That’s good to hear! I’ve ADBed almost all of the Google & Samsung stuff off my phone already so I’m well used to fighting with Aurora to download certain apps by now. Nearly all my apps are from F-droid as well so that will make the transition a lot easier, and I do a lot of self hosting so I’m not relying on any proprietary services that are going to demand play services be installed. Balatro on my steam deck already steals enough of my time, so honestly if my phone won’t let me install it that’s probably for the best.

Going from One UI 6 to One UI 7 on a Samsung has made me very excited to go get a used pixel or fairphone and install a custom ROM instead. Absolutely abysmal update.

This is another one of the many reasons the online safety acts a lot of countries are bringing in are going to put so many people in danger. Adults can afford to pay for a VPN subscription, kids are going to download the free ones like this and fall victim to blackmail.

I think it would be great if at the next protests the crowds were filled with these nonsense t-shirts and signs to waste the police’s time. It is completely legal to protest a proscription order so I don’t think they have any legitimate grounds to arrest anyone. And if they do, they look very silly.

The age verification companies go into more detail on their website but the tl;dr is they want any website with age checks to compare the user’s IP address to publicly known lists of VPN IPs, look for hints such as time of day for if the user is UK based, and then force the user to either prove their age or prove that they live outside the UK.

Which is insane of course. It’s already a bad law as it stands, but if they get their way then even people living outside of the UK would be forced to provide their location to every social media platform they use if a websites automated system believes them to be connecting via a VPN.

I can’t imagine it being very enforcable since Netflix have tried for years to block VPN users with very mixed results & as for geolocation it should be fairly straightforward to spoof that. But these companies get paid by each verification so even if it only shifts another 20% off of VPNs and onto handing over their ID it’s still more profit for them.

I use NewPipe, so seemingly any age-gated content is just being blocked from me now and there’s not a chance I make a google account ever again. This morning I’ve been so kindly protected from watching John Oliver interview Monica Lewinsky, or from watching some clips from Taskmaster which is as benign and family-friendly as it gets.