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Android apps are blocking sideloading and forcing Google Play versions instead
  • There already exists a "Google Play licence check" permission apps can use to verify whether or not the app has been bought on a Google account that's present on the device.

    If people can crack the app to remove this (which is a thing for some of the popular apps), they'll also figure out how to patch this out. This is strictly useful for free apps, and only serves to make it unviable to distribute verifiably clean apk's outside of Google Play (so rip APKMirror)

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    In Leak, Facebook Partner Brags About Listening to Your Phone’s Microphone to Serve Ads for Stuff You Mention
  • It isn't. I've personally had it happen where a relative who went to some country that bans video calling and VoIP (except for the unencrypted/honey pots of course) and used Signal to call people back home (only because I told them it would be unblocked due to censorship circumvention). Despite everyone in my household being familiar with WhatsApp, I was the only who did video calls with them and had to share my device so others could also call them. Even when I'd set up Signal on one of their devices, they still complained it was to difficult to use, insisted I'd uninstall it when the trip was over and used it a grand total of once.

    I honestly think it's partly to do with the nerd factor. This same relative turned out to also have installed the backdoored unencrypted app to chat with others, but hid it from us due to me being vocal about not using that. These other households, also WhatsApp based, managed to install, sign up and use that just fine. They also couldn't be bothered to set up Signal for some reason, yet gladly accepted the suggestion to use the honey pot.
    I think that these people in my circle don't care about security at all and only care about the platform. If it's "secure", "private" and "censorship resistant" and they haven't heard of it until I, the "techie", explain the technological benefits of it, they'll think it's a niche "techie" thing they're not nerdy enough to understand. If I get them to use it, they'll keep thinking this whenever something is slightly different than WhatsApp and be frustrated. Meanwhile they can get behind the honey pot because "WhatsApp doesn't work there, this is just what people in that country use". It appears normal because "normal people" use it all the time, and they'll solve any inconvenience themselves because "normal people (can) use this, and I'm normal too".

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    People of lemmy, what was your “oh crap” moment?
  • My grandpa had developed the habit of falling out of his bed. The first time I was afraid that he was gonna die on the spot as I'd heard it, but it eventually became such a "regular" occurrence that I didn't think of immediate death anymore. This particular day, he'd fallen twice. They brought him to a nearby hospital to get a check-up. I was worried sick that this time something was actually wrong, or that he might've broken a bone or something. Turns out he was fine! No broken bones or anything. Just one teeny tiny minor issue...

    When he was brought to the hospital, he was accidentally placed in the area with people who were brought there with covid. I hadn't been able to see him in months because of the restrictions, and even when I did go the months prior it was always with far distance, masks and in short bursts. I did everything I had been told to do to "keep him safe", "ease up the workload in the hospitals" and all those government campaigns and all that, only for him to die because of this (seeming) serious neglect from medical professionals.

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    You are given an opportunity to hard reset our universe (particularly, the Earth). You are also allowed to change one rule about the new universe. What rule would you change?
  • Any and all personal gain becomes mutual gain.

    • If you don't intend to cheat anyone, the party you're interacting with gains in a similar "amount" as you
    • If you achieve personal gain at the cost of someone else, their net gain will be even greater than yours
    • In case there's no direct party you're interacting with while gaining (such as you running a red light when no one's around to be inconvenienced), society as a whole gains
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    How can I get a screw like this out?
  • I once had a screw on a laptop that wouldn't unscrew and eventually somewhat lost its shape. I had asked my uncle for help, who gave me the solution. I think it was slightly less bad than this, but it might help:

    1. Apply WD40 around the edges of the screw, such that it could enter the hole
    2. Apply it to the screw head
    3. Hold your screwdriver in the hole and gently tap it with a hammer a couple of times
    4. Slowly attempt to screw it out, whilst applying firm downward pressure on the screw

    Note that the amounts of WD40 you have to apply are tiny. We're talking drops of the stuff. It might be best to attempt to spray something else, and use the residue on the nozzle to apply it

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    End of an era: Nova Launcher's parent company lays off practically everyone
  • I'm currently on it because Neo Launcher stopped working one day, but is there a way to have app icons on the home screen without them being in the dock? It fills up quickly if you use PWA's

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    Take action to stop chat control now!
  • The Netherlands only remains "neutral" because of the clause that forces companies to detect unknown CSAM and/or "grooming" material (last time I checked). It's only a matter of one or two countries that can make the difference, with most neutral countries probably having similarly "minor" objections.

