This is probably because “This app depends entirely on a certain instance of a network service” (cdn.comaps.app), and you have that hidden in your settings. So basically it has the download URL for maps hard-coded.

If it’s such an obstacle for social life, I’d just give in and make an account. Given the alternative is “exchanging phone numbers” (with the intent to text or call, presumably) I’d say Instagram is no worse privacy-wise - both offer absolutely no privacy protection. If a phone number is required to register (I don’t know if it is), I’d get a bootleg sim specifically for it. I would treat all communications on any proprietary platform (even 1-on-1) as though they are happening in public (Twitter-style). Avoid using apps if at all possible as they have more access to your device. If that’s not possible, at least do not give those apps any permissions, however hard they are trying to eek them out of you. Do not use it for anything but chatting with your acquaintances - merely looking at your feed, even without any explicit interactions like opening a post, gives Meta a lot of data about you.

If the connection moves on from “acquaintance” to “friendship”, perhaps try pushing them towards a better platform - I recommend Matrix as it is federated (unlike Signal), and has pretty nice clients/UX nowadays (unlike Tox and XMPP), and is e2e-encrypted (unlike almost everything else).

Yes, as I’ve said, this is just me getting old rather than any issue with the joke format :)

Capitalists now: “Here is your 26 megajoule cupcake!”

Capitalists a year later: “Here is your insulin subscription, only $299/month!”

No birthright citizenship in a country founded and inhabited almost entirely by immigrants, with no mandatory national ID? Yeah that’s gonna be a shitshow and a half.

Man, I’m getting old. I don’t understand why all jokes have to be fake twitter screenshots now.

Sorry, I’ve been a vegan for long enough that I don’t remember the names for all the animal bits, even in my native tongue let alone english :)

The really offensive part is having >2 liters of milk, per person, in a work fridge. What the fuck do you need so much for? I bet that fridge smells like a mix of spoiled milk and utter distrust for other human beings.

I think it’s a bit confusing, but in my view almost all socialists (including democratic socialists) are communists since the end goal they are trying to achieve is communism. Socialism (which can be described as welfare state, majority-publicly owned capital, and planned or market-socialist economy) is almost always seen as a stepping stone towards communism (stateless, classless, moneyless society), even though it is would also be an improvement on its own.

(to confuse matters even further, Lenin’s party was initially called Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, even though today’s understanding of social-democracy would only apply to the Menshevik wing).

Rental… application… fees?? You have to pay to even apply? WTF?

Hm, this is interesting - I am indeed “outdoorsy” and could only see “white and gold in shadow”. I think this might also be because of the highlight on the right suggesting that it’s daylight all around and the dress is in deep shadow, and the blue color is also highly reminiscent of “white cloth in deep shadow”. This XKCD helped me clear up the confusion and now if I squint I can see both color schemes:

https://xkcd.com/1492/

Yep, although I think StreetComplete does at least ask “how many levels in a building”, which allows for pretty good approximations most of the time

Install StreetComplete, open it, boom, a lot of easy things to do that will help some people out (especially with regards to opening hours, accessibility, addresses and such).

Once you want to do more advanced edits, install Every Door. It’s not as obvious what to do there, but it still highlights issues that need to be fixed and is relatively easy to operate; however, you will need to start looking at OpenStreetMap wiki to take full advantage of it.

Then you can move to more advanced editors, such as Vespucci on your phone (wouldn’t recommend doing everything from there), ID editor in your browser or JOSM as a proper app on your computer.

Actually, recently I learned that setting the tree species (or at least genus) can be very useful to some people: https://lemmy.ml/post/31772921

There’s no such thing as “fully mapped out”. Just open StreetComplete. If there are no tasks left, go ahead and map all the individual trees, or benches, or yield/stop signs, or all the buildings so that they appear good-looking on a 3d render.

Next time a consumer get stuck with a practically irreplaceable battery because it’s too expensive from a company, they will look at other companies selling equivalent products, AND how much they are charging for batteries.

