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As I found out recently, these features are Geo-locked. Both Pixel & Galaxy phones have this functionality built into the Phone/Dialler app. In the UK, despite

As I found out recently, these features are Geo-locked. Both Pixel & Galaxy phones have this functionality built into the Phone/Dialler app. In the UK, despite that it's legal for individuals to record their own calls without any consent or notification to the other party, these foreign companies have decided that it's either illegal, or that we're just now allowed to use it, and the features are disabled. The built-in options are therefore unavailable, and Google seems to have gone on a crusade to make sure these apps in the Play Store are nerfed or removed. APIs that apps could use to provide this functionality have been removed and the only option now is to use he accessibility APIs which involve manually installing apks, and dismissing scary warnings. I don't expect this will work for much longer. Where's Stallman when you need him...

pierat 3y ago
> Where's Stallman when you need him... Busy on his crusade of 'perfection', and absolute refusal of using any smartphone cause some chip is closed source. But the tincan and aluminum foil helmet network is completely open /sigh We need a new Stallman who doesn't let perfection be the enemy of good.
- javajosh 3y ago
  We need a new Stallman who doesn't let perfection be the enemy of good. Sometimes I share this sentiment, but sometimes I think that its foolish to try to build on top of a rotten foundation. You might be able to build what looks like a livable house on top of a rotten foundation, and those who object will have this charge leveled at them. And it will seem reasonable, precisely up to the moment the foundation fails and the house catastrophically falls apart. The closed chips, closed microcode, closed firmware layers are a rotten foundation that happens to support the modern internet well-enough to provide an illusion of solidity. Of course Stallman can object until he's blue in the face, it will take a demonstration, a real collapse, for people to really understand the problem. Lots of possibilities there, with everyone's favorite being a Sino-US war over Taiwan with a heavy cyber component which targets these components, particularly power infrastructure, and the US realizes it no longer has the capacity to recover from such a blow, and such capacity was lost 2 generations of engineers ago. Mere argument becomes irrelevant at that point, because Nature doesn't care about argument, She only cares about Survival.

pierat 3y ago

> Where's Stallman when you need him... Busy on his crusade of 'perfection', and absolute refusal of using any smartphone cause some chip is closed source. But the tincan and aluminum foil helmet network is completely open /sigh We need a new Stallman who doesn't let perfection be the enemy of good.

javajosh 3y ago
We need a new Stallman who doesn't let perfection be the enemy of good. Sometimes I share this sentiment, but sometimes I think that its foolish to try to build on top of a rotten foundation. You might be able to build what looks like a livable house on top of a rotten foundation, and those who object will have this charge leveled at them. And it will seem reasonable, precisely up to the moment the foundation fails and the house catastrophically falls apart. The closed chips, closed microcode, closed firmware layers are a rotten foundation that happens to support the modern internet well-enough to provide an illusion of solidity. Of course Stallman can object until he's blue in the face, it will take a demonstration, a real collapse, for people to really understand the problem. Lots of possibilities there, with everyone's favorite being a Sino-US war over Taiwan with a heavy cyber component which targets these components, particularly power infrastructure, and the US realizes it no longer has the capacity to recover from such a blow, and such capacity was lost 2 generations of engineers ago. Mere argument becomes irrelevant at that point, because Nature doesn't care about argument, She only cares about Survival.