Most of the people who complain about stuff like this are those who run custom, degoogled Android ROMs and think they are entitled to Google's work forever.
It's technically true that I run custom degoogled Android ROM.
However, I'm MAKING my own Android ROM. I actually do the job Google implied they would do when they announced Project Treble with Android 8.0 (which is actually providing working new Android versions on older Android vendors).
I'm guessing you don't know my project, so I'm making GSIs, which make Android's Project Treble actually usable to thousands of various devices. If you take Google's Project Treble as-is, you get /at best/ something that is not even a smartphone (you get no in-call audio, assuming you get calls at all, because it doesn't provide VoLTE support). I'm making it actually daily-drivable.
Many users are saying that I'm doing Google's job there, and even some Googlers said so. But of course, it's not in Google's nor the OEM's best interests to do that, which is way this job needs to be done by other people.
Also, I sent dozens of patches to AOSP, with very very small success rate. (While my contributions to Linux were pretty smooth)
My line could have been misinterpreted, and I'm not sure how I'm supposed to interpret yours, so I'll explicit it just in case, because my previous post can be understood both ways:
No, I don't feel entitled to Google's work, the quote was sarcasm.
My point of showing my contributions is that I can do stuff on my own, that I'm happy that Android is opensource, and I do my best to contribute to it, in the opensource spirit. But if it stops being opensource, then so be it (it'd be a bigger shot in the foot for Google than for me anyway), I'm not simply leeching on Google's back, like previous comments assumed.
I'm entitled to Google's work because they made their code open source.
They did it because they wanted to be entitled to someone else's work (the free components they built it on). No one told them they couldn't be proprietary from the ground up.
You forget the part where all of this was necessary precisely because OEMs couldn't be bothered to update their drivers to work with more recent versions of the kernel.
Three years ago, gregkh did a presentation about LTS in Android. Guess who was using latest LTS kernels. Google? Nope. Sony and Essential are who.
Guess who upstreamed support for their phones in Linux kernel? Google? Still nope, again it's Sony.
How long was Pixel 1 supported? Ah yes, a whopping 3 years. (Same for Pixel 2 I believe). Who does better? Fairphone (circa 100 overall employees, and not many are software engineers), and nVidia.
Guess who provides major kernel upgrades? Sony (but not Google-certified sadly), and nVidia.
So far, Google hasn't shown any sign they are more capable than average OEMs to upgrade my devices.
> You seem to not understand who exactly provides kernels for Android and other embedded devices.
Oh, I perfectly understand how those things work, I've Google-certified more smartphones than I can count (which means more than 50), and that's merely one line of my resume.
In my comment, I mention Sony who upgraded their major kernel version. How does it fit your mental model of embedded system's BSPs?
I currently work in a company who provides software upgrades for a 10 years-old STB. This 10 years-old STB (that's older than the Nexus 4) is currently running Linux 5.4, and is planned to run Linux 5.14 in a few months, at millions of customers' home.
Are we bigger than Google? Gosh no, by orders of magnitude. Are we spending a lot of time on this? Well nope, we don't even need one person full-time to upgrade kernel version. Are we paying that person a lot? Nope, they could probably move to Google 500 meters away and have at the very least double salary.
Of course SoC-vendor stopped providing us with upgrades aeons ago.
But, contrary to Google, we actually have monetary incentives to keep supporting this device.
That's their point. Google, for their own phones, put next to no effort upstreaming the code, but accepted the vendor status quo.
If they can't even wrangle this for their own phones, how is going to a more permissive license and embracing proprietary modules going to make the situation better?
I'm not sure where you got that "point". Microsoft couldn't wrangle this either and they've still ended up with a wildly successful operating system which simply provided a stable ABI.
Why are you so darn sure that they're wrong and the model that's been failing for the last 15+ years is really the right one?
Microsoft's kernel is also famously behind the times because they can't update key parts because of the stable API. Like how the scheduler only knows about banks of 64 cores at a time, and you have to manually load balance your threads from user space in some cases. Or how they couldn't change their VFS to compete with Linux's expectations because they reversed the caching model. The NT filesystem cache sits between user space and the filesystem so internal metadata isn't cached by default but instead needs manual work from each day driver that's always not quite implemented well in practice. On Linux the cache conceptually sits between the FS and the block device so metadata is actually cached 'for free'. Because of these problems it was faster to literally run a whole other kernel for WSL2 rather than the apples to apples of WSL1.
And when we have an example of perfect phone APIs that don't need updates and perfectly written drivers to back those APIs then we can start to entertain that idea.
Stable does not mean perfect. It means putting a version number on it, don't fucking change it pointlessly, and decouple it from the other parts of the kernel.
My Pixel 5 with the latest update installed is running Linux 4.19. Pretty old, but still supported until 2024 according to kernel.org. Still, a more recent kernel release would be preferable of course.
