- cross-posted to:
- privacy@programming.dev
- cross-posted to:
- privacy@programming.dev
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I’m bothered that big companies, especially tech right now, no longer see their customers as people they need to please to stay in business, but instead as something they’ll inconvenience and squeeze as much as they can possibly get away with.
They all got to where they are making, at one point, amazing products. Now? Fuck making windows useful, we can throw ads and AI at you every place we can think of. Fuck all of the parts of Android that made it stand out, we tell you what to install. You don’t want all of your data scraped and sold? Fuck you, there’s 3 of us and we’re all doing it. In fact we’ll never stop finding new ways to harvest data.
Phones have basically stagnated entirely in the US. Sure you get moderately better chipsets, but what else? AI? I haven’t had a phone struggle with anything in… maybe 10 years. Instead features that people didn’t use enough just get removed.
Users are the commodity to be traded. They have what they see as a business model that’s too big to fail. And the users agree!
First time?
Nah, just cranky about it.
I’m actively looking for a new phone that has 0 Google in it, and am looking ad de-Googling the rest of my life.
I remember being genuinely hyped about Gmail in 2008. Now, I don’t want them accessing any of my data.
I’m taking steps, slowly, as well. I’m getting off windows very soon, I’m working on getting off of various services these companies run one at a time. Depending on what really happens with Android and Google we’ll see.
of course google wants every developers id the second they get into bed with a fascist federal government
I feel like this is the new normal cycle of every software company. Once they become a leader, it’s never enough. It replicates the rise of billionaires. Just as the billionaires being rich beyond anything they and all of their succeeding generations could ever spend is not enough, being the industry leader and producing an amazing product that people want is somehow not enough. It always turns to control and power.
At some point they get large enough that the whims of users cease to affect their decision-making. If Google, Meta, and MS tomorrow rolled out a social credit system that made the Chinese version look generous, 95+% of their users would not change a THING to avoid it. Maybe 98% of their users.
I can’t wait for AI to become a living corporate trillionaire entity and fuck us all to the end of humanity.
I came here specifically to ask about alternatives to Android now that google is becoming too abusive in the relationship.
I was looking into it a few ago. I found something made in Europe which advertise as more consumer friendly (Fairphone). If I got it right they want to stand out of the crowd by:
- Selling phones that can be repaired easily;
- Offer a de-googled OS based on Android.
The second point could be interesting, considering this Google abusive behavior towards users. Moreover, there is another thing that caught my attention: their devices (the last one is missing, but maybe it’s just too new?) are supported by Ubuntu Touch, which should be just a Linux OS running on phones. That would be my dream, so that I can consider my phone just a computer with all the freedom I can get, such as write down my bash/python/C applications to do what I want to do without having to mess up with all that Android development suite.
However, if I am not mistaken, in the past I heard some bad reviews about Fairphone, so you should perform your due diligence.
Custom Android ROMs based on AOSP, which is the open source parts of Android. I used to use LineageOS back in the day.
Before buying a phone, make sure that it has an unlockable bootloader and a custom ROM of a recent Android version. Note that some phones have multiple versions for different regions and some might not be unlockable, while others are. For example many Samsung international phones are unlockable, but none of the USA models are.
Note that many commercial apps like Netflix, Pokémon Go, bank apps, etc. will refuse to run if your bootloader is unlocked. It also permanently trips Samsung’s Knox.
Unfortunately, this seems to be something that might be changing in the future. Google isn’t going to be open source with android development anymore.
GrapheneOS works well. But only on pixel devices.
Ironic that you need a Google smartphone, isn’t it?
That’s unfortunately a dealbreaker for me. I have a free phone from some company I’ve never heard of and I don’t plan on buying a new one. Hopefully we will see more progress on mobile operating systems in the coming years.
Unfortunately, things are heading in the opposite direction. The number of phones you can install other os’s on is dwindling by the day. Even the phones designed solely for this purpose are failing to capture enough market to remain sustainable.
The OS’s are getting there by leaps and bounds, but you being able to install it on anything is the hard part.
Not android or apple. I’ll go to a prepaid flip phone before I give apple a cent. They’re essentially the paragon of greed.
The year of the Linux mobile is coming.
IS THAT A FUCKING HEADPHONE JACK!?
Let’s go 🔥🔥🔥
Standards are low huh?
Well all the major brands are below that…
It’s nice, and good to see more of a push. However, I think kill switches for at least microphone and camera should be the new default. It’s absolutely ridiculous to walk around with an internet connected mic and a camera that looks at your face whenever you look at your phone. Personally, I’ll never carry a phone around anymore that doesn’t have mics and cameras desoldered or there’s a kill switch. For the back camera a cover with a slide is fine, but doesn’t really work with the front part.
