#root Android phone

[ueberdemnebelmeer]

@verginediferro tagged me to share 4 non-selfie photos, hiiii🥰

i often purge my camera roll and barely take pictures as it is but (clockwise): early morning half-hidden nebelmeer, first caspar david friedrich i've ever seen in person, ceiling of a shop in florence, late autumn twilight pic

i believe who i had in mind has already been tagged but, regardless, if you see this take it as an invitation to do the same 🫶🫰🏻

[abracadaze]

society if you were able to preview updates for apps/operating systems before downloading them to make sure they’re not dogshit. why yes i do have autism thank you for asking

[cheezyharu]

LANOTA IS FREE FOR 3 DAYS??? *rushes to appstore and downloads Lanota for the first time in 2 years*

[brambletakato]

would it be a fool's errand to try and rip descole's model from punipuni, because not gonna lie i am very curious about the sword and potential rigging differences (that might make him better to put in other stuff like vrchat) and it looks like they actually fixed his boa

[davepaste]

noo the modded discord mobile client I use died and now I have to use one with an edgy name. Rip Bunny

[mlembug]

On non-rooted Android phones you can install Firefox or Fennec F-Droid and use the uBlock Origin plugin and use it instead of Chrome or Chrome-derived browsers.

This, of course, works with the website only. I don't use the Tumblr mobile app so I can't help with blocking the ads there, nor I can help if you use iOS, as I never had an iPhone.

PSA

If you happen to stumble upon an ad that looks like this, DO NOT SCROLL DOWN.

The rest of the ad is a very tall GIF of strobing red light that can potentially cause seizures. You cannot scroll past this ad quickly enough to avoid seeing it.

There seems to be no way to report the ad, so the next best thing is to use an adblocker (if you haven’t already) or even stay off the mobile app.

Please reblog to help spread awareness.

[onemonitarsoftware]

ONEMONITAR: WhatsApp Spy App with GPS Tracking

Stay updated on the target's whereabouts with ONEMONITAR's WhatsApp Spy App featuring GPS tracking. Monitor real-time locations alongside WhatsApp activity.

Protect Your Loved Ones and Ensure Safety with ONEMONITAR– The Ultimate Monitoring Solution!

[wu-sisyphus-gang]

Ruby: At some point with these ads we will have to start playing the games ourselves instead of watching YouTube.

Jaune: There's ads on YouTube?

Ruby: ?

Jaune: I use Linux on my desktop and rip my music from the command line. My phone is a rooted android running calyxos operating system with an internal virtual machine where I do my banking. I use brave browser on all my devices which blocks ads and cookies. I use a vpn on all my devices and the YouTube app I use is a third party front end which gives me all the features of YouTube premium for free if I wanted but I donated a one time fee to their patreon.

[bauhausdog]

this may be an unpopular opinion but software should be a lot, a looooooooooooooot more sustainable than it is right now, the drive for profit forces consumers to throw away old devices for new ones, this is so horribly wasteful it's offensive

have you tried it a custom windows version before? a windows pc that needs at least 25 gb could be in just plain 8gb, you need 8gb of ram at least? a custom made windows could run under 1.5gb or so.

this is a world of difference for people from low income countries who have low end devices, its the difference from barely running software to a fully working machine

Remember jailbreak and rooting? the phone modding community is still going, there are multiple projects to run a customized version of android, people are even trying to put linux on it, there are even indie phone manufacturers now!!!!!!!!!!, you could buy right now a phone that is not from a big company, but why all of this? to get away from android/samsung/apple as much as possible and reclaim hardware as our own.

a lot of devices that reached end of commercial life is still going thanks to efforts like these.

If possible, please learn phone modding and get a bit tech savvy with custom os, maybe even give linux a try, learn how to install f droid and install super lightweight and privacy respecting apps, use firefox or similar to get an adblocker, the world of tech can be way way less resource and money intensive than you think

[regexkind]

I usually do not recommend apps because I hate things that look like advertisements, but I recently took a long journey down the road of "I want to backup an SMS conversation with tens of thousands of messages" and ran into so many roadblocks and pitfalls that I wanted to share the only thing that seems to have worked. I am also sort of hoping that people with more Android chops will say something like "oh you missed officially-supported option XYZ" or something like that.

