I’m in Europe, and I don’t use banking apps. For the most part anyway, one of my credit cards pissed me off by switching to app only, then eventually I relented with one bank because I wanted a 2nd account that required the app.

Banks either verify by SMS (lol) or provide a passkey fob.

GrapheneOS should provide some measure of protection. You can also perhaps disable some tracking features using something like Warden (requires root) - although this hasn’t been updated in years and probably misses stuff now.

Yeah ditto :( but Jenny Nicholson released a 4 hour video on the Star Wars Hotel just recently.

https://youtu.be/T0CpOYZZZW4

Run Magisk in Zygisk mode with the deny list hiding itself from banking apps.

However I would advise not using the banking app if you can help it, they’re not clean. Hell, even accessing online banking via a website seems to require connections to google.com and gstatic.com to perform hidden captcha (you don’t have to do the picture thing but it still does the server side tracking).

Lol I do run Android without Google Play Services.

Ty, but I think I’m just gonna switch from my dodgy Chinese Xiaomi phone to the refurbished Pixel 7 Pro I have. I mean, I’ve had it for like e months now, one of these days I will. Although, I really will miss my IR blaster, even though I hardly ever use it it’s nice to be able to change the TV in the pub lol

Edit: lmfao I just changed the TV 10m away, had Tour de France on, but now it’s basketball.

You’re still putting a measure of trust into Google with that, rather than just trusting F-Droid.

Ah wait, I should’ve read the article lol:

The law allows local authorities to name “designated providers” of a certain scale – currently only achieved by Apple and Google – and require those providers to do three things:

• Allow third-party app stores on their devices;
• Allow application developers to use third-party billing services;
• Enable users to change default settings with simple procedures, and offer choice screens for tools like browsers;

And it forbids them doing three more:

• Engage in any form of preferential treatment of their services over those of competitors in the display of search results without justifiable reason;
• Use acquired data about competing applications for their own applications;
• Prevent application developers from using features controlled by the OS with the same level of performance as the one used by Designated Providers.

So Google already allows 3rd party app stores and lots of settings (although these are always hit and miss, even in the custom ROM scene - I can’t get pocket detection right now and my phone keeps doing things in my pocket), but the 3rd party billing and choice screens applies to them.

Downloading F-Droid from Google Play kind of defeats the purpose of F-Droid.

Doesn’t Google already let you do this?? My Android phone doesn’t even have Google Play Services, I just only use 3rd party stores. If I want an app from Google Play I get it through Aurora.

Eerily reminiscent of David Cameron calling for a Brexit referendum.

SpaceX would probably be more profitable if they didn’t have to spend so much time and resources on preventing Musk from interfering with things.

The lawsuit wasn’t coming because they were in a strong grey area with one physical copy per digital. By offering unlimited copies they directly invited a lawsuit.

And then their legal defense had absolutely no competency behind it. They didn’t come with any legal principles, they basically just said “we shouldn’t be punished because we’re nice”, and then they tried the same style of argument during appeal, basically throwing money away on legal expenses. All the while they were campaigning for donations - the people that supported them were paying the lawyers, not for the IA’s regular activities.

If only they hadn’t shot themselves so hard in the foot during covid with their book lending, and dug the hole so much deeper with their piss poor handling of the lawsuit.

While I do very much support what they do, I’d be reluctant to give them money, if only because it might go to paying their dumbass lawyer.

Can it play Crysis?

Could well be needed. It’s not fully understood, but human space travel - even to the surface of relatively nearby Mars - might not even be viable. Aside from the radiation issue after leaving the Earth’s magnetosphere, zero gravity changes the body. When astronauts land they’re carefully assisted to get out and placed onto soft bedding. From Chris Hadfield’s autobiography, merely standing up after coming home from a few weeks/couple months on the ISS was like standing on a bed of needles. It took about 2 weeks to be able to move around again, which makes me wonder how we’ll ever get people on the surface of Mars. The Moon is pretty easy in comparison, much lower gravity and not that far away.

Nooooooo. I can’t remember my ICQ, maybe I still have it somewhere, but this is still sad.

At least IRC is still going.

Edit:

In its heyday, ICQ boasted over 100 million users on its platform, which was a remarkable achievement at the time. In 2010, ICQ was purchased by Mail.ru (now VK), who has since owned the products as it declined in use.

Today, ICQ announced that they are shutting down on June 26th, recommending that users switch to VK Messenger and Workspace.

So apparently Russian business killed it.

But downloading an app won’t install it as a system app.

Meanwhile they’re hiding the Maps button and forcing you to use maps in situ on the main search page.

It’s available on all phones, but they all have their own version, forked from long ago. Even the standard AOSP Phone app has long split from Google (who have ceased open source development of the app).

I feel like this would require cooperation from the manufacturer, as Google doesn’t actually provide the Phone app (except when they are the manufacturer).