Readit NewsDebugging and testing is just for the non-believers.
Apps first published to the Play store before August 2021 are not required to upload their keys [1]. This likely includes Signal.
> It seems plausible the US government could send a NSL (or similar) to Google and force them to distribute modified APKs for apps like Signal
Since when do you have to hand over your signing keys to Google? I seem to remember the Signal devs saying that they preferred publishing their app on Google Play as opposed to F-Droid because in the former case they control the signing keys. Has this changed?
Since it requires App Bundles, which is mandatory, as soon as you have Android TV support, for example.
https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2022/11/app-bundle...
See https://dev.to/npomepuy/vlc-for-android-updates-on-the-play-...
Thanks for sharing this. I agree with your sentiment as one of my Android apps use vox SDK. However, my experience is very limited compared to you to write about it.
> The absolute nightmare is about giving Google the root signing key of your application,
I haven't and I don't think it is required.
> the unfinished business about app bundles
Can you elaborate what's unfinished here?
> the compatibility for Google form factors (XR, TV, Auto, Automotive),
My app is disabled for Android Auto in production. If I re-enable, then it gets rejected during the review. I have never been able to precise fix the issue they are raising to let me re-enable Android Auto.
For Chromecast (TV), I have to run a web server inside the app to serve the media.
It is required, as soon as you have Android TV support, for example.
https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2022/11/app-bundle...
See https://dev.to/npomepuy/vlc-for-android-updates-on-the-play-...
Native NDK is another can of worms, with updates linked to SDK or sometimes not, unclear documentation about device and API compatibilities, compiler behavior changes and other requirements (like the 16K one) that impact so many 3rd party native libraries.
But, of course, the rules on the uploading and the changes of the Console, that changes so often is what makes it painful.
The absolute nightmare is about giving Google the root signing key of your application, the unfinished business about app bundles (which should reduce the size of the downloaded app, and more often than not, make it bigger), the changes in compliance, letters to sign for different countries, the compatibility for Google form factors (XR, TV, Auto, Automotive), Inline installs and other Teacher Progams, Play for family and so on.
All of this changes non-stop and is very poorly documented :)
At least, the Play Store is still GPLv2 compatible, so for now, we're saved (VLC)
This blog post links to the "VideoLab Store", hosted at https://videolabs.io, which prominently uses a logo extremely similar but not identical to the VLC (which stands for VideoLAN, not VideoLab) logo. Their homepage even goes as far as displaying "Hire the VLC team" as its headline.
As far as I'm aware, VideoLab has nothing to do with the VideoLAN non-profit, and it very much seems like they are intentionally trying to mislead people into thinking that they are the developers of VLC.
So far, VideoLabs is hiring most of the VLC core developers and those people are the main force of development of VLC. It's setup this way so that if the Videolabs company does not live forever, VLC stays forever free, and the non-profit lives.
This is quite classic of open source projects, and in the case of VideoLAN, there are 3 or 4 companies doing consulting.
Same for us, our forum and our Gitlab are getting hammered by AI companies bots.
Most of them don’t respect robots.txt…
I would also only use Zeta locally.
Would be nice to get a confirmation of this as it sounds wild.
Depends of your paranoia level: either because laziness or because of evil intentions...