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At this point I'm convinced that there's something deeply wrong with how our society treats technology. Ruining Android for everyone to try to maybe help some

• frogperson 7mo ago
  Its not society, this is simply more fascism. Corperate and government cooperation to surviel and controll the masses. So long as the 5g chips and the 2 mobile app stores remain under control, then 5 eyes has nearly full coverage.
  • pixl97 7mo ago
    A fascist society is a society. Members of that society will gladly vote in more fascism.
• guelo 7mo ago
  > just should not use smartphones and the internet That's ridiculous. Phones are being made more and more of a requirement to participate in society, including by governments.
  • grishka 7mo ago
    Which is exactly my point! This is exactly the thing that desperately needs to be undone.
  • coldtea 7mo ago
    >That's ridiculous. Phones are being made more and more of a requirement to participate in society, including by governments. The latter is what's ridiculous, not what the parent suggests.
  • gzread 7mo ago
    If the government wants to force me to use a certain device, it should give me that device.
• NullPrefix 7mo ago
  >They should probably not have a bank account at all and just stick to cash Pretty much illegal in some parts of EU
  • cenamus 7mo ago
    Source? Also how is it related to the EU if it only affects certain places? Could have just said certain places in Europe
    • pfortuny 7mo ago
      Spain: you must be paid through a bank if you -have a steady contract -are paid more than 1000€ for a job (say you are self-employed).
    • foepys 7mo ago
      Not illegal per se in Germany but you won't find a legal job that doesn't require you to have a bank account. Benefits will also only be paid electronically (exceptions for some asylum seekers apply). You also cannot get a tax refund or pay taxes without a bank account.
    • derfniw 7mo ago
      Illegal would by a hyperbole. But the noose is tightening a bit. There are upcoming limits for cash transactions (10K, countries can opt to go lower), and strong requirements for identity verification at 3K or more euros in cash. See: https://www.deloittelegal.de/dl/en/services/legal/perspectives/eu-aml-paket-wendepunkt-geldwaeschepraevention.html https://www.deloittelegal.de/dl/en/services/legal/perspectiv... EDIT: The other side of the coin is that banks are _required_ to give legal residents of a country a basic account that can be used for payments.
    • hjadal 7mo ago
      Also illegal in Denmark. You need a NemKonto by law. Also making cash payments over 15000 is illegal since 2024. So you can't make a large purchase without a bank transfer.
• estimator7292 7mo ago
  Your mistake is taking Google's argument at face value. Protecting users is an outright lie, this is purely about control. Google doesn't give one single shit if users download malware from the Play Store, but hypothetical malware from third party sources is so much worse that we need to ruin the whole OS? That doesn't pass the sniff test. Google wants to make sure you can only download malware from developers who give google a cut. They want to control the OS and remove user choice. That's all it is. That's what it's always been about. "Protecting users" is a pretense and nothing more. Google does not care at all about user safety. They aren't even capable of caring at this point. There are far, far cheaper and more effective ways to actually protect users, and google isn't doing any of them.
  • grishka 7mo ago
    I'm assuming good faith and giving them the benefit of the doubt. Of course it might be that they want more control. In addition to controlling the world's most popular web browser and the world's most popular search engine and the world's most popular online advertising network and the world's most popular online video service.
    • nijave 7mo ago
      It's really hard to when there's already technical solutions. They could require a process like bootloader unlocking that puts it in "dev" mode for instance While signing is useful, leaving no escape hatch imo is blatantly predatory
      • grishka 7mo ago
        These restrictions already don't apply to something you install over adb, so there's already that. But that still considerably raises the bar for things like apps made by sanctioned entities, for example, most Russian banks.
    • 63stack 7mo ago
      Assuming good faith and giving the benefit of the doubt to google is just naivety. They have shown time and time again that they will take as much control from you as they can.
• itsdesmond 7mo ago
  what
• zadikian 7mo ago
  Is this even the reason? If Android phonemakers are simply concerned about tech-illiterate users switching to iPhone, they could sell a locked-down Android phone that requires some know-how to unlock.
  • giancarlostoro 7mo ago
    This was a reason that someone at Google gave iirc, but its ridiculous.
