Xbox 360 DVD drive. Xbox 360 was jailbroken so that the games can be extracted and downloaded from the discs. They can then be played for free on modified Xbox 360s or emulators.

Xbox One has yet to be jailbroken. PS4 and PS5 depend on the firmware version.

Every game shown by XWine1 has been a game that was on the 360 or also already available for PC.

> And then how long it takes depends on demand.

I'm sure some of the top selling exclusives on PlayStation and Xbox have had high demand to be played on PC.

> Which would be useless the same as it is on Windows.

It's only useless on Windows because Windows hasn't fully committed to trusted computing yet. The end goal is NGSCB (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next-Generation_Secure_Computi...).

> Netflix works fine on Linux. It runs in a browser and uses some DRM nonsense that doesn't work any better than it does anywhere else but satisfies Netflix's contractual requirements to use some DRM nonsense.

It works as intended. Free Linux can only decode Widevine L3, so you are limited to a lower quality stream. Chrome OS supports L1.

On Windows, Netflix uses PlayReady, and on Apple OSes it uses FairPlay.

Re: What we talk about when we talk about sideloading

#617

Post by palata »

godelski wrote: post #597
palata wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You must be relatively young. Did you read my comment at all? :-) > You had to take action to receive them. They weren’t automatic updates like they are today. Are you saying I was doing it wrong? > updates for Boeing 747s Oh I get it. Maybe we just weren't playing with the same toys :D

> Did you read my comment at all? :-) Did you read * MY* comment at all?! Everything @mechanicalpulse said was accurate. To answer @grishka's question (because it seems you also don't know) > What did that look like? Well I literally answered that in my comment! >>> Back when software came on physical media we still had patches. We had patches that came through the internet AND WE HAD PATCHES THAT CAME THROUGH PHYSIC…

I didn't say it was impossible to put a patch on a physical media.

I was saying that in my experience as a user, I never, EVER received a patch or got any mean to request one.

My point being that the expectation was that what I was buying was "finished". When there was a bug, FOR ME, it was there forever.

With modern software, I encounter so many bugs everyday that I don't even realise anymore. Look at someone using something that depends on software for a while (not very long), see how they work around bugs (by restarting the app, or retrying the button, or going through a different path). When they do one of those things (like retry), if you ask them "wait, what did you just do?", chances are that they won't even know that they had to retry because of a failure. Why? Because modern software fails constantly.

Code is never perfect, that's for sure. But back when it was hard to update, the code had to be a lot more stable than today.

Re: What we talk about when we talk about sideloading

#618

Post by pabs3 »

grishka wrote: post #601
godelski wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but many people never registered. Which leads to things not getting patched, more bugs, and more computers getting hacked. A great system... I'll also add that if it was a big enough bug that it'd end up on the news and that's how people got informed. Otherwise, like you suggest, good luck. But it was possible. It is baffling to me that we are having this conversation on Hacker News of all places. Aren't we a commu…

> How in the world does any programmer think for a hot second that code is bug free? If you stop bloating the scope of your product by endlessly adding features no one ever asked for, you'll eventually run out of bugs. Also, while it does not make you "omniscient", working with a known stack instead of following fashion does help a great deal with preventing bugs.

The problem is that the scope changes based on circumstances outside your control.

Re: What we talk about when we talk about sideloading

#619

Post by pabs3 »

necovek wrote: post #297
EvanAnderson wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So much this. I totally want security fixes, but I only want security fixes. I don't want UI changes, features removed or altered, or anything with my usability upset. My computing devices are tools I use to do my job and run my life. I don't want those tools changing without my consent.

Unfortunately, even for desktop software, this has shifted today: you can hardly get a security update without a feature upgrade too. Except in cases like Debian (or Ubuntu LTS main collection, Redhat distribution...) which assumes the burden of backporting security fixes to a stable collection of software.

Debian has exceptions too; for eg all mainstream browsers come with feature upgrades too, even in LTS/stable.

Re: What we talk about when we talk about sideloading

#620

Post by pabs3 »

erelong wrote: post #566

There's a lot of things to be said on these topics, it probably is worth trying to keep android "open" here, but there's also a lot of alternative routes to consider and in the long run I think maybe Android is a lost cause (?) to be abandoned The big alternative is mobile linux or linux mobile, which is akin to desktop linux in the 2000s maybe in lagging behind the competing operating systems. An influx of interest…

Librephone is mainly about reverse engineering firmware and other binary blobs, not creating new phones.

https://librephone.fsf.org/FAQ.html

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