why?

I’d say the spiderverse movies are significantly better than the original trilogy.

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.

There is an RCS test app, we could theoretically modify that, but I guess nobody has for some reason. I don’t particularly want people to use it, Matrix makes so much more sense.

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.

“forbes sites” is basically just blogs

Smart TVs are the stupidest fucking things.

No TV manufacturer is actually willing to put processing power or networking features in a TV, and they’re never willing to spend money developing the software, so even new, they’re slow as shit, and you can no longer realistically use them for 10 years, they’ll go obsolete. A $35 external computer is more powerful and I’ve been using mine for a decade now without a problem. The interface is more straightforward. I don’t need to log into anything. I don’t need a special remote, I can just use my phone. The TV manufacturer can’t spy on me. There’s no microphone.

Dumb TV + Chromecast is just a thousand times better than a smart TV.

It’s weird how much better Chromecast was when it came out than it is now. Stronger hardware, sure, but no real antifeatures, you could set it up without installing the app, you could use the app without giving it location data, casting was way more straightforward…

What he does to Martin Starr’s character might have been the biggest issue. Classic shakedown, a little bit of useful business advice… Except it ends up getting him into trouble, both with the law and without. Starr’s life falls apart, and instead of saying fuck it and ratting on the guy who forced him into it and saving his own ass, he goes all in on the criminal conspiracy that only ever hurt him.

I liked it, but couldn’t bring myself to finish it once I realized that Sly’s character literally only ever hurt people. It felt like it was supposed to be “old man, set in his ways, criminal, doesn’t know how to live in this world, says the wrong thing, but has principles, does the right thing.”

But in the end it was just “old man, set in his ways, criminal, doesn’t know how to live in this world, says the wrong thing, but has principles, but he’s still an asshole and makes everything worse all the time, and of course he does, he’s a criminal and a jackass.”

It’s still fun to watch him go Mike Ehrmantrout on a situation, but Mike’s plans usually end well for the people he’s helping.

Koler was very pretty, but there’s no way to get back into a call once you switch out of it. This is really bad, partly because it makes it impossible to hang up without restarting your phone. Huge, glaring bug they never fixed.

I’m absolutely with you on Contacts.

I hate Google Photos for a number of reasons, I think my current app is just simple gallery.

I agree that opening up an RCS API would be great but I don’t think that’s what the original comment was getting at

I think the original comment was implying that nobody, anywhere, would be using a locked-down Google-controlled messaging client in 2023 if it wasn’t preinstalled on their phones as the main messaging app. This little reaction gimmick doesn’t mean anything towards the end of freeing people from backwards-ass proprietary messaging services that don’t respect our damn privacy or freedom, it’s just another monopoloid trap.

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.

Note, this doesn’t work with any other (hypothetical) RCS clients, this is not a part of the RCS standard, it’s a feature entirely proprietary to Google Messages.

oh, Microsoft got even better at spying on people?

come on, this is a bug, not a feature.