[tonylemesmer]

Engineering disagrees. Having safety interlocks on machines is seen as necessary and sensible to prevent accidental harm.

If you want to achieve something that you think sideloading is the only answer for then maybe try and find another solution? Btw. I’m not arguing we shouldn’t educate people about the dangers of phishing etc etc. just that engineers should find better solutions than shortcuts.

Some people will never understand the need to be vigilant. And even vigilant people have momentary lapses of vigilance.

[edit] i think we’re talking about deliberate sideloading but also accidental sideloading in the same breath here. One enables the other? Accidental sideloading is very much undesirable.

[heavyset_go]

> Engineering disagrees. Having safety interlocks on machines is seen as necessary and sensible to prevent accidental harm.

Right, which is why operating systems ship with security and sandboxing features. Security does not require an App Store.

[76SlashDolphin]

Security features should be there to prevent a user from accidentally letting malicious things happen. Key word: accidentally. One does not accidentally enable apk installation from untrusted sources on Android. If you spend the time going deep into the settings of your phone, and dismiss two massive security warnings then I don't really have any sympathies and those users should have some more common sense. It's like wanting to close down a metro system because some people are incapable of reading the warning signs and jump down to the rails.

With these kinds of security problems you need to decide where the restrictiveness is best for society and I would very much argue that in the case of phone security it's on the side of sideloading.

[tonylemesmer]

Except when a sideloading switch is so easy to access that naive users are easily manipulated into enabling it or having a security policy installed on their phones that disables it.

[wiseowise]

> Engineering disagrees. Having safety interlocks on machines is seen as necessary and sensible to prevent accidental harm.

> safety interlocks

That's what sideloading switch is.

[nasmorn]

But then we need to take the ability of gatekeepers to forbid random things away. Why can’t I run docker on my iPad?