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Nothing Phone says it will hack into iMessage, bring blue bubbles to Android

arstechnica.com

41–50 of 175 posts

Re: Nothing Phone says it will hack into iMessage, bring blue bubbles to Android

#41
post #4

The nothing website claims: > Nothing Chats is built on Sunbird's platform and all Chats messages are end-to-end encrypted, meaning neither we nor Sunbird can access the messages you're sending and receiving. > Nothing is powered by Sunbird, and Sunbird's architecture provides a system to deliver a message from one user to another without ever storing it at any point in its journey. Messages are not stored on Sunbird…

Hey, I worked on that bridge! (I’m the Brooklyn guy).

I highly suspect that they’re doing a sort of Matrix hosting thing and can then claim E2EE because Matrix encryption or whatever. But based on how the bridge works (or used to? it’s been some time), then yes - there IS a point in time in which it has to be a plaintext string. Unless they somehow managed to reverse engineer iMessage’s encryption - in which case, well shit, there’s bigger problems now - eventually you have to tell IMCore/imagent and/or ChatKit what it is that you want to send, and who to send it to. And thus it can’t be E2EE otherwise it would be unintelligible to the recipient.

Curious to know if they’re actually talking to imagent and using chatkit (and thus have iMessage features ie typing receipts, sending reactions) or if they’re just using AppleScript and reading the sms db…

God I should go back and rewrite Brooklyn. Now that I’m more than halfway through a CS degree and know how to make a binary search tree and how to not leak memory. lmao

Re: Nothing Phone says it will hack into iMessage, bring blue bubbles to Android

#42
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I do. And Android an "anti-status" symbol. cf. https://archive.is/0Mpc8 Edit: and this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38272193

Ok but the point still stands. My impression of iOS users is they simply feel they prefer the UX, whereas you feel, as an Android user, that you’re making an ideological choice. As someone who cares little for the ideology of consumer choices, I don’t think we’d get along, which reinforces the original point about personal compatibility.

Please don't make things up. Parent never said a) they own an Android or b) they own one for ideological reasons.

>As someone who cares little for the ideology of consumer choices, I don’t think we’d get along

This means you actually _do_ care about the ideology of consumer choices, no?

Re: Nothing Phone says it will hack into iMessage, bring blue bubbles to Android

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

apparently, a lot of american teenagers do. But I think it's because when a message uses iMessage, then there are reactions and other features available, where messages from Android are regular SMS and will lack those

I asked a bunch of teen to 30+ year old friends and family, and every one would say that for the purposes of dating, they would require iOS usage due to the perceived probability of an Android user being an incompatible match being too high.

Are you in the USA?

Re: Nothing Phone says it will hack into iMessage, bring blue bubbles to Android

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine that I'd also be incompatible with someone who cares about which device I use to message them. I also happen to use Android. Go figure.

This is very “You can’t fire me, I quit!” energy

It literally does. I'd imagine the kind of people that they don't want to associate with are exactly the kind of people who wouldn't like them anyway. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Re: Nothing Phone says it will hack into iMessage, bring blue bubbles to Android

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I asked a bunch of teen to 30+ year old friends and family, and every one would say that for the purposes of dating, they would require iOS usage due to the perceived probability of an Android user being an incompatible match being too high.

Are you in the USA?

Yes, but a few of the cousins/nieces I asked are in England.

Re: Nothing Phone says it will hack into iMessage, bring blue bubbles to Android

#46
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cheapest iPhone is $429. An iPhone 15 not-Pro is at least $799, a Pro $999, up to $1599. Is that cheap?

No that's not cheap. If someone thinks that's cheap, they're living in a bubble.

Compare it to all of the other things people use as status symbols: it’s a tiny fraction of a car, less than a decent suit, and wouldn’t go that far at a nightclub or nice restaurant. Google has been intensely marketing this idea that green bubbles are discriminatory as part of their PR push but I’m skeptical that even if Google got everything they wanted from the EU, the shallow people wouldn’t instantly move on to some other signifier.

Re: Nothing Phone says it will hack into iMessage, bring blue bubbles to Android

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

apparently, a lot of american teenagers do. But I think it's because when a message uses iMessage, then there are reactions and other features available, where messages from Android are regular SMS and will lack those

I asked a bunch of teen to 30+ year old friends and family, and every one would say that for the purposes of dating, they would require iOS usage due to the perceived probability of an Android user being an incompatible match being too high.

Lol, good way to avoid those people.

Re: Nothing Phone says it will hack into iMessage, bring blue bubbles to Android

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I asked a bunch of teen to 30+ year old friends and family, and every one would say that for the purposes of dating, they would require iOS usage due to the perceived probability of an Android user being an incompatible match being too high.

What on Earth would drive that perception? Do iOS users prefer dating other people who will spend lots of money on a status symbol? This sounds like nothing but a thinly-veiled attempt at discrimination based on an assumed level of wealth. (Which, if you've priced out Pixels lately, is not at all accurate.)

iPhones are popular. I grew up when almost nobody had cell phones or even pagers, and remember the exact same thing happening for having the wrong shoes, jacket, Trapper-Keeper, Walkman, bike, skateboard, etc. or, in high school or later, car. This is why there’s such a booming industry in counterfeit clothes or rapid knockoffs because certain people really prize being able to fit a trend.

If Google gets everything they ask for, the shallow people will instantly move on to something else because that’s how people like that work.

Re: Nothing Phone says it will hack into iMessage, bring blue bubbles to Android

#49

Do most Android users actually care one way or an another? IMO, it seems like there's a small, if vocal, minority of folks with a deeply weird inferiority complex around blue bubbles and most people don't care at all. None of my Android using friends seem to give a shit.

[deleted]

Re: Nothing Phone says it will hack into iMessage, bring blue bubbles to Android

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has nothing to do with wealth, iPhones are cheap. As another commenter states, it’s about taste or “weirdness”. Similar to making assumptions based on clothing or clothing or other chosen attributes.

The cheapest iPhone is $429. An iPhone 15 not-Pro is at least $799, a Pro $999, up to $1599. Is that cheap?

Yes, meaning that if all you knew about someone is that they have an iOS device, you would not be able to tell what their wealth/income status is (other than maybe they are not in the bottom 10%).
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