I would carry around a flip phone if my work didn’t require Passkeys generated exclusively from MS Authenticator.
I just put stickers on the selfie camera.
As long as companies can keep pumping shitty, almost entirely closed off android phones that cost less than 200 dollars for consumers (selling hardware at a loss while making up for data harvesting and sale), “linux mobile” will be just another meme along with “year of the linux desktop”
Neat! And a removable battery.
Debian too! Always liked me some Debian, super stable.
Sign me the fuck up!
The specs look quite decent, and it even has an SD card slot. I really would love to get away from android.
I want to believe, I really do. But I fear that the crypto apps people have grown dependent on will make it harder than the desktop battle. And IDK but I seem to recall every year since at least 2001 being proclaimed to be the year of the Linux desktop.
I rely on my banking apps (plural), governmental email app, government authentificator app and the governmental LMS app for public schools to make my everyday function. And the last time I tried just a custom ROM, those apps refused to run.
A phone that can’t do NFC payment, banking and authenticator work is not a phone. It’s a pile of shit that’s little more than a toy for children.
Nothing wrong with toys, but they arnt useable products worth any amount of real money.
is this legit?
As shitty as M$ is, it would have been nice to see Windows phone become moderately successful and be a third primary mobile os.
I’d prefer that firefox os had caught on and turned into a big player today
That’s would just be Windows 11 S Mobile Edition, but you do not get the option to upgrade to Windows 11 Home Mobile Edition as you would on a PC
Or maybe you do get an option, but its a subscription for $50 per quarter-year. 🫠
And 16GB storage (because everything is being saved to OneDrive anyway).
Not much different than Google. Keeping their mobile device storage low and then officially advising people to just store stuff on Google drive instead.
Thus driving people to pay for Google One.
I disagree. That would’ve just been more garbage like with the xbox.
I’m playing gears on PS5 as we speak. Ha ha. What a shipwreck XBOX has become.
That’s great news. Exclusivity is not good for the consumer/gamer. Now you can play more games on your console.
As a platform holder is terrible, I have a series X and it’s a paperweight.
Meh, that’s not real competition… the big one just collude
I didn’t hate my Windows Phone when I had one.
I did, it fucking sucked
No way - it was a good phone at the time. I had a Lumia 640 and it worked like a charm. There was only a small range of apps, but the main features worked fine: mail, calendar, messaging, camera and route planner with a map. There were news readers, Acrobat. I did not miss much and if M$ sold it’s software better to other manufacturers than Nokia, I think it would have worked well and fitted between Apple and Google.
I would have rather seen the development of BBOS10. It was so far ahead of its time.
That whole thing we do with swipe gestures to navigate the android interface? Yeah BBOS had that years ago.
I miss my Passport.
I still have my BlackBerry Passport.
with chrome, ope, edge
Time to back to the analog world and short wave radios.
Lemmy would rock in Morse code
It would only be days before someone builds logic gates using Morse code somehow (who am I kidding, it probably already exists), and we recreate the entire thing again lol
Fuck them. I have a guitar a pocket watch and a wind uo radio. Everything have is a nicety.
I kinda want a 2.5" round screen fit into a pocketwatch case. Give it an nrf52, lora, bt, wifi.
Are we already nostalgic for analog oligarchy?
We burned down the past we can burn down the future too.
now it’s just a race for the giant conglomerates to make the worst decisions for consumers
Your computer no longer “computes”, its just a barebones terminal to access a “virtual pc” in the cloud.
Good news, you don’t need to pay $1000 for a good laptop, all you need is this $50 windows machine that only runs a client that streams a live feed from MS Headquarters
Bad news, its a subscription, stop paying and you lose all files.
Wait a minute did you type a “Eat The Rich” document, sorry can’t have that, violates ToS, deleted.
Fahrenheit 451 x 1984
894,784 degrees
Yep. There’s no such thing as competition any more.
Tech companies are just gas stations across the street from each other.
and you don’t have a choice atp its just forced enshittifcation down your throat!!
Are you kidding me? How am I supposed to live in this damn Orwellian society that is coming?
Look up Microsoft in the early 90s and how we all got through it.
tbf, we all got through it by just going to other platforms. now there’s almost no other platforms to go to because big tech either pressures them until they fold, or sell to them and become part of their umbrella as some shill company or they remain independent but still use big tech software to run their backend, so your info ends up going to them anyway.
i think in the future, everyone will be forced into surveillance by default and those who don’t will have to either pay dearly for privacy or learn how to program their own security. checkout project gideon that’s already getting pitched to the united states government and other governments from israel. it’s literally that show “person of interest” plus
Pretty sure they’re talking about antitrust lol
That’s just it. You’re not supposed to live. You’re supposed to be controlled.
🦉 529
Always has been
okay well goodbye Google, then
what’s the alternative here?
