Long fermentation with little sourdough is making a come back in France (e.g the Respectus Panis thing) but I would think it's harder to apply to baguettes for professional bakers looking at how many they churn a day. That would be a lot of proofing bread to store.
This article makes it sound like a good thing, but bread made using the Chorleywood process is considered as ultra-processed food and studies shows that it can contribute to IBS.
IMO This invention has been bad for the UK, causing real bread to become an expensive, and hard to find in some places, specialty.
Brits will pop up like snails in the rain to defend this god awful bread. They'll explain to you for the 15th time that it was a necessity back in the day, or how it's cheaper or faster to make or whatever reason they come up with in the moment. Fellow Brits, we know this, it's ok, it's 2026 the ration times are over. It's time to move on or accept reality.
Right, but that is because it essentially was a necessity. Its fortification also aided in the developmental health of generations of children. Snark about it all you like; it was valuable.
People in fact don't eat dull white sliced bread in anything like the quantity they did. The majority of bread sold might be like that but we just eat less bread full stop.
But first, when you say "this godawful bread", what exactly do you mean? Chorleywood is a process, not an outcome. It's not just the template pre-sliced white/wholemeal/brown loaf thing from the three big brands. Quite a lot of bread you might think is not Chorleywood essentially is.
Go to even a larger French supermarket and buy a baguette, and that will very likely be a Chorleywood-based process. Much in-store-bakery bread is a modified Chorleywood process (if it is not, it is another similarly "ultra-processed" method, apparently called Activated Dough Development).
Most supermarket "sourdough type" bread, even some quite expensive stuff, is a modified Chorleywood process. Most ciabatta are.
I don't really eat "cut loaf" bread anymore for quite immediate health reasons — it invariably causes acid reflux and then skin irritation, so I gave it up a long time back. But I do still eat the odd part-baked bread roll and even some of those are Chorleywood process.
There is a good chance that if you're in a posh café you're still eating a Chorleywood-type bread. Because it is a way of making bread at scale; it is not a single product outcome.
> Most supermarket "sourdough type" bread, even some quite expensive stuff, is a modified Chorleywood process. Most ciabatta are.
I assume this is one reason why most supermarket "sourdough type" bread is, well, not good. (Sure, it's better than the cheapo sliced-white stuff. There's a lot of space between that and actually-good.)
I don't claim to know for sure that no bread made with Chorleywood-type processes is good. I am fairly sure, though, that no bread I've had that I have good reason to suspect was made that way has ever been much good.
(One specific complaint: It tends to have crumb that lacks elasticity. If you try to spread anything fairly thick on it -- soft cheese, say -- it tears and crumbles.If I do the same thing with one of my own loaves, the crumb flexes but doesn't tear or disintegrate. This isn't the only thing I find unsatisfactory about even supposedly fancy supermarket bread, but it's a thing I can describe fairly explicitly rather than just waving my hands and saying "well, it's just not good, you know?".)
> I don't claim to know for sure that no bread made with Chorleywood-type processes is good. I am fairly sure, though, that no bread I've had that I have good reason to suspect was made that way has ever been much good.
I want to say that I also find Chorleywood bread to be "noticeable" somehow, because it feels like it always is compared to my local artisan place, but I have realised this evening while reading about the other common accelerated process used here — ADD — on this impressive page:
… that it might be difficult to tell these two processes apart from each other meaningfully by taste. Whereas the difference from non-industrialised, slow-fermented bread is usually pretty obvious.
(FWIW I do still eat the supermarket sourdoughs along with part-baked things, because the artisan place is less convenient — though it has just started to offer a terrifyingly convenient delivery service -- but mainly I am doing this to slow down my bread consumption even further; ultimately I feel healthier if I eat less bread.)
It's slightly depressing how much better the everyday food is just some 300kms east of London (i.e. in France). I was shocked the first time I pitched up in a random Carrefour and saw that their basic food is an essentially unobtainable level of quality in the UK.
British food has come a long way over time, though there is still that subculture the rejoices in shite, or "proper" as they call it, food.
At least we can feel superior to the US on this front, who produce the worst bread I've ever eaten.
USian here, guilty as charged. Although I imagine it's the same as in the U.K. in terms of a lot of people who eat a lot of crap, while there are still plenty of people who know and appreciate good food, including baked goods. So, there is good bread here, but either you make it yourself or pay a premium.
