>In 2016, when I got a new phone, the default setting changed and I would just wake up to my device stating, "Tinder has been updated. Deal with it".
I turned off auto-updates on my phone.
So this happened. Last year or so I traveled to SF and tried to call an Uber home after a long day of walking around. My phone had 5% battery left. I opened the app and there it was... The maps and everything showed up, but then it blocked the UI with the message: "You haven't updated the app in a month. Uber won't work if you don't update it right now." It really rustled my jimmies. In the next 15 minutes, 3 of us (2 are foreigners with no cell connection) had to stand in the freezing rain when the damn thing was updating with my 2.5G connection. When the Uber arrived, I had 1% left and not long after I got in the car, my phone shut down. I was so worried the phone would die before the car arrived.
The other day I talked about how backward-compatible Google Maps is and unfortunately it made the news on Slashdot. Some people were like, oh yeah, Windows is backward compatible with 30 years old apps. Are you a millennial/a shill for praising them for supporting their API for 10 years? Yeah, keep talking about Windows, until you fucking use some of the apps nowadays that wouldn't work when you haven't updated them in a month.
is an interesting choice of example. The anger at updates only really makes sense for apps that are entirely local to your hardware. As soon as you have an app where part of it runs on a server that you don't control, that logic goes out the window. They can stop your non-updated app from working with no effort, just by making the server API incompatible. As long as you are depending on someone else's server to be up and responding and not changing, you give up your rights to be in control of local updates.
It sucks, but that's the reality of SaaS. I'm a fan of using local apps whenever possible. For instance, Google Docs is just too damn useful not to use sometimes. But I still, majority of the time, will choose to use a local word processor whenever I can get away with it. And when I'm done working on a Google Docs project, I download it in several formats and put it in the drawer.
In the meantime I'd really like to see more take-up of open source, federated hosted solutions based on open document standards and open protocols. But so far the big corporations are winning that game.
Even if you turn off auto-updates, some things still auto update silently. A long time ago, I wrote a small utility which listened to the PACKAGE_ADDED and PACKAGE_REMOVED events (I don't know if it's still possible to listen to these events on recent Android versions). IIRC, there were two packages that always updated silently (wihout a notification icon) and automatically, even with automatic updates disabled: com.android.vending (Android Market/Google Play Store), and com.google.android.gms (Google Play Services).
It’s not the fault of “apps” here. The thing that is breaking compatibility is the server backend. Native frontends (“apps”) have to be coded defensively (e.g. to not even attempt to work unless you update) only because whatever backend service they talk to has no wire protocol that can go a month without what would be, under semver, a major release.
You’ll notice that apps that target stable protocols—POP3/IMAP mail clients, RSS newsreaders, vCard calendar apps—never force you to update. They don’t need to. The app will keep working as long as the server they are configured to talk to keeps speaking the same protocol (and it will, because public, RFCed protocols evolve really slowly.)
The fault here lies mostly, I think, with backend developers who have spent their entire careers working on web projects—where, if they want to make a breaking change, they can just ask the web frontend developers to make a matching change on the website that conforms it to the new wire-protocol, and at most the only problem users will have is that their webpage might spontaneously refresh itself if it was relying on a websocket connection. You can’t do that when you have a native frontend pointed at your backend service, but these backend engineers just don’t seem to put much weight on the needs of native frontends. It's web-frontend chauvinism, basically. (Either that or it’s their management forcing them to act as if they don’t.)
I've uninstalled around 10 free to play games and apps that Windows 10 installed without asking in the past 6 months, so I'm not sure those slashdot people should be using windows as a good example of having control either despite that 30 years of backward compatibility. :)
Your complaint doesn't make much sense. These apps are pretty front ends for cloud databases, just like websites. You don't demand that websites serve you one version of javascript and then never update it again. These are not standalone local apps. They are client-server networked apps that need the client and server to stay in sync for them to work. Uber and Apple/Google have solved the problem you experienced by having the apps only be auto-updated while they're being charged so they don't chew up your battery. You decided to break that feature and then complain that your magical cab hailing device was slightly inconvenient.
> I was so worried the phone would die before the car arrived.
I've had my phone die well before the Uber arrived and it wasn't a problem, it showed up at the place I requested.
Once the ride is initiated the drivers phone becomes the primary client. It seems quite flexible with devices going offline (as it should, mobile networks are unreliable).
> use some of the apps nowadays that wouldn't work when you haven't updated them for a month.
