Gene Burrus again raises a key point. Platform companies change APIs frequently as a method to deliberately disadvantage other developers, forcing them to play catch up to have a good user experience. #DMAWorkshop
Fully support the question from uptodown.com: file formats matter, #Android App Bundles (AAB) vs APKs give #GooglePlay a big wedge to disadvantage other app stores. #Google is good at turning small technical improvements like that into tools to maintain their #monopoly. There are other ways to solve the problem of smaller APKs. This one happens to preference Google Play, since control that format and require it. Plus they require developers give their private key to Google Play #DMAWorkshop
Great point from Gene Burrus: #Microsoft's #monopoly was broken via regulation, and that meant that #Google and #Apple were not charged a 30% fee as they worked to break into the market that had been dominated by #Microsoft. The DMA is building on that experience. #DMAWorkshop
Flying to Brussels, I was offered some digital boarding pass format which I was not familiar with: #Passbook pkpass. Living #GoogleFree, I assumed it was some proprietary thing. But I searched #FDroid and found @ligi 's app:
https://f-droid.org/packages/org.ligi.passandroid/
It worked perfectly! #FreeSoftware #FTW
So far no mention of #FreeSoftware at the #DMAWorkshop but I guess that's not surprising since it opens with in-app payments as a central topic. It would be great to see free options like #Liberapay and #OpenCollective represented. I was happy to meet @murena here, so I know I'm not alone as an #FLOSS-based implementer.
#DMAWorkshop has started, many more suits than I'm used to. The first interesting insight I gathered in conversation: "sideloading" is a loaded word which serves the monopolists. On other platforms, this is called "installing". Sideloading highlights that there is a main source, and installing outside of that source. Of course, many people don't want to think about the source, but we need choice over which is the main source.
We're busy with further developing the #opensource firmware of Nitrokey 3 and now a new test version is available. Have you had a look already? 😎
https://www.nitrokey.com/blog/2023/nitrokey-3-alpha-firmware
On my way to #Brussels for the #DMAWorkshop, trying to channel #FreeSoftware communities in what I fear might be an event focused on the giants #proprietary software. Or maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised?
A century ago, Polish and Ukrainian nationalists fought a brutal war against each other, where at least 50,000 died. Now they are allies. Let's hope history continues to follow this pattern, and we put #nationalism to rest. Let people be people, and respect their culture, language, religion, and democracy wherever people happen to live. Central Europe always was and always will be multi-ethnic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Ukrainian_War
https://warsawinstitute.org/poland-ukraine-history-divides/
Over the last few months, I put a lot of work into the @fdroidorg app. Here's what's new: https://f-droid.org/en/2023/03/01/new-repo-format-faster-smaller-updates.html
The US National Cyber Security Strategy has one thing so right I am cheering.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/National-Cybersecurity-Strategy-2023.pdf
If the corporate publishers win the lawsuit, authors lose ✍️ Here's @neilhimself, Naomi Klein and 1000+ other authors explaining why they "fear a future where libraries are reduced to a sort of Netflix... for books" https://www.fightforthefuture.org/Authors-For-Libraries #supportauthors #EmpoweringLibraries
Started syncing work on the #smali package between #Debian and #KaliLinux, bookworm's libsmali-java provides an update over Kali's own smali package, but there is still a bit more to be done. Hoping this is the start of more cooperation!
@webmink I greatly enjoyed your live tooting of the #DMAWorkshop. I'm up next: this Monday is the next one, this time about the app store regulations. I'll be there representing #FDroid @fdroidorg. Any advice for pushing #FreeSoftware in that context?
🕵️♂️ Today, the Open Source Programme Office (@EC_OSPO) held a Secrets Management Hackaton for the developers from the 🇪🇺 Commission.
The goal was to remove secrets from the internal projects' codes so that more 🇪🇺 projects can become #opensource and be shared on http://code.europa.eu.
Has anyone ever setup a multihop #wireguard? How about chaining more than one commercial #VPN provider? If it is easy to setup and fast enough, it could be a nice way to improve privacy without having to entirely trust the provider. https://mullvad.net/en/help/multihop-wireguard/
We have generally avoided recommending #VPN providers for #privacy since it is a thorny proposition, although they are clearly useful for #censorship #circumvention. We recently mapped out what a VPN provider needs to do to gain users' trust https://guardianproject.info/2023/02/28/steps-towards-trusted-vpns/
#DMAWorkshop
Meta speaker is a lawyer who has just spent his full slot pouring cold water on any approach to messaging #interoperability on every imaginable ground and dismissing all the existing entities running client=side bridges (e.g. iMessage and Matrix).
When #GooglePlay introduced privacy labels, I was very curious to see how they managed to get reliable data about the #privacy properties of Android apps. I know first-hand how difficult and time-consuming privacy audits of Android apps can be. Now Mozilla has taken a closer look, and it seems Google doesn't even have reliable data.
Just uploaded #weblate's wlc tool v1.13 to Debian to make it into bookworm. wlc is a handy CLI tool for managing translations in the terminal. This update enabled #bash #completion! Thanks @weblate for all your work!