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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 10th, 2023

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  • At the moment there is no end-to-end encryption as part of RCS. Google created a proprietary add-on for their app. Apple is working with the standards committee to add end-to-end encryption.

    RCS on android has only two supported apps, one by Google and one by Samsung. Google is actively blocking phones with custom Roms from using their RCS app.

    Google also provides/hosts the RCS backend software used by most telecoms. They can host their own implementation, and most did at the start. But now a lot switched to Google to provide their RCS service.

    You can’t get around Big Tech spyware if you want to use RCS.











  • I (originally from the US) moved to Germany with a Swiss girlfriend, so we visit Switzerland frequently and know the cultural/politics.

    I find Germany to have much better social policies than Switzerland, such as better worker rights/conditions, public health insurance. The Swiss people voted against having minimum 5 weeks vacation and also just rejected caps on the private insurance minimum costs. The politics are much more conservative/individualistic compared to Germany. On a positive side, Switzerland probably has the best public transport system in Europe.







  • The FOSS contributions from companies mentioned is only at the kernel level. And a lot that use the kernel, but with proprietary blobs for their hardware. I suspect that is because kernel/embedded development is hard and costly.

    Most of the dominate OSes people use, with the exception of Windows, is based on an FOSS kernel, with then the layers above and applications being proprietary.

    These software systems are being used to lock people in to the specific platforms and perform user hostile behavior. So while having the kernel be FOSS, it doesn’t result in user freedoms imagined by FOSS, it just companies reducing their costs.