Technology

71371 readers

3484 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related news or articles.
Be excellent to each other!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

L3s@lemmy.world

enu@lemmy.world

technopagan@lemmy.world

L4s@lemmy.world

L3s@hackingne.ws

L4s@hackingne.ws

542

AOSP isn't dead, but Google just landed a huge blow to custom ROM developers (www.androidauthority.com)

submitted 2 days ago by lzfm@lemmus.org to c/technology@lemmy.world

91 comments fedilink hide all child comments

TL;DR

Google has made it harder to build custom Android ROMs for Pixel phones by omitting their device trees and driver binaries from the latest AOSP release.
The company says this is because it’s shifting its AOSP reference target from Pixel hardware to a virtual device called “Cuttlefish” to be more neutral.
While Google insists AOSP isn’t going away, developers must now reverse-engineer changes, making the process for supporting Pixel devices more difficult.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] metaphortune@lemmy.world 30 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I don't have any actual research, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Pixel itself doesn't really make money at all. One of those "get people hardcore into the Google ecosystem to get their money/data" things.

[–] ocassionallyaduck@lemmy.world 32 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The absolutely criminal dark patterns that they pull on people via Google photos auto backup is insane.

Just in my own orbit 2 of my friends wives, my parents, and my in-laws all wound up paying Google because they thought they had to or lose all their photos. We helped most of them disconnect the autobackup (that they didn't even know was activated) and move it to offline safely. But that was the most downright evil shit Google has ever done and literally a fire in me for manipulating the elderly and less tech savvy so blatantly.

[–] Supernova1051@sh.itjust.works 24 points 2 days ago (1 children)

devil's avocado: this move has saved many people's cherished photos from disappearing by having them auto save. before Google photos I'd run into cases (I used to do home IT support) where people had years of family photos disappear because they didn't back them up properly. Having to communicate what happened was never fun.

is Google photos perfect? No, but it's a great solution for people who don't want to manage their data.

[–] ocassionallyaduck@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yes, but that shouldn't explicitly opt in, and they shouldn't marry that product to Gmail and Google Drive if they are going to push it to enable by default.

Again, it's really insidious. They push it so aggressively I had to disable it on my personal device twice, and I can't just not use Google Photos app because it's tied to the camera itself on pixel phones.

[–] tiramichu@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I agree with you, it's insidious.

Given you've got a Pixel phone, you can save at least yourself from this problem by running Graphene or Calyx on it.

[–] ocassionallyaduck@lemmy.world 1 points 19 hours ago

I'm not worried about me. I can manage. But I had to intervene and make it a Project for my immediate family. Which is always unfun, because who wants to expose all their personal data that way, especially photos.

Crazy that Google just screwed over GrapheneOS like this.