VideoLAN @videolan App Stores were a mistake. Currently, we cannot update VLC on Windows Store, and we cannot update VLC on Android Play Store, without reducing security or dropping a lot of users… For now, iOS App Store still allows us to ship for iOS9, but until when?

    • sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al
      543·
      9 months ago

      They’ve not updated it there either though. It seems to be less of a case of can’t update Android and more of a case of won’t update Android

      • deweydecibel@lemmy.worldEnglish
        63·
        9 months ago

        From their Twitter:

        If you wonder why we can’t update the VLC on Android version, it’s because Google refuses to let us update:

        • either we give them our private signing keys,
        • or we drop support for Android TV before API-30, and all our users on TV API<30 can’t get fixes.

        It’s not much, just dozens of millions of people use Android TV before Android-11…

        Maybe we should tell users to buy new TVs? #electronicWaste

        I can’t speak to why they’re not updating on FDroid but seeing as how it’s much more difficult to get people to use FDroid on Android TV, I don’t think it will help them with that issue anyway.

        • stoy@lemmy.zip
          89·
          9 months ago

          Google requiring their private signing key is insane, and goes completely against the concept of private/public keys.

          Why is Google asking for this?

      • bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
        461·
        9 months ago

        What exactly is the issue preventing them from updating the Android version?

        Also, if that’s the case, it sounds like “App stores were a mistake” is a bit misleading, since the particular app store isnt the problem.

        • sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al
          644·
          9 months ago

          Basically, modern app stores have changed how they work and now require the signing keys, VLC feel this is a bad thing and refuse to update. Banks are okay with it, but VLC feel more strongly than banks.

          • taladar@sh.itjust.works
            963·
            9 months ago

            Banks are okay with it, but VLC feel more strongly than banks.

            I mean banks are known for horrible security practices all around so that makes perfect sense.

                • gartheom@lemmy.world
                  10·
                  9 months ago

                  Setting a max password length is sometimes done to prevent ddos attacks. Without it, attackers could just spam 1MB passwords constantly and force the login server to just spend all its cpu time hashing garbage.

                  That being said, a password limit of under 20 characters probably just means they are just storing passwords in plaintext.

              • CaptainSpaceman@lemmy.world
                141·
                9 months ago

                Absolutely. They are entrenched in their regulations so much that it takes forever to change things.

                Years ago, I had an account at an american big4 bank with an 8 character password and was going through and making all my passwords unique. I was changing everything to random strings of 20-30 characters (this isnt the best practice, btw, but still better than 8chars), so when I get to this bank account it capped me at 15chars. I couldnt believe the forced low entropy they gave me for something as vital as a bank account.

                I asked them why, and basically they said their system would break with anything over 15chars.

                • Lojcs@lemm.ee
                  1·
                  9 months ago

                  The equivalent of a 20-30 character random password with numbers and characters is a 7-11 word passphrase. Seeing how passphrase generators default to 4-5 words (equivalent to 11-14 characters) what you did isn’t so bad

              • deweydecibel@lemmy.worldEnglish
                102·
                9 months ago

                Who do you think makes the decisions for a bank?

                The person writing the Android app?

                Or the person who just wants customers to be able to access the app and use the services?

                • soloner@lemmy.world
                  4·
                  9 months ago

                  Banks have laws and regulations that they must abide by to secure the access to and information of customer accounts. A security team will surely have to sign off on whatever the app developer or customer experience manager wants to implement.

          • Lojcs@lemm.ee
            18·
            9 months ago

            Isn’t that how fdroid worked for a long time?

            Edit: although it doesn’t make sense to me for play store to do the same without the source code available

            Edit 2:

            The reason is that they forced new apps AND apps for Android TV to use App Bundles https://developer.android.com/guide/app-bundle This type of release cannot be installed as it but can be used to generate the apk files. In order to do so, the Play Store has to sign on the fly.

