Hans-Christoph Steiner @eighthave@librem.one
Joined Aug 2019
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
I was giving a computing ethics lecture about #FOSS and #antifeatures around 2014. Lots of folks there had never even heard of #FDroid. Maybe it's still not well-known?
F-Droid is a repository and platform for FOSS on Android. Their app can manage your other apps, much like you do with the Google Play Store.
When I need an Android app for something, I always check F-Droid first, just because the apps are trustworthy.
I'll reply with a few of my favorite apps on F-Droid... 馃У
I guess the tricky part there is that those stub classes need to be named the same as the proprietary dependencies, including the gradle lines. I wonder if it would make sense to have a #Maven repo that parallels Maven Central and maven.google.com that just contains stub libraries with the same Maven coordinates as the proprietary libs that many projects depend on.
#Gradle and #Java both operate by loading all dependencies and classes that are used in a project, unlike C or C++, which can #ifdef them out. This makes #FreeSoftware a bit harder when touching proprietary libraries, since all dependencies must be present at build time. If a build requires proprietary blobs, the resulting binaries cannot be free software. One workaround is to make free stub classes in build flavors to replace the proprietary build dependencies when building.
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
Tired of your weather app violating your privacy, e.g. by instantly collecting your location data?
Worried because it has tracking software included?
You may try out the privacy-friendly #TinyWeatherForecastGermany , available at #fdroid 
:
https://f-droid.org/packages/de.kaffeemitkoffein.tinyweatherforecastgermany/
This is a #floss #android #weather #app using precise and detailed #opendata from the #dwd (Deutscher Wetterdienst).
Supports #forecasts for over 5000 places worldwide, a rain radar and weather warnings for Germany.
After years of being one of the few to keep pushing dependency verification and even #PGP signatures on binaries, while getting responses like "gpg in 2022? wtf?", it is gratifying to see that not only has #Gradle full adopted this workflow, but also #Android developers at Google:
https://android.googlesource.com/platform/frameworks/support/+/HEAD/gradle/verification-keyring.keys
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
RT @pixeldetracking@twitter.com
Migrating http://maps.google.com to http://google.com/maps, a benign change?
Not really, now Google has permission to geo-track you across all of its services, cf. https://garrit.xyz/posts/2022-11-24-smart-move-google 馃槇
馃惁馃敆: https://twitter.com/pixeldetracking/status/1596087028986556418
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
RT @alvar_f@twitter.com
~2 Jahre hat eine Arbeitsgruppe der Konferenz der unabh盲ngigen Datenschutz-Aufsichtsbeh枚rden von Bund und L盲ndern (DSK) versucht, Nachbesserungen bei Microsoft 365 zu erreichen.
馃憠 Zusammenfassung des Berichts der AG zu #MS365: https://datenschutzkonferenz-online.de/media/dskb/2022_24_11_festlegung_MS365_zusammenfassung.pdf
Festlegung der DSK: 馃憞
馃惁馃敆: https://twitter.com/alvar_f/status/1596179727311863809
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
After two years of negotiations with Microsoft, the joint committee of the German federal data protection authority and 17 state regulators (DSK) published a devastating statement that essentially says that organizations currently cannot use MS365 in a lawful way under the GDPR.
Thanksgiving: Celebrating the day Americans fed undocumented aliens from Europe
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
No #SimReg nations: Bosnia & Herzegovina, Canada, Cabo Verde, Comoros, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Kiribati, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Maldives, Malta, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Moldova, Namibia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Philippines, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Sweden, UK, USA, and Vanuatu.
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
For people wanting some more information on NGI's involvement with #ActivityPub, this is a good starter: https://www.ngi.eu/blog/2022/11/24/how-ngi-supports-open-interoperable-decentralised-and-trust-based-internet-applications-through-fediverse-projects-like-mastodon/
Do you have an interesting ActivityPub-related project? The next deadline to submit proposals is December 1st - that is next week. And the best thing is: you can submit today!
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
We want to add the official #Tor onion service for f-droid.org as an official mirror, so that clients will automatically use it. Please test by sharing the repo link to #FDroid client then add it as a mirror:
https://gitlab.com/fdroid/admin/-/issues/12#note_1184095205
This should prompt to add it as a mirror, which is safe since the keys need to match. Click cancel if it offers to add a new repo.
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
The majority of apps on Google Play have never even been starred once. It seems Google Play's users do not care at all about the majority of the apps in their collection. Anyone have any ideas why Google would allow it to become such a cesspool? Is it that they believe they can just make their recommender engines find the good ones? Or do they want to remove friction for developers to ensure their monopoly? https://www.statista.com/statistics/266217/customer-ratings-of-android-applications/
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
@fdroidorg Installing #postmarketOS helps 馃槈
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
@postmarketOS @fdroidorg if only more OEMs would bother to add mainline support for their phones...
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
Pinafore's wellness settings are pretty awesome. No for-profit social media site would ever have the balls to do something like this.
Requiring everything be free software is the standard of the best distros, and what #F-Droid strives for. This goes against what Google is trying to with the Android ecosystem. They are pushing hard to get everything using their proprietary bits so that they can control the ecosystem. #F-Droid is the biggest force pushing back.
Joined Aug 2019
