danhakimi

why?

If you are willing and able to enter a partnership like Samsung, you can do it fully (including encryption support etc).

Samsung can interoperate. We cannot. We cannot enter into partnerships with Google. We are people, Samsung is a massive corporation. You understand the difference, right? Google will not let us access their servers. They’re not making it difficult, they’re not making it possible at all.

you don’t just need to support the protocol, you need a server to communicate with your client, and Google is not here to federate its RCS service with Bob’s summer Github project.

Matrix is the federated messaging network. It’s also end to end encrypted, although people have pointed out issues with server security and with metadata—which is why they’re working on peer to peer tech.

RCS is not similar to any federated technology at all. It’s operated exclusively by Google in the US and most other countries. The technology was created, from the ground up, for carriers. But even carriers couldn’t actually make it work in practice, so they asked Google to take over. It’s a fucking albatross. We, as a society, need to drop it.

Google is the exclusive RCS provider for all carriers in the US and many other countries. The desire for an AOSP android API is for developers to be able to write clients the way they do SMS clients, not to replace Google’s servers—that’s a pipe dream. IIRC, Google actually helped Samsung develop RCS support in their app. I’m not sure why it’s so difficult to implement.

It’s kind of open. It’s pretty much open for carriers to implement on the server side, and for OEMs to develop on the client side. There is an open source client in AOSP’s RCS Test App, but for one reason or another, as far as I know nobody’s attempted to implement it in an actual usable client app. I don’t believe there’s a server reference implementation. And, in the US, all the carriers’ RCS services are run exclusively by Google, so there’s no real point in attempting to set up your own server. Apple might be able to navigate the politics with carriers and with Google to make something work, if it wants to, but it’s really not a standard for us to play with.

Use Matrix Instead.

I disabled the Google App back when “Google Now” was still a thing. Remember when it would give you directions to get where you were going after you were already on your way? I’d be on the train, it’d tell me “oh, you wanna go somewhere? Get off the train, take a cab to the nearest train station, get on the train…”

They removed everything but sports score tracking, I kept using it for a while, and then I realized that I could just fucking use my browser for search, since that’s where I wanted to read search results anyway. And that’s what I did.

They’re going to keep doing this again and again, making their app worse and worse.

No idea why I would ever want the Google app back.

they will back a super narrow conception of “right to repair” that only hurts their competitors, but doesn’t inconvenience Google at all.

I found, ages ago, that I never used the google app for something I couldn’t do in my browser. Like, this was back in the days just after Google Now died—all the features that almost worked just got scrapped because they really didn’t work. It allowed me to keep up with one college sports team, but other than that, opening the app was just a slower version of opening up my firefox and searching there.

So that’s what I do now. I disabled the Google app, and I don’t miss it at all.

I disabled the google app years ago. I use my browser for search, and then when I get the results, the results actually show in my browser, and I don’t have to switch apps or anything to get to my browser.

Plus, I don’t have to look at the vestiges of all the features the app used to have, which now just feel like they’ve left the UI cluttered and pointless.

Plus, every time I open the app, I feel like I’m being spied on, because I am.

Plus, Google Assistant sucks ass. I don’t want AI to guess what I’m trying to search for, deterministic imperative searches are actually better.

it’s still going to be a distraction, especially if it’s the rare type of meeting you actually need to listen to or engage with.

There’s got to be a way to remove Hamas without killing everyone in Gaza. I hope the international community can come together to find a way. I definitely wouldn’t leave it to Israel lol.

Israel is going to try its best. Nobody else is going to touch this with a ten foot pole. Most of the international community isn’t even willing to condemn Hamas, let alone go in there and get rid of them. Israel literally calls them up in the buildings they’re going to bomb and says “please evacuate this building by this time!” You can’t make that shit up.

If Egypt or the UN wants to take care of Gaza after the war, and actually make sure they don’t get weapons, and actually de-radicalize them (current schools in Gaza are not great at deradicalization), you name it, I’m sure Israel would be on board with that. They didn’t blockade Gaza for fun, blockades are expensive. But burying the dead from the constant attacks of a Hamas with infinite weaponry is fucking worse.

Fun fact, Element / Matrix have had this covered for ages.

alright, well that seems to be working for now, thanks.

now to figure out how tf RSAF works…

Something about Obtainium sketches me out, is it really safe?

I installed it and got a note that it’s not compatible with the latest version of android… is it?

or f-droid… I’d love something like this, but I ain’t compiling shit from source for android, not nearly worth the hassle

I have a pixel 6. In addition to the occasional missed swipes in general, which are annoying and count for something compared to the 100% instant unlock rate I had with my rear scanner, I feel like if I’m not careful about the exact angle at which I tap my thumb, or the exact position where I center my thumb, it registers wrong. When I hold my phone naturally, my thumb is positioned wrong, it comes in a little too sideways to register. So after I get it wrong a couple of times, I need to carefully hold my phone in an awkward position or bend my thumb in a weird way to make sure I hit the exact right spot at the exact right angle. And then sometimes it’s still wrong, so I try to change the position and use a different finger. And with all that effort, I’ve still gotten locked out of my phone a couple of times.

None of that shit with the rear scanner, it just works, my phone is always unlocked before I see it.

the technology my device uses to communicate with services, including self-hosted services, is known as the internet. local area networks only work in the local area, which frustrates the purpose of a mobile phone—being mobile, and all.

both the server and the client must be connected to the internet to communicate with one another across significant distances.

you’re right, this is a textbook problem.

Why would I bother? Why would I want GPT-4 to attempt to explain a joke to me? I’m an adult.

If you care, if you think that’s a feature, you can go ahead and ask it to try to explain this, it’s a very simple joke, it wouldn’t be hard for a human without a sense of humor to explain, so certainly a half-cocked algorithm should be able to manage. But don’t bother telling me what happens, I couldn’t care less.

Many people tend to use their phones even when they’re not at home.