            Not buying it. They could let the dev sign evey combination before uploading. They’ll be caching them anyways

          • flappy@lemm.ee
            6·
            9 months ago

            Uploading your signing keys sounds like Windows uploading your bitlocker keys

          • deweydecibel@lemmy.worldEnglish
            51·
            9 months ago

            Banks aren’t run by the people that develop the apps. They have no idea what a signing key is, they just want the app available and updated.

        • deweydecibel@lemmy.worldEnglish
          21·
          9 months ago

          In addition to the private key thing, the Play Store is requiring them to drop support for APIs older than API 30 unless they provide the key.

          Which in effect means VLC can no longer be updated on AndroidTVs running Android 11 or earlier.

          Which is millions of customers, according to VLC

      • TWeaK@lemm.eeEnglish
        101·
        9 months ago

        VLC don’t update on Fdroid, Fdroid compile all the apps on their repo (the one that comes with the app). Fdroid do some checks on the updated app before they compile it, so it’s always a little behind the main release.

        Edit: it could also be that VLC haven’t yet released the updated app (and in particular its source), so Fdroid have nothing to work with.

        • sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al
          21·
          9 months ago

          I just feel it doesn’t make sense to moan unless you have releases you’re unable to deploy.

          • TWeaK@lemm.eeEnglish
            21·
            9 months ago

            I agree, I mean it kind of sounds like they have something dodgy they’re about to put out but they’re playing silly buggers and trying to deflect the blame, else they would have released already and pointed to the lack of a store release as the stores’ problem.

            • sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al
              3·
              9 months ago

              I don’t even think it’s that. I think it’s simply a case of them becoming complacent and now they’re scrambling for excuses. VLC has stood still for a long time. Fan sub groups now recommend MPV on Windows and on Android VLC is showing its age. They speak of not wanting to abandon old users on legacy hardware, but what about old users on modern hardware who have been left feeling abandoned by how buggy the software is? When you dig into things, it doesn’t look like anyone is doing VLC full-time and alternative projects are more lucrative and that’s fine. Just say that. Even the other day, when they spoke of their new plans, once you got past the headline, all the plans were sane and made perfect sense, some more than others. I think they’re just a bit embarrassed.

                • sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al
                  3·
                  9 months ago

                  Ugh, I’m biased and so I don’t really want to answer but will try. According the VLC, the reason for them becoming so terrible as a media player is because they can’t update their app. Now as you and me can both clearly see, the latest version available is the version that is in the app store and on F-Droid. If they were crying about not being able to update and had a version or two that they were unable to upload, it would make sense. But nope, they have nothing beyond what they have. Add to that, if you look at their forums, lots of people have been raising issues. One very handsome man even posted this in October

                  VLC was once the best in class. Not only was it a great piece of legacy software, the Android team were so passionate that they took that reputation and all the expectations that go along with it and exceeded it.

                  But as time has gone on, it’s just started to languish. If you attempt to rewind a few too many times, the video freezes and you get audio. You can’t play a folder on a NAS without creating a playlist. You play a folder locally without VLC losing its place. Every time the screen goes off, it needs to scan the device anew. And despite being at the forefront of Holo Design and Material Design 1, it’s yet to implement Material You.

                  It feels like VLC for Android has been forgotten…

                  To which their response was to ask for logs, despite the fact that the issues can be reproduced on every device I’ve ever tried.

  • batman without ears@sh.itjust.works
    83·
    9 months ago

    Fdroid is the obvious answer me thinks. Anyway love you guys/gals at videolan still haven’t come across a piece of software that destroys every other in its field in every aspect.

    • TWeaK@lemm.eeEnglish
      11·
      9 months ago

      By the way, archive.is and archive.ph are Tor unfriendly.

      Not just Tor, they poison DNS queries from Cloudfare and Quad9, basically any DNS that doesn’t give them sufficient location information about the end user.

