Conversation

Bryan Steele 🦋
@canadianbryan
Replying to
@RichFelker
I'm curious if that's a new point release, or some kind of out-of- band update. I some something concerning on their discourse forum suggesting that users need to re-enable the "Studies" system. I don't run Firefox anymore, but honestly the way they're handling this.. 🤦‍♀️
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Daniel Micay
@DanielMicay
Replying to
@canadianbryan
and
@RichFelker
They used the studies system to deploy a fix for this. It seems like they can deploy fairly arbitrary changes and code via the studies system. It's essentially an out-of-band update mechanism. I assume it's not part of Firefox on Android since it's against Play Store policy.
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Daniel Micay
@DanielMicay
Replying to
@DanielMicay
@canadianbryan
and
@RichFelker
Google doesn't actually bother enforcing those policies in practice, but they do forbid out-of-band updates / extensions to the code other than code running in an isolated virtual machine. So, for example, browser extensions are allowed, but only if they're properly sandboxed.
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Daniel Micay
@DanielMicay
Replying to
@DanielMicay
@canadianbryan
and
@RichFelker
I tried fruitlessly to convince the Termux developers to consider support for packages based on apks so that it would work with file system level w^x enforced via SELinux (removing execute / execute_no_trans for app_data_file). It's a good example of Google not enforcing this.
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