It's too bad that it seems like interoperability will only be for direct messages, and group chat support "will come in the future". There are a couple of groups I haven't managed to move to Signal. I guess I'll continue to bridge WhatsApp and Matrix so that I can avoid having WhatsApp installed on my main phone
Thank you! This is the piece of information I was missing. I kept wondering as I read the article whether that was a LGPL license breach. Thanks for clarifying
A consequence of that is that local companies, that have local economy level income, can't compete on salary with those foreign companies. So they can't get the top-tier workforce they used to have access to. Ever increasing the economic disparity between countries.
They allow brain drain to happen, without the barriers of having to move countries.
I think it should be illegal to label access to digital content as "buy" or "purchase" if you can't download the digital file DRM-free. If the way they presented the option to pay implied ownership, you should be able to own that digital file.
I think hybrid can work too, but it requires proactive transparency. In my workplace, a tech scale-up, we switched to hybrid after the pandemic and IMO it's working like a charm.
Everybody puts in their calendar each day whether they are going to work remotely or in the office. They also put their working hours or availability, they put when they are going to be off etc. Everybody I interact with shows up to meetings, some later than others, but that's no different than when we were onsite. Work is getting done faster than when we were fully onsite, although slower than during the pandemic.
The office is fully prepared for this working arrangement, with many "booths" for having calls, plenty of meeting rooms, all with great videoconferencing equipment, a meeting room booking system integrated with the calendar that "just works". Everybody is available on Slack while working, although IMO Slack is a bit overused and abused.
Now everyone works where they are more comfortable. Many have moved to smaller cities, others to the countryside. There are people that always go to the office, others that never go. There are teams that agree on certain days to go to the office, but AFAIK is not mandated by their managers, they just like to work and hang out together.
All in all, a great working experience, while staying productive. In fact, the workforce has increased about 20% since just before the pandemic, but the company has more than doubled in revenue, and volume of business and it doesn't feel chaotic at all. So I'd say that's the proof that hybrid is working for us.
clarification: NFC payments in Google Pay. For example my bank app has mobile payments implemented and they work on GrapheneOS.
AFAIK the only reason why Google Pay NFC payments don't work is because Google Pay keeps a list of hardware and OS that's allowed to use that feature, and GrapheneOS is not in that list. It's not an OS limitation.
There was an open issue to spoof this data so that Google Pay NFC payments, among other Google features behind this check, would work. But it looks like it got discarded 2 days ago: https://github.com/GrapheneOS/os-issue-tracker/issues/1986
Using old devices that no longer receive security updates, like the Galaxy S9+ you mentioned, is unsecure. It makes sense that GrapheneOS, a security-oriented OS, only recommends devices that are still getting security updates both for the OS itself but also for hardware firmware, which only the manufacturer of the hardware can provide.
There are old versions of GrapheneOS for older devices, and some devices are still in extended support, like the Pixel 4a (although not for long I expect). So if you are OK with the compromised Galaxy S9+, you could also be OK with the compromised Pixel 3a, which received the June 2022 security patch in GrapheneOS[1], while the S9+ received the March 2022 security patch[2]
My shiny new Pixel 8 just fell off a table after 1 hour that I left it there. It didn't vibrate and I didn't move the table or anything like that. Glass phones are so slippery that they take a life of their own when placed on a flat, smooth surface. I miss plastic phones.