Hans-Christoph Steiner @eighthave@librem.one

I'm always shocked at how many people buy those cheap plastic #kitchen sponges. They work so terribly and are not washable. Take literally any old rag that is at least partially #cotton, and it cleans so much more efficiently. Like literally any old t-shirt. And everyone knows how to wash a t-shirt.

I posted some thoughts about F-Droid clients and maintenance in response to a post, I'd be interested to hear what other people think: https://www.reddit.com/r/fdroid/comments/noov58/the_problem_with_the_fdroid_clients/h0aobs7/ @fdroidorg@mastodon.technology

This quote from #Google #Arizona court docs really sums up a lot about #SurveillanceCapitalism design:

"The current [locations settings] UI feels like it is designed to make things possible, yet difficult enough that people won't figure it out. New exceptions, defaulted to on, silently appearing in settings menus you may never see..."
https://www.azag.gov/sites/default/files/2021-05/McGriff_Exhibit_207.pdf

From an internal Google discussion: "TBH, given what you seem to want to do (not have any contact with any Google service whatsoever), your only option is flashing LineageOS for microG on your phone" https://www.azag.gov/sites/default/files/2021-05/Chai_Exhibit_201.pdf

#Arizona #Google #LineageOS #microg

Anyone know what #google ULR is?

"Suppose a user has disabled permissions to, say, Google Maps for Mobile (GMM). With client-side location, GMM will not get location, as the user intended However, they can still get a place card (e.g. Riddler) via ULR-->████-->GMM server--> GMM client. (URL has GmsCore's location permissions, not GMM's). This seems like a bypass to Android's permissions model."

https://www.azag.gov/sites/default/files/2021-05/Berlin_Exhibit_236.pdf

"Apple is removing apps before China’s internet censors even complain. Apple does not disclose such takedowns in its statistics."

#Apple did not have to make tricky corporate setups with #China to get around the #USGovt ban on US companies handling over data to China. They created a corporate arrangement where a Chinese gov owned company GCBD owns the data, so the Chinese government just asks them instead of Apple. This is clearly pursuing profits in direct conflict with human rights principals Apple claims to protect. This sounds just like #IBM's tight relationship with the Nazis in 1934.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/17/technology/apple-china-censorship-data.html

I just read what I think is the best article on the internet in Cuba:

"US media depict the island as stuck in the digital dark ages, but Cuba has lively cultures of connectivity that could evolve into a self-sustaining, open, and accessible digital commons."
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/in-cuba-will-the-revolution-be-digitized/

The idea that #EU "failed" at vaccines are based on the same flawed premise: countries hoarding vaccines for themselves is good. The virus tells us otherwise, as it rapidly mutates around the world. Good vaccination programs recognize that the pandemic is global, and cannot only be handled on a national level. Vaccinating the lowest risk groups in the US and UK while the highest risk groups elsewhere are not vaccinated is bad science and bad policy. EU, Russia, China, India all export vaccine.

There are so often scary headlines talking about aging populations and declining birth rates. For example: https://www.politico.eu/article/italy-birth-rates-coronavirus-pandemic/

This is actually good news on a number of fronts: people can freely choose children or not; the #climate needs fewer people living high-impact, developed-world lifestyles; and historically, shrinking populations give more power to the masses. Productivity is still growing, so the economies will be fine. For a real world example, see Japan's declining population.

I think I found the answer in this error message:

Unable to strip library '/builds/eighthave/torservices/app/build/intermediates/merged_native_libs/release/out/lib/x86/libtor.so' due to missing strip tool for ABI 'X86'. Packaging it as is.

If the binaries on Maven Central include debug symbols, then stripping them while assembling the APK will change them. I wonder what the right thing to do is here? Ship stripped binaries? Require stripping in the APK build? Disable stripping?

If anyone is looking for a #ReproducibleBuilds #Java / #Android project to hack around with, jtorctl now builds with #Gradle (from gradle.org or #Debian), #Maven, and #Bazel with sketches of Ant. The idea is that if all the build tools make the same JAR, no need to trust the build tool.

https://GitLab.com/eighthave/jtorctl or https://GitHub.com/eighthave/jtorctl

Another bit for the annals of #ReproducibleBuilds: the new TorServices app is reproducible across a couple machines. It uses a reproducible libtor.so binary from a Maven Central artifact, which is pinned by SHA-256 using Gradle Dependency Verification. I built TorServices on yet another box, and this time, it had diffs in the libtor.so. WTF, how is that possible? It just had to copy the libtor.so from AAR to APK. I guess it could have been a glitch in that computer, or hacked test build box.

Just finishing up the first release of a new #Tor provider app called TorServices. It is meant as a stripped down, Android-native system service. It is built on the new Android-native TorService, which can also be embedded into apps.

Get nightly builds here:
https://gitlab.com/guardianproject/torservices-nightly

The core service is available at https://gitlab.com/guardianproject/tor-android