There is a word like that in swedish (bordskrydda) and danish (bordkrydderi) meaning spices/seasoners that are on the table (and added as each person prefers during the meal). Direct translation would be "table seasoners" or "table spice".
The Swedish government didn't say that, some researcher did, and it was talked about in the public service news, afaik. The part of the government they asked on the topic said it was unsafe to have sensitive conversations in any brand of car.
Console game discs do not require a license key, the disc itself is the key. Apart from not having to fear losing your account and thus the game, you also get the added benefit of being able to sell or trade the game.
Sure you can! Downloading the localizations is a large extra complexity in development though, while simply bundling them all is a minor bother in increased download size, for the customer.
No, it's just that I noticed something weird with some apps. For instance, Google Maps is now relying on Google Services permissions instead of asking for permissions for itself [1].
If I'll give these permissions to Google Services, it means any app also using Google Services will automatically have access to the allowed resources.
I've noticed this just starting to happen to me much more aggressively in the last few days. Now the Gmail app will pop up that same modal box in your screenshot every time I make the Gmail app have focus (from the home screen or from the square-button-menu), and every time I open any email.
None of the Google apps respect me. The maps app makes me disagree to giving enhanced location tracking every time I turn on location. The music player has a big bar constantly at the top that says "Downloaded Only," which if I accidentally tap it turns off downloaded only mode and kicks me to the store. If I leave location on accidentally, the camera app will sometimes use location to guess where I took a picture and ask me to "share" that. I don't use Google search, but I can't remove the giant search bar from the main screen or the shortcut if I accidentally hold the menu button.
Those are the only Google apps I use, and they all disrespect me. I only use a bit of Google but it's exhausting to even use just that bit.
Maps and location services is specially annoying. For example, try to disable "Wifi scanning even when Wifi is off". Now every time you open Gmaps, it will nag you. Every single time. Even though it works perfectly fine without it.
Yes, just gave Google Maps as an example but I'm experiencing the same with Gmail and others. It's starting to become very annoying.
My biggest concern is, even if I trust Google Services to have access to all of those requested permissions (consequently allowing the designated app Gmail, Maps, etc to access them) will these resources (permissions granted) be available to any app using Google Services?
Isn't this solved with run-time permissions model since android 6? Customers can be informed before requiring individual permissions, in a context where it is understandable, such as requiring WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE when saving a picture. Am I missing something?
It's not obvious to users that READ_PHONE_STATE means the ability to obtain your IMEI, and if an app just exits when you deny a permission (or lies to you about why it needs it) what do you expect most users to end up doing?
The user-facing text for READ_PHONE_STATE is "Read and control phone status __and identity__".
How more obvious do you want it to be?
And I expect users to uninstall the app or live with the consequences. Because what other option is there?
If you want a kindergarten OS where a corporation prevents you from running apps according to their daily whim and maximization of profits - get an iPhone. Apple will protect you by making sure you run only kids friendly apps which only work with their dongles and hardwares. And that's ok, but we do not need two operating systems with same limitations that only differ in branding. In corporate controlled Apple world, things like Linux do not exist.
I only know what "identity" means in this case because I've read the SDK docs. There's any number of things that phone identity could mean other than IMEI.
(Before you accuse me of just wanting to restrict what people can do with their devices, I'm on the board of directors of the Free Software Foundation - I am very, very interested in ensuring that ultimately end-users are able to do whatever they want to do with things that they own. But that's not incompatible with the OS being designed to do its best to ensure informed consent for whatever an ap wants to do)
Of course, but is there even a way to phrase this better? Google could (and probably should) write "allows access to IMEI", but I'm not sure that adds a lot of informational content.
Don't get me wrong - I think this is still a severe problem. The fact that Google made a half-arsed solution where apps can just target older API and get away without asking for permission is horrible. The fact that apps can extort users with "give us contacts or I won't run" is also horrible.
But I'm out of ideas on how to fix this without giving control over to a single huge corporate entity which will rather lock you out of your own device than to deal with slight possibility of and kind of liability :/
My understanding is that iOS doesn't give apps access to the IMEI - it gives them a tracking identifier that users can disable. Having the OS empower users feels like a better solution than obfuscating what information you're giving up to apps.
Android has it as well - you either have the "Advertising ID" which behaves the same way as the iOS one (requires no permission on either OS) or ANDROID_ID (also requires no permission).
Both are reset with factory reset, but apps still for some reason demand tracking via IMEI.
> Both are reset with factory reset, but apps still for some reason demand tracking via IMEI.
Because from the marketers perspective, a fixed, constant, identifier of a particular phone beats out one that can change periodically. There's more tracking and big-data possibilities from the fixed never changing IMEI value. So that is what they want.
What I personally would want is no way for any advertiser to ever send any ad to my phone in any way, ever.
But given that I'll not likely ever reach that point, I'd settle for those advertisers not receiving any unique identifier from my phone that allows them to know anything more than "ad X was sent to an anonymous phone".
> Google could (and probably should) write "allows access to IMEI",
That works perfectly for us technical minded folk.
For the vast majority of the Android user base (the 99% who are not us technical folk), that is just as opaque a description as "access phone state". They will simply have no idea what an IMEI is, nor will they have any idea of the implications of allowing an app to have access to the IMEI.
The one difference is that warnings to those users could be phrased as "do not allow apps access to your IMEI because ...", which they might understand (eventually) without needing to know what an IMEI happens to be.
“And I expect users to uninstall the app or live with the consequences. Because what other option is there?”
There are other options that Android could have explored, as already mentioned in this submission’s comment thread. For example, this post by qznc:
“My solution is to use CyanogenMod (now LineageOS) and deny access when apps request it. To applications it looks like they can access my contacts, but if I deny it, they only get to see an empty list.”
As you mentioned, there’s no need for two mobile operating systems that don’t give you control over what apps you can run and how you can run them. If Android gave users the option to block permissions for apps without informing the app that the permission has been denied, it would give Android users more control over their phones and the apps running on them, not less.
But as I wrote again - this is available by default in Android since version 6.0. It even behaves the same way (you get empty contacts etc if the app doesn't use APIs explicitly.)
For your "standard" app user, identity isn't a synonym of IMEI (reading that without being an Android dev, I'd just assume it mean my identity, i.e. accounts, on my phone) and most doesn't even know about IMEI.
You're right. But it's worth considering that most people don't know or care what an IMEI is, and even less so would they understand the consequences of sharing it with an app.
Most users will probably indeed grant the permission when asked, but the choice is there, rather than requiring ALL manifest permissions to install and run the app, so it's a lesser of two evils, imo.
No, apps just ask upfront for all their permissions, only now in several separate windows. And if you will deny app even one thing it asks it won't work. So nothing really changed with fine grained permissions.
I think the application can be quite cool, but this video... ugh, it reminds me somehow of the infomercials where people struggle to do the basic tasks.
