Just need to make sure it’s not doing some phone home stuff after the fact, or cut it from ever reaching the Internet at all. I wouldn’t put it past any big corporation to be pulling that with the guise of the app being local and double dipping by selling data at a later date.

Linus Tech Tips did a good job exposing Anker for doing this with security cameras that were supposed to be local only but were found to be uploading pictures to their servers.

If you can, turn off unknown callers from being able to reach you.

I’ve done this and it’s been wonderful. The spams have actually decreased significantly since I don’t answer the phone for them at all anymore.

It’s under Settings > Phone (have to go into Apps in iOS 18) > Silence Unknown Callers

Anyone who is not in your contacts gets a ring but the ring doesn’t go to you so you don’t hear it and don’t answer. They can leave a voicemail but scammers never leave me voicemails.

YouTube has a recommendation system already in place and it generally works for me except for music.

I don’t use it as my main source of music, but it’s convenient at some times like putting on music on my Apple TV while I work or if I am on my computer and don’t have my offline music library available. Or if I want to see the music video because I like the video that goes with the music. I used to use it to find new artists based on my existing taste, but whenever they broke the search/suggestions is when that all stopped for me and now I just use it for the same music or if I found a new artist and want to quickly check out their music.

There’s no reason for it to be this shitty. It seems intentional on their part. Maybe making money from paid spotlights under the guise of “recommendations”.

YouTube desperately needs to fix the recommendations for music. It’s either recommending me the same music I already listen to and is irrelevant to what I’m currently playing or something irrelevant to my taste and the video being watched. Think watching an Ice Cube video but having recommendations for Megadeth and Alice In Chains and Adele on the side. And if it’s not something I’ve already watched/listened to, it’s still something totally unrelated.

For the longest time, they kept recommending “Beck - Loser” to me on anything I would watch, regardless of genre. I’ve never listened to or searched for any of Beck’s music and I don’t know how that would be recommended to someone currently watching an Ice Cube music video…

And the live performances…I don’t ever watch or listen to live performances. Yet YouTube always recommends it to me. Even having a whole section dedicated to “Live Music”. Never asked for this, never searched for it…I don’t care for Live performances. I want studio only.

And what’s worse is that YouTube has a feature to tell it “Don’t recommend this video - because I watched it or don’t like it” or “don’t recommend this channel” EXCEPT for music! Why???

I guess the next step in piracy is to change the apk enough that it doesn’t get recognized correctly, if that’s possible? Though then everyone will have to worry about malware-ridden apps.

I think this is horrible, aside from piracy, because you may want or need to stay on an older version of an app. I have had to for devices at work that require a specific version or just an easy way to manage the device and ensure devices only got updates we approved through our MDM.

Yeah it’s not a good solution at all. Would have been better to have a separate place for water to serve both purposes. I see a lot of places that will have a glass pitcher dispenser on the side of a soda dispenser just for water.

The water usually tastes better from these, anyway. Not polluted by the sugary soda/carbonation that comes from the same dispenser.

Would also be obvious that someone isn’t getting free soda and pretending to get water since it’s a totally different place.

That’s probably their argument. They probably thought that by removing the water option, people won’t be able to sneak soda and pretend they were getting free water.