And that irony now is that messenger on Android is RCS compliant and currently has this exact functionality, except it’s less trustworthy.

Once again I’m using one messenger and everyone else who’s using an RCS messenger gets encrypted, but SMS (clearly marked as such) is a viable fallback.

I recall there being a LOT of those watches out that were “mobile data connected” for very cheap.

The catch? The mobile data radio was 2g, and those networks are all obsolete and gone now (I think)

All of the wyze stuff seems to be decent, but not super premium.

The headphones are 85% as good as the Bose, but for $49

The scale is quite good, nothing even remotely off about that and it integrates with Fitbit just fine.

The Color smart bulbs have been solid. One of the wyze smart plugs lost its memory once and needed to be re-setup, but fine since.

The cameras all work great too, as long as you’re comfortable with the fact that the video goes to some cloud location.

Seems like asking for disappointment

if you want a decent cheap option, the wyze watch seemed okay

I think Signal shot themselves squarely in the dick by removing SMS functionality.

Previously, you could use Signal as the primary SMS/messenger app. Any conversations with other Signal clients secure. Conversations in SMS/MMS? Marked as not-secure.

But, out of some purity concerns, SMS functionality was removed and the dev team focused on adding useless shit like “stickers” and then the pin-code harassment.

Signal adoption plummeted as intended (?)

Easy! Just replace their usual SMS app with Signal, and then every contact they have that does use Signal is private and secure!

Oh. Wait. That’s exactly the functionality that Signal removed in their effort to ensure that Signal is never widely adopted…

Doing something about International Law on international waters is a totally different matter than within the the borders of a sovereign nation.