No. Just look at the current phone market. The average consumer doesn’t care enough about repairs down the road, or at least it doesn’t affect their purchasing decisions, they are mostly driven by convenience and familiarity. If what you’re saying was true, everyone would be buying fairphones.

I also imagine a business of spare parts because just having to give the right data, e.g. specifications like cell, module, pack, C-rate, E-rate, SOC, DOD, voltage, capacity, energy, cycle life, but also connectors and just size, will probably open up dedicated spare part vendors.

Those specs are already widely available for many phones and in fact you can buy aftermarket 3rd-party batteries for most of them. The problem is that battery replacements are painful, require specialized equipment (at least a hotplate, suction cup, spudger for most phones) and skills (not breaking the screen/glass back, unglueing the battery without exploding it, then carefully glueing everything back together etc). This is what the law should be addressing first; if it were easy to replace batteries (like a 1-minute job instead of 30-minute job), you would see a lot more DYI replacements and probably way longer lasting phones on average.

GenAI image generation is OK at text for half a year now, hence thousands of sloppy/unimaginative comics in your feeds. Not sure this in particular is AI because the text is well-aligned and matches with the background, and in general everything is kind of coherent, but it possibly could be.

It means they can find out where it was purchased and by whom.

How? Do the e-waste centers keep track of the shit you take from there? Not where I live, they can sometimes give you stuff for free. Or you can just pick it up on ebay/craigslist/garage sale, that works too. Good luck tracking that.

All of them. Again, this is required by Android ToS.

I strongly doubt that because on my two last phones (OnePlus 5 & POCO M5) I didn’t have to log in to a Google account with the default ROM, there was an obvious “Skip” button in the lower left corner when prompted to log in. Can you point me towards that ToS or a screenshot of an unskippable “Sign in to Google” screen on a consumer smartphone?

That burner phone can still be traced back to you.

Depending on what that means, sure. Most likely scenario is that you get apprehended, can’t discard the phone for whatever reason, and the cops search it. In that case yeah sure it can be traced back to you.

If you are careful and only use it for (careful) photography and maps (as OP requested), then I feel like it can’t really be traced back to you if you discard it or give it to someone else etc, except maybe fingerprints and DNA (but cops likely won’t have the resources to do that for everyone in the entire protest). And for situations like this it a digital camera or a paper map could be traced all the same.

All “feature phones” are running some form of Android

I’m not talking about “feature phones”. Just a regular old midrange smartphone. E.g. the original Samsung Galaxy A-series.

That burner phone is likely going to require you to sign into a Google account with a phone number before it will do absolutely anything

Some of them will, sure. Check before buying (or just make a new Google account without linking it to a phone number - might require a VPN to somewhere else but doable). I’ve had plenty of smartphones where you can just skip it. You won’t have access to Google Play and such but that might be a bonus :)

Android requires this in their ToS

I’m too lazy to check but I highly doubt it - Google is not available in China at all and yet there are plenty of Android smartphones sold there. Also Android is mostly open-source and different vendors can and do build different versions of it.

As others said, you can reuse burner phones, and they can be really really cheap. You can get a 10-year-old midrange phone from an e-waste place for free or close to that, replace the battery (which tends to be much easier on old phones), and it will do everything you need just fine. I think it’s the sweet-spot between convenience (e.g. navigation is really useful if the crowd carries you to part of the city you don’t know, taking photos/videos, etc) and safety (even if you get caught, and are forced to unlock the phone, there’s virtually nothing on it that cops can rummage through). Just make sure to pre-download maps and other resources you may need (for maps on a cheap old device I would recommend this: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/app.comaps.fdroid), but don’t log in to any accounts. Unless you really need to communicate with others over the phone, keep the airplane mode on. If you’re savvy enough, while replacing the battery you can also physically disconnect the antennae from the modem too for extra peace of mind.

Oh, also, I don’t know about your country but in some places you can still get “anonymous” pre-paid SIMs from sellers in shady underpasses for cash. If you really must communicate with others via cellular/need mobile internet, that’s also an option to put in your burner phone. But once again, avoid logging in to any accounts or calling anyone you know unless absolutely necessary.