This is the app called Franco Kernel Manager, one of the best kernel managers that are out there… Even when it was outdated (which I think that’s the cause it got booted from the PlayStore?).

I used it to check the process of my phone and monitor the active and idle drain mostly, I paid for it a long time ago, but now it just fails to check the licence and it doesn’t let me use it fully… I think there must be a cracked APK over there…

EDIT:

Fortunately the app is back in the store and hopefully that update version comes soon enough!

  • @[email protected]
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    5058 months ago

    There are lots of reasons to pirate stuff, but this argument in particular boils down to “We should steal stuff now because maybe some day in the future I won’t be able to use the paid version after they go out of business.” And that is shitty.

    You bought it, so go crack it now that the license check is broken and nobody will care. That’s GOOD piracy. Support the creators, pirate when you can’t or it’s unreasonable to pay (more).

    Don’t just pirate to mitigate theoretical future inconvenience. Do it to circumvent actual inconvenience, or to get things you couldn’t otherwise afford, or to say “fuck you” to big, shitty companies.

    But pirating from a small-time dev just in case there are maybe license problems far in the future is not The Way

    • Gormadt
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      558 months ago

      Couldn’t agree more on it being a bad justification for piracy

      Though if you bought it and the license check stops working later I’m not even sure I’d call patching it to work without the check piracy, it’s simply fixing something you own

      Yeah you’re going to use the same tools but to me I don’t see it as piracy but simply a right to repair thing

      • @[email protected]
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        118 months ago

        Yeah, exactly. It’s the same reason I have little hesitance pirating a game I already have when the platform I have it on doesn’t support mods (looking at you, Xbox game pass)

        • wolfshadowheart
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          78 months ago

          In this regard it’s about the ability to pirate, which always comes down to the classic “it’s a service issue.”

          The need for pirating this software wouldn’t exist if the license check wasn’t broken, but since it is, it’s now the only way to access it regardless of your ownership or not.

        • @Klear
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          68 months ago

          Back in the day I would often “pirate” games I owned on a CD because ot was faster than finding said CD.

        • Gormadt
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          48 months ago

          Or when I lived in a place with shit internet and I had games that needed an online handshake to play, I basically pirated every game that needed that check because I wouldn’t be able to play otherwise

          And they usually ran better too, funny that

    • HurkieDrubman
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      368 months ago

      okay but if that’s your purpose then there’s no problem with purchasing and pirating at the same time.

      • @[email protected]
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        648 months ago

        Absolutely. I do that regularly. Purchase to support the creators, pirate to meet some specific use case.

        • HurkieDrubman
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          148 months ago

          like I’ve had more than one super good YouTube video essay go missing, getting permanently pulled because of some copyright issue with a background shot or something, so I’ll actually add really good YouTube videos to my Plex library just in case as well

          • @[email protected]
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            88 months ago

            Totally. Though, that case can be a tiny bit tricky. Like, people should be allowed to remove stuff from the Internet that they’ve created if they want, but it should also be okay to archive content that may be abandoned or lost. Hard to create rules that differentiate the two effectively for enforcement

            • HurkieDrubman
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              8 months ago

              the specific ones I’m talking about, they were removed by YouTube and not at the creators behest. like one of them is about the three stooges and whoever owns The Three stooges material complained about some copyrighted material in the background horse shit

              • @[email protected]
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                28 months ago

                Sure I’m just thinking about how you’d write a law or policy that accommodated both reasonable scenarios

                • HurkieDrubman
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                  58 months ago

                  well it’s a really interesting concept. there’s really no other form of media where you could put something out there and then recall it somehow. like if you wrote a book that you didn’t like, there’s absolutely no legal way you could prevent people from reading it, etc. sort of ties into the Barbra Streisand effect

            • @Mnemnosyne
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              18 months ago

              Like, people should be allowed to remove stuff from the Internet that they’ve created if they want,

              No, no they shouldn’t. This is antithetical to the generally good intention behind copyright.