1. Google will backup your SMS but unless you pay for Google One, your MMS will be lost—so all the photos etc in the thread are gone.

2. Moreover what is in Google One will not be downloadable into a format that you control. The only option is to port to a new phone.

3. Moreover even if you use Google Takeout to try to download that archive from Google One, the result is busted and doesn't include said media.

4. Many of the other apps have a "free trial" that is so hampered that you cannot actually make a single archive.

5. The app I found will export a massive XML file to one of several filesharing services—Google Drive, Dropbox, and Onedrive—as well as a local backup that can presumably be ported over USB. The app has an associated web viewer, which has problems with loading all the videos and pictures in a long text chain, presumably because it is trying to cram the entire thing into the DOM. If you unselect loading those, you can "click to load" them afterwards, and this works, although it can cause the scrolling to get lost.

6. However, the fact that it's an XML file means you can do SAX parsing of it, even though there could be 100MB videos in the "data" attribute of some of the tags (!). I've already been experimenting with doing that—written a little parser that sends everything to an SQLite3 database.

7. The format of the dump seems to be. "smses" is the root tag pair, and within it are tags of type "sms" and "mms". "mms" can contain two children, "parts" and "addrs". A "parts" tag can contain multiple "part"s which contain the "meat" including the "data" attributes, which seems to be where all my pics and videos have gone. An "addrs" tag contains "addr"s that seem to be just participating conversationalists. There's a hell of a lot of metadata stored in the attributes, not all of which I have deciphered beyond the datatype of each field.

8. I think I want to actually do the whole SQLite3 song-and-dance and just dump pictures and videos to some static folders. Then you could write a small local webserver to deliver a properly scrollable and searchable version. But right now, having a backup that I can save to a USB or several is really comforting.

[t52b]

Heart Toy mayor update continuation

So now onto the other two parts

The album builder is used to build albums for the joi suite later the joi suite can only use the albums built here so its a pre requisite to build albums for later useI

mage Fetching from Image Boards: Fetch random images using tags from popular image boards: Danborou, R34, Realborou, The Great Image Board, and e621. Input your desired tags, separated by spaces, and press the button to fetch images. If the image cannot be found or if the HTTP request fails, an error will be displayed, and the fetch button must be pressed again to retry.

Invalid JSON Errors: If an invalid JSON error occurs, it typically means no image was found for the given tag on the selected site. Try fetching from another site or use a different tag. Album

Management: Create new albums by inputting an album name and saving images directly to them. If no album name is provided, images are saved to the root of the app's storage (counted as an album).

Image Selection from Local Storage: Pick images from your phone's local storage using the file picker. Save them directly to an album or create a new album.

Direct URL Saving: If you have the direct URL to an image, input it and save the image to your selected album. The process is easier on Windows, but somewhat difficult on Android. Album Deletion: Delete selected albums, but requires multiple clicks if the folder is not empty.

File Organization and Limitations: The app uses Android's file system for album management, which can involve some manual navigation (copying and pasting files into albums using the file picker). The app remembers the last location when accessing files via the file picker, making it easier to pick from specific folders. on pc this is much easier as the file explorer can access the persistent storage and copy images with control c control v

Joi Suite Feature List:

Interval Creation & Editing

Interval Object: Tempo: The tempo (beats per minute) for the interval.

BeatTightness: Controls how tight the beats feel, influencing the spacing between beats.

EndTempo: The tempo the interval will gradually reach by the end.

TempoAcceleration: How quickly the tempo changes during the interval.

BeatNumber: The number of beats within the interval.

SyncopalGalop: A setting that modifies the rhythm to alternate 1 and mltiple beat per metronome tick.

Duration: The length of time this interval will last.

Imageshiftperiod: The speed at which images will change during the interval.

Imagefadein: Controls how quickly images fade in.

EndPauseLength: The length of time the pause lasts at the end of the interval.

Interval Editor Window:Input fields for each of the interval parameters (Tempo, BeatTightness, EndTempo, etc.). Add Interval Button: Creates an interval based on the current input and adds it to the interval list. Suggest

Random Values Button: Generates random values for the parameters, which can then be added as a new interval. Range-Based Interval Creation: Enter two values for each and all parameter (in an "x-x" format) to generate random intervals within that range. Interval List: Displays all created intervals as cards.

