hifreq

My argument is only strengthened by your data?.. Messages app is the app every iPhone user uses to send and receive SMS messages. It's not about some exclusive features, blue vs green bubbles, etc. It's just SMS messages.

So just citing the number (130M) means nothing in this debate. WhatsApp or Signal or FM Messenger are not SMS apps, so we can't just look at the number of active users and make conclusions.

How many angsty teenagers must have an iPhone because of the color of their chat bubble? That's the number that (apparently) matters.

Agreed. Every single platform/device has apps that are exclusive to it. It's mind-boggling to me that people are so obsessed with Messages. I can't play thousands of Steam games on my Mac. My friends who have PCs play those games together, have fun, chat online. Should Steam be forced to "open their protocol" whatever that means?..

I can't play many games on my MacBook, so can't play and hang out with friends who all have Xbox/PS5. What should I do?

The only reason we are having this conversation is that some Americans can't fathom the idea that something they want is not available to them for free.

We can assume that there are close to zero iPhone owners who don't use Messages, considering that almost half of the US population has an iPhone. This calculation fails to account for the critical aspect: Messages is the default SMS app, it's not just a group chat. Comparing it to WhatsApp is just incorrect.

It's a ridiculous comparison. How do you calculate "more widely" usage? I use Messages for all SMS messages. I've had maybe 5 group chats in Messages over the last 10 years, all groups are organized in WhatsApp or Signal. So what is more widely used in my case?

Messages is the default SMS app on iPhones. 130M iPhones in the US does mean there are 130M Messages users. So what? Some teenagers are angsty because of green bubbles? FFS do we not have bigger problems to deal with?

Clearly, App Store is not just a payment processor, stop misrepresenting the situation.

I want to be able to send messages from Signal to WhatsApp! Alas, I am not entitled to that.

The demo video is using ChatGPT.

I couldn't find this info in the readme... does this tool anonymize ChatGPT requests? What does it mean that it's a private an secure tool in the context of using ChatGPT?

Never noticed that. My guess is that restaurants in general don't use olive oil very often because it's several times more expensive than vegetable oil. Saying that, fine dining vegan restaurants do use olive oil e.g. in salads.

There used to be a way to request full data deletion on their website. Probably too late to do it now for people who are included in the hack, but could still be a good idea to do it asap.

> not retain a copy

Unfortunately this is just one step away from a blog post where the CEO apologizes for letting down their customers by keeping copies of all data in an unsecured s3 bucket that was downloaded in its entirety by a 13 year old "hacker".

That might be true, but my impression is that the algorithm is weighted, so some artists (more popular in general, recommended, played more often by that individual user, would get picked more frequently by the "random" algorithm).

As far as I can tell all Spotify's playlists (in all forms, e.g. including "random" and "track radio") use weighted algorithms based on several factors like user's play history, Spotify's recommendations (probably includes paid promotions), general artist's popularity, etc.

When I still used Spotify, I would get a dozen of my favorite artists mixed into basically any "playlist" I pick. Was one of the reasons I quit Spotify - they are too opinionated on what I should listen to.

I was excited to get an insight into some hidden backend tools but it seems like this post is just about playlists (creating your own playlists, paying for placements in other people's playlists), and ads?

You and I have a very different definition of "upselling".

If Google releases a new model that they say can read prompts directly from your brain and they release a demo where they show a person sit quietly and prompt the model just by thinking, and later it's going to be revealed that there was a person sitting behind the camera and furiously typing all queries on a laptop, would you still defend Google? This is honestly ridiculous.

> it wasn't faked

> Steve Jobs also faked

So which is it?

The red flag for me was that they started that demo video with a background noise to make it seem like it's a raw video. A subtle manipulation for no reason, it's obviously not a raw video.

The fact that they did not fact check the videos again makes me not particularly confident in the quality of Google's work. The bit where the model misinterpreted music notation (the circled area does not mean "piano"), and the "less dense than water" rubber duck are beyond the pale. The SVG demo where they generate a South Park looking tree looks like a parody.