I'd note that south or southeast would work, even southwest might. But East would clearly lead to the Netherlands. (they may also eat better bread there too, I wouldn't know)
One of the effects of the strike was that white sliced was in short supply and mangled people ended up with weird granary loaves etc as they were all that was left in the shelves. They liked them.
And from that day granary and seeded breads became a lot more popular over the bland spongy white sliced stuff.
I will say that whatever the failings of white sliced, I still prefer it to over-sweetened US bread.
I don't really understand this either. Mixer taps are just better, but I have separate taps in my bath tub despite the block of houses being built in the 2010s. Guess some people like the aesthetic.
Probably not in your bath, but in houses with water tanks at least one of the cold taps will be fed directly from the mains supply. If you are drinking it then you want it straight from the mains rather than from the tank in your loft that’s been sat there for a while and had all sorts of things falling into it
... Huh. So, these seem to have totally died out in Ireland, despite us changing the rules on mixers at about the same time as the UK did (Irish plumbing and electrical rules tend to follow UK ones). You'll see them in old installations, but more or less never in modern ones (even modern antique-stylised plumbing has anachronistic mixer taps). Hadn't realised that they were still a thing in the UK.
The reality is that the process is used all round the world these days (as covered in the article), not just in Britain, and its done that by being fast and cheap. It's also doubtful that it's any worse for you than American supermarket breads which are pumped full of sugar, emulsified oils etc etc.
Frankly all the pre-processed, plastic-wrapped supermarket loaves can get in the bin as far as I'm concerned, I buy sourdough from the local farmers market. But that's significantly more expensive and I recognise it's a position of privilege.
Harsh but true. It's the same phenomenon as defending the BS 1363 power plug that needed an embedded fuse because their domestic postwar electrical wiring was Not Great -- to save on copper.
Yeah BS 1363 is a really weird British standard to pick on, especially in a discussion about our food standards! Well engineered to actually stay in the socket, sockets have safety shutters as well as the earthing which other standards bizarrely lived without and it's not easily confused with a myriad of similar but incompatible standards. The fuse is a non-issue in practical use, and handy if your circuit is high current and your power cord isn't.
People who prefer plugs that are fun to step on are doing electrical interfaces wrong!
They're all horrid to step on, so that's not really worth discussing.
The US plug (NEMA 1-15P is the 2-prong version, or 5-15P for the most common 3-prong grounded) is actually pretty decent. They stay in sockets pretty well if the sockets aren't bottom-of-the-barrel garbage products which, sadly, many things in the US are in general.
What many people miss when comparing US and EU plugs are that they're actually doing fairly different jobs. The 120V mains in the US is significantly less trouble than the 240V in Europe, so you can get away with a lot less mechanically on the plug. The US NEMA 6-15P plug design (the 240V version of the standard plug) is, accordingly, kind of shit. But at least it's rare enough that receptacles tend to be of decent quality, which mitigates a lot. The locking versions (L5-15R etc) are actually quite good, and should almost always be used when possible and appropriate. They're good to 480V and even a bit beyond -- not just working but actually good -- and you can't say that about most EU plug designs. You guys have those horribly bulky pin-and-sleeve disasters and we get nice NEMA locking plugs for our three-phase.
One of the other things that European plugs have to deal with, and US plugs don't, is that European electricians have no idea how to separate hot and neutral wires and basically wire them up randomly. This has major consequences in a lot of product design and is really really annoying when you're trying to build something safe. (Namely: in the US you're often (but not always) not allowed to fuse neutral wires. That makes sense, for safety reasons. You have to fuse hot... but in Europe you don't know which one is hot, so you have to fuse them both. Which means you just fused neutral. Design conflict!) That shows up in the plugs, too; with no idea where hot is, you have to be more careful and can't use neutral to help you out.
British plugs are worse to step on, not because the pins are any worse to have jammed into your foot but because the design of the plugs means that if you leave one unplugged on the floor there's an excellent chance that it ends up in caltrop configuration with the pins pointing upward, whereas a US-style plug is (I think) more likely to end up with the pins pointing sideways where they're less likely to hurt your foot when you step on the plug.
But in all other respects the British mains plug design is really rather good. It does a good job of making partially-plugged-in plugs still safe, it's nice and robust, it readily stays firmly plugged in, etc.; US plugs are much worse in these respects and I think so are typical continental European ones.
