How will the transfer occur? I'm assuming via Google account?
So this is vendor lock-in to an online account being sold as a way to "win" against a problem _created_ by said vendor? I would prefer a per-device wait time and I sincerely hope a Google account will not be a hard requirement. I didn't consider this initially.
Google is in the process of stealing the shirts from our backs and selling them back to us. Whoever wrote this article is drinking the kool-aid. This should NOT be presented as a positive thing. Some of us use Android without a Google account and would still like to sideload.
Recommending RetroArch seems needlessly complex too, I'd figure it'd be simpler to learn how to operate a given emulator for a given system since the scope is narrower. DuckStation's UI for example is pretty friendly.
> a non-intrusive banner that appears monthly on a transition screen and asks users who save hundreds of euros or dollars a year to consider making a voluntary contribution is not scandalous
Showing that actually pretty intrusive banner would undermine their argument.
Okay cool, I don't ask for donations. Instead I just sell my product, something like a Office 2024 license. 120 Eur a year, but feel free to use it as long as you like. That's what I bought recently. I don't want Microsoft 365 with the cloud storage, I pay Dropbox for that and use some other client to use it basically as a extra storage device for backups. I just need an Office suite, Excel, Word, Powerpoint. Yes: LibreOffice is nice and all, but doesn't work for MY needs.
But I get your point: having a succesful Open Source (FLOSS) app without dono's isn't possible, you need to have some to make it work anyhow.
This is a bad argument. Established things are established. “If you don’t like what the president of your country is doing, just run for the office yourself.”
"Established things are established" BUT "established things don't always stay there." Things can change, if many people will support said change. The power of many is really something.
Exactly. And it seems that "many people" do not, in fact, support this change, to the point Libreoffice felt necessary to defend it after the fact on their official website.
Maybe "many people" remember what's been going on at Mozilla over the past decade. After all, Mozilla went there before and set the example of downward slope: first donations then partnerships, first opt-in then opt-out then automatically installed addons, first "contribute to the browser" then to sideprojects/non-technical causes, etc.
Even this cannot adjust volume levels independently for multiple tabs in the same browser, which I have always been able to do on linux with pulseaudio/pipewire. People on windows use browser extensions for this, with full access to all tabs/sites...
Every time I try to build a castle in my swamp, it gets to a certain height and then it just sinks?
STOP telling me about civil engineering, we fucking invented that shit. And NO, we have to build it in the swamp, it feeds us and keeps us safe, and I'm darned proud to say we invented that too.
There's no way this is really about scammers. I have never heard of scammers pushing sideloaded apps upon their victims in order to carry out their scams.
Would welcome evidence to the contrary. Is this truly a threat model that's seen in the wild?
My gut says no because social engineering is about hijacking legitimate, first-party processes. Scammers attack login credentials, MFA flows, and use first-party apps to maintain access (think remote control software like TeamViewer). These apps come from the Play Store, not from meticulously curated collections like F-Droid, and not from somebody pressuring you to sideload an APK.
And if scammers decide to use sideloading as an attack vector -- then like all the other security gates that can be defeated via social engineering, I expect they will find an end-run around this one as well. Either on a technical basis, or by social-engineering users into bumbling past it and on to the next stage of the scam.
Build an idiot-proof system and society will build a better idiot. And yeah, the rest of us only wind up slightly annoyed, _for now_, until Google tightens their grip further on some other flimsy pretext.
>There's no way this is really about scammers. I have never heard of scammers pushing sideloaded apps upon their victims in order to carry out their scams.
I also never got targeted by pig butchering scams[1], and neither did my immediate friends/family, so I guess those must not exist either?
You don’t need malicious apps for this, it’s common to use real crypto exchanges and get them to send you money. How does google’s approach solve that?
And here are apps straight from the App Store [0] that are outright scams. How dos this protect people from these?
This 24-hour wait time nonsense is a humiliation ritual designed to invalidate any expectation of Android being an open platform. The messaging is very clear and the writing's on the wall now, there's nowhere to go from here but down.
I understand where the author is coming from but this bends a little too far towards "recording outside your door is bad and you should feel bad because you are a horrible paranoid person" for my taste.
The reality is that a lot of societies or locales are not high-trust and it makes sense to take steps to insure oneself/family/possessions.
Installing cameras on your property does not necessarily mean you have a destructive attitude, are suspicious or paranoid, or that you are storing and cataloging events. It's a set-and-forget system that the majority of users probably don't think about on a daily basis. You install them in the hopes that you'll never have to use them.
I also reject the idea that installing a surveillance system means treating neighbors as enemies. Well-meaning people should implicitly understand that the surveillance isn't directed towards them in that way.
This is also why Amazon Ring and cloud-connected mass surveillance systems should receive scrutiny - these DO mean exposing your neighbors to third parties who may treat them with suspicion.
I would rather a more grounded argument like "_Amazon Ring_ is bad and you should feel bad, get a better surveillance system" because currently this article's reasoning is very nebulous and subjective.
I don't think I'm overly paranoid. I do still have a HomeKit compatible encrypted video doorbell that cannot talk to any outside vendor.
Once in a while it has turned out to have been good to have. Never critical, but good to have. And I don't have to give everything to [Amazon/Ring|Flock|local PD|whoever]... unless I choose to.
What does a surveillance system actually give you? Have you dealt with Police after break in & robberies?
I was a building manager for 6 years and Police took the footage over 10 times during my tenure, nothing was ever recovered by the police and recognised offenders were never bought to any sort of justice.
