chaosharmonic

So the issue with RCS is that google just this last year made the move from their internal implementation of E2EE for RCS to the standard implementation based on MLS (now that the standard impl is actually viable).

They did this quietly in the background and most people didn't notice but in doing so they released new system/OS level services and started relying on those. And notably they did this rollout staggered such that only some people got it and some didn't which made everything way more confusing.

From this point on now that RCS is more or less all "standard" stuff now you shouldn't see any major breakages. The only situation where you might see one would be when android inevitably opens up RCS outside of the google services walled garden but even then you should be able to continue relying on the google services version until the non-google version is stable.

Is there anywhere public that there are writeups or roadmaps about this? I'm particularly curious about whether there will ever be an API for third-party clients.

What's left in terms of meaningful technical barriers, that would prevent this all from being baked into Android instead of requiring Play Services?

To the best of my knowledge Plex has never been open source. It's just easy to mix up because it's been using Kodi as a base the whole time.

something more established like Codeberg, or if f/loss, Forgejo or Gitea?

Codeberg's git hosting is a Forgejo instance, actually.

I acutally see the reduced burden that comes with actually sharing resources.

To extend the previous analogy: Valve didn't make desktop Linux viable on their own. A lot of it is owed to another self-interested actor -- Google -- through the reduced need for dedicated desktop apps (largely pushed by Chrome), and various enhancements to wireless and power management that were necessary to make it a viable mobile platform (directly benefiting Android/ChromeOS, but then spreading out to laptops and mobile devices in general, including handhelds like the Steam Deck).

You can see it on a smaller scale in ecosystems like Android -- where handset makers regularly contribute features from their UI skins upstream, so that they no longer need to spend engineering resources maintaining distinct versions of theming engines/notification badges/multiwindow/various other stuff.

On a related note this is an argument for open source models, not just open weights. I think a lot of the diminishing returns relate to the opaque nature of most models.

I don't think it needs to be framed purely as generosity. You just need a sufficiently self-interested actor that sees open ecosystems as a necessary part of reducing their own risk profile, relative to the alternative of complete reliance of a third-party business that can take an exorbitant cut and/or Sherlock them at any time.

Valve and SteamOS are a good example of what this idea looks like in practice. (Though they may also illustrate a third thing you need: a privately-run company, that has enough profit, and enough commitment from leadership to the company's vision, that they can make long-term bets without having to eventually bow to investors seeking short-term gains.)

Fair, I more so mean for digital releases.

Movies, on digital marketplaces, have had this kind of distinction for a lot longer than games have.

Not to defend this, just to further observe the different nature of their marketing -- games also haven't historically had similar "rent" options in the first place. Timed demos are a newer trend, demos in general have usually been smaller sections of the content, and they typically aren't something you're paying for.

It kinda feels cyclical, tbh. Bang-for-buck entrant that's friendly to modders shows up in the market, enthusiasts flock to it, it chases a bigger market as it grows, and then it eventually fades out as it loses what made it special in the first place -- assuming it even makes it that far.

I also think of Essential and Poco when this kind of thing comes up.

Notably, from their FAQ:

We’ve taken inspiration from other open-source projects that have taken a similar approach, including Wikimedia, Red Hat, Rust, Python Foundation, Apache, Mozilla, Linux, and Debian.

Yeah, I had significantly less apprehension about it myself on reading their docs, but thought it was still news XD

Yeah, I'm pretty sure these are all descendants of SnapDrop, but development or hosting or both seem to keep dying off the various forks every few years.

That one is, apparently, now owned by whoever also owns the zombie brand of LimeWire.

I'm aware these aren't mutually exclusive. To me, the bigger benefit of not integrating them is that I can just rotate in freshly charged batteries anytime they die, and don't have to care about being within proximity of a charger.

(I also find this important for gamepads, to the extent that I don't just opt to play wired.)

See, you also lose me at non-removable cables as a point of failure, for the same reason OP loses me at "toothbrush"

My XReal Beam Pro¹ has two USB-C ports: one for charging, one for Thunderbolt video output (both support data transfer IIRC).

I know what you're saying, but to be a little pedantic about it it's actually only USB 3.

(I wish there were mobile devices supporting USB4; it would bring them significantly closer to feature parity with larger devices.)

As much as it still pisses me off reading the Surface product head's comment that if you love USB-C then you love dongles -- while shipping a Mini DisplayPort connector -- I also think it's a waste that they didn't contribute their magnetic docking to the upstream spec.

We could have had a USB Type-M. (Or, alternatively, Type-F -- for "magnets, how do they work?")

See, I agree with this too. You wouldn't have to worry nearly as much about the random little things that are specific to just one device or another (IR blasters, the DAC on old LG phones, etc) if you could just plug in a second USB peripheral.

But what I'm more getting at is the other way around: that wireless headphones will already have USB-C for charging anyway. And that, particularly for larger ones (that have that port directly on the device, and not in a separate charging cradle), it really seems like a waste that more of them don't leverage that -- so that, again, you could use the headphones while you charge them.

I too am a USB-C maximalist, but with a handful of differences from OP:

- You lose me at "toothbrush." I don't want personal care items that have internal batteries at all, because they'll eventually die on me while the device itself (brush heads notwithstanding) is otherwise perfectly functional. I'd much rather keep rechargeable AA(A)s on hand for that kind of stuff. (I still haven't found a good electric razor for this purpose, though, and have actually just gone back to manual for the foreseeable future.)

