Hans-Christoph Steiner @eighthave@librem.one
Joined Aug 2019
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
I am very happy to join the @fdroidorg Board of Directors for the upcoming two years.
F-Droid is in the heart of the Open Source community, which I see as a very important part of the shift away from the US big tech here in Europe. Success of Open Source on mobile is success we all can share.
F-Droid gives visibility to software developers who want to build experiences without predatory practices.
This is important.
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
“Don’t forget international traffic, […] which is one of the fastest growing markets.” –Michael Peterson of Deutschen Bahn
We, as passengers, know that the demand for more and better cross-border rail is there. Now is the time to back it up with policy and offerings that make it possible.
Apparently, #Google has lost track of their goal for #Android "We wanted to make sure that there was no central point of failure, where one industry player could restrict or control the innovations of any other. " https://web.archive.org/web/20120501080416/http://source.android.com/about/philosophy.html
That page is 404 Not Found now...
On #Google's official download page for the #AndroidSDK they list a column "SHA-256 checksum" but then provide a SHA1 value. WTF?
https://developer.android.com/studio#command-line-tools-only
The last third of that is an interesting discussion about whether it actually pays off to use the latest versions of dependencies based on the data that #Sonatype gathers from #MavenCentral and other repositories
https://opensourcesecuritypodcast.libsyn.com/2026-state-of-the-software-supply-chain-with-brian-fox
The last third of that is an interesting discussion about whether it actually pays off to use the #latest versions of dependencies
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
Google Play Integrity: what if Google dictated what software ran on your computer.
Open source implementations of attestation: what if a bunch of other people dictated what software ran on your computer.
Look, these handcuffs are permissively licensed!
No, thank you.
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
🇺🇦
On a train to #Dagstuhl, I finally got to read the nice write-up about on-device local-web-to-app tracking: https://localmess.github.io/assets/bridges-to-self-localmess-usenix-security-26.pdf
TL;DR summary: You might want to uninstall (or deactivate if pre-loaded) all #Facebook and #Yandex apps from your phone. That kind of behavior is pretty clearly malicious - not even just ethically wrong, but seems actually illegal (at least in the EU, though IANAL).
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
It appears one or more impersonators have already registered some of the #Android applications that I maintained, including @appmanager. I've reported this to #Google, but not sure what's going to happen. The Android developer verification is still in beta, and it doesn't have a lot of features now to deal with this kind of problems.
#Native #apps have inherent advantages over #web apps, yet an open web is important. #Gatekeepers are abusing its openness. Web apps dominance on #desktop looks like an effect of the gatekeepers pushing for that. Web apps are pushed by #BigTech: #Google #Apple #Facebook #Amazon, partly as a way to break #Microsoft #Windows's dominance. Its good to break Windows' dominance, but now, Big Tech web apps serve as new gatekeepers.
#Government and #military leaders right now are talking a lot about how they need to prepare for the threats they are facing from other countries. But what they basically never talk about is how their own military #buildup makes other countries feel threatened. From what I've seen, this applies everywhere no matter which side they are on. That looks like a clear path to more war. They should be considering #deescalation is also a proven method for avoiding #war, not only #deterrence.
Another case of the #AI #bubble in action: insane #VC funding to create things that corrode the internet and public sphere and that people don't actually really want. #OpenAI's #Sora is no more! It was very expensive to run with hardly any paying customers.
https://www.revolutioninai.com/2026/03/%20chatgpt-gpt-54-mini-silent-switch-march-2026.html
"If that holds at scale, the “#AI coding boom” is not a #productivity #revolution. It is a #debt-acceleration loop wrapped in excellent #UX."
https://medium.com/write-a-catalyst/an-ai-wrote-576-000-lines-to-replace-sqlite-7ea538826d72
Watching two party politics like #Democrat vs #Republican in the #US, it seems like an endless game of "he said she said". With multi-party politics, there are more possibilities. When three differing opposition parties get together to have a hearing to hold the government to account, that sends a pretty clear message that is not possible in two party politics.
Democrats have a hearing, Republics say its just politics. Or vice versa. Then stalemate.
For example:
https://abcnews.com/Politics/follow-law-bondi-after-democrats-storm-epstein-files/story?id=131199517
Hey #Europe, check out how #Sanchez and the #Socialist party in #Spain stood up against
the #IranWar, ignored threats from #Trump, so far received no meaningful retaliation and improved their standing in the latest #elections.
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
How do you feel about the impending lockdown of Android?
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
EFF's Certbot has brought HTTPS to millions of web domains for free! Each cert brings us closer to encrypting the web and defending users everywhere. Help support this work today. https://eff.org/support-certbot
Hans-Christoph Steiner
boosted
Two weeks in, our Open Letter to Google to Keep Android Open has gotten over 50 signatures from 20 countries. Our latest endorsement: Forbrukerrådet, the creators of the viral hit video: "A Day in the Life of an Ensh*ttificator". https://youtu.be/T4Upf_B9RLQ?si=FlZ4CswIlPJDs6Rs https://keepandroidopen.org/open-letter/#signatories
#Technology can empower people, the key is what it empowers people to do. #Weapons technology allows people to kill others ever more effectively. And #AI #ChatBot #tech like #ChatGPT can empower us to make our deepest darkest fantasies real. Most of the world has decided that it is not a net positive for individuals to have easy access to deadly weapons. Although chatbots can do useful things, it seems ever clearer that lots of the uses of #LLMs do more harm than good
https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/15/lawyer-behind-ai-psychosis-cases-warns-of-mass-casualty-risks/
Joined Aug 2019
