You'd expect nothing less from Signal, but there's still metadata left that can be quite useful.
They offer an alternative version for Android that uses a web socket, so not the best solution either, but oh well. I'd like to see them support UnifiedPush officially though. The Molly fork does, for instance.
A lot more elegant than a web socket, and if more apps supported it, you'd have less apps all running their own service in the background. Well, speaking for a degoogled system, where this would matter a lot more.
What I wonder about is if the push notifications are ‘sent’ anyway, ie through the network and the phone just doesn’t do anything with them? Does anyone know?
Exactly. The issue is that the app still sends the notification to the cloud server. The cloud server doesn’t forward that notif to your device if you have notifs turned off, but it still gets sent to the server regardless. Which means it’s still subject to be shared with the government.
Why in the hell do push notifications need to be generated on google/apple servers? I'm sure our phones are more than capable of processing the information from the app to the lock screen.
Because having multiple applications continuously running in the background polling multiple servers for notifications in real time is a good way to run down your battery very quickly
The general design is a single system component wakes up the device when it’s sleeping (such as during screen off) and checks in with Apple/Google servers to see if there are any notifications.
Why?
Imagine if every app needed to wake up your device and make network requests to check for notifications etc. The more apps, the faster your battery drain as a queue of apps grows, constantly waking up your device to call home and check for notifications.
Hence Push Notification Services. Instead, developers send a notification to Apple/Google who then pool those notifications with notifications from other apps/developers. Then the single notification service on your device periodically wakes up the device and checks for notifications.
Additionally, push notification systems by OSs are designed with efficiency and minimal networks requests and bandwidth utilisation so an app can’t chew up user’s data quotas due to being poorly written.
TL;DR: It saves battery and network data, enabling users to use more apps.
I'm curious why "push notifications" really act like "pull notifications." Your phone has to request updates from Google/Apple's server. You're still just polling a server frequently. Why is it not the other way around? Why is your phone not the server, and Google/Apple make the "request" to your phone?
It's the difference between polling notifications, where each app wakes up once a minute and goes to ask their respective servers if there are any new notifications, and push notifications which, as the name suggests, are pushed to your phone once they arrive so those apps can sleep.
I think leaders and elites are so out of touch they know nothing about us and have to rely on bad data to try and decipher what we want but wind up being stupid and just applying control measures because they’re not smart enough to just listen to our complaints.
None of the rules and restrictions that they impose on us will ever impact them or anyone in their families, political power is just about maintaining and increasing political power. If we ever get any protections or services it's just because doing so will enable them to get reelected.
I don't think most people understand how politicians live - every room they go into, everyone in the room is suddenly their servant; they live every moment surrounded by sycophants who are making a career out of preventing access to you. There are a handful of people that have more power than you, but you hardly ever encounter them. A few months of that would change anyone - imagine living years like that?
One day, someone taps you on the shoulder; it's some dirty 20 something who doesn't even know what wagu steak is, much less why you shouldn't be interrupted while it's still hot.
What the fuck do you want, kid?
I'm up to my ears in medical bills, is there anything you can do about socializing our healthcare?
You look around the table apologetically at the people you're eating with, three of whom work for health care companies. They don't say, "that would destroy our line-goes-up" or "any normal job will get this kid health insurance, he just doesn't want to work." They don't say anything. They just roll their eyes and flash a sheepish, such an embarrassment kind of look.
Now's not a great time, ok? But call my office and we'll set something up.
But there never really is a good time, is there? You turn back to your plate, your beef is still mostly hot, and don't bother giving the kid your number. You forget the kid a moment later and don't think of him again until years later. What ever happened to that kid? I hope he figured out his debt problem.