> barely a historical footnote. Certainly not for those tinkerer types. Often it's the tinkerer types who are concerned about privacy, and it's those types who

> barely a historical footnote. Certainly not for those tinkerer types. Often it's the tinkerer types who are concerned about privacy, and it's those types who install Copperhead OS or XPrivacy, which allows you to deny exactly this kind of thing. Not only that, but it'll let you block all those smaller ways of spying - like unique device IDs being phoned home to 6 different ad, analytics and crash handling services that the silly game you just installed uses. It's hard for me to imagine using a phone on which I see ads, especially on YouTube, can't background apps like SSH clients, syncthing, even direct IMAP and SIP connections used to be a struggle for people on iOS (still may be?) or run app that Google/Apple have decided are evil piracy tools, like a manga reader or a torrent client manager and search tool. I have friends who even run emulators and use memory editors to cheat at mobile games regularly on their phones... very, very different models. Android is just a lot more flexible for a tinkerer to this day. All this is possible without exploits on most devices, allowed and accepted by many manufacturers. There's this weird attitude on HN I see frequently where it seems like everything has to be "for the masses" for it to be of any value - tinkering by definition is not for the masses. Android devices probably shouldn't be for the masses, but for tinkerers, they really do pack a respectable punch in my opinion.