#Android is dying.

We all know that #Google wants to kill the “unverified/sideloaded” apps (names carefully selected by Google’s professional gaslighters to give a negative connotation to “apps that are not distributed by Google’s own store”).

We all know that the new “verification process” amounts basically to a ransom where you need to give Google your keys and your money if you want to build apps for Android.

It involves developers handing their signing keys to a user-hostile American company (so they will sign your package for you and will also able to decrypt your secrets) and paying them a $25 fee for each app.

Even if you don’t even use the Play Store to distribute your apps.

This is not a price to pay to get the app distributed through them, nor for using any of their services. It’s a price to pay just because they want to control the whole ecosystem end-to-end, and they know that they can get away with that because you’ll keep using their shitty OS even if you’re outraged at them.

We all know that they got a lot of backlash. And after the backlash they reiterated that they “listened to the community” and would have made a process to still allow people to “sideload apps”.

Well, today that process has been finally unveiled. And it sounds even shittier than I thought.

That’s because Google is currently filled with the best professional enshittificators in the world: the job role of these people is not to build new things, nor to listen to customers and build what they want. No, their job is specifically to find the sweet spot where they can make things as shitty as possible, add as much friction and user frustration as possible to prevent them from doing a certain thing, while still being able to tell regulators “well, it’s not that shitty, you see? We still give users an option - buried under 10 layers of dark patterns”.

In order to install apps external to the Play Store you will have to:

• Activate the developer settings (the usual “tap the build number 7 times to show the hidden menu” thing)

• In the developer settings, enable “Allow Unverified Padckages”

• Confirm that you are not being coerced (seriously, how much malware did they actually see installed by people being coerced or tricked to download and install random APK files?)

• Restart your device

• Wait 24 hours

• Return to the unverified packages settings

• Scroll past 3-4 additional warnings whose sole purpose is to scare you off

• Select either “Allow temporarily“ (7 days) or “Allow indefinitely“ (and I’ve got a hunch that the Allow indefinitely option will probably be gradually phased out)

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/03/google-details-new-24-hour-process-to-sideload-unverified-android-apps/

me smaht

i like blender. open source software restores my faith in humanity.

"Human activity has grown to challenge planetary limits, yet the official solution to any problem that arises is to grow more. Like fish unable to live anywhere but in water, our leaders find it hard to imagine any way of life outside the Growth paradigm. Production and consumption, income and expenditure define our lives."

https://www.juancole.com/2026/03/paradigm-instead-growth.html

Head's up, Mastodon users: There appears to be a coordinated effort to impersonate relatively high-profile people who have accounts on various instances but who have not used them in a while.

I've gotten several follow notifications - and a couple of DMs - from impersonators of people I know. The bogus accounts have lots of underscores in the handles, and they repost items from the past, sometimes years old. If you spot this, please report, do not engage, and then block.

Pls boost.

The LLM discourse on the Fediverse has really irked me the last few days.

Refusing to read writing made with the use of LLMs and refusing to give time to writers who use, promote or justify the use of LLMs is not purity culture, it's a boycott. It's a political act of withdrawing my time, resources and support for something that I find deeply morally wrong. It's protest. I have a choice and I refuse.

LLMs are exploitative, destructive, biased, mediocre parroting machines. Using them has a negative impact on the climate, the arts, the quality of the internet, the job market, the economy, the accessibility of electronics, even on skill development, creativity and mental health. LLMs are made and trained on the unpaid labour of millions -if not billions- of people who didn't consent. Their generic output litter the path to finding anything by true human creators.

Wherever I can, for as long as I can, I reject LLMs and anything that is related to them. I'm boycotting.

The whole "people shouldn't transition before age N because their brain isn't fully formed" thing is so catastrophically dumb.

Like, do you really think I wanted to be a fully formed man? Seriously. What's the upside?

For most trans people, the more of the wrong gender we get, the more pain it brings. Waiting until those changes are permanent only makes them worse. It's like if you have a gluten allergy and someone says they won't believe you until you've tried every loaf of bread in the bread aisle. More pain doesn't fix it. We don't get over gender dysphoria by exposure therapy. We just get more trauma that we have to live with the rest of our lives.

Instead, being able to transition BEFORE the brain and body are fully formed is the ideal. The earlier the better. The earlier you're able to get access to medical transition, the closer your fully formed body and mind will be to what they should be. That's a good thing! Waiting only causes harm.

The only reason why people think like this is because they refuse to believe trans people and trans experiences. They think that their default cis assumptions about people should override those people's own experiences. Sure, they'll grant some allowance in theory to adults who want to muck about with gender. But they don't actually believe we are who we say we are. Not if they think we have to have known since we were 4 but shouldn't transition until 25. The only way that makes sense is if they're either trying to be unbelievably cruel or if they simply don't believe we're real.

If you want to know if someone's an ally, look at how they treat trans kids. Because being an ally starts with believing us, that our experiences are real. And if they won't believe the kids, they're not going to believe you when you're 35 or 45 or 70.