Did you know you can put a whole game inside of a push notification • Hacker News Board

Re: Did you know you can put a whole game inside of a push notification

#51

Post by kitsunesoba » Sun, Apr 11, 2021, 12:57 AM UTC

m-p-3 wrote: post #49

kitsunesoba wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Actually, we wouldn't need these dirty perversions with notifications if we had a proper background mode for apps. Like, you know, proper computers had for maybe 60 years. It's worth noting, however, that desktop and laptop PCs have a surplus of energy relative to mobile phones, so it's no big deal if there's a bunch of processes running in the background doing their thing… usually , anyway, because on PCs it's als…

Can we stop making phones that are so thin that they struggle to be powered for a full day under moderate use?

I think it may be best if there's a wide variety of battery capacities in phones, rather than a raised minimum capacity across the bar.

If battery power is universally plentiful, you'll get something of a road expansion effect where developers simply take advantage of cheap power and bloat apps to fill the added capacity, returning you to square one with phones struggling to last a day.

So with that in mind, the best case scenario may be for manufacturers to keep their current thin models but also introduce new ultra-high-capacity models, so apps are optimized reasonably well and users can take full advantage of the extra capacity.

Re: Did you know you can put a whole game inside of a push notification

#52

Post by matchbok » Sun, Apr 11, 2021, 1:03 AM UTC

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #31

I'd prefer Apple to fix horrible notifications on iOS. Since they broke VoIP background notifications, developers have no way to reliably perform silent delivery of information to device. For example in a chat app that syncs with desktop you can deliver incoming messages, showing them as alerts, but you can't deliver your own, because you MUST show alert on every push notification. Another use case is removing notifi…

Huh? We use silent pushes all the time to sync stuff. Works great.

Re: Did you know you can put a whole game inside of a push notification

#53

Post by jtbayly » Sun, Apr 11, 2021, 1:04 AM UTC

kitsunesoba wrote: post #40

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as absolutely no one should be delivering information silently to a device they don't own. That's a very very very shallow thinking. You are advocating to break the internet. You are destroying every internet protocol that ever existed. They all silently deliver information to devices you likely don't own. Actually, we wouldn't need these dirty perversions with notifications if we had a proper background mode for a…

> Actually, we wouldn't need these dirty perversions with notifications if we had a proper background mode for apps. Like, you know, proper computers had for maybe 60 years. It's worth noting, however, that desktop and laptop PCs have a surplus of energy relative to mobile phones, so it's no big deal if there's a bunch of processes running in the background doing their thing… usually , anyway, because on PCs it's als…

My M1 MacBook Air unexpectedly gave me a battery low warning today after probably 4 hours of use.

I quickly checked Activity Monitor and Dropbox was not responding and using huge amounts of CPU. Yeah. This is a problem.

Re: Did you know you can put a whole game inside of a push notification

#54

Post by contravariant » Sun, Apr 11, 2021, 1:12 AM UTC

djsavvy wrote: post #9

Does anyone know if there’s a similar API/technique for windows?

Surely you can just draw an extra window on top of all other windows?

Re: Did you know you can put a whole game inside of a push notification

#55

Post by phist_mcgee » Sun, Apr 11, 2021, 1:14 AM UTC

itsDario1 wrote: post #17

ineedasername wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

y use lot wrd wn few wrd do trk

y use lot

y

Re: Did you know you can put a whole game inside of a push notification

#56

Post by zamadatix » Sun, Apr 11, 2021, 1:15 AM UTC

chmod775 wrote: post #44

lupire wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A web browser displayed dynamic content all the time and is considered safe.

No. Nowadays you should still disable JavaScript as well as video playback in your browser if you want to be safe. There was a brief period some years ago where browsers looked "pretty safe", but we have quickly backtracked by stuffing JS and browsers full of new APIs that are creating new vulnerabilities. Edit: Yes. Downvoting will surely reduce the amount of CVEs. https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=ch…

I mean you might as well just disable all connectivity on your computer if you only feel safe by not having CVEs show up in a search. Generally people want to still receive content though and are looking for the safest ways to do that, not ways to re-enact Bubble Boy, and for that browsers actually rank pretty good against most any other ways to get dynamic content.