One could require FLOSS drivers instead, so the community would have a possibility to update them later. This is exactly how it works on GNU/Linux phones, Librem 5 and Pinephone.
I'm not sure how switching to a more permissive driver model and licence where now you won't even get the source to these drivers will make the situation better.
No. I don't know if the winky face is to denote sarcasm, but it seems like it should still be noted that because so many people who could be vaccinated are refusing to get vaccinated, vaccinated people and people who can't get the vaccine still have to worry about a greater chance of catching a variant strain and also hospitals not being able to care for them (for any reason) because they're being bogged down treating preventable disease.
Variant strains are going to happen regardless of what we do, just like with the flu. This is an invalid argument that people keep using in ignorance. It's like people honestly believe the world was going to achieve 100% vaccination rate.
You are making an extraordinary claim when you state that the vaccine does not prevent spread.
Additionally, the flu vaccine becomes ineffective year after year expressly because of variant strains arising from unvaccinated people failing to take precautions like wearing masks, socially distancing during epidemics, and avoiding school and work while infectious.
The vaccines don't reliably prevent spread. That is hardly an extraordinary claim, it's an established scientific fact. Fortunately the vaccines are still very effective at preventing deaths.
Are you looking for 100% effectiveness? That's not how anything in the world works. If I can reduce the probability of spreading infection, that is a clear benefit to society. If enough people reduce the probability of spread enough, we can reach a point where for all practical purposes, the virus is gone.
No one is realistically looking for 100% effectiveness. However the vaccines don't reduce spread enough to eliminate the virus. Eventually we'll all be exposed. The main benefit of the vaccines is preventing deaths.
Not necessarily. The number of COVID infection cases related to new variants among the vaccinated population is increasing. That's why I'm back to wearing a mask again.
If everyone had been vaccinated as soon as the vaccine was available to them, and were using good mask and hand-washing hygiene, it might not have come to this.
2 year warranty mandated by the EU. If it breaks after that I'll throw it away. I just don't see the problem. I know some will think this is a troll comment, but given most people don't care about reparability when they buy a new phone, maybe you should stop trying to push it.
Good luck finding competent developers and paying them European salaries.
Most of these companies hire mediocre developers in small numbers because of budget constraints and then work on their product on borrowed time until the EU seed money runs out.
> Good luck finding competent developers and paying them European salaries.
I can assure you some of the brightest people i know are paid a misery in your standards, first of which researchers working for public universities. Free software "consulting" companies like Collabora are also filled with brilliant people.
On the other hand, i don't think i know a single person that gets paid high salary (> 2000-3000€/mo) that does anything useful for society at large or has an interesting skillset. Those are usually managers or Chief Whatever Officers, and i believe the whole society would fare much better without them.
Trying to equate skill/usefulness with salary is a doomed enterprise. You'd be surprised with the knowledge and skills of some janitors cleaning your office, if you ever talk to them.
I would extend this by saying that most of the people in the US earning mid 6 figures as developers are doing even less good for society than those managers. The market set those salaries high because the negligible marginal cost of reproduction in the software industry is a lure for capital, not because it produces things we actually need.
I am saying, not suggesting, that developers who accept to work for a much lower salary will naturally be, in average, less competent than those who know their worth.
That's a stupid argument. EU-based developers usually get paid EU-level salaries ( so higher than the median EU salaries). Some work at American companies' EU-based offices, for slightly better salaries ( sometimes), but things remain in the same ballpark.
Not everyone desires to move to the US to get a Silicon Valley-level salary and sacrifice their Quality of Life for it.
What's wrong with getting paid more while being able to live in a place with large homes with large yards and wide road ways...
Electricians in the US easily make over $70k early on, and over $100k with in a few years. And that isn't even the best paying trade job.
An experienced Programmer easily can get a job making 120k+, and that isn't even in the valley.
That being said, I wouldn't want to move here either. You get paid more, the homes are nicer and more private, and you fit a big SUV down any road. But the medical system sucks, and really takes a toll on take home $$. Especially with kids. Along with that you have idiots that think trump was the second coming of jesus. And do nothing more than cry about thing that will only hurt them in the long run.
> Electricians in the US easily make over $70k early on, and over $100k with in a few years.
The median pay for electricians in the US is $56,900; the cutoff for the top 10% is under $100K [0], which is quite inconsistent with them “easily” making $70K early on and $100K within a few years.
Maybe a few years ago, and that number most likely factors in appetences. Not strictly journeymen.
Any Journeymen not taking home north of $65k should be looking for another job, as their employer is screwing them over. There simply isn't enough of them and employers will gladly pay for someone experienced to join their work force. Even with the recent massive pay increases it is hard to keep people from going somewhere else for even higher pay.