              The point was not to allow people to take away things they have created, but to permit them to profit in order that they might choose to make more, and be able to support their life in a capitalist system. These intentions are largely good.

              Allowing people to take away what they have created is the opposite of this intent, and harmful to the public good, which benefits from as many works as possible being accessible to the public.

              • @[email protected]
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                28 months ago

                Playing devil’s advocate here, but is it truly a public good to have as many works as possible accessible to the public?

                What if misinformation outweighs real information in the aggregate?

                • @Mnemnosyne
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                  18 months ago

                  I’d say generally yes but maybe not in every instance. Consider it an overall principle rather than a hard no exceptions rule.

                  That said, copyright/creator control is not the correct tool to use to do so.

              • @[email protected]
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                18 months ago

                You misunderstand my meaning: they shouldn’t be able to go out and remove all copies of something in existence. But they should be able to limit distribution of the thing they created, up to and including stopping distribution.

                • @Mnemnosyne
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                  28 months ago

                  Why? How is it better for society and people overall if they have the power to do this?

                  Allowing the creators to profit is understandable and necessary in our current system, but what benefit is gained for the public by them being permitted to stop distribution altogether?

                  If there is a benefit to the public and society that I am not seeing, then ok, but ‘they created it so they should control it’ is harmful to the people at large, and that should be prioritized over a creator’s ego or desire for control.

          • kratoz29OP
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            18 months ago

            so I’ll actually add really good YouTube videos to my Plex library

            How do you achieve that, manually or automated?

    • @[email protected]
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      208 months ago

      I think if more people took that path, pirate only when you actually have a problem, much less content would be cracked and piratable.

      Imagine OP and someone who is capable of cracking a software both bought and used this app, then 3 years later the app stops working. OP goes to look for a crack, but one doesn’t exist because the person who would have made it happened to stop using it before they had a need to crack it. So now OP is just boned.

      So I say, always pirate everything and do so asap. And then obviously, if you want things to keep being produced, you should probably support the creators.

      • @[email protected]
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        108 months ago

        “I’m going to steal stuff because if I don’t then people who NEED to steal it won’t be able to” is some serious mental gymnastics.

        Your argument only works for creating cracks, not consuming them. Absolutely create cracks even when they aren’t needed. But that’s not the same as using the crack even when you don’t need to, just because you can

        • @[email protected]
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          28 months ago

          Idk if you meant to, but you came across really rude. Anyway…

          You’ve got a point about creating but not using the cracks, that does leave the question of when it’s ethical to release it. Immediately for those with region locks or whatever that prevents them from normally acquiring it? Wait till it’s no longer available anywhere? Try to region lock your crack?

          Also my comment was not advocating for stealing, it was advocating for ensuring your ownership rights asap after purchase.

    • kratoz29OP
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      98 months ago

      Yeah, I agree with you completely, indeed I just posted this as in a meme manner.

      I love FKM and I paid for it even when it was clear the app wasn’t going to be updated that much, I usually don’t feel any kind of remorse while pirating, but now this is justified and that is good too.

      Regardless this is a good reminder that this can happen anytime with any app or service, being a good or a bad one, having nice or asshole devs/teams behind, and for that piracy will always be a handy solution, I just wish that abandoned apps could somehow being open sourced automatically, but that is a dream.

    • @[email protected]
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      17 months ago

      I own many many hard books that I’ve purchased or had ordered from my local bookstores.

      I also have a kindle that I use every evening and have never paid for an ebook.

    • @[email protected]
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      -38 months ago

      When the only “valid source” for an app is an app store run by an advertising company that’s more then enough to justify it.

      • @[email protected]
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        8 months ago

        “Deprive small indie devs of revenue because advertisers would get a cut” is a bad take. Support small developers or don’t use their product. If a small dev chooses to use a platform you don’t like then don’t use their product.

        IMO piracy is only justified when it corrects for a problem. Doing it without consideration for who is being harmed isn’t cool.

