Techy Geek

This one's infuriating. Google is retroactively locking down Android, a platform that was sold to you as open, letting you install whatever you want, from wherever you want. Now there's a supposed workaround to keep installing unverified apps, but it's a nine step process with a mandatory 24 hour wait built in, buried inside Google Play Services, meaning Google can change or kill that workaround entirely anytime it wants, without even pushing a system update. You bought this phone believing you controlled it. Now the company that sold it to you gets to decide, after the fact, how open your own device is allowed to be, and it can tighten that grip further whenever it feels like it. This is exactly the pattern we've seen with smart home devices getting bricked and apps getting killed overnight. You're not buying a device anymore, you're renting permission to use it on the manufacturer's terms. 🤬 🔗 https://www.techradar.com/phones/android/your-phone-is-about-to-stop-being-yours-anger-brewing-among-android-fans-as-major-google-app-change-draws-near #Android #Google #RightToRepair #ConsumerRights #TechNews

🎯💸 Ever notice you and a friend get charged different prices for the exact same item, same store, same time? That's surveillance pricing: companies using your personal data to figure out exactly how much you're willing to pay. Consumer Reports found people can be charged up to 23% more for identical purchases. Instacart already paid a $60 million judgment over deceptive practices, and regulators are now digging into how it uses AI to set different prices for different customers. 🔗 https://www.forbes.com/sites/pamdanziger/2026/02/03/algorithmic-and-surveillance-pricing-pushes-retail-into-legal-minefield/ #SurveillancePricing #BigTech #ConsumerRights #AI #Privacy

Apple's Photos app has been automatically scanning every face in your photo library since 2016, no consent, no toggle to turn it off, not just for you but for anyone who appears in your pictures, including minors. A federal judge already certified this as a class action covering 6.5 million Illinois residents, and damages could theoretically reach $32.5 billion. Apple's defense is that the data gets encrypted after it leaves your device, so they claim it's not a stored "biometric identifier," and that not even they can read it. I'm not buying that completely. Companies don't build features like this, with zero opt out and zero toggle, out of pure generosity. If there was truly nothing in it for them, there'd be an off switch. Call me skeptical, but "we can't see it" is a hell of a convenient thing to say about data you built the entire pipeline for. Facebook paid $650 million and Google paid $100 million for doing this exact thing to their users. That's not a coincidence, that's a pattern. 🔗 https://www.mlex.com/mlex/data-privacy-security/articles/2518846 #Apple #Privacy #BIPA #ConsumerRights #FacialRecognition

📱💸 Google's blaming "supply realities" for Pixel 11 price hikes ($899 rumored, up from $799), but Android Police says that's only half the story: mandatory Gemini Intelligence now requires 12GB+ RAM, killing off affordable 8GB devices like the Pixel 10a. Google can't cut prices while forcing AI bloat on every phone. 🔗 https://www.androidpolice.com/googles-price-hike-explanation-ignores-the-real-culprit-mandatory-ai-bloat/ #Android #GooglePixel #Tech #AI

🚁📦 DoorDash just got FAA approval to fly its own delivery drones. DoorDash Air is here. Paired with its sidewalk bot Dot (already rolling in Phoenix suburbs and Fremont, CA) and an AI system that decides bot vs. drone vs. human driver for every order, it's easy to see where this is headed: gig drivers may not stay in the loop for long. 🔗 https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/29/doordash-is-building-its-own-drone-delivery-business/ #DoorDash #Drones #Automation #GigEconomy #AI

🚨📸 This one's genuinely disturbing.🚨📸 Flock Safety's license plate cameras are in over 6,000 communities, marketed as a crime fighting tool. Turns out at least 50 police officers nationwide have been accused of using it to track women in their personal lives, no warrant needed, in 46 of those cases through Flock specifically. One Georgia police chief ran hundreds of searches on a woman's car over a year, then told her "don't worry I'm not tracking you or some weird stalker shit" when confronted. She said it herself: "He watched every single move I made." The system logs searches, but those logs are usually only checked after a complaint. There's no federal rule requiring a search be tied to an actual case, and policy is left up to roughly 18,000 individual agencies. A camera network sold as safety infrastructure is quietly enabling exactly the kind of surveillance it claimed to prevent. 🔗 https://www.techspot.com/news/113325-dozens-police-officers-accused-using-license-plate-cameras.html #Privacy #Surveillance #Flock #TechNews #Stalking

📢 Think about this for a second. You make monthly payments on a car. That same car is quietly recording your every move, exact location every 3 seconds, how hard you brake, how fast you accelerate, then selling it behind your back to LexisNexis and Verisk, who hand it to insurance companies. You're paying to own something that's being used to build a case against you, and you're not even in the room. Some drivers saw their premiums spike or got denied coverage outright, with zero explanation, because they had no idea their own car was reporting on them the whole time. GM did this to over 14 million vehicles. The FTC banned it for GM specifically, for 5 years. But there is still no federal law making this illegal everywhere, for everyone. Only 3 states have banned it outright. In the rest of the country, this is completely legal. You're financing your own surveillance, and unless you live in the right state, there's nothing stopping any other automaker from doing the exact same thing right now. 🔗 https://edge.intruvent.com/p/prevent-this-your-car-selling-your #GM #OnStar #PrivacyMatters #ConsumerRights #Surveillance