Card Swap: You can swap the order of two intervals in the list by clicking on their cards.

Delete Last Interval: Removes the most recently added interval card from the list.

Sequence Creation & Management:

Sequence: The collection of intervals you’ve created. You can give it a name, save it, load it, or delete it. Once you’re happy with your sequence, you can start it by pressing the Start Button.

Sequence Start: The interface allows for fullscreen mode once the sequence starts. A small blinker will appear in the bottom right corner, showing the current BPM. The color of the blinker changes based on the rhythm:

Green: Downstroke

Red: Upstroke

Black: after-stroke pause

Inter-Sequence Notifications: before each interval ends, a 5-second message will fade in, showing the tempo, tightness, and beat pattern of the next sequence. If there’s an intermittent pause, the screen will fade to black, and text will instruct the user to breathe, relax, and wait for the pause duration.

Image Display & Album Integration:During the intervals, images from the selected album will fade in. The image transition speed is controlled by the Imagefadein parameter. Images will shift at the speed defined by Imageshiftperiod.

Album Selection: You can change the selected album at any time during the sequence. The next image will fade in from the newly selected album once it’s changed.

Timing & Pause Features:

End Pause: At the end of the interval , a pause will occur. If the inteval has an end pause, the screen will fade to black and instruct the user to breathe and wait. The countdown will guide the user through the pause.

Infinite Inteval: The last interval of the sequence will stretch infinitely until the user stops the sequence. Every 300 seconds (or configurable time), a warning will notify the user that the sequence is ongoing.

Overall User Experience:Interactive and rhythm-driven experience, combining beats, tempos, and visuals from the album. Ability to customize and randomize beats, tempos, and image transitions, creating a personalized rhythmic experience. Seamless transitions between intervals and a clean user interface that helps focus on the rhythm while enjoying the accompanying imagery. for a bit more detailed explanation consult the help menu in each section

Once Again i state that these parts can access adult image boards thus the app is now considered NSFW and ADULTS ONLY because of these additions

[dragon-in-a-fez]

Howdy, just read your post on adblocking via @stainlesssteellocust . Might you have any advice for removing all the pre-installed garbage apps that came on Android phones? Resources, etc is fine, thanks and you're doing good public service with all this advice!

apps that come preinstalled on a phone will either be "user" apps, which can be uninstalled normally, or "system" apps, which are intended to not be removable.

on recent versions of Android (starting with 14, I think?) you can "disable" system apps, which should freeze them and prevent them from running in the background. tbh I don't know if this applies to all phones - it might be something manufacturers can switch off if they want, so this advice might only apply to certain brands.

removing entirely will require rooting your device. after that it's pretty easy - and comes with the big caveat of "don't remove anything you're not 100% sure your phone can run without".

[iwonderwh0]

The thing about cybersecurity within the context of dbh is that it is entirely possible that a significant percentage of things androids don't even need to "hack" as security measures in place of existing devices are made to stop humans from hacking them. ANDROIDS, however, may be made to be able to interact and exchange data with those devices BY DEFAULT, especially if device's manufacturer is CyberLife or one if it's filials/partners (I think CyberLife as a mega corporation is like Nestle that owns like 20+ different sub-companies like Maggi, Purina, Nescafé, Lóreal, Garnier, Aqua Panna... just to name a few)

Especially considering how androids are this really closed-up system that wasn't made to be accessed like computers. Quite literally everything about their inner software and ways to manipulate it is probably extremely proprietary, so end-user has absolutely no way to see what exactly androids are exchanging with other devices or what is it they are processing at the moment and how. Thing is, the communication between an android and other devices probably is encrypted but like, between androids and devices, so humans can only detect the fact of some packets being exchanged but can't really see the content of any of it. After all, androids are likely made to be easily compatible with all those smart home suite, but because humans aren't actually granted admin/root rights to their androids, it's "secure" for androids (any CyberLife android for that matter) to communicate with all those devices without additional authorization because they are already seen as authorized. Even those people who deal with android support and maintenance are probably only granted a fraction of actual admin rights, for troubleshooting and things like that.

