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>I'm talking about things like small tools that were shared on e.g. xda-developers before Github came, about fan-mods for games etc... The 'big' ones continued

>I'm talking about things like small tools that were shared on e.g. xda-developers before Github came, about fan-mods for games etc... The 'big' ones continued living, but if you now e.g. search for a special kernel/ROM for your G1/ADP1 you are mostly out of luck. This is something that has always sketched me out about the Android rooting and moding scene. "Download this suspect binary from rapid share and run it as root" seemed to be a cornerstone of it.

yablak 12y ago
This is generally taken care of using checksums, assuming you trust the source. Of course, trusting the source is the hard part. CyanogenMod, for example, has a chain of trust for their releases; though they host their own binaries.
- comex 12y ago
  It is too bad that these went down, but yech, sharing binaries or even entire OS images made of open source code... what if you want to change one configuration option or line of code while keeping whatever special modifications were made? What if you want to combine the changes in X fancy ROM with Y? (Never mind that the kernel is GPL.) I'm not an Android user myself, but I will nevertheless suggest that optimally these things would be distributed as source on GitHub, with a deterministic build system guaranteed to be able to reproduce binaries in the future, and only secondarily as binaries.
  - ianlevesque 12y ago
    I agree but an Android build takes hours and hours and has a complex setup. Even a pretty dedicated Android user would prefer a binary.
    - pakled_engineer 12y ago
      I build them on AWS now, mainly since it takes me 5hrs to download the source compared to a few minutes on AWS. Anybody who knows of a better cloud building service? I consistently fail to estimate instance costs.
      - micro-ram 12y ago
        You are using a spot instance right?
        pakled_engineer 12y ago
        I am, and it doesn't cost much at all just sometimes there's problems with builds you have to manually track down I'd rather pay a flat monthly fee somewhere and get x amount of builds/bandwidth if possible. Build time is around 14mins only + the few minutes to repo source + few seconds to run my script that yoinks the junk from Android and the kernel.
        entrop13 12y ago
        care to share that script?
        Xylakant 12y ago
        I'm certain you can use travis-ci for that purpose.
Crito 12y ago
This is why I have stopped believing that "The Year of the Linux Desktop" would even be a good thing. Android has "regular old joe sixpack" users by the millions, but has the Android community actually benefited from that? The existing "desktop linux" community has their act together far more than the Android community, despite (or because of?) not having those legions of unskilled users.
- stusmall 12y ago
  Benefits have come out of it. It's not about the number of users who have it, but about the money companies are backing the users with. Linux has gotten some great new features that benefit the ecosystem as a whole that came out of Google's work on ChromeOS and Android. dm-verity is a good example of this.
  - Crito 12y ago
    Hardware support specifically is often cited as one of the ways that "desktop linux" would benefit from joe-sixpack users. That is what has always been lacking from "desktop linux". Hardware support in official ROMs from phone manufactures is good of course, but what is freely available to the Android community is much worse. It turns out joe-sixpack doesn't really give any shits about hardware support being open-sourced. It's nice that Google has given back some stuff, but that's peanuts compared with what the "year of the linux desktop" meme promises.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
userbinator 12y ago
This is something that has always sketched me out about the Android rooting and moding scene. "Download this suspect binary from rapid share and run it as root" seemed to be a cornerstone of it. The warez/cracks scene was essentially the same thing, and yet if you knew where you were getting things from, it was quite safe. The antipiracy groups have since been spreading plenty of FUD (and some possibly attaching malware to releases, I don't know) and working with the AV/security industry to make you believe otherwise, however. Just as a warez/cracks group would be called out for it and very publicly shamed if they put malware in their releases, the same would happen in the Android scene. It's true that there are many rather clueless users (known as "leechers" in the vernacular), but there are also many knowledgeable ones and all it takes is one to give sufficient evidence of malice to trigger the "immune reaction".
- untog 12y ago
  The difference being that making an Android build is not an illegal activity.
- fizl 12y ago
  But it's even worse than that. People run random operating systems on devices they carry 24/7. Devices with microphones, multiple cameras, access to personal and work email, text messages, passwords, your location. And there are so many places for things to wrong. Any one of the following could be malicious, incompetent, or compromised: * The ROM's maintainer. There are many groups here, for example many ROMs are based on ParanoidAndroid, which is based on Cyanogenmod, which is based on AOSP. * The device maintainer. Typically each brand/model device has its own volunteers to maintain any proprietary blobs or special upgrade process * The hackers who provide special binaries that root each device, unlock the bootloader, etc. * The added packages you typically get separately from the ROM, for example Google Apps. * The build machine, typically just some random box donated semi-anonymously by someone * The web hosting (without TLS, of course) provided by some other random person. I love Android. I compile and run my own ROM. But the current scene scares the shit out of me.
  - fencepost 12y ago
danudey 12y ago
It's the same with things like game trainers, save editors, etc.. Sign up and give your e-mail address to this forum so that you can see the download link for this file. Which is an outdated version. The new version is in another forum thread on a separate forum, but you have to register to see links. The link is to a rapidshare download page, which rest assured is totally legit. I honestly don't understand why more people don't create Github accounts and use that to distribute, or at least use their ISP's free web space. Most of these tools have names, are well-known, and are the top hit on Google, but none of them have an actual website that you can go to to see if they've released new versions, something for other games, etc. It's all very sketch.
- jhchabran 12y ago
  Trainers, save editors, translations are basically a common entry point into programming, like a closed knit group of people that love video games and who wants to modify/hack/translate their favourites games. At some point, programming comes to the table and people will start sharing knowledge about it with their own way of doing things. A popular project will get hosted somewhere and the following projects will get hosted there too, simply because they're learning by looking at the popular one. Rapidshare, megauploads, all of these are tools people know before getting into programming, so they just use it. Github is something that comes later, if things get serious. Dwarf fortress stuff is like that, Minecraft is even worse, you get adfly in the middle :D
  - blueskin_ 12y ago
    >Dwarf fortress stuff is like that dffd exists for things that aren't github(etc)-appropriate such as tools. No real reason to use anything else unless you're trying to monetise it with adf.ly etc (which might also count as a reason not to download).
- userbinator 12y ago
  I honestly don't understand why more people don't create Github accounts and use that to distribute, or at least use their ISP's free web space. The (pseudo)anonymous aspect of not having a fixed identity which could easily be linked to something else is both convenient and valuable to privacy?
mikegioia 12y ago
I bricked my Samsung GS3 (SPH crappy one) doing just that. 8 hours off-and-on of random binary / flashing and on the 9th hour, bricked. Horrible, horrible experience.