      • themoonisacheese@sh.itjust.works
        471·
        9 months ago

        Ok yeah it’s kind of funny but if you think about it for a second that ipad is perfectly functional. If apple doesn’t want to support it because it doesn’t make them money, then why can’t the community? Why does apple get to decide what is e-trash and what isn’t?

        The laptop I bought second hand in 2014 is still very much functionnal, and in fact it still runs. I’ll concede that it doesn’t run well, as it was already unpowered back then, but it runs some flavors of Linux oriented towards low-power devices, because people made them to do specifically this. If I had bought a second had ipad instead, it would be in a landfill by now. It didn’t even take any special actions on toshiba’s part to make it behave like this, they just made a laptop that was up to the standards of every other laptop at the time. What I’m getting at is that this isn’t a new idea, we know how to take care of our devices for longer already, were it not for the apples and googles telling us what we can’t and can do on the device we own.

        • sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al
          48·
          9 months ago

          I thought MissTake’s response was really good and covers pretty much everything

          “Thanks to Apple”?

          The original iPad was a 32 bit A8 single core CPU that topped out as 1Ghz and with 256MB Ram and used the ARMv7 instruction set.

          How do you expect a modern day OS with requirements to deal with real world sensors, and user requirements that didn’t exist back then, to run against that?

          The latest iPads have 2GB Ram, are 64 bit, run multiple cores and have embedded motion coprocessors and neural capabilities running a much later instruction set.

          Let’s be reasonable here - that device is now about to be 14 years old.

          And, if “the hardware works beautifully” how is it “pretty much a brick”?

          iPads are not the same as laptops or desktops. Sure, you can still run some Linux distros on older 32 bit hardware, but everyone who does knows of the limitations of doing so and realize that they lack the horsepower of modern day computers and use them accordingly.

            • themoonisacheese@sh.itjust.works
              4·
              9 months ago

              My thoughts exactly. It would be unreasonable to expect full support 14 years after it came out, and it would be unreasonable to expect modern apps to work flawlessly. But it’s not unreasonable to say that all the specs mentionned by the commenter can just be considered to all be 0 if the device cant run anything - not because it is physically incapable of it, but because we can’t even try.

            • sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al
              1·
              9 months ago

              From my understanding of the quoted text, that’s what the person is suggesting. That at a certain point, things shouldn’t any longer just work and users should be made to take responsibility.

      • 9488fcea02a9@sh.itjust.works
        203·
        9 months ago

        Its hilarious that apple is creating a bunch of ewaste for no good reaaon?

        My mom’s macbook is 14 years old and perfectly functional. So why doesnt it work (well) anymore?

        Apple doesnt provide updated root certificates anymore, so all https sitesare borked.

        • BolexForSoup@kbin.social
          117·
          9 months ago

          Name a company that gives security updates to 15 year old tablets.

          I wish they did, but this is hardly just an Apple problem. The only reason I bring this up is because people very quickly dunk on Apple without thinking about the fact that we need more access to all of our hardware in order to increase the longevity for those who want to.

          Frankly I find iPads work longer on average than most other tablets. Purely anecdotal though.

          The other elephant in the room is that most people don’t want to use 15 yr old tablets. I know I don’t want to edit video on 15 yr old desktops, even though they were perfectly capable of editing 15 years ago. But not current videos. Just like 15 year old tablets will not be able to readily stream or display a lot of modern content correctly.

          • admiralteal@kbin.social
            121·
            9 months ago

            Why does it have to be a company?

            Tons of old hardware continues to be useful to its owners just by virtue of being on open and maintainable platforms.

            But Apple continues to push harder and harder for planned obsolescence while claiming they support their devices better than the competition.

            Apple earns unique hate in this category because of how strenuously they fight against things like right to repair. Failing to support old products isn’t the end of the world but intentionally making it so that old products aren’t supportable is very bad and the Apple App Store is a major instrument for making sure old Apple devices stop being useful.

            • ares35@kbin.social
              23·
              9 months ago

              apple does ‘support’ their hw better, it’s just that it’s a pretty low bar to start with these days. they and their competitors could do better–much better, but zomg! someone has to think of the shareholders. they’re far more important than users or the planet.