Re: Did you know you can put a whole game inside of a push notification

#57

Post by reader_mode » Sun, Apr 11, 2021, 1:21 AM UTC

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #31

I'd prefer Apple to fix horrible notifications on iOS. Since they broke VoIP background notifications, developers have no way to reliably perform silent delivery of information to device. For example in a chat app that syncs with desktop you can deliver incoming messages, showing them as alerts, but you can't deliver your own, because you MUST show alert on every push notification. Another use case is removing notifi…

Why would you need to notify user of his own messages ? Can't you just do a sync pull once the chat is up ? I feel like using notifications to deliver messages is unreliable anyway you are going to sync on focus.

Re: Did you know you can put a whole game inside of a push notification

#58

Post by dpeck » Sun, Apr 11, 2021, 1:23 AM UTC

GamePigeon (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/gamepigeon/id1124197642) does something similar. Completely unaffiliated but it’s a solid little gaming app and useful for playing games with older family members.

Re: Did you know you can put a whole game inside of a push notification

#59

Post by tdrp » Sun, Apr 11, 2021, 2:22 AM UTC

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #31

I'd prefer Apple to fix horrible notifications on iOS. Since they broke VoIP background notifications, developers have no way to reliably perform silent delivery of information to device. For example in a chat app that syncs with desktop you can deliver incoming messages, showing them as alerts, but you can't deliver your own, because you MUST show alert on every push notification. Another use case is removing notifi…

We've also run an app with 1 million+ users for a few years, and I can confirm that notifications are a wreck on both platforms, but IMO even more so on Android/FCM.

In fact most of our calculations show that we have never gone past 85% delivery of high-pri Android notifications to valid FCM tokens. By high-pri here we mean direct chat messages in an active 1-on-1 chat conversation. This has caused many users to abandon the app since they assume the system to be unreliable. One of the main reasons seems to be that many Android phone vendors have simply whitelisted WhatsApp, Facebook and a couple of famous apps and then dumped every single other app into some kind of "kill if in background and completely forget about it" bucket. In some cases it can be fixed by asking the users to wander deep into the phone settings and toggle some switches. We brought the delivery rate from the low 80s to 85% by literally buying a bunch of the phone models we had heard had issues and trying to repro what was happening then popping up custom instructions for users like "looks like you are running this kind of phone which in general will not deliver notifications, please go to settings -> blah". But the whole thing has been a gigantic game of cat and mouse which really shouldn't be in the hands of individual app developers. In many cases the FCM system does not return any error code.

I'd be curious to hear if anyone here has achieved 95%+ FCM delivery rates on Android apps.

Re: Did you know you can put a whole game inside of a push notification

#60

Post by chmod775 » Sun, Apr 11, 2021, 2:41 AM UTC

zamadatix wrote: post #56

chmod775 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Nowadays you should still disable JavaScript as well as video playback in your browser if you want to be safe. There was a brief period some years ago where browsers looked "pretty safe", but we have quickly backtracked by stuffing JS and browsers full of new APIs that are creating new vulnerabilities. Edit: Yes. Downvoting will surely reduce the amount of CVEs. https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=ch…

I mean you might as well just disable all connectivity on your computer if you only feel safe by not having CVEs show up in a search. Generally people want to still receive content though and are looking for the safest ways to do that, not ways to re-enact Bubble Boy, and for that browsers actually rank pretty good against most any other ways to get dynamic content.

The question wasn't "what is the safest way to display dynamic content", the question was "is displaying dynamic content (this way) safe".

And the answer is no. Web browsers are the safest way to run arbitrary code in a sandbox on your computer - which is what dynamic content in this context really means - the same way that aiming at your feet is the safest way to shoot yourself.