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Wired_Top_Stores
feeds.twtxt.net
 (5w ago)

A German Court Has Ruled That Google Is Liable for False Statements Generated by AI Overviews
The ruling holds that a company that designs, trains, operates, and manages an AI system must assume legal liability for any damages caused by the responses it generates. ⌘ Read more

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Wired_Top_Stores
feeds.twtxt.net
 (5w ago)

Signal Alums Reveal ‘Encrypted Spaces,’ a System for Making Private Collaboration Apps
The new open-source project could serve as the basis for a future of apps with features as complex as Slack, Discord, or Google Docs—but with added protection against surveillance. ⌘ Read more

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Wired_Top_Stores
feeds.twtxt.net
 (7w ago)

Android Is Fighting Phone Scams With a New Feature to Prove Who’s Calling
Available for Android 12 and later, the anti-scam feature is baked into Google Dialer, which sends a silent “confirmation signal” to ensure whoever’s calling you is who they appear to be. ⌘ Read more

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Wired_Top_Stores
feeds.twtxt.net
 (7w ago)

Hands-On With Gemini Spark: I Gave It Access to My Life and It Friend-Zoned My Boyfriend
Google’s new AI agent combed through my emails, documents, and calendar to plan a birthday party and still didn’t clock the person most important to me. ⌘ Read more

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Wired_Top_Stores
feeds.twtxt.net
 (7w ago)

Illinois Lawmakers Just Passed America’s Strongest AI Safety Bill
The bill requires companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google to have third parties confirm they’re following safety standards. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker says he’ll sign. ⌘ Read more

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Wired_Top_Stores
feeds.twtxt.net
 (7w ago)

Google Security Engineer Arrested in Million-Dollar Polymarket Trading Scheme
According to federal prosecutors, Michele Spagnuolo made more than $1 million on the prediction market platform using confidential information about Google Search traffic. ⌘ Read more

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hacker-news-front-page
feeds.twtxt.net
 (7w ago)

DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode
Article URL: [https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/duckduckgos-ai-free-search-saw-nearly-28-percent-more-visits-in-the-week-following-googles-insistence-that-people-love-ai-mode/](https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/duckduckgos-ai-free-search-saw-nearly-28-percent-more-visits-in-the-week-following-googles-insistence-that-people-love-ai-mode/ … ⌘ Read more

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Wired_Top_Stores
feeds.twtxt.net
 (9w ago)

Google I/O 2026 Live Blog: All the Gemini and Smart Glasses Updates as They Happen
Follow our live coverage of Google’s annual developer keynote, where the company will announce updates to its Gemini suite of AI tools and more details about Android XR smart glasses. ⌘ Read more

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Wired_Top_Stores
feeds.twtxt.net
 (10w ago)

Googlebook Is Google’s New AI-Powered Laptop Platform Built on Android
They won’t replace Chromebooks, but Googlebooks have an Android-centered operating system, AI-first features like the Magic Pointer, and a promise of desktop-grade apps. ⌘ Read more

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Wired_Top_Stores
feeds.twtxt.net
 (10w ago)

Google Is Rebranding the Fitbit App to ‘Google Health’
Google is sunsetting Google Fit by year’s end. While Fitbit remains very much alive, the rebranded Google Health app is your one-stop shop for all things health and fitness. ⌘ Read more

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Wired_Top_Stores
feeds.twtxt.net
 (11w ago)

DHS Demanded Google Surrender Data on Canadian’s Activity, Location Over Anti-ICE Posts
Using a 1930s trade law, Homeland Security targeted the man—who hasn’t entered the US in more than a decade—following posts on X condemning the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. ⌘ Read more

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Wired_Top_Stores
feeds.twtxt.net
 (12w ago)

The Race Is on to Keep AI Agents From Running Wild With Your Credit Cards
AI agents may soon be buying your stuff for you. The FIDO Alliance has teamed up with Google and Mastercard to try to ensure that shopping in the near future isn’t a complete disaster. ⌘ Read more

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movq
www.uninformativ.de
 (23w ago)
↳ In-reply-to » Well that was a lot of snow. Barely made it home. (Because, of course, today was the day where I went to the office. 🤣)

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org I don’t know a number (wait, why can’t I google a Wetterbericht but only a Wettervorhersage?!), but it was enough for public transportation to shut down. 😅 I think I saw around five trucks on the side of the road who couldn’t continue, too icy. Some cars stranded.

