But those customers don't count. They aren't real Apple customers, because they want to do things that benefit them, not Apple's shareholders. In other words: they're holding it wrong.
Law, not technology, is the true battlefield in the War on General Purpose Computing, a subject I've been raising the alarm about for decades now:
https://memex.craphound.com/2012/01/10/lockdown-the-coming-war-on-general-purpose-computing/
The fact that there's no technical way to enforce these restrictions means that the companies that benefit from them have to pitch their arguments to lawmakers, not customers. If you have something that works, you use it in your sales pitch, like Signal, whose actual, working security is a big part of its appeal to users.
If you have something that doesn't work, you use it in your lobbying pitch, like Apple, who justify their 30% ripoff app tax – which they can only charge because it's a felony to reverse-engineer your iPhone so you can use a different app store – by telling lawmakers that locking down their platform is essential to the security and privacy of iPhone owners:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/12/youre-holding-it-wrong/#if-dishwashers-were-iphones
Google lost a brutal antitrust case brought by Epic Games, makers of Fortnite:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/12/im-feeling-lucky/#hugger-mugger
Epic's suit contended that Google had violated antitrust law by creating exclusivity deals with carriers and device makers that locked Android users into Google's app store, which meant that Epic had to surrender 30% of its mobile earnings to Google.
Google lost that case – badly. It turns out that judges don't like it when you deliberately destroy evidence:
They say that when you find yourself in a hole, you should stop digging, but Google can't put down the shovel. After the court ordered Google to open up its app store, the company just ignored the order, which is a thing that judges hate even more than destroying evidence:
https://www.justice.gov/atr/case/epic-games-inc-v-google-llc
So it was that last month, Google found itself with just two weeks to comply with the open app store order, or else:
https://www.theverge.com/news/717440/google-epic-open-play-store-emergency-stay
Google was ordered to make it possible to install new app stores as apps, so you could go into Google Play, search for a different app store, and, with a single click, install it on your phone, and switch to getting your apps from that store, rather than Google's.
That's what's behind Google's new ban on "sideloading": this is a form of malicious compliance with the court orders stemming from its losses to Epic Games. In fact, it's not even malicious compliance – it's malicious noncompliance
MickelBlue Ars Centurion
11y
282
agt499 said:
:And to the OP's situation, I'm pretty sure the WIIM stuff support the actual ChromeCast Audio protocol too, so they could conceivable replace failing units one at a time is needed without shifting to a whole new system.
WiiM products support Chromecast audio (called Google Cast in WiiM): https://faq.wiimhome.com/en/support...-enable-or-disable-google-cast-on-wiim-device
MickelBlue Ars Centurion
11y
282
Baenwort said:
I'm glad my ChromeCast Audios still work. I'm dreading the day I have to figure out a replacement for them to keep all my old amps around the house playing the same thing in sync.
There's quite a collection of music streamers that support multiple platforms and multiroom audio that could replace a Chromecast Audio, while also offering more functionality:
https://www.wiimhome.com/wiimmini/overview
https://www.arylic.com/products/s10-wireless-preamplifier
https://www.evehome.com/en-us/eve-play
And for anyone only needing an Apple Airplay receiver, similar to the old Apple Airport Express devices: https://www.belkin.com/p/audio-adapter-with-airplay-2/AUZ002ttBK.html I personally have one and it works wonderfully.
Google Chrome will steal 4 GB of disk space from your computer for its local large language model unless you opted out.
It's called weights.bin and it's stored in a folder called OptGuideOnDeviceModel. What's more, if you track down the file and delete it, Chrome will download a fresh copy and reinstate it. //
If you didn't opt out, Google has some info on how to disable it. In brief: in Chrome's address box, enter the special URL chrome://flags. In the resulting page, look for an entry named optimization-guide-on-device-model and set it to Disabled, then restart Chrome. The browser should then delete the weights.bin file. //
The late great Grace Hopper used to hand out 30 cm (roughly 1 foot) lengths of wire as physical examples of a nanosecond: that's how far light can travel in one billionth of a second. If Google considers a 4 GB model to be "nano" sized, then it puts Hanff's hyperbolic comment about the climate footprint into real perspective. It gives a hint of the size of the real gigantic models in the datacenters metastasizing across the world.