• giancarlostoro 7mo ago
  Idiocracy needs a spiritual "sequel" with modern times.
  • benlivengood 7mo ago
    It is called baseline reality, unfortunately. We haven't started watering crops with salt-water but it's only a matter of time.
    • sitkack 7mo ago
      Israelis have a plan for that in Gaza. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/as-israel-floods-gazas-tunnels-with-seawater-scientists-worry-about-aquifer-contamination/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/as-israel-floods-...
      • 3842056935870 7mo ago
        [dead]
• jancsika 7mo ago
  I like this idea. But last time I tried it the customer representative on the other line told me they were sorry but they could not accommodate my request at this time.
• hbn 7mo ago
  > People who are unwilling to figure out the risks just should not use smartphones and the internet. Sounds great in theory, but just today I was reminded how impossible this is when walking back from lunch, I noticed all the parking meters covered with a hood, labelled with instructions on how to pay with the app. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/city-of-regina-removes-coin-parking-downtown-9.7106997 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/city-of-regina-r...
  • plst 7mo ago
    What do you mean by impossible in this case? Can't you just have the coin-operated parking meters back? Where I live, in EU, parking meters even take cards. EDIT: I guess "just" is doing some heavy-lifting, so I won't argue this further, but "impossible" isn't the word I would use either. The city could revert this decision, definitely if enough people wanted them to (that's... I know, the hardest part). I just agree with the OP that we technically could go back to slightly less-digital society.
    • gruez 7mo ago
      >Regina city council made the decision to remove the coin option at downtown meters as part of the budget deliberation process, said Faisal Kalim, the City of Regina's director of community standards.
      • plst 7mo ago
        Yes, I read the linked article. Yes, the city made this decision. The decision could be reverted. I understand that this is a type of thing the OP (top-comment in the thread) is wishing for. I don't see the "impossible" in my understanding of the linked article.
        • TheChaplain 7mo ago
          Budget-wise it becomes impossible. Coin-operated meters means someone have to come around checking the meter, collect coins, check the parking tickets. One person can only cover so many devices per day. Then you have mechanical maintenance, with that comes disputes with "it was broken, it didn't accept the money" and so forth. I've probably forgotten a number of other related things, but compare the above to digital solution. Parking app, where the customer pays only for the parked time, no fiddling with money or keeping track of time. The parking attendant checks much quicker by just scanning the license plate while walking the rounds (could be done via car and a mounted camera even). Analog just costs more, and citizens doesn't want taxes to go to things that are not strictly necessary.
• nijave 7mo ago
  I was always under the impression security was a red herring and the real reason was control. Google wants to own the device and rent it to users with revocable terms the same way SaaS subscription software works. Locking down what can run is a key step in that process
  • browningstreet 7mo ago
    I worked at a bank on the backend for architecture and security.. and I've posted this attestation here before, but the sheer volume of fraud and fraud attempts in the whole network is astonishing. Our device fingerprinting and no-jailbreak-rules weren't even close to an attempt at control. It was defense, based on network volume and hard losses. Should we ever suffer a significant loss of customer identity data and/or funds, that risk was considered an existential threat for our customers and our institution. I'm not coming to Google's defense, but fraud is a big, heavy, violent force in critical infrastructure. And our phones are a compelling surface area for attacks and identity thefts.
    • gzread 7mo ago
      Then don't issue an app. Issue people cards to pay with and let them come to the bank for weird transactions.
      • quesera 7mo ago
        That'd be great, if your goal was to hemorrhage customers.
      • drnick1 7mo ago
        This 100%. I don't understand why everything needs to be an app nowadays. Some things are best done in person and without to technology. No, I won't install some shitty app that requests location and network access to order lunch. If a venue does not provide a paper menu and accept cash, they have just lost my custom.
        • 7mo ago
• II2II 7mo ago
  > Ruining Android for everyone to try to maybe help some rather technologically-hopeless groups of people is the wrong solution. This isn't about how skilled a person is, it is about tackling social engineering. The article gave the example of someone posing as a relative, it could also be a blackmail scheme, but it could also be the carefully planned takeover of a respected open source project (ahem, xz). What I am saying is this sort of crime affect anyone. We simply see more of it among the vulnerable because they are the low hanging fruit. Raising the bar will only change who is vulnerable. Society is simply too invested in technology to dissuade criminals. Which is why I don't think this will work, and why I think going nuclear on truly independent developers is going to do more damage than good.
