#blue bubble green bubble

[odinsblog]

I’m sorry, but the fact that the U.S. government is treating Android users like they’re being discriminated against bECAUSE OF A GREEN FUCKING BUBBLE is objectively one of thee stupidest things and most colossal wastes of government regulatory authority I’ve seen in a good fucking minute

We can and should have meaningful discussions about Apple and whether or not it’s a monopoly (it’s not), or a monopsony (possibly), and yes, there is a discussion to be had on the accessibility and the predatory practices of the entire industry—not just Apple—but the fact that the whole “green bubble discrimination” framing even made it into the lawsuit is somewhere between funny and absolutely bizarro

I am convinced that that specific part of the lawsuit is something that Android loving tech bros (Linus Sebastian, Nilay Patel, Elon Musk, etc. etc. etc.) kinda talked up into being a serious thing ™

Listen, my father’s parents had 7 boys and 7 girls, and my mother’s parents also had 7 boys and 7 girls (yes they got married and had children; no, they didn’t all marry each other) — so my point is, I have a shit ton of aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews. We could probably start our own political party. We’re spread out all around the country, and we talk + text + FaceTime with each other ALL the fucking time. Literally never has anyone complained about being a fucking green bubble, and yes, many of my extended family are Android users and so are some of my siblings. It’s a non-fucking issue, a manufactured controversy

If we ever have problems with interoperability (rare) then someone just switches phones (because many people have both Apple and android devices), or we text, or we just talk (not every convo requires FaceTime or pictures), or everyone just switches over to Zoom. JFC, before Zoom, we all connected on something called ooVoo and stayed on that for hours the night that Obama was elected for the first time. This is not difficult people

Use whatever phone you prefer, honestly Idgaf

But I’m actually getting kinda mad the more I think about that foolishness being one of the things that the Department of Justice is wasting time arguing about

“The stigma and social costs of not having an iPhone”?

*blinks in Black Lives Matter*

There are multiple genocides happening around the world, American owned businesses are data mining and vacuuming up every scrap of our personal data, Black people + women + refugees + trans people are being, REALLY being discriminated against, and the Apple lawsuit has the audacity to use language that implies harmful social discrimination is happening? Because “poor” old android???

What’s next, will android users become a legally protected class?

Please be serious for 2 seconds

It’s a fucking insult to people who are REALLY experiencing true discrimination based on personal characteristics that we cannot change

This reeks of white people bullshit

Please GTFOHWTBS

[heartnosekid]

johandburan on ig

[berriebombz]

POWERPUFF GIRLS! (ft Princess Morbucks....)

I had a great Powerpuff girl design idea an earlier this week, so I drew it immediately!!! And it was SO UGLY I immediately gave up!!! It was so bad i reevaluated my choices, which worked in my favor at the end! I much prefer these designs. Anyways, my version of the girls are a bit more covered so they won't get hurt as much in combat, having metal robot like combat armor on their legs to deliver heavier blows and protection. All of them have their own type earrings, and personal sleeves I think would fit them!

As for Morbucks, we all know she wants to copy the ppg so she copied their powers with tech.... I made her leg armor more complex, throwing some bolts in there for good measure, and made the stripe on her chest in a vague M shape (both to symbolize Morbucks and for her to not have a black neck like the girls.) Also brought back her silly jetpack! In conclusion, making your own ppg designs is an amazing practice for character design actually

(also bubbles slightly inspired by @lune-redd. Round bubbles just rocks.)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

An adversarial iMessage client for Android

Adversarial interoperability is one of the most reliable ways to protect tech users from predatory corporations: that's when a technologist reverse-engineers an existing product to reconfigure or mod it (interoperability) in ways its users like, but which its manufacturer objects to (adversarial):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability

"Adversarial interop" is a mouthful, so at EFF, we coined the term "competitive compatibility," or comcom, which is a lot easier to say and to spell.