Yeah that’s the issue, when it comes to mobile, anyway
!remindme 2 years
Does !remindme work on Lemmy?
!remindme 1 day
The EU’s been breathing down Apple’s neck for them trying to do similar shit, so i find the timing kinda weird.
Plus they’d need to force-update their spyware first, i wonder how many versions of android they’re willing to go back.I think the update is already installed, just waiting for the kill switch.
Yet Apple has been able to profit from their walled garden for decades now. Doesn’t that set a precedent that it’s okay? I honestly don’t blame Google for going this route—it’s inaction from our policymakers that has created the space for abuse.
When our policymakers take direction from capitalists, it’s ok to blame to capitalists.
Yeah I was going to say it’s better to blame the policy makers but who the fuck cares? Neither side of that coin does.
Interesting perspective. So the suggestion is to redirect our blame away from our elected representatives or even from electing representatives that run on a campaign that aligns with our priorities.
There’s more than enough blame to go around. It’s not a zero sum game.
I’m not sure how you came to that conclusion based on what I wrote, but my suggestion is to not let companies escape consequences for shitty things they do simply because regulators fail to be effective at their jobs. Legally allowed is not the same as morally acceptable.
The EU has been targeting Apple for years now for not allowing sideloading (the whole Fortnite drama) and ruled that no, Apple can’t bar users from installing shit.
Apple requires developers to go through a Notarization process, much in the same way that Google intends to introduce restrictions to sideloading on Android. How is this different?
It isn’t, now that apple is using that to block installation of third party apps I’m expecting the EU to once again step in.
I’m not giving up my off the market pixel dungeon mods.
Shattered pixel dungeon? Or is there another version?
Several others that have been taken out of the store completely or that never got in, like unbreakable pixel dungeon is the old regular pixel dungeon without item degradation.
Fuck google
Easily the most disgusting company in the planet and it’s funny that their old motto/slogan was ”Don’t be evil”.
Sounds like you’re not familiar with Oracle…
One rich asshole called Larry Ellison…?
I’ve recently gotten to think that the company which made the basement for all these disgusting companies is usually viewed as not just not disgusting, but almost holy. Meaning Sun. So, maybe, judging the tree by its fruits, the most disgusting company was Sun.
I mean, I know that everyone who used their products and of course people who worked there are still in awe and remember it like a Soviet summer camp shown in the Everlasting Summer game.
But perhaps that’s misguided. They’ve built the hierarchical systems, the infrastructure, for all the dystopia of today, and their code still powers much of it.
Also you know how the second competitor in an almost monopolized market is sometimes considered an accomplice of monopoly? Because they are strong enough to support some of its ways, while the rest are not. So they reinforce it. I’m also looking at Firefox writing this. Literally.
Perhaps we’d have a better environment office-wise if LibreOffice and OpenOffice were not a thing. They support MS formats, thus indirectly contributing to MS dominance. The network effects work in a few different ways, while were it different, those desperately needing MS documents would use MSO, at the same time those just needing some office suite would possibly not.
Perhaps that can also be applied to Unix and Unix-likes, Sun made a lot of momentum for Unix and Unix-like desktops when they contributed to TCL/Tk so that it became a tool for making Unix and Unix-like desktop applications easily. And when they created Java and Java applets in web browsers prepared the public for scripts in browsers and cross-platform applications served over net.
Yes, it all felt like heaven behind the corner, but perhaps they are to blame. What if.
After all, much of that was free or for the cost of a CD then, and free cheese usually is part of a trap. Perhaps if instead commercial competing platforms, like Amiga or even Apple, were to gain more following, we’d have a different world. All those development resources couldn’t have been gifted (Sun in the 90s, I mean, and honestly many universities) out of nowhere, something made that worth the expense.
Or, if we want free and open, Lisp environments are somewhat easier to hack on (also again about TCL, it kinda approaches that in convenience for a non-programmer to make something simple, quick and dirty, but good enough), and accessibility to wider, eh, masses is meaningful here. So maybe GNU shouldn’t have gone with a Unix-like system idea. I mean, OK, they do have a Lisp environment fit for everything, it’s called Emacs.
BTW, about disgusting companies coming to mind first, I’m not disgusted by Oracle, in comparison to most other big ones they do honest business. I dunno why they are hated, uncle Larry says dystopian shit with enthusiasm and no remorse, but at the same time his company sells exactly what it advertises. It’s all kinda open and straightforward, it’s the “one rich asshole called Larry Ellison” company, which may not be what someone likes, but is certainly better than companies actively building worldwide digital fascism (it, of course, offers expertise and help to those who do in case they need it). Also he’s really a self-made man. Unlike all those other types from good families, good environments and with good education.
OK. I just have that conspiracy theory brewing in my mind about Sun actually being evil. Sorry.
