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…

oh fuuuuckkk

well, I’m on f-droid, so I guess my only issue is that I’m going to stop getting updates… but I’ll need a new gallery eventually, what are people switching to?

Edit: it seems fossify is forking smt:

https://github.com/FossifyOrg

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.

I don’t understand people who give a thread this kind of title. “Hey, help me with this thing—” generally, if you want help, you should say, right in the title, what you’re asking for help with. Your title was almost as long as your post itself and said nothing.

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.

Use Antennapod instead

I mean, they could enable automatic cloud backups (and I do mean enable, the solution is built into the system quite neatly and their automatic backups are already well-encrypted so they’re just being ridiculous about security theater instead of letting us have a very important feature). And they could stand to make the cross-device experience (much) better.

but mostly, I wish anybody I knew used it. I’m wondering what kind of circle you’re in where everybody started using signal.

Really? Are you a web developer? Reporter? The only people I know on Signal are a reporter, who hates using it but needs to for sources, and a friend from undergrad (a tech school) who… probably doesn’t use it anymore, I haven’t actually been in touch with her.

ooof. monkey’s paw, huh?

Yes. They’re quite reasonable, especially considering you don’t even need an account. https://tosdr.org/en/service/2201

It’s a Free Software product. They are owned by 8x8 which charges for its video solutions, but Jitsi is absolutely free and Free. https://www.8x8.com/products/plans-and-pricing

alright, to spell out the joke: nobody uses signal. I wouldn’t be able to pay my friends to install signal. there’s nobody to chat with.

how did you reach those numbers?

Ah, I figured there wouldn’t be too many FaceTime people in the android community, but here we are.

Isn’t that just Signal, though?

Not even close. It’s missing WhatsApp’s most important feature, which is the user base. I never understand why people don’t understand that.

Most people like the “Instagram but green” features

I have no idea what features you’re talking about.

I feel weird about using a proprietary matrix client, but it does look pretty and would be at least a marginal improvement over using whatsapp + facebook messenger… probably…

They just got rid of messenger lite, even though the main messenger app is a steaming turd.

Unless it’s facetime.

ah, I forgot about Signal since I don’t like to video chat alone.

When will companies learn that taking a 2D thing and making it 3D does not make it better?

A TV journalist I know helped shed some light on this.

He used to write about one article a week. Usually a review, sometimes an article article.

Nowadays, they have him write about seven “articles” a week, but six of them are SEO-optimized factoids. You know, those articles where you’re looking for the premiere date of a show, but they’re six sections long, the premiere date is the last section, and the first five sections look kind of like they were written by a human who hates his job? Yeah. They make actual journalists write those, and they want them written well, because Google’s idea of fixing the SEO race was to prioritize long articles and articles that look like they were written by humans.

So these articles are created by humans, they’re churned out fast, and they have a few sections represented by headers that directly answer common search terms / questions. The more common the question, the further the answer is buried down in the article.

These articles aren’t serious, so they expect you to get six of them done per week on top of your actual job, but they still want you to put effort in and write them well so they don’t look like chatgpt garbage, and so that, when people click on them, a fraction of a percent of those people actually stick around on the website and look at more ads.

I assume it doesn’t work for lemmy -> kbin or kbin -> lemmy?

lol, I’ve always kept my watch history “paused” and YouTube always recommends… the videos I’ve already seen. Great. Thanks.

Oh, nice! I really appreciate those rare occasions where Google makes my experience better.