[HN Gopher] The Confusing State of RCS
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The Confusing State of RCS
Author : hocuspocus
Score : 54 points
Date : 2024-11-03 18:45 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (substack.com)
| happytoexplain wrote:
| >the relationship between carriers, Google and Apple.
|
| I am begging you to accept the Oxford comma into your heart.
| justin66 wrote:
| I think anyone who couldn't infer the meaning of that sentence
| deserves whatever dire consequence you imagine they might
| experience.
| smt88 wrote:
| Plenty of people don't know the definition of "carrier," and
| it's especially confusing because Google is a reseller (via
| Google Fi).
|
| A single comma would clear up any possible confusion and
| require nearly zero time to add.
| stavros wrote:
| To be fair, this was an egregious sentence to not add a comma
| to.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| It needs to be reworded. "Between" implies two parties: so a
| relationship between (one carrier) and (one mobile OS/app
| dev/vendor).
|
| Since there are many carriers and at least two OS vendors,
| now we have "...relationships among..."
| goodoldneon wrote:
| The Oxford comma isn't a panacea. Sometime it makes a list read
| like a parenthetical phrase
| smt88 wrote:
| I don't agree. Can you share an example?
| ericpauley wrote:
| Cue the em-dash, semicolon, colon, and parenthetical as
| secondary clause separators. If you still can't use the (in
| my opinion mandatory) serial comma without ambiguity then you
| need to rephrase.
| tzs wrote:
| In every example I recall seeing where using an Oxford comma
| causes a problem it is because some sort of appositive or
| parenthetical phrase has been set off with commas.
|
| Commas are the most common way to set off such phrases, but
| they are not the only way. Most grammarians seem to think
| that em dashes or parenthesis are acceptable, and I've seen
| styles guides that recommend doing that if there are commas
| in the sentence.
|
| As far as I can tell if we just stopped using commas to set
| off such phrases when other commas are in the sentence (or
| just stopped using commas to set off such phrases all the
| time) that would get rid of all the cases where _including_
| the Oxford comma in a list makes the list ambiguous, without
| changing the cases where _not having_ an Oxford comma is
| ambiguous.
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| _Well technically..._
|
| https://fi.google.com/
| hocuspocus wrote:
| Thanks, fixed :)
| jmclnx wrote:
| Again I was thinking this was the "real" RCS:
|
| https://www.gnu.org/software/rcs/
|
| seems we are running out of acronyms.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| Not only that, but it appears that there are at least five
| expansions to "R___ Control System":
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RCS
| stavros wrote:
| I don't know, my mind went to the messaging system that's being
| deployed now, instead of an ancient VCS. There are only 14k
| possible three-letter acronyms anyway.
| skissane wrote:
| RCS brings to my mind Reaction Control System, as in
| spacecraft. Been reading a lot about space recently...
|
| Although I suppose the headline doesn't make much sense in
| that context - spacecraft systems are rarely in a "confusing
| state" (except maybe Boeing Starliner)
| gwern wrote:
| There are only 14k, but they are very unevenly distributed,
| so you might be surprised how many are left for the taking:
| https://gwern.net/tla
|
| You only have to go as far as 'CQK' before there is, AFAICT
| and based on Wikipedia entries, essentially no even slightly
| important use of a TLA. There are then another >2k more or
| less unused, and if you go to four-letters, you've got ~390k
| to play with.
| zamadatix wrote:
| We ran out a long, long time ago. 26^3 is only 17,576 and 26^4
| is less than half a million (even if we intentionally set out
| to increment them rather than use them as meaningful acronyms)
| yet the birthday paradox gives grave odds for even longer
| acronyms via random assignment.
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| And that's including awkward ones nobody wants like QWFW
| 486sx33 wrote:
| I think apples adoption of RCS is good, but it lacks IMHO two
| huge things. 1. A better warning to users (other than being
| green) that RCS messages are NOT end to end encrypted and that
| your conversation is an RCS conversation. 2. Force read responses
| from the other party should be enabled.
|
| Small other complaint, anyone using SMS should get auto ignored
| on Apple now, or at least a setting for auto-ignore messages that
| aren't iMessage or RCS
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| >Small other complaint, anyone using SMS should get auto
| ignored on Apple now, or at least a setting for auto-ignore
| messages that aren't iMessage or RCS
|
| I dunno man, RCS is pretty unreliable, even in Android-to-
| Android communications. SMS is your standard fallback.
|
| Honestly I try avoid the whole thing and prefer to use Telegram
| or FB Messenger, which also have the benefits of reasonably
| well on computers.