A recent study led by Grace Liu at Carnegie-Mellon found that regular AI use caused measurable cognitive impairment. It's worth thinking carefully about what we trade away when we outsource our thinking and, separately, what the planet pays to power the systems we're outsourcing it to.
This vulture suggests you turn it off now, everywhere you can. ®
Starting September 2026, a silent update, nonconsensually pushed by Google, will block every Android app whose developer hasn't registered with Google, signed their contract, paid up, and handed over government ID.
You bought an Android phone because Google told you it was open. You could install what you wanted, and that was the deal.
Google is now rewriting that deal, retroactively, on hardware you already own. After the update lands, you can only run software that Google has pre-approved. On your phone: your property, that you paid for.
After September 2026, none of these can be installed without Google's blessing.
F-Droid, home to thousands of free and open-source Android apps, has called this an "existential" threat. Cory Doctorow calls it "Darth Android".
Android's openness was never just a feature. It was the promise that distinguished it from iPhone. Millions chose Android for exactly that reason. Google is now revoking that promise unilaterally, on devices already in people's pockets, because they've decided they have enough market dominance and regulatory capture to get away with it.
Ars Technica: "Google's Apple envy threatens to dismantle Android's open legacy."
Don't replace your fleet—revitalize it. Transform your existing PCs and Macs into secure, cloud-first endpoints. Deploy at scale from anywhere, with no complex IT requirements.
We’ve been pretty excited about the announcement of Chrome OS Flex and what it could mean for scores of aging laptops – Windows and Mac OS included. Though we have a lot of content planned around this new OS from Google, we also realize that we’ve not put up a clear guide on how to actually get this up and running on your own device. With the USB method, you can test drive Chrome OS Flex without breaking anything on your computer and make the decision if it’s the right move for you or not. So why not give it a go?
Starting today, Google will let US-based users ditch an old username without creating a new account.
Google started testing this option some months ago, both in the US and internationally. Today, the name change feature is rolling out widely in the US. You can check for the option on this account page to get started (you’ll have to log in). Some of the accounts we’ve checked already have the option, but it could take a while for it to appear for everyone.
Over the years, many users have abandoned old Gmail addresses because the handle is too personal or their names have changed. Now, you don’t have to abandon anything. When the option appears, you’ll be able to change the username portion of your email (the part before @gmail) to anything you desire. However, Google says you can only change your address once every 12 months.
AWS's destiny isn't to lose to Azure or Google. It's to win the infrastructure war and lose the relevance war. To become the next Lumen — the backbone nobody knows they're using, while the companies on top capture the margins and the mindshare.
The cables matter. But nobody's writing blog posts about them. ®
Important news for Gmail power users: Google is dropping the feature whereby Gmail can collect mail from other email accounts over POP3.
The company hasn't exactly gone out of its way to call attention to this – like actually telling anybody anything. The news appears in a support note with a sign on the door saying "Learn about upcoming changes to Gmailify & POP in Gmail." The article itself is less euphemistic than its title: //
7 hrs
MaFt
Still working for me?
Importing from POP is still working for me. It did, however, stop just before Christmas and I had to change the settings on gMail to use TLS.
So it seems like they're stopping plain text authorisation for POP rather than ALL POP mail retrieval.
Sick of AI summaries? Here's how to remove AI from Google and get back classic search - on desktop and mobile.
You can completely disable Gemini in Gmail, Docs, Drive, and more.
Google Photos has separate Gemini settings you must turn off, too.
Chrome users can also disable Gemini directly in browser settings.
Are you frustrated by Google's insistence on injecting Gemini into everything? While some do enjoy Google's latest AI tools and smart features, which seem to roll out every week, others might prefer things the way they were before.
Meanwhile, the US Global Forecasting System continues to get worse.
➤ You, the consumer, purchased your Android device believing in Google’s promise that it was an open computing platform and that you could run whatever software you choose on it. Instead, starting next year, they will be non-consensually pushing an update to your operating system that irrevocably blocks this right and leaves you at the mercy of their judgement over what software you are permitted to trust.
Shortly after our post was published, Google aired an episode of their Android Developers Roundtable series, where they state unequivocally that “sideloading isn’t going anywhere”. They follow-up with a blog post:
Does this mean sideloading is going away on Android? Absolutely not. Sideloading is fundamental to Android and it is not going away.