  • grishka 7mo ago
    There's quite a gap between this sort of opportunistic scamming that's happening all over the world and targeted multi-year campaigns that probably require the resources of a nation state.
    • warkdarrior 7mo ago
      > targeted multi-year campaigns that probably require the resources of a nation state Ha ha ha, "resources of a nation state"! One could run phishing campaigns at scale over many years without breaking the bank. This was true before LLMs, it's probably even cheaper now.
      • grishka 7mo ago
        Sorry, I keep forgetting that LLMs are a thing. But I disagree because many people, especially tech-savvy people, can't possibly trust any communication that has the hallmarks of slop.
        • jnovek 7mo ago
          At this point it’s naive and perhaps a bit dangerous to assume that any of us can differentiate LLM from non-LLM text. I see less and less recognizable “slop” as time goes on, but I doubt the amount of content being generated has gone down.
• xg15 7mo ago
  > People who are unwilling to figure out the risks just should not use smartphones and the internet. That train has left the station decades ago. The internet has become an essential part of modern societies. People can't not use the internet (or smartphones), at least if they don't live in the woods.
  • grishka 7mo ago
    Have you read my comment in full?
    • ceejayoz 7mo ago
      I have, and I have the same objection. Do you have a response to it other than “change society to 15 years ago”?
      • grishka 7mo ago
        No, why should I? I'm not proposing to "change society to 15 years ago", my idea is more selective. It's more like "do a thorough review and restore all the mechanisms that made the use of smartphones and internet optional".
        • john_strinlai 7mo ago
          >"do a thorough review and restore all the mechanisms that made the use of smartphones and internet optional". we should probably workshop ideas that are within reality. downvoters are welcome to tell me how they would approach a worlwide review of everything that requires internet and un-internet it. i will wait. some primer questions to get your brain turning: who organizes and conducts the review? who pays for the review? who pays for the implementations? whats the messaging and how do you convince people to go along with rethinking/re-implementing their entire already-working infrastructure that they have potentially spent millions to billions of dollars on? do you just dissolve all of the internet-only services, and tell the founders to suck it? who enforces it and how?
• croes 7mo ago
  Given how many tech savvy people here run OpenClaw or one of it’s copycats I wouldn’t be so harsh in my judgment.
• ravenstine 7mo ago
  This has nothing to do with keeping people safe. If it did then power users could continue to install their own software by being given that ability as a developer setting. The fact that some people are gullible enough to go into a hidden setting on their phone and enable that in order to install an app from a random Chinese website is not a good reason to take away everyone's freedom. Consolidation of power is all this is about.
  • jrmg 7mo ago
    This has nothing to do with keeping people safe. ...and... some people are gullible enough to go into a hidden setting on their phone and enable that in order to install an app from a random Chinese website are kind of contradictory.
    • zadikian 7mo ago
      It's not a contradiction. Removing that setting solves that problem, but it's not the only solution.
      • array_key_first 7mo ago
        It also only solves that very specific problem. You don't need to side-load an app to scam someone. There's plenty of malware on the play store you can use. And, you don't need malware. There's plenty of legitimate apps you can use for scamming. And, you don't need an app, I would imagine most scamming is done without an app. So, really, we're solving a subset of a subset of a subset of a subset of the problem.
        • johnnyanmac 7mo ago
          yes. Hence, "this isn't about keeping people safe". The most effective means of hacking is social engineering. You can't solve that with any number of "security measures". If you require all the DNA sources in the world, a scammer will still charm a target into opening it up for them.
        • 7mo ago
• hilliardfarmer 7mo ago
  [flagged]
• Retr0id 7mo ago
  I don't know if Google is making the right choice here, but I do believe that technology should be for anyone (anyone who wants it, at least). How do you plan to decide who gets to use internet banking and who doesn't? That doesn't seem like a good road to be going down, either.
  • grishka 7mo ago
    People themselves will decide. Same way they decided whether they wanted to buy a computer in the 00s. It's just that those who decide to not have internet banking should not be disadvantaged by the society compared to those who have it.
