• xcjs@programming.devEnglish
    4 hours

    I do not consider a win, and I will continue applying pressure where I can.

  • h4arts@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    7 hours

    still just not gonna update my phone for a while until they’ve for sure have allowed side loading. Got my pixel because it’s just a nice phone, and i can put graphene on it when it’s paid off. Half of my apps are all from f-droid, too.

    • freddo@lemmy.zipEnglish
      5 hours

      You cannot install graphene until it is paid off?

      • mememuseum@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5 hours

        Some carriers lock the bootloader until you’ve paid off the phone.

        Phones produced for sale through Verizon have a permanently locked bootloader.

        • Archr@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1 hour

          Fuck Verizon for this exact reason. Never buy from them direct if you can help it.

          • mememuseum@lemmy.worldEnglish
            13 minutes

            Didn’t realize this when switching. Went through a whole kerfuffle to cancel the trade in deal.

            Phone agent sounded perplexed when I wanted to keep my old Pixel 7 Pro lol.

        • dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          3 hours

          Why is that?

          Would you be able to change the IMEI as I would have thought those were encoded on the hardware chip. If you could it means they couldn’t blacklist the phone if you stopped paying.

          Paying you can spoof it

  • aesthelete@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10 hours

    Can someone please come out with a phone that’s an actual computer and help stop this nonsense?

    Phones cost a lot of money at this point and I’m completely sick of them being some locked down, surveillance ridden pile of crap. A reasonably built one would be able to replace a laptop at this point if it weren’t for these artificial constraints imposed by the stupid fucking suits running things.

  • entwine@programming.devEnglish
    11 hours

    If antitrust was being enforced, Google execs wouldn’t even dream of attempting this bullshit.

    Antitrust regulation is probably the easiest way to fix the biggest problems in our society, it is 100% bipartisan, and it is easy to explain to the average US voter. The only group that is against it is the billionaires/ultra wealthy. Instead, politicians are all hyperfocused on culture war mudslinging and bullshit that makes no difference.

    Break up Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta (just to start), and watch how the tech industry explodes with innovation again, and the tech billionaire becomes an endangered species. The AI bubble will burst as companies actually need to compete to survive, and thus won’t be burning as much resources on crap that clearly doesn’t work.

  • Fedditor385@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11 hours

    I, as the owner of my device, don’t want to wait 24h.

    I hope this will popularize the ROM community again. It gradually faded out due to mainstream ROMs having every perk of the custom ROMs but now the custom ROMs can start offering freedom, which no official ROM will offer.

    • aquovie@lemmy.cafeEnglish
      4 hours

      Is there a tap to pay system that works on custom ROMs? I thought those really required SafetyNet/PlayIntegrity/Whatever-it-is-now.

      I would rather not give up tap to pay but I will if I have to. It seems like trying to Magisk my way into getting Google Wallet to work would be a PITA.

    • signup@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      8 hours

      I, as the owner of my device, don’t want to wait 24h.

      then dont. adb is instant

      • Scrollone@feddit.itEnglish
        5 hours

        Why would I need a computer to do something that the computer that I already have in my hand can and should do?

  • osanna@lemmy.vgEnglish
    15 hours

    It’s not side loading. It’s installing software on the device you probably paid multiple thousands for that you no longer own.

  • Kilgore Trout@feddit.itEnglish
    15 hours

    To call the install of apps of your choice as «sideloading», means that they have won.

    • zarkanian@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      12 hours

      That’s the name of the command, though. It’s adb sideload. Anything else is installing.

          • entwine@programming.devEnglish
            4 hours

            I don’t know if adb sideload will fallback to a regular install, maybe it does as a convenience for people who don’t read the docs? In any case, you said:

            That’s the name of the command, though.

            And I demonstrated that you’re wrong by linking to the official man page (aka the docs) directly from the master branch of the public git repo. Here’s the relevant part which describes the sideload command:

            sideload OTAPACKAGE Sideload the given full OTA package OTAPACKAGE.

            • signup@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              3 hours

              idc what those stupid docs say. i know i installed apps with that command before

  • ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.netEnglish
    17 hours

    I’m writing an app that I will distribute only through f-droid. The people I would like to share it with are typical, non-technical android users. Before those changes I could just send them a link to f-droid apk and explain it’s just another app store or send a link to the apk directly and probably most of them would be able to install it. Now I would have to tell them to do all those weird things first, things that look suspicious and that they would not understand the purpose of. I don’t think anyone will be wiling to do it. This is not a win. The effect will be exactly the same - serious limits on distributing apps though alternative channels.

  • sonofearth@lemmy.worldEnglish
    18 hours

    It is always like this. Make a very anti consumer decision that everyone hates, then tone it down so the half of those people will say “we won”. This is a loss.

    • 🔍🦘🛎@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11 hours

      Reading the article it looks like they found a decent middle ground. It lays out how the steps help prevent people from getting scammed.