BS 1363 isn't an EU plug though. Doesn't have issues with separation of hot and neutral wires (and does have a fuse for the hot wire built in) and nor is it specified with the idea that electrocution risk is no biggie or that not falling out of walls (a big issue with some Euro plug and socket combinations too) is up to the manufacturer. And having one type of plug for all regular home appliances in the UK and a different one for three phase feels like a more sensible split than the range of 2 and 3 pin options of varying quality and compatibility that CEE7 and NEMA present.
Fair point on BS 1363 not being EU, and about UK electricians not being incompetent (I actually didn't know they were careful unlike the continent -- that's just one of those things that once you have to deal with the insanity that is continental Europe, it doesn't really much matter what else is out there).
But my point about electrocution risk is that 240V is not twice as dangerous as 120V. It's actually much, much worse. And 480V is worse still. We used to say that screwing up 120V will hurt you, 240V will kill you, and 480V will kill you, start your corpse on fire, and blind everyone around you. So the design requirements for all 240V class plugs are much more important.
> not falling out of walls ... is up to the manufacturer
This one is a real problem in the US because there is a standard, it is a good standard, parts are made and tested to the standard, and standards-compliant parts work very well. But few people require the damn standard. If you want good receptacles in the US, get stuff that's marked "Federal Specification W-C-596 rated" (aka "Fed Spec"; "Spec Grade" is self-certified to... something... which is... not the same thing... but in practice the manufacturers seem not to abuse that term too much; often lower-volume part numbers seem only to be available as "Spec Grade" presumably due to testing cost). It will perform well.
As a Brit I will tell you that not all of us like this processed shit that passes for bread.
However the plug is actually a really good piece of engineering. There’s so many subtle design features to it that can be genuinely life saving. The only drawback is the often cited problem of stepping on one, to which I say “you shouldn’t be leaving plugs on the floor anyway. And it’s still better that than having kids electrocute themselves or your house burning”
The peak of British engineering was in the 1990s when I briefly lived there, and you could not buy small appliances with a plug attached. You got the bare wire, and you had to buy a separate plug, and connect it yourself at home.
Of course, any rational British person would instantly understand that the best way to ensure safety is to have every single person wiring up every single plug in their house.
Mostly I’m happy about that, but you can’t remove the plug from dead appliances anymore and keep it (along with the 48 other “spares”) now they are all moulded plastic.
AFAICT the two processing steps that have the most impact are the super fine milling that is used to create modern flour, and the removal of the bran from the flour. Those are likely the same whether you have Chorleywood bread or homemade 4 ingredient bread.
I suspect that Chorleywood bread made with stone ground whole wheat flour is better for you than home made four ingredient white bread. (with the caveat that Chorleywood probably doesn't work with such flour).
I cannot really think of worse bread than pret or that first picture garbage. It's just so horrible compared what I bake at home, but sure, you can keep it for 40 years and it'll still be the same. Apparently people value that over their colon health.
At the time, it was, it allowed the country to feed itself on (largely) its own wheat. They didn't know it could contribute to IBS, they did know there was national food security at stake. Beyond that it made cheaper, mass-produced bread more viable in a bunch of places. Historically, globally it's hard to see cheaper staple food as an entirely bad thing. Now we know the consequences perhaps it's time to rethink.
> causing real bread to become an expensive, and hard to find in some places, specialty.
How do you think it has it caused real bread to become expensive? Is it not more likely that real bread is more expensive to produce and therefore people buy the cheap shit?
> At the time, it was, it allowed the country to feed itself on (largely) its own wheat. They didn't know it could contribute to IBS, they did know there was national food security at stake. Beyond that it made cheaper, mass-produced bread more viable in a bunch of places. Historically, globally it's hard to see cheaper staple food as an entirely bad thing.
That's just not true. It allowed to industrials using british wheat to compete against industrials using canadian wheat. Another approach could have been to protect artisan baker instead of going all in with the industrialisation of food production.
> How do you think it has it caused real bread to become expensive? Is it not more likely that real bread is more expensive to produce and therefore people buy the cheap shit?
Because bakery are seen as a specialty, and do not sell high volumes. You just have to cross the channel to see that real bread doesn't need to be that expensive and small bakers can compete with industrials.
I wonder about bakeries too. When traveling in France and elsewhere in Europe, the uniformity of bakery bread has suggested to me that a lot of it is made from a mix.
