Hans-Christoph Steiner @eighthave@librem.one
Joined Aug 2019
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
"A passionate and bipartisan legislative effort to rein in the country’s largest technology companies collapsed this week, the victim of an epic lobbying campaign by Amazon, Apple, Google and Meta"
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-20/big-tech-divided-and-conquered-to-block-key-bipartisan-bills
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
Tech giants are now spending hundreds of millions to systematically shape policy across the world, including donations and funding to policymakers, civil society orgs, media orgs and academia.
A decade ago, this may not have been clear to everyone. Now it really should be.
We welcome help for bumping the #targetSdkVersionfor #FDroid and have mapped out what needs to be done:
* https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroidclient/-/issues/2037
* https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroidclient/-/issues/1440
Given our limited resources, I have chosen to focus my time on concrete improvements for #FreeSoftware. The only thing I'm opposed to in all this is removing functionality in order to bump targetSdkVersion. Google's recent changes there have removed functionality that many rely on.
When #FDroid is built into a #FreeSoftware ROM, like #CalyxOS, #lineageos for #microg, etc there is no popup warning with fdroidclient. That comes from "Play Protect", which is #Google proprietary software that flags things based on automated rules, it does not point to real world security concerns for apps like #FDroid. I have nothing against the #targetSdkVersion sandbox, I just think it is important to note what it is good for, and what it cannot do well 2/2
As lead maintainer of the official #FDroid client, I hear a lot of criticism that #targetSdkVersion is still at 25. fdroidclient is #FreeSoftware, publicly audited, with #ReproducibleBuilds, written in memory safe languages, with a proven record of respecting #privacy and delivering #security. The source and binaries also receive human and machine review. #targetSdkVersion is designed around untrusted proprietary software with non-memory safe code where the binary only gets machine review. 1/2
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
@lauren #FreeSoftware and audits are the only way to provide trustworthy #E2EE. Apps like #DeltaChat, #Matrix with #Olm/#Megolm, #XMPP with #OMEMO, #Signal, #Threema provide trustworthy E2EE because they are built on open standards, free software, and have been publicly audited. That is the standard all services should be held to in order to be labeled trustworthy. Anything else just means you have to trust the service operator. 2/2
Hans-Christoph Steiner
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@lauren It is important to describe the limitations here. E2EE here would be useful when emailing with third parties. Since #Gmail is proprietary software, users just have to trust #Google to do the right thing. Technically, it is easy to build E2EE where the service can get the private keys and decrypt as they like. Given participation in #PRISM etc, proprietary Gmail cannot provide trustworthy E2EE, especially considering most emails stay within Gmail 1/2
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
We may never be able to match the incredible achievements of #JohnMastodon, but the European Union still plays its part!
We are proud funders of Mastodon through the Next Generation Internet initiative (@EC_NGI).
Open,
Interoperable,
Decentralised,
Trust based.
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
People rocking up on this platform and expecting it to be as rich and diverse and mature as their carefully nurtured Twitter feed, fine-tuned over a decade to reflect their interests and values, maybe give it a few weeks of actually investing in finding the accounts that interest you before writing the whole thing off as a howling wasteland.
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
Why curation and #decentralization is better than millions of #apps.
Hans-Christoph Steiner
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🇺🇦 🇹🇼
Happy to have our last version of "The Android Platform Security Model" now included in the official August 2021 edition of ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3448609.
Fully open access - download, read, share, feel free to use however it's helpful ;-)
"Generally speaking, warring parties do not like neutral states. Russia complains about the sanctions, and Ukraine wants Switzerland to allow the re-export of our ammunition from Germany. But criticism is a sign that a neutral state is doing its job well" https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/-there-is-no-such-thing-as-an-altruistic-state-/48103724
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
We talk a lot about companies that make and sell spyware, such as NSO, but let’s not forget the companies that back them and the states that allow them to sell their products to authoritarian regimes around the world. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/08/us/politics/spyware-nso-pegasus-paragon.html
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
I have finally said something substantial about this topic.
https://www.wired.com/story/effective-altruism-artificial-intelligence-sam-bankman-fried/
I'm happy to see our Natural History Museum Vienna start to acknowledge the historical wrongs that it has been a part of, and to start doing something in response: they have finally returned the remains of 64 people that were literally stolen from New Zealand in the name of "#science" https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/04/rage-but-also-joy-and-completeness-bringing-new-zealands-stolen-ancestors-home
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
"#FreeSoftware [...] should be considered a human right. I became a supporter of the FSFE to help make that point." – Erik Grun
Find our work for education in our annual #softwarefreedom report https://fsfe.org/news/2022/news-20220928-01.html#education
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
Oh my God.
I’ve just realised what ChatGPT reminds me of. It’s from Douglas Adams’ novel Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, published 35 years ago.
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
Russia continues to bring death and devastation to Ukraine. It is deliberately targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure, seeking to paralyse the country at the beginning of the winter.
To make the Kremlin pay for its cruelty, we have proposed our 9th package of sanctions. It will step up our pressure and complement the existing sanctions that are already biting hard.
More info: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/statement_22_7568
Joined Aug 2019