  • Jorn@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    18 hours

    My galaxy will let me install but then I get this when I try to run the app:

  • ☂️-@lemmy.mlEnglish
    18 hours

    no.

    i’ll look into this, but they seem to have used the old strategy of announcing something absurd then back down to what they wanted because of “community pressure”

    bonus for not looking bad in comparison, while still being bad.

  • fodor@lemmy.zipEnglish
    20 hours

    Of course we didn’t win. the more hoops you have to jump through, the fewer people who will install their own apps and then you lose all of the community support. And Google didn’t promise not to change their plans in the future. So you know that they’ll promise this now. Maybe they’ll backtrack a little if they have to and they will try to ratchet things up six months later anyway.

    Real solutions involve either breaking up monopolies or breaking up monopolies, which is why some of the other cell phone vendors’ actions recently look positive. If there are two versions of Android that are popularly used, then the banks will have to support both of them and then everyone can run away from Google whenever they feel like it. But if there’s only one popular version and Android itself gets more and more locked down then that is Google seizing the entire market and they will cut out all of the other cell phone manufacturers as soon as they can. that will be just as bad as Apple.

  • gergo@lemmy.worldEnglish
    17 hours

    the win in this is that many people realise how locked google has made android and how blatantly and arbitrarily google exerts their control over it. hopefully that will be input to some consumer decision (when sailfish becomes an alternative) and a tiny bit more people will consider their choice when getting a new phone. and maybe it also helps some regulation to be agreed (in europe, obviously).

  • Zedstrian@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    1 day

    Making users wait 24 hours doesn’t improve security; it’s an anti-competitive change designed to make the Google Play store seem like less of a hassle in comparison.

    • over_clox@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1 day

      I can actually see where it can improve security against scammers trying to scam elderly and non-tech savvy people.

      • Scammer tries to get someone to install malware from their site
      • Victim isn’t familiar with sideloading, but scammer instructs them
      • Victim hits the first time 24 hour block and has to restart and wait
      • The restart alone breaks contact with the scammer, scam thwarted

      For the rest of us that know our way around Android, it’s just a one time annoyance, after completing all the steps to enable sideloading, you won’t have to wait 24 hours anymore.

      • CorrectAlias@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        6 hours

        The problem with this is that most of the apps used in scams are already on the play store. I haven’t ever seen a scam which requests the user to download a third party app, although I’m sure it’s happened on occasion.

        My point is that this won’t stop most scams, and primarily cause annoyance for actual power users.

      • BackgrndNoize@lemmy.worldEnglish
        10 hours

        This is only the first step, they will keep adding more bullshit like this in the name of security till you end up with a device that’s nothing more than a advertisement terminal for google

      • 3abas@lemmy.worldEnglish
        20 hours

        Solution in search of a problem?

        I have never seen a scam call involving sideloading an app on a phone… Why would they whenTeamViwer is in the Google app store?

        • over_clox@lemmy.worldEnglish
          20 hours

          Fuck I dunno, I haven’t used the Play Store since Covid lockdown. I rather prefer to sideload most apps and avoid Google for the most part anyways.

      • Pika@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        23 hours

        Lets be real though, currently they already have to blow through 4 other warnings about installing unsigned APK and enabled the browser or file manager to be able to install applications. It’s almost certain if they are that far deep/commited, they are going to call the scammer back if the scammer left a number.

        Yes this might allow for a time delay where the scammers number could be disabled if reported by enough people, or someone else to be like “yo this is a scam” if they mentioned it but, I don’t think this is as secure as they are saying it will be. The target audience for this is very unlikely to be thwarted by a time delay. Plus, the scammer will make some excuse about how the warning is just a safety percaucion and doesn’t need to be followed as this is a normal usage of the toggle, and then have them call back after the delay is done.

        For clarification: the target audience doesn’t know about the scam, and all they care about is that someone is seemingly willing to assist with an issue or problem they have. Said person knows the solution and they just have to wait for the timer to be done to be able to do said solution. They have no reason of telling others about it (unless they were complaining about googles time delay) as they already got someone who is seemingly able to assist.

        Honestly, having to have the user type “I agree that I have verified the application i am trying to install is genuine and not a fraudulent app” or a listbox of checkmarks to toggle in order to enable it would be far more efficient for this case.

        Hell take the example image the article on the dev page has and make it into toggles instead and it would work far better than a timer does.

        • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
          12 hours

          Honestly, having to have the user type “I agree that I have verified the application i am trying to install is genuine and not a fraudulent app”

          Ask Other Linus how well that sort of thing (“Yes, do as I say!”) works, LOL!

          I agree with you that Google’s anti-competitive time delay BS is likely to be ineffective for its claimed purpose, but frankly, I don’t think any other reasonable (i.e. non-rights-infringing) strategies would be effective either. Honestly, there’s a limit to how much effort you should go through to save idiots from themselves – and how much annoyance you impose on everyone else in the process! – and I think we’ve already hit it.

          • Pika@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            5 hours

            I have never seen that page before, but that’s hilarious. I somewhat hope that he did that as a demonstration of, hey, someone may do this because it’s hard for me to wrap my head around someone who uses a computer for a living, doing something like that.