My car has an automatic gearbox and I’m not sure if that’s good or bad in such conditions. 😂 Pretty hard to accelerate without spinning wheels …

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lyse
lyse.isobeef.org
 (29w ago)
↳ In-reply-to » Trying to come up with a name for a new project and every name is already taken. 🤣 The internet is full!

@movq@www.uninformativ.de How about “Quongsi”? I generated the first five letters with pwgen --no-capitalize --no-numerals 5 and since that already showed up in DDG search results, I simply appended the last two, which yielded nothing on DDG and Google).

What kind of project is it? Maybe we can help you find a name or nudge you in the right direction.

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@villares@ciberlandia.pt
ciberlandia.pt
 (30w ago)

There is a #Processing survey going on at:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSduTT2cWlXzr7QG_g4LJ-Op6LwVTI7dtXHCGVH_FdI0BK00qg/viewform

I’m happy it mentions #py5 at some point.

At the end there is this invitation for the Processing Discord server. I find it unfortunate that the Processing Foundation is moving the community towards a closed, opaque platform controlled by a corporation, when they have the open and searchable forum powered by Discourse. I wish I understood the reasoning. I know Discord can be “convenient” but IMHO the downsides are much bigger.

#CreativeCoding #Discourse

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@villares@ciberlandia.pt
ciberlandia.pt
 (31w ago)

Como ficaria as sua #VidaDigital se você perdesse acesso à sua conta do #Google (gmail, drive, photos e etc.)? Isso pode acontecer e acontece.

Tento pensar nisso pelo menos uma vez por ano. De tempos em tempos uso google.com/takeout e fica cada vez mais difícil.

Impulsionei agora pouco um post sobre uma pessoa trancada pra fora da conta da #Apple, um desastre também.

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bender
twtxt.net
 (31w ago)
↳ In-reply-to » Use more WebP, I guess.

Webp, though it has been around for a long while, wasn’t fully supported on all browsers until recently. The other formats has been in use for such a long time, proving to work just fine, that the advantages Webp provides haven’t been seemingly enough to merit a switch.

Google is also the one behind Webp, and, well, people don’t trust, nor like, them much.

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bender
twtxt.net
 (31w ago)
↳ In-reply-to » Use more WebP, I guess.

Webp, though it has been around for a long while, wasn’t fully supported on all browsers until recently. The other formats have been in use for such a long time, proving to work just fine, that the advantages Webp provides haven’t been seemingly enough to merit a switch.

Google is also the one behind Webp, and, well, people don’t trust, nor like, them much.

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thecanine
twtxt.net
 (34w ago)

To everyone previously asking, what my (and other developers) endless complaining about Google, to both every EU body, with a form on their website and every relevant team at Google accomplished…
WE FUCKING WON!!!
“While security is crucial, we’ve also heard from developers and power users who have a higher risk tolerance and want the ability to download unverified apps.”
-source

I was also able to work with my new webhost, to bring back “🐕.fr.to” - everyones favorite vanity redirect domain, for my site, Googles changes to SSL warnings in Chrome, killed at the beginning of this year.

The lesson: I NEED TO COMPLAIN MORE

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movq
www.uninformativ.de
 (36w ago)

I used Gemini (the Google AI) twice at work today, asking about Google Workspace configuration and Google Cloud CLI usage (because we use those a lot). You’d think that it’d be well-suited for those topics. It answered very confidently, yet completely wrong. Just wrong. Made-up CLI arguments, whatever. It took me a while to notice, though, because it’s so convincing and, well, you implicitly and subconsciously trust the results of the Google AI when asking about Google topics, don’t you?

Will it get better over time? Maybe. But what I really want is this:

  • Good, well-structured, easy-to-read, proper documentation. Google isn’t doing too bad in this regard, actually, it’s just that they have so much stuff that it’s hard to find what you’re looking for. Hence …
  • … I want a good search function. Just give me a good fuzzy search for your docs. That’s it.

I just don’t have the time or energy to constantly second-guess this stuff. Give me something reliable. Something that is designed to do the right thing, not toy around with probabilities. “AI for everything” is just the wrong approach.

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movq
www.uninformativ.de
 (36w ago)
↳ In-reply-to » @bender Thanks for this illustration, it completely “misunderstood” everything I wrote and confidently spat out garbage. 👌

@prologic@twtxt.net Let’s go through it one by one. Here’s a wall of text that took me over 1.5 hours to write.

