FriendOfDeSoto

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Merz is in his 70s. He is not the most gifted politician. One nickname given to him by a journalist is “the unavoidable” in reference to him having no good competition for leadership in his party after a perceived century of Angela Merkel in charge who had successfully sidelined him. For a reason, it seems.

He is very good at dropping shit like this in the media and then having it walked back or watered down. I do not see this idea getting a majority in the country where Google street view is useless because people rebelled against having the public facing side of their buildings photographed for easier navigation. And I can see a few arguments that would occupy the supreme court for a decade, were this to become law.

I appreciate the air of publicity this story brings.

You probably can’t trust your password manager if it’s compromised

In other headlines: water is surprisingly wet.

One thing that what they call agenetic AI will undermine might be a lot of the subscription based biggies of the industry. I’m thinking about Adobe in particular. They charge a monthly premium for having user-friendly, low learning curve software that often has become industry standard. But there are open source alternatives for many of their big hitters (Inkscape, GIMP, etc.). If the agenetic model needs a tool to design a logo or expand an image - and you probably already pay for the privilege of using the agent model - this may prove to be a boon to the open source development of these intermediary software tools. Because the relative difficulty to use them as we hear from Adobe heads all the time won’t matter to the computer. And they are free (with a request to donate). So a chunk of interest and probably money and effort will move from those subscription services to open source alternatives and their development. This is just one positive effect so-called AI could have for some open source projects.

Sadly, at the same time we squander resources and kill polar bears.

I am not an expert and I think this falls at the first hurdle because a login is required to view more than the latest post or two.

Here is how I use it: you take an old device that you never installed Insta on, run it under a burner account at the OS level, run a kill switch VPN on it (preferably always on the same server), and then create an account on Insta that you’re ready to ditch the moment they want your ID. That device doesn’t do anything else than Insta.

Tried it with VPN on and on Vivaldi on Android and it works just fine. I think you have another gremlin in your setup.

Is this a bad use of so-called AI? Yes. Is this illegal? I’m going to say no. One of the reasons why Google tried this is because in various markets they’ve been dragged to court or coerced to fund news initiatives because they used snippets from publishers in their search results word-for-word. A not insignificant number of publishers has been lobbying pretty hard against them for giving you their headline and a couple of phrases as a snippet. Those publishers are dumb if you ask me but they were able to bend laws to their will and limit the usefulness of the link, the cornerstone of the internet. So you can sort of understand their motivation why they would try this. And it was only a test from what I’ve heard. So bash Google for all the truly evil shit they’re up to. This issue is dumb but not really worth the outrage.

What confuses me about this scenario you’re painting is this: it doesn’t matter which app is better than WhatsApp for your mother to navigate if none of the contacts she texts with are willing to move with her. She’s not breaking off contact with folks over a GUI issue, is she? Or is she only using it with you?

Also, random messages not going through has not been an issue in the “war” between Android and iOS so far as I can see. Image quality of attached images, getting spammed with a new text for every reaction of a user in iMessage on the Android side, and some rare messages in group chat contexts that originated in iMessage were issues (and they’re not anymore IIRC). Now, if those are the ones you mean with “random messages” then okay. Did you or she convince all her contacts to move to WhatsApp as a result? If so, once again, moving her off it won’t do any good unless everybody follows along with her.

A move off of WhatsApp and to Signal is recommended from a privacy point of view. Meta is a terrible company. Signal is less bloated than WhatsApp. Beyond that I think they’re all roughly similar in functionality and user interface. By which I mean equally confusing for somebody over 60 today.

The comment was the first one I ever made with that account.

With that account. Can I read that as ‘but I have others that have been banned for understandable reasons’? If so, you give me no indication why I shouldn’t take my hunch to the grave.

Whether or not I agree with your take on decentralized social media is irrelevant. I believe that trolling on other platforms, or indeed this one, will not further the cause you have summarized.

If I had to hazard a guess, your comment managed to violate another guideline or contained unsuitable language. I would also not be surprised to learn that if we managed to get ahold of the person who deleted your comment we would find out that you had a history of questionable comments and that’s why the moderative leeway afforded to you may have been cut short. The fediverse will not benefit from a crusade into other platforms in the same way coca cola doesn’t advertize with the slogan “hey, you fucking loser, you would benefit from this cool beverage of ours.”

I’m basing my guess - and I could be wrong of course - on the fact that you think I was gatekeeping rather than describing the status quo.

You gotta be able to back up a claim like that with screenshots or something else other than hearsay. It’s my impression that no one really GAF about the fediverse, or only pays lip service to it like Meta, which explains why it’s so nice. It’s only us nerds here willing to be our own algorithm. So I have a hard time believing this. Also, who still cares about comments on YT?

We’ll never know until another NSA employee defects to Russia.