This is a worrying trend but I don't think it's really that bad yet. My primary phone died recently (famous Nexus 6p bootloop) and I used my old Samsung S3 with stock Android circa 2014 and I was surprised how many of the apps still functioned properly without updates (including the ancient built-in pre-Chrome webview Browser app).
... basically my expectation these days was that they wouldn't work. But in practice 99% of my phone use is SMS/Messengers + Maps + Browsers, and they all worked perfectly fine, web standards don't advance that quickly at all, and the messengers are all using simple protocols where they had no problem.
So it's typically the edge case 1-5% 3rd-party apps like Uber that are of concern.
It's really not hard to develop APIs that are versioned. This is becoming a standard best practice among mobile/web app developers (via SemVer standard). And there's no excuse for a big company like Uber to not support ~1-2yr old apps.
I'm not sure how I feel about this; you had the power to not auto update; you exercised it; the company had the power to not allow out of date apps use the service; they exercised it... seems right to me. You put yourself in that situation.
I have a very cheap phone which does not have a lot of space left for apps. So it became a habit for me to deinstall and install less frequently used apps only when I need them (e.g. I go on a trip). Actually it makes me feel better that apps like UBER are not installed when living mostly in a country where I cannot use them at all. Fun fact: You can use the same approach also on high end phones. Install less used apps only when you know you will need them. This way you also do not need to auto update less frequently used apps.
As an end-user, I'd like things the way they are. If I'm used to the app and it works, why should I be forced to update the damn thing so that it keeps working?
> Yeah, keep talking about Windows, until you fucking use some of the apps nowadays that wouldn't work when you haven't updated them for a month.
It's not really Windows' fault that the applications are being bad actors, though, so I don't see how that suddenly invalidates the backwards compatibility of the OS. Also, I'm sure if you use a 30-year old app, it's not going to prompt you to update before using it.
I remember being quite upset when Uber told me I had to update the app in order to use it. In recent years (at least on iOS), they now warn you that your version won't work in the near future. I suppose that if you don't use the app for a very long time, you might miss this warning window, but with my infrequent Ubering that hasn't happened yet.
You didn't mention the phone OS, but ... It's been a while since I was a 3rd party iOS developer, but I thought at one time having a "time bomb" or anything else that causes the app to basically do nothing is in violation of Apple's AppStore rules and would cause the app to get removed from the store.
Auto Updates without user interaction is the biggest security benefit I can think of for a normal user. Yes you read that right. It's f*cking great that my parents can use an always up to date browser and OS and I don't need to worry if they have updated all their stuff. Update mechanisms like for Java and other stuff which pop-up and require user interaction are a thing most people will not get right.
Actually I really like the Chrome OS approach where it's done continuesly in the background. Not all people want to know what's going on under the hood and how the motor of their car works exactly. Some people just want to drive securely from A to B.
I thought it was a story about cars and tech when I first started reading it. It wasn't until the article talks about dents and such that I realized this wasn't the focus.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I just reactivated my old Android phone yesterday for fun and as soon as I put the sim card in the phone started blowing up with notifications about old voicemails, ones I never saw on my iPhone I had just had it in. There were about a dozen voicemails from the past six months from jobs I had applied to and heard nothing back from, or had a preliminary phone interview with, asking me to call them back to schedule something. I mentioned it to my sister, who moved from Android to iPhone the same time I did, and she did the same thing and found a bunch of voicemails from a college she's recently applied to asking if she can send them some piece of paperwork. It's so frustrating that we didn't know that these voicemails existed.
I think the fundamental problem is that to make these technical products like mobile OS's and email apps you need to be so far into tech that you can't really imagine what it's like to be a casual user. This is why I don't consider software engineering to be on the same tier as other disciplines of engineering. Yes, civil engineers make bridges, but they use them in daily life exactly the same as regular people do - the same goes for electrical engineers and power in the home, and mechanical engineers and vacuums/air conditioners/bicycles. When you make software, you look at all software differently and you lose the perspective of a regular person.
This is why I go out of my way to only buy phones that are going to be very well supported by LineageOS for a long time.
You can go Google-less on such devices if you want.
The only real limitation is that you cannot do anything about the super-privileged proprietary modem that simultaneously can spy on you at any time that also prevents you from running newer kernels on your hardware because of how evil every Android vendor is with their proprietary bits.
At least there is finally momentum to kill the ME / SP backdoors on desktops. Its going to be much harder to do that on mobile since the only way to use cellular networks is through these proprietary black box modems.