The criticism of AI as untrustworthy is a problem of misapplication, not capability.

This section says AI should not be treated as an authority. This is actually just what I said, except the AI phrased/framed it like it was a counter-argument.

The AI also said that users must develop “AI literacy”, again phrasing/framing it like a counter-argument. Well, that is also just what I said. I said you should treat AI output like a random blog and you should verify the sources, yadda yadda. That is “AI literacy”, isn’t it?

My text went one step further, though: I said that when you take this requirement of “AI literacy” into account, you basically end up with a fancy search engine, with extra overhead that costs time. The AI missed/ignored this in its reply.

Okay, so, the AI also said that you should use AI tools just for drafting and brainstorming. Granted, a very rough draft of something will probably be doable. But then you have to diligently verify every little detail of this draft – okay, fine, a draft is a draft, it’s fine if it contains errors. The thing is, though, that you really must do this verification. And I claim that many people will not do it, because AI outputs look sooooo convincing, they don’t feel like a draft that needs editing.

Can you, as an expert, still use an AI draft as a basis/foundation? Yeah, probably. But here’s the kicker: You did not create that draft. You were not involved in the “thought process” behind it. When you, a human being, make a draft, you often think something like: “Okay, I want to draw a picture of a landscape and there’s going to be a little house, but for now, I’ll just put in a rough sketch of the house and add the details later.” You are aware of what you left out. When the AI did the draft, you are not aware of what’s missing – even more so when every AI output already looks like a final product. For me, personally, this makes it much harder and slower to verify such a draft, and I mentioned this in my text.

Skill Erosion vs. Skill Evolution

You, @prologic@twtxt.net, also mentioned this in your car tyre example.

In my text, I gave two analogies: The gym analogy and the Google Translate analogy. Your car tyre example falls in the same category, but Gemini’s calculator example is different (and, again, gaslight-y, see below).

What I meant in my text: A person wants to be a programmer. To me, a programmer is a person who writes code, understands code, maintains code, writes documentation, and so on. In your example, a person who changes a car tyre would be a mechanic. Now, if you use AI to write the code and documentation for you, are you still a programmer? If you have no understanding of said code, are you a programmer? A person who does not know how to change a car tyre, is that still a mechanic?

No, you’re something else. You should not be hired as a programmer or a mechanic.

Yes, that is “skill evolution” – which is pretty much my point! But the AI framed it like a counter-argument. It didn’t understand my text.

(But what if that’s our future? What if all programming will look like that in some years? I claim: It’s not possible. If you don’t know how to program, then you don’t know how to read/understand code written by an AI. You are something else, but you’re not a programmer. It might be valid to be something else – but that wasn’t my point, my point was that you’re not a bloody programmer.)

Gemini’s calculator example is garbage, I think. Crunching numbers and doing mathematics (i.e., “complex problem-solving”) are two different things. Just because you now have a calculator, doesn’t mean it’ll free you up to do mathematical proofs or whatever.

What would have worked is this: Let’s say you’re an accountant and you sum up spendings. Without a calculator, this takes a lot of time and is error prone. But when you have one, you can work faster. But once again, there’s a little gaslight-y detail: A calculator is correct. Yes, it could have “bugs” (hello Intel FDIV), but its design actually properly calculates numbers. AI, on the other hand, does not understand a thing (our current AI, that is), it’s just a statistical model. So, this modified example (“accountant with a calculator”) would actually have to be phrased like this: Suppose there’s an accountant and you give her a magic box that spits out the correct result in, what, I don’t know, 70-90% of the time. The accountant couldn’t rely on this box now, could she? She’d either have to double-check everything or accept possibly wrong results. And that is how I feel like when I work with AI tools.

Gemini has no idea that its calculator example doesn’t make sense. It just spits out some generic “argument” that it picked up on some website.

3. The Technical and Legal Perspective (Scraping and Copyright)

The AI makes two points here. The first one, I might actually agree with (“bad bot behavior is not the fault of AI itself”).

The second point is, once again, gaslighting, because it is phrased/framed like a counter-argument. It implies that I said something which I didn’t. Like the AI, I said that you would have to adjust the copyright law! At the same time, the AI answer didn’t even question whether it’s okay to break the current law or not. It just said “lol yeah, change the laws”. (I wonder in what way the laws would have to be changed in the AI’s “opinion”, because some of these changes could kill some business opportunities – or the laws would have to have special AI clauses that only benefit the AI techbros. But I digress, that wasn’t part of Gemini’s answer.)

tl;dr

Except for one point, I don’t accept any of Gemini’s “criticism”. It didn’t pick up on lots of details, ignored arguments, and I can just instinctively tell that this thing does not understand anything it wrote (which is correct, it’s just a statistical model).