Scratch any tech success and you'll find a comcom story. After all, when a company turns its screws on its users, it's good business to offer an aftermarket mod that loosens them again. HP's $10,000/gallon inkjet ink is like a bat-signal for third-party ink companies. When Mercedes announces that it's going to sell you access to your car's accelerator pedal as a subscription service, that's like an engraved invitation to clever independent mechanics who'll charge you a single fee to permanently unlock that "feature":

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/12/05/carmakers-push-forward-with-plans-to-make-basic-features-subscription-services-despite-widespread-backlash/

Comcom saved giant tech companies like Apple. Microsoft tried to kill the Mac by rolling out a truly cursèd version of MS Office for MacOS. Mac users (5% of the market) who tried to send Word, Excel or Powerpoint files to Windows users (95% of the market) were stymied: their files wouldn't open, or they'd go corrupt. Tech managers like me started throwing the graphic designer's Mac and replacing it with a Windows box with a big graphics card and Windows versions of Adobe's tools.

Comcom saved Apple's bacon. Apple reverse-engineered MS's flagship software suite and made a comcom version, iWork, whose Pages, Numbers and Keynote could flawlessly read and write MS's Word, Excel and Powerpoint files:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/adversarial-interoperability-reviving-elegant-weapon-more-civilized-age-slay

It's tempting to think of iWork as benefiting Apple users, and certainly the people who installed and used it benefited from it. But Windows users also benefited from iWork. The existence of iWork meant that Windows users could seamlessly collaborate on and share files with their Mac colleagues. IWork didn't just add a new feature to the Mac ("read and write files that originated with Windows users") – it also added a feature to Windows: "collaborate with Mac users."

Every pirate wants to be an admiral. Though comcom rescued Apple from a monopolist's sneaky attempt to drive it out of business, Apple – now a three trillion dollar company – has repeatedly attacked comcom when it was applied to Apple's products. When Apple did comcom, that was progress. When someone does comcom to Apple, that's piracy.

Apple has many tools at its disposal that Microsoft lacked in the early 2000s. Radical new interpretations of existing copyright, contract, patent and trademark law allows Apple – and other tech giants – to threaten rivals who engage in comcom with both criminal and civil penalties. That's right, you can go to prison for comcom these days. No wonder Jay Freeman calls this "felony contempt of business model":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/09/lead-me-not-into-temptation/#chamberlain

Take iMessage, Apple's end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) instant messaging tool. Apple customers can use iMessage to send each other private messages that can't be read or altered by third parties – not cops, not crooks, not even Apple. That's important, because when private messaging systems get hacked, bad things happen:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_celebrity_nude_photo_leak

But Apple has steadfastly refused to offer an iMessage app for non-Apple systems. If you're an Apple customer holding a sensitive discussion with an Android user, Apple refuses to offer you a tool to maintain your privacy. Those messages are sent "in the clear," over the 38-year-old SMS protocol, which is trivial to spy on and disrupt.

Apple sacrifices its users' security and integrity in the hopes that they will put pressure on their friends to move into Apple's walled garden. As CEO Tim Cook told a reporter: if you want to have secure communications with your mother, buy her an iPhone:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tim-cook-says-buy-mom-210347694.html

Last September, a 16-year old high school student calling himself JJTech published a technical teardown of iMessage, showing how any device could send and receive encrypted messages with iMessage users, even without an Apple ID:

https://jjtech.dev/reverse-engineering/imessage-explained/

JJTech even published code to do this, in an open source library called Pypush:

https://github.com/JJTech0130/pypush

In the weeks since, Beeper has been working to productize JJTech's code, and this week, they announced Beeper Mini, an Android-based iMessage client that is end-to-end encrypted:

https://beeper.notion.site/How-Beeper-Mini-Works-966cb11019f8444f90baa314d2f43a54

Beeper is known for a multiprotocol chat client built on Matrix, allowing you to manage several kinds of chat from a single app. These multiprotocol chats have been around forever. Indeed, iMessage started out as one – when it was called "iChat," it supported Google Talk and Jabber, another multiprotocol tool. Other tools like Pidgin have kept the flame alive for decades, and have millions of devoted users:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/07/tower-babel-how-public-interest-internet-trying-save-messaging-and-banish-big

