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Eagle0110 @ Eagle0110 @lemmy.world
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2 yr. ago

  • Google Confirms Non-ADB APK Installs Will Require Developer Registration

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  • And not as many people ever even care about doing this is exactly how we got to this point.

  • Motion sensors in high-performance mice can be used as a microphone to spy on users, thanks to AI — Mic-E-Mouse technique harnesses mouse sensors, converts acoustic vibrations into speech

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  • If the people on the good side stop trying to find exploits like this, and by finding them develop awareness and knowledge about them, so that countermeasures can be devised, then bad actors are much more likely to find new exploits first, and when they exploit it you won't even see it coming anymore.

  • Google Confirms Non-ADB APK Installs Will Require Developer Registration

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  • XDA is dead, and you just described one of the symptoms of a forum being dead.

    That said there are still a small amount of people posting detailed posts for rooting Xperia phones, for how to flash OS updates with unlocked bootloader without losing your user data, for how to bypass carrier restrictions to get international model to work with the 5G bands in the US via build.conf edit and baseband flashing, etc. There are perks of a community being small and niche, and I guess not everyone is brained washed by Samsung's propaganda they use to justify permanently locked bootloader on their phones lol

  • Google Confirms Non-ADB APK Installs Will Require Developer Registration

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  • You said it like banking apps will be happy to work with a Linux phone lol, the banks always have their interests inherently conflict with user control anyway. And rooting and getting a custom ROM (one which exists or otherwise) are two completely different things that have nothing to do with each other, and you shouldn't support manufecturers who choose to make it difficult to unlock bootloader anyway.

    By 2025, rooting still empowers you to make your own Android device however you like it to be.

    Also not many people care about custom ROM these days because Android stock ROM got much better in average, so there's much less a need for creating a brand new ROM just to get basic features. Why making a brand new ROM instead of modding the pretty good one you already have now. And root empowered ROM modding tools that are developed as Magisk module or Xposed modules still have a pretty big community, there's a long list of pretty big repos with hundreds of modules each, and with how sophisticated Magisk and Lsposed have evolved it's easier than ever to write your own mods

  • Google Confirms Non-ADB APK Installs Will Require Developer Registration

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  • Recent AOSP repo added lines of code to Package Installer to handle enforcing restricting whether Package Installer installs an APK file or not based on dev signatures, as well as denying installation if internet isn't available so it can't contact Google's servers for dev signature verification.

    So this is enforced by Package Installer, which is already how Google enforces their ridiculous minimal SDK version requirement for installing APK packages, as well as for blocking app update with an APK package with mismatched signature or blocking downgrading an existing app with an APK package, which I already have bypassed via Xposed this way.

    Besides, rooting gives YOU total control over your own device like when you have sudo on Linux, even if Google tries some new BS there will be a way to counter it when you have root

  • Qualcomm to Acquire Arduino—Accelerating Developers’ Access to its Leading Edge Computing and AI

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  • Thankfully it's not like I'll still have the choice with my "do not buy from" list on my pocket notebook soon in this economy anyway /s

  • Google Confirms Non-ADB APK Installs Will Require Developer Registration

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  • Thankfully I have root, I'll just simply hook into it runtime via Xposed to bypass this nonsense.

    Seriously anyone who doesn't have root on their Android devices these days and age, well may Google have mercy on you lol

  • 'Dumbphones' Are Not Private

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  • Exactly!

    Ultimately rooting empowers users with control, and many company profit from users not having control, like Netflix, like Google with their ads, etc., so they love to make people think rooting is somehow unsafe lol

  • 'Dumbphones' Are Not Private

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  • Exactly, taking away tools which enable you to enhance your digital privacy, or the ability to use such tools, is fundamentally a flawed way to enhance your privacy in the long term.

    Same for security with rooting, and it's the same reason why the argument that "rooting makes your phone less secure" is a fundamentally flawed argument.

  • Let's talk security: Answering your top questions about Android developer verification

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  • This would not help us much at all, Google clearly doesn't consider iOS a completing platform because Google's core business is still advertising not selling phones or phone OS (which Apple does both since all iPhones are iOS devices and all iOS phones are iPhones). And on iPhones Google already have most of their ads delivery platform and services offered, you have iOS apps for YouTube, YouTube Music and all of them, while the closed nature of iOS makes it even more difficult for people to do things like blocking Google's ads with system-wide adblockers or bypassing YouTube ads with modded YouTube clients, like you can easily so on Android.

    Not to mention iPhones such soooo much more than a locked down Android since on Android it's still much easier to root as long as you have a phone with unlocked bootloader, than to jailbreak literally any iOS device, since iOS jailbreaking actually requires exploits and Android still has mostly a Linux kernel so a lot of the tools work out of the box, while iOS does not at all and has a very different OS architecture.

  • Removed

    Is anyone NOT steaming their Music?

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  • Same! Although still on my 512GB SD card but I'll have to upgrade to 1TB soon at this rate lol

    Also thank goodness 2TB SD cards came onto market not long ago, I'll not run out of options anytime soon lol

  • If I wanted to donate a few dollars a month to the future development of a phone OS that will allow users to continue "sideloading". What is your recommendation, and why?

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  • Yeah a really big and fundamental difference between an Android phone and an ARM laptop is that a phone has to have a low level radio stuff that have to be close sourced and fully locked down for regulatory compliance in most countries, so that they transmit radio stuff within legal bands and within legal transmission power and all that, you simply cannot open source those or even keep them user-accesable and mod-able without your device being illegal to be commercially sold as a mobile phone, because then anyone could mod them to operate as radio equipment outside the legal range. And that requires the firmware of those radio stuff to be provided by the manufecturers of those radio chips and devices (not the OEM of the phone).

