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A comment on Malware on My Android Phone. Parent comment

Re:Malware on My Android Phone by crossroadsguy on Monday January 11, 2021 @12:46PM (#25732660)
As an iPhone user and an Android developer my lessons learnt, over the time, are:

1. Do not trust Google to vet the apps in the play store. They won't; they don't even try.

2. Those shiny Play Protect and whatnot postured around by Google are practically utter useless bs/bloat

3. Stick to famous, really famous apps from the Play Store - as in well known - e.g. Facebook, Netflix, Evernote etc (you will be tracked of course, you won't be hacked - you pay this price by using Googled Android anyway)

4. If you couldn't find a well known app on Play Store - head to https://www.f-droid.org

5. Do not, just do not download any other app on your phone (treat it as a no exception rule) unless you know what you are doing and possibly can look at the code - find something decent as an APK from GitHub et al.

6. Be very miserly when it comes to doling out permissions to apps. Your default should be "no".

7. Privacy (not really) and safety are just superficial polish by Google on Android OS - their core and only focus developing the OS is: making it as much of an ad platform as they can and on top of that how to get a bigger and bigger cut of the overall ad revenue with every release.

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Re:Malware on My Android Phone by ladyanita22 on Monday January 11, 2021 @01:04PM (#25732989)
You speak like if you were any kind of authority.

Nowadays anybody can be an Android developer, India is full of teenagers doing it.

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Re:Malware on My Android Phone by maxmalysh on Monday January 11, 2021 @01:24PM (#25733354)
http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html
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Re:Malware on My Android Phone by ladyanita22 on Monday January 11, 2021 @03:14PM (#25735826)
TL;DR
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Re:Malware on My Android Phone by Qub3d on Monday January 11, 2021 @03:56PM (#25736739)
The part of pg's comments that relates to your comments is this part:

"Saying that an author lacks the authority to write about a topic is a variant of ad hominem—and a particularly useless sort, because good ideas often come from outsiders. The question is whether the author is correct or not. If his lack of authority caused him to make mistakes, point those out. And if it didn't, it's not a problem."

But in general, Paul Graham isn't saying anything that is novel to this site's comment guidelines:

Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#comments

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Re:Malware on My Android Phone by craftinator on Tuesday January 12, 2021 @09:50AM (#25747599)
"Don't be a dick, because plenty of people are smarter than you, and even people who are not smarter than you can come up with really good ideas and perspectives."
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Re:Malware on My Android Phone by rxhernandez on Monday January 11, 2021 @02:22PM (#25734766)
I was a teenager doing Android Development in 2010. What difference does age make in this discussion?
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Re:Malware on My Android Phone by ladyanita22 on Monday January 11, 2021 @03:13PM (#25735816)
What I mean is that it's not a valid argument to establish the authority of the speaker.
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Re:Malware on My Android Phone by the_jeremy on Monday January 11, 2021 @03:43PM (#25736442)
Why isn't it? Teenagers in India can have authority on a subject and more experience in certain areas than I do.

I'm not taking their post completely on faith. It matches up with my previous experiences, including the article we're currently talking about and related articles I've read.

Is there a specific issue you have with their point, or did you just want to point out that they're not special for making apps?

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