It's right there in the article, in the postwar years the UK was reliant on imported Canadian and other wheats, the process allowed the UK to use its own wheat. "Artisan" bread was not a thing in the early 1960s, AFAICT at that point in time Britain had an extremely impoverished food sector.
> Because bakery are seen as a specialty, and do not sell high volumes. You just have to cross the channel to see that real bread doesn't need to be that expensive
France seems to be a bit of an outlier here AFAICT. But is 'real' bread even that expensive in the UK?
Look, you can get a 24hr sourdough loaf at Tesco for 2 quid - https://www.tesco.com/shop/en-GB/products/272914228 - or 3.75 for the 800g version. And you can tell it's not chorleywood because there's no Ascorbic acid or added oils. Real bread is available at any given supermarket if you want it.
If your real complaint is "Why don't we have France's bakery culture?" well I think that goes a lot deeper.
I have another suggestion which doesn't contradict yours.
When I was younger I used to get bored way more often. I had to wait regularly during a week (e.g. for a bus, friend, appointment) or even at work as a software dev (e.g. compilation which used to take more time).
This was also the case when doing some physical activities which didn't require lot of thoughts.
Back then, before mobile phones with internet access, you were either reading something or alone with your thoughts in those situations. This was when I had time to think back at things that happened, processing the information I had, refining ideas etc.
Nowdays those are often situations where we ingest more information like listening to podcast, reading stuff on the phone, etc... or situations that just doesn't exists anymore having optimised our work to remove those waiting points.
I personally find myself with clearer thoughts when I break those habits and give my brain some time to be bored again.
I do think there is "lack of boreness" epidemic leaving people with way more raw thoughts and way less time to process and challenge information, leading to some form of exhaustion and lack of clarity.
I have another suggestion which doesn't contradict yours:
This is only a small part of it (tech addiction 24/7 via phone); certainly there is something bigger at play, here (e.g: "the brain isn't the same anymore;" agreed).
I do not use email nor a cell phone (several years; outgoing landline, only), so I have more than enough time to ruminate (and read a few dozen books, annually) – and yet agree very much with OC's theory on needing mental health exercises to replace our newfound AGI tools/workers.
As an extremely conversive person (unbound by a cellphone), it's become an extremely strange world, particularly when talking with strangers, even in just the past two years. It's like: everybody is just mentally exhausted, mortal.
> It's like: everybody is just mentally exhausted, mortal.
Very much this. I think a lot of it is that the "slack" of our lives is being eliminated little bit by little bit to improve "productivity", and in so doing it is making life harder, mentally and physically, in ways that we don't really grasp because we're the frog being boiled. We are more "productive" and "efficient" than ever, but we're not happier or living better lives, and a lot of that I think is due to us eking out the last bit of gain for our work lives and leaving nothing left in the tank for when we aren't working.
This three day weekend, I only really felt like I could do things today, but now I have to go back to work tomorrow. Wouldn't it be great if I didn't need 2-3 days just to become a normal person again every time I don't have to work? Wouldn't it be great if I could use at least one day on the weekend every weekend to do something of personal interest rather than mental recovery in a fog?
My favorite full-time schedule was four-10s: ten hour days Monday-Tuesday, and again Thursday-Friday.
This MT_RF schedule meant I never had to work a "Wednesday", and my Tuesdays became additional "almost Fridays".
I would often take part-time gigs on Saturdays, because my problem isn't that I need several days off in a row... it's that I don't want to work more than three days in a row.
----
The only thing I lack in my self-induced retirement is healthcare (so a big thing for this American boo)... which within the decade might require me to work some minimal job just to get benefits – I dread this day enough to avoid the topic, furtherly.
Is Trader Joes still 28 hours/week [for bennies]? I can still sort grapes, friend-uh-ly.
At early-forties, I don't think I count as "young" anymore.
Definitely: growing up without a cell phone was beautiful. I still remember driving around semi-lost, using paper maps, quite fondly (I still print directions).
My last partner (eight years my junior) "grew up on her cellphone" and it was just remarkable how fucked her brain was... at least different from my own landlined-childhood POV (e.g: attention-span; need for constant contact).
----
And yet, my brain also enmushifies (lately: increasingly).
