Ask HN: Why hasn't x86 caught up with Apple M series?
450 points by stephenheron 7d ago 620 comments
Ask HN: Did Developers Undermine Their Own Profession?
8 points by rayanboulares 22h ago 16 comments
FreeDroidWarn
132 josephcsible 68 9/2/2025, 3:01:02 AM github.com ↗
But we don't have anything like FF as an alternative to go from Android. Especially considering banks require "certified OS".
I also switched banks so I can use my bank card as the 2FA device, similar to CAP. [0]
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_Authentication_Program
BankID in Sweden and similar in other European countries.
Kicking banks off the internet/apps would make Android and Apple less cushy.
Here's my attempt at future history: Firstly they'll require you to prove your current location, to ensure that the request isn't made by a remote hacker; they'll do this by integrating their own cellular modem, as well as scanning local wi-fi networks. Then, at a second phase, they'll integrate a camera and microphone to perform a face identification, asking you to speak out a particular phrase while performing a particular motion. At the start they'll only require you to turn the mic and camera on during active usage, but eventually they'll say that these have to stay on continuously so that they can ensure that the device wasn't tempered with. And if we aren't careful, we'll accept every single small added requirement, until we're boiled alive.
Cash is positioned as suspicious. In 10 years, it might very well be illegal.
So many apps even refuse to be installed on older versions of iOS/Android.
That's because they see older versions of Android decrease in usage so they think it's fine to lock them out and potentially lose customers[1], but they're not going to do that to the majority of them.
If the majority stops falling for the propaganda and "upgrading" to a worse experience, other businesses will follow.
[1] I have told businesses that changes to their site have made me no longer want to do business with them, and seen responses ranging from complete dismissal to quick reversion.
https://grapheneos.org/releases
(Pixels only)
ATMs won't let me send money or do any other kind of maintenance
You need legislation.
https://github.com/woheller69/FreeDroidWarn/blob/master/libr...
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Why not? Freedom isn't a given --- you need to fight for it.
I'm sure everybody would profit from that...
https://blog.google/products/google-pay/google-wallet-age-id...
1. doxx yourself of they kill your account
2. re-build every app with pointless newer api version literally every year or it gets taken down.
3. Push an update or a new app or they kill your account.
..
My guess is enshittification, some random exec is trying to save a few pennies in server and storage costs.
..
I'd also say that google makes so much money from ads and data-brokering that everything else they do is not vital for their survival and thus undergoes a sort of "genetic drift" where they just make random decisions.
Combat abuse. I don't think this is a solvable problem, so obviously this won't be a silver bullet. But maybe will it impose more cost on the abusers creating a nicer app store experience for everyone. Or maybe this only imposes cost on the honest ones? I don't know how much validation they do.
> 2. re-build every app with pointless newer api version literally every year or it gets taken down.
Fix vulns. This also gets rid of abandoned apps. It also probably provides an "opportunity" for the dev to agree to new T&C.
> 3. Push an update or a new app or they kill your account.
This one seems shakier to me, but it might feed into an effort to get rid of abandoned apps. But I disagree with this being healthy for the ecosystem, if that's actually the reason.
I'm not trying to defend google, but from working in FAANG, some of this is obvious. None of these things save a significant amount of server or storage costs. Some of it is clearly anti-abuse and efforts to defend themselves from the constant stream of crap that tries to make its way into the app store.
> everything else they do
Google isn't like some dude (sundar) making decisions. It's a bunch of millionaires and billionaires making decisions. There's some high level guidance, but the difference between different divisions is 100% based on who's running that particular show.
When an app works but keeps getting updated, that means the enshittification is starting. How else do you extract money out of a completed app?
Thats okay, they jumped the shark when the imperative for ads took over.
How much MB (kb?) does this dependency add to apk?
EDIT: The AAR file is 26KB: https://jitpack.io/com/github/woheller69/FreeDroidWarn/V1.3/... But most of it looks to be from R.txt and I think that file gets deduped/compressed during app packaging?
I don't think this meets the bar for copyrightable code. Copyright protects creative expression. Displaying a single dialogue does not take creative expression, and pretty much any developer given the task would produce code identical to this.
Also you're misquoting. The license is GPL-3, not AGPL.
Something that is too small to be considered creative should be a documented example you copy and adopt into your app, not a dependency.
The only exceptions to this are things like "A dependency that contains all unicode planes and categorizes characters", which isn't creative, but is useful and too large to copy-paste, and also updates over time.
Or the timezone database file, another case of something that should be "public domain" knowledge (uncopyrightable), but makes sense as a dependency.
This is not that sort of thing.
This easily meets thresholds for creative work. The basic concept is nigh-trivial, but the concrete implementation is still creative.
That I doubt; it seems more like it's deliberately large and complex enough to be copyrightable, because otherwise it wouldn't be.