Limiting ADB is the obvious next step. Even if this one specific feature request does not come to pass, Google has cornered everyone into relying on a developer interface for any normal personal computing tasks, whether running on-device or through USB/wireless. It's quite clear at some point in the future you will either be required to surrender your identity to them and pay a yearly fee or be severely limited to continue using it in any meaningful capacity, because Google does not want you to develop applications on Android outside their controlled channels -- and it's a developer bridge, the battle was already lost when they did not back down from the changes forbidding normal, legitimate ̶s̶i̶d̶e̶l̶o̶a̶d̶i̶n̶g̶ installation.
>Don’t even get me started on OEMs that force an audio warning such as “This call is being recorded,” when it’s in places where it’s not legally required.
This is also Google's fault. Their dialer--that OEMs increasingly pick over their own, despite their always being much better, see old MIUI one for example--just blanket applies the rule almost everywhere. Especially annoying on all MediaTek SoCs that do not support the feature on an hardware level at all through proper, reliable third-party applications. As if you didn't need any more proof you don't own "your" devices. But maybe in a couple years Gemini will be able to listen to the calls and summarize them for you, just need to go through the approved surveillance channel.
Not before connecting it to the internet, even Pixels will go through hundreds of megabytes of data before allowing you to unlock them (see 0). Also, will Google let me browse the web with "my own OS" without their proprietary services installed on it? (see 1) And without developers pouring tens of thousands of work hours into making projects such as GrapheneOS viable despite Google, you wouldn't even be able to do much that requires anything to do with SafetyNet and all successors delivered through Google Play Services, which is functionally the core component of any Android device for the near entirety of typical use-cases. And I'm not excusing OEMs, but they did not build their market share off of being "open" then start to close every door and trap you in it.
>Not before connecting it to the internet, even Pixels will go through hundreds of megabytes of data before allowing you to unlock them (see 0).
What's the problem here? Are you roaming all the time and that imposes a unreasonable cost on you? You want to stay totally off the grid and using VPN/tor isn't enough?
>Also, will Google let me browse the web with "my own OS" without their proprietary services installed on it? (see 1)
Having control of something isn't the same as third party services granting you access. Many online games only supports windows with secureboot and TPM enabled, but that would be a silly excuse to say that you don't really "own" your PC.
>What's the problem here? Are you roaming all the time and that imposes a unreasonable cost on you? You want to stay totally off the grid and using VPN/tor isn't enough?
It depends on a remote endpoint that can go down at any point, and depends on the company's policies present and future. It is functionally asking for permission to another party to unlock it, and that would not fall under the umbrella of ownership through being able to install "my own OS" on it, at least for me. And a simple OTA update is all it takes to add multiple verification steps to it, such as providing your ID/using your verified Google account, or just take it out.
OpenAI and Anthropic models will refuse to address security vulnerabilities in code produced in the very same session. Most importantly, their models are being being used by them, and certainly will be by state actors, to attack others--while preventing every consumer from securing themselves. Hugging Face itself had to use GLM ran by themselves, because those locked down models would trigger safety guardrails during an ongoing attack.
If this is not an excellent demonstration of how western corporations are utterly deranged in their approach to security--internally and through misguided, corrupted models and psychotic guardrails--I'm not sure what would be. It is impossible to have or maintain an asymmetric approach to security. It's also the greatest demonstration of how open weights that can be run on your own hardware, and that can be liberated, are fundamental and must not be restrained in any capacity.
EPP is a corrupt, authoritarian regime that will hopefully not last long. It is not a coincidence the union took a massive, noticeable turn for the worse in 2019 -- the von der Leyen presidencies have done immeasurable damage it will never recover from. They have also been complicit in crime and corruption from Bulgaria, Serbia and Hungary, for years, and that is even if you exclude the Pfizer disaster nobody was held responsible for. They are giving the opposing parties ammunition they need to take them and the dream of a stronger union down, and the only way they can fight back is banning those parties outright, one of which voted completely against this utterly insane, already repeatedly rejected mass scanning. It's hard to think of the union as anything positive when this is the direction it is taking.
Just for context, some european contries have been abusing spyware such as Pegasus so much Israeli firms have cut ties with them, one such example below with Italy. Others have pointed out Greece and Poland. It's quite laughable that a member of the EU parliament would be subject to the same kind of spying activities innocent journalists, activists and possibly normal people are, all of that by the member states of the union, directly contributing to the Israeli companies developing and spreading malware.
Cutting ties after there has been an outcry is damage controll. I would assume that the product is still available under another sub vendor to the same people.
Of course it's damage control. The post just tries to paint the europeans as incompetent to hold the power. The company making spyware is somehow wise, righteous and saintly.
People are getting real EU fatigue from both sides of the spectrum. The attacks on privacy are the most concerning, the members of the high level group pushing for ChatControl and other surveillance state measures are still anonymous, while the Commissioner's Pfizer chats are still nowhere to be found--not that they would be subjected to the same surveillance as the little people. The needs of those bureaucrats sitting in their glass windowed buildings--with AC still running on their tallest floors where the commission staff works, while shut down on the lower ones--clearly do not match what the average person wants or expects. How much can they push it further? They're only adding fuel to the fire that will replace them with something just as bad, if not worse. It's hard not to be skeptical considering the exceptional level of lobbying steering regulations. The latest is the utterly idiotic, anti-consumer de minimis threshold changes, with an incomprehensible "per category" fee on every purchase outside the EU, lobbied for by EuroCommerce, killing entire hobbyist fields (e.g. anything to do with electronics) in the continent.
Creating a problem, positioning yourself as the solution, and using any power you are given to exacerbate the problem, is an unfortunately-viable strategy. In theory, journalism can let the air out of the strategy, but someone's been going 'round killing or suborning the journalism organisations, so that's a bit tricky at the moment.
It's not, and the problem is Google shoving those summaries in everyone's face while using the cheapest, lowest model for it. If they cannot scale one that would produce more accurate results, they should not be doing it at all. The product is not ready, and it's a terrible look for them, not that anyone seriously believes they can produce any kind of decent LLM model at this time of course.
The internet, as it was before the one-way ratchet started to close, feels more and more like a lightning in a bottle that nobody in power wants repeating ever again. Everything in the past couple years has been going towards the centralization into a small number of services, walled wastelands that require you forfeit any kind of anonymity to even browse, tightly coupled to the countries they operate in, and especially for tech corpos, practically an extension of surveillance agencies through PRISMesque programs.
Soon enough (and already the case, if you're one of the unlucky ones) you won't even be able to browse it without explicitly allowing Google to track you on every single website you try to access through your Google-approved, constantly monitored handheld device, linked directly to your identity.
Commercial VPNs are not a solution, they're merely kicking the can down the road, and shrinking the number of people that will complain once they will, finally, come for them too, first by requiring strict accountability to providers and age verification, then outright banning any that do not comply.
On the other hand, while there is more monitored walled garden stuff, there is more stuff in general. I seem to be seeing more varied and often anonymous views than in the early internet when there was less good content up there.
>Don’t even get me started on OEMs that force an audio warning such as “This call is being recorded,” when it’s in places where it’s not legally required.
This is also Google's fault. Their dialer--that OEMs increasingly pick over their own, despite their always being much better, see old MIUI one for example--just blanket applies the rule almost everywhere. Especially annoying on all MediaTek SoCs that do not support the feature on an hardware level at all through proper, reliable third-party applications. As if you didn't need any more proof you don't own "your" devices. But maybe in a couple years Gemini will be able to listen to the calls and summarize them for you, just need to go through the approved surveillance channel.
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