> this flow runs entirely through Google Play Services, not the Android OS. Google can change it, tighten it, or kill it at any time, with no OS update required and no consent needed.

I am curious: Can you opt-out with the device not connected to the network?

From the statement in the article it seems that may not be possible?

all appliances used to come with schematics and repair manuals, there was no prevention of modification or repair. We're talking cars, washing machines, dryers, radios etc.

Separate from computers and phones locking down devices is a much wider issue, usually it is only implemented to reduce liability of the manufacturer or to allow for planned obsolescence.

I think historically it has existed like this due to regulation regarding radio sending equipment and the integration between the platform (CPU) and modem in phones.

Due to this the equipment manufacturers where never incentivized to have a "open" ecosystem for the CPU+modem combo. That's why there is no OS war on a per device basis, most phones supports 1 OS officially.

Google approval policy may prevent that now or retroactively.

Adjusting the spark timing is more a right to repair issue. If you replace the screen of your phone with one of a working phone do you expect it to work or do you need the approval from a licensed apple technician?

A taxi is still a car but we use a different word to differentiate the mode of operation. The difference in language infers different usage of the same machine.

Therefore going by car is understood as something different then going by taxi. In relation to this issue, it's like you rented a car but you get a taxi instead (selected operator controls the vehicle instead of you). Most people would not be pleased.

The problem being that phone or tablet is understood to be similar to computer while really they are not. So perhaps a different term to highlight this difference is not strange or counter-productive. Do you call your "smart tv" a computer in daily conversation?

No worries Thomas Dohmke has you covered with his new project.

https://hackernews.hn/item?id=46961345

https://hackernews.hn/item?id=47712656

> X-Stat header that controls whether the server operates in enterprise mode.

Perhaps this header mentioned in the article is related, maybe that's the toggle for the enterprise mode? Seems there is at least traces of "enterprise mode" on the normal github servers.

There is no “the toggle”. Read the article. A GHES appliance (and github.com) is dozens of services working together, some of which act differently in ES mode, so there are toggles galore. But probably not a lot that can be toggled by user input :(

When reinventing markdown turns into recreating roff.

I feel like a lot of people don't know about the power of the roff suites and that it is installed by default on a lot of systems.

> Kidding aside, that kind of misses the point of either.

I agree, in my view markdown is good because it is simple, if you want to use a proper markup language use roff.

SDF is cool, I commend their efforts of keeping a pub unix going! To me it feels like a stronghold of the "old school" web, similar to certain builtin board systems.

I regularly visit and enjoy reading the phlogs of their members as well.

Indeed, more information here: https://developers.facebook.com/m/messaging-interoperability...

It seems Meta is able to set some rules about the interoperability making it very difficult for an FOSS implementation to emerge. Additionally organizations like Signal though technically interested in this interoperability have stated they won't lower their security standards for this.