Hans-Christoph Steiner @eighthave@librem.one

We can set up #internet communities with hard requirements to respect the community. This is why #FDroid is legally structured to put #FreeSoftware first and foremost, via legal structures set up by Commons Conservancy.

What is happening with #Reddit should not be surprising, it is a for-profit corporation. They are legally required to maximize profit. There are no requirements to respect the community that uses it. This is the danger of hoping that #internet companies will do the right thing. Corp. officers will not take on personal liability to defend communities, because corp laws say shareholder profit comes first. #WhatsApp showed this by selling out to #Facebook. #Telegram looks very ripe for the same.

For those who believe that the western liberal democracy is more effective than Chinese communism, consider that China is ahead of its #climate goals while western liberal democracies are behind. "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark" (Shakespeare quote, not singling out). If we are to prevent authoritarians from expanding, we need hold our governments to account. We also must take personal responsibility and do what we can to reduce our own climate impact https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/29/china-wind-solar-power-global-renewable-energy-leader

Interesting to see that the #Ruble has dropped below pre-invasion value when compared to the #Euro.

@cobratbq I wasn't talking about confidentiality, I was talking about tracking unread messages. Or is there something I'm missing?

@vitriolix I didn't know #Slack did that. I find Slack's UX to be over-complicated and put too much emphasis on emojis. But I also haven't used it that much. I worry about #Matrix going too much in that direction, but I would like to at least try a "preview then mark unread" UX in Matrix.

I like #Matrix and #Signal both for group communications, but there are still many things that #email does much better. For example, I often want to quickly preview a message to see if I want to deal with it now. If not, then I leave it marked unread. Not possible all the messenger apps I've tried. That leads to slower response times because I won't open messages until I'm fully ready to deal with something more complicated. Maybe #DeltaChat is the best direction for the long term.

A decade ago, #AmnestyInternational did some extensive UX work on #panic buttons using the power button. They used 10 presses as their trigger, and still got far too many false positives. Their conclusion was power button triggers were not workable. #GuardianProject reached a similar conclusion back then. I guess #Google missed that research: they shipped #Android with a 5-press trigger, and now emergency services numbers are receiving record numbers of false calls:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/06/uk-police-blame-android-for-record-number-of-false-emergency-calls/

#NYC way of dealing with work when it is hot: go from super hot subway platform to cold subway to frigid AC offices and keep working away.

#Vienna way of dealing with work when it is hot: no AC anywhere, if it is too hot to work, go to the nearest body of water and spend the rest of the day swimming.

AI generated music is getting traction because they are basically exploiting a loophole in copyright laws, where AI systems can take human music and make it available in a way that looks like copyright laws do not apply 2/2

I don't think I'll ever see a good reason for #AI generated #music. Music taps directly into emotions and human connection. There is already so much human-composed music out there that could be used instead of AI music. The problem is broken #copyright laws e.g. long terms, massive penalties, and applying a commercial regulation to all uses. 1/2

@th_willenbrink@mastodontech.de @mynacol One central goal of my work in #FDroid is to provide all the tools to give users access to updates and new apps, no matter what the conditions. That means when data is too expensive, the internet is out, when f-droid.org is unjustly blocked or censored, etc. Offline and nearby mirroring provides a failsafe way to get apps and updates.

@grote ah right, I couldn't eat the baby leaves fast enough, so then I had lots of the bigger ones. Any tips on how to stagger arugula planting to get more time to eat the baby leaves?

@lehtimaeki For those who believe that targetSdkVersion is more important than other features, #FDroid Basic is available, and it targets 33 (the latest). The official alpha is available already, the release will be out any day now https://f-droid.org/packages/org.fdroid.basic/

@mynacol @th_willenbrink@mastodontech.de Off the top of my head, I'm currently struggling to get a decent user experience for offline repo mirrors on USB thumb drives using recent storage APIs. Google has locked out lots of functionality to limit how apps use local folders. If you have invasive apps installed, then that limits the damage. If you have good #FreeSoftware installed, then that limits the possibilities. There are many other real world examples out there.

@th_willenbrink@mastodontech.de @mynacol What it breaks is well documented, if you're interested, you can find some of it documented in our issue tracker. If Droid-ify works for you, then great! That's #UserFreedom in action. I fully support custom clients since that is the only way to deliver certain kinds of user experiences. For the record, the official F-Droid client supports many things that Droid-ify does not, like mirroring. The core logic is available as libraries: https://f-droid.org/2023/05/02/three-client-libraries.html

@th_willenbrink@mastodontech.de @mynacol I agree that not doing anything about it and complaining would be a bad way to handle this. That is not what is happening in #FDroid. The targetSdkVersion sandbox literally breaks access to functionality, by design. That is a central design goal. Those who do not understand that do not understand what a sandbox is. The key question here is who gets to decide which functionality remains functional, and which gets banned by the sandbox.