Hans-Christoph Steiner @eighthave@librem.one
Joined Aug 2019
Hans-Christoph Steiner
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Citizens can only trust the 🇪🇺 digital ID if it’s transparent & gives them control over their data. The @EUCommission must protect users from illegal access to their sensitive information & fix loopholes in the upcoming #eID now! ☔
#eIDAS
https://epicenter.works/en/content/civil-society-demands-eu-commission-must-close-e-id-loopholes
Hans-Christoph Steiner
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🇪🇺 EU Commission's Microsoft 365 reliance raises privacy alarms!
Internal documents reveal the EU Commission's data privacy concerns over dependency on Microsoft.
Should the EU embrace #opensource to prioritize data sovereignty?
Hans-Christoph Steiner
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🇺🇦 🇹🇼
Remember that #Facebook's new name #Meta doesn't really refer to the doomed-from-the-start #Metaverse whim, but its much more important reliance on #metadata as the core business model.
#Instagram, #WhatsApp, and the other "products" are primarily metadata collectors. Who communicates with whom, when, how often, how much, through which types of data; which groups are they members of, how do they interact with them; which posts/articles/products do they read, like, or buy? This metadata is sufficiently detailed that the actual content of "what" somebody sent is no longer important - and therefore it doesn't hurt the business model to provide end-to-end encryption in WhatsApp and (more hesitantly) Facebook Messenger. Or, as Gen. Michael Hayden (ex-NSA) infamously once admitted "We kill people based on metadata" (https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2014/05/ex-nsa-chief-we-kill-people-based-on-metadata). And #Meta's metadata collection is much more detailed than the mere phone call/message and email and IP packet records the NSA/CIA/etc. use(d).
That metadata is the basis for targeted advertisement and manipulation of individual and public opinion. That's where the money and the power is, not some silly 3D avatars. So the company name #Meta is, actually, interestingly descriptive and honest about the exploitative business model.
Protect yourselves. Use @torproject, @signalapp, @Mastodon, @pixelfed, and other federated services instead of feeding more into the metadata collection.
Hans-Christoph Steiner
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It is now possible to use #Python as an #ECH client using the DEfO development fork:
https://guardianproject.info/2025/01/10/using-tls-ech-from-python/
Hans-Christoph Steiner
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I wrote a blog post about using TLS ECH from Python https://guardianproject.info/2025/01/10/using-tls-ech-from-python/
Hans-Christoph Steiner
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Today Mastodon is taking another step towards its founding ideals: independence and non-profit ownership. We're transferring ownership of key assets to a new, European not-for-profit entity, ensuring our mission remains true to a decentralised social web, not corporate control. #MastodonNonProfit
https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2025/01/the-people-should-own-the-town-square/
Don't get me wrong, I love #apksigner for signing and verifying. It is a vast improvement over jarsigner, etc. And @fdroidorg relies on it. Passing apksigner should remain a requirement for any APK published on f-droid.org. As things stand now, I would be staunchly opposed to removing `apksigner verify` checks for f-droid.org. I also recommend that all repos also require apksigner. 3/3
For example, #fdroidserver is coded against apksigner from build-tools version vX.0.0. Someone does `pip install fdroidserver`. Then at some point, the user upgrades apksigner to version vY.0.0 which breaks the parsing before fdroidserver supports apksigner vY.0.0. That breakage needs to fail gracefully, and that is really hard to do. Much harder than just writing pure Python code to extract the certificates which is tested against the apksigner test suite. 2/3
I'm sometimes asked why #fdroidserver implements somethings in #Python rather than scraping #apksigner output. Reliably and securely parsing CLI output over the long term is really hard to get right because deployed fdroidserver code has to be future proof, in that it has to support newer apksigner versions that might have changed its output. 1/3
Hans-Christoph Steiner
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We're starting a sprint to look at all the issues preventing #ReproducibleBuilds in all the apps we ship. Most of the issues are simple fixes in the upstream code, like unsorted outputs or timestamps included in the build.
You can help make the #FreeSoftware #Android ecosystem be more reproducible! See the failures here and help us report them upstream: https://verification.f-droid.org/failed.html
Hans-Christoph Steiner
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We wrote a blog post about trust and how to have a verified installation of our client.
One such source for the client could be our CLI tool, that recently got the ability to download the F-Droid.apk.
Read more at
https://f-droid.org/2024/12/11/verified-first-time-installs.html
Hans-Christoph Steiner
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This week in #FDroid (TWIF):
- european-alternatives.eu lists software and apps that come from the EU, some of them are regular guests in our TWIF
- we found a YouTube video about apps that are NOT on a centralized app store
- aTox and UniPatcher were updated again after a long hiatus
- Kodi fixed many bugs
- OsmAnd~ has a lot of new features
- Status, VLC and Zulip were also updated (and 111 more apps)
- MRT Buffy is new and helps you commute in Dhaka
Read more at https://f-droid.org/2024/11/21/twif.html
This is the example of the kind of feature that the #DigitalMarketsAct is driving #Google to implement. It could have been implemented long ago, but there was no pressure for Google to do so. Notice how they implemented it in #PlayServices, not Android. Apps that implement this are then tied to Google's proprietary stuff. That's their way of maintaining control of the ecosystem. https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/21/24302562/android-restore-credentials-transfer-restore-key
Hans-Christoph Steiner
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Happy 37th anniversary of the Max Headroom Incident, to those who celebrate.
I would love to see an analysis of the power dynamics of how all the browser companies are working together on the #Chromium code base. Of course, #Google has an oversized influence, both because #Chrome is dominant but also because Chromium is a Google project. I can't imagine #Microsoft is a pushover there. #Brave, #Opera and #Vivaldi probably have much less sway, but could join together. Are there useful avenues for #Firefox resources to have more impact in the Chromium ecosystem?
When the ÖAMTC ambulance helicopter flies overhead in #Austria, it is an experience. Its fast, loud and strikingly low to the ground. Its the only helicopter I see. For me, this event represents the social system. It flies in reserved airspace, private aircraft aren't allowed. Trips are covered by health insurance. I compare this to living in #NYC, where most helicopter flights are some rich asshole flying around for no good reason. This helicopter reminds me another world is possible
Hans-Christoph Steiner
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It seems we have some excellent news! The SDK now seems to be licensed under GPL 3.0, making the @bitwarden client fully open source again: https://github.com/bitwarden/clients/issues/11611#issuecomment-2436287977 (https://github.com/bitwarden/sdk-internal/commit/db648d7ea85878e9cce03283694d01d878481f6b). If this change stabilizes into the next release, I can remove the warning in my blog post again.
H/T Philipp Hofer, thanks for noticing and sending me the links!
Hans-Christoph Steiner
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🎉 PSA: F-Droid users! 🎉 The Tuta Calendar app is now available on F-Droid 🥳
❤️ You can get the Tuta Calendar app here: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.tutao.calendar/
@jcaleitao thanks for running a public #IPFS gateway. Yours is currently returning 502 errors.
Could someone please train an AI image generator on a data set without any porn at all? Or is this just a bias in the free ones? I feel like half the time I try to generate an image mentioning the word "woman", it rapidly goes towards porn. Try generating with a term like "breast feeding" and its impossible. This is a bias on the internet we really do not need to reproduce or spread further. Paid services might be better but most of the world will use the gratis ones. #enshittification coming up
Joined Aug 2019
