Hans-Christoph Steiner @eighthave@librem.one
Joined Aug 2019
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
Google's new Takeout interface (see image). Good stuff: allows storing the data in other non-Drive services (Box, Dropbox), periodic exports, granular selection of data, good coverage of common formats. Bad stuff: still no actual portability through interoperability - you cannot do service-to-service transfer.
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
For @edri I've recently written a comment about the @EU_Commission's #DSA Stakeholder Event in July and what the #EU should do *right now* to start enforce the #DigitalMarketsAct and the #DigitalServicesAct.
https://edri.org/our-work/regulating-big-tech-in-europe-with-the-digital-services-act-digital-markets-act/ #DMA #PlatformRegulation #gafam #bigtech
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
If #Facebook is officially designated a gatekeeper under the #DigitalMarketsAct this September, by March 2024 we're supposed to see «a reference offer laying down the technical details and general terms and conditions of interoperability»: art. 7(4).
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2022/1925/oj#007.004
It will be interesting to see what role, if any, #Threads will have in it.
The #DMA is the official reason to not launch it in the #EU, per Bloomberg News https://mastodon.social/@fediversereport/110661982620933580 and Mosseri on Verge.
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
From today on the English version of "Ada & #Zangemann - A Tale of Software, Skateboards, and Raspberry Ice Cream" should be available from your preferred book store world-wide with the ISBN 978-1-718-50320-5 or directly from the publisher #nostarchpress
Your help sharing your thoughts about the book with others in different channels would be highly appreciated.
On the public #Weblate, mystery accounts are creating Old English (ang) and Middle English (enm) in the #FDroid projects. They don't respond to my messages, or do any translation work. This makes me suspect foul play. Anyone have any ideas?
For example:
* https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/f-droid/-/ang/
* https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/f-droid/-/enm/
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
The main #Jitsi public instance https://meet.jit.si is now requiring logging in with a Google, Facebook or GitHub account in order to create new rooms. https://jitsi.org/blog/authentication-on-meet-jit-si/
Apparently they feel that there was too much abuse of their terms of service, but they do not give any details at all.
A strong example of this comes from navigating with apps in Austria. Apps like #OrganicMaps #OsmAnd and others that use #OpenStreetMap data have much better information on footpaths, bike lanes, and minor roads than #Google does. So often my preferred route is entirely absent in Google Maps. On the other hand, Google Maps sometimes has more information on shops, offices, restaurants, etc. Other apps have much better transit information. Yet many stay in the Google bubble because of this bias 2/
When discussing #Google alternatives for #privacy, I heard: "I tried X a couple times but it didn't give me the results I wanted but Google did, so I stay there". I use multiple search engines and see each one's strengths and weaknesses. This made me realize there is a kind of bias: using one service provides simplicity. When using one, we don't know when that it is providing worse results than alternatives. Then people get the impression "the alternative sucks, I'll stick with the good one" 1/
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
Travelling by train in Europe should be silky smooth.
From pan-European corridors to interregional connections, we have helped build greener and sustainable ways into #Europe.
And we are up for more:
🚊 Today, we earmarked more than €52 million to support the purchase of 37 electric #trains for 13 interregional routes in Romania.
🚆 This month, we allocated €411 million to help build two sections of Spain’s Murcia-Almería high-speed railway.
Discover more: https://europa.eu/!J6DBmw
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
"Data brokers are obsessed with families with children ... Some people might be reluctant to tell a stranger whether they have children, exactly how many, whether they are still small. The advertising industry wants to know just that.
Mom and dad don’t live together? The advertising industry is capitalizing on this, too. Some segments are about single parents. For Germany, we found segments on single parents with adult children, single parents with teenagers and young single parents."
So I just worked through trying to make #Debian bookworm do hibernation with encrypted swap and #SecureBoot. Looks like #Linux is fine with using a swap file from an encrypted partition, but now the requirement is apparently that the swap is signed to prevent modification. I stuck what I know here https://wiki.debian.org/Hibernation#UEFI_.2F_Secure_Boot
„Für mich ist es frappierend, dass beispielsweise der Amazonas-Regenwald in den Medien regelmäßig mit dem Aufruf erscheint, die Biodiversität dort zu schützen, dabei sterben vor unserer Haustür Arten aus" https://science.orf.at/stories/3218278
Just because #Putin is bad and his invasion of #Ukraine horrendous does not automatically make the powers that be in Ukraine good. There are some very sketchy elements in the government in Ukraine, for example #NordStream, https://www.spiegel.de/international/investigating-the-attack-on-nord-stream-all-the-clues-point-toward-kyiv-a-124838c7-992a-4d0e-9894-942d4a665778
One of the things I sometimes appreciate about using #invidious is that is sometimes pauses and doesn't work for a bit. That forces me to think: did I just click through to this video, or is it actually worth watching? I hate interruptions in general, but I also hate being driven by social media #algorithms to waste my time and my brain.
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
@fdroidorg meetup at #chaoszone @ #cccamp23 right now!
Europe has a long history of destroying river ecosystems throughout the continent by building dams.This contributes a lot to #ClimateChange. The #EU is exporting this, by paying for new dams in pristine ecosystems, for example, in the #Balkans, where the locals have long history of keeping nature intact and wild. Places like #Bosnia and #Albania should export their knowledge to the EU, what is happening is vice versa and now we watch more "dams destroy rivers completely"
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
@kgbvax TRUST. Yes, that's the key.
With CLOSED source you need to trust the dev, ans solely the dev (unless there were audits).
With FOSS, everyone (technically capable of) can review/audit the source. At F-Droid, that is done: many eyes on the code, many mechanisms cross-checking it. True, not every line and every minute, but it's done.
Knowing the dev behind it then is only needed to put blame – and THAT is not what F-Droid stand for 
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
Unlike Google, F-Droid does not force developers to publicize their name or address information.
We understand that people have many reasons to develop under another name than their legal one and to keep their personal information private. And that what matters is the trust between user and developer, not private details of their lives.
For more information on how we designed F-Droid to protect your privacy, see https://f-droid.org/2022/02/28/no-user-accounts-by-design.html.
Joined Aug 2019