The surveillance system gives you the footage. If police can't do anything with it, that's unfortunate, but not the fault of the surveillance system.
In this instance I'd say the surety and closure provided by the ability to simply review the footage is an important aspect for potential victims. And if victimized by something worse than petty theft, the value only goes up.
I’m not saying it’s the fault of the surveillance system if police don’t use it. But what is the actual benefit to you/society as a whole we film our neighbours never completely trusting them, if the people paid to protect others aren’t using it.
Seems superfluous if police don’t use it when provided to them voluntarily.
It tells me when packages are on the porch. This is the main value add for me.
I’ve been debating adding a camera pointed a bit more outward, as there at least 5 2 car accidents a year at the intersection outside my house of a 1 way road without a stop sign and a 2 way narrow city road with a stop sign. At least 1 of these accidents every 2 years ends up hitting my neighbors house.
Yep, I mostly just enjoy generally knowing what's going on around my property at a glance, especially when it's inconvenient to go outside.
Checking if there's a package at the garage or front door. Generating a time-lapse of outdoor projects. Discovering the neighbor's idiot contractor that wants to dig on the property or get through the fence for something. Observing weather while taking shelter. Figuring out what caused the loud bang on a window (usually birds) or the roof (usually a tree branch). Observing the behavior of neighborhood or wild animals that manage to slip through the fence. Keeping an eye on outdoor contractors while I'm busy with work. Ensuring that one of the neighborhood kids aren't sneaking around being a liability with the pool, hot tub, or countless other dangers. Checking if I forgot to place the trash at the curb after randomly waking up at 3am. Capturing the hilarious moment a buddy and I shot a stream of E85 directly on a stack of 2x4s when we upgraded my car's fuel pump and forgot to connect the low-pressure line. My partner likes to watch squirrels eat nuts that she sets outside.
Sometimes it's fun to play around with the several months of recorded data just for the sake of experimentation. Similarly, I also enjoy capturing stuff on ISM bands like 433MHz, and not because I am nosy, paranoid, or have malicious intent; but, because it's free and open data observable within the environment that I live, and analyzing it is simply interesting to me.
There used to be a FedEx delivery guy in Pittsburgh that would photograph packages in place, then steal them. I know this because I once got the notification while he was still pulling away - and the package was gone. Happened a few times, but only when there was a photo taken (back then, it wasn't common for them to do that).
I have a mentally ill teenage neighbor, who used to break in and steal from me. I knew it was him, but I needed video proof.
Once I had that, I called the police, and pressed charges, and FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HIS LIFE he went to court for his actions. He had previously made multiple assaults on his mother, even attempting to kill her, and the police only took him to a juvenile mental facility for a few hours to days: no court history.
THAT is what it actually gives you: actionable proof. What the fancy judge-types call "evidence".
Twice I have relied on mine and neighbors ring camera for proof hat I did not cause damage to my vehicle on insurance claims, and was instead another driver(s)/hit and runner(s).
Wether insurance went after those people for the claims or police, it certainly helped me there.
Same is said for dash cameras. It is in 99 percent of scenarios for "set and forget" not for some malicious anti-neighbor behavior
Historically, eventually the people realize that the state is doing too little to protect them from crime. Usually, at that point in time, a posse is formed. Having images of repeatedly-encountered perps can be very useful to a posse.
I grew up near there. Agree 100%: that man needed removal from society, and the local law enforcement and judge weren't going to do that. (Rape of a 13yo, forced marriage of same, years of massive drug running, carrying a weapon openly as a felon into bars where no non-LEO can legally carry... He was more evil than you imagined before clicking on that link.)
The town did all they could for his poor widow, and she kept quiet about whatever she might have seen...
And we now again live in a time where such things are done and go un (or under) punished. This is why I expect more of that. I do not celebrate it, but I expect it.
I think it’s fine if your Ring camera is only pointing at your property. If it’s pointing into a public spaces, then yeah I think you are doing something bad and you should be shamed for doing it.
To add on to what others have already mentioned, the PDF has more details on bisphenols which paints a less dire picture than the press release.
1. There are no EU-wide regulations restricting on BPA concentrations in electronics devices.
2. The ECHA has proposed for limits is 10mg/kg which is also used for the OEKO-TEX Standard 100.
3. In the study's evaluation criteria, for parts to achieve a green rating for bisphenols, the concentration has be below 0.8mg/kg for parts touching the skin and below 10mg/kg for parts not touching the skin.
4. 69% of the tested samples achieved a green rating for bisphenols.
So while there is a gap in regulations ensuring a safe baseline for electronics, the majority of the tested headphones are doing okay as far as bisphenol exposure even under the proposed guidelines.
Annex 1 of the study lists the test results for individual brands/models. There are several, including Airpods, that get an all-green evaluation score.
I'm wondering the same. There are some master&dynamic models that are mostly made from metal/leather, but they're above my usual price range. I'm not really an audiophile, I'll settle for lower audio quality, but I'd prefer to wear one that doesn't have me constantly guessing whether I'm poisoning myself.
The PDF lists specific products and their results, Sony WH-1000XM5 look good, so do a few others. Purchasing a known-good model might be a good idea but I question how effective this would be, given potential variance in manufacturing processes between lots.
I use SteelSeries Arctis 1 which wasn't tested. The Arctis Nova 5 scored "red" for parts touching the skin though, so...
I want so badly to try one of these but it's been out for a while and I'm terrified they'll announce another one immediately after I make the purchase...
It's unlikely that they release a new phone soon. They didn't even upstream all drivers for this one yet, and the OS is currently based on an old Debian version:
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