We were afraid that AI will take over and take away our freedom, but I think some companies have done a great job at ruining their products, and our lives as well.
We are finally facing the ramifications of short-sighted decisions years ago. In the race to the bottom where a plurality of people opted for "free" or "cheaper" options, not enough people cared about how money is made. Companies like google aren't charities, so profits would have to be extracted irrespective of the dubiousness of the approach. The current situation was predicted by many.
corporations actually have most of the attributes people fear from AI (lack of concern about human values, optimizing for the values they care about at any cost, paperclip maximizer style, a vast amount of paralell and subversive power), its just that they are slow and inefficent.
It's an interesting (but mostly depressing) problem. The insistence that "others must be in control of what you own" doesn't really sit well with me, at all. I won't drive a phone without root, for instance. Otherwise the plethora of updates I have sitting around not being updated would do nothing but eat data with garbage updates with naught but a new roll of advertisements and, if you're unlucky, new garbage access requests. Update the os? Yeah, no. Not on your watch, at least.
A firewall, for instance, is a basic necessity. Even the crude android flavors. It includes the ability to lock out your "vendors" selectively and accurately.
My build is, hm, approaching it's fourth year, I think. No auto updates save for select apps. No complaints. No surprises. But I'm special, I don't do "phone for fun" and so have a fairly limited and hardened short list of requirements.
The most annoying thing on android is Google XXANY - by a wide, wide margin. I'll be itching to build a google-go-around on my next handset, for certain.
Save all those apps you like, for sure, I still depend on side-loading quite a few that have since gone by the wayside. At this juncture I have to take absolutely every bit of control that I can get my filthy paws wrapped around.
I understand that powers have shifted, and the majority of the people prefer "free" email/chat/spreadsheets/storage, when "free" means "welcome to our own special walled corner of the internet, give us your personal data and watch these ads".
But why should in 2018 be so hard for one to be able to simply pay once for hardware or software, that puts the user first? Is it impossible for such a company to succeed at scale?
> But why should in 2018 be so hard for one to be able to simply pay once for hardware or software, that puts the user first? Is it impossible for such a company to succeed at scale?
Apple seems to follow that plan. For your "email/chat/spreadsheets/storage", they have iCloud mail, iMessage, Numbers and iCloud Drive. You pay once, and get software support quite a lot of years later. They don't seem to be selling or gathering much data. They won't show you ads.
Now, it won't be RMS approved, but that's another debate.
Just like you use software by license and don't "own" it, hardware makers have realized they can bilk with the same business model. It's no coincidence that slime software companies are the ones making the current hardwares that have such "features" -- Apple and Google chiefly among them, along with the ecosystem they created in their own image.
Serious question, do any phones exist that can fully owned by the user? For a period, I was excited about the Ubuntu phone because of the fact that I could have full control over it. Sad to see that project terminated.
I'm also interested in "dumbphones" that can use CDMA or GSM networks.
For the majority of the history of land lines and analog phones, the phones and lines were owned by the telephone company, and leased by the consumer. This change happened in 1982, 10 years AFTER mobile phones were invented.
> Serious question, do any phones exist that can fully owned by the user?
Many (HTC, Google, ASUS, etc. - NOT Samsung) unlocked android phone can be loaded with a variety of bootloaders and then flashed with the ROM of your choice where you have full root access. Of course without google apps (Google Play Store) your phone isn't all that useful, but you can install google apps ( maybe from a questionable legal/copyright stand point, I don't remember) and have more control over the device.
Not sure if this matches what you mean by fully owned though. Checkout XDA Forums (https://forum.xda-developers.com/) to see what interesting things are out there you can do. There's also LineageOS (https://www.lineageos.org/) formerly CyanogenMod.
I suggest to everyone I know to try going a couple of weeks without a smart phone. You can still stay in touch over calls/sms, but is much easier to distinguish useful screentime, as in the time I'm working on a computer versus fluff screentime when I'm feeling awkward or mindlessly scroll feeds. It helped a lot with being present, not being bombarded with notifications and actually valuing communication.
I've seriously contemplated a roll-your-own "dumb phone" solution not only for myself but also for my mother and in-laws (they're all in their 70s). An Adafruit Fona would provide all of the telephonic functionality I'd care about, and then it's just a matter of choice regarding microcontroller, display, etc.
> Serious question, do any phones exist that can fully owned by the user?
