Not sure where to start with an eyeroll? from a clueless Cloudflare boot-licker. Coming from a CF domain (another technofeudal fiefdom) there is probably no hope for you. But since there are at least 6 others equally clueless, I’ll go out on a limb and link the research in the off chance the extent of disclosure with Google’s Location service sinks in with someone:
http://web.archive.org/web/20250422153816/https://www.scss.tcd.ie/doug.leith/apple_google.pdf
If you can root your phone
Only certain phones. I tried several different hacks out in the wild for my version and they failed. It’s also an off-brand phone that gets no notice by any of the alternate OS projects so flashing is not an option either.
you can install whatever location mocking app from fdroid,
What exactly are you referring to? The stock AOS already supports mock locations. And I’ve used it. But not many apps are designed to make use of the mock location. I vaguely recall coming across an app that hacked the official GPS API to use the mock location in order to fool apps that are naive about mock locations, but of course that bit only works on rooted phones.
It’s a shit show all around. But in any case since not all phones are rootable, apps need to be written to specifically read the mock location feed as a GPS alternative.
Network based location is available via other ways, not just by the goog, if you install microg
I heard of microg before; looked into it, and went no further. I don’t recall what the problem was, but I vaguely recall that it still requires some kind of ties to Google.
(edit) MicroG is proposed as an alternative to playstore. I used to use Raccoon, a desktop app to fetch playstore junk. It still required a Google login to use Google’s API. The circumvention was to use a shared account. I imagine that’s also how microg must work. But I eventually decided Playstore garbage does not belong on my phone anyway. I will only use apps I can obtain outside of playstore.
or only its location part unifiednlp, you can get quick rough location from celltowers and even crowd sourced wifi based location, formerly collected by mozilla, nowadays by poziton.
If there is some way of getting that info using an unrooted phone that has been Google-neutered to the full unrooted extent, I would be interested. I could not remove most of the Google infra but I could disable it. I had it in my notes to check out Unified Network Location Provider and forgot about it. Thanks for the reminder.
My notes also mention this app, which only works on recent phones (not mine):
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.wigle.wigleandroid/
Not sure if that was the barrier that stopped me looking further.
In any case, there is still a role for old TomToms to play here. Using cell towers and wifi APs requires your navigation phone to have those radios powered on, which need energy.
I agree. But you have to start somewhere. The guideline has been converted into legislation in Belgium since last week.
Do you have more detail on what was implemented? I could only find this repairability index, which I suspect won’t be much more useful than energy indexes and nutrition indexes.
This is why I said at the local level. City council cannot change federal laws.
Also when people would dig through the piles they would often throw shit everywhere
The problem is that they are in piles to begin with. I have climbed on piles of appliance waste stacked ~5 meters high. These are not neat stacks but randomly dropped/tossed things which roll when you step on them. I fell once and got bruised but was lucky I did not get impaled. I’ve been kicked out of junk yards ½ dozen times.
The problem with the chain of disposal is the public tosses something out and the privately-operated metal recovery business immediately claims it as their property to be cashed in for its melt value. They immediately treat the incoming appliances as garbage. A middle step is missing. The middle step should not involve a massive pile of junk that is dangerous to climb. Large appliances should all be on the ground with space around them to inspect. The metal recovery business should not have a claim on the property before this middle step.
The EU has been grappling with right to repair laws for over 10 years now. It’s a complete shit show.
At the moment, a washing machine maker in the EU is only required to release repair documentation to professional repairers who are insured, not consumers. And they only have to do it in the 1st 10 years, not in the time period that things actually break. At the 10 year mark, they automatically lose the docs and stop making parts.
The law you reference is not yet in force AFAIK. But when it comes into force and each member state eventually legislates, look at what we are getting-- from your reference:
A European information form can be offered to consumers to help them assess and compare repair services (detailing the nature of the defect, price and duration of the repair). To make the repair process easier, a European online platform with national sections will be set up to help consumers easily find local repair shops, sellers of refurbished goods, buyers of defective items or community-led repair initiatives, such as repair cafes.
That’s crap. It’s fuck all. Consumers are not getting service manuals. They are just being told where they can go to get someone else to do the work. We can of course already find repair cafes because they publish their own location. But repairers at repair cafes are just winging it. You cannot bring them a large appliance like a washer. They don’t even have water and drain hookups. And even if one repair cafe made an exception for large appliances, their repairers are not insured and thus cannot legally get access to service manuals.
Everything at the state/fed/intl levels is a total shitshow. This is why I asked in the OP what can be done at the local level.
I should have linked the parent thread. Federal laws are a shit show. In the US, most states have paltry R2R protections typically only covering cars, wheel chairs, and farm equipment.
This is why I am collecting ideas for what we might petition LOCAL govs to do, like city councils.
I don’t think that is true. I never heard of a creativity test or measurement as a precondition to copyright protection. As I understand it, anything you write (regardless of artistic creativity) is automatically protected under an all rights reserved copyright unless you explicitly state otherwise.
The middleware app you link to says this:
I installed a similar FOSS middleware app (which apparently no longer exists):
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.broeuschmeul.android.gps.bluetooth.provider/
It worked as far as getting the fix via NMEA over bluetooth and sending the mock location to the kernel, but the problem is that OSMand and Organic Maps are not written to make use of it. What version of OSMand are you using? I am trapped on an old version because OSMand decided to leave those with pre-AOS7 devices in the dust. Maybe they added mock locations afterwards.