I’m beautiful and tough like a diamond…or beef jerky in a ball gown.

  • 115 Posts
  • 541 Comments
Joined 4 months ago
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Cake day: July 15th, 2025

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  • do GSI roms still contain google binaries (play store, play services, etc…) or is it similar to a AOSP rom where its just a bare android image

    Yes. That’s to say they can be either depending on how the ROM was built. All of the GSI ROM builders I’ve worked with usually have multiple releases of the same build with different configurations: root, no root, with Google services (often MicroG), without Google services, combinations of both, etc.

    To my understanding, GSI ROMs are basically just the “userland” portion of a full ROM. Basically they use the stock/existing kernel, drivers, etc but replace the rest of the system that runs on top of it. If memory serves, they’re possible due to Project Treble. Sadly, they still require an unlocked bootloader to install, so they’re not a total fix-all.

    They’re also very generic generic images (hence the “G” in the term). They’re not optimized for any specific device and can be hit-or-miss feature wise depending on the device. If you’re already reading about a specific device on XDA forums, then you’ll probably be able to see what works and what doesn’t.

    TL;DR: Running a GSI ROM is like upgrading to a newer Linux distro but without upgrading the kernel.












  • A database can be used to plug into any number of applications that run on top of it as well as be easily shared by multiple people and centrally backed up. Auditing, logging, and row and table level access controls, and other measures can be easily added.

    Excel files (or even MS Access files) as “databases” are often just people emailing around a file or accessing it from a shared drive. You end up with a split-brain situation at best and at worst you’re dealing with constant file corruption from multiple people thinking they can access it from a shared drive at the same time.

    Then you get vendor lock in and are forced to keep MS Office professional licenses because Shawn created some stupid Access “app” 10 years ago which is “THE DATABASE” and no one understands how it works.






  • I’m about that same age but am so glad we’ve largely abandoned the “www” for websites.

    On my personal project website, I have a custom listener setup to redirect people to “aarp.org” if they enter it with “www” instead of just the base domain.

    server {
        listen              443 ssl;
        http2		        on;
        server_name         www.mydomain.xyz;
    
        ssl_certificate     /etc/letsencrypt/live/mydomain.xyz/fullchain.pem;
        ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/mydomain.xyz/privkey.pem;
        ssl_dhparam         /etc/nginx/conf.d/tls/shared/dhparam.pem;
        ssl_protocols       TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3;
        ssl_session_cache   shared:SSL:10m;
        ssl_session_timeout 15m;
      
        ...
        
        location ~* {
          return 301 https://aarp.org/;
        }
    }