Hans-Christoph Steiner @eighthave@librem.one

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

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

@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/

@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/

@jnthnkl Sapio looks great! I guess it should serve as a replacement for https://plexus.techlore.tech/ Is there a public API available for this data? It would be quite useful. For example, an fdroid-compatible repo could use it when reviewing new apps for inclusion. In that case, the data should also include the Version Code in addition to the Application ID.

@uniqx this looks like it should be your next mobile device: look a phone with a trackpoint!

Its cool to see more and more apps using #MabLibre. It used to be so many apps just used #Google for maps and then just failed on #GoogleFree devices. For example, I just downloaded a city's bike sharing app made by a mega corp, and it uses MabLibre so works fine without Play Services. My experience used to be that all the navigation apps required Google.

I live near a branch of the #Danube and have seen beavers a couple of times. It is great to see them coming back. I didn't realize how dire the situation was: the population was done to 1200 a century ago https://cartographymaster.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Beinder.jpg

@argv_minus_one Do you have a reference on that? It doesn't line up with my understanding. For example, Mozilla does not say anything like that in their criticism back in May, and it seems that things have improved since then https://blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/2023/05/15/mozilla-weighs-in-on-the-eu-cyber-resilience-act/

Ok, my final struggle was getting #GnuPG to switch to the new #smartcard. It seems that GnuPG was architected around a single smartcard per private key. Seems fine as a recommendation, but problematic as a strict requirement. It seems that GnuPG 2.4 has changed this, but I don't know the details.

Here's my switch scripted hack:
https://gitlab.com/-/snippets/3638931

@argv_minus_one
Then if an employee wants to contribute to external free software that the company does not use at all then the shouldn't be liable for that software since they don't have any related commercial activity. It seems to me that work outside of commercial activity are exempt.

I worry about a key piece of the F-Droid funding model: we often get grants to improve #FDroid, so the contributors who work on F-Droid pieces under contract might be liable. That's where I'm still unclear

2/