Honestly sounds like a job for a [Raspberry Pi Zero(https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-zero/).
Small battery pack and a USB key, a bit of software setup, off you go.

Install Raspbian: https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/computers/getting-started.html#raspberry-pi-imager

Set it up as a hotspot:
https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/computers/configuration.html#enable-hotspot

Configure Samba share:
https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/computers/remote-access.html#samba

I have a friend group that insist on all events being planned through facebook.
I’ve missed out on events in the past due to not taking part.
It’s no longer a hill I wish to die on.

I agree and use Signal myself.
But people like the extra features of WhatsApp like desktop/web clients with seamless history sync and all the other little things that WhatsApp provides.
The average Joe doesn’t even think about security or privacy, they just know that the results of using WhatsApp are superior than using SMS.
iMessage is a non starter everywhere out of the US, it just doesn’t have the market penetration.
As an Australian, no one I know (many of whom own iPhones) talk about the blue-green bubble stuff.
They recognise where the fault lies and simply don’t use the app.

In certain places like India, WhatsApp is the default means of communication for everyone.
You can use it without phone data if you are on wifi, it supports better quality than sms for sending images, you can video chat with it, it’s cross platform, etc etc.

What’s more amazing to me is that it’s not more popular in western countries.

I agree, that’s why I said “and able”

You can interoperate with googles RCS.
If you are willing and able to enter a partnership like Samsung, you can do it fully (including encryption support etc).

Google are determined to not make it easy, and I agree with you, it appears to be yet another messaging land grab.

Trying to put myself in their headspace for a moment, one justification for making it hard is to stop thousands of apps coming out declaring “full RCS support!” through the APIs, then screwing the pooch (through poor security or deliberate back doors or or or).
Right now Google are desperately attempting to make RCS happen, after almost a decade of trying and failing to make various carriers play ball.
They do not want any bad press about how feature poor/insecure/slow/buggy it is right now.

Only Google can make an RCS app

Yes and no.
You don’t need to make your own OS, but you do need to implement support for the RCS protocol within your app, rather than piggyback on Googles APIs.

I don’t like it, but there’s no legal requirement for google to provide those APIs, like they did with SMS etc.

it’ll work just like SMS does now

I agree with this part of your statement 100%.
It will work POORLY.

Whether it’s in the same app or simply a different colour like SMS is currently, it’ll be a half assed implementation, designed to segregate your iphone and android friends.

Got an existing iphone group chat? Bet you can’t add an RCS participant to it.
Create a new RCS group chat so you can include everyone? Bet it’s missing features that you’d get in imessage.
Receive a high resolution video from a friend via imessage? Forward that to another friend via RCS and they’ll receive 5 blurry pixels.

And throughout all of this, apple will blame the RCS protocol and say “We’re actively working with GSMA to improve RCS”.

No one trusts apple for the very simple reason that they have a habit of saying the quiet part out loud: Tim Cook Says ‘Buy Your Mom An iPhone’

There’s some gotchas in Apples statement:

They have promised to implement “RCS Universal Profile”
This means the bare minimum, not the advanced features implemented by Google and Samsung etc.
An example of a missing feature from Universal Profile is end to end encryption.

They also said: “This will work alongside iMessage, which will continue to be the best and most secure messaging experience for Apple users.”
The implication of this is that it won’t be in the iMessage app, it will be in a separate but official app, siloing your Android friends from your iPhone friends.

When this comes out, every European is going to shrug and keep using Whatsapp.

It’s not the android side that’s failing, it’s Apples refusal to implement anything other than SMS for cross ecosystem compatibility.

FOSS is enshitification-hardened, not proof.

VLC remains awesome because the guy (maybe Jean-Baptiste Kempf?) that controls the project has refused to be bought, has in fact refused HUGE sums of money.

The original author of any project has to right to sell it with the corresponding licence changes at any time.
There’s some legal grey area on something like Linux or VLC which have MANY MANY developer hands in the pie, and existing users could certainly fork off the existing releases, but VLC could pivot tomorrow to a for profit company and make future releases of the official VLC a paid product, if they choose too.

I would definitely look to hire that kid with a high wage just to make sure he doesn’t hacke me again, if I were one of the companies he hacked into. Companies should really think about trying to hire these hackers because then the threats against them might go down ever so slightly.

I understand your thought, but some people just want to watch the world burn and you definitely don’t want to bring that sort inside.
This guy seems to be driven, capable and lacking the common sense to know when to stop.

Nasa faked Australia

As an Australian, this is wild and I want to know more.

Edit: Woah. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/australia-doesnt-exit-people-who-live-actors-paid-nasa-kurt-nielsen