    • EvanAnderson 7mo ago
      Agreed. Businesses should not be permitted to follow a "technology only" business model (which usually means lower costs for the business) to discriminate against potential Customers who might not want to use that technology.
    • Retr0id 7mo ago
      I think you'll find that most people using internet banking are using it voluntarily, not because they'd rather visit an in-person branch every time.
• gkoberger 7mo ago
  I “get” technology so I understand how you got here. But this is the wrong take. I expect to go to a restaurant and not die from the food… and I want nothing to do with the inner workings of the kitchen. I just want to know any restaurant I go into will be safe. Society has made restaurants safe, either because of government pressure or it’s good for business. How is that not a fair ask for technology, too? We all have things we know well, and then there’s reasons we’re alive that we don’t even know exist because someone took care of it. It’s unreasonable to only allow people to participate in society once they understand every nuance.
  • bombcar 7mo ago
    You could torture the analogy more and say that this is more like saying "it is possible to make bad food and kill yourself at home, so we require everyone to go to a restaurant."
    • bigbuppo 7mo ago
      Well, I mean, do you know many houses burn down because someone fell asleep while frying a pork chop? We should just get rid of kitchens at home because it's just not safe.
      • lovehashbrowns 7mo ago
        Oil fires cause immense damage to property and life! I don’t know why stoves are allowed in homes at all. Worse yet, they don’t implement any age verification, so a child can just turn on the burner! It’s crazy!
        • JuniperMesos 7mo ago
          People are actually trying to legally ban gas stoves in homes based on reasoning similar to this.
          • retr0rocket 7mo ago
• mystraline 7mo ago
  > At this point I'm convinced that there's something deeply wrong with how our society treats technology. The problem isnt with technology. The problem is with physical ownership versus copyright/trademark/patent ownership in abeyance of physical ownership. I go to a store and buy a device. I have a receipt showing a legal and good sale. This device isnt mine, even if a receipt says so. The software (and now theres ALWAYS software) isnt mine and can never be mine. My ownership is degraded because a company can claim that I didn't buy a copy of software, or that its only licensed, or they retain control remotely. And the situation is even worse if the company claims its a "digital restriction", ala DMCA. Then even my 1st amendment speech rights are abrogated AND my ownership rights are ignored. It would not be hard to right this sinking ship. 1. Abolish DMCA. 2. Establish that first sale doctrine is priority above copyright/patent/trademark 3. Tax these 'virtual property rights' 4. Have FTC find any remote control of sold goods be considered as fraudulently classified indefinite rental (want to rent? State it as such)
  • grishka 7mo ago
    If you think about it for as long as I did, you will find that the moment everything went sideways is when general-purpose computing devices started having their initial bootloader in the mask ROM of the CPU/SoC. Outlaw just that, say, by requiring the first instruction the CPU executes to physically reside in a separate ROM/flash chip, and suddenly, everything is super hackable. But DMCA abolition would certainly be very helpful as well.
• shadowgovt 7mo ago
  > Ruining Android for everyone to try to maybe help some rather technologically-hopeless groups of people is the wrong solution. Those groups of people are Google's paying customers. Google will, of course, defer to the ones who need more help to be safe online over the ones who don't. That's how you create a safe ecosystem.
  • dzikimarian 7mo ago
    What's then left as Google's advantage? I'm really not interested in buying myself a cage, but if Google will make me choose between two cages then Apple has nicer one.
    • shadowgovt 7mo ago
      Google still doesn't make you pay s dollar to write an app on their architecture (only to have it hosted in their store).
      • andrekandre 7mo ago
        you also don't need to pay apple for using xcode and building apps for ios either; the 99 dollars is for uploading to appstore or installing to devices for more than 7 days
        • shadowgovt 7mo ago
          Using xcode does require paying Apple, unless you've gotten your hands on a free copy of the OS and/or free Apple hardware somehow.
• themacguffinman 7mo ago
  How is it unsustainable when iOS has enforced even stricter rules for its nearly 20 year lifespan?
