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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

#81

Post by kragen »

rsch wrote: post #69
cb321 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say the situation is worse as this "subscription-esque" model is "spreading" to areas beyond software. Exercise equipment like ellipticals and bicycles - whose software is/could be borderline +/- resistance level trivial - has been moving to "only works with an online subscription" business models for a long time. I mean, I have had instances that controlled resistance with like a manual knob , but these new…

That planned obsolescence thing on light bulbs isn't the entire story. Light bulbs will last longer if driven less hard, due to the lower temperature. But that lower temperature also means much lower efficiency because the blackbody spectrum shifts even further into the infrared. So some compromise had to be picked between having a reasonable amount of light and a reasonable life span. But yeah agree, this subscripti…

Yes, but the compromise didn't have to be an industrywide conspiracy with penalties for manufacturing light bulbs that were too long-lasting and inefficient. But it was. Consumers could have freely chosen short-lived high-efficiency bulbs or long-lived low-efficiency ones.

In fact, they could have chosen the latter just by wiring two lightbulb sockets in series, or in later years putting one on a dimmer.

Re: What we talk about when we talk about sideloading

#82

Post by ge96 »

Tangent about open source development

As a person that tried the Pine64 ecosystem and not being able to will drivers/C++ apps into existence (like I can with web/cross platform), I did not contribute much other than buying the device/doing some videos on YT. (I bought: PP, PPP, PineBook, PineNote, PineTab)

It depended on few people working on it eg. through Discord communities

Anyway point is I saw Expensify I think they have these GitHub PRs which have $ values on them, would be interesting to take that approach, just pay for it literally eg. a GoFundMe for a feature.

ex. https://github.com/Expensify/App/issues/73681

Re: What we talk about when we talk about sideloading

#83

Post by xondono »

I’m honestly very tired of this argument, everything about it is bad.

Features aren’t rights, if you want a phone that let’s you run whatever you want, buy one or make it yourself.

What you’re trying is to use the force of the state to make mandatory a feature that not only 99% users won’t use, it vastly increases the attack surface for most of them, specially the most vulnerable.

If anyone were trying to create a word that gives a “deviant” feel, they wouldn’t use “sideload”, and most people haven’t even heard the term. There’s a world of difference between words like “pirate”, “crack”, “hack” and “sideload”.

If anything I’d say it’s too nice of a term, since it easily hides for normies the fact that what you’re doing is loading untrusted code, and it’s your responsibility to audit it’s origin or contents (something even lot’s of devs don’t do).

If you want to reverse engineer your devices, all the power to you, but you don’t get to decide how others people’s devices work.

Re: What we talk about when we talk about sideloading

#84

Post by kragen »

dotancohen wrote: post #79
Ajedi32 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree it's a pointless distraction, but it's a distraction you instigated by trying to language police your own supporters. I and most others who use the term sideloading don't use it because we want to make sideloading "feel deviant and hacker-ish", we use it because it's the commonly accepted term for installing apps outside the app store. I'm open to alternative phrasing, but "direct install" doesn't work becaus…

> and "installing" doesn't work because that doesn't distinguish from installing from the Play Store I'm not choosing sides, but why do you need a term to distinguish from installing from the Play Store? On my Debian machine I install git from apt (officially supported) but also install Anki from a tarball I downloaded from a website. Same term `install`.

Because Google isn't trying to prevent installing, just "sideloading".

Re: What we talk about when we talk about sideloading

#86

Post by oblio »

gruez wrote: post #49
marcprux wrote: post #27

Author here. I admit I am rather startled by the tone of many comments here and the accusations of disingenuity. Splitting hairs about the origin of the term "sideload" does not change the fact that those who promote the term tend to do so in order to make it feel deviant and hacker-ish. You don't "sideload" software on your Linux, Windows, or macOS computer: you install it. You have the right to install whatever you…

>Splitting hairs about the origin of the term "sideload" does not change the fact that those who promote the term tend to do so in order to make it feel deviant and hacker-ish. Can you corroborate this? At least for me, the whole idea that "sideloading" has negative connotations only came up as a result of this debacle, and the only evidence I've seen are some very careful readings of blog posts from Google. The word…

"Sideloading" definitely has subpar connotations. Something you do which is not the "main approach". Let's be real here.