| curt15 wrote:
| >Small other complaint, anyone using SMS should get auto
| ignored on Apple now, or at least a setting for auto-ignore
| messages that aren't iMessage or RCS
|
| This would exclude any people who aren't on mobile data all the
| time. If iMessage becomes an Internet only messaging platform,
| it would have no compelling edge over Signal or WhatsApp.
| Kwpolska wrote:
| It already is an Internet-only messaging platform, and its
| compelling edge and sole reason why people care about the
| blue/green bubble thing is being installed by default on iOS.
| acdha wrote:
| People care because it's enormously better than SMS and
| also better than RCS. Nobody would care if green didn't
| mean things like no guarantee of better than same-day
| message delivery.
| Kwpolska wrote:
| People outside of the US have solved this problem by
| adopting an OS-agnostic Internet-based messaging platform
| like WhatsApp, Signal, Facebook Messenger, or Telegram.
| There are one or two people I exchange SMS messages with,
| but other than that, my SMS inbox is full of automated
| notifications, and the actual chats happen elsewhere.
| crazygringo wrote:
| 1. Being green is fine. Why do you need a second
| differentiator? Green has always been without E2EE and
| continues to be without. The last thing I want is some extra
| icon adding visual noise.
|
| 2. Forcing read receipts, you mean? Absolutely not. The ability
| to turn off read receipts is vital for privacy. Nobody should
| be forcing anything there.
|
| > _Small other complaint, anyone using SMS should get auto
| ignored on Apple now_
|
| Please don't. The messages I send fall back to SMS when I don't
| have good data connectivity, which happens all the time on the
| go. Why should my messages be auto-ignored because of my
| connectivity issues?
| spankalee wrote:
| So you're saying I should never be able to text iPhone users?
| Great.
| gruez wrote:
| Doesn't iOS have RCS support now?
| spankalee wrote:
| I don't have access to RCS from my phone number, but I do
| have access to SMS.
| RandomThoughts3 wrote:
| Nobody cares because everyone in the US weirdly uses iMessage
| while the rest of the world uses either WhatsApp, WeChat or Line.
|
| Honestly, at this point, would probably be easier for Google to
| just push WhatsApp in the US despite it being a Meta app if they
| really want to break iMessage stronghold.
| rodgerd wrote:
| Google don't want to "break the iMessage stronghold". They want
| to crack open Apple customers' messaging so they can feed it
| into their advertising systems. WhatsApp is useless to Google
| for that.
| spankalee wrote:
| Maybe Google wants their users to have a decent,
| interoperable phone-base messaging solution?
|
| They don't make any money or sell any ads via text messages
| with Android users, why would they suddenly with iPhone
| users?
| RandomThoughts3 wrote:
| Clearly Apple uses iMessage to create a significant lock in
| effect in the USA. So, yes, as their main competitor, Google
| should want to attack the market share of iMessage. It's
| probably the biggest thing standing in the way of Android.
| Pushing a competitor with great interoperability between
| Android and iOS would make sense.
|
| I mean they clearly believe that they can do that by
| themselves in the US market but WhatsApp has the advantage of
| being able to lean of expatriates and people with contacts
| abroad as a steppingstone.
| martin8412 wrote:
| That wouldn't send a ton to data into the hands of Google.
| acdha wrote:
| Google sells RCS services, and they botched their way out of
| the social market. For a company which depends on ad targeting
| that's pretty huge and Meta is hardly going to help their
| biggest competitor in advertising but the phone companies are
| far more negotiable.
| refulgentis wrote:
| This is generally a good chronological recap, however, the
| confusing state seems to arise from an unnatural focus on finding
| drama / attributing motives / a lens of corporations personified
| playing chess with full information at all times, and then
| getting confused about what these inferred chess moves mean.
|
| Ex. Some MVNOs haven't updated their iOS cellular with apple yet
| because it's an obscure technical thing for a feature most of
| them don't know exists, yet, for an OS that came out...3 weeks
| ago? It's not confusing or indicative of some grand plan on
| anyone's behalf
|
| My flag went up for "need to read this closely, they're
| substituting facts for lengthy contextual verbiage that _feels_
| true " as soon as it's talking about gTalk doing a video call a
| year before FaceTime. The implication that this went away, and
| more importantly, the implication Google "lost" to FaceTime, and
| even more importantly, framing not buying WhatsApp as a "miss",
| are unambiguous signs of immature commentary.
|
| Smaller aside, not intended as a singular reason to find it
| lacking basis: I'm no Google fan, but over the years, I've
| learned to ignore handwaving about how the Nth rebrand of
| hangouts was somehow leagues ahead and then disappeared and there
| was a brand new one that lost meaningful core features.
