Back in 2009 during the Cyanogenmod days, Google issued a C&D to the developers to keep them from distributing Google Apps alongside the main ROM. IMO it was less about the app distribution and more to force Cyanogemod to come to the table and work with Google to develop ground rules on how 3rd party ROMs would interact with Google more broadly. Cyanogemod (now LineageOS) basically agreed not to step on Google's toes. At the time it was not to distribute Google's Apps inside of the ROM. Now it's to not bypass OS level protections like Play Integrity (formerly Safety Net)
> Any action taken to bypass Play Integrity risks a backlash against all custom OSes, and could cause Google to block them entirely from the Play Store.
So long as the main players follow this advice, Google tends to also ignore smaller players that _are_ working around this via Magisk or other means. It's also possible that this simply becomes non-viable after some time.
It's also worth noting, Google has ways to allow third parties to certify their devices on https://www.google.com/android/uncertified/ . This doesn't grant fully Safety Net, but it's definitely another way Google is working with custom ROMs to ensure you have access to the Play Store
My highschool teacher in 2008 taught us how to use the "mail merge" feature in Word. Out of the whole class it was the most "advanced" feature we learned and I wondered if I would ever use it in reality. Nope. Good to know it was outdated in the 90s
All things being equal, you're right. I'd want to avoid the issue of wanting a lawyer and prefer the resources of a larger corporation making those decisions
But they're not equal.
The police can acquire a warrant and serve it to a select few megacorps for ALL of the footage at a specific ___location for a specific time range. That's setting aside some policies where there's active cooperation between the megacorp and the police. By hosting it myself, I avoid this sort of blanket privacy violation.
In my particular situation, I'd guesss it would entirely eliminate police acquiring a warrant for my footage unless I'm a criminal suspect or there was a crime committed in my front yard. Maybe I'd be a bit more forthcoming anyway if a crime happened on my property :P
I kind of read this article as the cops being lazy and requesting literal everything, not because they'll use it but because it's easier than understanding the job they actually need to do.
In that case it'd probably be OK to hand over footage.
But the more sinister and intentional motive among law enforcement also exists. The whole thing is a crapshoot and every case is probably different. If you're lucky, a responsible cop is involved. If you're not, it can be really bad times.
Ah yes, the mere possibility of a sentient AI arises and we're already invoking Roko's Basilisk
More seriously, that seems like a poor way to make moral choices in regards to AI. It's important to be able to distinguish if it does or doesn't have personhood. All evidence I've seen says "No", despite what this guy says.
This is why I power down my laptop physically and ensure startup is speedy. You simply can't trust suspending the laptop to not jack up the overall stability of the system after wakeup or drain the battery unnecessarily or whatever unforeseen disaster awaits you.
I can't stand other platforms comparatively. On Linux, I can start my laptop and be productive in the time other platforms take _to wake up from suspend_. No thanks
I think that's a huge overstatement of how much duplicated effort is involved. The process is much more akin to:
* OS 1 finds a bug in Gnome, reports it and perhaps fixes it
* OS 2 benefits from pulling in the new code as well, fixing bugs
* OS 3 writes a driver for the camera and publishes it as part of their kernel
* OS 4 finds a bug in the camera driver they started using, publishes their fix
Yes, there's some overheard to running 25 projects. There's also a huge downfall to excluding 24 projects from contributing as first class members of the project. To boot, it's also a situation where the more contributions make the fixes contributed even more battle tested and beneficial.
tl;dr - OSS development styles don't map onto commercial development styles cleanly
I guess it comes down to that: will Pine64 take an OSS development approach or a commercial development approach? I've been swimming on the question of why Linux isn't more accessible to more people for a while, and have come to believe that a commercial approach is the only way Linux can achieve the work-out-of-the-box dream.
Commercial development allows you to afford to control the hardware, make deals with other companies, and pay people to build compatibility with your system (i.e. Nvidia), which is what Microsoft and Apple did to keep their position. Server distros like Debian, Ubuntu, and Redhat already have deep foundational and corporate backing, and are a joy to use.
There are definitely drawbacks such as vendor lock-in and all the issues that come with corporate vs community control of the software. However, I believe having a single center of development and revenue (to pay for the development), while at the same time having fully open source software and hardware is possible and would have a huge impact.
Historically, "works out of the box" has largely been a matter of low-level hardware bringup. That's one part of FLOSS development where there is already a natural "center of development and revenue", namely ODM's and OEM's. They just need to stop pushing hacked-together, barely-working downstream BSP's tied to a single software configuration, and start cooperating with projects at relevant levels of the stack. Pine64 is actually a lot better at doing this than your average hardware vendor, the OP is mostly complaining about relatively minor quibbles (though important quibbles nonetheless, because they directly impact OP's work).
Pine has been very much in the "we make hardware, community figures out software" camp, otherwise we wouldn't even have the discussions of "different things worked in different distros" etc.
Back in 2009 during the Cyanogenmod days, Google issued a C&D to the developers to keep them from distributing Google Apps alongside the main ROM. IMO it was less about the app distribution and more to force Cyanogemod to come to the table and work with Google to develop ground rules on how 3rd party ROMs would interact with Google more broadly. Cyanogemod (now LineageOS) basically agreed not to step on Google's toes. At the time it was not to distribute Google's Apps inside of the ROM. Now it's to not bypass OS level protections like Play Integrity (formerly Safety Net)
Their stance now can be found here: https://lineageos.org/PlayIntegrity/ . Note the part that says:
> Any action taken to bypass Play Integrity risks a backlash against all custom OSes, and could cause Google to block them entirely from the Play Store.
So long as the main players follow this advice, Google tends to also ignore smaller players that _are_ working around this via Magisk or other means. It's also possible that this simply becomes non-viable after some time.
It's also worth noting, Google has ways to allow third parties to certify their devices on https://www.google.com/android/uncertified/ . This doesn't grant fully Safety Net, but it's definitely another way Google is working with custom ROMs to ensure you have access to the Play Store