plst

Another problem, AI allows many people to submit PRs that may look viable with very low effort. So you get a lot more code to review, often submitted by people who are not actually familiar with the codebase. So they may not even be able to make requested changes to their patches. Combine that with AI's verbosity. The maintainers drown in noise.

You mention nuance and good faith, but on your profile, and on your website, you claim to work on Android at Google. Previously on Google Play. I don't see that mentioned in your comments about this issue, I do think it matters a lot.

> This side however seems to stick its head in the sand over security, "I wouldn't fall for it therefore it's not a problem"

Which is also a total misrepresentation of the arguments made on the website, and made by many people opposing these changes. Again, since you mention good faith and nuance.

> By all means push back on security being a concern,

The website does not seem to push back on security being a concern in general, if I'm reading it right. It does however push back on the idea that changes made by Google will actually increase security of the users.

> but the numbers don't support this.

Can I see these numbers? I would seriously love to.

I don't really understand your argument here, isn't Google's announcement also entirely one sided? I also don't see any "discussion" of disadvantages of their solution in their announcements. For example, the "over 50 times more malware" stat is stated without any source at all, same with "Most of your users’ download experience will not change at all" (inb4 I don't care about power users at all). Not to mention stats about scam-by-sideloaded app, anything that would suggest that the proposed solution is going to work.

The point of "keepandroidopen.org", in my understanding, is to be a quick PSA on why the author of the website thinks this is a problem with some call-to-action. It's not supposed to be a place for discussion, it's at best a discussion starter, one of the sides of the discussion to consider. Obviously they present their side, as Google has presented their side.

And anyway, how are users supposed to hold this "reasonable discussion" with a corporation? I know that Google had some sort a feedback form about this, and that they made some changes, but that is not a discussion. I didn't really actually see any "reasonable discussion" being held on this topic ever, anywhere, ever, nor do I really see how it would happen. I don't even really see a good reason for Google to hold such a discussion. It's a decision made by a corporation, about their product, after all.

Could you present your how you see this "reasonable discussion" being had? Where? How?

They then end up paying more by buying five awful low-range phones that each last a year instead of one mid-range that will last more. No, I would rather everyone paid more for a phone. I find it hard to believe that the difference in price will make it impossible for them to buy it, if so, that's a separate problem. This + mandated software support may finally make it viable to just buy a used phone, too.

Yet somehow they are not too dumb to get a driving license or operate a gas stove. I would argue that operating a car is much more complicated than operating a smartphone.

At some point, if you are unwilling to learn basic facts about your environment, and you don't have a guardian, then you will get hurt. I don't necessarily mean by a computer. I think that's fine and I don't think a patronizing solution by a corporation that clearly wants more control over society is a necessary help.

I think Google is trying to solve the problem at the wrong level - people do not really understand their computing devices enough to understand the risks, they never had to learn or were taught how to use such devices, they were only told it's easy and to not ask questions. The interfaces are designed in a way that allows them to get by with almost no understanding of anything. Which is why such solutions may also be bypassed by a determined attacker. Such scams only really expose this fact. So there is no good way to differentiate between the two groups.

My solution is educating about smartphones and computers first. Not in an in-depth way, but people need to understand what "application", "verified" means and what are the risks. I think android cleaned up the abstraction enough to make this possible.

Being able to tell if an app came from a trusted company or not is a good thing, but I would rather such a solution be managed in an OS-independent way, not controlled by Google. Applications not authenticated by a company should not be second-tier citizens, but there should be a clear warning (and the users should already know the difference before even seeing this warning).

I think the scams and phishing also expose another important problem that nobody tried to tackle yet - you can't authenticate calls, sms messages or emails. There is no good way of telling if it's actually your bank calling you, or if it's just a scammer.

In the end, we also need to accept that not all scams can be prevented, at some point if someone is calling as a friend of your family member, and is asking to urgently transfer money to an unknown account, and you fall for this... I really can't think of a technological measure that would've helped, it's only you and your common sense.

