Are there any entities on earth with resources to compete with a complicit global duopoly?
If Android is open source, why can't/won't a community fork it? Graphene OS exists but many folks claim Netflix and banking apps do not work with it (despite allowing logins from any common desktop browser)?
If all widely-accepted phone operating systems are de-facto proprietary, what does this say about the current phase of society?
What choice do non-billionaire/millionaire humans have for living in a single-planet society where technology is so highly integrated (and the inherent non-consensual compromises)?
What If the little people are going to get squeezed even more?
LineageOS is based on AOSP and works well. I don't understand the banking app thing either. I suspect it's a regional issue. I can log in to my credit union account via any browser, and if something needs MFA it should be able to use TOTP which works on anything.
Android in practice is full of proprietary blobs, stuck on old kernel versions, and the hardware is barely supported. Lots of downstream crap from the vendors not playing nice. Most devices running Android are instantly doomed to be e-waste. You can look through devices postmarketOS supports, and anything without mainline kernel support and most stuff working is basically e-waste unless someone puts in a lot of work for that particular device. It's a little bit like how modern GPUs don't work without blobs in the kernel anymore and you have to go back to Haswell era or older for things to work with all free software, but the state of smartphones is a few steps worse than that due to their locked down nature.
Pretty much any OnePlus device (other than ones still too new) seems to be a good bet for decent software support (both LineageOS and pmOS). Though annoyingly stuff like the 3G shutdown makes a lot of the earlier models unusable as actual phones these days. At least they can still be computers. Not quite e-waste.
Yes we have banking websites but they are increasingly moving to an auth model where you have to enter an otp generated in the app but the app refuses to work on non-verified devices.
A simple yes/no alert box is not "[...] specifically to resist coercion, ensuring that users aren't tricked into bypassing these safety checks while under pressure from a scammer". In fact, AFAIK we already have exactly that alert box.
No, what they want is something so complicated that no muggle could possibly enable it, either by accident or by being guided on the phone.
The angry social media narratives have been running wild from people who insert their own assumptions into what’s happening.
It’s been fairly clear from the start that this wasn’t the end of sideloading, period. However that doesn’t get as many clicks and shares as writing a headline claiming that Google is taking away your rights.
> The angry social media narratives have been running wild from people who insert their own assumptions into what’s happening.
No, until this post, Google had said that it wouldn't be possible to install an app from a developer who hadn't been blessed by Google completely on your device. That is unacceptable. This blog post contains a policy change from Google.
> The angry social media narratives have been running wild from people who insert their own assumptions
There may have been exaggerations in some cases but these hand wavy responses like "you can still do X but you just can't do Y and Z is now mandatory" or "you can always use Y" is how we got to this situation in the first place.
This is just the next evolution of SafetyNet & play integrity API. Remember how many said use alternatives. Not saying safetynet is bad but I don't believe their intentions were to stop at just that.
Sorry what? Their original plan absolutely was the end of sideloading on-device outside of Google's say so. That's what the angry social media narratives were that you seem upset about. Anyone being pedantic and pointing out that adb install is still an option therefore sideloading still exists can fuck off at this point.
I don't think this section is actually the same as the present state just with a new alert box.
I suspect they mean you have to create a android developer account and sign the binaries, this new policy just allows you to proceed without completing the identity verification on that account.
What are you talking about? This change for "experienced users" was only just announced and not part of any previous announcement. It has not been clear from the start at all.
This makes me sad, R* has made some of my most favorite games, especially Red Dead Redemption 2.
They make so much money, why can't they play nice and treat their employees like human beings?
I don't recall reports of Valve (Steam, also super profitable) stooping. Is Rockstar a genetic relative of GAFA, because this is more like what I've come to expect from Amazon.
Valve is a "flat" organization, where your compensation is determined based on peer review.
Rockstar, and owner Take-Two (largely owned by institutional investors--well known for their historical championing of workers rights and fondness of unions), both seem to have your typical corporate hierarchies, where executives are fairly and correctly compensated for being more productive than over 200 software engineers combined.
It may sound simplistic but its the truth and there are plenty of other examples and history around this - Starbucks recently. 30 employees unionizing may not have any significant impact on their profits, but if they let that union grow it would have a lot more members demanding better working hours or wages over time. A strong union also generally leads to a loss of control by management where they have to negotiate more with workers which they don't like. Why do you think they were fired?
Firings in this case were for union busting. Illegal union busting is profitable - that's why business owners do it. Because it's illegal, they will make up a different excuse for why the workers were fired. They will never admit to illegal union busting. So you should not take their statements as good faith.
Firings reduce expenses, the equation above explains the rest. Of course, that's only in the short term, but that's what exec bonuses are given out on!
This is also true if humans in general, at all stations in life, including union members and union leaders. Is there any offer a union would refuse on the grounds that’s too much?
People like getting more money, but they don't die without it. You can get a job that pays just enough to pay your bills and work at it until you die. Companies can't do that under capitalism. They take on debt and require growth to pay back their investors, or they don't take on debt and get undercut by a competitor who does.
I imagine the GP was referring to the fact that Costco experiences that kind of growth while giving their employees excellent pay and benefits. Even low-level store employees typically make $20-30 an hour.
It’s because they don’t sell everything, and the things they do sell, they sell to the top 50%.