But iMessage support has remained elusive. Last month, Nothing launched Sunchoice, a disastrous attempt to bring iMessage to Android, which used Macs in a data-center to intercept and forward messages to Android users, breaking E2EE and introducing massive surveillance risks:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/21/23970740/sunbird-imessage-app-shut-down-privacy-nothing-chats-phone-2

Beeper Mini does not have these defects. The system encrypts and decrypts messages on the Android device itself, and directly communicates with Apple's servers. It gathers some telemetry for debugging, and this can be turned off in preferences. It sends a single SMS to Apple's servers during setup, which changes your device's bubble from green to blue, so that Apple users now correctly see your device as a secure endpoint for iMessage communications.

Beeper Mini is now available in Google Play:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.beeper.ima&hl=en_US

Now, this is a high-stakes business. Apple has a long history of threatening companies like Beeper over conduct like this. And Google has a long history deferring to those threats – as it did with OG App, a superior third-party Instagram app that it summarily yanked after Meta complained:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/05/battery-vampire/#drained

But while iMessage for Android is good for Android users, it's also very good for Apple customers, who can now get the privacy and security guarantees of iMessage for all their contacts, not just the ones who bought the same kind of phone as they did. The stakes for communications breaches have never been higher, and antitrust scrutiny on Big Tech companies has never been so intense.

Apple recently announced that it would add RCS support to iOS devices (RCS is a secure successor to SMS):

https://9to5mac.com/2023/11/16/apple-rcs-coming-to-iphone/

Early word from developers suggests that this support will have all kinds of boobytraps. That's par for the course with Apple, who love to announce splashy reversals of their worst policies – like their opposition to right to repair – while finding sneaky ways to go on abusing its customers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/22/vin-locking/#thought-differently

The ball is in Apple's court, and, to a lesser extent, in Google's. As part of the mobile duopoly, Google has joined with Apple in facilitating the removal of comcom tools from its app store. But Google has also spent millions on an ad campaign shaming Apple for exposing its users to privacy risks when talking to Android users:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/21/23883609/google-rcs-message-apple-iphone-ipager-ad

While we all wait for the other shoe to drop, Android users can get set up on Beeper Mini, and technologists can kick the tires on its code libraries and privacy guarantees.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/07/blue-bubbles-for-all/#never-underestimate-the-determination-of-a-kid-who-is-time-rich-and-cash-poor

[bluerm]

PPG if I was the Executive 💗💚💙

[goobersplat]

2000 Pokémon Charmander, Squirtle, Bulbasaur Lot of 3 Empty Bubble Containers

[artsbymei]

[light-intothedarkness]

الساحل الطيب💕

[buttercool-crystal]

I got a little bored. So, I drew the Powerpuffs if they were in Sprunki.

If you do not know this game, then you can play it on Google.

Also, I didn't want to add eyelashes cuz i think they look weird.

[snowdin-stims]

🫧 | source

[thisisrealy2kok]

Check out this "Mental" rave flyer for The Bubble in Binghamton, NY! (1998)

[cheola]

@sseulr1n 𓂂͏ 𝜗𝜚 .

[heartnosekid]

dipyourcar on ig

[rhiangalaxy]

The besties~

[ID: A TGCF drawing. Xie Lian walks alongside Shi Qingxuan who is in their female form. XL looks down at them with a gentle and slightly amused smile, one eye opened and the other closed in a wink. SQX has her hand wrapped around XL's arm, the other hand holding a closed fan up under their face. She is laughing/talking exuberantly with both her eyes closed in a large smile. End ID]

[bubbleblujay]

frutiger aero stimboard!!!

🐠 | 🫧 | 🐠

🫧 | 🐠 | 🫧

🐠 | 🫧 | 🐠

[xcremephillinx]