I’m a professional theoretical physicist in my 40s and I never thought the day would come that I would realize I became shit at mental math. I can do quantum physics in my head but don’t ask me to add 17 to 34
I've also noticed that I drive more slowly/defensively, if only because I need more time to react to all these other bad drivers =P
You won't catch me (nor any of my brilliant brothers) doing math without a calculator... and I got a SAT790Math way-back-when (do they still score that way? I missed one question, only; many of my brothers scored 750+).
It is questionable what is, at present day, considered young and old (and particularly during mid-forties), as life expectancy doubled last century from roughly ~40 to ~80 years. which makes everyone in their forties old by ... olden standards and mid-life at current ones.
if we get to live through the (forthcoming or already unfolding) singularity, there's a fair chance new life standards extend to 140-180 years*, with medicine, yoga, nootropics** and all.
I doubt that's the only factor, but I agree that it's almost certainly a factor. The modern "tech" industry has filled our waking hours with unceasing demands to do something. Buy this product, watch this video, listen to this podcast, react to this social media post; even "practice self-care" has somehow turned into an obligatory virtue-cultivating task. We obviously had advertising before, but this is a different beast, something akin to living in a casino.
As Bo Burnham put it, "apathy's a tragedy and boredom is a crime".
Definitely. Much of the structure of internet media encourages constant, passive consumption. Or, to use the terms of the grandparent, we move traded ambient thinking, reflection, and imagination, which the brain is pushed into during boredom, for ambient consumption.
I think a lot of people believe that, as long as they consume "high quality" or more intellectual content, the negative effects of constant consumption are mitigated, but I think that's false. It's less about the content and more about the structure and process. If you never give your brain moments to stop basic processing of wildly different inputs and to just critically examine them instead, you will suffer brain rot, even if the content you consume is "educational".
Yes. And I'd also add that so much of it is about context and intention.
If you intentionally sit down to enjoy some low-brow entertainment (Maybe a silly action movie or a mediocre rom-com) because you enjoy that, great.
But I recently realized that there are podcast episodes from 10 years ago that I still remember parts of, but few from recent years, even though I've listened to far more podcasts (and they haven't become less intellectual).
I too subscribe to theory that "being bored" was an important part of our day to day lives. I think it gave us time to basically decompress and "defragment" our minds, and that is also when a lot of novel ideas or clarifications would come to us. Now having 24/7 entertainment at the tips of our fingers is almost completely removing this extra time from us, and there is much less processing that actually happens.
I’m a champion of boredom. I really feel it’s a life skill. Personally, I do all kinds of things to create space for boredom. But really it’s my kids where I want them to experience some boredom and structure my parenting style somewhat around creating space for their boredom. On their own, they would never be bored a moment of their life. There’s too any screens and amounts of content available and my kids don’t even use the internet/SM, yet.
Walter Benjamin basically predicted this in The Storyteller (1936) — nearly a century before smartphones:
> "If sleep is the apogee of physical relaxation, boredom is the apogee of mental relaxation. Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience. A rustling in the leaves drives him away."
I will often experience something I call "feeling addled" when I haven't taken this kind of downtime for too long, usually after about two days. It presents as a difficulty in thinking clearly, a compulsion for easy dopamine, and feeling kind of like I've taken too much caffeine. It is disturbing to imagine that this is the constant default for many people now.
We can totally avoid (being conscious of) processing stuff during sleep too. Just take some SSRIs or smoke weed and you wake up in the next day. I think that that has more effect on people than people realize, dreaming is important but many people don’t experience that side of things any more.
I get the wildest dreams. Lately it's nonstop cardio in my dreams. It's been like this for weeks. It is not relaxing, I don't know why my sleeping self won't just rest. Instead I have to spend the night dancing or jumping from moving train cars like frogger, climbing to the tops of high places, or just straight up running at a sprint for hours.
This is my default experience. Falling asleep, then waking up an unknown amount of time later as if nothing happened. Maybe I don’t pay attention to my dreams
I don’t remember my dreams most nights and that’s always been the case. When I do it’s fairly disconnected and random vignettes without discernible meaning. So I’m missing one of the most important aspects of my life? I guess it’s possible but it’s hard to feel that way without having experienced profound dreams.
Sometimes the meaning doesn't come from you to the dream. It can be how you decide to act in the dream that will shape your subconscious and in turn have influence in your state when awake.
For example, if you have a nightmare and decide to attack the threat instead of trying to flee, then almost all fear evaporates from your subconscious.
