Newpipe and Redreader for reddit are my 2 favourite apps on Fdroid. Amaze file manager is also pretty sleek for an Fdroid app. Dns66 is great for adblocking when you are not rooted. Termux is a must have for those who need a terminal. Osm+ is a decent maps option and Mupdf is a fast and minimal reader for pdf files.
Fdroid is great for open source apps especially when you are trying to avoid shady behavior by apps, but since Android itself is full of shady behavior and dark patterns it's at best a bandage on a severely wounded patient.
Slide for reddit is another reddit client. Fully open source under GPLv3, nice looks and hi designed very well such that you never have to reach for keys at the bottom. Wholeheartedly recommended.
The last time i tried Amaze i found the large logo in the sidebar irksome (especially as there was no way to hide the sidebar on a tablet), and it seemed to have trouble generating thumbnails when opening at a directory stuffed with photos or videos (it would generate a few, then stop, then pick up again once you scrolled, skipping 2-3 near where it last stopped etc).
This is disingenuous. It's been actively marketed to law enforcement. A product is not created out of the blue with no target market. That's simply not how things work.
And that's whats happening to with a lot of surveillance technology, see Palantir, they are being packaged and aggressively marketed to schools, law enforcement and government.
Taken together these companies are selling and enabling a surveillance dystopia for no bigger reason than personal gain and the people responsible should be called out.
The tech community have become bad actors, and a lot of apologism and hand-waving happens here.
At the moment they are just trading on the reputation of early pioneers who at least professed some ethics and commitment to public good to pretend they are part of the same group.
They continue to posture on public discussions while implementing dark patterns and surveillance as a matter of course in their workplace. This is the fact, the tech community led by SV have sold out and they know it. Their main priority is pretending its not happening or diminishing the consequences.
If there is a backlash it will be well deserved as these people are selling out the rest of the world for profit, greed and personal gain.
The certificate system is broken. Technical people should not be promoting centralization, raising barriers to publishing and empowering middle men. That is not a technical solution, but behavior that favours business and vested interests.
There is now a clear pattern of attempts to raise barriers and cede more control to actors in the middle.
First it was de-legitimizing http, now its standard certs, then it will be 3 years. What's stopping this degenerating into an elaborate 'approval process' from a central authority in a few years which you pay dearly for, all in the name of security?
This kind of control gives some the power and fig leaf of any 'arbritary process' to delegitimize and silence others.
Unity was the first Linux desktop that was polished and had the just works feel about it.
I remember struggling with Linux GUIs since the earliest days of Redhat and we are talking 15 years ago. Unity is comparable to my retina macbook and Win10 desktop. This is not a small achievement. Your grandmother could use it.
Internet opinion tends to be loud but may not be representative when you mix in the vested interests pushing their own desktops, astroturfers and a certain community who think they should control Linux and everyone needs their approval and blessings.
In Unity's case it was this last group with the most vicious reactions. No one can be so bitter about a desktop unless they are vested in something else. I wish Ubuntu hadn't abandoned it.
Taxpayers are on the line for trillions of dollars with socialized risk and yet there are people on this thread regurgitating the same old anti-government anti-regulatory line without any irony. How can you roll back regulations without resolving fundamental questions about risk and 'too big to fail'. With citizens like this who needs oligarchs.
These are the same anti-government folks who will whine endlessly about social services as 'handouts' and 'freebies' and look the other way while trillions go to subsidize the rich and powerful. This is ideology.
Either you believe in democracy or you do not. In a democracy the government is you, not an organization out to get you. Regulations exist to protect the whole from the greed of a few.
This mythical anti-government civilization full of freedom only works in a farming based frontier society that has occupied land and can give parts of it away for free to all new comers, where any government can only take away rights. But that time is long gone.
>Regulations exist to protect the whole from the greed of a few.
Regulations exist so that entrenched players can use the lethal force of government to block new challengers. Never quite as blunt as I put it, but that is the threat backing all the actual outcomes.
And the overall solution is to allow them to fail next time. Don't fix it, let it crash and burn. Stop socializing the losses since the profits were privatized.
>And the overall solution is to allow them to fail next time
Then pass a regulation barring the US from ever giving another "bailout". In the aftermath of '08 those corporations played the US like a fiddle to get their billions of dollars in free loans because "our whole financial system could collapse if you dont". Why wouldn't they play this game again, perhaps even more brazenly than last time?
Just that. My own view is that regulations are antithetical to competition. Sometimes regulations are necessary but it's not true that they come without a cost.
>In a democracy the government is you, not an organization out to get you.
Don't know if you missed this bit, but these rollbacks were voted on and approved by Republican (and Democrat) representatives, who in turn were voted for by the people.
>Either you believe in democracy or you do not.
It is possible to believe in democracy and also believe in limited government.
You seem to have selective memory -- those who are against these regulations and gov't welfare came out against the bank bailout back in 2008 and 2009 while those who are for regulation and gov't largess silently sat back and looked away.
