pentae
Born on January 03, 2012•2571 Karma
So no, I don't think that's a small amount of risk, even if there's billions of Android users in the wild.
Especially considering how much money can be stolen from peoples bank accounts
67% of android users in 2025 did not get their banking credentials stolen.
> In Q2 2025, the number of attacks involving malware, adware, and unwanted software decreased compared to Q1.
https://securelist.com/malware-report-q2-2025-mobile-statist...
Windows XP had an audio recording app and most people didn't even have microphones. Now we have smartphones that don't have a way to record audio as a file or even write text notes built into the system, forcing you to use third-party tools that can be maliscious.
It is true that at certain points I have bought brand new Android phones that did not come with such basic utilities, including utilities that bargain priced feature phones were expected to have, like a sound recorder.
IIRC, the Droid Turbo 2 I got in 2016ish came with Android 2 and did not come with a sound recording app stock. It also did not have a file browser stock. This was a Flagship product. The flashlight was not included for long enough for the top ten app, a flashlight app, to be on a significant quantity of android phones and end up being a data harvesting operation.
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2013/12/...
Honestly, I do regret not having given them iPhones when they still had the cognitive ability to learn new user interfaces. iOS UI, on its most basic, default form, has remained stable except for cosmetic changes and the move away from the home button. Also UI is generally quite consistent between apps. Android on the other hand, keeps changing and varies wildly depending on the manufacturer and generation.
Now it's too late for them to learn new UI paradigms, so I'm stuck with near-vanilla Android flavours.
34-40% of Harvard students are white.
26% of Stanford students are white.
Yeah, sounds like a really valid conspiracy you have there
This website has ages 12 to 17 at 50%.
https://datacenter.aecf.org/data/tables/8446-child-populatio...
The Ocean Cleanup themselves have estimated at least 75% of ocean trash is from fishing boats, and from living on a remote tropical island myself, at least 90% of the things you find washed up on the beach appear to be from Chinese fishing vessels. (there's usually Chinese characters on the bottles and plastic)
Imagine how much more cost effective it would be for these NGO's to lobby (bribe) politicians and the UN to require all fishing vessels to bring back their trash to port to be weighed and processed, their nets counted.
They say theres about 10 rivers in the world that contribute the remainder of the ocean plastic, so if they can put these recovery systems on those next then we're half way towards solving the problem
There are NGOs working on legislation/lobbying fixes to the problem; eg Ocean Conservancy. But those changes will take a looooong time to get through the system. And regardless, there's already plastic in the oceans that will have to be cleaned up regardless, causing damage right now. So starting on the cleanup at the same time seems reasonable to me.
The ocean cleanup also funds various research initiatives -- like the numbers you mentioned -- which lobbyists can use to help change legislation.
They estimate that 75% of the ocean trash in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is from fishing boats.
It's not called a bribed, it's called a secondary financial incentive..
Obviously there is demand for them otherwise capitalist fast food chains would have eliminated them long ago to cut costs. I don't think it's hard to see why they are useful.
The most hilarious outcome of this is the paper straws at places like Starbucks.
Feeding you coffee from a plastic cup through a cancer causing paper straw served to you wrapped in plastic.
Ignoring morals to lower costs is so plainly obvious as a way to increase profits that it is almost an insult to insinuate that any one group of people didn't think of it themselves.
Accounting for your externalities is something you have learn, and there is no guarantee individuals or societies learn it.
Eight of them are in Asia: the Yangtze; Indus; Yellow; Hai He; Ganges; Pearl; Amur; Mekong; and two in Africa – the Nile and the Niger.
https://blog.education.nationalgeographic.org/2017/11/06/jus...