There already exists a “Google Play licence check” permission apps can use to verify whether or not the app has been bought on a Google account that’s present on the device.

If people can crack the app to remove this (which is a thing for some of the popular apps), they’ll also figure out how to patch this out. This is strictly useful for free apps, and only serves to make it unviable to distribute verifiably clean apk’s outside of Google Play (so rip APKMirror)

It isn’t. I’ve personally had it happen where a relative who went to some country that bans video calling and VoIP (except for the unencrypted/honey pots of course) and used Signal to call people back home (only because I told them it would be unblocked due to censorship circumvention). Despite everyone in my household being familiar with WhatsApp, I was the only who did video calls with them and had to share my device so others could also call them. Even when I’d set up Signal on one of their devices, they still complained it was to difficult to use, insisted I’d uninstall it when the trip was over and used it a grand total of once.

I honestly think it’s partly to do with the nerd factor. This same relative turned out to also have installed the backdoored unencrypted app to chat with others, but hid it from us due to me being vocal about not using that. These other households, also WhatsApp based, managed to install, sign up and use that just fine. They also couldn’t be bothered to set up Signal for some reason, yet gladly accepted the suggestion to use the honey pot.
I think that these people in my circle don’t care about security at all and only care about the platform. If it’s “secure”, “private” and “censorship resistant” and they haven’t heard of it until I, the “techie”, explain the technological benefits of it, they’ll think it’s a niche “techie” thing they’re not nerdy enough to understand. If I get them to use it, they’ll keep thinking this whenever something is slightly different than WhatsApp and be frustrated. Meanwhile they can get behind the honey pot because “WhatsApp doesn’t work there, this is just what people in that country use”. It appears normal because “normal people” use it all the time, and they’ll solve any inconvenience themselves because “normal people (can) use this, and I’m normal too”.

My grandpa had developed the habit of falling out of his bed. The first time I was afraid that he was gonna die on the spot as I’d heard it, but it eventually became such a “regular” occurrence that I didn’t think of immediate death anymore. This particular day, he’d fallen twice. They brought him to a nearby hospital to get a check-up. I was worried sick that this time something was actually wrong, or that he might’ve broken a bone or something. Turns out he was fine! No broken bones or anything. Just one teeny tiny minor issue…

When he was brought to the hospital, he was accidentally placed in the area with people who were brought there with covid. I hadn’t been able to see him in months because of the restrictions, and even when I did go the months prior it was always with far distance, masks and in short bursts. I did everything I had been told to do to “keep him safe”, “ease up the workload in the hospitals” and all those government campaigns and all that, only for him to die because of this (seeming) serious neglect from medical professionals.

I’m currently on it because Neo Launcher stopped working one day, but is there a way to have app icons on the home screen without them being in the dock? It fills up quickly if you use PWA’s

The Netherlands only remains “neutral” because of the clause that forces companies to detect unknown CSAM and/or “grooming” material (last time I checked). It’s only a matter of one or two countries that can make the difference, with most neutral countries probably having similarly “minor” objections.

You don’t. You see, Nintendo encrypts their games and basically outlaws any way to access decryption keys from your own console. In your proposal you don’t even own a Switch to lawfully or unlawfully obtain the keys from, meaning that you’ll 100% have to acquire those “illegally”.

Not that I care for the record

I’ll be sure to check out those instances then!

I wanted to use it back in the day, but most instances didn’t load. Even less often then regular Piped for me. I’d imagine that this wouldn’t be particularly improved now that YouTube’s doing their whole “Sign in to confirm you’re not a bot” spiel

IIRC, GBC cartridges could physically fit inside the OG GB, but would throw an error when it required the extra power of the GBC. The GBA had the notch that determined Advance/not-Advance mode and made GBA games physically exclusive to the GBA

I’m hoping it’s gonna be like a GameBoy Color game. One cartridge. Play on Switch, regular graphics. Play on Switch 2, next-gen graphics. Everyone wins

I’ve checked the Github when I read this to see whether they’re having trouble as well, and currently it appears that YouTube will block your IP if you use it too much

It could’ve been. You and me probably would’ve blocked ads regardless of their content for various reasons, but I’d imagine that Google wouldn’t have reached this critical mass prompting this scheme if their ads were properly vetted.

The technologically literate capable of installing ad blockers are the minority, and those who’d do it out of principle are a smaller subset of those

Does this also apply when not using the official app? I recently bought a Phillips bulb (not Hue) and set up Home Assistant for it, along with the Matter bridge. This turned out to also connect it to the Wi-Fi, but I never installed a manufacturer app.

Would blocking internet access via parental controls on the router be enough to mitigate such threats, or is its mere presence in an internet-connected network dangerous?

Firefox is looking to implement Manifest V3 to keep extension feature parity with Chromium, but their version will not ban the one API that adblockers use. So Firefox will eventually be V3 compliant

Note that SM64 (and OoT, but I don’t think that’s on Android yet) are special cases. These have been reverse engineered by the community to the point that they’ve manually decompiled the entire game, and then separately ported to modern platforms. The project in the OP is different, as it’s made for games that don’t have this effort behind them

Idk why, but this is the hardest I’ve laughed at an internet post in a long time

The app doesn’t even come with any removed channels?! What’s next, ban VLC because it can play illegal videos? Ban Windows because it can connect to the internet and play pirated streams? Ban eyesight because you can watch an unlicensed broadcast? Removed politicians

Deliberately broken by default?

Years ago I used to use an app called “AdSkip” or something along those lines that used the accessibility API to automatically mute and skip all YouTube ads. I’d imagine the screen black-out would be trivial to add on top

I don’t know if this would ‘satisfy’ them (I know it wouldn’t, I’m referring strictly to the legal stuff). From what I’ve heard, the point Nintendo was making wrt the encryption is that aquiring prod.keys in any way, shape or form is illegal. Of course, creating an emulator for a system that only runs games that contain encryption which can only be undone with prod.keys requires the developers to have this file. Since they’ve successfully made an emulator, this implies that the Yuzu team has in fact obtained a copy of this file and done something naughty.

The problem is that, regardless of whether or not the decryption happens in Yuzu or in another completely separate program, modern Nintendo games do not come unencrypted. This means that someone at some point has to decrypt the files, and thus has to use prod.keys to do so. According to Nintendo, using and creating any emulator for a modern system requires someone to do something illegal at one point in the chain, and therefore emulation (by parties not explicitly authorized by Nintendo) cannot legally exist.

I say that Nintendo should piss off after I’ve bought something from them and that I should be allowed to do with my property as I please, but even the most legally and morally correct way to emulate is not okay with them.

This raises the following question: if Nintendo does not respect in the slightest our property rights by pulling such stunts, why should we as end users respect their intellectual property rights? Why go through all the effort of clean room reverse engineering a console instead of blatantly copying as much of the official code base as possible if the legal system punishes you all the same? Why limit yourself to only emulating games you personally ripped from your own cartridges if the act of ripping has already placed your actions into the “illegal” category?