|
| I get the Google service stuff is confusing and not good stuff,
| but truth is you could start a gChat Gmail Chat gTalk etc. in
| 2009 and have it in your Google Chat in 2024.
| DidYaWipe wrote:
| "Over the top?" Come on, use descriptive terms.
| tyrust wrote:
| That's the term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over-the-
| top_media_service
| vdvsvwvwvwvwv wrote:
| He is using estiablished terms.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over-the-top_media_service
| geor9e wrote:
| _Puts on tin foil hat_ Established by a cable company
| lobbyist to disparage their internet-based competitors. Makes
| it sound like netflix is hopping over the top of the gate, to
| the senators they were begging to ban it. Source: made it up.
| mh- wrote:
| You needn't make comments like this when a quick google
| would tell you that the CRTC - Canada's FCC counterpart -
| popularized this term 13 years ago.
|
| https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/publications/reports/rp1110.htm
| psanford wrote:
| The client situation for RCS is really quite bad. With SMS and
| MMS I can fairly easily run my own client on a linux system that
| has a GSM modem. This is not the case at all with RCS. Even
| worse, Google Messages is not open source and so far there have
| not been public APIs available on android to interact with RCS
| messages.
| binkHN wrote:
| I can't upvote this enough. As an Android developer of an app
| that uses text messaging, RCS is completely locked out.
| zeeZ wrote:
| Shortly after RCS became supported, I disabled it. After going
| years without receiving a single unexpected SMS, I was suddenly
| flooded with fake DHL schemes via RCS from +63 numbers (to my
| German number). I don't see a reason to ever re-enable RCS
| hocuspocus wrote:
| Interesting.
|
| I had never gotten any spam via RCS until this year, and it's
| been in relatively small numbers compared to WhatsApp,
| Telegram, and mostly SMS which stays the top spam vector for
| me. In any case, Google Messages spam filtering works
| incredibly well.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| This post left out the Android situation for custom roms, rooted
| devices, and non-Google blessed devices. On these devices Google
| willfully and maliciously blocks RCS for these subsets of would-
| be users: https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/1/24087418/google-
| messages-b...
|
| I say willful because they admitted to it, malicious in that at
| no point will the device inform the user that RCS is blocked. It
| shows connected and will not relay messages. Spoofing fingerprint
| and other props it will immediately begin to work again. For
| users affected, they will have inbound messages silently blocked
| (because other users will see the device registered on RCS, but
| Google will not relay it) but not know about the disruption
| unless they were aware of this news.
|
| EDIT: In case anyone thinks this is me being alarmist, RCS is
| beginning to be used for 911 here's Google's own press release on
| it: https://blog.google/products/messages/google-messages-
| rcs-91...
| hocuspocus wrote:
| Ha, I admit last time I worried about custom ROMs, I was using
| a Nexus 5.
|
| I think it's a lost cause and not only because of RCS, see also
| banking applications. On the other hand, even a $200 Galaxy A
| gets 4/5 years of updates today, which benefits the vast
| majority of customers a lot more than an unlockable bootloader.
| baxtr wrote:
| I was working at a large telco back in 2010 when they started
| introducing RCS. Yes it's that old...
|
| Point is, we never got very far because every carrier and every
| phone manufacturer wanted to have their say. It was (and probably
| still is) "standard definition by committee". And that just takes
| forever.
| bastloing wrote:
| Doesn't matter what Apple does, they blinked, now they have to
| catch up.
| cyberax wrote:
| I really, utterly, and completely hate RCS. It's incredible how
| Google and Apple managed to screw up the messaging market.
|
| I want to have very straightforward functionality: send rich
| notifications to my clients via RCS.
|
| It's simply impossible. Carriers control RCS, and you need to
| make commercial agreements with each one to make sure your
| messages are delivered. Wonderful.
|
| But it gets worse. There's RCS Business, so once you do get
| agreements with carriers, you can spam users as much as carriers
| approve. There is no way to opt out of automated messages. India
| got a dose of it and RCS got disabled pretty quickly.
|
| I wish carriers just looked at Telegram or Signal for examples of
| _good_ messaging infrastructure.
| hocuspocus wrote:
| Article author here, I didn't look into this as I naively
| assumed that the consolidation around Jibe would make this use
| case better than SMS, not worse.
|
| I see a lot of providers on this page:
| https://jibe.google.com/partners/messaging-partners/
|
| Including Twilio, Sinch, ...
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(page generated 2024-11-03 23:01 UTC)