Funny you bring up land lines, considering that those essentially began the trend of operator-owned end-user equipment. See for example Model 500 phone:
> As with most telephones of the time in the United States, the 500-series telephones were owned by the local Bell Operating Company and leased on a monthly basis to customers
I have an iPhone 4S running iOS 7 (jailbroken of course) and an original MBP retina running Mavericks. I don't update them because the risk of updating is higher than the risk of not updating. Right now everything is working, and everything is set up the way I like it. If I don't update, things might break some day, but there is also a greater-than-zero chance that everything will continue to work for quite a while. If I update, those odds drop to zero. Not even a statistical approximation of zero, but actually zero. Updating is just trading one set of risks for a different set of risks. I choose the devil I know.
Also these updates drain the battery all the time and there is no way to tell them to please stop.
At least on Android you can install "greenify app" but for that to work properly, you need to have root and for that you have to unlock the bootloader (for which you have to wait 14 days and also void your warranty). I mean wtf, it's my phone but the design is such that a shit ton of crap always needs to run in the background (looking at you google play services) and dozens of useless apps that are always connecting just to show me more push notifications.
I can choose whether apps auto update on iOS devices but more importantly, when I download something on my computer, I have no control of what the app does. On my iOS device, I can be somewhat assured that it's going to be somewhat trapped in a sandbox and only be allowed to do what I specifically give it permission to do.
I wish that Apple would give you an option to not allow an app to access the internet and not just disallow the use of mobile data.
Increases in complexity up the barrier of entry to any advanced system, but lately it seems like things are made with the intent to make that barrier impossible to overcome within the lifetime of the hardware. The right to repair and open hardware standards are something we need to organize and push for if we want to see improvements. After all it's been demonstrated time and time again that we can't trust black box hardware.
I think we are going more and more into the direction of renting almost everything. If you use ebooks like Kindle you don't accumulate a book collection. Same for record collections. Devices become useless once the connected cloud service shuts down. Eventually we'll probably have cars that get obsoleted quickly. I bet the same will happen for household and other robots once they get more powerful. You will have to pay monthly rent to use them.
When obtaining new apps or devices, you can’t tell if it is a worthwhile investment because it could break in any number of ways. For your money, are you buying 2 weeks of functionality or 5 years of it? It’s not even enough to have a reputable seller because good apps are sold to terrible companies that ruin them later, or the developer just decides to add new money-making schemes later.
It seems that we need more guarantees (legally enforceable, i.e. you said you wouldn’t update your gizmo to do X but you did so I get compensation).
The GDPR is going in the right direction by creating a "bill of rights" for your data, so ownership is firmly delineated and all 3rd party use of data revolves around clear revokable granular consent.
What we need now is a "bill of rights" defining and preserving the notion of ownership for digital devices. Part of that should be that the device should only do what it's explicitly asked to do. Updates should be opt-in in nearly all cases, and mandatory updates should meet stringent requirements similar to vaccines. That is, only to combat major threats that apply to users as a group.
[+] [-] jimmies|8 years ago|reply
I turned off auto-updates on my phone.
So this happened. Last year or so I traveled to SF and tried to call an Uber home after a long day of walking around. My phone had 5% battery left. I opened the app and there it was... The maps and everything showed up, but then it blocked the UI with the message: "You haven't updated the app in a month. Uber won't work if you don't update it right now." It really rustled my jimmies. In the next 15 minutes, 3 of us (2 are foreigners with no cell connection) had to stand in the freezing rain when the damn thing was updating with my 2.5G connection. When the Uber arrived, I had 1% left and not long after I got in the car, my phone shut down. I was so worried the phone would die before the car arrived.
The other day I talked about how backward-compatible Google Maps is and unfortunately it made the news on Slashdot. Some people were like, oh yeah, Windows is backward compatible with 30 years old apps. Are you a millennial/a shill for praising them for supporting their API for 10 years? Yeah, keep talking about Windows, until you fucking use some of the apps nowadays that wouldn't work when you haven't updated them in a month.
[+] [-] radarsat1|8 years ago|reply
> "Tinder has been updated. Deal with it".
is an interesting choice of example. The anger at updates only really makes sense for apps that are entirely local to your hardware. As soon as you have an app where part of it runs on a server that you don't control, that logic goes out the window. They can stop your non-updated app from working with no effort, just by making the server API incompatible. As long as you are depending on someone else's server to be up and responding and not changing, you give up your rights to be in control of local updates.
