It's in beta as of yesterday:

https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/rcs-is-making-its-iphone-debut-starting-with-ios-18-beta-2-how-itll-change-texting/

M as in Mancy?

True.

Also, there is a psychological effect of people either feeling excluded from a conversation, or suspicious that they are being secretly insulted when they can't understand it.

It's good if you need to protect and restrict a large group of computer illiterate people with low needs for applications or power.

What exactly does Google have left that people like? Gmail?

Shhhh! Dammit. Now they are definitely going to realize they haven't ruined it yet.

If you use Debian-based linux (Ubuntu, Minut, others), Mozilla recommends getting the package directly from their respository rather than flatpak or other repos.

Personally, I saw a major performance increase on my low-powered laptop when I switched from flatpak to the Mozilla package.

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/4-reasons-to-try-mozillas-new-firefox-linux-package-for-ubuntu-and-debian-derivatives/

I work for a company that does marketing, and they are seriously struggling right now because TV and Social media ads are getting more expensive, while at the same time becoming less effective.

Yes. This is true.

Because ads suck and people hate them. Whats the new way? Be good at what you do so people talk about your brand. Show up in searches when I'm looking for you. That's it.

I still like it. But it does have two problems:

1. Post spam. There is no enforcement of the posting rules, and nobody reacts if they are reported. For example, I'm looking for a Volvo, and people post a Dodge but put every car manufacturer name in the listing so they show up in every search.

2. Scam fucking overload. Every time I post anything for sale, the scam traffic is overwhelming. I listed a car and got like 12 similar scam responses. Most appeared to be chat bots with no human behind it. Some surprised me by responding to my sarcastic replies.

But I still look there. The site works for the most part, especially if you use the search modifiers. And selling stuff works too. Sometimes you get murdered, but it's rare.

Oh good. Because if there's a profile of my advertising preferences out there, it knows that when I am forced to view an ad, I look away from the screen, turn off the volume, sigh dramatically, and say "Fuck right in the ass."

Personalize away.

It seems like the "cars tracking you" problem is a very real and very serious thing that should obviously be legislated separately of electric vehicles or country of manufacture.

I got a Mazda recently, and I was reading all the ownership paperwork, and the guy asked me what I was looking for. I said "I'm looking for the language about what data Mazda is collecting about me." And the guy laughed and said there's nothing in the paperwork about that. They just do it. You can't shut it off.

So many of my iPhone fan friends have said "Oh, you finally made the switch, you're going to love it" after I recently bought my first iPhone.

It's a phone. It did not magically transform my user experience. It's 95% similar to what I had on a Pixel. Better low-effort privacy. Better direct hardware access for music and video. Significantly more lag, app freezups, and fragility and some baffling user experience decisions.

I would switch back again, or not, doesn't matter.