  • etiennebausson 7mo ago
    There two main mobile OS in the space, one moron-proof but limited, the other a bit more permissive, but slightly less secure for it. The problem is that most apps target only those two, and the second is trying to moron-proof, loosing most of it value to part of its users, while the apps are still locked in.
  • grishka 7mo ago
    Android has about 2/3 worldwide market share and it hasn't had anything like this before. Many people, myself included, chose it exactly because it allows the installation of modded, pirated, or otherwise non-store-worthy apps.
    • zadikian 7mo ago
      The 2/3 marketshare must be almost entirely due to Android being cheap and accessible, not because those people need to install arbitrary software. A lot of mobile plans don't even give you GB/mo, they give WhatsApp messages/mo. Not saying that this is right on principle.
    • tonyedgecombe 7mo ago
      >Many people But also a tiny percentage of the whole.
• VladVladikoff 7mo ago
  >Ruining Android for everyone Are they really though? does the average person really care about side loading? I think we are in an echo chamber. I can't picture any of the people in my life installing things from outside of an app store on their phone. However I realize that's purely anecdotal, it would be nice to see actual statistics on this to have a more informed decision.
  • monocasa 7mo ago
    When I point out that Apple listened to the Chinese government and removed apps that protestors were using to communicate during the Hong Kong protests, they seem to get it.
    • orbital-decay 7mo ago
      They removed VPNs at the request of the Russian government too (they have no operations in Russia). They are actively participating in government censorship.
  • otabdeveloper4 7mo ago
    This "sideloading" thing is mostly to enforce US sanctions against countries like China, Russia and Iran. So yes, hundreds of millions of people care about this.
    • nozzlegear 7mo ago
      I don't think it follows that the entire population of each of those countries automatically cares about this just because it's, ostensibly, being done to enforce sanctions against them.
      • otabdeveloper4 7mo ago
        I never said anything about "entire". Normies in sanctioned countries install banking apps by "sideloading" APK's downloaded from an official site. They all know exactly what "sideloading" is and why Google is banning it.
• GeekyBear 7mo ago
  > People who are unwilling to figure out the risks just should not use smartphones and the internet People who aren't technically sophisticated should choose the smartphone ecosystem that was designed to offer the safety of a walled garden from the start. Google sold Android as the ecosystem that gave users the freedom to do anything they like, including shooting themselves in the foot. Google should not be allowed to fraudulently go back on their promise now that they have driven the other open ecosystems out of the marketplace.
  • NotPractical 7mo ago
    Choosing an iPhone is not sufficient to avoid the risks of technology. The majority of online scams require nothing more than two pre-installed apps: Safari and Phone.
    • NotPractical 7mo ago
      Before downvoting, consider providing evidence that sideloading comes anywhere close to being the root cause of most online scams. Just yesterday I discovered that my grandmother had been receiving calls from "Google business support" on her iPhone. The fact that they can't get her to sideload some app doesn't seem to stop them.
    • anhner 7mo ago
      in 2 years: you will have a wait period of 24 hours or pay a yearly fee if you want to access a website that is not on $COMPANY's whitelist
• skybrian 7mo ago
  No, you have that backwards. A society is judged by how it treats its least able members. Android devices are primarily for mainstream users, not us. Technically adept users are the minority and we can deal with a few hoops to customize our phones the way we like. It's selfish to advocate against better protections for the least able people in the world just for our own convenience.
• Wowfunhappy 7mo ago
  Could the technophobes please just buy different smartphones? If certain people want to opt in to locked down devices, I think that's okay. But please give me a device that lets me do whatever I want. (And still lets me participate in modern society—I can't live with a Linux phone). Apple's argument for locking down the iPhone but not the Mac has always been some variation of "Mac users are professionals and iPhones are for everyone." Fine! Where can I buy the unrestricted iPhone? As far as I'm concerned, basically every problem could be solved if Apple would put the Security Research Device on an unlisted page of their online store for the general public. Normies won't buy it, and I will.
  • dwaite 7mo ago
    We already have that. The market for the "technophobe" (e.g. above average and below levels of security awareness) phone is 100x larger. That means the people who say "I can evaluate the intricacies and impacts of software authorization" have significantly fewer speciality devices to pick from, and those devices may not be worth developers (or regulators) making carve-outs to support.