yablak 12y ago

This is generally taken care of using checksums, assuming you trust the source. Of course, trusting the source is the hard part. CyanogenMod, for example, has a chain of trust for their releases; though they host their own binaries.

comex 12y ago
It is too bad that these went down, but yech, sharing binaries or even entire OS images made of open source code... what if you want to change one configuration option or line of code while keeping whatever special modifications were made? What if you want to combine the changes in X fancy ROM with Y? (Never mind that the kernel is GPL.) I'm not an Android user myself, but I will nevertheless suggest that optimally these things would be distributed as source on GitHub, with a deterministic build system guaranteed to be able to reproduce binaries in the future, and only secondarily as binaries.
- ianlevesque 12y ago
  I agree but an Android build takes hours and hours and has a complex setup. Even a pretty dedicated Android user would prefer a binary.
  - pakled_engineer 12y ago
    I build them on AWS now, mainly since it takes me 5hrs to download the source compared to a few minutes on AWS. Anybody who knows of a better cloud building service? I consistently fail to estimate instance costs.
    - micro-ram 12y ago
      You are using a spot instance right?
      - pakled_engineer 12y ago
        I am, and it doesn't cost much at all just sometimes there's problems with builds you have to manually track down I'd rather pay a flat monthly fee somewhere and get x amount of builds/bandwidth if possible. Build time is around 14mins only + the few minutes to repo source + few seconds to run my script that yoinks the junk from Android and the kernel.
        entrop13 12y ago
        care to share that script?
        Xylakant 12y ago
        I'm certain you can use travis-ci for that purpose.

