Hacker News: dearjames

New comment by dearjames in "English: A vs. An"

dearjames — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 22:56:08 +0000

This reminds me of the multiple AI videos out there that I have to involuntarily listen to because people hate using earphones/headphones. They just start off like "The man/woman blah blah blah", and my poor brain is always noting that's bad English/grammar or whatever because What man/woman are you talking about? Where did he/she come from in this story that you just started telling?

Ask HN: How does my ISP know I am making a WhatsApp call?

dearjames — Wed, 08 Jan 2025 13:53:31 +0000

The MNO Econet Wireless in Zimbabwe has what are termed social media data bundles, these data bundles only work on say Twitter, WhatsApp, Instagram, etc. When you purchase say the WhatsApp bundle, you get assigned some MBs of data that only works on WhatsApp. You can text, view statuses (even video statuses), download/upload media, etc. However, you cannot make call (either voice or video calls).

If you initiate a call, the call goes through, it will ring for the other person but as soon as they answer, your WhatsApp will be stuck on the "connecting" screen. The same is true for the reverse i.e. if someone else calls you, you get stuck with a "connecting" screen as soon as you answer.

Aside from it being very annoying that my "240MB" of data is apparently unable to make a call on WhatsApp, I am generally curious how they might be doing this, the simplest explanation I have is they limit the bandwidth so much that a call cannot go through.

Whatever method they are using to do it, I imagine it can also be used to "fingerprint" someone. It's not a lot of information, but it can be a useful/helpful data point if coupled with other data.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42634202

Points: 12

# Comments: 8

New comment by dearjames in "How WhatsApp works with other Facebook products"

dearjames — Wed, 06 Jan 2021 19:17:32 +0000

Yeah it used to be quite hopeless unless you opened the link in a tab that had already loaded WhatsApp web. Now however, if you click the green button that says "CONTINUE TO CHAT" on the initial screen, it'll load a page with an option to download WhatsApp and another that's titled "use WhatsApp Web", just click on that one. Unfortunately, it will load a new instance of WhatsApp web in the current window even if you already have another open in another tab.

New comment by dearjames in "How WhatsApp works with other Facebook products"

dearjames — Wed, 06 Jan 2021 13:56:18 +0000

Well, in Zimbabwe because of the large user base WhatsApp got when it initially arrived (due to reduced charges, SMSs where about 15cents a pop then) around 2011-2012, the ISPs have effectively made it the only way to communicate economically by providing a "bundle".

Basically they offer you a drastically reduced price to only access WhatsApp, mostly text message without media at that. Compared to the data plan that can access the whole internet it is very very cheap to use just WhatsApp.

The cheapest WhatsApp bundle on the most popular network (Econet) is currently at around 51cents to text the whole week (65MB of data) vs the $13 for 8gigs. Granted the 8gigs is for a month but $13 is a big amount in this part of the world, and with regular data there's the aspect of discipline to not use all that data on youtube and other data hungry apps/websites.

New comment by dearjames in "How WhatsApp works with other Facebook products"

dearjames — Wed, 06 Jan 2021 13:41:26 +0000

You can actually send a message without saving a contact. Using WhatsApp's click to chat:

  wa.me/263xxxxxxxxx?text=Hello

Note: The phone number with country code and no preceding plus.

Opening that link will launch WhatsApp (or WhatsApp web) to the user's number and the text "Hello" in the message field.