Just to add more context: these are good guy hackers who have responsibility shared their findings with the companies affected. It took them around 3 years to translate the signals they intercepted. And as far as anybody can tell, no one used this in the wild. It’s wild but it isn’t Snowden-wild.

If you care about things beyond the operations, the Proton boss came out in support of 47’s adminstration with regards to regulating big tech IIRC. I’m not aware the Mullvad chief did something similar.

Proton works well. But it’s designed to be the basket for all your eggs (VPN, office suite, email, etc.). They want you to use all their services and push for upgrades to the highest tier. I found their customer support you be … very … slow.

If you need port forwarding, AirVPN is another option. I think they’re cheaper than Mullvad but it’s held together by dedication and duct tape. It works okay but read their website first to see if you’re okay with how it’s set up.

We are already living in a privacy nightmare. Whether you film and then doxx folks with a smartphone, a camera you’ve hidden in your clothing, or one built into the frame of some spectacles really doesn’t move the needle much any more. We’re in the red already. The nightmarish data collection and then sharing is already baked into our internet experience.

And the people at large sit in a chair in a burning room that is this nightmare we’re in, uttering “It’s fine.” It’s been years since the Google glasshole debacle. People are so used now to other people just filming shit all the time. I think these glasses will end up just being tolerated. There won’t be thousands around in your daily life, like smartphones. Society will acquiesce even in occasional perverts and intentional doxxers. The digital Overton window will move on.

What I can foresee is a more enforced no filming ban in certain areas, like restrooms and changing rooms. There could even be a technical solution that garbles recordings whether they are attempted or not.

Yes, you must have missed it. And so it begins.

Google is moving to make Android less open source. I’m not sure more devs following suit is going be good for them or their users. The G doesn’t give an F.

What we need is an OS fork that gets maintained. If not that, some other workaround that fools the Google servers. Because you can bet money that nobody made from flesh and blood is going to look at this inside Google.

Maybe devs can band together and form Middle Finger Corp. and designate one willing person as their contact to serve as registered dev for a gazillion apps. Follow the letter of the law, not the misguided spirit of it, in a manner of speaking.

If you are sitting on a mobile OS and you were afraid to fail like Windows, maybe now is the time to give it a go?

This is another cut, among thousands. It’s bad because we can see the motivation behind it. Free speech only for one team.

I don’t want to be victim-blaming when I say expecting any big US corp to protect your privacy is futile. I know they want the reach of Insta and that’s of course not a bad thing. But it’s a threat considering who runs it. Another threat is editorializing the content. Don’t put music on it, don’t opine on the shamefulness of what the jackboots are doing, just post it. It’s the best chance of this dying in the courts before the independence of the judiciary has completely gone. Constant dripping wears the stone and the MAGAs are pissing on it full force.

Another consideration must be at this point to host or mirror your content on servers outside the US. Countries that already didn’t give an eff about the US or cooperating with its authorities. If you run your digital opposition on US-run/controlled infrastructure, you’ll be shut down soon.

I think your definitions don’t quite match common use. When people think about sideloading, they think about installing apps from a third-party source that are not approved by the primary vendor. That’s precisely what Google is going to block.

See the end of my pervious comment. The fact that we call that “sideloading” in common parlance is a magic trick Google has already played on us and we ate it up. Resist.

The way I understand sideloading is installing an app through a way that isn’t Play. So F-droid - as one example - is sideloading because you need to go through the overly dramatic warning messages to enable the install from unknown sources. If all the devs in F-droid’s repository theoretically registered with Google, nothing will change. The only difference is that Google wants to know who made it. They make it harder and shittier and thus limit our choices, yes. But they don’t block everything outright.

The problem arises for apps, whose developer doesn’t want Google and by legal extension the American judiciary to have access to their information. That’s a privacy concern that I find very concerning too. I’m not defending Google’s choices here. I hate it. I also don’t like the inevitable hyperbole going the other way.

Not defending Google but I have a but (no typo - although I’m the proud owner of a double t version as well. But I digress.)

Google is not getting rid of sideloading. They are implementing a registration process for devs and then do a check if they have the info on record before allowing an app to be installed. It is possible for you to download an APK from wantsomalware dot com and install it as long as the developer registered with Google - as all the malware dipshits will manage to do on burner accounts, which will not curb the spread of malware, which is their stated aim. Technically, your bank could distribute its app on its website as long as they registered with the Goog. But it will render abandoned projects uninstallable and that’s the rub.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like this either. Twisting their words though isn’t helping either.

Corey Doctorow pointed out that it is mad that we call it sideloading. Installing an APK is the same, whether it’s coming from Play, F-droid, or the dark web. There should not be this distinction. Lobby your politicians on this matter. G will not GAF about this petition - it’s PR for the cause at best. Only the tag team of legislature and judiciary can set this right.

It did for me. Anything with file access will ask for permissions first time around. (Android 13)