Hans-Christoph Steiner @eighthave@librem.one
Joined Aug 2019
@SpaceLifeForm yeah exactly. I'm trying to suss out why the quarterly growth is not there any more, since that could be a measure of my own work, e.g. on #FDroid #Debian and exposing #tracking and #SurveillanceCapitalism
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
Last May, for the first time, we generated more electricity from wind and solar than from fossil fuels.
Renewable energy is homegrown and creates high-quality green jobs in our Union.
On the#InternationalDayofCleanEnergy, we reaffirm our commitment to accelerate the clean energy transition and strengthen our energy independence ↓
The promise of USB-C is huge: standard plug for everything including charging, devices sharing power with each other, all the things over a single port. But wow, it is buggy compared to the old USB days. Like sometimes, devices just decide not to charge from a given USB-C connection. Hopefully this can still be improved, and USB-C doesn't turn out like #Bluetooth, where almost everyone feels like it regularly pranks them. I guess that's why there are still so many devices with headphone jacks
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
🇺🇦 🇹🇼
I am again trying to set an (opt-in) open book exam with the whole Internet being allowed as a tool for students during the exam (just no other persons to collaborate with). While Bard is getting a lot better at mathematical/logical examples compared to the (free version of) ChatGPT, both are still really bad at text comprehension mixed in with logical reasoning. To my students: Yes, some of these questions will results in confused answers when simply pasted into the LLMs - please still engage your own thinking processes!
In my experience, the best UX for consistency and flow was Mac OS X circa 2008. Back then, #Apple was moving more towards #OpenSource and had gotten really good at defining Human Interface Guidelines and getting developers to follow them. Basically all the apps I used had the same UX for the core things (key commands, open/save dialogs, window management, etc). Then they got distracted by iTunes and shifted to working on devices that prioritize consuming rather than creating.
2/
The #UX situation on desktops regularly pisses me off: desktop apps technically are much better suited to providing a system-wide, consistent and easy UX. But #SurveillanceCapitalism means that all the money for development is going to the web, where tracking is built in and each site defines its own core UX patterns. So now the desktop can't keep up in terms of developer time, and sadly the web is often easier. 1/
With all this news about #BigTech doing layoffs because they are replacing people with #AI, I wonder if that is actually PR spin and what is actually happening is all the #AntiTrust actions are actually biting the monopolists where it hurts: their bottom line
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
This week in F-Droid (TWIF) was published again.
We have a lot of information in it, so jump right in: https://f-droid.org/2024/01/25/twif.html
In short:
- FOSDEM is around the corner.
- We specifically talk about the following apps: Money Manager Ex, Open Video Editor, Tachiyomi, Fossify Phone, KOReader, OnionShare, Organic Maps and OsmAnd~.
- The spring-cleaning of our repo is underway, and we have found some proprietary dependencies. The affected versions were removed.
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
Court ruling rejects spyware vendor’s motion to dismiss lawsuit filed by Apple. Judge says anti-hacking laws fits #Pegasus case „to a T“. #NSOGroup will fight on https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/24/us_judge_rejects_pegasus_spyware/ #Staatstrojaner
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
Fun fact: it's data privacy week 🔒 so here are some of our favorite extensions for a safer online experience.
1. Multi-account containers! cookies are separated by container, so you can use multiple accounts at the same time.
2. Privacy badger: this extension automatically blocks invisible trackers and opts you out of data sharing & selling.
3. History cleaner: this deletes browsing history older than a specified number of days 👀
Which ones are you currently using?
I like to think about little hacks to increase my #privacy while working on code. Lots of build systems fetch all sorts of things from the network, and send all sorts of data. #Android, #Flutter, and others have opt-out tracking. One little hack I have going is to force #Gradle to fetch #Maven dependencies over #Tor (except from #Google which blocks Tor). https://gitlab.com/-/snippets/3642145
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
This week in F-Droid (TWIF) with news about following apps was published:
- Element with an update and a fix for a critical bug
- The Fossify fork of Simple Mobile Tools has now 2 additional apps: File Manager and Calendar
- Kore was downgraded due to a non FOSS dependency
- Transportr is back after more than a year
Also, we've had 8 more new apps, 2 removed ones and 150 updated apps.
@team Reminds me of how #IBM sold those counting machines that ran the Nazi death camps. Sure, the counting machines didn't directly kill people, but they did make the Nazi government more efficient at finding the people it aimed to murder. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/04/hitlers-willing-business-partners/303146/
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
We have defined a secure and usable architecture for decentralized package repositories that any mobile user can use and understand possible risks.
The next official release of the official F-Droid client will widely deploy this to our users. We then plan to make a final architecture document, so others can understand the whole model.
We would love any kind of feedback, our drafts are here: https://gitlab.com/fdroid/wiki/-/wikis/Repository-Management-Overhaul#architecture-and-ux-considerations
@kiri @fvbever The #GPL is fundamentally about #UserFreedom. When #Android started, #Google recognized they could sell it better if it was Free Software because want free software and related freedoms. That led to Android becoming the largest OS in use today. Now Google has #monopoly power. They have a clear track record of reducing user freedom in Android, and moving to a kernel without the GPL would give Google more power over users and the market.
@fvbever #AOSP's policy is Apache-2.0, with only case-by-case exceptions: https://source.android.com/docs/setup/about/licenses
So #Google clearly does not want GPLv2 there either. Plus a big part of #BigTech's development model is building proprietary software that is mostly community-maintained free software. That's harder to do with any #GPL license.
@fvbever @kiri while I do think there are some really specific cases where regulations do not allow third party software, that point has been massively leveraged to push against the #GPL. Those rules really are rare, and on top of that, there are many cases where manufacturers are banning third party software because it is a cheap way out, not because the regulations actually require that.
Large corporations like the hate on the #GPL even though it has brought them big benefits. #Linux would be nowhere near what it is without the GPL. I always saw #Google's #Fuchsia kernel as their effort to get out of the GPL, since it would replace the Linux kernel. There was even media hype to that effect. Now I'm happy to see that Google is no longer supporting #Chrome on Fuchsia. I see this as a win for #FreeSoftware
https://9to5google.com/2024/01/15/google-is-no-longer-bringing-the-full-chrome-browser-to-fuchsia/
Joined Aug 2019