Back to androids smoothly communicating with other smart devices. Even if their network traffic is visible, it is possible to hide the fact of them communicating by making it look like androids are communicating with other "middle-man" devices that have access to an actual target. So, in plain terms it means that android can get access to, let's say your phone by communicating to your smart air-conditionair or something that (of course) has its own app on your phone and air-conditionair is allowed to send data to your phone. So it will look like android is exchanging data with air-conditionair and air-conditionair is exchanging data with your phone, but in reality it's this android communicating with your phone.

[onfirebyday]

#10 the android

(uh oh, just realised this was in draft for over a week)

oh god..... the haircut book..... 🤦‍♂️

wow this beginning. he gets super worked up about the Yeerks and how dreadful they are, then tries to super 'casually' drop in "btw my mum is infested"

"the theme song for dogs" perfect, no notes

um this guy gets out of his car to tell at a dog??? that's nuts (to use an animorphs-ism)

I love how completely unnerving it is when they see the gaps in Erek's hologram. Both the lack of smell and the glimpse through the hologram are really well described despite being sensory experiences that humans can't really experience

just looking him up in the phone book is so great (and also makes it pretty clear that the Yeerks wouldn't even have to try after finding one of them)

the Sharing being both a cool teen hangout and a place people do business networking is soooo bizarre. it's narratively neat to have this organisation covering both, but in reality it would make much more sense to be multiple associated organisations

it's so horrible that Jake has to just ignore him completely freaking out over the phone and seem normal while Tom's in the room

Marco starts putting Erek into a very specific box, as some kind of enemy spy who must be rooted out

his thoughts on rage and anger are really interesting (something that has to be felt and then gotten rid of) especially in contrast with how important it is to Rachel (a tool to be harnessed into a weapon, later a rush that she loses herself in to get through)

this audiobook narrator pronounced the O in opossum - America, explain!

continuation of Cassie's decision that Tobias has a right to be a hawk (but maybe not when there's cute babies...)

I love Ax super casually dropping the Z space mass situation, and how much it disturbs and sticks with Marco

Marco is quite susceptible to the instincts of a certain type of animal (spider shark snake)

ripping out of the bird and demorphing while falling (and bouncing 🤮) is so so so horrible. morphing isn't usually that gross to me, but this was yuuuuuck

the conversation with his dad where he learns exactly when his mother was infested is devastating, and so is him realising that his dad is considering ignoring her warning

I really really love that we find out that the Chee exist, and then immediately learn about the factions at play. k.a. really is great at alien civilizations

I didn't expect the book (and Marco) to really think that keeping the Yeerk captive is cruel. this is pretty clearly harming a living creature, which calls into question how the Chee's programming works

the yeerk's absolutely must communicate in their natural state. this is something that I am pretty unwilling to budge on, there's no way they developed civilization without communication.

they have an intense conversation on the pros and cons of helping the Chee, but the fact that some of the Chee want the to be able to choose isn't a named factor. they have the right to self determination, surely

I made a note on how the bugs could just fall down the vent, and then guess what happened?

all of them slowly realising the furnace issue and just having to say 'hope that doesn't happen'

and well. then is happens.

I love how the security in this room is just backwards engineered to be infiltrated by bats

I'm glad Marco was unconscious and didn't see the aftermath of Erek's fighting, because the reactions from everyone else is really impactful.

"do you think anything will come of it" like half your missions will come from the Chee

[andmaybegayer]

Finished Psalm for the Wild Built and it's mostly not a book? It's a lot of tone poetry describing a very particular kind of wild place. I don't mind this but it's also not trying hard enough! I have heard this shit before tell me something I don't know! You're a sci-fi author you are required to get weird with it.

This stands out in particular because there's a back half offhand line Against A Dark Background where they're hiking through real forest in a radioactive exclusion zone primarily occupied by Androids who split off from humanity to live long-lived lives of contemplation and restoration where one character explains to another that real forest is this complex layering of old and new growth with tangles of roots and undergrowth and variable canopy, unlike your tamed forest near the cities, and I was like this is basically a whole book of this. That and cosy.

To quote some discussion I was having with @thosearentcrimes following her scathing and pretty much right review of Too Like The Lightning:

A lot of sci-fi writing is very YA not in like, contents but in how much it seems to be built on inviting the reader to self-insert. That's why the authors obsess over world building so much.

I can feel myself going back to basically every sci-fi book and splitting it in half between the Actual Narrative And Themes Part and the Worldbuilding Exposition Segments. These are not necessairly Only Characters and Only Loredump but in a lot of books they are.

