This is informative and unfortunate

The alternative is to turn off the server, which we want to avoid doing.

The funnier and IMO better option

To use the word “Android” on their devices, they already have some kind of backroom deal with Google. Nobody really knows what that deal entails, though. It would take a(nother) lawsuit to find out.

Shut off your phone when you protest, wherever it happens to be (especially if you’re not leaving it at home).

Those companies have always developed some of their own, “hardware-specific” software and never released the results to the public either.

(Correct me if I’m wrong here, but that’s probably why pixels of the past have had really good ROMs, while phones from other companies are lucky to get LineageOS on them.)

I did try one of these, but I noticed that I would end up moving the camera enough for a visible “shake” effect in most pictures I took. And this was outdoors in open areas with plenty of daylight.

Macro photos on it are great, though, and the working GPS was lovely. Shame about not having luck with most else on it. I have no idea how my phone manages to make things look better

Is there a such thing as a recent PEN from OM or Olympus (I’ve actually looked at their stuff, but I’m somewhat confused about which name their cameras get)? I was leaning in their direction, too - I saw they have a camera with a GPS and great macro photography, but I think its sensor is smaller than my phone’s.

(FWIW the OM-D relies on a smartphone for GPS tagging apparently, and I have no idea how that’s handled with an app, especially because the data handoff is whar I’m trying to avoid)

…nah

Users can opt to make their searches private in their account settings.

The more time goes by, the worse the divergence will be. (I think this is basically the idea, but correct me if I’m wrong:) Right now, we might have GrapheneOS 15 vs Android 16. But eventually, there will be an Android 17 and an Android 18. GrapheneOS developers will either have to trudge along with an older OS, or hire more developers to recreate the missing pieces of the code - pieces Google has already created but will never release . The missing pieces will get bigger and more significant. Android 15 will age out of security updates.

This is pretty bad.

It’s an admirable benchmark at least. I was eying “pocket laptops” but I didn’t see any with a screen under 8" that also supported a SIM added or PCIE slot to add my own, let alone hardware that wouldn’t require tinkering to run Linux. Most were $400ish devices with questionable build quality and Windows 11 preinstalled.

They give too much uncritical attention to Google’s PR statement, while barely affording a link to the venerable Graphene team at the very bottom of the page.

This isn’t a counterpoint to the exposed Google issues, it’s a shrug

The Doctorow article does not say “scraping is good actually” - it says “scraping in X circumstance is good” and “scraping in Y circumstance is bad”, and wraps up by admitting the obvious and glaring contradiction.

Replacing a smartphone with hardware that fills your smartphone needs is more expensive than I’d like.

• MNT Pocket Reform: €1,050.00, or $1,215.86
• 2013 Sony HX50, used: $220

Over $1400 and a lot of space for devices that, together, perform roughly the same functions as a new $800 smartphone.

How do phones manage to fit such decent cameras into their tiny chassis while still keeping the price down and also being a phone? I’ve seen explanations about how incredibly cutting-edge tech makes it into phone cameras, but it’s hard to fathom how the surveillance inside of them subsidizes the camera costs.

(Regardless, I would love recommendations for a good all-around digital camera that can actually compete with a phone’s camera app: low light conditions, macro, a little zoom, gps tagging, preferably fit in your pocket. Even if it’s old)

Maybe Google is comfortable enough offering the Pixel as a typical consumer device now, instead of a developer one. They used to be able to differentiate themselves from their competitors, but there aren’t many competitors left.

At least it’s only an issue for new articles, which probably have the least editor involvement.

People creating self-promotion on Wikipedia has been a problem for a long time before ChatGPT.

AOSP can be fully abandoned and privately forked by Google without it technically being “dead,” but that abandonment would effectively kill the project.

From the article, Google can technically let AOSP still exist while destroying it in practice:

what could happen is that Google takes Android closed source from here on out, spinning off whatever remains of AOSP up until that point into a separate company or project… This technically means “AOSP is not going away”,

From the author, a sentiment I fully agree with:

If in 2025 you still take statements from big tech based on best intentions, you’re a fool.

OpenStreetMaps has had decent Android clients, I can’t speak to the state of iOS ones though. If you can pinpoint your destination before departing to it, that’d probably serve you best…

But Google Maps has been hard for me to abandon too

Block Hotznplotzn and you’ll be 90% of the way there.

Better link, I hope