keverets @keverets@librem.one

Appealing the removal didn’t yield any result. Google just repeated the same statement "the app was removed because it uploads the contact list" without even acknowledging any of the arguments I made in the appeal.

I understand that most of my audience here on Mastodon is more ideology aligned with F-Droid but the app sales on Google Play store have contributed significantly to me working (almost) full time on #Conversations_im.

Without the revenue from Google Play I can’t afford this.

Google have been quietly de-listing #XMPP apps from their Play store one-by-one for made-up reasons. Today they finally came for Conversations (https://gultsch.social/@daniel/111929074071688694 ).

@fdroidorg doesn't have these problems, and they additionally rebuild from source, supporting reproducible builds (so unlike the Play store, you know the published source code matches what's in the app you download). With their recent enhancements (https://f-droid.org/2024/02/01/twif.html ) I'll be recommending it to more people.

The BBC extends its Mastodon experiment for another six months: "We are also planning to start some technical work into investigating ways to publish BBC content more widely using ActivityPub." #Technology https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2024-02-extending-our-mastodon-social-media-trial?utm_source=werd.io&utm_campaign=mastodon&utm_channel=mastodon

"There are Mastodon servers operated by governments for their official government accounts, and this is the perfect use case for them — because they get to control their entire IT infrastructure, and we get to see and subscribe to these important announcements."

(👆also true for public service media broadcasters or universities)

Good interview with #Mastodon founder Eugen Rochko: https://www.platformer.news/mastodon-interview-eugen-rochko-meta-bluesky-threads-federation/

HT @ChristophKappes

“Banning Flipper Zero devices is tantamount to banning a multi-tool because it can be used for vandalism, or banning markers because they can be used for graffiti,” EFF’s @legind told @Motherboard. https://www.vice.com/en/article/4a388g/flipper-zero-ban-canada-hacking-car-thefts

Absolutely agree with this @organicmaps are amazing

https://mstdn.social/@W_Lucht/111903110020482060
Have I my mentioned how totally awesome @organicmaps's new "Outdoors map style" is - a mode that highlights tracks and trails?! It's absolutely splendid, and amazingly accurate even for small paths (built on OSM).

By the way: #OrganicMaps is fully offline, requires no registration, has no ads, no tracking - and works very well. So it depends on donations, like the fediverse does! Use and support them if you value it

Watt-Wise Game Jam

"Build delightful games that use as little energy per second as possible in order to make games and computing more sustainable, and to discover new directions for software aesthetics. [...] We are developing both hardware and software estimation techniques for measuring energy consumption. Participants can use our open source power estimation tooling while developing their games to optimize for using less power. "

https://wattwise.games

#permacomputing #lowtech #videogames #energy

I have real trouble getting my head around the way we nearly eliminated flu season for a year and now we're right back to accepting tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths per year. Same with Covid, of course. How many other lives could we save with modest change?

PSA for folks in North America. There is a solar eclipse coming up on April 8. Get your eclipse glasses now, so you are not left scrambling.

https://eclipse.aas.org/eye-safety/viewers-filters

Interesting: “Introducing Pkl, a programming language for configuration”

https://pkl-lang.org/blog/introducing-pkl.html

I fear the future of the web is a division between two philosophies. That it is a place where people go to find things made by people who care OR that it is a slowly stagnating database to be queried, mined, and deconstructed so that a person can be given something generated by a machine run by people who don’t care at all (except for money).

The further we let the line between author and material drift the more we get just “content”. And the closer we get to the second nightmare.

The Beaverton pulls no punches.

https://thebeaverton.com/2024/02/alberta-premier-marlaina-smith-bans-kids-from-going-by-their-preferred-name/

#ABPoli #TransRightsAreHumanRights

Please choose from the two contemporary design styles for your wifi hardware: “rounded soft box with white light” or “satanic death cult blood sacrifice altar”

Study finds that once people use cargo bikes, they like their cars much less - https://arstechnica.com/cars/2024/01/study-finds-that-once-people-use-cargo-bikes-they-like-their-cars-much-less/ "Even some one-car households ditched vehicles in favor of cargo bike-sharing." #transport

Love this toothpaste label - let's roll it out across all products

Google announced that starting in June 2024, ad blockers such as #uBlock Origin will be disabled in Chrome 127 and later with the rollout of Manifest V3 (#Mv3).

The new #Chrome manifest will prevent using custom filters and stops on demand updates of blocklist. Only #Google authorized updates to browser extension will be allowed in the future, which mean an automatic win for Google in their battle to stop YouTube #AdBlockers .

#ManifestV3 is deceitful and threatening to your privacy, and now is a good time to switch to #Firefox (@mozilla) and/or #TorBrowser (@torproject) if you haven't done so already!

EFF (@eff) on Google’s Manifest V3:

⚠️⁠https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/12/chrome-users-beware-manifest-v3-deceitful-and-threatening
⚠️⁠https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/12/googles-manifest-v3-still-hurts-privacy-security-innovation

Chrome Manifest V3 Transition Timeline (2023-11-16)

🚩⁠https://developer.chrome.com/blog/resuming-the-transition-to-mv3/

🆕 blog! “Rebuilding FourSquare for ActivityPub using OpenStreetMap”

I used to like the original FourSquare. The "mayor" stuff was a bit silly, and my friends never left that many reviews, but I loved being able to signal to my friends "I am at this cool museum" or "We're at this pub if you want to meet" or "Spendi…

👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2024/01/rebuilding-foursquare-for-activitypub-using-openstreetmap/
⸻
#ActivityPub #fediverse #FOURSQUARE #geolocation #OpenStreetMap

Amazon seems to have (quietly) gone back on its promise not to sell facial recognition to law enforcement.

Remember: temporary corporate beneficence is not a substitute for real laws to protect people. Ban it.

https://fedscoop.com/doj-fbi-amazon-rekognition-technology-ai-use-case/

The #UX situation on desktops regularly pisses me off: desktop apps technically are much better suited to providing a system-wide, consistent and easy UX. But #SurveillanceCapitalism means that all the money for development is going to the web, where tracking is built in and each site defines its own core UX patterns. So now the desktop can't keep up in terms of developer time, and sadly the web is often easier. 1/