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True downloads don’t equal usage but there’s a correlation. I also doubt deployment equals usage - I can deploy to some env and not make any requests.

Additionally, how you can get data on how many deployments without telemetry? The only telemetry that I’m interested in is for my uses, and don’t really care about sending data on deployment count to a third party. So the download count becomes a “good enough” metric.


That’s such a cool Lego diorama. Beautifully done!


> I'm not particularly concerned about unfair gains made possible by insider knowledge.

I am. I work at a company that trades publicly. My wife works at a firm. I can’t do anything with my stocks outside of three weeks a quarter. I can never buy options. My wife has to clear her positions with whatever department. If I have these obstacles, congress should absolutely have them — maybe more. Ideally they can trade index funds and that’s about it.


> If I have these obstacles, congress should absolutely have them

This jealousy is a minor issue, though. There's no reason for you to believe Congresspeople should have exactly the same limitations and opportunities that you have. This is in fact a discussion that involves limiting them from doing things that you would retain the right to do.

The problem is how they govern.


It’s not jealousy, it’s equality. If insider trading is illegal, then it should be illegal for everyone and Congress should be no exception. They have even more opportunities and insider knowledge, about many more companies than I do. It absolutely affects how they govern, they tend to be more corrupt because they don’t have to abide by the same regulations that a civilian does.

Yeah, your equality really is just jealousy. It's your feeling that the situation is unfair. But there's no principle of nature that says that things must be fair.

For me, if I can improve the lot of everyone by at least X%, but doing so means that some few people will actually get a benefit of 2X%, that's a darn good deal. Withholding the potential X% from those poor people just because it's not fair seems rather cruel. We may have the luxury of wanting things to be fair, but there are some people for whom those X% will make all the difference.


> Yeah, your equality really is just jealousy. It's your feeling that the situation is unfair. But there's no principle of nature that says that things must be fair.

By that logic why have equality for anything? Why even have civil rights if you can just be like “that’s just the way it is, why should you be able to vote? I’ll vote for the best of all our interests”. It doesn’t work that way.

> For me, if I can improve the lot of everyone by at least X%, but doing so means that some few people will actually get a benefit of 2X%, that's a darn good deal.

In an altruistic society, maybe. But economic theory is based on the idea that everyone will try to do what’s best for them and not for the masses. Congress sets the laws - so they are more interested in benefiting themselves than anyone else. Therefore we need a forcing function, and one way would be to clamp down on insider trading.


https://sancharsaathi.gov.in

- Report fraud/scam calls and SMS directly from your phone.

- Block or track lost/stolen phones by disabling their IMEI so they can’t be misused.

- View all mobile numbers registered under your ID and report any unauthorized SIM cards.

- Verify if a phone is genuine with an IMEI/device authenticity check.

- Report telecom misuse, such as spoofed calls or suspicious international numbers.

The stated goal is protect users from digital fraud and safer telecom usage, who knows how good it’ll be. Probably a PITA.


So a pretty transparent way to tie IMEI to someone's identity and track their location under the guise of "finding lost phones" and "checking your phone's authenticity"

IMEI is already tied to your identity. You need ID to buy a phone or a SIM.

I think this is to crack down on sharing a SIM card which is registered to someone else. It ties identity + location + aggregates all SIMs registered to someone with their current location.

Not to mention they can probably payload anything into the app whenever they want.


That's already the case for most places around the world, unfortunately. Though, this does make the link rather obvious, which is a bit more surprising. Normally shady tracking just happens through a combination of data brokers and leaked databases.

I've been using it since it came out. It does its job.

I was getting 5-6 scam calls per day, now down to maybe 1 in a month.

It's just a wrapper around their website (for now).

I think this app is harmless but I don't think it should be forced onto anyone.


> I think this app is harmless..

It may be today. And you have no way to know for sure. But there is also no way to know what the app will do down the road when a politician you do not trust is in control of it.


Agreed. But they already have massive tracking capabilities. I don't they are so stupid that they'd do this in such an obvious way: too much scrutiny.

CDOT's CMS system already exists in the background.


This is great first hand feedback. I like these kinds of HN posts.

How do you think it works? Example: If enough people report, then some police agency investigates? Rinse and repeat enough times and the scam calls/SMS should fall?


It partially automates the process of lodging a complaint against a call, SMS, or WhatsApp communication.

On IOS, you still have to copy/paste the incoming number into a form, provide a screenshot of the message, date/time and it uploads the complaint to their systems.

They inform you that they will not send updates.

What I've observed is a huge drop in scammers, and new scammers get tagged as potential spam by the operator upfront. So they're doing something on the back end.

You can only file a police complaint if you actually suffered monetary loss. I haven't, so I don't know how that works.

