Again, if exhaustion is getting to you, you don’t have to reply.

You can take a break and relax, there’s no big time crunch here, the same posts and replies will still be around tomorrow or the day after.

Put yourself first, call it a self-care day!

Debian and install the “unattended-upgrades” package.

You set it up with an email address to complain to when something fucks up and it just works.

E: no matter what you end up going with, some kind of reverse proxy or vpn will be helpful for when you need to remote in and fix something.

If you end up needing Remote Desktop and can do it, stay away from Wayland. The screen sharing situation there is confusing and annoying for seasoned users, let alone in a tech support situation.

What might be a better bet is either a windows (robust screen sharing setup) or mac (simpler interface and reliability) computer. You’re gonna be on the other end of it, so make sure to pick what you know the most deeply when it comes to remote support.

E2: another note in the vein of hated non linux oses: Those might be good because other people in the users life may be familiar with them and it won’t be such a pain when they wanna open a file or something.

Good luck. Before you make the leap to either a linux mobile os or graphene, make sure it can meet your physical security and emergency use requirements.

No one’s sitting you down in front of your logged in lemmy account and forcing you to reply. If you’re exhausted then take care of yourself first instead of engaging. It’s not gonna make me feel bad.

Yeah. The company cares about its identity and profits and is taking steps to protect them.

Oh yeah, you can also, if you’re the kind of person who would do this, just be caveman about it and build a physical media library. Learn how to rip and sync the files to your device and you’re ready to go.

CDs are the easiest because all you need is a cd drive and a computer. Records and tapes need their specific player and an audio interface (or one of those all in one newfangled players that have a usb on the back).

It’s pretty fun…

Don’t push yourself to switch from ios. It’s extremely unlikely you need to go to graphene to get the kind of privacy you need and familiarity with the system and how you can protect yourself in it is arguably more important.

I really try not to get into a back and forth over technical details because in my experience it boils down to “you said uninstall but actually nothing is removed and it was disabled”.

But if you really think there’s something I said that isn’t imprecise language or technical nuance point it out.

“He who can destroy a thing, controls that thing.”

Of course, we don’t need to get into sci fi philosophy to recognize that Android is googles os.

Google has the ability to restrict who can install what from what repo and as such “the Samsung store isn’t the play store” isn’t much of an argument.

I don’t think anyone would say that the Android marketplace stops at the play store and Google certainly doesn’t say that. They’re in control of Android, they’re policing the Android software marketplace. Apologies if that wasn’t clear.

It would be really hard to prove that Google is trampling on ownership rights here considering you can install from third party sources by either registering a dev account or disabling the set of services and software that implements the system, going without play services and using whatever third party store you want.

(Or even just in the articles own words “ the advanced flow will allow users to bypass verification, but the process isn’t easy. You’ll have to navigate to a buried menu, confirm you understand the risks multiple times, and wait a whole day before completing the process.”)

And no matter how you feel about it at the moment there is no recognized right to install whatever you want on your phone. It’s unlikely there will be one in the near future either because such a right is counter to the interests of the surveillance state.

Point it out or stop breaking the rules of the com and instance.

Part of what made badbox/superbox so successful (along with the marketing, mlm stuff, glut of cheap arm/risc decoders, environment of 69 fucking subscriptions a month your average person has to maintain just to watch terminator when they get home from a shift) was the presentation of malware payload apps from third party marketplaces alongside “legit” apps from the first party ones.

It’s the gas station effect. Of course you can trust the Tamriel rebuilt branded rhino pill, it’s on the same rack as the goodys powder and tums!

That same mixing made it very difficult for everyone trying to figure out what was happening to actually get something taken down. Apps on the play store would be barely legal or skirting the law but interacting with or funneling data around apps from third party stores that were definitely doing something “wrong”.

When takedown notices were sent for the play store apps they didn’t have any effect on the third party hosted ones.

So for the whole thing to run how it did, yeah, they needed third party repositories.

You might not see this as a good thing, but Google does. And tbh they’re right. It’s bad for the minuscule number of users who actually load stuff from third party sources, but its incredibly good for them as a company and a brand.

This, again, is what policing an application marketplace looks like.

The point isn’t to protect you the user, but to protect the reputation of their platform. Right now, and I know this isn’t easy to hear, Android is the scam/insecure platform.

I am a user of Android devices everyday, btw, not just some random hater.

From googles perspective it doesn’t matter if users are unable to anonymously install whatever they want if the various marketplaces and therefore the Android platform gains trust in the eyes of consumers (and law enforcement/security professionals).

They aren’t policing their platform to protect you, they’re doing it to protect themselves.

Everything you need already exists, it’s just plumbing.

RSS takes in a website with articles or blog posts or whatever and makes them summarized so you can just look through the titles.

Some kind of script to load some recent plays of yours on YouTube and scrape, compare and output the recommended panel would give you their recs.

There are also very bad no good recommendation engines that don’t work. At least they were bad and didn’t work in the past.

Yes it does.

It forces developers to register if they wanna distribute software. Now they can’t just pivot to a new identity whenever they’re under investigation.

It prevents devices from running software from unverified developers. Now the malware developer can’t just use a third party store to bypass the verification requirements.

That’s both sides of the coin, but wait, there’s more:

End users can disable it if they’re willing to go without play services or can do their own sideloading and support with a “limited” developer account.

The end result is not a panacea that fixes every problem with Android but a move to bring the various official android marketplaces in line with the ios app store.

And someone can either disable the system service that does this and go without play services (which is their store) or get a “limited” developer account and keep doing whatever they’re doing.

This is what it looks like when they police their store.

I’m not happy about this but they really have no choice.

The android app marketplace is infested with spyware and Android devices were recently found to be the vector for one of if not the worlds biggest botnet (super/bad box).

If you wanna be able to keep using your os to make ad money you gotta lock it down and since Android is largely open source and used by tons of oems that means locking down some part that you could conceivably do without but no one really will.

Set up whatever arr piracy stack is going now and some kind of overlay network (vpn but not in the vernacular of “anonymizing proxy”) to play your files.

Pick a player that you like and use it.

Use a combination of rss and scripts to get recommendations.

I know this sounds stupid and pedantic, but what do you mean by ownership?

Where or how do you download?

E: recommendation isn’t off the table, you’ll just have to go about it in an unconventional way.

How are you planning on getting into piracy/how do you have everything set up right now?