another_comment

First CA passes AB 1043, which requires age attestation. Now, they take the next step.

"California is preparing to share with an outside organization detailed information about driver’s license holders"

"The state plans to provide the information to the American Assn. of Motor Vehicle Administrators, a nonprofit organization whose governing board is made up of DMV officials from across the country."

"In the future, an ID database like the one the association maintains could be used to support mobile licenses that people can use on their iPhones or online age verification for access to mature content or chatbots."

Excellent question. I will try that tomorrow morning and report back.

>>I’d argue that a reasonable network limitation with a minimal blast ratio is responsible.

I'm the OP and I agree. Across 3 Twilio phone numbers and I maybe make 4 voice calls and 10 texts a week. I've been doing this for 4 years or more.

>> For example, I use SIP over 5060 on Spectrum without issue.

As did I, until a week or so ago. Until I was cut off, without notice. I've been a Spectrum residential customer since the 1990s.

I'm not running my own service. I'm using www.iptel.org, they offer a free sip account. Under the hood they use the Kamailio sip server. It is pretty darn reliable for a free service.

Every few months iptel.org goes down for a few hours and I get 408 request timeouts. When Spectrum blocked 5060 UDP, I got 408 request timeouts for a week. It finally dawned on me to try my iptel account on my VPS and my SIP register succeeded. That's when I knew Spectrum had shut 5060 UDP. I tried 5060 TCP and that didn't work either.

My guess is Spectrum has been rate limiting port 5060 for a while, and finally just turned it off.

Nice.

>> Guess they want you to pay for their bundled phone plan instead.

I think you are right. But I am waaaay to cheap for that. I'm using Twilio on some Raspberry Pi's with some software I wrote myself. For 3 phone numbers, I'm spending like $10 a month total.

My call quality also seems better since I've switched on the VPN. I do not have numerical proof of this, but it sure seems like my voice calls are crystal clear now.

>> There is literally no other option to watch YouTube on a TV nowadays

I use https://github.com/yuliskov/SmartTubeNext Smart Tube Next on a Firestick. I side loaded both the beta and release versions with adb. I have not seen a commercial since. If Release doesn't work, try Beta. One of them always seems to work.

>> And it's impossible to buy a dumb TV in 2022

Next best thing: I bought a Samsung TV last year and never accepted the Terms and Conditions. No ads.

Edit: fixed link syntax

Thanks, I fixed the url.

Project N95 is the National Critical Equipment Clearinghouse for personal protective equipment (PPE), COVID-19 diagnostic tests and critical equipment. Edit: stupid typo on url, sorry https://www.projectn95.org/

US based non profit, not tied to amazon. I've bought their stuff. They are legit.

>> All traffic passing through Twilio is categorized as application-to-person traffic.

Thanks, I didn't know that.

>> If you haven't registered your brand, been assigned a trust score, and registered your specific number with a specific a2p campaign, you'll be subjected to heavy filtering.

I've done none of the above. I've been using Twilio for 3 years and this is the first time I've ever had an SMS rejected. I don't get it.

>> I think voip.ms only allows person-to-person traffic. Try registering a number there and sending the same message that got blocked.

I'll give that a try.

This gets rejected: "(Error: 30007) Carrier violation. Your message content was flagged as going against Verizon carrier guidelines."

This gets rejected: "(Error: 30007) Verizon Carrier violation. Your message content was flagged as going against carrier guidelines."

This does not get rejected: "(Error: 30007) Carrier violation. Your message content was flagged as going against carrier guidelines. Verizon"

>> Why are there rules about the content of text messages at all?

I have no idea. What is disturbing to me is the arbitrary stuff Verizon is filtering. Seriously, what is so controversial about a Twilio error message?

>> I think it might be time to define a new metric that more closely reflects the actual cost of living.

We had different inflation stats back in the day. The US government has been slowly changing them. This guy uses the old official methodology to calculate inflation today. He gets way higher inflation using the old methodology and plugging in todays numbers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadowstats.com

There is a lot of controversy here, but I think inflation is definitely higher than reported.

>> how exactly do you propose the CPI is manipulated

One way is OER, aka Owners Equivalent Rent. Great article https://wolfstreet.com/2021/03/11/house-price-inflation-in-c... (look at that graph half way down).

Another way is "hedonic adjustments". https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/603/inflation/hedonics-an...

>> Modern smartphones however, seem like walled gardens in which I have no control at all.

By design, I think.

>> I am locked into a single OS on my smartphone, which either spies on you or is locked down even more. Every iteration a bit more control is taken away from the user.

I got so fed up with this, I abandoned the whole mobile infrastructure and built my own phone with a Raspberry Pi 3B+. The Raspberry Pi is pretty open hardware (yes, I'm aware it's not perfect). For software I used Python 3, C and GTK. It does voice and SMS/MMS only, but that is enough for me.

I built it for myself. It's stable enough that I use it as my daily driver.

I am in the process of open sourcing the code and putting it out on github. https://github.com/another2020githubuser/thepyphone

I truly hope an open hardware smart phone becomes available soon. Until then, I'll use my home grown PyPhone to get by.

>> If you believe Apple and Google need to give up their cash cows, it's clear that's never going to happen by convincing people to make lifestyle changes.

I'm suggesting people will stop giving money to Apple/Google when there is an alternative. And we, as tech folks, are going to have to build that alternative.

>> The only way is to get laws or regulations passed that force these companies to comply.

Google and Apple have billions to lobby Congress, so I'm not confident that will happen any time soon.

I think undermining them from the bottom up with a cheap open source alternative is probably more practical.

I agree that general purpose computing is endangered. And that bothers me a lot.

However, if you are going to take a stand for open computing, you are going to have to make sacrifices. You will have to give up a lot of conveniences. As a technologist you will have to give both time and money. Apple and Google are not going to give up their billion dollar industries voluntarily. You will have to stop giving them money. And you will have to stop using their services.

My solution? I built myself a phone out of a Raspberry Pi 3 with a Touch Screen and a Logitech Headset. It does SMS/MMS and voice only. I've been using it for over a year now as my daily driver.

I'm going to open source the code. Check out https://github.com/another2020githubuser/thepyphone for more details. Right now there is just a README out there, the real code exists in a private git repo. I'm reviewing the code and stripping out private details so I don't end up doxxing myself :)

If you like the idea, please star the github project. I could use the encouragement. Thanks.

>> what would be the most secure way to keep and use a mobile phone?

My opinion: there is no secure way. My initial solution: build a home phone based on a Raspberry Pi 3B+ (with touch screen).

I already built this home phone for myself. It does only voice and SMS/MMS. It only works over Ethernet or Wi-Fi.It uses mains electricity. I wrote the software -it's Python3 and C.

I've been using this phone as my daily driver for the last year. It is very reliable.

I plan to start making it available in Jan 2021. Look for more posts here.

I'll post here on hacker news once I get a web site up and running. Look for a post from this user name (another_comment). I'll also post here in the comments of appropriate posts.

Thanks for the interest.

Amen to Linux Phones. We need more choices!

I got so sick of these kind of shenanigans, I built a simple, non-mobile phone with a Raspberry Pi 3B+, a Raspberry Pi 7 inch touchscreen, and a Logitech headset. It runs off Wi-Fi or Ethernet only.

It does voice and SMS only, but it does what it does very well. I wrote all the software myself (Python3 and C).

I've been using this as my daily driver for over a year now.

I'm planning to make it available to the public soon. All of it will be open source, of course. My goal is an open source alternative to Apple/Google.