Hans-Christoph Steiner @eighthave@librem.one
Joined Aug 2019
Hans-Christoph Steiner
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Whether here on our Mastodon server, or on ATproto with new W profile 👉 @ec.europa.eu – we look forward to staying connected with you.
Hans-Christoph Steiner
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If European response to US big tech is trying to replicate it, we have already lost.
A) Copy is rarely better than the original.
B) US big tech fucking sucks. Why would you like to be like that?
Hans-Christoph Steiner
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💳 Who should decide what content is acceptable online? Banks?
In TRANSACTION DENIED, author Rainey Reitman joins Annalee Newitz to discuss why content moderation decisions shouldn't be made by financial institutions. 💵💷💴
As banks, payment processors, and credit card networks gain influence over who can participate online, questions of speech become questions of financial power. ⚖️
🎧 Listen & subscribe to the Future Knowledge #podcast ⤵️
https://futureknowledge.transistor.fm/episodes/transaction-denied
The #LLM approach to #AI is famous for needing vast amounts of data. Web programming is where LLMs excel because #bots can scrape all the websites out there, on top of ingesting all the code in #GitHub, etc. This vast pool of web code that has fed the big AI companies #models includes the 95% of startups that have failed, the supply chain #security nightmare that is #npm, and other gems. For other key dev platforms, there isn't this vast pool available to LLMs
Hans-Christoph Steiner
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We're temporarily pausing the bimonthly open calls with the exception of #NGI Taler & Fediversity. We'll be taking stock of a decade of Next Generation Internet. After the summer the application process will re-open with 3 new programs under the Open Internet Stack (OIS) umbrella.
Ongoing projects are not affected and can continue their important work of providing the building blocks for an open, resilient, and secure internet for all.
https://nlnet.nl/news/2026/20260612-NGIZero-stocktaking.html
#NGI0 #OIS #fossfunding #FOSS
This reminds of me a bit about how email changed the work place. Yeah, I'm old, I worked in offices before we had email there. At first, email was a great improvement, but then came the tsunami of emails. It was so easy to send, people started sending far too many. Then everyone is drowning in it, wiping away most of the productivity gains.
In my minimal experience coding with #AI, it is clear to me that #botsitting work is really draining. There are so many other boring things I'd rather be doing, and they don't take much of my energy. So there does seem to be some small #productivity gains from using AI, it would end up making my quality of life worse. So I'll happily stick to getting in the zone, and just rolling with the boilerplate, refactoring chores, etc. until I see these tools make me happier
https://www.glean.com/work-ai-institute/reports/work-ai-index-report
So the #iPhone could be part of the solution for #ClimateChange! The wealthy of the world all get them, then have a fewer kids, and therefore fewer top #consumers in the world 😜 https://www.theregister.com/personal-tech/2026/06/09/study-links-iphone-rollout-to-decline-in-us-birth-rates/5253138
Hans-Christoph Steiner
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🇺🇦
I'm leaving #Google: https://www.mayrhofer.eu.org/post/leaving-google/
While I believe that I have been able to do some good with my continuing (part-time) engagement in the Android security and privacy team since returning to Austria a couple of years ago, the deal with the US #DoW is completely misaligned with my personal ethical principles. I will, therefore, no longer be able to act as a contact point to Google-internal teams and discussions, but will continue our research on private digital identity, end-to-end secure communication and storage, network privacy, (embedded/mobile) operating system security, supply chain transparency, etc. from a purely academic point of view. Android - and in particular AOSP - will remain a research interest, so please feel free to reach out on any of those topics for potential collaborations or discussions on the academic side.
Hans-Christoph Steiner
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Heute stellen wir unser Projekt Smartphone Werkstatt für Kids auf dem Umwelt- und Klimapreis 2026 vor.
Sechs Monate lang haben wir mit Grund-SchülerInnen Smartphones repariert und dank Ada von der @fsfe viel über freie Software erfahren 
oh funny someone published an academic research paper on this, the abstract sounds interesting: https://www.nber.org/papers/w34910
anyone know anything about it?
Could there be an "uncanny valley" of #AI #LLM #bullshit, where the error rates are low enough that humans get lazy and stop checking, which then leads to higher error rates than when humans did it without AI. Unfortunately, the current #BigTech business models prioritize #adoption and #engagement, so that will bias them towards ignoring this affect.
Hans-Christoph Steiner
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This is absolutely nuts: hackers are hijacking high-profile Instagram accounts by simply asking Meta's AI chatbot to change the email on the account. Meta's AI does it, hacker gets password reset code, they're in. A staggering security issue
Hans-Christoph Steiner
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RE: https://social.wildeboer.net/@jwildeboer/116679473218827225
I'm so proud of our government institutions that are moving to Mastodon 🥹
There are now several Dutch ministeries, provincies, agencies and municipalities, but also officials such as state secretaries and ministeries on social.overheid.nl 🥳
A big thank you to @manfredzielinski for making this happen.
And what I find quite funny is that maybe a third of the phone call would be taken up with the standard Austrian pleasantries one must use, including a proper greeting and minimum two forms of goodbye 😉
Someone should do a quantitative #productivity analysis of #Debian's #workflow vs #Microsoft's for #Windows, or #Google's for #Android which both surely include #LLM #AI tricks that this point. I'd bet both those companies have done that internally. Any chance of leaks? 😉 So much of how Debian works is in public, so anyone could do some kind of analysis.
I've been an early adopter of #Internet things for decades, but at the same time, I work to be able to realistically assess the value as compared to other methods. Many things in #Austria still happen in person and via the #telephone, so its a good testing ground. I'm frequently surprised at how #efficient in-person/telephone can be when compared to #online, like government offices have employees that handle making appointments by phone, they are often really good at it, so its surprisingly fast
The #internet is full of fun locking #garden #hack ideas for all sorts of things but almost always, they use #toxic materials that you really don't want leaching into your #soil. Even common #plastics like water bottles or #polypropylene turn quite toxic when exposed to #sunlight for a while. For example, https://rosal.web.uah.es/pub/Aquatic%20toxicity%20of%20commercial%20polypropylene%20and%20associated%20chemicals.pdf
Hans-Christoph Steiner
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No matter the geography, a common reality emerges: those least responsible for the crisis are on the frontlines of confronting it. In doing so, they are not only protecting their territories, but safeguarding the ecosystems that sustain life on Earth, often at great personal risk.
Take action and stand with Indigenous Peoples to protect their territories.
Link in bio.
Hans-Christoph Steiner
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My personal conclusion can however not end up with anything else than that the big hype around this model so far was primarily marketing. I see no evidence that this setup finds issues to any particular higher or more advanced degree than the other tools have done before Mythos. Maybe this model is a little bit better, but even if it is, it is not better to a degree that seems to make a significant dent in code analyzing.
Joined Aug 2019