  • SchemaLoad 7mo ago
    You can do that, there are custom roms and open source phones. The problem is banks are legally obligated a lot of the time to pay out for fraud and scams. So in response they won't allow you to run their software unless they can verify the compute environment.
    • kuschku 7mo ago
      So why can I access my bank account just fine via the website on my phone, but shouldn't be able to do the same via the app? Can't they offer at least a PWA version of the website for custom ROM users?
      • philistine 7mo ago
        People tend to distrust websites. URLs are also an immutable ledger that guarantees you’re in the right spot. The web is surprisingly robust for security. What guarantees your banking app is the right one? A PNG and an app name with no security whatsoever.
• inquirerGeneral 7mo ago
  [dead]
• wat10000 7mo ago
  Smartphones and the internet are really useful and convenient. Even if we could make it work, it seems quite rude to say that people should be excluded from it because we can't be bothered to make it safe. Consider an older technology that became fundamental to much of daily life a century or two ago: writing. After a few millennia where literacy was a specialized skill, we pretty quickly transitioned to a society where it was essential for common activities. Rather than make sure everything had pictures and such to accommodate the illiterate, we tried to make it so that the entire population is literate, and came pretty close to succeeding. There are people who just outright can't read for whatever reason, but they're a very small minority and we aim to accommodate them by giving them assistance so they can get by in a literate world, rather than changing the world so you don't need to be able to read to live a normal life. Rather than saying that half the population (a low estimate, I believe, for how many people will fall prey to malware in an anything-goes world) should abandon this technology, we should work to make it so they don't have to, with some combination of education and technological measures.
  • grishka 7mo ago
    Some people don't want to be taught about some things because they don't care enough about them. I was told a story as a kid about a grandma that didn't want to learn to read and write. It's the same thing here — there are people who don't want a smartphone. They were just fine with an old cell phone that could only call and text, but then the society forced them to buy a smartphone, so they did, but they still don't really want it. It's still a burden to them. It still creates more problems for them than it solves. I know several people like that.
    • wat10000 7mo ago
      I mean, too bad. You don’t want to learn to read and write? You have to anyway.
• alexchapman 7mo ago
  Or people just learn it and if they screw up they learn from those mistakes.
• derefr 7mo ago
  > to try to maybe help some rather technologically-hopeless groups of people Even if they're the majority? (Keep in mind that as average lifespan keeps getting longer while birth rates keep going lower, demographics will tend to skew older and older. Already happened in Japan; other developed countries will catch up soon.) > They should probably not have a bank account at all and just stick to cash. You know that these (mostly) don't fall into this category of being "hopeless with [modern] technology" because they're cognitively impaired, right? Mostly, the people who most benefit by these protections, are just people 1. with full lives, who 2. are old enough that when they were first introduced to these kinds of technologies, it came at a time in their life when they already had too much to do and too many other things to think/care about, to have any time left over for adapting their thinking to a "new way of doing things." This group of people still fully understands, and can make fluent use of, all the older technologies "from back in their day" that they did absorb and adapt to earlier in their lives, back when they had the time/motivation to do so. They can use a bank account; they can make phone calls and understand voicemail; they can print and fax and probably even email things. They can, just barely, use messaging apps. But truly modern inventions like "social media' confound them. Old bigcorps with low churn rates are literally chock-full of this type of person, because they've worked there since they were young. That's why these companies themselves can sometimes come off as "out of touch", both in their communications and in their decision-making. But those companies don't often collapse from mismanagement. Things still get done just fine. Just using slower, older processes.
• moomoo11 7mo ago
  Start your own nation and then start your own company, then. Nobody is forcing you to use a smartphone. If your work needs you to use some app, they’ll buy you a phone if they respect you. If you’re so upset just stop using it. But you won’t.
• pie_flavor 7mo ago
  'Only the educated elite should be permitted to use technology' is a great take, but unfortunately the peons outvote and outspend you, so their opinions matter more than yours.