              • admiralteal@kbin.social
                41·
                9 months ago

                Apple innovates in new and exciting ways to not support devices. They invent new antirepair technologies and have pioneered locked-in walled-garden app stores that prohibit users from doing what they want or need to keep their devices working.

                They don’t get to wear the white hat just because they do some shit well. They are the bad guy. And they could change posture pretty much immediately if they were at ALL serious about their devices having long-term support. They control basically their whole tech stack and could make it so their devices can continue to be maintained indefinitely even if they aren’t doing it. But control matters more to them than support.

                I really don’t think anyone should be giving them credit here, not even as a backhanded compliment.

              • metaldream@sopuli.xyz
                2·
                9 months ago

                They only support their hw better on phones and tablets. On a computer you’ll longer support from Windows or Linux LTS distros. I have a 13 year old laptop still running the latest version of Ubuntu

          • kindenough@kbin.social
            3·
            9 months ago

            My iPad2 can’t do internet anymore, or for instance used as a panel for home assistant webpage or client, but it’s perfectly fine as a homestudio controller and music / midi generator and that is what I still use it for. Battery is still great too. I got it about 13 years ago and I will be using it until it stops working. Looks as good as new too.

            I do have a recent iPad too, it’s for all the stuff I cannot do on the old one.

            • MachineFab812@discuss.tchncs.de
              2·
              9 months ago

              Almost any iPad works great as a second monitor as well, with minimal setup. I wish they could be easilly made to work like a Bamboo tablet for drawing purposes though.

          • 9488fcea02a9@sh.itjust.works
            41·
            9 months ago

            So the ending to the story which i didnt feel like typing out earlier was that i loaded debian on to the macbook and it runs 2x faster now with regular security updates…

            The vast majority of people will never edit a video. The vast majority would be perfectly happy doing 90% of their work in a browser on older hardware instead of chucking it in the bin

          • ares35@kbin.social
            31·
            9 months ago

            i do edit photos and video on a 15 year old desktop. yea, it’s not as fast. it even still only has mechanical hdd. it works. i really don’t give a shit how long it takes to encode. it can sw encode hd h264 in ‘real time’ (sw giving better quality output and at a smaller file size than the faster gpu encoding), that’s good enough for me. it does everything the much newer system i’ve been able to use recently at the office can do–it’s just slower at some things.

              • MachineFab812@discuss.tchncs.de
                2·
                9 months ago

                My 2007-era desktop was perfectly capable as an HD video editor and streaming server. Anything worth a shit in the Desktop space since round-about 2010 has been decent at on-the-fly transcoding as well.

                Your incredulity is astounding to me. The Xbox 360 and PS3 were both perfectly capable as streaming players, way back in 2006. The PC’s of that era were more powerful, not less, and avoiding emulation or discrete gpus are some of the main reasons those consoles used PowerPC. They wanted a more compact solution

  • idefix@sh.itjust.works
    597·
    9 months ago

    VLC is still on Twitter? I thought they would be quick to migrate to Mastodon, slightly disappointed.

    And thanks OP for linking outside of Twitter.

    • d-RLY?@lemmy.ml
      4·
      9 months ago

      Mastodon and other federated platforms are still confusing to normies and less ideologically-minded users. Aside from that, unless VLC starts hosting their own instance, it is hard to say if the particular one they decide to use will stick around. They can relocate by taking some extra steps of course. But they would likely care to put that effort into making VLC Player better instead of into social media. For now at least. X has been more or less the same for a long time (even with the past couple of years) for what they use it for. I am sure they would like to be on an open platform over propriety if that were the only difference. And nothing is stopping them from using both at the same time in order to reach as many people as possible.

  • Thann@lemmy.mlEnglish
    464·
    9 months ago

    and yet the fdroid version was updated last month!

