Technology

And this is why having 3rd party app stores is important. It’s why it matters that Google is killing side loading, if two fucking companies get to decide what you can do on your phone, we’re in a bad spot technology wise

It's only objectionable to fascists who are getting their sensitive little fee fees hurt

Google's sideloading restrictions seems almost like its perfectly timed... 👀

Anyways, Google can gargle my:

When I had an iPhone 3GS I got in a hot tub with it in my pocket and it died. I let it dry out. Then I very carefully took it apart and found all the little white stickers inside that turn from white to pink when in contact with water. I used a razor blade to remove those stickers without damaging them. I then placed a drop of bleach on each which turned them back to white and let them dry out. I used very tiny amounts of super glue to re-apply them to the exact same positions within the phone and then very carefully reassembled the phone.

Took the phone into an Apple store. Guy disappeared into the back for about 10 minutes with it. Came back out and said it must have just up and died but he doesn't know how and gave me a new iPhone.

Only Apple product I've ever owned.

Fuck you Apple.

remember when Tim Apple gifted tRump a golden statue? Pepperidge Farm remembers.

Apple CEO Tim Cook recently gave Trump a 24 carat gold bribe.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/08/07/tim-cook-trump-gift/85555805007/

I get the outrage, I really do, but the app broke many privacy rights for users and also the app did technically break ToS by definition being a “doxxing” app.

Regardless, there are websites out there that do it far better than the app, and have universal access Apple and Android devices, which makes sense, because the developer of ICEBlock made it exclusive to Apple, and hispanic communities are overwhelmingly Android users.

Does anyone remember how the Devs from there didnt want to release for Android because ApPlE iS sOoOo mUcH mOoOrE sEcUrE

Get rekt.

I’m surprised it stayed up as long as it did. I thought Apple would have taken it down within days.

Anyways I’ve seen this as a non app alternative: https://www.stopice.net/

This shouldn’t be on the app store. It gives the US government too much access to pull data from it, or order it pulled down. This should be a web app hosted outside the US that can be accessed by any device and can be obscured by VPN access so the regime can’t persecute participants. Apps pull way too much data from phones that ICE can subpoena.

I don't understand why society accepted that the hardware maker gets to decide what software you run.

That'd be like your car deciding which roads you can take, or your blender deciding you're not allowed to use strawberries in your smoothie.

Are you nuts? Why the fuck would your phone decide which apps you can run?

This is why the web is way better than any app store, yes even with the problems of DNS (DIDs becoming more prevalent cant come fast enough though). Any future phones should have a first class web experience imo.

Edit: I wanna add that browser monopolies are a real threat too. Ladybird is legit on Charlie Kirk's side aka nonpolitical so not a fan of the outlook there. Would love to see KDE fork chromium/blink with valve money and recreate Konquerer and bring back KHTML (I like irony). Valve even has a fork of CEF (Chromium Embedded Framework, electron uses this as well) because of Steam and its ui being a big web app. KDE then has web apps and add them to Discovery, or you can build qt apps. Make it happen valve! And hire me to help lol

This is cowardice from Apple, but ICEBlock was not a good app:

• Micah Lee: Unfortunately, the ICEBlock app is activism theater
• Micah Lee: ICEBlock handled my vulnerability report in the worst possible way

"Good thing I got revenge though on Google's sideloading ban by buying a phone that never allowed it to begin with"

I’m gonna play devils advocate here (and probably be monstrously downvoted);

ICEBlock stored the location data of all its users on Apples iCloud Servers. This the perfect target for ICE; a complete database of locations of every person who doesn’t want ICE to know where they are.

One assumption is that that Apple realised how tempting this data is to the current demonstrative administration and purged it before ICE could get their civil-liberty-abusing mitts on it.

This kind of thing is coming for Android as well once Google has converted it to it's own walled garden bullshit.

What's objectionable about it Apple? Hmm?

the USA Goverment probably forced them to remove it

Who could have seen this coming from the company whose CEO gifted Trump a literal gold plaque in celebration of his reelection?

It's really sickening that every corporation has thrown in with the new fascist regime.

At least these assholes used to pretend to be "not absolutely awful". Now they're just mask-off oppressors.

The corporate sector will always back a fascist government.