iggldiggl (u/iggldiggl)

iggldiggl commented on Google will allow only apps from verified developers to be installed on Android 9to5google.com/2025/08/25... · Posted by u/kotaKat

chenxiaolong · 4 days ago

If this is enforced via Play Protect, then the whole mechanism can likely be disabled with:

    adb shell settings put global package_verifier_user_consent -1

This does not require root access and prevents Android from invoking Play Protect in the first place. (This is what AOSP's own test suite does, along with other test suites in eg. Unreal Engine, etc.)

I personally won't be doing this verification for my open-source apps. I have no interest in any kind of business relationship with anyone just to publish an .apk. If that limits those who can install it to people who disable Play Protect globally, then oh well.

iggldiggl · a day ago

There's also the related "Verify apps over USB" setting which is even exposed in the developer mode settings GUI.

iggldiggl commented on Google will allow only apps from verified developers to be installed on Android 9to5google.com/2025/08/25... · Posted by u/kotaKat

weirdpickles · 4 days ago

And thus accelerates Google's push away from APKs, preferring instead for all developers to embrace their proprietary App Bundle format. Complete with ad hoc signing performed by the Google Play store at time of download. The bundle is also customized to the device, meaning an .aab file ripped off a device won't necessarily be loadable on another device since it could have different configurations/hardware that happen to limit it.

I think anyone who works as a dev knew this was Google's endgame the moment they started circling the wagons with the app bundle stuff. It was already getting weird before that, but it was uncharacteristically out of step with historic Android.

iggldiggl · a day ago

> The bundle is also customized to the device, meaning an .aab file ripped off a device

.aab-files don't ever make it to devices, they're just for transporting the app from the developer's system to Google for further processing and then pushed back out to devices as regular .apk files (albeit indeed split up across multiple files).

> won't necessarily be loadable on another device since it could have different configurations/hardware that happen to limit it.

For the purposes of independently archiving apps it is a bit annoying, sure, but the only hard dependency is having the correct CPU architecture for apps containing native code, and in practice almost everything runs on ARM, with only the 32- to 64-bits-transition providing some potential roadblocks. (Or I suppose if you wanted to run an app taken from a phone on an x86-based emulator.) Otherwise, you'll "only" be missing additional languages and display densities for graphics resources, but the system already needs to be able to fall back to whatever language and graphics resources are available in case the developer didn't even include them in the first place.

Plus for a while Google itself had a feature in the Play Store that allowed sharing free apps to nearby devices via Wifi, including apps with split APKs. (Though I never tried it in practice and it seems that last year they removed that feature again, so yeah…)

iggldiggl commented on Google will allow only apps from verified developers to be installed on Android 9to5google.com/2025/08/25... · Posted by u/kotaKat

mikewarot · 4 days ago

>Unfortunately, it actually is the best means to keep a society of the masses functioning more safely online

Imagine if people felt that way about electrical power distribution? Every single thing you ever plugged in required a license to be validated at the time you tried to use an outlet?

For me, it's obvious that better ways of doing things exist, but I'm weird, and possibly a crank.

The solution, in my opinion, is to do the same thing we do with power in the home... limit the damage that can be done by anything plugged in, only giving away a limited capability for power delivery in a given outlet.

The analogous way to do this in an operating system is to discard the idea of providing all of the computing resources available to every program you run, and limit it in some way. The "permissions flags" we've all come to dread, first with UAC in Microsoft Windows, and now on our phones, obviously suck, and won't work.

The way to do it on a desktop, is to allow the user to choose exactly which resources a program may use, at runtime, by dialog boxes similar to the ones they already use, but with the additional behavior that the operating system enforces their choices, instead of just praying a program operates as intended.

On a phone, I don't have as strong an intuition, but I'm sure it can be worked out, both in a friendly, and secure way that doesn't require full time checking with consent from our betters in the corporate overlord hierarchy.

We can have secure and user friendly compute, both in our desktops, and in all our devices.

iggldiggl · a day ago

> The way to do it on a desktop, is to allow the user to choose exactly which resources a program may use, at runtime, by dialog boxes similar to the ones they already use, but with the additional behavior that the operating system enforces their choices, instead of just praying a program operates as intended.

> We can have secure and user friendly compute, both in our desktops, and in all our devices.

I'm doubtful about that, e.g. basically all existing file system sandboxing implementations that I'm aware of tend to break workflows that are more complex than "open exactly the one single file the user selected". (Apple's implementation tries a bit harder, but you still run into limitations pretty quickly.)

E.g. when I open an image in my favourite image viewer, I don't just want to view the one picture I've opened, often enough I also want to browse through other pictures within the same directory without having to explicitly open all those other images through some OS-secured gateway. And even that isn't enough, because my favourite image viewer also has the nifty feature of being able to quickly switch into a different directory (plus it has its own built-in thumbnail directory browser), so ultimately the only way to use its full functionality is through full file system access.

Or videos – subtitles are often enough stored in separate files, so a video player will want to look for those files, too, when it starts playing a video. Split-up archive files work along the same lines, too.

