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Something is wrong when the ‘telephone app’ on your phone becomes 3rd party
61–70 of 345 posts
Re: Something is wrong when the ‘telephone app’ on your phone becomes 3rd party
#62I fought having a phone through to 2008 - now I'm reconsidering wanting one again if there was a pure messaging device right now with no voice - I'd bite their hand off I don't need a mobile browser or even apps - all they do is stop me from disconnecting from work for a few minutes or hours - I don't think always-on is good for anyone over time
Not trying to be an ass but isn't the device you want called a 2 way pager?
yes, but with a larger screen and keyboard
not sure why such negativity on that comment - I've met many people who see a phone as a distraction, but want to retain some instant communication capability
there is a real hivemind phenomenon on HN that mobile apps are everything next - what if that's not the case - what if people don't want to be tracked, profiled, remarketed to 24/7 - what if they just want the 4 messages they get in a day that are worth reading?
Re: Something is wrong when the ‘telephone app’ on your phone becomes 3rd party
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't carry a phone in my pocket, I carry a personal computer that also makes voices calls over cellular networks.
I've been joking lately that there is a new one syllable word for "personal computer": phone. At the current rate that's how the language will shift. I suppose we'll know if people start referring to things like "macOS deskphones" and think "laptop" always meant "laptop phone". :) It's like those futurist ads from the 50s (and 80s/90s) AT&T that soon there will be phones capable of amazing things everywhere in our li…
> I've been joking lately that there is a new one syllable word for "personal computer": phone.
I wouldn't be surprised. I suspect that a smartphone is the only computer very large majority of today's children has ever used.
Re: Something is wrong when the ‘telephone app’ on your phone becomes 3rd party
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Skynet v. 0.1 didn't build itself. Clearly, though, once it becomes a minimum viable product, it will produce the next generations of itself. Or will it? If it's an AI intent on approximating human speech processing, why should it be any good at programming? See also https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9658524/1/Branches-on-the-Tree-... .
I wonder what makes people think that an AI needs to be able to code to improve itself. I don't see infant brains "programming" themselves to get better. The next step in programming is probably not anything like programming. Machine learning certainly isn't. Creating a neural net that achieves superhuman image recognition takes 30 lines of code in keras. And terabytes of training data. But the programming doesn't lo…
> I wonder what makes people think that an AI needs to be able to code to improve itself. I don't see infant brains "programming" themselves to get better.
That's largely because you haven't looked. Infants are constantly developing and pruning pathways and connections in their brain, which effectively changes both the hardware and the software.
Re: Something is wrong when the ‘telephone app’ on your phone becomes 3rd party
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point is, this should not happen to core functionality. Specially not sneaky like this.
Define core functionality. We are carrying computers that happen to have a radio that can communicate with cell towers. The phone functionality is just as "core" as any other service that the OS exposes. (Camera, Web Browser, GPS)
If it's in the /system partition, it shouldn't be able to do any data collection or bound to any companies' services.
Anything bound to any companies' services or doing any data collection should be entirely user-controlled and user-replacable.
Re: Something is wrong when the ‘telephone app’ on your phone becomes 3rd party
#66I completely disagree with the title. The fact that "telephony" can be an app on the phone is a WONDERFUL thing. It means that the author of this article has a choice, as opposed to NOT having a choice.
The problem is that it was switched to a 3rd-party app that collects and shares data without the user's knowledge or permission, and is rather difficult to switch back.
Re: Something is wrong when the ‘telephone app’ on your phone becomes 3rd party
#67https://www.wileyfox.com/the-brand >UNRIVALLED PRIVACY AND SECURITY >Choose precisely the data you wish to share; protect apps with additional PINs; prevent spam with Truecaller Integrated Dialler. So their idea of privacy is privacy from everyone except the manufacturer (and "trusted" third parties) >Of course, you can always root the phone and install custom roms. But this process takes some time and the developmen…
FWIW their phones originally ran CyanogenOS. They're in the process of updating to stock android [1], after cyanogen's recent layoffs/pivot/rebranding/disaster [2].
[1] http://www.androidpolice.com/2016/12/31/after-cyanogen-colla... [2] http://www.androidpolice.com/2016/11/28/cyanogen-inc-will-sh...
Re: Something is wrong when the ‘telephone app’ on your phone becomes 3rd party
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, out of curiosity, at this point what are his choices?
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and... . This is the "Google Dialer". This is one example; there are dozens more.
The Google Dialer only works on Stock Android.
Which is a shame.
Re: Something is wrong when the ‘telephone app’ on your phone becomes 3rd party
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the dialer stopped working I'd never notice, but if the phone app broke entirely I'd stop getting calls from telemarketers and loan scams.
And vacation sweepstakes, and shitty recruiters, and IRS scams, and... This must be the elephant in the room. Traditional telephony has become dominated by bad actors. They hit a critical mass and now my phone app is a waste of space.
This must be an American thing. In New Zealand I still use the phone app for talking to people. I've never recieved a spam call - a few calls from companies I already donate too asking for more etc, but that's it.
How many "bad" calls do you get a month?
Re: Something is wrong when the ‘telephone app’ on your phone becomes 3rd party
#70Or that just means that we still call the device in our pocket a "phone" for legacy reasons. If we are okay with having a third party handles our messages, VoIP etc, why not the phone app?
I don't carry a phone in my pocket, I carry a personal computer that also makes voices calls over cellular networks.
I refer to it occasionally as my hand terminal.
That said, it sucks as a hand terminal, because everything it does everything through vendor-locked, cloud-enabled shitty apps with almost no interoperability. If this is how future of computing is going to look, then I'm sorely disappointed.