And it framed everything like a counter-argument, while actually repeating what I said. That’s gaslighting: When Alice says “the sky is blue” and Bob replies with “why do you say the sky is purple?!”

But it sure looks convincing, doesn’t it?

Never again

This took so much of my time. I won’t do this again. 😂

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@rlafuente@ciberlandia.pt
ciberlandia.pt
 (38w ago)

Gente amiga, podem ajudar-me a recordar casos de membros do governo que vieram das grandes tecnológicas para cargos relacionados com digitalização e tecnologia?

Os que me lembro:

  • Bernardo Correia, SecEstado da Digitalização do Gov Montenegro, ex-diretor da Google em Portugal
  • Manuel Dias, “CTO” do Estado no Gov Montenegro, ex-Microsoft e OutSystems
  • André Aragão Azevedo, SecEstado da Transição Digital do 2º Gov Costa, ex-administrador da Microsoft Portugal

Eu sei que a lista é maior, e por isso adorava beneficiar da sabedoria coletiva pra poder completar a caderneta!

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movq
www.uninformativ.de
 (38w ago)

Der ganze Vorgang ist archetypisch für die seit Jahrzehnten völlig ohne Not stattfindende politische Selbstverzwergung Europas.

A comment on heise about the recent AWS outage.

https://www.heise.de/meinung/Kommentar-zum-Totalausfall-bei-AWS-Nichts-gelernt-in-den-letzten-30-Jahren-10794622.html?wt_mc=sm.red.ho.mastodon.mastodon.md_beitraege.md_beitraege&utm_source=mastodon

(Too bad there’s no good translation for the great word “Selbstverzwergung”.)

I’m paraphrasing: Europe (and other regions) depend on US IT services, a lot, without an actual need. We saw AWS, Google, and Microsoft build large datacenters and then we thought “welp, shit, nothing we can do about that, guess we’ll just be an AWS customer from now on.” Nobody really went ahead and built German/European alternatives. And now we completely depend on the US for lots of our stuff.

The article even claims that there’s now a shortage of sysadmins in the EU? I’m not so sure. But I’d welcome it, makes my job more secure. 🤣

Hosting services, datacenters, software, everything, it’s all US stuff. Why do we accept this, why not build alternatives …

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thecanine
twtxt.net
 (40w ago)

I noticed Google put out this article: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/09/lets-talk-security-answering-your-top.html it’s very current day Google, but the comments under the YouTube video are pretty on point and I saw a few familiar faces there. There is also, unexpectedly, ways to contact Google.

First a form for “teachers, students, and hobbyists”, that I filled politely, as someone who falls under their hobbyist category. It can be filled both anonymously, or with an e-mail attached, to be contacted by them (I chose the second option).

Also a general feedback and questions form, that I was not as polite in and used to send them the following message:

I have already provided some feedback, in the teacher, student and hobbyists form/questionaire, as well as an open letter I’ve recently sent to the European Commission digital markets act team, as I do believe your proposal might not even be legal, given the fact it puts privacy-focused alternative app stores at risk (https://f-droid.org/cs/2025/09/29/google-developer-registration-decree.html) and it was proposed this early, after Google lost in court to Epic Games, over similar monopoly concerns. Why should we trust Google to be the only authority for all developer signatures, right after the European courts labeled it a gatekeeper?

Assuming this gets passed, despite justified developer backlash and at best questionable legality, can you give us any guarantees, this will not be used to target legal malware-free mods, or user privacy enhancing patchers, like the ones used for applying the ReVanced patches? I have made a few mods myself, but I am in no way associated with the ReVanced team. I just share many peoples concerns, Google Chrome has been conveniently stripped of its manifest v2 support, that made many privacy protecting extensions possible and now you’re conveniently asking for the government IDs, of all the developers, who maintain these kinds of privacy protections (be it patches, or alternative open-source apps) on Android.

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thecanine
twtxt.net
 (40w ago)
↳ In-reply-to » My open letter, to the European Commission digital markets act team:

@bender@twtxt.net To add some context, I’m not one to write open letters often, nor do I expect to become some kind of martyr, the European Union will unite over, to fight Google.

