I’m pretty sure I’ve been using the Simple Gallery app they mention for years.

It looks like it is still open source. However I do see on the Play Store page that their contact details are in Israel.

The Pro version, the one I use, claims to collect no data at all. Not sure how much I trust that.

Maybe it’s time to look for a new gallery app…

EDIT:

The open source code has not been updated since 2023, and neither has the Pro app. However the non-pro app has been updated in 2024.

Therefore, it might be safe to use the open source code version on GitHub, but I wouldn’t touch the free one on the play store.

I wouldn’t use the Pro version on the play store as you would be funding these companies and they could push an update in the future.

EDIT 2:

As mentioned here, a popular fork of many of these now abandoned Simple apps is the Fossify project. If you liked the app I’d recommend looking at that if you want to keep getting security updates at the very least.

I think they are bundling this into their regular app, so they’d have to put every guardian read on the list😅

Ok, so it’s an encrypted, open source whistle-blowing feature in their app / system.

The article is light on technical details but if it makes whistleblowing easier and safer than for example emailing their editors that’s probably a good thing.

I might be whooshing here but you could also be a liberal and take action?

Protests are happening everywhere. If you aren’t too ill to do so, show up.

Uhhhh republican?

Well, that’s not necessarily true.

Some apps, alongside providing their core functionality, such as messaging, also collect a lot of information from all the permissions they are granted on your device.

Think for example constant location tracking or collecting your contacts, as I believe Facebook Messenger does.

It could be possible to provide a front-end that blocks certain requests or spoofs information.

Of course, that doesn’t stop them from collecting information you directly provide to them by using the service, such as profile information, direct messages, interactions etc.

I suppose you could use these services as a skulker which doesn’t have an account (or a semi-anonymous one) whilst denying all permissions and providing as little information as possible. It’s not wholy black and white.

That said, I do recommend not using these platforms at all if you can. Use alternative platforms that provide similar services. Lemmy vs Reddit is a good example.

It’s just not always practical advice for everyone, given that some people have jobs that require social media, or have no other means of contacting some relatives and friends.

Nope. I complain when it affects me and disadvantaged people. Regardless of the party in power.

Politicians are not your friends and should be held accountable.

The rich and privileged don’t need or deserve more stuff, so I don’t feel bad for them if they are negatively impacted (within reason)

Make America checks notes Poor Again!

The Nazis praised the US’s “scientific” approach to racism and eugenics.

Measuring people’s heads; IQ tests served in a person’s non-native language and relied on specific knowledge of American culture; Plain old racist rhetoric like calling people “dangerous”, “criminals” with no evidence. (Sound familiar?)

Anything to prove that black and foreign people were inferior and should be exploited, in a classic “we know the answer and we must cherry pick the data to reach that conclusion”.

A lot of these tools were taken up by the Nazis for their persecution of Jews, and now they’re coming right back around.

This is an educated meme.

Cool. Now let’s make immigrants legally people in the US.

I’ll repost my comment from the other post:

For people who have not read the article:

Forbes states that there is no indication that this app can or will “phone home”.

Its stated use is for other apps to scan an image they have access to find out what kind of thing it is (known as "classification"). For example, to find out if the picture you’ve been sent is a dick-pick so the app can blur it.

My understanding is that, if this is implemented correctly (a big ‘if’) this can be completely safe.

Apps requesting classification could be limited to only classifying files that they already have access to. Remember that android has a concept of “scoped storage” nowadays that let you restrict folder access. If this is the case, well it’s no less safe than not having SafetyCore at all. It just saves you space as companies like Signal, WhatsApp etc. no longer need to train and ship their own machine learning models inside their apps, as it becomes a common library / API any app can use.

It could, of course, if implemented incorrectly, allow apps to snoop without asking for file access. I don’t know enough to say.

Besides, you think that Google isn’t already scanning for things like CSAM? It’s been confirmed to be done on platforms like Google Photos well before SafetyCore was introduced, though I’ve not seen anything about it being done on devices yet (correct me if I’m wrong).

Are you sure about that?

I’ve read both articles and they both seem to say they are stopping production of Blu-rays, plus three other formats.

We will end production of all models of Blu-ray Disc media, MiniDiscs for recording, MD data for recording, and MiniDV cassettes as of February 2025

It mentions that consumer recordable Blu-rays were already dropped last year.

Mid-last year, the Japanese multinational conglomerate revealed that it would stop production of consumer-grade recordable Blu-ray discs (BD-RE and BD-R)

Still, this might just mean that Sony will no longer make games distributed via disc. Sony does not have a Monopoly on making Blu-ray discs, and I do not believe they can unilaterally decide that no more will be made by others

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_optical_disc_manufacturers

Regardless, it is a sign of the times, with Blu-ray reader production being recently stopped by LG. It’s likely all downhill from here, as much as I am sad to say.

I will resist this as much as possible, as I like owning my media. If you give me no means to own my movies, then I will find other ways to acquire them.

And for posterity by focus mode I meant that there’s a mode where you can manually control the focus of the camera, at least on my phone

Ah yes! It’s pretty cool that you have focus peaking too so you can see exactly where the focus is while you are dialing it in. Helpful for macro shots etc.

Sorry, I don’t actually know what you mean by “Focus mode”.

I doubt it’s technically FOSS given that it’s a mod of a proprietary camera app usually limited to the Pixel phone line. It is free though.

Yes and when viewing them, you can pan around with your phone or a VR headset like you were there!

If you’ve ever used Google Street View, it’s basically that.

Also, welcome to modded stuff. It’s sadly not always user friendly, and often requires further googling and reading to understand.

Despite this site’s best efforts to make recommendations (it’s a godsend given how many versions there are), I’ve still had to test a lot of different versions to find one that works well with my phone.

This link should help you find something for your phone model:

https://www.celsoazevedo.com/files/android/google-camera/links/

The Camera2 API was introduced in Android 5 in 2014 I believe. It was a big deal at the time. Most phones should support it.

I didn’t know Xperia phones made rooting easy. Are they any good nowadays? They’re obviously really small market-share-wise.

Agreed. Google really does have a reputation for killing good things.

The main reason I still buy them is that it is one of the only brands that makes it easy to root your phone. Used to buy OnePlus but they’ve kind of abandoned their enthusiast community quite a few years ago.

Until recently, I think you could do it with the Street View app, but apparently that has now been discontinued. Not sure what you can do now.