pup_atlas @ pup_atlas @pawb.social

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Joined

2 yr. ago

If someone thinks AirPods Max sound amazing, they’re agreeing how good compressed audio can sound, whether they realize it or not.

Yes! (Kinda) I’m not saying lossless music is the end all be all, and honestly in normal life I prefer non-lossless, because its SOO much less data, and you can hardly tell the difference in normal listening anyway. What I was trying to express was how bad badly done compression can sound. Good compression exists, and it can sound nearly identical anecdotally, but there is a limit to how low you can go before you start hearing it, and I’m trying to say that I think Spotify has chosen a rate below that level by default. I switched to a higher profile and the problem is mostly gone.

There may be other factors at play, Apple quite likes to compress stream data between their own devices, even on “standard” protocols (just look at their monitor collaboration with LG where they did the same thing to exceed the max resolution of an existing display signal). Regardless, there is a difference, and it is not a small one. It was immediately obvious to me after listening to a single song. Something about the pipeline is crunching audio to the level where it’s obviously degraded. This isn’t audiophile grade splitting hairs and “I think it sounds ever so slightly better with these gold cables” it was like the difference between 480p and 1080p video to me, enough to be actually annoying during normal listening, even if I was actively trying to forget about it.

I wholeheartedly disagree. I have more trained ears then most (worked in video production), but not by much, and when i got my AirPods Max, I thought they sounded awful at first. They were crunchy and dithered sounding in this weird way. I was gonna return them, but I did some testing, and discovered that I was hearing Spotify compression. I turned up the quality as high as it would go in the settings, and that made it a little bit better, but I could still hear it, and can to this day. I did some further testing by signing up for a tidal free trial, in addition to Apple Music. Listening in lossless was an entirely different experience, I could definitely tell the two apart blindly, without even specifically looking for sound quality. There were like 2 to 3 instruments in a given song that I wouldn’t be able to pick out in the lower quality audio, that I could easily pick out in the lossless audio. You have to have a pretty decent pair of headphones to be able to hear it, but some of the higher and consumer stuff can definitely hit that level, and when you do, it’s not something you have to go looking for, it sounds very obvious.

By doing it that way, you are all the sudden generating tens, if not hundreds of requests per minute to grab notifications for every platform and service, rather than just the one. With a unified approach, the phone can wake up in the background every 5 minutes and ping Google to ask for notifications. If everyone did it individually, your phone would never be able to go to sleep, and would CONSTANTLY be sending out requests to random servers. That also brings up security concerns, since you can get a vague idea of location data from a request, any app that can send notifs can soft track users. They would also open the door for one to be compromised, and send malicious info much easier than it would be to do thru Google. All around, its just a worse solution to the problem with one very small benefit.

Rooted, degoogled AOSP is definitively not “mainstream”. Mainstream to me means something you can but off the shelf and start using without having to modify it.

Perhaps not, but it’s not just the act of making the service worse, it’s doing so measurably to paying customers ONLY when using a competitors product. With those caveats, I think you could at least argue standing. Winning is a whole other battle.

Perhaps YouTube premium subscribers would have standing as a class action, since Google is materially worsening the experience of a paid product if you don’t use their browser

They claim it in the article, and in a few other publications, but I haven’t seen anything that explicitly confirms, from sunbird, that this is the case, including on their website. They also make claims on their website that conflict with that architecture, as I don’t believe it would be possible to E2E encrypt messages like they claim they do. I kinda wonder if the Mac Mini claim is an assumption that everyone just ran with, without confirming that it’s true. I could be wrong though, I’ll gladly eat my words if anyone has a primary source to cite, but that architecture and business model just doesn’t appear to be compatible with their claims.

In the article it mentions that the service is run by sunbird. Just by reading their FAQ it doesn’t actually sound like they are MITM’ing messages via some mac server somewhere. It actually sounds more plausible to me that they are doing all the magic “on device”. They specifically mention that this won’t work on multiple phones at the same time, that’s what’s tipping me off.

What I suspect is happening is that the phone itself is spoofing an actual iPhone, and connecting to Apple servers as if it is one. Normally you wouldn’t be able to do this, Apple sells the phones, so they know all the serial numbers that should be able to access iMessage, and would be able to block anything that doesn’t report to be a real iPhone. What I think may be happening is that sunbird could be buying up pallets of dead, old, or otherwise unusable iPhones for pennies on the dollar, and using those serial numbers to pretend they were an iPhone from another device (like the nothing phone) directly.

This would make sense with their business model, according to their FAQ they have “no reason to charge money” for their product yet. Buying access to iMessage for a few bucks upfront with no ongoing cost would match up with what they are claiming, and it would be extremely hard for Apple to detect on their end, as they would appear to be all sorts of models, bought at different times, in different places, and signed in by real people.