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
      18·
      9 months ago

      I wish I was lost in dessert, but it’s better for my wasteline that I’m not.

      And good on VLC for standing up against this. This type of thing should absolutely be opt-in by the developer.

    • Artyom@lemm.ee
      47·
      9 months ago

      Google is forcing apps to have Google services handle private keys. VLC doesn’t think that’s a good policy for security (it’s not), so they’re refusing to adopt it. Whenever you sign in on an app with your fingerprint, the encryption/authentication is being handled by a different program and stored alongside all your other keys. This creates a single point of failure for all sign-ons on your phone.

    • TORFdot0@lemmy.worldEnglish
      141·
      9 months ago

      My guess is that their update won’t be approved unless they drop support for old OS versions

      • deweydecibel@lemmy.worldEnglish
        16·
        9 months ago

        Which is a problem given it’s a media player, and AndroidTVs still on Android 11 or earlier would be denied updates.

        • Em Adespoton@lemmy.ca
          4·
          9 months ago

          Is it a problem though? Old versions of VLC still work fine; I have it on my iPad 2 but haven’t updated it in over 5 years.

          Old hardware doesn’t have to worry about security updates because it’s already insecure. So unless VLC stops working, I don’t need updates. And it’s not like my iPad is capable of playing HEVC 4k HDR video anyway, so new codec support isn’t a problem.

          • Syn_Attck@lemmy.today
            4·
            9 months ago

            One of the quickest ways to pivot into a corporate intranet is via an old insecure networked printer that Shannon from HR brought in.

            Sure, maybe you don’t have anything worth stealing or leaking, but I bet getting hit with ransomware that encrypts every drive on the network and charges you $2,000 per drive to decrypt will put a damper on your day, month, or year.

            Hope you’re one of the 0.1% of people that actually keep regular backups.

            • Em Adespoton@lemmy.ca
              2·
              9 months ago

              My point though is that if you’re running the old device without appropriate lockdowns, it’s already leaking like a sieve. It’s been at least five years since the corporate perimeter has been considered more than a minor line of defense, specifically because there are so many pieces of equipment long out of security patch support (if they ever had it) that can’t be trusted.

              And ransomware actors don’t bother with the printer; they get in via phishing emails and misconfigured routers and remote access tools — because it’s too much work to target the printer when there are juicier targets.

              Although there’s been a recent push towards credential management compromise, and if you’ve got an iPad 2 connected to an Apple ID that also happens to include an iCloud keychain with your Exchange server credentials on it….

              • Syn_Attck@lemmy.today
                2·
                9 months ago

                My thinking was more along the lines of old vulnerabilities in VLC (specifically codecs/implementation) exploiting a set of the most commonly sold TVs, and spreading via torrents. If your malware group can target 6 models of the best selling 5 year old TVs and spread via torrents and then infecting video files, which spread over Windows networks and keep infecting video files, it could be a good few million device strong botnet.

                Seems more like something an APT actor would focus on because the effort:reward ratio isn’t there for most groups, and it would take a lot more effort than the MicroTik botnet or other compromised router nets.

                I’m hesitant to run any outdated network-connected devices on my (read: the one my personal devices use) network. The only older model device we have running is a brother printer but it still receives firmware updates, and it’s segmented so printing is never done directly from anyone’s device, it’s hooked up to an old laptop running a simple custom web server that accepts files and puts them in the printer queue, and tunneling and DNS are configured on the router, if someone needs to print, they go to [thenameoftheprinter].com in their browser and upload the file(s) and it prints. Devices without access to the guest network can print with Bluetooth, it just requires opening the laptop and pairing and manually printing.

                But that was born out of issues of compatibility with the printer running on the guest/kids network, and not wanting to plug it directly into the router or use the Brother apps more than “This printer is older, must not have direct network access.”

    • BolexForSoup@kbin.social
      49·
      9 months ago

      It’s a frustrated tweet not a hard hitting piece of journalism. Why is everyone here scrutinizing this so much? Do people hate VLC now or something?

