Indeed it does.

Yep. So all of the F-Droid-distributed apps will be associated with one account. Or maybe it'll be distributed across a handful of accounts.

For open source apps absolutely anyone can package and submit an app under their account.

You think Google is going to verify that an app was submitted by the author/developer rather than some F-Droid guy who submits all of the F-Droid apps?

They just require the code to have been submitted by a registered identity. They aren't going to check copyright ownership... and with open source apps that's rarely only one person anyway. The only risk is that if some of the F-Droid apps turn out to be malware, Google may revoke the permission of the person who submitted them to submit apps. And note that they don't insta-revoke. If it's a legitimate mistake (e.g. someone slipped some bad code in upstream), and it doesn't happen too often, it's fine. But whoever does the F-Droid submissions will want to take some care with what they submit.

That, BTW, is the actual reason for the registration requirement: Being able to block malware authors, at least to the extent of requiring them to find or create some government ID to create a new account. The way many malware authors operate, the $25 fee may actually also pose an obstacle for them.

Similar requirements on the Play store did wonders for reducing malware volume to a level where Google could stay ahead of it. Now they want to extend the same protection to the entire Android ecosystem. If you're curious how I know this: From 2014 to 2025 I was a senior member of the Android security team at Google. While I never worked on anti-malware efforts, I know the senior engineers who do and I chatted with them about stuff. The security engineers have been pushing for this change for years but it has been blocked by management because it was expected that it would generate exactly the sort of mis-perception that you have. Eventually, the engineers were able to prove their case with sufficient data that management let it happen (not without some pushback from the PR team, I expect).

It really, truly has nothing to do with killing F-Droid. No one in Google has any reason to want to kill F-Droid, and more than a few use it personally. NewPipe is a different story, though even there the Android team doesn't particularly care about it, except to the extent that the YouTube team can convince them to care.

If you're a fact-consumer, you should not say "Bush stole the election".

The best evidence is that the recount that SCOTUS stopped would not have changed the outcome. A different recount that wasn't being done, wouldn't have been done and probably couldn't have been done quickly enough, even if someone had asked for it, which no one did, might have changed the outcome.

For Gore to win (assuming the recount reached the same results as the NORC/media recount), all the following would have had to happen:

1. SCOTUS would have had to remand rather than stay (on Dec 9)
2. FLSC would have had to acted immediately to (a) change the recount to be statewide and (b) direct something very like the maximal standard used by the NORC/media (every other standard found a Bush win). There's no hint that anyone would have asked for either of those things.
3. FLSC would have had to rule that the recount didn't have to be completed by the legislatively-defined Dec 12th "Safe Harbor" date, which most interpreted as the hard deadline. I don't think anyone knows what the probability of that was, but FLSC's previous rulings seemed to imply they wouldn't have.
4. The very careful statewide recount would have to have been completed (including legal arguments and challenges) in at most 8 days. Realistically more like 5, since there absolutely would have been more time-eating litigation.

The most likely outcome if SCOTUS had done nothing is that the recount, if it completed fast enough, would have confirmed Bush's win.

It's also worth noting that another plausible outcome -- Florida just can't make a decision by Dec 18th and sends no electors -- would also have been a Bush win. Without Florida's 25 votes, Gore would have had the most electoral college votes, but wouldn't have had the constitutionally-required 270. In that case, the US House of Representatives would have picked. The result would almost certainly have been a purely party-line vote, 223-211 for Bush.

One final comment: 2000 did not represent some sort of "failure of democracy", and wouldn't even if SCOTUS' intervention actually had changed the outcome. When the electorate is very closely divided, the outcome is determined by random events. Chaos. If a butterfly in Peoria had flapped its wings a couple of months before it could have gone the other way.

Oh they know all right... They can sense weaknesses like that.

Yep. And this just means that F-Droid has to have one person sign up and submit all of the apps for signature, as I said.

>>>With GPL, they must.

"Must" is doing an awful lot of work in that statement. I'm guessing that finding a blatant, longstanding, notorious GPL violator is easier than finding a penny on the street.

Nonsense. There's no reason to expect that mandatory developer certificates will kill F-Droid, at all. F-Droid will need one guy to pay the $25 fee and identify himself. Unless they can use the open source developer exception that Google has talked about (but hasn't announced any details, AFAIK).

That's a bigger issue, because Google's announced policy is to require that apps respect intellectual property, which would include not distributing apps that blatantly violate terms of service. Most likely F-Droid will have to stop distributing NewPipe if they want to be in Google Play. If dropping NewPipe is enough to kill F-Droid, then I guess that'll do it.

Those in the north will complain because the portion of the winter they go to work in darkness will increase, and it will be darker. Those in the center will also complain louder because they'll start going to work/school in the dark.

Those in the south will be confused about why everyone else is complaining, but they'll lose.

It's really not. 20 years ago, yes, but they've grown up and wised up. I know lots of excellent engineers at Microsoft, and I know they do good work, and they report that their colleagues do, too.

And note that I'm no MS fanboy. I hated them with a purple passion in the late 80s and early 90s, and swore off Windows entirely in 2001. I did finally break down and buy a Windows laptop a couple of years ago because I bought a CNC milling machine and the good software is Windows only, but that's the only thing I use it for.

More precisely, "Everyone does".

Microsoft's code isn't especially shoddy, all large codebases that are getting AI review right now are experiencing the same thing.

That's the thing: these OpenAI things are basically Alexa +. But what's the plus? What compelling new features are being added that justify buying a new device, and paying for a bunch of AI data centers to make it work? I've got voice control for my smart home working cloudless already, and I rarely use it; I prefer silent interactions. Same for asking questions, I prefer using a regular search engine, where a quick peek at the returned links can give me an indication of how accurate the AI summary is (sometimes it is, often it isn't).

That would be funny... but also foolish. Iran is thrilled to have Trump right where he is, doing all the dumb things he's doing.

I think they feel it would be more like humans communicate. But humans invented blackboards and certainly found them useful to improve communication.