A website like that doesn't really keep up with what is really happening in a field like that. $100K/year working 50-60hours a week is not uncommon.
> That being said, I wouldn't want to move here either. You get paid more, the homes are nicer and more private, and you fit a big SUV down any road.
Which is a thoroughly unsustainable way of living. I like walking and biking, and I wouldn't want to sacrifice them and the practicality of having everything within a walking/biking/public transit distance for more house and yard maintenance.
> But the medical system sucks, and really takes a toll on take home $$. Especially with kids.
And takes a mental toll having to worry about that kind of thing. I don't want to be afraid to go to the doctor.
Because everyone who "knows their worth" is willing to endure a poor work-life, subpar healthcare, inferior education for their children, volatile social climate, practically non-existent social protection and crazy wildfires in exchange for a higher salary, right?
Well I can say most of that is hit or miss, and some just downright wrong. Crazy Wildfires is the only correct issue here, lol.
The actual Hospitals and Doctors in America have always been hands down better. Its only if you can afford it. Really any top tier Silicon Valley job is going to come with pretty good heath insurance. The Subpar Healthcare is more or less a poor person problem. Nothing like destroying net worth like having to go to the doctor with sub par insurance. Getting 3-6K+ in bills over a few nonsense visits.
Like I said before I wouldn't move to America either. But to think the EU isn't a$$ Backwards in many ways would be an understatement. I lived in the UK for 3 years, and like most of Europe school system is a hit or miss depending on location. Private Schooling is not uncommon in America for that reason.
This in part is why Americans in higher level careers (family's with income of 120K+) tend to retire with more money in their retirement accounts than their EU brothers. Nearly all my Fellow successful 30yo's had over 50K in their 401k when they turned 30. The ones that didn't are ones that will most likely always jump around to different entry level jobs.
Taking advantage of money is exactly what you want to do. Money will make you more money. So not having money working for you only works to keep you down. The more money you have working for you, the more it makes in a given part of time. Want to create generational wealth, you'll need to make as much $$ as you possibly can and teach your kids how to keep growing their chunk after you pass.
As someone that grew up in a lower middle class home where extra cash just didn't exist. My dedication in life is to make my children set in life. I was lucky enough to find a career path to allow for such entitlement. No it is not a sad life, its only sad if said money is purely for self indulgement.
Notice I wrote ONLY. Of course it's a huge motivation, but would I move to a country or city I hate for x dollars? Would I work in a company that's making chemical weapons that work only on kids? Would I work for Facebook?
No I wouldn't and there are dozens of (less comical) examples where I draw the line.
To be clear: I'm not claiming they don't ban users. They do. I've been told they don't shadowban users: they don't make it look like you're not banned while in reality your messages are all invisible to everyone but you... or so they've recently claimed.
AFAIK: "ban" and "shadow-ban" look the same: you can post comments, but they automatically [dead], the difference is just that if it's a "ban" you get told you are banned by a mod. And while it's probably a lot rarer nowadays, I believe e.g. the spam filter still automatically applies this without a message, it seems there is a system killing accounts that go too deep into negative karma, ...
They did that to me years ago, like ten years or so. Took me weeks to figure out the site wasn't slow when logged out! They don't do it anymore (and thankfully, because if they did it to me now I'd slowloris the hell out of this site).
I think most people who have the technical skill to do this effectively don't telegraph their intentions on what is, to all intents and purposes, social media.
They should allow server owners to choose whether every bot they have added can read every message or just /commands. But that would require too much intelligence on their part :P
The problem is admins haphazardly adding tons of toy bots to servers with sometimes hundreds or thousands of members, and those bots being a front for storing tons of user data (including eg. user online status, user tag (name#1234) history, a large DB of the users' messages across years). The users in these servers aren't informed of such change and Discord can't trust these developers to say "we don't log messages" without requiring them tie a legal identity to any potential malicious logging.
> Unfortunately, at the same time, there were growing concerns with a user-bot ring that made a website and scraper known as "dis.cool", which farmed user information.
> Most library developers felt the changes were misdirected and targeted the wrong type of bot. The threat model was based on user-bots being bad actors, and not regular bots, while the changes targeted regular bots. We also felt that it was easy to sidestep the restrictions by just having a bot ring, similar to what is now done today with user-bots.
> Discord claimed [the new requirements, including government ID] would help with security and privacy by preventing malicious bots from growing and obtaining sensitive data. The library developers responded that it wouldn't help since malicious bots had to be invited and the crux of malicious bots were, and still are, user-bots.
Seems like a reasonable description of the issue to me, covering everything in that comment.
If you feel it gets lost in the words then I think the proper thing to criticize is the writing style, not the credibility.
(If the term is unclear, "user-bot" means it's a normal user account being used in an automated way.)
