'Coon Cave

Patrick’s blog about Android, apps and everything in betweent. May contain traces of rambling. Feedback and subscriptions welcome!
Wednesday, January 18, 2023

Raccoon 4.24.0

Feature release:

  • Added –gp-renew-gsfid commandline parameter.

The GSF ID is a supercookie that evolved from the Android ID, which was/is baked into the Android Framework itself. Originally, it was more or less guaranteed to be valid for life. Nowadays, it lives inside the Playstore app and may expire or become otherwise invalid. When that happens, Play forgets the associated hardware profile, resulting in empty search results.

Since not all causes for a breaking GSF ID are known, the new commandline argument just fixes the problem by simply registering a new GSF ID.

Friday, December 16, 2022

Twitter is no longer allowing you to link to your Mastodon profile? Let's bypass that!

A quick and dirty, err, I mean, fast and furious url forwarding service.

Thursday, November 24, 2022

Giving Mastodon another try

Maybe there's still hope for social media…

Wednesday, November 23, 2022

Raccoon 4.23.0

Bugfix release:

  • Some versions of Android have a bug that will cause the packagemanager commandline tool to crash on the device, when called with packed flags (“-rtd”). Raccoon did not catch that and reported a finished install, even though it was actually just a finished transfer. This bug only affects traditional, single APK apps. App bundles (“split APK”) are not affected as they require the pm command to be called with different parameters. Fix is to call the pm command with unpacked flags (“-r -t -d”).
Monday, November 21, 2022

So, why is it so bad to teach Google/Twitter/Facebook… which things interests you, when they use that data to find you more of those things?

Think about it this way: when you see something that enrages you, you are pretty likely to check it out. Click on it and the system learns that this is of interest to you. So in order to keep you engaged (make you see one more ad), you get more and more of the things you hate. The door you just heard slamming shut? That’s your mental health, leaving the building.

This whole “privacy does not matter, just pay with your data” nonsense is pretty much the reason why corporate social media platforms turned into the shitholes, they are.

Sunday, November 20, 2022

Drawing an idiotgram

A valuable skill, every engineer should master.

Saturday, November 19, 2022

A reader wants to know: why is FIDO(2) crap?

Passwords are inherently insecure, so we are told (not they aren't). It would be better to BUY into FIDO (no, it wouldn't).

Friday, November 18, 2022

My worst job offer ever

A blast from the past.

Thursday, November 17, 2022
Wednesday, November 16, 2022

I just had a revolutionary idea for a new social media site: no accounts, no moderation, everyone can just write what he wants, when he wants, but nobody can read anything. No bubbles, no drama, no fake news. I call it Shreddit.