The other benefit is that you can keep an eye on id theft used to get connections using your info. This is a huge problem in rural India. Scammers use this to create bank accounts to move money.


Another great post. Thank you. It is great to hear that haven't suffered any monetary loss and you are getting fewer scam calls.

I have a "dumb" follow-up question: (Honestly, I don't understand the pushback here on HN against this app.) Do you feel it is invasive or acts as gov't surveillance on your mobile phone? What you describe sounds pretty good to me.


As of now, it's completely passive. It's just a wrapper around their website with some features which reduce friction.

For example, we have a DND (Do Not Disturb) system which is opt-in. Most people don't know about this. Originally signing up required a new user to send a series of text messages to register (opt-in) and select what kind of ads (spam) they would tolerate. For example you could say block everything except bank offers.

This app walks you through the process.

I keep a close watch on permissions etc which apps ask for. This app doesn't really want access to anything unusual.

This on IOS, I know nothing about Android.


Can you uninstall it? That's the litmus test.

At the moment, yes, as I installed it myself off the App Store.

That's what the ruckus is: the govt wants to push it everywhere mandatorily.

Right now it's harmless: it's just a way to report scammers and lost handsets.

But who knows what they'll shovel into it tomorrow.


> There's actually a lot more visual changes than that just the button, but I will leave that to the reader as an exercise in spot-the-difference ;)

This is fair. But issues like this will never get my attention in general because I don’t have time to do this exercise - I would much rather have it all spelled out. Even if there are a bunch of related issues they won’t get fixed in a single PR, it likely will be multiple.

I guess my point is that if you really want OSS projects to improve, the issue submitter can’t just ask the maintainer “figure it out”. It totally works this way in the corporate world though (IME).

Edit: I’m sorry to have jumped to conclusions. Leaving my comment up for accountability.


I didn’t ask the maintainer to “figure it out”. I posted a thread in the forum with multiple videos to start a discussion.

People here have stated I should have filed on GitHub, and because I don’t want to link my GitHub to this account I suggested someone else do it.

That was 6 hours ago, and people are still commenting about my lack of a suitable report rather than actually reporting it correctly themselves - as is evident by the lack of a new issue on the github.


I’m sorry for jumping at you like that.


No problem :)


> I swear I did not see the change in button width before reading the linked comment.

I didn’t either! I stared at that gif for a few minutes and I couldn’t tell what the problem is (or what to look for). It wasn’t until you said “changing button width” I knew where to focus my attention.


That’s if you get to go to court. ICE makes mistakes and I doubt any of their detainees get due process.


$699 (maybe 799 for a more premium model) seems to be a good compromise given what it would take to build a sufficiently similar PC while being close enough to the PS5/Switch. Xbox is practically dead.

I don’t think it needs to compete on price directly, if it can deliver the polish of a console. It can also play up the angle of being a full blown computer.


I think the steam machine will be 999 given they said "priced as a pc". I hope to be wrong, because at 700 it's insta buy for me.


You can tell XBox is cooked because Halo was released on the PS5.


> I still think about the way the CEO of Nokia back in 2010 describing what it would be like for them to abandon their in-house OS for Android: "Peeing yourself to stay warm"

This has intrigued me because eventually that’s what they ended up doing - although with two major caveats.

Firstly, the mobile space did not have room for 3 players - MS tried very hard and their Nokia phones were pretty good. But it was just one platform too many. They just couldn’t find a niche for itself as Android was being used everywhere due to their open source branch. Proves the point made by you though, there wasn’t space for a second Android if MS were to embrace open source. Nokia tried hard with Meego - I loved the UI but the market was moving at light speed back then.

Secondly, HMD started by branching off from the Nokia of yore and their Android devices are also very good.

I’ll always miss my old Nokias, they were the duopoly with the BlackBerry in the pre-smartphone era.


The tiles UI was simply not good.

The phones themselves were very good. I have a functional Windows phone in a drawer, that I sometimes charge (and it still works!), but after playing with the tile UI for few minutes... eww


Absolutely LOVED the tiles UI and so did everyone I know that gave Windows phone a shot. By far the best mobile experience I've had outside of a few apps I wanted missing. I really miss the OS. I think in general though the other commenters were correct that there was already too much market share coming from iOS and Android.


Agreed, for what we had in 2012, it was absolutely wonderful UI.


Also agree. Windows Phone 8.1 and 10 were great smartphone interfaces.


Would have been great if it had apps, too.


As an absolute harbinger customer, I wholeheartedly agree. I also think iPhone Air doesn't look so bad.


I absolutely loved the tiles interface and held onto my Windows phone for as long as I could. I eventually had to switch to Android when apps I depended stopped working on Windows phone.


Not sure if doing it once before is “long history” but cool nonetheless


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