Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Keep Android Open

f-droid.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

701–710 of 764 posts

Re: Keep Android Open

#701

Post by ece »

pino83 wrote: post #695

I'm always baffled why there are obviously enough people (not only here in particular; but also here; and sure, it's not a majority, but it's enough people to actually have some influence) who can formulate all these claims, but the actual movement is quite disappointing. As long as everybody knows that you are just talking, but in the end you are basically fine with everything and declare "pragmatism" and all those…

The value is in awareness, it's easier to switch for some than others, but that comes after awareness.

Re: Keep Android Open

#702

Post by yellowapple »

eldaisfish wrote: post #224
chrneu wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's relatively easy. It's basically a command for each step you want to do and it tends to fail gracefully nowadays. If you can install a linux distro you can flash a custom rom on a well-supported phone. If it were more mainstream I could see GUI apps to manage all this for people, if they don't already exist. Idk I just use adb.

That describes relatively easy for you, but not for the average person who can’t even be bothered to change the default ringtone.

I can't be bothered to change my phone's default ringtone and yet I've had very little issue installing LineageOS and GrapheneOS on the various phones I've owned over the years.

Re: Keep Android Open

#703

Post by limagnolia »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #689
dhayabaran wrote: post #639

[flagged]

"Android sideloading should be the same: download an APK, verify the signature, install." Download source code from mirror, verify signature, compile, install If the target OS is under the control of a giant surveillance and online advertising services company, then what is the probability of the company allowing mobile hardware buyers to control their hardware using software of their own choosing. Is it non-zero The…

Rather ironically, the advertising giant is the one who makes phones that are the essayist to install software of your own choosing.

Re: Keep Android Open

#704

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #689
dhayabaran wrote: post #639

[flagged]

"Android sideloading should be the same: download an APK, verify the signature, install." Download source code from mirror, verify signature, compile, install If the target OS is under the control of a giant surveillance and online advertising services company, then what is the probability of the company allowing mobile hardware buyers to control their hardware using software of their own choosing. Is it non-zero The…

There is additional irony in that the people who started the giant surveillance and online advertising services company in the 1990s relied on OS projects^1 that allowed users to download source code, compile it, install it and run it, all for free, without restriction aside from "copyleft" provisions. The company's "search engine" ran on open, permissively-licensed software

In other words, they did not need permission from a corporation that controlled the software

The other company whose name behins with "A" that provides a corporate-controlled mobile OS also relied on source code that they could download, compile, install, run and distribute for free, without restriction (aside from attribution provisions)^2 in order to create a mobile OS in the 2000s

1. Linux

2. FreeBSD, NetBSD

Also, the surveillance and ad services company used NetBSD libc when creating Android

Re: Keep Android Open

#705

Post by 4nonverbal-alit »

notpushkin wrote: post #549
4nonverbal-alit wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding notifications, both iOS and android doesn't support reading and responding to text messages. The feature works on android because of a workaround: apps create a global notification listener and they can also interact with notification - read UI contents and respond. I know it's still better than not having a workaround at all like in iOS. But just pointing out that Google probably never meant to let others…

This is incorrect – KDE Connect requests the SMS permission on Android. It does get access to the past messages.

Actually true. Thanks for correcting!

Re: Keep Android Open

#706

Post by TexanFeller »

dhayabaran wrote: post #639

[flagged]

App stores may reduce many of my freedoms, but they also provide me with some other freedoms by limiting the power of big tech companies over me, and the tradeoffs are different for my phone compared to a PC. For example Apple uses their big stick to ensure that apps can't simply refuse to work if you enable privacy setting that limit them. If Facebook refuses to work until you give it full access to your photos and exact location even when the app isn't running the realistic outcome will be that everyone will just give them what they want rather than not using the service. I remember years ago on Android that Google Maps would refuse to work if I didn't allow it to access my location when it wasn't running, and I never want to go back to that world.

Re: Keep Android Open

#707

Post by meatjuice »

mistercheph wrote: post #94

https://postmarketos.org/ It's time to say goodbye.

I wish I could. There are many proprietary apps for banks and governments, which are definitely not available for Linux based phones. Maybe I can run them through waydroid though, I don't want to risk my fully working Pixel to try it out.

Re: Keep Android Open

#708

Post by [deleted] »

TexanFeller wrote: post #706
dhayabaran wrote: post #639

[flagged]

App stores may reduce many of my freedoms, but they also provide me with some other freedoms by limiting the power of big tech companies over me, and the tradeoffs are different for my phone compared to a PC. For example Apple uses their big stick to ensure that apps can't simply refuse to work if you enable privacy setting that limit them. If Facebook refuses to work until you give it full access to your photos and…

[deleted]

Re: Keep Android Open

#709

Post by ece »

TexanFeller wrote: post #706
dhayabaran wrote: post #639

[flagged]

App stores may reduce many of my freedoms, but they also provide me with some other freedoms by limiting the power of big tech companies over me, and the tradeoffs are different for my phone compared to a PC. For example Apple uses their big stick to ensure that apps can't simply refuse to work if you enable privacy setting that limit them. If Facebook refuses to work until you give it full access to your photos and…

So let's give Google more power.

Re: Keep Android Open

#710

Post by dotancohen »

microtonal wrote: post #526
fragmede wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But unfortunately, it turns out that some people you interact with aren't actually your friend. That guy that seems totally legit and just wants your sister to install his fun little game/app that he wrote is actually trying to get her to install an app that's going to track your location and read all your messages and copy all your photos. To keep her safe from the "actually" bad people, of course.

By default their app cannot though because Android uses proper sandboxing and gated API access. So you actually have to give the app location access, access to your messages and access to your photos. Well, unless you use one of the many crappy Android devices that never get security updates, are running old kernels, old vendor security patch levels, miss all Android security patches, except applying the backported s…

  > Well, unless you use one of the many crappy Android devices that never get security updates
You mean those crappy devices that let me record my phone calls and let the voice recorder continue recording the lecture even when the screen is locked?
Post reply on HN