Re: What we talk about when we talk about sideloading

#87

Post by kragen »

terminalshort wrote: post #42

I think this misses the forest for the trees here. The platforms behavior here is a symptom and not the core problem. I think the following are pretty clearly correct: 1. It's your damn phone and you should be able to install whatever the hell you want on it 2. Having an approved channel for verified app loading is a valuable security tool and greatly reduces the number of malicious apps installed on users devices Gi…

> 2. Having an approved channel for verified app loading is a valuable security tool and greatly reduces the number of malicious apps installed on users devices

I would instead say that having a trustworthy channel for verified app loading is a valuable security tool. F-Droid is such a channel; the Google Play Store is not. So Google is trying to take this valuable security tool away from users.

Re: What we talk about when we talk about sideloading

#88

Post by lisdexan »

cesarb wrote: post #56
999900000999 wrote: post #26

You know, this would be a fantastic time for Google to get their sandbox in order. If we need to do it like this, go ahead and create a secondary user, call it sandbox and let me install all my wild and unapproved apps there. SecureNet can automatically fail in Sandbox. But I don't think they're going to do that, ultimately users who actually care about this are an absolute tiny percentage of the market. And weirdos…

> And weirdos like us can always just import a Chinese phone that doesn't have mandatory Google verification crap. No, we can't. One of the first countries with that mandatory Google verification is Brazil, and we can't import phones which are not certified by ANATEL, they will be rejected by customs in transit.

I knew Brazil was kinda weird with tech import taxes but I didn't know they banned non-certified phones, jezz. Here in Chile they get disconnected from the cell towers after 30 days, but you just need register it^.

Do you know if the Brazilian gov or regulators asked for this first from Google or something?

^: It's less spooky than it sounds, any phone in Chile needs to be compatible with the natural disaster alert system.

Re: What we talk about when we talk about sideloading

#89

Post by lucideer »

gruez wrote: post #49
marcprux wrote: post #27

Author here. I admit I am rather startled by the tone of many comments here and the accusations of disingenuity. Splitting hairs about the origin of the term "sideload" does not change the fact that those who promote the term tend to do so in order to make it feel deviant and hacker-ish. You don't "sideload" software on your Linux, Windows, or macOS computer: you install it. You have the right to install whatever you…

>Splitting hairs about the origin of the term "sideload" does not change the fact that those who promote the term tend to do so in order to make it feel deviant and hacker-ish. Can you corroborate this? At least for me, the whole idea that "sideloading" has negative connotations only came up as a result of this debacle, and the only evidence I've seen are some very careful readings of blog posts from Google. The word…

> Can you corroborate this?

I don't think this is so much a question of sources & corroboration as it is of language.

Regardless of the origins of the term "sideload", the language implies a non-standard practice. The prefix "side-" may be used in some software contexts to describe normal, non-deviant software, but only in cases where the software in question is considered auxiliary. In general, anything described as "side-*" is connoted to be surplus / additional / non-primary at best - adding that to the term "load" & the loading action itself is surplus/additional/non-primary. It's automatically considered non-standard.

> those devices don't have first party stores

This only supports the argument. If somebody felt an alternative term was required on Android because the first-party store was the primary source of software, the only reason they could have for needing such an alternative term would be to explicitly differentiate that alternative source as unofficial/non-standard.

Re: What we talk about when we talk about sideloading

#90

Post by gruez »

marcosdumay wrote: post #67
milutinovici wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux had "stores" long before android

Yeah, and they are the primary way to install software for nearly every distro that has them. And even when people install software on their user's home only, we don't call it anything different. It's correct to say that "sideloading" was created to emphasize it's a deviant activity. I believe it was created by the people doing it, when they discovered hacks that enabled them. But I wouldn't be too surprised it was c…

>Yeah, and they are the primary way to install software for nearly every distro that has them.

>And even when people install software on their user's home only, we don't call it anything different.

But even on Android the word used is "install". When you try to install an apk, the button says "install", not "sideload". "Sideload" is only used in the context of google's blog post, where it's there to differentiate between installs from first party sources vs others. This is an important distinction to capture, because their new restrictions only apply to the latter, so something like "installing isn't going way" wouldn't make sense. "sideload" captures this distinction, and is far more concise than something "installing from third party sources". Moreover this sort of word policing reeks of ingroup purity tests from the culture wars, eg. "autistic vs person with autism" or whatever.

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