It sucks, but that's the reality of SaaS. I'm a fan of using local apps whenever possible. For instance, Google Docs is just too damn useful not to use sometimes. But I still, majority of the time, will choose to use a local word processor whenever I can get away with it. And when I'm done working on a Google Docs project, I download it in several formats and put it in the drawer.
In the meantime I'd really like to see more take-up of open source, federated hosted solutions based on open document standards and open protocols. But so far the big corporations are winning that game.
[+] [-] cesarb|8 years ago|reply
Even if you turn off auto-updates, some things still auto update silently. A long time ago, I wrote a small utility which listened to the PACKAGE_ADDED and PACKAGE_REMOVED events (I don't know if it's still possible to listen to these events on recent Android versions). IIRC, there were two packages that always updated silently (wihout a notification icon) and automatically, even with automatic updates disabled: com.android.vending (Android Market/Google Play Store), and com.google.android.gms (Google Play Services).
[+] [-] derefr|8 years ago|reply
You’ll notice that apps that target stable protocols—POP3/IMAP mail clients, RSS newsreaders, vCard calendar apps—never force you to update. They don’t need to. The app will keep working as long as the server they are configured to talk to keeps speaking the same protocol (and it will, because public, RFCed protocols evolve really slowly.)
The fault here lies mostly, I think, with backend developers who have spent their entire careers working on web projects—where, if they want to make a breaking change, they can just ask the web frontend developers to make a matching change on the website that conforms it to the new wire-protocol, and at most the only problem users will have is that their webpage might spontaneously refresh itself if it was relying on a websocket connection. You can’t do that when you have a native frontend pointed at your backend service, but these backend engineers just don’t seem to put much weight on the needs of native frontends. It's web-frontend chauvinism, basically. (Either that or it’s their management forcing them to act as if they don’t.)
[+] [-] eksemplar|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] guelo|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dmix|8 years ago|reply
I've had my phone die well before the Uber arrived and it wasn't a problem, it showed up at the place I requested.
Once the ride is initiated the drivers phone becomes the primary client. It seems quite flexible with devices going offline (as it should, mobile networks are unreliable).
> use some of the apps nowadays that wouldn't work when you haven't updated them for a month.
This is a worrying trend but I don't think it's really that bad yet. My primary phone died recently (famous Nexus 6p bootloop) and I used my old Samsung S3 with stock Android circa 2014 and I was surprised how many of the apps still functioned properly without updates (including the ancient built-in pre-Chrome webview Browser app).
... basically my expectation these days was that they wouldn't work. But in practice 99% of my phone use is SMS/Messengers + Maps + Browsers, and they all worked perfectly fine, web standards don't advance that quickly at all, and the messengers are all using simple protocols where they had no problem.
So it's typically the edge case 1-5% 3rd-party apps like Uber that are of concern.
It's really not hard to develop APIs that are versioned. This is becoming a standard best practice among mobile/web app developers (via SemVer standard). And there's no excuse for a big company like Uber to not support ~1-2yr old apps.
[+] [-] DiNovi|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] therealmarv|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bhnmmhmd|8 years ago|reply
As an end-user, I'd like things the way they are. If I'm used to the app and it works, why should I be forced to update the damn thing so that it keeps working?
[+] [-] mynameisvlad|8 years ago|reply
It's not really Windows' fault that the applications are being bad actors, though, so I don't see how that suddenly invalidates the backwards compatibility of the OS. Also, I'm sure if you use a 30-year old app, it's not going to prompt you to update before using it.
[+] [-] pishpash|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gnicholas|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryandrake|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] a3n|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dannyw|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] therealmarv|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ohazi|8 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16374464
[+] [-] gnode|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] garyrichardson|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PascLeRasc|8 years ago|reply
I think the fundamental problem is that to make these technical products like mobile OS's and email apps you need to be so far into tech that you can't really imagine what it's like to be a casual user. This is why I don't consider software engineering to be on the same tier as other disciplines of engineering. Yes, civil engineers make bridges, but they use them in daily life exactly the same as regular people do - the same goes for electrical engineers and power in the home, and mechanical engineers and vacuums/air conditioners/bicycles. When you make software, you look at all software differently and you lose the perspective of a regular person.
[+] [-] amelius|8 years ago|reply
We desperately need a code of conduct for engineers.
And/or we need certain types of businessmodel to become outlawed.
[+] [-] zanny|8 years ago|reply
You can go Google-less on such devices if you want.
The only real limitation is that you cannot do anything about the super-privileged proprietary modem that simultaneously can spy on you at any time that also prevents you from running newer kernels on your hardware because of how evil every Android vendor is with their proprietary bits.
