[eviks]

> Spamming the thread will only cause Google developers to lock the issue, ignore valuable community feedback, or stop sharing public updates about this change entirely.

So nothing would change (they can also lock away your "valuable community feedback" because what bothers them is the criticism itself), thus feel free to express your approval

[AussieWog93]

> because what bothers them is the criticism itself

I think there's a difference between criticism of a policy and being brigaded by a reddit mob.

[zetanor]

Google pushes a new feature to Android where phones wake up at 2:22 AM every night to play a blood-curdling scream at maximum volume, regardless of settings. An issue is created and gets assigned, into which Google employees regularly butt in to explain the feature exists to keep users safe from night break-ins. Nothing changes. People have to start modifying their lives around this problem—most have to shut off their phones during the night, many had to buy a separate alarm clock—and masses of disappointed customers eventually make their way to the bug tracker to voice their concern. The issue gets locked as "too heated".

Apple has had this feature for three years on iOS. What else should they have done?

[gruez]

>What else should they have done?

Use an AOSP fork like grapheneos or lineageos. Barring that, voting with their wallets and buying a HarmonyOS phone. If for whatever reason they're doing that too, there's probably more powerful forces behind this change (eg. government mandates) that won't be helped by spamming an issue tracker.

[aceazzameen]

Downside is those specific forks only work on very specific devices, when there's countless great hardware in the wild with shit software.

[beej71]

And apparently a lot of people can't access their savings with grapheneOS. I know eventually I'm going to end up carrying 2 devices.

[Gander5739]

Lineageos works on about 300 different phones, and you can flash a GSI for partial support on others.

[NotPractical]

I have bad news for you if you think GrapheneOS isn't going to accept this patch from upstream if it lands.

[inigyou]

Graphene would probably make it an option, like how it asks you if apps should be able to access the internet.

[gruez]

That's a non-issue because you can build (or patch+resign) grapheneos yourself.

[matheusmoreira]

But if you do, it fails attestation which turns the phone into a paperweight.

[eviks]

You think wrong, "mob" is a collective way of criticizing a policy.

Sure, there are differences in types criticisms, but then try to actually articulate those and address whatever you think the issues with those are

[p-e-w]

The implication in the blog post that Google developers somehow “overlooked” or “misunderstood” important use cases here, and if only they were informed about them they would reconsider, is frankly insulting.

[light_hue_1]

Every single time any story has the words "Google developers" in it, they're behaving like arrogant, disconnected, anti-consumer jerks. From constant GCP breakage, to not acknowledging obvious Android bugs, to intentionally braking Chrome. It's a stark contrast to behind the scenes interactions with them.

[lII1lIlI11ll]

Yeah, my favorite one is how Chrome users are not smart enough to handle case-aware web-page search toggle. Although to be fair their Chrome team is very arrogant even by Google standards.

[kitsumed]

If I didn't word it like that (I'm the author) the "reddit mob" would have exploded the thread. That's the last thing I want. I want valuable feedback there, for now its somehwat working.

Most of the users who saw the post on reddit didn't even open the blog post anyways, according to analytics.

[wolvoleo]

I don't think the developers are bad, the problem are the top dogs that are telling them what to do.

[nikanj]

Exhibit A: https://issues.chromium.org/issues/40093420

Decades of people desperate for a fix, utter stonewall from Google

Some PM somewhere decided that autocomplete belongs on all your fields, and who are you, the poor site developer, to disagree?

[jeroenhd]

The moment an article like this hits HN or Reddit or any other such forum, any hope of changing anyone's mind is lost. The same happens to Github issues too. I haven't checked the isue myself, but seeing it here means it's probably already too late at this point, it'll probably get flooded.

Google does take feedback from app developers every now and then, but obviously their own teams' feelings on the subject are more important to them than some open source developers relying on a hack like in this article.

I think it should be quite obvious that the ADB daemon wasn't designed to enable call recording from an app initiating an adb session over a loopback address. https://xkcd.com/1172/ strikes again.

That doesn't mean the developer who wrote this is wrong to dislike the change: Google themselves have added call recording to their dialer a while ago so it's clearly a feature they stand behind. That doesn't mean the adb team shouldn't do a little security hardening, though.

[xethos]

In 2008 Sergey Brin and Larry Page saw the limo waiting, and instead chose to rollerblade to the Android unveiling. Sergey Brin, during the presentation, threw his G1 in the air to show off how his homemade application leveraged the accelerometer to see how high he'd thrown it

That use-case was never designed for when the sensor was added, and is every bit as hacky and fun as adding call recording with a loopbakc address

And that's the first problem: Android is no longer fun, and it's no longer for trying this hilariously stupid hacky method of doing what we, the users, want.

The second problem is an attitude of "Google's dialer has it built-in, why would one want a third-party dialer instead of Google's?"

Because we fucking can - or could, at least. The OS was designed to be as modular as possible, to the point where, while iOS still can't change their launcher, Android has had that option since day one. Setting aside Google casting themselves as the (not so) benevolent dictator of "Just use our apps exclusively. Life will be easier that way", closing off the modularity is antithecal to the Android experience that so many geeks fell in love with, and arguably made the platform what it is