Comment by mouse_
7 months ago
Would you buy a hammer that can't ever hurt your thumb? What implications would that have? Would that be a good hammer?
Bad opinion time that I hope will maybe at least be thought provoking: I would hope a malicious app I willingly installed will be able to behave maliciously. Our security bureaucracy is going to grow exponentially and people are still going to be stealing people's shit, because people need to be able to access their shit and people are dumb.
> requires no [Android] permissions
I think this is the part people are upset about
While I appreciate the sentiment of fighting against oversecure features. This is a great security feature. The Windows OS model started development in the 90s, before the internet or even malware was popular. Android started development around 2010 and was able to provide a security design that contemplated risks of malware and internet.
In Windows installing malware compromises other applications, while in Android, your other apps are safe. In this news, this security mechanism fails. To denounce that the mechanism is completely useless is quite stupid, you just outed yourself as someone who doesn't have any security responsibilities and shouldn't have.
> Would you buy a hammer that can't ever hurt your thumb?
Yes.
I believe those hammers are made by Nerf. Now go build a house with one.
There was a time when we would have said something similar for table saws that cannot cut off your finger. Might be a little harder to pull off the trick with a hammer, but it just seems like another engineering problem. And it would make for a very expensive hammer.
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Would you buy an electric saw that cannot damage your fingers?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQu3ccfl7Ow
Or you would yell at a cloud?
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> Would that be a good hammer?
They're called rubber mallets and they are useful in a number of situations where you want to
> I would hope a malicious app I willingly installed will be able to behave maliciously.
You should be able to install an app that has continuous access to your screen but that doesn't mean that continuous access to your screen is something you should have to grant to every piece of software that runs on your computer.
You can hurt your thumb with a rubber mallet. Maybe the better metaphor would be kids' safety scissors which I guess represents the iPhone, but I'd still rather go with the Android (regular scissors) because I'm an adult and I'll take responsibility for the risks of using the more powerful tool.
I think one can still build a product that has a level of guard rails without impacting usability.
I also think iOS is more of an opinionated 'set of shears'. E.g. 'Right Hand only Scissors made from proprietary parts, made to only cut objects that 80% of scissor users need to cut' if we were to go down the road of analogies.
Funnily enough Google Android is removing the ability for unsigned non-adb APKs. I would suggest your 'regular' scissors will be slightly bluntened in the upcoming Android 16 OS release.
Why are you speaking like having a secure device and a powerful device are exclusive options?
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