This statement is untrue. The developer verification decree effectively ends the ability for individuals to choose what software they run on the devices they own.
It bears reminding that “sideload” is a made-up term. Putting software on your computer is simply called “installing”, regardless of whether that computer is in your pocket or on your desk. This could perhaps be further precised as “direct installing”, in case you need to make a distinction between obtaining software the old-fashioned way versus going through a rent-seeking intermediary marketplace like the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store.
Regardless, the term “sideload” was coined to insinuate that there is something dark and sinister about the process, as if the user were making an end-run around safeguards that are designed to keep you protected and secure. But if we reluctantly accept that “sideloading” is a term that has wriggled its way into common parlance, then we should at least use a consistent definition for it. Wikipedia’s summary definition is:
the transfer of apps from web sources that are not vendor-approved
By this definition, Google’s statement that “sideloading is not going away” is simply false. //
You, the consumer, purchased your Android device believing in Google’s promise that it was an open computing platform and that you could run whatever software you choose on it. Instead, starting next year, they will be non-consensually pushing an update to your operating system that irrevocably blocks this right and leaves you at the mercy of their judgement over what software you are permitted to trust. //
As a reminder, this applies not just to devices that exclusively use the Google Play Store: this is for every Android Certified device everywhere in the world, which encompasses over 95% of all Android devices outside of China. Regardless of whether the device owner prefers to use a competing app store like the Samsung Galaxy Store or the Epic Games Store, or a free and open-source app repository like F-Droid, they will be captive to the overarching policies unilaterally dictated by a competing corporate entity. //
Developer verification is an existential threat to free software distribution platforms like F-Droid as well as emergent commercial competitors to the Play Store. We are witnessing a groundswell of opposition to this attempt from both our user and developer communities, as well as the tech press and civil society groups, but public policymakers still need to be educated about the threat.
To learn more about what you can do as a consumer, visit keepandroidopen.org for information on how to contact your representative agencies and advocate for keeping the Android ecosystem open for consumers and competition.
In August 2025, Google announced that starting next year, it will no longer be possible to develop apps for the Android platform without first registering centrally with Google. //
➤ You, the consumer, purchased your Android device believing in Google’s promise that it was an open computing platform and that you could run whatever software you choose on it. Instead, starting next year, they will be non-consensually pushing an update to your operating system that irrevocably blocks this right and leaves you at the mercy of their judgement over what software you are permitted to trust.
Starting next year, Google plans to require all apps installed on certified Android devices, including sideloading, to come from developers it has verified. Many Android developers see the move as a power grab and have started a movement to "Keep Android Open." //
On Tuesday, via the F-Droid blog, he renewed his challenge to Google's assertions about its verification program, specifically the company's claim that "Sideloading is fundamental to Android and it is not going away."
"This statement is untrue," he wrote in his post. "The developer verification decree effectively ends the ability for individuals to choose what software they run on the devices they own.
"It bears reminding that 'sideload' is a made-up term. Putting software on your computer is simply called 'installing,' regardless of whether that computer is in your pocket or on your desk."
Both Google and Apple [PDF] use the term "sideloading" as a pejorative, possibly because they have a commercial interest in running app store toll booths.
Prud'hommeaux proposes the term "direct installing," in case you need to make a distinction between obtaining software the old-fashioned way versus going through a rent-seeking intermediary marketplace like the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store.
Pointing to The Register's recent report about 77 malicious apps on Google Play that amassed more than 19 million downloads, Prud'hommeaux questions both Google's ability to catch malicious apps and its lack of evidence to support the claim that it "found over 50 times more malware from internet-sideloaded sources than on apps available through Google Play."
There doesn't seem to be a way to do this specifically (possibly because you can't even see the speed limit on the web app outside of photographs — only on the mobile apps proper), so you'll just have to use the form to report a generic problem with a road:
Open the left sidebar hamburger menu
- "Edit the map"
- "Add or fix a road"
- Click on the road
- Select the appropriate "Length of road"
- Underneath that, select "Other" and type in a description of what needs to change
o track and visualize tasks easier and faster, use timeline view.
Timeline view is an interactive visual layer in Sheets that can help you manage many project parts, such as:
- Project tasks
- Marketing campaigns
- Schedules
- Cross-team collaborations