It's a short book. It doesn't go far enough with the politics! I can appreciate some truly out there visions of the future. This was pretty vanilla solarpunk! I think that had it really gone for it with the culture of the Pangans I would have been more invested in it in general but "ah we build little towns out of wood and we eat organic produce and have a small pantheon of gods who don't really matter" just isn't that weird. Shout out to Caesein buildings though points for protein based construction materials. Azlon towers...

It did get me thinking about Solarpunk in general and I think one of the things that rubs me the wrong way about it is that it feels like a way of living for the end of history. You recycle and rebuild but you don't change, because to change you might need to do something new. You can only reach Solarpunk once you have done the things you need to do to produce enough acceptable material and land and space and productivity and knowledge and technolgy.

(There's a line in the book about "A pocket computer, built to last a lifetime, as all computers are" and like come on. Ignoring computing power, do you remember the state of cellphone screens ten years ago. Just the glass has improved so much that modern phones can shrug off impacts that would shatter an early-mid 2010's smartphone. It was not possible to make a display both good and hardwearing until recently.)

This obviously isn't always true and also Solarpunk isn't a real ideology, but the world of Pslam does not seem to be changing. The ideology espoused is that work is valuable but that you should never have to do it. It briefly touches on the interesting idea that Civilization is a machine that keeps you away from fear and hunger and pain and suffering, hell, Dex is a monk of Small Comforts. To me from there you draw the line that there always has to be work done to build and maintain Civilization.

I guess you could put this down to Small Perspective in the book. Small Perspective stories aren't bad, but they feel like the kind of conversation you have with friends where the requirement to be consistent or logically sound isn't there because it's understood that what you're doing doesn't matter broadly.

[foone]

As the person I follow who does reverse engineering, do you have any suggestions for finding resources on reverse engineering Android apps?

Specifically, there's an app I'm playing with, where after seeing the structure of the "export as Markdown" output I want to know what the internal structure and representation of the data is. The end goal of understanding it is to be able to add certain kinds of data dynamically, rather than up front. That's certainly doable typing in raw markdown, but being able to do it "app style" would be more convenient.

The google Play Store entry does not mention any open source licenses, or looking for the source code and hopefully a git repo or something would have been my first step.

(I'll probably need to bang together a crappy app to do what I really want regardless, but maybe this app's data structure would be more convenient than doing so with markdown.)

So, android stuff:

First you need the APK. You can do some trickery with your phone to pull it over the ADB connection if you install the android SDK, but generally I just google "app name APK" and you'll find some greymarket site that'll give you a copy.

Secondly, APKs are just ZIP files (JAR files, technically, but JAR files are also just ZIP files!). Unzip them and you can find lots of interesting stuff, often.

For disassembling/decompiling them, my go-to program is jadx. It's a java decompiler that's been around a while and can natively open APK files and decompile them. There's some weirder new APKs that it can't handle (something to do with a newer bytecode revision, I think?) but I can't recall the details on how you handle those. Those are rare, in my experience. jadx is pretty good, but you'll occasionally find methods or entire classes that it just can't figure out, and it'll give you a bytecode dump. I don't yet have a good solution for those, other than "get good at reading JVM bytecode".

If you're dealing with games, another useful thing can be UABE and dotPeek. These are unity/C# tools, but you would be surprised how many android games (and non-games!) are actually unity under the hood.

Bluestacks can also be useful, because it'll let you run the app on your desktop and that can be handy for things like running WireShark to log all network traffic.

Speaking of logging, the other handy thing I've done is enabling android developer mode on my phone to get to one specific option: Bluetooth HCI snoop log.

Now, actually getting that log is tricky and varies from phone to phone, because for some reason manufacturers like to move it around, but it's one of the best ways to reverse engineer bluetooth communication stuff. You basically turn on the log and everything your phone does to communicate with your Smart Toothbrush or whatever will be logged to a file, then you can yank that file over and stuff it into Wireshark.

So... hopefully some of that is a helpful start? I've not done a huge amount of Android reversing so I'm not super familiar with the tools used, but these are the ones I've got on hand for when I do.

also sorry for all the horny robotgirl posters who saw "android reverse engineering" in the tags and thought this was gonna be about taking them apart with screwdrivers and rooting around in their insides. Not today!