Hans-Christoph Steiner @eighthave@librem.one

What is happening with #Reddit should not be surprising, it is a for-profit corporation. They are legally required to maximize profit. There are no requirements to respect the community that uses it. This is the danger of hoping that #internet companies will do the right thing. Corp. officers will not take on personal liability to defend communities, because corp laws say shareholder profit comes first. #WhatsApp showed this by selling out to #Facebook. #Telegram looks very ripe for the same.

For those who believe that the western liberal democracy is more effective than Chinese communism, consider that China is ahead of its #climate goals while western liberal democracies are behind. "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark" (Shakespeare quote, not singling out). If we are to prevent authoritarians from expanding, we need hold our governments to account. We also must take personal responsibility and do what we can to reduce our own climate impact https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/29/china-wind-solar-power-global-renewable-energy-leader

Interesting to see that the #Ruble has dropped below pre-invasion value when compared to the #Euro.

I like #Matrix and #Signal both for group communications, but there are still many things that #email does much better. For example, I often want to quickly preview a message to see if I want to deal with it now. If not, then I leave it marked unread. Not possible all the messenger apps I've tried. That leads to slower response times because I won't open messages until I'm fully ready to deal with something more complicated. Maybe #DeltaChat is the best direction for the long term.

A decade ago, #AmnestyInternational did some extensive UX work on #panic buttons using the power button. They used 10 presses as their trigger, and still got far too many false positives. Their conclusion was power button triggers were not workable. #GuardianProject reached a similar conclusion back then. I guess #Google missed that research: they shipped #Android with a 5-press trigger, and now emergency services numbers are receiving record numbers of false calls:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/06/uk-police-blame-android-for-record-number-of-false-emergency-calls/

#NYC way of dealing with work when it is hot: go from super hot subway platform to cold subway to frigid AC offices and keep working away.

#Vienna way of dealing with work when it is hot: no AC anywhere, if it is too hot to work, go to the nearest body of water and spend the rest of the day swimming.

AI generated music is getting traction because they are basically exploiting a loophole in copyright laws, where AI systems can take human music and make it available in a way that looks like copyright laws do not apply 2/2

I don't think I'll ever see a good reason for #AI generated #music. Music taps directly into emotions and human connection. There is already so much human-composed music out there that could be used instead of AI music. The problem is broken #copyright laws e.g. long terms, massive penalties, and applying a commercial regulation to all uses. 1/2

I never understood why arugula was a food until I grew it. It is intense and bitter, why would people eat it? When you grow it yourself, you just throw down some seeds where it gets some rain during the winter. Then you get massive amounts of it in the spring, and it is all bug free. Without really doing anything. If I had to grow all my own food, then I think I would probably end up eating a lot of arugula. Plus it tastes better when its freshly picked, not just pure bitterness.

I will go one step further and say that calling #FDroid an "unsafe app" by this standard is dishonest. It seems that some at #Google also agreed, since the older version of that screen was honest: "Blocked by Play Protect" instead of "Unsafe app blocked". Looks like the #GooglePlay team is still focused on protecting their #monopoly, this time using scare tactics. 2/2

This screen that #Google shows on #Android when installing #FDroid really bugs me. It is purely based on the integer value targetSdkVersion, without considering our security model, public audits results, track record over 10+ years, exclusive use of memory safe languages, or even what our code actually does. It is as if #FDroid marked anything that comes from Google as containing ads and trackers. 1/2

Code review is an essential part of team maintenance of #software. It must be a conversation . Pushing code without review might feel like getting things done, but it creates a form of technical debt. The other maintainers have not taken in the new logic yet, and therefore cannot act on it. That can mean duplication of work or breakage, since the other developer was not aware of the new logic.

looks like local/mesh device-to-device networking is finally getting good enough that #China is banning it https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/09/china-plans-new-rules-to-regulate-file-sharing-services-like-airdrop-and-bluetooth