Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Something is wrong when the ‘telephone app’ on your phone becomes 3rd party

martinruenz.de

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 345 posts

Re: Something is wrong when the ‘telephone app’ on your phone becomes 3rd party

#71

Post by muppetman »

wutbrodo wrote: post #37
tzakrajs wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've always found it weird how everyone I know seems much more cautious about phone usage than me: for example, I've never understood why people don't answer numbers they don't recognize. I'm slowly realizing that this is because apparently people are inundated with spam calls? I think I may have received one solitary spam call in my entire life. I can't really account for the discrepancy

Where do you live? I'm the same, 0 spam calls ever, but I live in NZ.

Re: Something is wrong when the ‘telephone app’ on your phone becomes 3rd party

#72

Post by muppetman »

AngeloAnolin wrote: post #27

Did I read that correctly? Isn’t this sweet? I am searching for a dialling application for my smartphone. A DIALLING application. Does this mean he can't practically call someone outside his contacts list as there's no way to key in phone numbers? Or would he still be able to make regular voice calls?

He can't make calls, because he disabled the dialer app. The functionality is still there in the phone, but he has no app that exposes it. Android truely does provide enough "rope" to hang yourself if you start to disable apps you shouldn't.

Re: Something is wrong when the ‘telephone app’ on your phone becomes 3rd party

#73

Post by bostand »

muppetman wrote: post #68
freeone3000 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This could be fixed if Google considers this a problem.

Remember when they added Google calendar to Play to fight Samsungs BS?

Re: Something is wrong when the ‘telephone app’ on your phone becomes 3rd party

#74

Post by wayn3 »

abakker wrote: post #42
wayn3 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thinking about the way we learn, I'd say it is a LOT like programming ourselves. Study and Practice both have aspects of learning to do steps in a mechanism to achieve an outcome, and each of us has to build that mechanism from scratch. The difference is that not all of us need to be self aware for the process to continue working. However, the best of us seem to have very detailed systems worked out for "programming…

But we are talking about literal programming here. Not conceptual programming.

I dont think that an AI will program itself anything like we program computers.

People who "program" themselves really just provide good data. Positive reinforcement, "healthy thoughts", "gaining valuable reference experiences", things like that. When you want to learn a new language, at the simplest level, you can immerse yourself in that countries culture and you will learn automatically. You don't hop inside your brain and move the axons around. You just provide good data and let the engine do its job, and why would an AI be incapable of doing that?

They already do that. "Backprop" is that mechanism. Not yet on a really advanced level, but a machine learning algorithm already introduces its learning back into itself and incrementally improves on that.

Re: Something is wrong when the ‘telephone app’ on your phone becomes 3rd party

#75

Post by muppetman »

mtkd wrote: post #17

I 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

Buy an Android device. Disable all apps you don't want, keeping only the apps you do want.

I'm sure you'll find a good reason to argue why this isn't what you want/need.

Re: Something is wrong when the ‘telephone app’ on your phone becomes 3rd party

#76

Post by ianseyler »

My iPhone is my pocket computer. It's on a tablet plan (data only - up to 1GB for $20 CAD) because voice and text is something I would hardly use. TextNow worked fine for me in past for phone calls and texting non-apple devices but I've since switched to Hushed as my go-to. I've never used the built in "Phone" app.

Re: Something is wrong when the ‘telephone app’ on your phone becomes 3rd party

#77

Post by TeMPOraL »

NikolaeVarius wrote: post #32
bostand wrote: post #28

Earlier 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)

It's still called a "phone", and it really sucks at being a computer (it is a good entertainment device though). Since a lot of things are still done over phone calls and every citizen in a civilized country is expected to be in possession of a phone number, I'd qualify it as core functionality.

Re: Something is wrong when the ‘telephone app’ on your phone becomes 3rd party

#78

Post by imron »

on_and_off wrote: post #50

What exactly is wrong with the dialler being an app ? It allows exactly what the author wants with his specific desire for a dialler that does not rely on play services or true caller.

From the article:

"When You install and use the Services, Truecaller will collect personal information from You and any devices You may use in Your interaction with our Services. This information may include e.g.: geo-location; Your IP address; device ID or unique identifier; device manufacturer and type; device and hardware settings; SIM card usage; applications installed on your device; ID for advertising; ad data, operating system; web browser; operator; IMSI; connection information; screen resolution; usage statistics; default communication applications; access to device address book; device log and event information; logs, keywords and meta data of incoming and outgoing calls and messages; version of the Services You use and other information based on Your interaction with our Services such as how the Services are being accessed (via another service, web site or a search engine); the pages You visit and features you use on the Services; the services and websites You engage with from the Services; content viewed by You, content You have commented on or sent to us and information about the ads You see and/or engage with; the search terms You use; order information and other usage activity and data logged by Truecaller’s servers from time to time. Truecaller may collect some of this information automatically through use of cookies and You can learn more about our use of cookies in our Cookie Policy"

and

"We transfer information to trusted vendors, service providers, and other partners who support our business and Services, such as providing technical infrastructure services, bug testing, analyzing how our Services are used, measuring the effectiveness of ads and services and facilitating payments as well as potential partners who may wish to work with us to provide other services."

Re: Something is wrong when the ‘telephone app’ on your phone becomes 3rd party

#79

Post by TeMPOraL »

muppetman wrote: post #72
AngeloAnolin wrote: post #27

Did I read that correctly? Isn’t this sweet? I am searching for a dialling application for my smartphone. A DIALLING application. Does this mean he can't practically call someone outside his contacts list as there's no way to key in phone numbers? Or would he still be able to make regular voice calls?

He can't make calls, because he disabled the dialer app. The functionality is still there in the phone, but he has no app that exposes it. Android truely does provide enough "rope" to hang yourself if you start to disable apps you shouldn't.

Yeah, the thing is, if dialer is an app you "shouldn't disable", then it also should not be silently replaced by the vendor with third-party service, with no easy way to revert that.

Re: Something is wrong when the ‘telephone app’ on your phone becomes 3rd party

#80

Post by TeMPOraL »

mtkd wrote: post #62
technologia wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 messag…

It's not a HN hivemind, but there are voices saying that indeed.

Maybe I'm weird, but I'm utterly disappointed with apps. Each piece of functionality is being partitioned into vendor-locked blobs that do much more on the cloud that they reasonably should, and almost none of that is interoperable with each other. If we call smartphones mobile computers, then we're throwing away 90% of power that comes with having all that compute on your person.

Post reply on HN