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    Steam Deck Now Cheaper Than A Switch During Valve's Big Summer Sale
  • You don't. You see, Nintendo encrypts their games and basically outlaws any way to access decryption keys from your own console. In your proposal you don't even own a Switch to lawfully or unlawfully obtain the keys from, meaning that you'll 100% have to acquire those "illegally".

    Not that I care for the record

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    The YouTube app could finally get a sleep timer (APK teardown)
  • I wanted to use it back in the day, but most instances didn't load. Even less often then regular Piped for me. I'd imagine that this wouldn't be particularly improved now that YouTube's doing their whole "Sign in to confirm you're not a bot" spiel

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    Metroid Prime 4: Beyond – Announcement Trailer – Nintendo Switch
  • IIRC, GBC cartridges could physically fit inside the OG GB, but would throw an error when it required the extra power of the GBC. The GBA had the notch that determined Advance/not-Advance mode and made GBA games physically exclusive to the GBA

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    Metroid Prime 4: Beyond – Announcement Trailer – Nintendo Switch
  • I'm hoping it's gonna be like a GameBoy Color game. One cartridge. Play on Switch, regular graphics. Play on Switch 2, next-gen graphics. Everyone wins

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    YouTube's next move might make it virtually impossible to block ads
  • It could've been. You and me probably would've blocked ads regardless of their content for various reasons, but I'd imagine that Google wouldn't have reached this critical mass prompting this scheme if their ads were properly vetted.

    The technologically literate capable of installing ad blockers are the minority, and those who'd do it out of principle are a smaller subset of those

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    What industry do you work in and what are the LPT the general public should know about it?
  • Does this also apply when not using the official app? I recently bought a Phillips bulb (not Hue) and set up Home Assistant for it, along with the Matter bridge. This turned out to also connect it to the Wi-Fi, but I never installed a manufacturer app.

    Would blocking internet access via parental controls on the router be enough to mitigate such threats, or is its mere presence in an internet-connected network dangerous?

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    Not you
  • In the Netherlands most far right seats were shuffled between FVD (4 to 0) and PVV (1 to 6/7). Can't explain their final seat, but I guess it might have to do with there being more this time around? We did have a couple progressive parties gain a little (D66 +1, Volt +2), but over all right/left/far right are said to have roughly retained their size compared to last elections.

    This makes PVV the second biggest list in NL, with GL/PvdA (Green/socialist left alliance) being first at 8 seats. Thing is, while GL/PvdA is collaborating in our national politics as basically one party, they're expected to join the European factions they're already a part of, separating them into 2× 4 seats. They will (and have been) collaborate and align their votes in Parliament and believe such collaboration might be the way forward on a European level as well.

    Because our media loves for there to be a heated fight, this is being interpreted as a victory for both PVV and GL/PvdA depending on who you ask

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    Google Chrome’s plan to limit ad blocking extensions kicks off next week
  • Firefox is looking to implement Manifest V3 to keep extension feature parity with Chromium, but their version will not ban the one API that adblockers use. So Firefox will eventually be V3 compliant

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    LPT Do it.
  • This is what I (a non coder who only knows git "download the Yuzu repo before they nuke it" and git "give me all the updates") want to do when I get to write a paper. How much git did you have to learn to do this?

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    How to port any N64 game to the PC in record time
  • Note that SM64 (and OoT, but I don't think that's on Android yet) are special cases. These have been reverse engineered by the community to the point that they've manually decompiled the entire game, and then separately ported to modern platforms. The project in the OP is different, as it's made for games that don't have this effort behind them

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  • Came up with this late at night. Not while being anywhere near a laptop though.

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