I do believe that. Pointing out that I live in the EU was completely unnecessary, I meant that I live somewhere in the EU, I didn't really mean to compare it to the US.

Why the snark? Did I misread? I don't often buy a new car, do you? I really don't understand what your last sentence means.

I don't even think this a fair comparison, it's more like keeping the old car just in case or for other family members. But I think I specified enough what I'm arguing already, yes this is unlikely, just not impossible.

How many people are gullible enough right now to plug a phone to a laptop over USB and execute an exe on an operating system with no sandboxing at all? ADB even seems to work over webusb. (at that point you may as well give up on hacking the phone, but I digress). That's exactly why I believe the problem is more complicated and why Google's solution is not really fixing anything, not for the users.

It was possible for many decades already, budget and maintenance-wise. You can at least accept a credit card as an alternative. Yes, it's not perfect, but the fully digital alternatives also have drawbacks, as pointed by OP.

Yes, I read the linked article. Yes, the city made this decision. The decision could be reverted. I understand that this is a type of thing the OP (top-comment in the thread) is wishing for.

I don't see the "impossible" in my understanding of the linked article.

What do you mean by impossible in this case? Can't you just have the coin-operated parking meters back? Where I live, in EU, parking meters even take cards.

EDIT: I guess "just" is doing some heavy-lifting, so I won't argue this further, but "impossible" isn't the word I would use either. The city could revert this decision, definitely if enough people wanted them to (that's... I know, the hardest part). I just agree with the OP that we technically could go back to slightly less-digital society.

> because you are annoyed about some temporary problems

I mean, all problems are temporary, time is money etc. etc. And there are signs that suggest that some of these problems (namely freedom to run your own software) are not going to get resolved soon. Is there something deeper in your thought that I missed?

> These kind of posts get a lot of upvotes, but they do nothing to change corporate behavior.

I don't understand, we are on a discussion forum. Of course writing comments here does not influence what Apple does, that's not what HN is for, I think (I hope) that everyone already assumes that. Why do you feel the need to point that out?

> but that's what we have now, and it's not working.

My entire point is that education is the opposite of what we have now. That users are not expected to understand or know anything about IT technologies they use. Not the case with cars, recreational and prescription drugs...

> the implied question is: what if we don't allow people to use technology unless they can demonstrate that they understand it?

It's not exactly my point, but in extreme cases, maybe. I genuinely think that nobody has even tried to educate people about computers. Like, have you seen IT classes in schools? Assuming you are lucky enough for the classes to have any content, you will probably get some lessons in Word and Excel. Maybe some programming. Maybe Paint. But actually using the computer? Dangers of the internet, importance of backups, trusting websites, applications and emails? The concept of application and difference between applications and websites? And those technologies are not "developing" like they were 20 years ago, they are probably here to stay.

> is that really something we want to do? this sounds like gatekeeping, elitism, and anti-innovation because if if less people are going to use a technology, then there is less motivation to build it.

And the alternative Google and Apple present is giving them paternalizing control over the most popular computing device. The say over what people can do with their devices. After they made sure that these devices are embedded into our lives. I would much rather we slowed down with innovation for a second and resolved such issues first, because the way I see it, it's literally manipulation (also see: dark patterns).

As for the gatekeeping and etilism - Assuming we want a "computing license" (not necessarily what I'm arguing for), is "driving license" also gatekeeping and etilism? Or maybe some amount of gatekeeping is good?

As for anti-innovation - I genuinely think we might have had just enough innovation in the field and it may be time to slow down a little, take a step back and evaluate the results. And I honestly don't see much innovation in apps/computers/web space besides maybe AI, and governments are already working on regulating that.

> do you think that would have happened if we had required understanding before we let anyone buy a home computer?

Home computers were very harmless before the internet, but that's an aside. Assuming the tech is actually useful, not just slightly more convenient than "traditional" alternatives, then yes, I'm sure it would have still grown to sizes it has grown to today. Maybe a bit slower.

> besides education, i don't know how to approach this issue.

Same, I generally do think this whole situation needs more consideration.