tamirzb

This is already an issue for tourists in many countries that have their own payment system (e.g. Brazil, India, Singapore, Thailand). In some of them you have companies that came up with products for tourists that allow them to pay but they usually come with fees. From what I know the majority of tourists in these countries just travel with cash.

This comment makes it seem as if it's the US who striked the Amazon data center.

> Know this - your kernel is not patched unless you run the absolute latest version.

This is correct for a lot of different software, probably most of it. Why is this a point that needs to be made?

Not sure why I decided to comment specifically on what you posted given the fact that there are various levels of misinformation going on in this thread, but I guess yours is the most blunt.

Anyway read the article you linked to again, you completely misread it.

If you are worried about your Google account being banned for using ReVanced (not that I saw any evidence for anything like that so far but I agree that there could be a scenario like this some time in the future), for years now I've been using a separate Google account only for YouTube. This account essentially only contains my YouTube viewing history and nothing more. I have yet to see any disadvantage in this separation

I run my Framework 13 with 1.4 fractional scaling (on Wayland) and honestly I think it looks pretty good.

This is indeed extremely annoying and I never understood why so many apps are configured to only be available in specific countries. Like what at all do they stand to gain doing this?

Google will then go on to complain about users installing APKs from shady sources but this practice pushes users to do so. I'm sure a decent amount of users ended up with malware on their phones just because they wanted to install an app that wasn't available in their listed country.

> We are committed to developing this standard in a way that ensures it will not be abused to segment users based on client hardware. For example, we may consider supporting software keys for all users regardless of hardware capabilities. This would ensure that DBSC will not let servers differentiate between users based on hardware features or device state (i.e. if a device is Play Protect certified or not).

Personally I do not believe this for a second. Yes I do believe that this is what they will do now. But in a few years, if DBSC becomes mainstream? I fully believe Google will start abusing this to strengthen their control. It's the same with the Chrome browser that they eventually used to push MV3 and tried to push WEI.

Honestly? I feel that this could be their way of pushing WEI again through the back door, and I am concerned that unlike WEI, this seems to barely get any buzz or pushback from the community.

It's a solved problem as in it's one single problem that is solved. I agree that WhatsApp is a really bad solution overall, just compared to iMessage it does solve the cross-platform issue.

I would also by far prefer a more open solution, but between relying on Apple for your country's messaging to relying on Facebook, at least by relying on Facebook you have one less issue.

> it still just works, albeit with fewer features.

If it doesn't have features I rely on then I don't see how can I treat it as "it still just works".

> iMessage in the US is the closest things to universal modern messaging.

The key part here is "in the US". What if you want to message someone who is outside the US? To be honest I am not sure about carrier prices in the US, but I am sure the person on the other side of the conversation would get extremely high bills for international MMS messages. Personally I don't see how the words "universal solution" can apply to something that works well in only a single country in the entire world.

Oh I definitely agree with you that I hope WhatsApp is the past. I sure do hope for something open, not sure if RCS is the solution here though.

In any case, iMessage share the exact same issues and also adds the issue of locking you to a single platform, so at least WhatsApp solves one issue that iMessage has.

> On the other hand, I think the long-term sequalae of the blue-green message is to push people to use stand-alone apps like WhatsApp and FB Messenger

I find it amusing that in 2024 people in the US still talk about WhatsApp as a future step. Where I'm from already 10+ years ago every single person you know would have a WhatsApp account.

With WhatsApp, LINE, WeChat, Telegram etc. I think this is pretty much a solved problem in the rest of the world, really only the US is behind here.