Prediction: Android will roll out a flow for “experienced users” that they promised in November with “in the coming months” (https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/11/android-de...), which will allow “experienced users to accept the risks of installing software that isn't verified”. And even then people will still complain Google is being too controlling by making the warnings too scary / the process too onerous, etc. (I don't expect installing apps from source via adb connected to laptop to go away!)
- From April 2025 there's https://blog.google/company-news/inside-google/around-the-gl... a blog post from a “VP, Government Affairs & Public Policy”, which mentions “people in Asia Pacific feel it acutely, having lost an estimated $688 billion in 2024” (I think this may be across all scams?) and ends with “Combatting evolving online fraud in Asia-Pacific is critical” after listing a bunch of random things (unrelated to Android) Google is/was doing. This suggests to me that Google was under some criticism/pressure from governments for enabling scams, and eager to say “see, we're doing something”.
> In early discussions about this initiative, we've been encouraged by the supportive initial feedback we've received. In Brazil, the Brazilian Federation of Banks (FEBRABAN) sees it as a “significant advancement in protecting users and encouraging accountability.” This support extends to governments as well, with Indonesia's Ministry of Communications and Digital Affairs praising it for providing a “balanced approach” that protects users while keeping Android open. Similarly, Thailand’s Ministry of Digital Economy and Society sees it as a “positive and proactive measure” that aligns with their national digital safety policies.
This shows that it was a negotiation with the governments/agencies in Brazil, Indonesia, Thailand that were breathing down on Google to do something.
- And the most recent https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/11/android-de... from November 2025 (which promised the “students and hobbyists” account type and the “experienced users” flow “in the coming months”) also has a “Why verification is important” section that mentions the “consistently acted to keep our ecosystem safe” and “common attack we track in Southeast Asia” and “While we have advanced safeguards and protections to detect and take down bad apps, without verification, bad actors can spin up new harmful apps instantly”.
The overall picture I get is less of “Google to suddenly abandon these iterative security improvements” but more like: under pressure from governments to stop scams, Google has been doing various things like the things you mentioned, and scammers have also been evolving and finding new ways to carry out scams at scale (like “impersonating developers”), and the latest upcoming change requiring developer verification on “certified Android devices” is simply the next step of the iteration. It sucks and feels like a wholesale lock-down, yes, but it does not seem a jarring disconnect from the previous steps in the progression of locking things down.
I remember when I was 6 or 7 teaching myself Applesoft BASIC and writing programs with funny (to me) little print statements all through them - when computing was just exploding with possibility.
I wouldn't have had a clue what a Fibonacci sequence was though ;)
The whole program is an Easter egg :) “sorry, he wasn’t born yet! try again” vs “no, he is already in heaven, try again”, and that cute goodbye routine.
> The symbol ∈ only is a viable solution in a portion of the use cases. For instance, an assertion such as O(n)⋅O(n) = O(n²) would not be correctly describable as O(n)⋅O(n) ∈ O(n²). Perhaps O(n)⋅O(n) ⊂ O(n²) would be defensible, but now one has to devote a non-trivial amount of thought into deciding which of the connectives =, ∈, ∋, ⊂, ⊃ to use in a given context. For instance the assertion “Since sin(y) = sin(x) + O(|y−x|), we have sin(x+O(1/n)) = sin(x) + O(1/n)” would now become “Since sin(y) ∈ sin(x) + O(|y−x|), we have sin(x+O(1/n)) ⊂ \sin(x) + O(1/n)”. Using the equality sign for all of these use cases instead is more intuitive and corresponds more closely to how the verb “is” (“to be”) is actually used in mathematical English.
and
> … Nevertheless most of us still often think in mereological terms rather than set-theoretic or first-order terms […] without requiring translation to set theory or first order logic; indeed, such a translation would only serve to slow that mathematician down as he or she would usually have translate it back into mereological form in order to wield it effectively. Because of this, I think it is worth adjusting our notational conventions to more closely align with our actual thought processes… I don’t see much advantage in interpreting each instance of the O() notation in the exponential type bound f(n) = O(\exp(O(nᴼ⁽¹⁾))) or the calculation (1 + O(1/n))ᴼ⁽ⁿ⁾ = \exp(O(1/n)⋅O(n)) = \exp(O(1)) = O(1) (for n sufficiently large), in terms of ideals.
Usually this means that the article is actually a book excerpt (often the first chapter of the book), and in this case we can find online the book's table of contents:
Preface
Introduction: Life as Testimony
1. Pecan Trees and the Roots of Stolen Botanical Knowledge
2. Sycamore Trees as a Path to Freedom
3. The Secret Lives of Willow Trees
4. Poplar Trees Bear Strange Fruit
5. The Sweeping Promise of Mulberry
6. A Haven for Community in Historic Oak Trees
7. Cotton Shrubs and Seeds of Subversion
8. The Gift of Apple Trees
Conclusion: Black Botanical Legacy Reclaimed
Usually the first chapter is self-contained, but in this case possibly there was some context about “Antoine’s innovation” in the Introduction that precedes the first chapter.
It's really short and would fit in a comment here, but quoting just some fun bits:
> A vertical organizer would have scooped this stuff up, and put it in a file to retrieve later. Had I done this, there would be a bare spot on my desk. These bare spots are the mark of vertical organizers. They are a dead give away.
> […] The fact is, I am a horizontal organizer. I like all the thing I am working on spread out on a surface in front of me, where they can beckon me to continue working on them. When I put something in a file, I never see it again. The problem isn't that I can't find it (although that has happened), but that I don't look. I am constitutionally incapable of opening a filing cabinet and fishing out a half-finished project to resume working on it.
Same, I already had a reMarkable tablet and got the reMarkable Paper Pro Move as an impulse purchase (ignoring its ridiculously high price) expecting to return it within the 50-day return window, but the fact that it fits in my pocket (or “most of my pockets”, as you said) has made a huge difference in how much I use it and how I spend my time. The sync is also nice (I think it works up to some limit even without a paid subscription, though it turned out I had one grandfathered in); I can basically send webpages I’m reading to it using the browser extension (at least on desktop). On mobile it’s a bit more annoying, but e.g. I’ve printed long newsletters from the Gmail to PDF (paper size A6) and imported the PDF onto it.
It’s perfectly adequate for writing on, but so far I’ve almost never used the fact that it has (a rudimentary set of) colours, though.
SSH in and you have access to basically everything. The stock setup has two partitions for the OS (it toggles between them when you update, or toggles back if it fails to boot a few times) so you can:
Last time I did it, I just did it manually - back up the OS version you want over ssh, then restore it whenever you want (on the non-active partition). And screwed it up the first time, and had to do a recovery: https://github.com/ddvk/remarkable2-recovery (requires using the contact pads on the spine for USB access - not too hard to solder up a pogo pin thing, but might take some time to get the parts).
So I'd recommend the automated way, though I haven't tried it yet :)
There's a (single) relatively active discord server if you want specific Q&As with other people too, or to double check whatever the current recommendations are (probably do that, as I'm somewhat out of date): https://discord.com/invite/nQ6nHwfDfc
And do definitely back up your data partition before making any major version movements tho, in case something doesn't work right and you need to roll back. I forget if/when that's necessary, but it's a good safety net just in case. And <8GB isn't much to store just in case.
Prediction: Android will roll out a flow for “experienced users” that they promised in November with “in the coming months” (https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2025/11/android-de...), which will allow “experienced users to accept the risks of installing software that isn't verified”. And even then people will still complain Google is being too controlling by making the warnings too scary / the process too onerous, etc. (I don't expect installing apps from source via adb connected to laptop to go away!)
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