If I install Android on a Raspberry PI do I still have this restriction?
Can I use FDroid?
Android developer verification: Early access starts
641–650 of 694 posts
Re: Android developer verification: Early access starts
#642Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're choosing the questions that have framing issues: > more than 50% of Americans believe there is at least some competition, or a lot of competition in every sector of the economy that would be relevant to this discussion. We're talking about Google and Apple but the relevant category would be "technology companies". Do phone platforms or mobile app distribution stores have "a lot of competition"? It's hard to se…
On the other hand, maybe if the railways weren’t broken up the USA might have been crisscrossed with high speed rail by now. Then we could argue how high speed rail would have been cheaper if the railways had been broken up. PS I appreciate your thoughtful response, and your contributions to HN more generally.
> On the other hand, maybe if the railways weren’t broken up the USA might have been crisscrossed with high speed rail by now.
Eh. The rails themselves are a natural monopoly in the same way roads are. It's one of the few things it makes sense to have the government build, or at least contract to have someone build, and then provide to everyone without restriction.
Meanwhile train cars and freight hauling and passenger service aren't any more of a natural monopoly than taxis or trucks. They get monopolized if someone is allowed to leverage a monopoly over the tracks into a monopoly over the rest of it, but that's unnecessary and undesirable. Separating them out allows the market that can be competitive to be competitive. Which is the same reason you don't want a tech monopoly leveraging it into control over ancillary markets that could otherwise be competitive.
There are two main reasons train service in the US is a shambles. The first is that the population density is too low, especially in the west. How many people do you expect to be riding a train from Boise to Des Moines on a regular basis? And the second is that truck drivers don't like freight rail, car companies don't like passenger rail and oil companies don't like either one, and they all lobby against anything that would make it better in the parts of the country where it could actually work. It's hard to make something good when there are millions of voters and billions of dollars trying to get it to suck.
Re: Android developer verification: Early access starts
#643Earlier quoted context omitted.
An update can become malicious even without change in permissions. E.g. my now perfectly fine QR reader already has access to camera (obvious), media (to read QR in an image file or photo) and network (enhanced security by on-demand checking the URL for me and showing OG etc so I can more informed choose to open the URL) But it could now start sending all my photo's to train an LLM or secretly make pictures of the in…
See that's what the intent system was originally designed to prevent. Your QR reader requires no media permission if it uses the standard file dialogs. Then it can only access files you select, during that session. Similarly for the camera. And in fact, it should have no network access whatsoever (and network should be a user controllable permission, as it used to be — the only reason that was removed is that people…
> See that's what the intent system was originally designed to prevent.
> Your QR reader requires no media permission if it uses the standard file dialogs. Then it can only access files you select, during that session.
On the one hand, yes, good point, but it runs into the usual problem with strict sandboxing – it works for the simple default use case, but as soon as you want to do more advanced stuff, offer a nicer UI, etc. etc. it breaks down.
E.g. barcode scanners – yes, technically you could send a media capture intent to ask the camera app to capture a single photo without needing the camera permission yourself, but then you run into the problem that maybe the photo isn't suitable enough for successful barcode detection, so you have to ask the user to take another picture, and perhaps another, and another, and…
So much nicer to request the camera permission after all and then capture a live image stream and automatically re-run the detection algorithm until a code has been found.
Re: Android developer verification: Early access starts
#644Earlier quoted context omitted.
But the ruling is correct. You can't have it both ways, if you invite competition you're not allowed to be anti-competitive. You can be Nintendo, offer a single store, only allow first party hardware, and exercise total control over your product. Then your anticompetitive behavior can only be evaluated externally. But if you open yourself up to internal competition with other phone vendors, other stores, and then you…
> But the ruling is correct. You can't have it both ways, if you invite competition you're not allowed to be anti-competitive That's just stupid, because being anti-competitive is an emergent outcome, rather than anything specific. Apple is definitely anti-competitive, but they exploited such a ruling so that they can skirt it. Owning a platform that no other entrants are allowed is anti-competitive - whether you're…
That's like Karcher opening a megamall to sell all their offering, vacuums, pressure washers, floor washers, you name it .. and then you, Bosch, complaining you can't sell your vacuum in Karcher's megamall where all the people go.
What are you even saying?
Whereas google was letting Bosch sell vacuums in their megamall, but only if it uses Google dust filters and people buy only Google made dust filters and Bosch isn't allowed to sell their own dust filters in the megamall.
Re: Android developer verification: Early access starts
#645Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's the JUDGE that came up with that reasoning.
Because that's the law, like it or not. Apple doesn't have a problem because the rules were the rules from day 1. Google did a bait and switch, legally.
What does antitrust law have to do with "day 1"? So if Ford and GM are both already in all 50 states and then they try to divide up territory between them, that's illegal, but at the point when there were still areas one of them wasn't in, they could publicly announce a contractual agreement to not enter into the other's territory? That seems not just questionable but actively bad policy with an enormous perverse incentive.
And if you're going to say this:
> Because that's the law, like it or not.
I would ask you to point me to the text in the statute requiring the courts to do that.
Re: Android developer verification: Early access starts
#646Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In most cases, F-Droid couldn't know either. F-Droid is quite restrictive about what kinds of app they accept, they build the app from source code themselves, and the source code must be published under a FLOSS license. They have some checks that have to pass for each new version of an app. Although it's possible for a developer to transfer their accounts and private keys to someone shady, F-Droid's checks and open…
You know what? That's bullshit. Anybody slightly competent can put horrendous back doors into any code, in such a way that they will pass F-Droid's "checks", Apple's "checks", and Google's "checks". Source code is barely a speed bump. Behavioral tests are a joke.
Anyone determined enough can break into any house. If not through ingenuitiy, then by a brick to your window. Doesn't mean we shouldn't lock our doors, turn off our lights, and close our curtains anyway.
The fortunate thing is that 99% of people won't bother trying to break your app if it's not dead simple. Advanved security mechanisms to check for backdoors is probably something only billionaire tech companies need to worry about.
Re: Android developer verification: Early access starts
#647Earlier 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…
So basically you're saying we're fucked. People don't care about FOSS in general, let alone when their phone says it's dangerous.
If peopele cared about privacy as much as politics pretends they do, we'd have solved so many problems in society.
Fortunately, those fighting, albeit a minority, have done great work in protecting this. No reason to stop now.
Re: Android developer verification: Early access starts
#648Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its my device. Not google's. Imagine telling you which NPM/PIP packages you can install from your terminal. Also, its not SIDE loading. Its installing an app.
Well... it would be good if this was true, but read the ToS and it looks more like a licence to use than "ownership" sadly :(
Google doesn't own AOSP. We don't need any google apps on an andoid phone for it to function.
Re: Android developer verification: Early access starts
#649Earlier 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.
The US anti trust legislation punishes the abuse of monopoly power, not being monopoly in itself. Google was found guilty in leveraging their dominating position on the platform to do just that.
On the other hand in the US Apple's App Store was not found to be a monopoly in the first place. Different cases about abusing dominating position also didn't go far.
Re: Android developer verification: Early access starts
#650I had been Android fan from the start. When first Android phones went out I was astonished by the amount of possibilities. There were linux phones available, my colleagues used to set up ssh servers and more. Samsung had Baidu at that time which at least to me appeared more closed than Android.
Things have been going bad since then. Closing of root access, closing of software, youtube not working in split screen etc. All the changes make me think of Android as more and more repulsing. Recent changes like removing old software from the store because they didn't update API and now this... Google stop being evil