I want to reiterate that this is pure speculation on my part, it's just a theory. Which this would mean that (in theory) chats could (and would) be E2E encrypted from sender to receiver, ultimately it’s still Nothing/Sunbird’s app, so they could be doing anything with it on device.

Oh, did we start requiring criminal background checks for pipes and metal stock too? This is the same problem we’re facing in the rest of the country, everything can be used as a weapon, and requiring background checks on all of them is gonna do nothing to stop gun crime. Regulate the damn guns, that is the only thing that will help.

I had a call last week where T Mobile SWORE to me up and down that I ran out of data on my 5 GB of LTE, then unlimited 3G speed plan. Which went down like this:

“right, and I’m out of LTE speed data, that’s fine, but you’ve throttled me to UNDER 10 Kbps, that’s emphatically not 3G speeds, I can’t even complete a speedtest”

“Sir it’s showing me that you’re out of data”

“Out of LTE data, but I still have unlimited 3G, thats the plan I bought”

“Sir you’ve hit the limit on your unlimited plan”

“If you are ceasing usable service at a certain limit, what part of this plan is unlimited?”

“Your data is unlimited sir, but you’ve hit your data limit for the month”

This kinda shit is straight up fraud, and clearly designed to con people who don’t know any better out of their money. I read the fine print, all of it, and their full corporate policy. I’m also technical, and I can see I have an RSSI to the tower of higher than -40, my signal is great. They advertised, and I paid for far more. That’s beside the fact that “unlimited” data literally doesn’t exist, there is a line speed to every uplink, you can’t physically download more than that a month. The government needs to get off their ass and prosecute these motherfuckers.

If you don’t get a physical piece of media that can be viewed offline indefinitely, you don’t own anything, you’re just renting. Services revoking even bought and paid for content is not unheard of, digital purchasing gives every streaming company the ability to do that.

Yup, those clauses should be illegal. Especially nowdays. In the past, you could cross out sections you don’t agree too before signing, or negotiate the contract somehow. But now, contracts are very clearly designed as a “take it or leave it” offer, and when literally everyone in a given marketplace for an essential product or service has the same clauses, it effectively removes your rights.

The US is indeed part of the world. I would be fine with similar coverage if this were to happen somewhere else like Germany or Turkey.

My understanding is that this alert is mandatory, and will sound no matter what unless the phone is fully off. You can turn off things like Amber and Weather alerts, but my understanding is that this one (by design) cannot be disabled.

Respectfully, I disagree. I see far more people using older iPhones than using older Andriods. Personally I’ve never gotten a flagship Andriod to last more than a year without serious usability issues, like Google Maps running at 2 frames per second. I tried all the popular brands, Samsung, LG, Motorola, etc, and they all consistently ended up unusable after just a year of use, even if I factory reset them, they’d be right back to where they were in a month or two. I even took great care to leave them as factory as possible, installing only basic apps like gmail, Discord, Telegram, Chrome, etc. No power user stuff like Tasker or customization.

I got so fed up I switched to iPhone in 2020, and I’m still rocking the same 12 Pro Max I bought back then. My usage hasn’t changed from Andriod, but I feel like my phone is reliable again. I don’t have to worry about my phone crashing, and loosing Google Maps mid-merge, or not being able to call people if I’m in need. This three-going-on-four year old phone just got the latest iOS upgrade, and you could still go back a few gens if you wanted. Hell, my partner just found one of the first few iPod touches at a thrift store the other day, and even that still works just fine, you can install and use apps like normal.

Firstly, let me be clear. This is my opinion as someone who isn’t, and has never been involved with their instance in any capacity. My account is with pawb.social.

Posting legal letters may open them up to additional legal liability, and it is completely reasonable to let the community know what happened without sharing the actual letter.

Secondly, you’re putting words in my mouth. I am not saying they are censoring in good faith. I am saying the complete opposite, that they are reversing their stance in good faith. In other words, they are uncensoring content in good faith.

This doesn’t sound like censorship, it sounds like they were getting legal threats directly levied at their volunteer team. I can understand the desire to protect yourself against getting sued for your (admittedly large) side project. It sounds like they are working on it in good faith though.

My guy, the feature is literally named “Autopilot”. By definition they are advertising it as a system that can PILOT the car AUTOMATICALLY. It doesn’t matter what they put in the fine print, they are blatantly describing the system as autonomous.

Spending less than you earn isn’t a realistic prospect for A LOT of people. In many areas the cost of living has increased so dramatically that even those pinching pennies, eating simple cheap meals like chicken and rice every night are feeling it. The inflation numbers being distributed by the government are at this point, a straight up fabrication, with no relation to how the economy is actually functioning. In terms of actual costs real people are paying, things have doubled or tripled in cost across the board since 2020 at the grocery store, not to mention how outrageous rent has become. Unless you are also doubling or tripling your income every few years, it’s easy to see where all that money is going.