• Denatonium 7mo ago
  I fully agree. Similar to killing bacteria with antibiotics, Attempting to idiot-proof machinery only leads to the creation of idiot-proofing-resistant idiots. We need to move back to putting users back into full control. Machines (including computers) should ALWAYS respect the input of the user, even if the user is wrong. If a person shoots themself with a gun as a result of their incompetence, we don't fault the gun manufacturer for not designing the gun to prevent auto-execution. If you can't operate a firearm safely, you shouldn't attempt to operate a firearm. Similarly, if a person deliberately points their car a solid object and accelerates into it, the actions of the operator shouldn't be the car manufacturer's responsibility. We need to get rid of ESC, ABS, AEB, etc. These features have created a whole slew of drivers who speed headfirst into the back of stationary drivers and expect their car to stop itself. This works right up until a sensor fails and the operator flies through the windshield (usually people like this don't wear seat-belts). If you can't drive, you shouldn't be driving until you rectify your incompetence. Similarly, phones and computers should respect user input. If a users wants root access to their personal device, they should be able to get root access. If a user runs "rm -rf --no-preserve-root /" as root, the device should oblige and delete everything, since that is what the operator instructed it to do. If you can't be trusted to use a computer, you shouldn't be using a computer until you rectify your incompetence. The lack of accountability in modern society is disgusting, and it leads to much deeper societal problems when people refuse to better themselves and instead expect the world to shield them from their willful ignorance.
  • I_am_uncreative 7mo ago
    I was with you right up until "We need to get rid of ESC, ABS, AEB, etc.". That is unreasonable. ABS, ESC, and AEB all exist to interpret what the driver intends. The driver does not intend for their wheels to lock up, that's why ABS exists, nor does the driver intend to skid. You can argue that AEB does not reflect the will of the driver, but it can also be disabled.
    • Denatonium 7mo ago
      I was admittedly a bit hot-headed when I wrote the original comment, but the critical qualifier in all of this is that these driver assist technologies should be optional and easily disable-able in a persistent manner, with a dashboard warning light to remind you that they're disabled. In a lot of modern cars, there's no straightforward way of fully disabling ABS, traction control, electronic stability control, etc. There are certainly situations where they may be helpful, such as in a top-heavy truck with an open differential, but ABS and traction control systems can pose problems in other situations, such as in snow. Especially in the case of RWD coupes with limited-slip differentials, a bit of skidding may be an asset, provided the driver knows how to correct for oversteer. Even in FWD cars, ABS can sometimes be a detriment when stopping in snow, as the rapid automated brake-pumping can dislodge the snow you were otherwise going to be holding steady on. Ultimately, I'm opposed to driver assist features being forced onto drivers who don't want to use them. I'm also opposed to teaching people how to drive with these assistance features. It's a lot like teaching students to use AI chatbots to do their work instead of teaching them to do their work themselves.
• nout 7mo ago
  (some) people are starting to understand why cash is so important. It's the neutrality that it provides. The fact that it can't be programmatically limited or censored and you can't be excluded from the economy. Cash is inclusive. Obviously cash becomes much harder to "use" online and in apps...
  • lyu07282 7mo ago
    Activists and human rights lawyers are constantly getting their bank accounts closed or denied, even UN human rights council members, members of the ICC, journalists, pro-palestine activists or people in the BDS movement, it happens ALL the time now in europe, people have no idea how bad that has become, nobody in mass media is ever reporting on it.
    • nout 7mo ago
      I got personally de-banked from one bank and I'm nobody. I had other options, so it was only a minor issue, but I can't imagine what it's like for people when they run out of alternatives.
    • th2o3i43498324 7mo ago
      I'm not surprised - the Zionist lobby has basically criminalized all opposition to it. Trump's "anti-DEI" geniuses ensured that any censure of Israel and its crimes would lead to the total destruction of one's life in the US (Gleen Greenwald talks about this on Tucker). Given how this is going, I'd not be surprised if anti-semitism comes roaring back by the end of the decade.
      • lyu07282 7mo ago
        > Given how this is going, I'd not be surprised if anti-semitism comes roaring back by the end of the decade. This is a huge issue yeah, so many jewish organizations that used to be fighting antisemitism are now more concerned with fighting anti-zionism, calling everybody who doesn't lick Israel's boot an antisemite. This will blow up in all their faces so hard.
