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Comment by entropicgravity | Hacker News Reader

Yes for example Android setting Location to "on" and then hiding the setting at the end of half a dozen drill downs. And then, every now and then on a new update, suddenly and without notification, Location has been reset to "on".

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Reject operating systems made by for-profit behavioral management conglomerates. It is still possible with alternatives like Lineage and GrapheneOS.

Doesn't Lineage still have some phone home features that let Google know what your IP is at all times?

Don't think so, but please cite that if it's the case!

I think he is right. One of the places google servers are used is captive portal checks [1]. Here is a, albeit not very deep, thread discussing how to disable it and you can easily find reports of losing internet access on lineage if you block google addresses on your network. Otherwise a connection to google servers is made every hour or so.

I remember reading, that this is not the only place in LOS, that google servers are used, but I never looked into it.

1: https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/guide-how-to-avoid-the-ca...

The captive portal check is a cookieless, cacheless request. Sure, you could argue Google "has your IP address" but it's a pretty absurd thing to worry about.

If your goal is to ensure that google has as little data about you as possible, this is not a pretty absurd thing to worry about.

Or, better, abandon Google-controlled operating systems completely and consider GNU/Linux phones, Librem 5 or Pinephone.

Android is applying tons of dark patterns. It's almost like the OS was created by Facebook and not Google.

Implying that they're that different? Imagine a world where Google+ took off.

It's exactly as if the OS was created by Google. Google is a company whose entire business model is centered around collecting as much data as possible on as many people as possible for their own financial gain regardless of what those people want or the harms that it causes. They will do anything if it makes them money. What else would you expect from them?

What harm does it cause?

Assuming this is a good faith question, here are some answers:

https://www.bcs.org/articles-opinion-and-research/the-danger...

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/10/why-getting-paid-your-...

As far as solutions, these are probably going to be more regulatory than technological in nature:

https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/what-gdpr-means-for-facebo...

I remember Android KitKat. It was the peak of the operating system. Every year since then a new version comes out that makes things slightly worse, often requested ux improvements get ignored, things people were doing that make their lives better but oppose Google's business model get broken or removed, UI elements get changed for silly design reasons that add friction to UX, and it never outweighs the good such as battery improvements and permissions management. I'm not even sure I'd classify it as an operating system anymore except superficially, you're not really operating your device with it, all you can really do is launch applications. You can't even change the default DNS server used globally by the system.

I do wish things were more configurable. A lot of things are excessively locked down.

But in general, Android is probably the OS I trust most. It has close to embedded-level reliability with almost consumer desktop level features.

Other platforms have to make a lot of compromises to achieve high availability, and are very simple, manual-first things like a very lightweight Linux.

The only real problem I have with the UI is the lack of an Undo, the fact that no browser lets you disable pull to refresh, and the few times I have found Bluetooth mysteriously turn itself off.

There's never any real confusion. I never have to read a manual or wonder where something is. It's perfect for a mobile platform, because you can do whatever you need to do right then and there, even if you haven't prepared for it or done it before.

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