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Briar 1.4 – Offline sharing, message transfer via SD cards and USB sticks

briarproject.org

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Re: Briar 1.4 – Offline sharing, message transfer via SD cards and USB sticks

#21

Post by georgyo »

jqpabc123 wrote: post #17

Man can not live by Android alone. I wish it wasn't this way but a communication app that only serves Android is severely limited and won't make the cut on my Android phone.

iPhone makes much of these concepts either impossible or extremely difficult.

Namely, things cannot operate easily as a background service. Forcing the user to jump though many hoops to make it work. And since it is not an apple service. There is a single button "reset settings" that breaks all the users changes for these apps.

On one hand it is generally more secure for iPhone users, on the other hand it greatly inhibits some types of innovation.

Re: Briar 1.4 – Offline sharing, message transfer via SD cards and USB sticks

#22

Post by jqpabc123 »

georgyo wrote: post #21
jqpabc123 wrote: post #17

Man can not live by Android alone. I wish it wasn't this way but a communication app that only serves Android is severely limited and won't make the cut on my Android phone.

iPhone makes much of these concepts either impossible or extremely difficult. Namely, things cannot operate easily as a background service. Forcing the user to jump though many hoops to make it work. And since it is not an apple service. There is a single button "reset settings" that breaks all the users changes for these apps. On one hand it is generally more secure for iPhone users, on the other hand it greatly inh…

I understand.

But it doesn't change the fact that other tools are available which do serve both and are thus much more practical.

Re: Briar 1.4 – Offline sharing, message transfer via SD cards and USB sticks

#23

Post by rchaud »

lloydatkinson wrote: post #9
rchaud wrote: post #4

Peer to Peer data transfer via computing devices is something I wish was be more mainstream. It's not, because the commercial cloud storage mafia has invested heavily in telling people that your data has to traverse their toll roads first. I recently discovered Syncthing Fork which was customizable in a way Google Drive or alternatives were not. And it's entirely P2P, transmitting files between my laptop and my phone…

> Bluetooth transfer There was a brief period while I was at school where people would share mp3 files with each other this way. This was before 2010.

I believe that's how the "share song" feature of Zune MP3 players worked.

Re: Briar 1.4 – Offline sharing, message transfer via SD cards and USB sticks

#24

Post by dashundchen »

rchaud wrote: post #23
lloydatkinson wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bluetooth transfer There was a brief period while I was at school where people would share mp3 files with each other this way. This was before 2010.

I believe that's how the "share song" feature of Zune MP3 players worked.

The Zune actually shared songs via WiFi. Microsoft unfortunately dubbed this feature "squirting" and initially had some silly DRM limits of three plays before the shared song expired. Nonetheless the Zune was an excellent music player.

Re: Briar 1.4 – Offline sharing, message transfer via SD cards and USB sticks

#25

Post by rchaud »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #10
lloydatkinson wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bluetooth transfer There was a brief period while I was at school where people would share mp3 files with each other this way. This was before 2010.

OMG yes, being able to share jpgs, mp3s and even java apps from one phone to another via Irda then Bluetooth felt mind blowing in the early to mid 00's, considering that most people didn't have internet on their phones (2G/3G data plans were eye-watering at the time, hell, even texts were expensive) but their phones had this short range wireless sort-of-WiFi-ish capability on their phones for sending and receiving fi…

Meanwhile, I couldn't change my 2006 phone's wallpaper without paying Verizon to enable the USB connection with a PC. I ended up taking a picture of the wallpaper using the phone, and then setting that image as the wallpaper. It was a 2-inch screen so it didn't look too bad.

Re: Briar 1.4 – Offline sharing, message transfer via SD cards and USB sticks

#26

Post by rchaud »

jqpabc123 wrote: post #17

Man can not live by Android alone. I wish it wasn't this way but a communication app that only serves Android is severely limited and won't make the cut on my Android phone.

The use cases described are niche enough that iOS users can buy a second Android phone to use it with.

Re: Briar 1.4 – Offline sharing, message transfer via SD cards and USB sticks

#27

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

rchaud wrote: post #25
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OMG yes, being able to share jpgs, mp3s and even java apps from one phone to another via Irda then Bluetooth felt mind blowing in the early to mid 00's, considering that most people didn't have internet on their phones (2G/3G data plans were eye-watering at the time, hell, even texts were expensive) but their phones had this short range wireless sort-of-WiFi-ish capability on their phones for sending and receiving fi…

Meanwhile, I couldn't change my 2006 phone's wallpaper without paying Verizon to enable the USB connection with a PC. I ended up taking a picture of the wallpaper using the phone, and then setting that image as the wallpaper. It was a 2-inch screen so it didn't look too bad.

Yeah I heard US telecoms were insanely draconic (why were they allowed to act like that though? lobbying?)

In Europe they weren't saints either but they weren't as bad when locking down your phone and mostly just resorted to SIM-lock, instead of locking other features as well.

Re: Briar 1.4 – Offline sharing, message transfer via SD cards and USB sticks

#29

Post by dna_polymerase »

rchaud wrote: post #4

Peer to Peer data transfer via computing devices is something I wish was be more mainstream. It's not, because the commercial cloud storage mafia has invested heavily in telling people that your data has to traverse their toll roads first. I recently discovered Syncthing Fork which was customizable in a way Google Drive or alternatives were not. And it's entirely P2P, transmitting files between my laptop and my phone…

> Peer to Peer data transfer via computing devices is something I wish was be more mainstream. It's not, because the commercial cloud storage mafia has invested heavily in telling people that your data has to traverse their toll roads first.

Been in software half my life never heard anyone saying anything like this. It's most of the time easier and more efficient to use cloud storage than to spin up and bootstrap a p2p system. Also, thanks to encryption I don't really care if data hits the cloud.

Re: Briar 1.4 – Offline sharing, message transfer via SD cards and USB sticks

#30

Post by jqpabc123 »

rchaud wrote: post #26
jqpabc123 wrote: post #17

Man can not live by Android alone. I wish it wasn't this way but a communication app that only serves Android is severely limited and won't make the cut on my Android phone.

The use cases described are niche enough that iOS users can buy a second Android phone to use it with.

Or they could just use a different solution that supports both Android and iOS.

Most people won't carry a second device for just one app.

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