    In fact the inherent complexity and overhead from this was one of the biggest hurdle for early smartphone manufecturers and smartphone OS developers like Nokia and their Symbian OS to become successful. And figuring out how to deal with this efficiently between all of the radio stuff suppliers and smartphone OEMs, was one of the major reasons iPhone and Google's Android were able to succeed commercially in the last decade. In Android this is one of the things that necessitated the HAL or hardware abstraction layer, so that the standardized Android system components and especially Android kernel don't have to directly deal with more than thousands of different models of radio hardware from all kinds of different manufecturers that all require different drivers and such because of how they are close sourced and locked down, whereas on a regular Linux distro running on a normal ARM laptop, the drivers of all those devices can be included into the kernel and redistributed because they are open source.

  • F-Droid and Google's Developer Registration Decree | F-Droid

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  • Exactly, trying to find software alternative for what ultimately going to be locked down hardware is never going to be a sustainable solution.

    Alternative OS means nothing if there's no widely supported open hardware with unlocked bootloader to run such OS long term, and Google is got all mainstream phone manufactures cornered legally and commercially with this and their requirement for manufecturer authorization for shipping GMS suite with their products.

    The only way out is this ridiculous decision of Google getting push backs from legislation, because there's nothing manufecturers can do and without them there's nothing FOSS developers can do to push back long term, and Google isn't stopping themselves from doing Evil™.

  • F-Droid and Google's Developer Registration Decree - Google’s move to break free app distribution

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  • Yeah may Google have mercy on them LMAO

    Hint: Google will NOT have mercy on them LMAO

  • F-Droid and Google's Developer Registration Decree - Google’s move to break free app distribution

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  • I agree in theory, but you're never completely in control of what's running on Android because there are still proprietary bits (like device firmware) that we can't replace, right?

    That argument is moot, even if you use a device that's 100% FOSS and you actually have total control over even down to firmware, like a Raspberry Pi cyberdeck/small form factor PC you built yourself using open source wifi cards, you are still connected to an internet infrastructure that's filled with proprietary devices such as routers and servers which you have practically no control over, and deliberate malicious actors can still do MITM attack for example as long as any data is being transmitted. And it's not really a personal mobile device anymore if you don't connect it to the Internet at all.

    However, even if you cannot ensure 100% control, having root access on your personal device enables you far greater freedom to monitor and investigate the behavior of the proprietary stuff you can't control directly, and mitigate or bypass the security and privacy vulnerabilities they might poss with far more options than is ever even close to possible on an unrooted device.

    For example, there are many apps I need to use because of services I need to use because of the city I live in, they have known track records of security and privacy violations. With a rooted device I have the freedom to capture every single pocket they transmit and analyze on Wireshark to see what they are doing, I can block internet access specifically for these apps without conflicting with my existing VPN setup, I can spoof my device's IMEI and other identifiable information for specifically these apps so they can't identify my phone, including even spoof my geolocation without the apps realizing they are spoofed, I can block these app's access to my phone's application list so they can't profile me by seeing what other apps I have, I can block their access to my phone's sensors without the apps knowing they are blocked (other than getting empty sensor reading), I can even deny permissions to those apps without the apps knowing the permissions were denied. On an unrooted device you either need ADB or can't do any of these at all.

    Also, without any of these tools how do you even know your device's manufecturer has done everything they need to do to protect your security and privacy? Just because they said "Trust me bro!"?

    Principle of least privilege is completely irrelevant here, any system app provided by your phone's manufecturer already have total system control anyway, including Google's GMS apps and Facebook framework apps that are pre-installed, and without root you also do not have an option for truly stopping or removing those apps.

  • If I wanted to donate a few dollars a month to the future development of a phone OS that will allow users to continue "sideloading". What is your recommendation, and why?

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  • This question shows you do not seem to understand what is actually going on.

    It's not the OS that need to be supported it's the phone who's manufecturer isn't contractually bound by Google to implement developer verification for blocking installation, otherwise they lose access to Google's proprietary suite including Play Store.

    There are already a LOT of existing, established and technological mature OSes that are open source and don't need to block anyone for installation applications, including Android AOSP itself.

    But the problem is you canNOT use a smartphone OS without a smartphone which allows you to run it on, with unlockable bootloader so you can install the desired OS, or is designed to run the desired OS instead of Google's garbage out of the box.

  • F-Droid and Google's Developer Registration Decree - Google’s move to break free app distribution

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  • Okay then keep buying Samsung phones and support their aggressive and audacious push for walled gardens on a platform that started as an open source OS, when they are neither the most affordable nor the most feature rich option.

    You deserve every bit of the enshitification and corporate exploitation that you have enabled and supported directly yourself.

  • F-Droid and Google's Developer Registration Decree - Google’s move to break free app distribution

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  • That's one of the biggest lies that's been systemically propagated by the industry. A rooted phone is as secure as you make it, because you are in control of your device's security.

    And a device you have control over is as secure as you make it so.

  • F-Droid and Google's Developer Registration Decree - Google’s move to break free app distribution

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  • It doesn't work like that for mainstream manufactures, the way Google does this, as they have declared so far, is making it a contractal obligation to keep this code in order for them to get Google's GMS certificate, which Google requires for authorizing them to integrate Google's suite into their phone's ROM, including Play Store and Google Service Framework, which are all proprietary software which manufacturers are not legally allowed to distribute without Google's authorization. And outside China it doesn't look like most mainstream manufactures dare to sell an Android phone without Google's Play Store, thanks to the wonderful collective of the Android users making fricking brilliant choices with their wallet over the decade, didn't they?

    The only way out of this for a government agency to step in it seems because Google really does have the manufacturers cornered here.