• segmondy 7mo ago
  open source alternative, at first it's going to suck. but over time it will win. imagine how miserable we would be if all we had was windows and osx. but we have linux. we are now at such crossroads were the choice is android and apple, we need a free alternative. much sooner than most realize the threat to freedom from big corps, govt and others will be so big that we would wish to have a free mobile OS. mobile is now the main computing platform and needs a free big corp alternative. it's true that some big corps would refuse to allow there apps to run on there like a bank, but that's okay! there will be alternatives ...
  • storus 7mo ago
    Not necessarily; coding agents might help to accelerate getting to Android/iOS feature parity much faster than what was the case with Linux.
    • LtWorf 7mo ago
      They do not have the hardware specs in their training, which is what is missing.
      • storus 7mo ago
        The whole app ecosystem however can be generated to a large extent, so missing apps should not be a barrier for free/open source mobile OSes assuming an open hardware mobile SoC.
        • LtWorf 7mo ago
          You've tried plasma mobile? All apps are already there. What's missing are the proprietary ones like whatsapp, uber and the likes. It's hardware support and battery life that is severely lacking. I occasionally contribute, but nothing major. But I have a chuwi x86 tablet running debian with plasma-mobile. It's not perfect but it's quite usable I think. Now if only there would be drivers for the new style non-v4l webcams, it would be better.
• renewiltord 7mo ago
  I agree. In fact, one of the things I frequently propose is that we disallow the elderly and mentally disabled from using advanced technology without government proctor. In this way we can protect them. Everyone else can choose to turn off their scam protection. People frequently talk about this with respect to AI and ads and how it’s bad for people to be use these things. I recommend we disallow the internet entirely for classes of people whose minds are not ready for the downsides of the tech. With your Adderall prescription should come a phone number to sign up to the government proctoring service.
• Nursie 7mo ago
  "We could make devices safe for everyone but this upsets freedom purists, so I've decided some people need to stay in the dark ages instead"
• SergeAx 7mo ago
  Yellowstone rangers taught us that building an effective anti-bear trash container is impossible because the top 10% of bears are smarter than the bottom 10% of tourists.
  • thaumasiotes 7mo ago
    They obviously didn't teach us that, because it isn't true. It's trivial to provide a container that can only be opened by following instructions that a human can understand and a bear can't. That container won't work to stop bears from having access to trash, because tourists have the alternative of just throwing their trash on the ground, but being unwilling to bother using a bear-safe container is a very different thing from being unable to.
• MrDresden 7mo ago
  This isn't about helping people, that's just the cover story. This is about Google wanting more control over their ecosystem.
• yaro330 7mo ago
  You live in a bubble. The roles are inversed. This is "ruining" Android for the 0.001% of power users that install .apk files and improving it for the huge chunk of population that are still getting hit by malicious ads that try to push app installs onto you.
  • basilikum 7mo ago
    Who is hosting these ads? Might it be Google?
    • yaro330 7mo ago
      No real counter argument? Do better HN
      • basilikum 7mo ago
        Google is using scams as an argument for dismantling ownership and restricting the owner of a device from installing software of their own choice on their own device. Yet they host the very ads that are part of these scams and profit from them. If Google wanted and actually cared about scams they would stop hosting these scam ads en mass. It clearly is a pretense. This is not about scams and it will not stop with a ridiculous 24h waiting period to enable installing software. They will remove the option altogether.
        • yaro330 7mo ago
          Oh boy. They don't host these ads, there are plenty of ad providers that happily do though, outside of Google businesses (Meta). Google also isn't one homogenous business, Android people don't have direct access to the ads people. This is about scams because 99% of all apk installs come not from basement power users installing cracked apps, but from the older people that are all too trusting to the internet that they're browsing.
          • basilikum 7mo ago
• jhanschoo 7mo ago
  My take is quite different. Every device that I use to do internet banking or things of that nature, I'm very happy to delegate security to companies, and consider that already I trust said bank with my finances. If I want a device I "fully control", then I don't expect a bank to trust it, I don't expect to do internet banking on it or other sensitive stuff of that nature. And that's the status quo even with Google implementing this, open-source OSes still exist, just don't expect internet banking to happen on them.
• jackpeterfletch 7mo ago
  Consider that you, and most of the community here, wouldn't have jobs if that were the case. XD