  • shortwavesurfer@monero.townEnglish
    221·
    9 months ago

    I don’t think app stores are the problem. I think big company app stores are the problem, such as the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store. I think something like F-Droid where you can add your own app sources or Droid-ify that has a ton of sources by default you just need to enable is the way to go.

        • TWeaK@lemm.eeEnglish
          6·
          9 months ago

          That’s right. Fdroid the app is just a program that accesses repositories. It’s not even the only one, Aurora has a similar version of their own called Aurora Droid.

          Fdroid the repo is a repository of FOSS apps maintained by the Fdroid team with apps they’ve reviewed and compiled themselves, to provide an element of trust that you might not get from every random developer.

          There’s no fool proof way of handling app trust other than developing your own understanding of the code. Otherwise you have to trust someone. Fdroid seem pretty trustworthy, more than the big corporations, and more than many unknown small time developers - however you can get app updates quicker direct from the developer, through the Fdroid app, if you’re willing to trust them.

        • lengau@midwest.social
          31·
          9 months ago

          Theoretically yes, but in practice for the vast majority of users it makes no difference. Very few people are going to go through the trouble of vetting another source, adding it, etc. That’s what the tyranny of the default is all about.

        • photonic_sorcerer@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          1·
          9 months ago

          There’s plenty of examples of FOSS devs selling out to corps who dramatically change the apps they produced. Not saying that would happen to Fdroid, but ultimately, unless you yourself control the software and its updates, you can never be 100% sure.

  • GravitySpoiled@lemmy.mlEnglish
    9·
    9 months ago

    With Play App Signing, Google manages and protects your app’s signing key for you and uses it to sign optimized, distribution APKs that are generated from your app bundles

    You can use google’s play app signing. It’s not mandatory.

    • stoy@lemmy.zip
      11·
      9 months ago

      That is not better, it still means that the app is signed with a non private key, which goes against the very concept of the private/public key concept

      • GravitySpoiled@lemmy.mlEnglish
        3·
        9 months ago

        Thats what they complain about. They can use it. They dont have to. Yes its bad but they mix up a lot in one post.

        • BolexForSoup@kbin.social
          61·
          9 months ago

          An unacceptable option is not an option. This is like saying somebody has access to multiple Internet providers when one ISP is so slow as to be nearly unusable, but it technically exists and you can technically pay for it. That’s not really what we mean by “choice.”

          Your response is so typical and frustrating to be honest. It’s flippant nonsense where you know what we are talking about but you don’t want to agree so you hide behind lazy responses like the one you wrote.

        • stoy@lemmy.zip
          1·
          9 months ago

          Why do Google need the private key? I can only see it being used to modify apps without notice.

              • TWeaK@lemm.eeEnglish
                1·
                9 months ago

                Yes, but only because it’s Google. Fdroid do exactly the same thing in their repo.

                The idea behind it is sound, because otherwise you’re putting all your trust in the app developer. By having the store do some basic checks and compile the app the idea is they can guarantee no third party/bad actor has inserted malicious code.

                However, this being Google, they are the bad actor.

                • stoy@lemmy.zip
                  3·
                  9 months ago

                  No, that is wrong, the app developer signs the app with their private key, sends it to Google, google scans ans verifies the app, and add their signature with their own private key.

                  The app can thus be verified to have been built by a specific developer and verified by Google before publishing, without breaking trust

  • lemmyreader@lemmy.mlEnglish
    7·
    9 months ago

    I’ve scrolled through the F-Droid repositories in Droidify app and see that VLC does not have their own F-Droid repository ? They could create one, and set up mirrors for it, think of a way to cover the hosting costs, why not ? Making yourself depend on Apple and Google and saying that app stores were a mistake feels wrong.

  • haui@lemmy.giftedmc.com
    3·
    9 months ago

    Reading this I remembered that stupid apple is now forced to let us sideload on iphones. I just kicked off the ios update to enable it.