Hans-Christoph Steiner @eighthave@librem.one

Something that stuck with me from a previous job is the quote: “don’t underestimate things that have survived many attempts to kill them.”

Think: DNS, bash, C, TCP.

These things have survived this long for a reason. Find out the reason.

The EU digital identity wallet might handle some of citizens’ most sensitive data. Its success highly depends on the trust people place in it. Undemocratic behaviour & the deletion of privacy-preserving features of the new ID are certainly the wrong way to gain society’s trust.

As a committer on a couple of medium-popularity projects I couldn't agree more with this:

"Maintaining a successful open source project is Good Will Hunting in reverse. You start out as a respected genius, and end up being a janitor who gets into fights."

— Byrne Hobart (@ByrneHobart@twitter.com)

I spent the morning poring over the Android 14 DP1 materials, especially the API differences report. Which means, once again, I have some random musings: https://commonsware.com/blog/2023/02/11/random-musings-android-14-dp1.html

As usual, the early developer previews have the most stuff to report on. Thankfully, these posts get shorter as we march towards beta releases.

And, as usual, I don't pull many punches.

All the hype about souped up developer productivity using LLMs for coding reminds me of the original title of this 2014 paper, before it was milquetoasted in 2015 acceptance.

LLMs can help you rapidly acquire semi-plagiarized fragments of well-traveled code instead of using a quality library with vision of the problem domain. Might be great for KPIs, but this debt will come back to bite you, unless you're already gone. Will be painful for orgs to adapt.
https://research.google/pubs/pub43146/

People worry a lot about losing knowledge — about "burned-down libraries".

Comparatively few people seem to worry about what happens if you take a billion books full of auto-generated, often-untrue junk text and *add* them all to the library.

In theory, nothing is lost. In reality, everything is lost, because nothing useful can now be found.

I have never really liked discussing whether you have something to hide, as an argument for or against security or privacy. First, it's irrelevant - everyone has these rights no matter what. But also, once you start talking about "hiding", you have already lost the discussion - because it's a word that is associated with negative connotations.

I think we should change the discourse. I don't have anything to hide. But I do have many things to protect. I have the right to protect my privacy. I have the right to protect my communication. I have the right to protect my work. I have the right to protect my friends and family.

#SomethingToProtect #Privacy

#metalab

@fdroidorg @guardianproject @eighthave gives opportunity to the free software community to release and distribute apps into this pilot - European Commission will open tenders on the website to help deliver on these goals of alternative open app stores #fosdem

And now @eighthave discusses what it takes to actually publish your mobile apps as free software on four freedom compliant app stores that respect and build trust with your users #fosdem

.... And now more on open app stores for the EU with @fdroidorg and @guardianproject member @eighthave - the EU MEP has tabled a funded pilot project that would support "De-monopolized access to apps" #fosdem #fosdem23

The next time you use any navigation device, software or https://www.openstreetmap.org/directions or @organicmaps thank Dr. Gladys West. Her contributions to the mathematical modeling of the shape of Earth, and her work on the development of the satellite models that were eventually incorporated into the Global Positioning System (GPS) technology. #BlackMastodon #BlackHistoryMonth

@LilHulkQ