The only thing that’s not obvious to me is that ??= doesn’t seem to invoke new Singleton() if it’s already defined, essentially short-circuiting. Otherwise I would have to look up the semantics of it if I were worried about that constructor having side effects or doing something heavy.

So let me buy a goddamn phone that I can install what I want in it. Again, I do not give a shit about any phone manufacturers that want to make a walled garden out of their Android installations. I agree, it’s perfect for the grandmas of the world. But Google is forcibly doing this to every goddamn phone, phone manufacturer, and Android enthusiast.

The only silver lining is that whenever Google decides that unregulated social media services like Lemmy are not family-safe I won’t have to listen to your malicious horseshit.

That’s twice that you’ve missed the point that everyone else is saying. Read it again:

without me nor the developer having to kiss the ring of Google or by extension the regulators (EU with Chat Control) that they are beholden to

Google is irreversibly designating themselves the sole arbiter of what apps can be freely installed in the formerly-open Android ecosystem. It’s the same as if they just one day decided that Chromium-based browsers would require sites have a signature from Google and Google alone. I honestly don’t give a shit if they did it just on Pixel devices, but they’re doing it to the phones of ALL manufacturers by looping it into Play services.

I just don’t understand: why the fuck are you so pussy-whipped by Google that you’re stanning their blatant power grabs?

Bruh, you’re trying to sanewash this of all things? Right now I can go to any third-party app store and click install on an app without me nor the developer having to kiss the ring of Google or by extension the regulators (EU with Chat Control) that they are beholden to.

After this I’ll have to fucking install Google’s SDK on my computer, manually download application files, and deploy them to my device over USB with CLI commands. I will never ever ever be able to get friends and family access to third-party applications after this change.

And fuck, man, there’s not even a guarantee this solution will last, either. Google promised they would allow on-device sideloading back when they started adding deeper and deeper settings restrictions on enabling sideloaded app support, their word means fuck-all and you know that.

Yeah, them being pissed at Russia and then backing the Middle Eastern equivalent of Russia is some serious cognitive dissonance shit