This concept of lack of boreness along with mention of studies was covered in a book called The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter (2021) that made me think about it a lot since I came across it. Amazing to see someone organically mention their experience about something similar.
That seems less likely then people being tired and stressed from the costs of living and the increased economic instability.
We have smartphones but we're perilously few missed pay cheques away from not having a house, with a capital class gleefully telling everyone how they'll all be unemployable very soon.
It would be the greatest irony if failing to manage the economic fallout of the coming AI revolution had a larger negative impact than the benefit it brings
We might just run into the worst recession in history as the heavily skewed service economy quickly runs out of customers who can afford to pay for it
We're already several years into the worst economic depression in history. People aren't having children because they cannot afford a home. But it can get worse of course.
There's nothing extreme about my statement. People have just adapted themselves into extinction, which is what happens to you when you don't have children.
Food is cheap and plentiful, which is why people are still denying that it is the worst economic depression in history.
So you're saying the complete lack of evidence of economic depression is a mere distraction from the reality that the evidence is just hiding? Is the depression in the room with us now? Can I speak to it?
The collapsed birth rates is the evidence. The enormous disparity between worker productivity and worker compensation is the evidence. Economic recession doesn't always spell hunger, it can have other consequences.
But seeing the way you are talking, I think you will be uninterested in any and all evidence and more interested in blowing off steam on the internet.
Being bored, showering etc is well known to engage the DMN (Default Mode Network) where your brain connects pieces together from larger, more distant areas together. We as a society are missing this and its obvious.
I use Ardour on Linux when I have to and what is terrible is that to get acceptable latency and jitter I have to use the sound system at the ALSA level. This kills sound for any other app I happen to be running. Pipewire introduces too much latency for recording good live performances and getting jackd to run properly with Ardour is something I haven't had success with yet, though to be fair I want to record music and not futz around with some baroque sound system. Half the time after quitting Ardour I have to restart pipewire/wireplumber et al to get sound working properly again.
In contrast, on MacOS I plug in my USB sound interface, it appears in my DAW and I'm on my way. And yes, I am getting a Mac now.
It was a good amount of rain, but most of it just went straight to rivers as soil is really dry (think if try to get a dry sponge wet again, soil behave in a similar way). It helps but if there are no new rain episodes, water tables will stay low, soil dry in depth and most of the country in a complicated situation regarding water.
Yes, we certainly need to re-wood uplands in the UK, but we also need to make rivers meander, reintroduce marshes and let place live the Somerset levels flood
There are definitely trade offs with Fairphone but it's unfair (no pun intended) to compare them with a company like Google without mentioning their strong points.
Fairphone does focus on having a better social and environmental impact, this comes as part of the price. It does also focus on repairability which also comes as part of the price. If those are things you do not specifically value (which is fine), that definitely makes their products too expensive in comparison with other manufacturers. The support side could definitely be better but as a small company, I personally thinks it's okay.
I have a Fairphone 4 and I'm happy with it, it's fast, takes good pictures, and just works. It has great support in communities as well.
I was able to easily change a part of a Fairphone 3 (dead usb c port) and the experience there was just great, they really made repairs super easy.
They're fair points. I do respect their ethos and what they're trying to do, that's why I hope they have more success than they're having at the moment. I do want to give equal weight and time to that. But at the end of the day, I'm buying a modern phone, it needs to behave like a modern phone.
FWIW, my understanding is the FP6 seems to be notably less successful and "just works" compared to earlier models.
It isn't really slow. It takes average pictures, and sometimes loses them. It regularly does annoying little freezes and bugs.
The FP6 has average spec, average performance, more bugs than average, worse/slower support than average (at least on their own forums) and a higher price than average.
I believe fair stuff done right should be at least as good as average, and I'm fine to pay more than average for that. When I pay more than average and get less than average, and looking like they're ignoring/avoiding problems in their own forums, that feels as though someone isn't being very fair towards their customers.
More and more parts of the windows eco-system is now generated by AI and reviewed by AI, humans are only involved in testing (source is a familly member who works for microsoft). Not sure if it's the case for this app, but there might be no dev to blame here.
It depends of the operating system you install.
Fairphone by default comes with a pretty standard Android version with Google Play serices, so it will be impacted.
If you either buy a Fairphone from Murena (with /e/ OS) or from Iode (with Iode OS) or if you buy a standard one and install a version of Android without Google Play Services (like /e/ os or Iode), then you can still use FDroid.
reply