You definitely shouldn’t invest time in SMS. Without RCS (or some custom messaging protocol support), “texting apps” are pretty much a dead market.
RCS is both more secure and more user friendly than SMS can be by design. Once the iPhone gets RCS support in the coming months/years, this will be especially true.
If you message cross-platform from Android to iOS, and you can’t get everyone to agree upon a 3rd party app, then you’re kind of stuck with sms. This isn’t a problem that is going away in the near future. Apple relies on their locked messaging platform to influence their users into thinking iOS is the best. The users then pressure all of their friends to get iPhones too. It’s an effective strategy for them. Very few iPhone users seem to understand the games being played.
In fairness, even the author of the article you linked didn’t think that’d ever happen. I’m somewhat up to date on most general tech things and missed this announcement too (though to be honest I don’t follow Apple announcements anyway).
You’re right, I’ve updated my reply… Hopefully someday that will be a generic RCS feature not exclusive to Google and/or Apple and Google will work to make the E2EE work between their two systems.
Plenty of services still unfortunately rely on SMS for 2FA, so we’ll still need a client to receive them. Doesn’t really need to be able to send them though, I don’t think any human has sent an SMS message deliberately for about 12 years!
I don’t know anyone in Canada that isn’t a new Canadian that uses anything other than the default sms app on their phone. (FBM and Insta and what not don’t count in my example).
I don’t know about the underlying technology, but every client I’ve used for the past couple decades supported groups.
However, they absolutely sucked. There was no way to leave. Unless someone made a new group without you and everyone used that, you’d keep getting messages.
More seriously, in these cases, I often rely on emails instead. But I don’t really use group chats a lot (even with my contacts that are on Signal), nor send many files, so it’s not features I really miss. And SMS works with everyone, so it’s always my default if the contact isn’t on Signal.
Group chats work over SMS. I use cloud links for large files or just SMS/MMS for pictures and you just live with the low quality if texting with an iPhone user.
obtainuim looks really useful for keeping these updated, but is there a reason they aren’t just on f-droid? until now I thought that was considered the norm or standard for open source android apps
F-Droid either requires app developers to set up their own repository (and point users to them) or to follow the F-Droid repo rules (the F-Droid devs compile and sign your app, not you)
I’m happy with my version of simple messenger, I’ve not updated it for a while… Am I good to keep using that? Can you explain more what you mean by selling out?
The lead dev sold simplemobiletools to Zippo Apps (or whatever they’re called), a company known for buying apps and stuffing them full of ads, trackers and bullying people into buying subscriptions.
That news came a bit out of the blue, and while I understand why he sold it, the fact that he sold it to such a fuckface company that goes against everything his apps stood for is… yeah
I worked at a pharmacy and the only time it actually happened was when a patient tried to sell their Vicodin to an undercover cop outside the store. The cop came in and asked for the information about the prescription and we gave it to him.
Yeah, I didn’t say any of that but ok. HIPAA/employers actually require you to give law enforcement information in a variety of situations, including specifically the situation I mentioned:
To report PHI that the covered entity in good faith believes to be evidence of a crime that occurred on the covered entity’s premises (45 CFR 164.512(f)(5)).
Is that without a warrant? It wouldn’t be hard to impersonate a cop or even a cop with a grudge against someone to come find out what medications they are taking to dig further into someone’s lives and ruin said life.
Yes, without a warrant. It’s in the Privacy Notice in any retail pharmacy.
Impersonating a cop is a pretty big step that’s illegal in its own right but we did have moms trying to see if their adult daughter was on birth control, but that’s pretty easy to stop. Just lock their profile and ask the patient to make up a passcode or only deal with them in person.
It is crazy how in a country where everyone sues everyone all the time things like that happen. I had assumed that such a system would lead to a more robust system where every manager to ceo is vetting their business against these problems to not get sued. Apparently the liberal system of suing anyone all the time does not at all replaces a governmental body that defines strong consumer protection rights. Reading this, Turbotax and Wells Fargo News teaches me that a suing society is not cleansing itself from predatory behaviour.
Here is a list of the top 5 most litigious countries by capita: 1. Germany: 123.2/1,000 2. Sweden: 111.2/1,000 3. Israel: 96.8/1,000 4. Austria: 95.9/1,000 5. U.S.: 74.5/1,000. The Top 10 also includes the UK (64.4); Denmark (62.5); Hungary (52.4); Portugal (40.7); and France (40.3).
As you can see, the risk of lawsuits in the U.S. is less than in Germany, Sweden, Israel, and Austria, and not much greater than the other countries listed in the top 10. Simply stated, Americans are not as litigious as many believe. While the large verdict against McDonalds for serving hot coffee received enormous publicity, that judgment was significantly reduced on appeal and the plaintiff spent the left of her life being ridiculed.
For those of you who think you are using a local pharmacy, you might want to check whether or not they're owned by one of these. They buy out local pharmacies without obviously rebranding. And then they kill the store. At least, that's Rite Aid's MO.
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