No. Android is not some sort of userland, not some sort of GUI layer. It is its own thing. Android is a basically a Java based OS where the hardware and the host operating system are both abstracted away.

I kind of wonder if something like this causes Apple to reconsider partnerships with vendors and play somewhat less hardball. It's obviously in Apple's best interest to have GT succeed -- the loan gets remade, they get a new gee-whiz screen material that no one else has or can even make (an established Apple strategy of cornering supplies of new technologies) and GT gets to make money, too, which can be invested in even better sapphire for the iPhone 7.

Squeeze your vendors too hard, there are fuckups and you've wasted millions of dollars and possibly put much more at risk and you don't gain the new magical feature advantage you wanted.

What kind of surprises me is that Apple doesn't have their own skunkworks R&D for coming up with new technologies like sapphire screens or other key components. They could work out what they wanted and then farm it out to someone who can mass produce it. Sort of like the Bell Labs or IBM labs.

No. Those I lumped under "Some republicans offered BS amendments and were rightfully voted down.".

What I thought "constructive well thought out amendments" were more like someone identifying a loophole/exploit and suggesting a fix. A fix that did not go against the spirit and intent of the legislation. Reasonable constructive criticisms and suggestions. And I want to emphasize these loopholes and exploits were not even discussed. Zero questions, zero debate, zero discussion; just an immediate no vote. Its not like they thought about it and decided no.

Seriously, the committee was complete theatre. It truly seemed that the legislation was written in a closed back room process and that absolutely no changes were going to be allowed. All the Democrats were apparently aware of this and played their proper role and offered no amendments at all, asked no questions, offered no discussion.

Android is *NOT* Linux based, it is merely Linux hosted. Android is its own OS, its own environment. As such Android is perfectly free to have less or *more* security than Linux. There was no stripping security out, there was only how much security to build into this new and independent environment.

There is a way for apps to jump through some hoops and access Linux (NDK) but only about 25% of apps (last I read) do this. For the vast majority of Android Apps and Android Developers they are just like Android users. They don't see or use Linux at all. If Android were to be updated to host on BSD these users and developers would not know or care. Of the remain 25%, many of their apps would still compile and run. Many use standard *nix calls, nothing Linux specific like most FOSS software.

The arduous task of reconstructing the 1949 behemoth, fraught with little in terms of the original hardware or documentation

So, the word 'fraught' doesn't appear in TFA. And there's probably a reason for that.

Fraught doesn't mean "without the benefit of".

fraught
frÃt/
adjective
adjective: fraught

        1.
        (of a situation or course of action) filled with or destined to result in (something undesirable).
        "marketing any new product is fraught with danger"
        synonyms: full of, filled with, rife with; More
        attended by, accompanied by
        "their world is fraught with danger"
        2.
        causing or affected by great anxiety or stress.
        "there was a fraught silence"

So, to continue this egregiously bad bit of writing ....

Wiff his trusty condoms, Ralph fraught he'd be safe, but, alas, he fraught wrong and got the clap anyway.

Bereft, perhaps. But, fraught??? Really???

Come on guys. Don't just use words you don't know what they mean because they sounded cool in another context.

Oh, wait, I'm assuming editors have a grasp of the language and actually read the submissions. My bad.

But, cynically, how would you even know?

If they're collecting stuff against the app permissions, WTF would you trust them when they say "oh, sure, we've deleted your stuff".

If they collected anything beyond what they had explicit permissions for, you have to assume everything else is a bloody lie.

Google needs to get their shit together.

Google's "shit" is collecting your personal information to use to sell advertising. So, from that perspective, it's mission accomplished.

There isn't a whole lot of ways to reconcile how Google wants to make money from Android, with a desire user privacy.

My best guess is Google has crippled the privacy to ensure that commercial interests trump privacy interests.

Do you think they're going to provide an ability for users to kill off advertising in apps? Especially when Google profits from this?

My guess is this "simplified" permissions model they rolled out this year was specifically designed to ensure better access for apps.

Not to worry ... Twitter wants in on that action.

"To help build a more personal Twitter experience for you, we are collecting and occasionally updating the list of apps installed on your mobile device so we can deliver tailored content that you might be interested in," the company said.

Yeah, no, thanks.

Didn't want your app before. Don't want it now.

This whole "free to use, but we get all your data" model of software is producing some pretty shitty stuff which is actively hostile to your privacy.

The only way to win is to not even play. Sorry, but I don't need your app.

My best guess, either the permissions model in Android is little more than a promise, but it isn't enforced ... or Uber is bypassing it and getting it anyway.

Both more or less suggest the permissions model in Android is defective by design. Because either it's not enforced, or easily bypassed.