- I don't think I could live off just one charging port, but would rather just ditch USB-A entirely.

- I'm using wired earbuds, with a standard headphone jack, but with the number of full-sized cans that are using USB-C in some way it baffles me that there aren't more or them (or any, that I've been able to find) that also support using it for audio input, so you you can play them while charging.

Then let them turn into SEGA.

libopus isn't even an outlier in using it for a media format specifically. See: everything coming out of the Alliance for Open Media

It also assumes the company still exists.

Adding to this: as much as I'm asking what smart glasses can do that a smartphone and tethered glasses can't, there's a second question here.

When the dumb display can also extend any other device you feel like, how is it more useful to have a dedicated set of frames with a dedicated operating system that you now have to care about?

I mean, I'm more than willing to take the reductive approach and just say that the purpose of a system is what it does.

But if we assume that it wasn't designed maliciously, we can look at this through another lens: FICO already existed at the time, so banks in particular would simply have no reason to bother calling around to all of your former creditors in the first place.

They would also probably need a third party agency just to find your former creditors.

I think the real question here is, how much of that can't you get with a device that just attaches to your phone via USB-C?

Yes. But to be clear, since "anyone" is vague: I specifically mean talking to hiring teams, about ex-colleagues who haven't given them permission to ask around in the first place.

Because the Fair Credit Reporting Act governs background checks. It isn't limited to money, or to scoring -- it covers any third party that reports data about you, for the sake of determining if you're eligible for anything from a loan to an apartment to a job. The language of it is broad enough that it doesn't just cover your spending and payment habits, but extends to your general habits, criminal history, personal character, and "mode of living."

I'm saying the behavior normalized by recruiters is a giant loophole in the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

Because when they proactively reach out to random individuals you worked with, to ask you for your views on them as a reference, without your consent, that is an exploit. It is a workaround. It is skirting the actual intentions of the thing, because its scope is limited to "agencies" -- which, no matter how broad that term might be, still ultimately means third party data collectors.

If something your boss said about you came up on a background check, you would have a right to know about it. But if someone on a hiring team goes behind your back to that same boss, for those same comments, that is widely accepted as fine and normal.

That's the part that's a real problem.

This does apply to third party background checks, and backdoor references in particular are just one giant loophole in the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

Eightfold AI is getting sued right now for acting as a credit reporting agency -- not just by scoring people, but by gathering data on them in the first place for the sake of reporting to employers.

If you ask a third party business to do run a background check, there are a bunch of responsibilities that triggers -- a right to view what's in the report, a right to know if it's being used against you, a right to dispute what's in it, and even to consent to it being pulled in the first place.

But if some recruiter or hiring manager goes directly to your former or current boss, behind your back, this is somehow not even taken seriously as a problem.

I'm not sure the incentive here is strong enough. For a specific profile they want, at $2500 for every 30 days, I could see businesses just paying that fine as an operational cost.

The incentive also exists, for the kinds of employers who would post ghost jobs, to also force in-person work again. You don't have to pay these fines to multiple states on one ghost job if the job is only available in one location.

I've landed on a similar hot take after one job offer got rescinded by a company that refused to give a reason, to anyone involved, and then wouldn't honor records requests. (But would send me a candidate survey.)

With any job, it would be one thing if it were at the applicant stage, and I hadn't talked to a person at any point. But with this one, there was an offer in front of me and there was no one at all who had both the capacity and the willingness to explain what had just happened.

If I started the job and they pulled this on day three, they would have to give a reason to an unemployment office.

I don't care how little inclination businesses have to tell the truth. Make them commit to the lie, in writing, somewhere that it actually costs something.

Most of my knowledge of new tools comes from newsletters, forums, and content creators. I find things through passive media consumption (and, where I can get it, discourse with other enthusiasts) more often than I find them in the course of trying to solve specific problems.

But not all managers think that your learning sources are valid, and care more that you spend time on their learning paths. Even if it's your off time.

(Yes, there is a story attached to this haha... and more importantly, several different writeups[1][2][3] on how random internet wanderings have been more beneficial to my overall technological capability than people who insist on the importance of a CS background when building dashboards and client UIs. In practice, thanks to a dev box with insufficient RAM, and your typical tabbed-browsing problem, I used `pkill` over `ssh` -- something I picked up from toying with Over the Wire levels in my off time -- a lot more often than I used linked lists at that job.)

[1] bhmt.dev/blog/scraping

[2] bhmt.dev/blog/ctf

[3] bhmt.dev/blog/feeds

Actually some percentage of it is just the previous codebase from Windows Terminal :-p

If an interviewer, who has the power to deny you a job unless your answers are satisfactory to them, is unprofessional enough to abuse that by pressing you for inappropriate personal details during the interview, then there actually is no correct answer.

You can't assume that person is going to act in good faith about anything else in that situation, so even refusing to take the bait is still ultimately a roulette wheel that can just as easily be labeled as "difficult" or "combative."

If it would be unprofessional to bring those things up freely, then it's actually more unprofessional to coerce people about them as a screening criteria -- whether that's coercing them into putting on a show of dancing around the issues, or coercing them into giving you honest answers.