Since Chrome does not “disable uBlock Origin” but Google deprecating manifest V2 in favor of manifest V3 it will be done in Chromium because Chromium does the heavy lifting and Chrome is “just a Chromium based browser”.
The Android app has an option in settings, chats, and chat backup. I don’t see how to make it take a local backup but apparently it has one already recently.
I mean if anything based on the most common AI used usually, ChatGPT or similars… They are just that, a chat, conversation , messaging with an AI, so the weird thing is that it didn’t happen before.
Posted today and already out of date. At least on the top pick. The AYN Odin2 is out already, and it’s a huge upgrade over the original in every way. The Odin Pro is still a good device, but the Odin2 is so so much better.
As of writing, the AYN Odin Pro is on sale at around $250 to make way for the AYN Odin2, which just wrapped up a wildly successful crowdfunding campaign. It will be significantly more powerful, with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, more RAM, Android 13, WiFi 7, and a larger battery. You can preorder the new version for $370, but the Odin2 Pro won’t ship until mid-December at the earliest.
They are shipping the orders from crowdfunding now. When that’s done they’ll ship orders from their website. So, I guess it’s technically a preorder. But the devices are being shipped now, just in a specific order.
I’ve had mine for a couple weeks. It’s killer. The SD8G2 is an absolute monster for emulation and gaming, especially with the active cooling.
Has there been any indication of these features in chat apps being popular enough to warrant this?
I’ve not really seen much one way or another in the case of Snapchat doing this, for example. In fact, last I read about that, there were rumblings of investigating it as a potential privacy breach of minors…In the UK, I think it was.
I think that was Chat Control legislation that eventually didn’t pass in the E.U (thankfully in my opinion). Under the guise of “think of the children” it was going to be a privacy nightmare.
I mean, makes sense to me. You’re storing your data on someone else’s servers, makes sense that it would count towards your storage quota on said servers.
Having said that, it’s really shitty that they’ve removed local backups (and that they don’t allow other third party services beyond Google Drive and Apple iCloud).
Another reason to not use WhatsApp (or to use another backup solution), I guess.
You’re storing unencrypted data on google drive with those backups, so they scan all of your chats. Whether they just look for malware/CSAM or people manually look through your chats is something you’ll never know.
Well, that depends on context. Let's say it makes less sense if you built your entire userbase on the back of handing off free storage for decades only to reverse course later after you've amassed a captive userbase in the literal billions of people.
But hey, I'm not gonna relitigate enshittification now. We all know.
FWIW, my current Whatsapp backup is 4GB, 1.5 without video backup. Google Drive gives out 20 for free, but they already made the same move regarding Gmail storage, so most of that is full. I have a paid account, but it's a work account and my personal chat logs do not belong there. Not using whatsapp is not an option. Just this week my vet sent me text messages over it. They didn't ask if I use it, they just assumed it because, again, captive audience in the billions. Whatsapp is just how texting works here.
Many people where I am also use WhatsApp. I don’t, because I don’t use Facebook apps. It hasn’t caused me many issues, and in the few cases where someone won’t switch to Telegram or contact me on another platform, I accept that same as I accept that when using Lemmy I won’t get the same content I would on Reddit.
I don't think I know a single person that texts over anything but Whatsapp. Businesses will reach out that way if they have your number. The government, too, sometimes. Every single person I know defaults to it and nothing else. My parents do. All my friends do. I may be able to convince a few of those to swap, but there is no way I'm convincing all of them. Again, "swap" here includes SMS texting. I'm saying this applies to all communications over phone that aren't direct phone calls. Scratch that, actually, most of these people also default to Whatsapp for voice calls.
The one exception is that some of my foreign friends do use a different app. They use Facebook Messenger.
You can use Whatsapp and something else. You can't get rid of Whatsapp.
I'm doing what my clients tell me, because it's generally considered to be a good business practice to not argue with one's clients unless you have a good reason to do so.
And that’s why if I was self employed I’d use another phone entirely or promote the usage of some other way of contacting me/us. Never would I have WhatsApp installed on my personal device (Dual SIM and all) since it’s my choice, which I can make.
Peer pressure, social norms, and even “bosses demanding you join their WhatsApp to communicate” is a non starter here.