I get the sense from TFA that even though these things are not explicitly asked for, it's doing them anyway.

So, either Uber is malware, or Android is insecure by default and there's little you can do without rooting your device.

In either case, what else can you conclude than "App permissions are at best guidelines, and at worst utterly meaningless".

Your options are:

1) Uninstall it, get on with your life.
2) Decide this is so important you don't care about your privacy
3) Root your device and install something which gives you granular control.

From what I've been able to ascertain, rooting my first gen Nexus 7 is hit and miss, and I've not yet decided to take that step.

Me, I've mostly decided I need fewer apps, run my tablet in airplane mode most of the time, and would rather use a web browser than most apps.

As you said, Android's permission model is completely broken. Which means I've mostly decided I don't trust what it's telling me.

Well, the problem is apps ask for every damned permission just in case, and give little explanations as to why. That whole permission which says "this can cost you money" ... WTF does that mean? In what context?

And the other thing is Google won't give the ability to have discrete permissions on apps, or come back later and revoke some. I frequently get annoyed because I can't think of a single reason why an app actually needs a given permission.

Now, if the app can access this stuff even if it has no permission -- then, yes, this is indicative of the fact that security in Android is crap to begin with.

I've said for a while, what I really want is the ability to go into an an app, and selectively turn off individual permissions. And the ability to click something which says "revert permissions to requested".

It's my damned device, I want control over it.

But, am I really surprised that every app is likely accessing far more than it should because greedy corporations feel entitled to it? No, sadly, not at all.

I have no interest in Uber. But hearing this, I have even less -- because they're either shady, or incompetent. Neither of which is good.

If there was a public blacklist, then it'd be easy to build a search engine specifically for blocked content that ran outside the EU, and thus the entire scheme would work even less well than it already does.

What the EU court has set in motion here leads, eventually, to either a Great Firewall of Europe, or the EU getting to perform global censorship against everyone. Neither outcome seems plausible, so, what next?

What's going through their mind is this - we are politicians and regulators. We are in charge. If our power is being challenged by a corporation, we need to slap them down as hard as possible, as fast as possible, so we remain the top dogs. We are not concerned with minor technical details that boffins like to witter about: we are the Democratic Representatives of The People and that means we must be obeyed!

The way this stupid "right" will play out was clear from the first moment the ruling was made. Lots of people with things to hide will try and get their misdeeds erased (check). Google will try and keep its results as uncensored as possible (check). EU will get pissed off that circumvention is easy and try to force them to perform global censorship (check). IP address based filtering will be implemented (not yet). Then people in America set up dedicated proxy sites so people in Europe can search uncensored (not yet). Then the EU will get mad and tell Google to drop the results from all search results, everywhere (not quite yet). And then there's going to be a big fucking showdown and we'll learn who needs who more. Or perhaps the UK will beat the EU to it with their parliament's retarded "Facebook should implement Minority Report" policies.

Whatever happens, it's looking more and more like there's going to be a big fight, either over this or spying, or both. Politicians are running scared because they suspect when forced to make the choice, a significant number of their citizens would side with Google/Facebook/WhatsApp/Apple over them .... and if you're a politician, that attacks the core of your power and identity. They won't be able to tolerate that.

1 TB has enough data for every man woman and child who ever lived to write a 1500 page book!

That's awesome and all ... but this isn't 1988, and we're not storing just text files any more. Nobody is writing 1500 page books to fill up their hard drives.

My iTunes folder is around 400GB, which includes my music and any digital copies of movies I've gotten. An HD version of a movie rings in around 5GB or so. I've still got dozens of DVDs I plan to rip so I have them on-line.

I just recently bought about 60 CDs which I need to rip, and the next BluRays I buy will include digital copies. So, realistically, I'll add another 100GB or so in the next few months.

I have about 100GB of photos, because I have owned digital cameras for the last decade.

I know people with children and HD video recorders who have massive amounts of pictures and videos. They blow through space like you wouldn't believe.

nd please do not give your niche use case in a reply

if you think my use case is niche, you're either clueless, or still only holding onto a bunch of text files.

My 2TB HD is about 50% free, and gets backed up to two separate 2TB HDs. I expect to be more like 40% free within six months.

But do I know a lot of fairly normal people without overly extreme data requirements who can blow past 1TB pretty fast.

So, I think your assertion nobody is using that much space is pretty much unfounded.

Seriously, look around you at what people are actually doing with computers. It might surprise you.

But, hey, like your namesake ... 640K ought to be enough for anybody, right?

That's what I thought too, and it wasn't making sense. "How is a protocol blocking a torrent site?"