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The reality of modern tech
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this post was submitted on 18 May 2024
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FOSS Android Recs per u/[email protected]: 1 , 2
Don't be mean. I promise to do my best to judge that fairly.
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I got a new phone for the first time in a decade and Android keeps cheerfully telling me I'm opted-in to new horrifying layers of surveillance. 'We're gonna look at the first thing you click every time you install anything! Isn't that great?' Fuck off and die. 'But you'll get less relevant recommendations...' Don't recommend anything. 'Wow, you're gonna get such generic ads.' Where else did you hide ads, Google?!
For context: my previous phone is an LG. LG does not make phones anymore. That's how long I clung to something I'd largely unfucked. And every time it boots, to this day, it reminds me I need to agree to some licensing horseshit.
Plainly not.
The damn weather app demands to know my location. Asking makes sense. Demanding is a failure to understand why people check the weather. I don't need it where I am. I need it where I'm going to be. You have no trouble showing me it's cloudy in the default location, five thousand miles north. Let me enter a city name and mind your damn business.
Weather apps being able to use GPS data is great. Weather apps shitting the bed if you don't give it permissions, when it fucking knows it has to ask for permissions, are failed products.
I will give it a location. It can tell me the weather there.
One counterargument: without your current location, it can't send any weather alerts that immediately impact your safety.
The network sends those.
Because the cell towers are cemented in place.
Not that Florida's smart enough to limit Amber Alerts to relevant portions of the state. I'm down in the dick-tip. I've been rudely awoken by blaring alarms about a kidnapping up in the grundle.
I hope they send those alerts to people in Nashville, because they're all closer to Tallahassee than I am.
This isn't always the case.
In winter I want to know if it's going to be good enough to go out on the bike or if it's going to be cold and wet in which case I'll drive instead (yeah I know better clothing blah blah). There is a case for knowing the weather forecast for my current location.
Yes, of course - some people need very local predictions. But I live in Florida. Snow is not an issue. I want to know if this afternoon's thunderstorm is going to cross where I'm driving, and I want to know what's up with cloud formation in the eastern Atlantic. The temperature's gonna be the same in all three places: Too Damn Hot.
Get a used pixel and install grapheneos
Alternatively, get pretty much any phone and load LineageOS on it, and just live the FOSS-purist Android life.
It's an incredibly sucky life, but it's a free one.
Have your looked at the officially supported device list recently? Sadly a lot of manufacturers don't have anything supported for several years.