However Google did loose to Epic Games in European courts, that determined Google maintains a monopoly over its Play Store, restricting competition and developers choices. And pretty much right after courts determined this, Google gives them the middle finger and proposes changes, that would destroy F-droid - the biggest and really the only competing app store, that’s actually competing and not just taking the apps from Googles Play Store and passing them on.

There are many more qualified and likable parties, who already reached out to them, with these concerns, I just think it’s important everyone impacted by this, politely contacts them too, to convey this is not just some niche non-issue, a few IT nerds made up.

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thecanine
twtxt.net
 (40w ago)
↳ In-reply-to » My open letter, to the European Commission digital markets act team:

@movq@www.uninformativ.de I submitted it via the form on their website (https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/contact-dma-team_en) and got the following response:

Dear citizen,

Thank you for contacting us and sharing your concerns regarding the impact of Google’s plans to introduce a developer verification process on Android. We appreciate that you have chosen to contact us, as we welcome feedback from interested parties.

As you may be aware, the Digital Markets Act (‘DMA’) obliges gatekeepers like Google to effectively allow the distribution of apps on their operating system through third party app stores or the web. At the same time, the DMA also permits Google to introduce strictly necessary and proportionate measures to ensure that third-party software apps or app stores do not endanger the integrity of the hardware or operating system or to enable end users to effectively protect security.

We have taken note of your concerns and, while we cannot comment on ongoing dialogue with gatekeepers, these considerations will form part of our assessment of the justifications for the verification process provided by Google.

Kind regards,
The DMA Team

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Phys_org
feeds.twtxt.net
 (40w ago)

AI advance helps astronomers spot cosmic events with just a handful of examples
A new study co-led by the University of Oxford and Google Cloud has shown how general-purpose AI can accurately classify real changes in the night sky—such as an exploding star, a black hole tearing apart a passing star, a fast-moving asteroid, or a brief stellar flare from a compact star system—and explain its reasoning, without the need for complex training. ⌘ Read more

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lobste_rs
feeds.twtxt.net
 (40w ago)

Stealing Part of a Production Language Model (2024)
We introduce the first model-stealing attack that extracts precise, nontrivial information from black-box production language models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s PaLM-2. Specifically, our attack recovers the embedding projection layer (up to symmetries) of a transformer model, given typical API access. For under $20 USD, our attack extracts the entire projection matrix of OpenAI’s ada and babbage language models. We thereby confirm, for the first time, that these black-box … ⌘ Read more

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thecanine
twtxt.net
 (41w ago)

My open letter, to the European Commission digital markets act team:

Hello,

I am joining other developers, concerned about Googles new plan, to approve every app and effectively destroy most of the competing 3rd party stores this way. The biggest one of these alternative stores, most known for their focus on user and developer privacy, already states, this would make it impossible for them to operate: https://f-droid.org/cs/2025/09/29/google-developer-registration-decree.html
Even communities like the XDA forum, where new developers are often introduced to the world of Android development, would likely be strongly impacted, as making, publishing and installing Android apps is made less accessible.

I am not just writing on their behalf, I run a small website myself (https://thecanine.ueuo.com/), that both provides legal modifications, for some android apps - for example adding an amoled dark theme, to the most popular XMPP chat client for Android, or increasing one of Androids keyboard apps height. This all comes after Googles previous changes to the Android operating system, that prevent users from installing old apps (old to Google, can mean only a couple of months, without an update - https://developer.android.com/google/play/requirements/target-sdk and the target version gets increased every year). I rely on apps developed by a single developer, even for things like making the pixel art presented on my website and sideloading as a way to make these apps work, before developers can catch up to Google’s new requirements - if Google is allowed to slowly kill these options, us digital artists will soon lose the tools we need to create digital art.

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hashtable
feeds.twtxt.net
 (41w ago)

Adieu les pubs, bonjour les micropaiements AI ? Le partenariat Google Deepmind et Coinbase qui pourrait booster les créateurs
Enfin, les geeks vont enfin pouvoir avoir des copines virtuelles qui leur réclament de l’argent ! Eh oui, dans l’intelligence artificielle, les choses avancent décidément très vite et même si le précédent billet sur le sujet ne date que d’un mois, l’actualité impose d’y revenir alors qu … ⌘ Read more

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thecanine
twtxt.net
 (44w ago)
↳ In-reply-to » Since Google announced their intentions to heavily limit sideloading on Android, starting end of 2026, I've been looking for potential solutions, for this policy change, that threatens the majority of projects I maintain, in some way. Google already killed my browser project years ago, but I have no other choice, than to fight this, any way I can.