At least there is finally momentum to kill the ME / SP backdoors on desktops. Its going to be much harder to do that on mobile since the only way to use cellular networks is through these proprietary black box modems.
[+] [-] bhnmmhmd|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TAForObvReasons|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway2048|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seorphates|8 years ago|reply
A firewall, for instance, is a basic necessity. Even the crude android flavors. It includes the ability to lock out your "vendors" selectively and accurately.
My build is, hm, approaching it's fourth year, I think. No auto updates save for select apps. No complaints. No surprises. But I'm special, I don't do "phone for fun" and so have a fairly limited and hardened short list of requirements.
The most annoying thing on android is Google XXANY - by a wide, wide margin. I'll be itching to build a google-go-around on my next handset, for certain.
Save all those apps you like, for sure, I still depend on side-loading quite a few that have since gone by the wayside. At this juncture I have to take absolutely every bit of control that I can get my filthy paws wrapped around.
[+] [-] tpaschalis|8 years ago|reply
But why should in 2018 be so hard for one to be able to simply pay once for hardware or software, that puts the user first? Is it impossible for such a company to succeed at scale?
[+] [-] suprfnk|8 years ago|reply
Apple seems to follow that plan. For your "email/chat/spreadsheets/storage", they have iCloud mail, iMessage, Numbers and iCloud Drive. You pay once, and get software support quite a lot of years later. They don't seem to be selling or gathering much data. They won't show you ads.
Now, it won't be RMS approved, but that's another debate.
[+] [-] kevin_b_er|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pishpash|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jim_dow_jones|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adreamingsoul|8 years ago|reply
Serious question, do any phones exist that can fully owned by the user? For a period, I was excited about the Ubuntu phone because of the fact that I could have full control over it. Sad to see that project terminated.
I'm also interested in "dumbphones" that can use CDMA or GSM networks.
[+] [-] platinum1|8 years ago|reply
http://www.nytimes.com/1982/12/16/business/new-era-for-the-t...
In fact, some people still lease their phones: https://consumerist.com/2012/04/30/hundreds-of-thousands-of-...
[+] [-] snark42|8 years ago|reply
Many (HTC, Google, ASUS, etc. - NOT Samsung) unlocked android phone can be loaded with a variety of bootloaders and then flashed with the ROM of your choice where you have full root access. Of course without google apps (Google Play Store) your phone isn't all that useful, but you can install google apps ( maybe from a questionable legal/copyright stand point, I don't remember) and have more control over the device.
Not sure if this matches what you mean by fully owned though. Checkout XDA Forums (https://forum.xda-developers.com/) to see what interesting things are out there you can do. There's also LineageOS (https://www.lineageos.org/) formerly CyanogenMod.
[+] [-] tpaschalis|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fallous|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zokier|8 years ago|reply
> Serious question, do any phones exist that can fully owned by the user?
Funny you bring up land lines, considering that those essentially began the trend of operator-owned end-user equipment. See for example Model 500 phone:
> As with most telephones of the time in the United States, the 500-series telephones were owned by the local Bell Operating Company and leased on a monthly basis to customers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_500_telephone
[+] [-] baseethrowaway|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lisper|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] superasn|8 years ago|reply
At least on Android you can install "greenify app" but for that to work properly, you need to have root and for that you have to unlock the bootloader (for which you have to wait 14 days and also void your warranty). I mean wtf, it's my phone but the design is such that a shit ton of crap always needs to run in the background (looking at you google play services) and dozens of useless apps that are always connecting just to show me more push notifications.
[+] [-] bonsai80|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scarface74|8 years ago|reply
I wish that Apple would give you an option to not allow an app to access the internet and not just disallow the use of mobile data.
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Blinks-|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maxxxxx|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 089723645897236|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] makecheck|8 years ago|reply
It seems that we need more guarantees (legally enforceable, i.e. you said you wouldn’t update your gizmo to do X but you did so I get compensation).
[+] [-] DannyB2|8 years ago|reply
I started my "Linux phase" in 1999 and have never finished going through that phase.
[+] [-] m_fayer|8 years ago|reply
What we need now is a "bill of rights" defining and preserving the notion of ownership for digital devices. Part of that should be that the device should only do what it's explicitly asked to do. Updates should be opt-in in nearly all cases, and mandatory updates should meet stringent requirements similar to vaccines. That is, only to combat major threats that apply to users as a group.