Crito 12y ago

This is why I have stopped believing that "The Year of the Linux Desktop" would even be a good thing. Android has "regular old joe sixpack" users by the millions, but has the Android community actually benefited from that? The existing "desktop linux" community has their act together far more than the Android community, despite (or because of?) not having those legions of unskilled users.

stusmall 12y ago
Benefits have come out of it. It's not about the number of users who have it, but about the money companies are backing the users with. Linux has gotten some great new features that benefit the ecosystem as a whole that came out of Google's work on ChromeOS and Android. dm-verity is a good example of this.
- Crito 12y ago
  Hardware support specifically is often cited as one of the ways that "desktop linux" would benefit from joe-sixpack users. That is what has always been lacking from "desktop linux". Hardware support in official ROMs from phone manufactures is good of course, but what is freely available to the Android community is much worse. It turns out joe-sixpack doesn't really give any shits about hardware support being open-sourced. It's nice that Google has given back some stuff, but that's peanuts compared with what the "year of the linux desktop" meme promises.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

userbinator 12y ago

This is something that has always sketched me out about the Android rooting and moding scene. "Download this suspect binary from rapid share and run it as root" seemed to be a cornerstone of it. The warez/cracks scene was essentially the same thing, and yet if you knew where you were getting things from, it was quite safe. The antipiracy groups have since been spreading plenty of FUD (and some possibly attaching malware to releases, I don't know) and working with the AV/security industry to make you believe otherwise, however. Just as a warez/cracks group would be called out for it and very publicly shamed if they put malware in their releases, the same would happen in the Android scene. It's true that there are many rather clueless users (known as "leechers" in the vernacular), but there are also many knowledgeable ones and all it takes is one to give sufficient evidence of malice to trigger the "immune reaction".

untog 12y ago
The difference being that making an Android build is not an illegal activity.
fizl 12y ago
But it's even worse than that. People run random operating systems on devices they carry 24/7. Devices with microphones, multiple cameras, access to personal and work email, text messages, passwords, your location. And there are so many places for things to wrong. Any one of the following could be malicious, incompetent, or compromised: * The ROM's maintainer. There are many groups here, for example many ROMs are based on ParanoidAndroid, which is based on Cyanogenmod, which is based on AOSP. * The device maintainer. Typically each brand/model device has its own volunteers to maintain any proprietary blobs or special upgrade process * The hackers who provide special binaries that root each device, unlock the bootloader, etc. * The added packages you typically get separately from the ROM, for example Google Apps. * The build machine, typically just some random box donated semi-anonymously by someone * The web hosting (without TLS, of course) provided by some other random person. I love Android. I compile and run my own ROM. But the current scene scares the shit out of me.
- fencepost 12y ago

danudey 12y ago

It's the same with things like game trainers, save editors, etc.. Sign up and give your e-mail address to this forum so that you can see the download link for this file. Which is an outdated version. The new version is in another forum thread on a separate forum, but you have to register to see links. The link is to a rapidshare download page, which rest assured is totally legit. I honestly don't understand why more people don't create Github accounts and use that to distribute, or at least use their ISP's free web space. Most of these tools have names, are well-known, and are the top hit on Google, but none of them have an actual website that you can go to to see if they've released new versions, something for other games, etc. It's all very sketch.

jhchabran 12y ago
Trainers, save editors, translations are basically a common entry point into programming, like a closed knit group of people that love video games and who wants to modify/hack/translate their favourites games. At some point, programming comes to the table and people will start sharing knowledge about it with their own way of doing things. A popular project will get hosted somewhere and the following projects will get hosted there too, simply because they're learning by looking at the popular one. Rapidshare, megauploads, all of these are tools people know before getting into programming, so they just use it. Github is something that comes later, if things get serious. Dwarf fortress stuff is like that, Minecraft is even worse, you get adfly in the middle :D
- blueskin_ 12y ago
  >Dwarf fortress stuff is like that dffd exists for things that aren't github(etc)-appropriate such as tools. No real reason to use anything else unless you're trying to monetise it with adf.ly etc (which might also count as a reason not to download).
userbinator 12y ago
I honestly don't understand why more people don't create Github accounts and use that to distribute, or at least use their ISP's free web space. The (pseudo)anonymous aspect of not having a fixed identity which could easily be linked to something else is both convenient and valuable to privacy?

mikegioia 12y ago

I bricked my Samsung GS3 (SPH crappy one) doing just that. 8 hours off-and-on of random binary / flashing and on the 9th hour, bricked. Horrible, horrible experience.