        If taking $1 from Google also means taking $5 from a small dev, you’re doing more harm than good

        • @[email protected]
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          -17 months ago

          IMO piracy is only justified when it corrects for a problem

          and big tech mass surveillance isn’t a problem?

          • @[email protected]
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            27 months ago

            … You’re suggesting pirating a small dev’s app…to protest surveillance by the app store owner?

            That’s not how it works. If you don’t like the policies of the store, then ask the dev to put it on another store. If they refuse, don’t use their product because they suck.

            Choosing to limit your product to a shitty store is a developer choice. That gives you the right to not use their product, not the right to steal it. Otherwise, pay for it and then install a cracked version to remove the surveillance or whatever

  • @[email protected]
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    958 months ago

    OOPSIE WOOPSIE!! Uwu We made a fucky wucky!! A wittle fucko boingo! The code monkeys at our headquarters are working VEWY HAWD to fix this!

  • Ace! _SL/S
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    8 months ago

    You can crack most apps using Lucky Patcher

    Make sure you get it from the official website though

    • mtdyson_01
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      118 months ago

      Looks like the luckypatcher.com and .info are both terribly spammy. Even with pureapk the download ended up being something called bluejay. Of course the play store chimed in and said installing it would be a horrible idea. I assume I just picked 3 fake sites to download from

    • kratoz29OP
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      88 months ago

      Is that true? Most of the time I tried it didn’t work.

      It has only worked for me with an old game called Nimble Quest so far 😂

      • Ace! _SL/S
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        58 months ago

        Try different things in the selection dialogue before patching.

        If you have root you could install Modded Google Play in Lucky Patcher to automatically succeed License checks

        Mods also exist to crack apps, Mobilism is a good site but be careful what you download from whom

        • kratoz29OP
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          38 months ago

          Thanks, I’ll check that out :)

          Nice to see this app still strong.

      • Rustmilian
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        48 months ago

        It’s works, but it’s much more effective on a rooted device.

    • Gormadt
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      48 months ago

      TIL, I’m going to have to check this out later for sure

    • @[email protected]
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      28 months ago

      I’m having a hard time finding the actual lucky patcher. Was it at .com or .info or something else? Please help

        • Dave.
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          38 months ago

          Accessing that from my phone shows the actual site content for about 3 seconds and then an endless array of “popup and notification blocked messages” as well as the usual combination of “oh noes your PC has three dangerous viruses click here to resolve” type redirects.

          Is this just a cunning way to weed out the normies or can I expect the same kind of thing from their allegedly-excellent app? Because they’re not leaving a good impression right now.

          • @[email protected]
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            27 months ago

            Yeah, that IS the real one, it seems. It asks for random package name, and it immediately installed as an LSPosed module.

          • Ace! _SL/S
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            17 months ago

            The app is adfree and not spammy. Can’t talk about the Website though, I haven’t browsed the internet without good content blockers for the last decade

            • Dave.
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              17 months ago

              Chrome mobile put up a pretty good fight. I have been meaning to put Firefox + ublock on my phone, maybe I’ll stop being slack and finally do it today.

    • kratoz29OP
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      108 months ago

      This is an outdated app at beast, I think he wouldn’t care, I hope it resurged though.

    • blakeus12 [he/him]
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      58 months ago

      Uhm, we had an oopsie. Don’t downvote me! Our r/programmerhumor specialists are working on it. Thanks for the gold, kind stranger!

  • @[email protected]
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    37 months ago

    IMO if an app is pulled from Google Play their license verification should just return true.

    • kratoz29OP
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      27 months ago

      Yeah, I agree, gladly the app is back in the store… And it even got a very much needed update!

  • Kokesh
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    28 months ago

    Anyone actually know why it got booted from the PS? I thought it was a maintained app. My favorite kernel manager.

    • kratoz29OP
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      27 months ago

      I think because it has been a long time without any updates, hopefully somebody finds out if this is true.