And never mind things like both HTML or DWG files, both of which can reference arbitrary other files up and down the directory hierarchy which need to be loaded at the same time, too…

Now the OS can't be expected to know about the peculiarities of each and every file type, plus you can't make permissions dialogues arbitrarily complex, either, which leads you back to the dilemma of ultimately either breaking more complex workflows, or else having to provide an escape hatch that then promptly runs the risk of getting abused by malicious actors, too.

iggldiggl commented on Google will allow only apps from verified developers to be installed on Android 9to5google.com/2025/08/25... · Posted by u/kotaKat

platevoltage · 4 days ago

Yes. You gotta pay your 100 bucks, but I don't remember feeling like my privacy was being invaded when getting a developer account. I assume the best reason they have for this is that they can nuke the account, effectively killing the install base of an app is reported to be malicious. Unless someone tells me why I should, I don't have a huge issue with this.

iggldiggl · a day ago

> I assume the best reason they have for this is that they can nuke the account, effectively killing the install base of an app is reported to be malicious.

They can already target malicious apps via Play Protect, including presumably all apps signed by the same signing key, so from that point of view no change would be needed. What this is presumably supposed to achieve is rather making it harder to rotate your signing key after it has been burnt…

iggldiggl commented on Google will allow only apps from verified developers to be installed on Android 9to5google.com/2025/08/25... · Posted by u/kotaKat

jones89176 · 3 days ago

> "banking apps still require Android compatibility layer"

I would say that this is really not the OS's problem, but the bank's problem. I find it absolutely intolerable that there are banks that force me to use a OS from one (or two) specific vendors.

Same goes for public transportation services (German Bahn Card is now only available in their app) or post mail services (German Post "Mobile Stamp" is only available in their official app).

iggldiggl · a day ago

> German Bahn Card is now only available in their app

Technically not as long as the fallback PDF version remains available.

iggldiggl commented on Yamanot.es: A music box of train station melodies from the JR Yamanote Line yamanot.es/... · Posted by u/zdw

modeless · 2 days ago

In Japan house numbers are based on construction date rather than position along the street.

iggldiggl · 2 days ago

And streets don't automatically have names, and with a few exceptions addresses are always based on city blocks instead. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_addressing_system for a more complete explanation)

iggldiggl commented on Yamanot.es: A music box of train station melodies from the JR Yamanote Line yamanot.es/... · Posted by u/zdw

numpad0 · 2 days ago

Commuter trains always knows where they are by various means. Braking distances for trains is airplane scaled, and so knowing where they are programmatically with accuracy on both trains and at central control stations is important for safety.

iggldiggl · 2 days ago

That's not actually true. True, with computerised technology it might be more convenient to implement it that way and it also allows some additional optimisations and bonus features, but it's not an absolute requirement.

At a minimum that's acceptable enough even by modern-ish safety standards, the signalling system only needs to know which sections of track are occupied and which are free, and it only needs to know that at the granularity of individual block sections between subsequent signals. It also doesn't necessarily need to know about the identity of the train, even though in practice you'll want to track that, too, for the convenience of the signallers.

The train in turn doesn't need to know where exactly it is – in terms of safety, it's enough knowing the local speed limit and the state of any upcoming signals, but for that, it doesn't need to know where it is in relation to the outside world. The classic implementation is simply fixed trackside infrastructure telling the onboard safety systems all they need to know.

Historically, any demands for knowing where the train is exactly in relation to the outside world were rather driven by automated passenger information systems and the like rather than the safety-critical parts of the signalling system.

iggldiggl commented on A German ISP changed their DNS to block my website lina.sh/blog/telefonica-s... · Posted by u/shaunpud

2716057 · 6 days ago

The workarounds on this page mostly suggest to use large public resolvers. Feature request (not sure if the author is on HN): it would be interesting to know which domains are blocked by 9.9.9.9, 1.1.1.1, and especially the new DNS4EU service.

iggldiggl · 4 days ago

One problem I've run into with that approach is that Akamai uses DNS for steering you to the correct portion of its CDN and the default servers you get from public DNS have abysmal peering with my ISP. So simply switching the default DNS in my router isn't enough, I'd actually have to run my own custom DNS resolver in order to special case Akamai there.

iggldiggl commented on YouTube will start using AI to guess your age If it's wrong you have to prove it cnn.com/2025/08/13/tech/y... · Posted by u/Bender

iggldiggl · 16 days ago

Not being logged in to Google and not keeping cookies between browser sessions, most of the time Google gives me the standard cookie permissions popup (where you can enable or disable search personalisation and targeted advertisting), but occasionally I seemingly at random I get the "we can't determine whether you're over 18 yet?" variant instead. I wonder what's causing it to flipflop between the two states…?

iggldiggl commented on A Simple CPU on the Game of Life (2021) nicholas.carlini.com/writ... · Posted by u/jxmorris12

iggldiggl · 18 days ago

In a similar vein, there's also the Wireworld computer:

* https://www.quinapalus.com/wi-index.html

* https://wiki.logre.eu/index.php/Projet_Wireworld/en