Readit NewsYou are falling for the trap that all these wannabe dictators are setting up for us: that they are protecting us with all these regulations. Oh sure it protects some people in some ways, but you're not seeing how you're giving away your freedom and put them in control of your life.
I say all of you should give up and use iphones like me! :)
Until we have laws that guarantee that I won't be forced to be a Google customer, I will demand freedom over my device if I am practically prevented from running an alternative OS because I risk getting my access to the rest of society limited. If it means that some people will be more vulnerable to scams in the mean time, that is not my fault, but the fault of politicians who have failed to secure our right to digital autonomy and our right to remain analog. I also think there should be other technical measures that could mitigate these scams that would not be as draconic, but I don't know enough about what scams you have in mind that I can offer concrete alternatives.
I do not think that is tyranny, but I think Google is definitely being a tyrant and misuse their market position.
Owning a smartphone is becoming less of a choice, and it's becoming harder to own one that respects my freedom. I don't think it is entitlement to demand freedom in an ecosystem that I feel I am forced into.
The fact that your country is getting age verification, given how democratic and free Denmark is should tell you the prevailing view of the public on the subject matter. Why not focus on what everyone will support - which is being free from tech companies and closed code systems. The 99% of people that do pay for phones, don't think about technology much, they don't even know what sideloading is let along care about it. You/HN is an extreme minority in that aspect, as are android devs. and there are definitely more people being adversely impacted by sideloaded malware. Freedom that is not practical is just wishful thinking. Freedom that ignores the harm caused on others is tyranny by any other name.
Yes, stunt growth if that growth is immediately harmful to the public. Provide adverse incentives that increase the cost of replacing humans. Less or no government subsidies, incentives or tax breaks if you replace humans with LLMs. Even without replacing humans, tax LLM usage like cigarettes.
In the short term that is. over time, wind down these artificial costs, so that humans transition to roles that can't be automated by LLMs. Go to school, get training,etc.. in other fields. Instead of having millions of unemployed restless people collapsing your society.
But everyone is on the take, they want their short term lobbying money and stock tips so they can take what's theirs and run before the ship sinks. (if I can be a bit over dramatic :) )
In other words, you shouldn't use vulnerability counts, but you can discern patterns of vulnerability to intuit something about the nature of the codebase.
For example, RCE vulnerabilities on Chrome, especially under V8 while not very common they happen commonly enough to suspect that maybe there is some code quality issue. However, if you look at the sheer size of V8, and how much scrutiny and research it undergoes, it is surprising there aren't even more critical vulns being found all the time. JIT is inherently a risky endeavor.
It's a nightmare scenario, our lives locked in to total corporate control. What do we get in return for that? Scammers won't be stopped by this, the key to grifting isn't technology but people. What you're suggesting is trading open platforms and open source and fortifying current marketplace monopolies for a marginal decrease in scams. For a while. Maybe. I suggest that is unbelievably stupid.
Also, how about not using android or iphones at all, support a FOSS phone with 100% control over it? This is a private business selling services to the public, taking measures to protect the public. You or anyone else has no entitlement or rights over how they provide that service. The right you have is to not spend your money on that business. Getting a phone that doesn't give you root on it to begin with is submitting to Google's (and vendor's) authority to arbitrarily decide what gets and doesn't get installed on your device.