I think it annoys my immediate boss that I use our corporate email for everything, or even simply calling them telling them the most menial of things.
Oh, it's my choice to approach every potential client with a long-winded pitch about why I'm off the grid and don't believe in telephones.
It's just terrible for business, and since I do like to consume food to keep this sack of meat running, I don't do that.
Look, there are two things happening here:
One, you don't seem to get to what extent Meta has entirely replaced key parts of the communications infrastructure in several parts of the world. You may as well be advocating communication via carrier pigeon.
Two, you get a kick out of being the difficult contrarian weirdo that refuses to submit to the mainstream of modern tech because you work for some boss that thinks it's worth getting your skills despite that song and dance, so there is no immediate downside. I know. Been there, done that. When you freelance you get way less precious about that, by necessity.
And yes, by the way, I do keep separate hardware and software environments to isolate some predatory applications to work hardware. That is viable. Just... not for Whatsapp. Because EVERYBODY uses it and I like my friends and family to keep talking to me, too.
That’s the thing…I do understand your qualms about having to use them even if it irks you no end because you’re ‘now not a weirdo’, and having run establishments prior to these days I find it amusing that you’re now required to indulge in sharing your contact list because it’s the “norm”.
Which is awesome because I somehow manage to keep in touch with fellow friends, colleagues, family and even talking to others on platforms such as this without conglomerates poking my metadata too as much.
I'm still a weirdo, but I can't afford to be a weirdo performatively these days.
So yeah, I can default to Firefox or keep the MS tools I have to use for work on its own contained browser instance, or refuse to use Samsung or Apple phones or whatever other act of technological petty rebellion that I want. But the point I'm making is that cutting the cord on Whatsapp is not practical for daily use in this region. It's very different in the US and in some other territories, but here it's definitely not.
It's far easier to step away from Twitter, Instagram and even Facebook than it is to do the same with Whatsapp here. That's the big takeaway that I want to convey here.
But you and I don't seem to be in the same society.
This is a heavily regional issue, which is my entire point. There is no iMessage alternative, we aren't in a WeChat area, or a Telegram area. Here it's overwhelmingly Whatsapp.
This is not the same everywhere. Social media is global, but the mix of it is far from universal.
Whatsapp (and Telegram, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, Line... whatever is your local poison) have absorbed texting entirely. Whatsapp drives all texting, a significant chunk of voice calls, a lot of non-work videoconferencing and it serves as a Discord-like group chat platform for a lot of people. That's how your grandma got radicalized over here, not Facebook proper.
Again, social media is more regional than people think, and it often doesn't look like Twitter, Instagram or even Facebook.
I can repeat, if you like. WhatsApp is not installed on my phone. Everyone I care about talking to uses Telegram. I understand it may not be as easy in your case to get people to switch, but if it’s either Telegram, Signal, or nothing, and they care about speaking to you, they’ll switch.
No, it's not "as easy in my case", it's impossible in my entire country.
It'd mean not having contact with friends, family, work clients, businesses and plenty of other conveniences.
I'm glad you're self-sufficient enough to not interact with humans on the basis of their messaging app, but here in the real world, if a client gives me their Whatsapp contact and I point them at Telegram I look like a weirdo who suddenly wants to have a ten minute conversation about social media instead of doing their actual job.
So I can repeat, if you like. You can't get rid of Whatsapp.
I mean, no, they'll notice. The messages would appear on a different app.
But me texting them is not the issue, people don't remove their text message app. The issue is them wanting to text me, entering my phone number on Whatsapp and having it not be there.
Never mind that a number of these interactions are using groups and other tools. So no, it's not an option. You may as well tell people you don't have a phone or you refuse to interact through anything other than wax-sealed letters. Is it possible? Yes, sure, the post will deliver those. Does it make sense? Not at all.
People underestimate to what extent Meta apps have supplanted signfiicant chunks of communications infrastructure in many places around the world. For all the crap people give to Musk's little hostage crisis on Twitter, it's peanuts compared to Meta's stranglehold. Americans in particular don't realize how hard they already won social media.
So how do you participate in the work chat with just SMS? Lots of informal collaborations in both my last role and current role needed and needs WhatsApp, with both internal and external stakeholders. I literally cannot do my jobs without WhatsApp.