            Being said, I think that prompt went above and beyond what was needed. At some point you just need to let the user touch the hot stove top… It stated what it was going to do, stated that it was going to be potentially dangerous and unlikely what the user wanted, and then reiterated that it was core essential packages needed for it to run… I don’t know what else they could do there. I would definitely be against adding further restrictions though. If he was willing to type that in, I don’t know what would stop him from doing that, to be honest, Maybe a…" I acknowledge this would break my system…" instead of it being yes-do as I say. But I don’t know.

            Being said hard agree there is zero reason that a package like steam should be able to uninstall your desktop., That was definitely a bug or a misconfiguration with the steam package. That was unexcusable. I just think they gave more than enough information of what that would do and he did it anyway.

            I firmly agree at some point the ends don’t justify the means and Android has definitely got to that point with unsigned packages prior to making this change., And I don’t think the ends justify the means to implement such a system. And I definitely think there is ulterior motives for implementing it.

            • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
              5 hours

              I somewhat hope that he did that as a demonstration of, hey, someone may do this because it’s hard for me to wrap my head around someone who uses a computer for a living, doing something like that.

              Nope, he genuinely didn’t bother to understand the warning before typing it. He may use computers for a living, but that just means he has a lot of very ingrained Windows bad habits to un-learn.

              It was some pretty big Internet drama when it happened and he’s still trying to defend himself from the near-universal lambasting he got for it. Although I included the link just in case, I’m kinda surprised you (being a person tech-savvy enough to be posting on Lemmy) didn’t already hear of it.

              He’s actually making a second attempt to switch to Linux right now (four years later), initially picked Pop!_OS again, and had some more problems with it. 🤦 He has a second channel where he posts clips from his podcast, and he keeps whining about how the other people doing it with him are having little to no trouble and he’s just cursed, LOL.

              • Pika@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                4 hours

                Yeah, I had never heard of it, I generally stray away from video based mediums, but I am a little surprised I didn’t come across articles for it, I can only assume that none of the creators I followed covered it.

                Although it was kind of funny to see the beginning of that second video, him still trying to do damage control, it looked for a second like he was going to agree that he had screwed up that install because he said it was 100% his fault and then he Backtracked and said that it wasn’t his fault and I’m like so close lol.

        • over_clox@lemmy.worldEnglish
          23 hours

          Sadly, there’s truth in everything you say. Scammers are gonna be scammers, and they’ll just find a new technique plus the long standing social engineering to continue their efforts to rip people off of whatever they can.

          Still, it’s something in the middleground, to help grandma be less likely to get scammed, while also giving power users an out and way to keep using their devices the way they want.

        • cageythree@lemmy.mlEnglish
          23 hours

          Honestly, having to have the user type “I agree that I have verified the application i am trying to install is genuine and not a fraudulent app”

          Yeah, this would be the most promising approach IMO. Whenever I was forced to write something, I did pay more attention to what that said than if I ticked a box next to it.

          Maybe even have them write “I am not instructed to install this app by someone else. I am aware that following instructions to install an app this way often have fraudulent intentions”.

          (Also if the language was changed recently, it should ask to write it in all languages that were set within the last 14 days or so. Otherwise the scammer will have them switch the language so they don’t understand what they’re writing)

      • Crozekiel@lemmy.zipEnglish
        1 day

        I’d believe that if most Pig Butchering scams weren’t using apps from Google Play already.

        • over_clox@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1 day

          Fair enough, you have a point. Although, I do think the developer verification thing will make it easier for Google to weed out bad actor developers altogether from the Play Store.

          Sure there’s no perfect solution, but at least they’re trying to make it a lot more difficult for the scammers out there, while still leaving power users a path to keep using Android the way we want.

          • Crozekiel@lemmy.zipEnglish
            1 day

            I think it is absolutely delusional to assume any of this actually has anything to do with security or safety of users. Google just wants more power and control over, well, everything they can get.

      • Pennomi@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1 day

        It’s going to be effective, but it’s a sad world where you have to create a total nanny state because there exist a subset of users who are INCREDIBLY stupid.

        • Cocodapuf@lemmy.worldEnglish
          12 hours

          It’s sad, but this is the world we live in. It’s constantly disappointing.

          But I do want to push back a bit, the people getting scammed are not incredibly stupid, they’re incredibly vulnerable. They’re often people who are generally less tech savvy, but also they’re people who don’t have a lot to lose, it’s a bit counterintuitive, but it’s easier to scam people who take money very seriously.

        • PseudorandomNoise@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          1 day

          Is it still a subset when it’s the majority?

          And to be honest, the level of effort scammers are willing to go through is shocking, and AI’s just making it easier for them.

          • azuth@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            17 hours

            Evidence that any significant percentage of people, never mind the majority, is getting scammed? Then how many of them via app installs?

          • Anivia@feddit.orgEnglish
            18 hours

            And to be honest, the level of effort scammers are willing to go through is shocking

            Is it? If you live in a country like India, then a single successful scam will be able to pay for years of living expenses