Apps on F-Droid are not using proprietary Google APIs and won’t be affected.

The whole tech world saw Microsoft Palladium as a nightmare scenario, but was quiet ten years later when Apple and Google did the same thing to our phones. That was a mistake.

I understand why manufacturers did it; it bought them a bit more space.

I don’t. New phones are huge while older, much smaller ones somehow found room for the analog audio jack.

I’m relatively content with my Pixel 4A running LineageOS (with root), but that’s an experience that’s really only suited to very technical users, in large part because some apps actively resist running in an environment the device owner actually controls.

My complaint is with the smartphone ecosystem as a whole: it’s designed to empower the OS vendor and app developers over users. The entire tech world (outside Microsoft and maybe some corporate IT types) saw Microsoft Palladium as a nightmare scenario a couple decades ago. Now we’ve let Apple and Google do the same thing with barely a grumble out of the mainstream tech press.

I haven’t been following the RCS story closely. My impression is it’s a standard core on which each provider can tack on nonstandard extensions, and somehow carriers are involved even though it’s internet-based. It sounds like people who won’t adopt third-party internet messaging apps are going to continue to have a bad time.

computer scientists: we have invented a virtual dumbass who is constantly wrong

tech CEOs: let’s add it to every product

Borrowed from here

A quick image search finds this warning label on ammunition saying to store it in a cool, dry place.

That’s probably what everyone using Lemmy would prefer to do, but some people believe it would negatively impact their ability to stay in touch with friends or family.

So many people asking me to have my wife do something different on her end. Beloved, she is on iPhone because she doesn’t want to do anything “weird.”

Assuming using a third-party messaging app is “weird”, then she can’t send you video with acceptable quality. That’s how it is.

She can’t fix that. You can’t fix that. None of the readers here can fix that unless they work at Apple. This may improve in the future when Apple adopts RCS, but there’s a lot that real-world implementations of RCS do that isn’t in the standard, so the full details of interoperability are uncertain until we see it in the wild.

Now, why can’t I get iMessage on my android phone?

Because Apple doesn’t want you to. Apple wants situations like this one to pressure people to buy iPhones because that’s apparently easier for some people than agreeing on a messaging app.

Lemmy and Mastodon are partially interoperable. Mastodon users can post to Lemmy by tagging a community, and can reply to Lemmy posts. Mastodon users can follow Lemmy communities, but the UX is pretty rough. Lemmy users cannot follow Mastodon users.

I’d hope that’s not terribly hard when the people in question are married to each other.

RCS from what I can tell still has some significant limitations, like the version common on Android having some Google proprietary extensions it’s not clear if other vendors will fully support. I’d still recommend something like Signal to most people, though RCS improves the experience for those not using that.

SMS/MMS has really low file size limits, and iPhones may downscale a little more aggressively than required.

Just pick an internet based messaging service. I like Signal, but they all work.

I suspect bad faith any time a company doesn’t do it the Pixel way (dev settings and fastboot unlock).

HMD also doesn’t provide any mechanism for unlocking the bootloader

This is the part that’s inexcusable.

I immersed an H150 in salt water for 30 minutes. There was no decrease in battery voltage, no water ingress, and no effect on function.

Yes. It allows then to avoid ultimate responsibility for moderation policy decisions.

Threads users are much more likely to interact with other microblog software like Mastodon than with Lemmy. It might be possible to post from Threads to Lemmy now by tagging a community much like Mastodon, but I have never seen it done. Lemmy.world does not block threads.net.

You should not trust them.

I don’t think a Mastodon server attempting to attract a mainstream audience should block them though, at least not at this point. We have a chance to welcome millions of people who wouldn’t have even heard of the fediverse otherwise.

There are some loud voices in the fediverse who don’t want it to be very welcoming. Here are a couple examples:

Threads defederation - what could onboard people to the fediverse faster than a giant platform run by Facebook joining? Yes, I hate Facebook as much as everyone else here, but they’re making an offramp for their users and half the fediverse wants to close that off?

Overbearing enforcement of norms - yes, it’s good if people put alt text on their images and content warnings on stuff lots of people find upsetting. It’s harmful to hassle people about it until they leave.

I think people who a small network with strong social norms are better off on servers that are selective about what they federate with to ensure stricter adherence to the preferences of their users. One of the great things about federated systems is that users can pick a place that’s run in a way that works for them.