They also did have benevolent dictators who spent decades building up good will, but supposedly the new bosses as of a few years ago are not so benevolent anymore.
> They make so much money, why can't they play nice and treat their employees like human beings?
Because they can.
In the gaming industry the biggest studios get away with running sweat shops because there's endless hordes of brilliant engineers and artists who had always dreamed to make videogames and need a huge name on the CV to move to better places.
The meager earnings in years previous to that are beyond wiped out. In fact, expect a lot more squeeze if you work at Take Two or a lot more rent seeking if you are a customer, because based on the stock price movement, the market is expecting a lot more net income.
Edit: looks like they set a ton of money on fire by overpaying for Zynga a few years ago. Customers and employees are going to be paying for that bad decision for a long time.
It's true that Take Two lost money but it's also true that Rockstar makes them tremendous amounts of money. Lifetime revenues from GTA5 are estimated to be near or exceeding 10 billion USD.
Managing to lose money on those kinds of profits is arguably further evidence that leadership there is overpaid.
Businesses desire growth, not conservation or charity. And that desire is frequently achieved through illegal means. Wage theft for instance is a far greater sum than the total of robbery in the US. The criminality is rampant!
Meta is also in the news today for making 10% of its revenue from scams, as well as for having codified policy that scammers representing at least 0.15% of their revenue must be protected from any moderation.
Capitalism is based on/grew out of the Norman feudalism, where lords were foreign conquerors who cared nothing about the locals, local land, local societal norms. They only cared about rent extraction for themselves (todays C suit class) and to pay the nobles above them (the market). They simply removed themselves one step, created corporations to remove all personal liability, and ramped up the profit extraction to a global scale. Just look at the first large scale joint stock company, the East India Company. Could corporatism have had a worse/more evil progenitor?
Systems need to be managed. If you cook with high temperatures and let your attention wander then the food burns. If you drive fast with bald tires then you may fly off the road. We know that strong regulation on industry, especially monopolies, high taxes on the wealthy, and powerful unions can keep Capitalism in balance, but we have chosen not to use these mechanisms. Is that Capitalism being flawed or is it us as custodians failing in our basic duties?
We've been through this before. As recently as the 1930s the Capitalist economy tried to eat itself and had to be stopped. That is historical and everything changes, but the basic principles are the same. Find out where things are going wrong and address that with some basic controls and limits.
> They make so much money, why can't they play nice and treat their employees like human beings?
Because they want to make great games. It's sad but we've never figure out how to replicate the creative output that crunch and stress triggers. I don't understand it and frankly I couldn't stand it so I left the industry but I won't pretend that we have a solution too the problem.
There's a big difference between people putting extra effort due to real external factors (e.g. company running out of money) and artificial pressure while executives enjoy their yachts.
This is a myth and plenty of amazing games were made without treating people like trash.
That’s not a Union thing, that’s a system thing. Anyone fiercely on either extreme of the spectrum is missing the forest for the trees and proudly waving their willful ignorance of the dynamics of power.
In an ideal scenario, Unions and Shareholders would cooperate to achieve suitable outcomes for both parties; in reality, the amount of power needed to even get a Union off the ground and keep it sustained against the onslaught of Capital means those who wield said power are inclined to use it often. It’s why the (debatably) smarter gamble has been more workers forming anti-Capital institutions: cooperatives, union-first enterprises, sustainable corporations with stringent, anti-Capital bylaws. By removing Capital’s power early, those who do come to the table are more likely to negotiate in good faith rather than scorched-earth tactics.
Don’t slight unions as a whole just because power dynamics in a Capitalist society dictate everything be a zero-sum game. Instead, focus on building a better game and fairer set of rules, and recognize Unions are part of that.
This is just a belief. A belief that allows you to do anything, and can absolve anyone of any evil.
Why stop there? Why have systems or government at all? Why even bother making murder illegal? After all, it's human nature. After all, it's just how life works. After all, the strong win, and the weak get eaten. Everyone knows that.
… and yet today in this imperfect system murder is illegal, and the weak thrive, even if they do not thrive as much as the strong.
The point is not which system gets rid of these, in my opinion, permanent aspects of human nature, but which one results in the best outcome despite them.
If the belief is the collectivism deals with these issues better, that’s wonderful. But I never hear that, instead, I hear that not-collectivist systems are the one and only cause of these systems, and that only collectivism will solve them. And I just don’t believe that’s true, and I think we have lots of historical evidence of societies that tried forced collectivization and failed.
I'd strongly disagree, as there are examples of societies that don't exhibit these traits. See the Kogi from Colombia for example. A necessity environmental condition seems to be that social groups size stays within certain limits (around 120 as I remember).
> Instead, focus on building a better game and fairer set of rules, and recognize Unions are part of that.
I’d prefer a more European system. But faced with a choice between American-style unions with their mob roots and silicon valley, I’ll choose the latter.
> They make so much money, why can't they play nice and treat their employees like human beings?
That's not how human nature works. Greed doesn't lead to idealism or altruism, it invariably leads to entitlement and more greed. The rich are never satisfied with hundreds of billions, they insist upon trillions.
Even kids who grew up wealthy and attended Harvard might go on to murder a health care executive. This article sums it up pretty cleanly IMHO, the health care system in America is infuriatingly unfair. Is the goal to help people or just extract extract extract until they are dead?
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