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A comment on Signal can now be used without Google Play Services. Parent comment

Re:Signal can now be used without Google Play Services by closeparen on Monday February 20, 2017 @06:09PM (#13691856)
Funny, for me, web, email, chat, calendar, etc. are all superfluous distracting noise. The one thing that keeps me on a smartphone is Google Maps.

I have a Garmin for the car, but their public transit directions are difficult to replace.

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Re:Signal can now be used without Google Play Services by jdkfree on Monday February 20, 2017 @06:51PM (#13692068)
If you can get transit to release data in a standard protocol, then I think that'd be fine. I would just be afraid of closed devices needing access to closed protocols and APIs. There be dragons.

Maybe something like nixOS where the phone's state is the result of a pure derivation. No installing or configuring anything except through a privileged ssh after decryption. Then boot and go again.

Only automatically updating is possible from the device proper, rollback on failure.

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Re:Signal can now be used without Google Play Services by astrange on Monday February 20, 2017 @07:24PM (#13692225)
> If you can get transit to release data in a standard protocol, then I think that'd be fine.

They do; it's called GTFS. It tends to need a lot of cleaning and manual in-person verification, which is expensive.

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Re:Signal can now be used without Google Play Services by CrackpotGonzo on Tuesday February 21, 2017 @02:04AM (#13693847)
You might be interested in this? No fluff, but does have maps and sync services. http://siempo.co
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