Delivery services will contact you on WhatsApp as proof that the delivery was made, disputes are much harder to solve without it.
Many businesses use WhatsApp as part of their chat support (luckily, not the banks, small wins at least). Talk to a person on the phone? Good luck.
These are just the examples off the top of my head; I feel like so many here are naive on what it's like to live in a modern, digital society.
I don't think any providers charge for SMS anymore. Or at least you get enough free ones that nobody ever hits the cap.
Because everybody uses Whatsapp instead, so it's not even worth trying to monetize the residual usage. It's like email, only automated communications use it, so you're better off only charging government agencies and companies who are the only ones using it.
Have to use WhatsApp to function in society though, where I am. At least, those messages aren't really that important in the long run so they don't need to be backed up, so no loss there for me.
Rental agencies won’t contact you on anything other than WhatsApp where I live (im serious, they won’t, they have 45 other prospective renters who want the same place you do and they all have WhatsApp).
So it’s a deeper issue than just a content one as I need a roof over my head.
Also I just checked my own WhatsApp backup space, it's just shy of 500mb with videos. Good for me I guess! I really don't use WhatsApp that much compared to Telegram.
@Darken I remember I once had all my messages disappeared (because of something that I did). Luckily, WhatsApp already backed up my messages a couple of days before. So I simply uninstalled the app, then reinstalled it and selected the backup to restore. A few messages from my work group were gone forever, indeed - those sent after the backup was taken - but they weren't an issue for me. Nothing important was sent in that time frame. With the backup I recovered pretty much more than 99% of the messages.
I cancelled my storage subscription with google in the past year, partially to degoogle my life, but also because in all those years they kept the price the same for the same amount of storage. It’s not like it was that much, 20€ for 100GB/year, but I have MS O365 family plan which gives me 1TB per account, so no real point in staying.
At one point I will have to demicrosoft I suppose, but I:m not in a rush. At least MS doesn’t convert my pictures to shitty quality.
I’m close to doing the same. Mostly because of how poorly they handled Google Play Credit cards being hung up in their automated system and basically stiffing me for them. They can’t be returned to the store despite Google insisting they can be. I gave up after 13 attempts…
Being more than a Google Drive and YouTube customer I have other Google services I’m not sure it’s worth the effort anymore. This is after years of paying monthly fees all because I can’t find a human at google to resolve a google play gift card issue on their end. I hope California takes them to the cleaners in the class action over the millions in Google Play they are holding.
It’s free money for them as there is no way for many users to redeem or refund these cards bought in grocery stores, online, and/or big box stores. This is the part where I think they have slided into the evil part the early version of them were concerned about.
There’s also an option to transfer your chats to another device without backing up to Google drive, but it obviously works only as a transfer tool not as a backup.
I’ve tried tablets over and over again over the years, there’s tablets in storage all over my house. The phone/tablet combo to me suffers from 1 major fatal flaw, the tablet is never around when you need it the most.
You can’t carry tablets in normal pockets, sure you probably have some jeans with bigger-than-normal pockets, but now that’s the first friction point: needing to ensure you wear your special jeans.
Now you need to carry it separately, not just slapping it in your pocket and going out the door. The second friction point: Always needing to carry some sort of small backpack/fanny pack/something to carry the tablet or resign yourself to letting it be loose in your car (Assuming you even have a car) or carrying it in your hands everywhere.
To me the foldable solves all of that, it’s a phone when you need a phone, but got caught up in an unexpected long wait somewhere? Boom, tablet, ready to go when you are when you need it the most. And that’s not even getting into things that tablets can’t do, I for one have fallen in love with the ability to partially fold it like a book when reading.
I use it for dnd sessions, brainstorming, sketching, anything I would use a regular sized for.
I also use it as an extra screen to watch YouTube or something on while I’m gaming at my desktop.
I would love a foldable to have if I started having to go back into the office, it would be nice to take notes on in meetings. But they are just too big for me at the moment.
I mean the whole point of a foldable is to be a normal phone, until you need the bigger screen the most. Excluding the Galaxy Folds, dunno what Samsung was thinking with that, it’s way too narrow to satisfy the normal phone part.
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