Friends who message you via less acceptable or egregious apps.

iirc what's app is ubiquitous everywhere except North America

based on the metric system obv

my coworker, originally from india, using whatsapp on his desktop computer as I dropped by this morning

only ever use skype or facetime when my parents phone me on it. in a weird way this technology, which i guess sort of did seem like how we imagined the future must be, seems to bore our generation but thrill the one that came before, at least ime. friends have told me the same thing about their parents and skype/facetime. a few weeks ago my dad facetimed me at about 1pm on a saturday, i was in bed with a horrible hangover, his face just appeared huge against the screen as he demanded help fixing the tv so he could watch a match that was starting in about 10 minutes - i then saw my own face as he saw it, bags under my eyes, his 34-year-old son obv in bed at 1pm, hungover. somehow managed to get through the call without permanently damaging our relationship.

― Bein' Sean Bean (LocalGarda), Tuesday, May 16, 2017 9:06 AM (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Lol. I always pull the old "let's switch to audio only as my connection doesn't seem to be that good" plug on unannounced video calls, they're a faux pas in my book. Though tbh my parents don't even know how to facetime, which is a huge blessing. Friends *know* this is not done.

yes, my parents constantly insist on facetime instead of a normal phone call. This is made worse by the fact that my phone is Android, so when they call on facetime, it comes up on my wife's phone, which she loves.

Oof. Grounds for divorce.

will try the web/app version on my home based laptop later on.
could be a work based network restriction thing that makes me have to register every few seconds.

well, installed whatsapp desktop app on home laptop and get exactly the same problem.
i checked, and there is no W10 app available via the Windows Store,
you have to get the d/l from the whatsapp website, and that only makes reference to W8, not W10.
suspect there is a slight bug when it comes to useage on a W10 laptop, hence no official app via the W10 store.

Hmmm, no such thing/bug on my w10 laptop. Only had to scan it once after installing it. I don't really use it on my macbook/w10 laptops tho.

i can of course use the website app as opposed to standalone, but just wanted to try and figure out the root cause.
that said, the friend i wanted to chat to decided she hates whatsapp,
so, sticking with messenger.

i use signal. i like it. only a few of my friends have it. so the feds can still read 85% of my communication. knowledge is power.

nope - checked, website version does the same.
weird little thing.
could be a setting in W10 (privacy setting), chrome setting, or a bug with the latest W10 build that came out last week.
cant be bothered to dig in further.

unannounced video calls

unacceptable. unannounced audio calls are bad enough.

FWIW when I referred to Skype I actually meant as a chat program, not the calls/video part of it.

We use it at work extensively to do workbased / group chats. I know Slack is the done thing everywhere else but I dunno.

Skype has the best emoji but nobody uses it for texting

using skype for texting is like buying a land rover for the spacious glove box

I think we just ended up using it for that cos we use it/all have accounts for other stuff... and Skype are a customer...

Sic otm about the emojis though, they're hilarious and fun.

https://az705183.vo.msecnd.net/onlinesupportmedia/onlinesupport/media/skype/screenshots/fa12330/emoticons/talktothehand_80_anim_gif.gif

the conclusion to draw from all this is that as usual tech companies have made our lives worse for their own ends

I use a combo of mime and interpretive dance.

trayce otm, ultimately it doesn't matter what we prefer because we end up using what everyone else uses

now that I know we can, I might sign all my ILX posts with a skype emoji

https://az705183.vo.msecnd.net/onlinesupportmedia/onlinesupport/media/skype/screenshots/fa12330/emoticons/discodancer_anim.gif