[charcircuit]

Getting rid of rooting is not a "war on general computing." General computing means that you can write a wide variety of software for them instead of the computer being meant for a specific use case. The app platform on Android allows for such a variety of apps. Just because it's not possible for an app to record your microphone without asking the user for permission that doesn't mean that the phone isn't general purpose.

[idiotsecant]

If I own it, I should be able to make it do what I tell it to do. Its a simple concept, no need to water it down to please our corporate overlords.

[aeroevan]

If I don't have root on my device, is it really my device?

[charcircuit]

Yes. That line of logic is like thinking you don't own a hard disk if the firmware on it prevents you from scratching / destroying the platter.

[cesarb]

One unstated part of that "if I don't have root on my device" statement is "...and someone else does have root on my device". On normal Android, Google does have root on your device, while you don't. For instance, whenever you tell the Android Market app (nowadays caled "Google Play Store", but internally it's still the same app) to install an application, it doesn't actually install the application; it tells the Google servers to ask your device to install the application, and a highly privileged service on your device does the actual download and installation.

Said service is highly privileged because it's signed with a key only Google has; several system services have special access (root-equivalent, or even actual root) to your device, and these are signed by the Google key. Some of these can be remotely updated, and this update is silent (I had long ago written a small app found at https://github.com/cesarb/packageaddedremovednotifier to notify me about these silent installs, but it depended on a notification which is no longer broadcast on more recent Android versions; it was instructive for me to notice how often Android Market and one other app were silently updated).

It's true that you don't have root on your hard disk (until you connect to its serial console pins and notice that it doesn't even ask for a password before giving you full access to all its low-level commands), but neither does anyone else.

[charcircuit]

>Google does have root on your device

Root access is meaningless on a user build of Android. Android is designed such that the root account is not needed and it is locked down using SELinux.

> to notify me about these silent installs, but it depended on a notification which is no longer broadcast on more recent Android versions

I built a test app on Android 14 and I was able to get the broadcast you are referring to. The changes which the app you linked has not adapted to is that since Android 8 you need to use Context.registerReceiver() to register an implicit broadcast receiver for those actions [1] and since Android 11 you need to use a <queries> tag (or query all permission) in order to get visibility of other apps on the system [2].

[1] https://developer.android.com/about/versions/oreo/background...

[2] https://developer.android.com/training/package-visibility

[Crespyl]

A hard disk firmware module isn't connected to the internet and reporting on you (yet).

[jauntywundrkind]

Side note I'm super sad the fabric connected hard drives that were popping up seem to have vanished. Drives already run pretty fancy ARM controllers; having a 2.5Gbit network connection out would be such a sweet sweet sweet game changer.

[stonogo]

"Installing software I want" and "physically destroying my device" are not the same thing, and shame on you for trying to equate them.

[charcircuit]

"Installing software you want" and "getting access to the root user" are not the same thing either. The root user is a means to an end and not the end in itself for one's desires they have with a computer.

[jacobgkau]

When Google decides that you're not allowed to install a piece of software you want on a non-rooted device (such as a phone call recorder or an ad blocker), and the only way to bypass those restrictions is using root access, then they become the same thing.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

I mean... yes? If a disk has firmware that prevents the owner from destroying it when desired, that's really not okay. It even has a practical angle in cases where you need to make a disk unreadable.