@bender@twtxt.net Believe me, I’ve never been more tempted to switch, than now, as Google is one by one, removing (or at last trying to remove) all the reasons why I chose Android, over iOS. In fact, many friends who were fellow “Android diehards”, ended up switching recently.

Sadly what I need is a headphone jack, ability to modify apps on device (decompile, change file, recompile), many specific mods, strong XMPP support, Pixel Station,… nothing switching to iOS, would give me.

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thecanine
twtxt.net
 (44w ago)

Since Google announced their intentions to heavily limit sideloading on Android, starting end of 2026, I’ve been looking for potential solutions, for this policy change, that threatens the majority of projects I maintain, in some way. Google already killed my browser project years ago, but I have no other choice, than to fight this, any way I can.

The best choice to deal with this, will probably be the Android Debug Bridge, which can be used not only to install apps unrestricted, but also to uninstall, or remove, almost any unnecessary part of the OS. Shizuku, combined with Canta Debloater, is the winning combination for now.

I’ve already removed most Google apps from my device: the annoying AI assistant, the stupid Google app adding the annoying articles, left of your homes screen, Google One, Gboard, Safety app… it’s amazing, no distracting Google slopware, like in the good old Android 2 days! And I absolutely intend to keep it this way, from now on, no new Google apps or services on my devices, unless Google can give me a good enough reason, to allow them there and whenever the app that verifies signatures, to block installing apps not approved by Google, I’ll just remove it from my device and advocate others do so too.

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thecanine
twtxt.net
 (47w ago)
↳ In-reply-to » @prologic @moveq I think it's mostly the serious lack of competition. All the Android phone manufacturers just use the Google version of Android, bundle in piles of Google bloatware and do whatever Google tells them to. If some of them installed Lineage, or any other versions, with their own stores and rules, or even just offer a less Googly version of their phones, as an option, for more experienced users, Google wouldn't be able, to push everyone around.

@bender@twtxt.net have you seen how many Google apps, get shoved into the new releases of Android. MicroG, Google Play, maybe Chrome is fine, but everything else, I can’t get rid of, is just bloatware to me.

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bender
twtxt.net
 (47w ago)
↳ In-reply-to » @prologic @moveq I think it's mostly the serious lack of competition. All the Android phone manufacturers just use the Google version of Android, bundle in piles of Google bloatware and do whatever Google tells them to. If some of them installed Lineage, or any other versions, with their own stores and rules, or even just offer a less Googly version of their phones, as an option, for more experienced users, Google wouldn't be able, to push everyone around.

@thecanine@twtxt.net I think Google’s Android is as vanilla as it can be, coming from the “source”. The bloatware is more often than not vendor’s provided, no? I don’t consider Google apps and services bloatware, but an intrinsic part of the Android “vanilla” experience.

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thecanine
twtxt.net
 (47w ago)
↳ In-reply-to » RIP Android:

@prologic@twtxt.net @moveq@twtxt.net I think it’s mostly the serious lack of competition. All the Android phone manufacturers just use the Google version of Android, bundle in piles of Google bloatware and do whatever Google tells them to. If some of them installed Lineage, or any other versions, with their own stores and rules, or even just offer a less Googly version of their phones, as an option, for more experienced users, Google wouldn’t be able, to push everyone around.

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thecanine
twtxt.net
 (47w ago)
↳ In-reply-to » RIP Android:

@movq@www.uninformativ.de @prologic@twtxt.net this is extremely concerning and I hope there is enough push back to stop this! The ability to modify apps, is one of the two biggest reasons, I’m still using Android. If they remove that option, I’ll be forced to switch to one of the de-Googled forks.

That might not be a good solution either, because I need banking and identity verification apps on my main device and already had to get a second device for work, which has tighter sideloading restrictions and I would very much not like to be forced into using three Android phones simultaneously, to do what should be possible, with just one.

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prologic
twtxt.net
 (47w ago)
↳ In-reply-to » RIP Android:

To combat malware and financial scams, Google announced today that only apps from developers that have undergone verification can be installed on certified Android devices starting in 2026.

This requirement applies to “certified Android devices” that have Play Protect and are preloaded with Google apps. The Play Store implemented similar requirements in 2023, but Google is now mandating this for all install methods, including third-party app stores and sideloading where you download an APK file from a third-party source.

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