I also found it quite ironic that the law that supposedly regulates the finance industry bears the names of two most corrupt politicians with close ties with banks (one with Fannie/Freddie and the other with AIG or the banking industry in general).
> Regulations exist to protect the whole from the greed of a few.
That's clearly one reason, and certainly the most commonly cited reason, but it's equally clearly not the only one, and it's certainly not the only outcome, whether intended or not.
The best buffer against "the greed of a few" is to allow real competition. Lightening regulations on smaller banks is quite likely to encourage competition.
I don't think it's fair for you to pretend you understand the psyche of everyone commenting on this thread and their opinions on "too big to fail" just because you don't agree with their viewpoints.
HN has a sizable portion of commenters with libertarianesque views, who would be in favor of reduced regulation while simultaneously deadset against subsidies and guarantees to banks and megacorps.
I'd like to point out an apparent oddity - that I, as a free market libertarian, agree with you that rolling back recent banking regulations is likely to lead to greater levels of exploitation of the populous by the banking/financial elite.
This does not negate the free market idea, rather we are just looking at a small detail in a larger picture. Without context things can be confusing.
The larger picture is that the banking system is not a free market entity. It was designed to prevent bank runs on insolvent banks - so that banks could practice currency inflation without, effectively, being called on it by other banks. (long story on inflation - most economists of course argue that it does not hurt the populous - some dissent...)
So anyway, the initial extra-market act - setting up the banking system, was designed to aid the banking elite in expropriating the wealth of the populous via systematic currency inflation - of course the stated aim was to "stabilize the banking system" and that is also true - prevent bank runs on insolvent banks so they can inflate more$$.
That stability, plus lots of greed, gave smart financial thinkers freedom to come up with yet more ways to exploit the system for their own benefit. Speculation in one kind of asset or another, etc etc.
Hence people decided the system "needed to be regulated" -- this new round of regulation needed to essentially quell the disturbances made possible by the first round - (the laws passed which created the banking system in the first place, here renamed as "the first round of regulation")
So sure - if we are going to have an artificial banking system propped up by law in the first place, it is only natural that it will require ever more regulation to keep it upright. After all, it is no longer "of the ecosystem" but "on top of it" - not subject to the full guidance of market forces.
Free market people who want to roll back recent, stabilizing, regulations, but support the banking system in general may not, in some cases, understand what they are asking for.
Silicon Valley and its offshoots are going to become surveillance central. The HQ of a surveillance economy courted by despots at home and abroad. The people working here are going to be the most hated people in the world.
A new narrative about benefits other than totalitarian surveillance is going to be crafted and circulated to provide some sort of ethical fig leaf for employees but everyone involved will know the truth just not acknowledge or discuss it.
Any reasonably well informed citizen intuitively will know this is not the right direction but there is an inevitability about it, money creates its own logic and many have already made their peace with it.
> Silicon Valley and its offshoots are going to become surveillance central. The HQ of a surveillance economy courted by despots at home and abroad. The people working here are going to be the most hated people in the world.
While Hollywood’s influence has waned, America’s leading internet companies ... have spread from Silicon Valley to all corners of the globe, even some untouched by American movies and TV shows.
It’s time for Americans to recognize that they have a new major cultural export, alongside movies and television: the set of modern communications platforms created in the United States that have since overtaken the world. The question then becomes: If the world looks at America and sees Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter as its profile picture, what does the world think?
Americans should be concerned. We’ve reviewed how America’s new major cultural export has been characterized in the international media and other public discourse lately, and based on that we’ve identified three key features that have become associated with it in the eyes of the global audience.
They go on to discuss that SV has a growing reputation as the engine of 1) the spread of "hate and harmful ideas, 2) "foreign intervention in domestic politics", and 3) "the general surrender of privacy". Well worth reading.
Perhaps open source licenses should prohibit their use for adware, spyware and surveillance.
Apart from a plethora of open source projects to build its websites Google is using Android to hoover user data and open source should not be used to support a surveillance state.
This is a can of worms and probably not enforceable but it's worth it just for taking a stand.
There has not been a bigger sellout in history than the tech community. What makes it insufferable is the posturing and hypocrisy.
Companies like Google and facebook continue to be glorified inspite of their creepy obsession with stalking everyone 24/7 and legitimizing surveillance.
If privacy laws worked it would not come to this. Without regulations depending on goodwill and ethics in the face of greed has never worked. It just leads to a self serving clique who will handwave and legitimize anything for profit.
The pentagon recently revealed it can't account for 21 trillion dollars. [1] The 18 US security agencies and military cost vast sums to run. The bank bailouts are trillions more, nickle and diming public services is an ideological position.
Civilized societies see a healthy and educated population and infrastructure as the beginning of building a progress oriented society, market fundamentalists like Friedman see it as an end, a process from which they can extract profits. This is an impoverished self-limiting vision.
Fdroid is great for open source apps especially when you are trying to avoid shady behavior by apps, but since Android itself is full of shady behavior and dark patterns it's at best a bandage on a severely wounded patient.