bramhaag

Although a majority of voting Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) actually opposed the regulation (314 against, 276 in favor, 17 abstentions), the motion to reject it failed to secure the required absolute majority of 361 votes.

This vote was urgently scheduled for today, the last day of parliament before the summer break. 113 MEPs were not present for this vote, likely having taken vacation days to extend their break. It's hard to believe choosing to do the vote today was done accidentally.

"effort" is a big word to describe typing out a few prompts to create something with 5k+ open issues.

Signal is one example. Their values are simply not compatible with what the Chinese government wants (local data storage, key access, etc.). Instead of complying and putting their users' privacy at risk, they accepted the ban.

Google, out of all companies, also decided to partially walk away from the Chinese market in 2010 over censorship concerns [1].

Nobody is forcing Apple to do business in China, or the UK. They actively choose to do so, and because of that also put themselves in a position where they have to comply with these laws, presumably because it makes them more money.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/23/technology/23google.html

Apple's response to the UK gov asking to see users' iCloud data says enough about where their priorities lie [1]. They do something far worse in China [2].

Don't fool yourself into believing Apple cares about your privacy. They care about money.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgj54eq4vejo

[2] https://www.reuters.com/article/technology/apple-moves-to-st...

Im pretty sure Google wouldn’t intentionally cut marginalized people like this off from the entire internet, would they?

Why wouldn't they? Google is notorious for making marginalized people's lives harder if it can make them money. Some examples:

- Hosting Palantir's ImmigrationOS, used by ICE to track immigrants

- Actively removing tools marginalized people use to protect themselves against ICE, such as ICE-tracking apps on the play store

- Intentionally aided Israel in committing genocide as part of Project Nimbus

- LGBTQ creator censorship on YouTube

Cutting off a small group of people they've repeatedly shown not to care about in the first place is a small price to pay to further cement their position as gatekeeper of the internet.

The requirements for the mobile devices are listed here: https://support.google.com/recaptcha/answer/16609652

So it seems that you will need a modern Android device with Google Play Services installed or a modern iPhone/iPad to be allowed to browse the web in the future.

No mention of device integrity verification yet, but the writing is on the wall.

They wrote a follow-up article, "Socialists are responsible for leaving children unprotected", which is somehow even more unhinged.

https://www.eppgroup.eu/newsroom/socialists-are-responsible-...

I agree that the wording is a little misleading. "No coal ever in the electricity mix" is what's stated on the site.

It seems they consider only coal use in the 21st century in mainland Europe + UK (i.e. not Greenland, Iceland, Svalbard, etc.).

https://beyondfossilfuels.org/europes-coal-exit/ keeps track of coal phase-out commitments. 24 European countries still use coal generators, and 6 have not even planned to phase them out (Serbia, Moldova, Turkey, Poland, Kosovo, Bosnia).

Never used coal power:

  Albania, Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Switzerland, Norway

  2016: Belgium
  2020: Sweden, Austria
  2021: Portugal
  2024: United Kingdom
  2025: Ireland

  2026: Slovakia, Greece
  2027: France
  2028: Italy, Denmark
  2029: The Netherlands, Hungary, Finland
  2030: Spain, North Macedonia
  2032: Romania
  2033: Slovenia, Czechia, Croatia
  2035: Ukraine
  2038: Germany
  2040: Bulgaria
  2041: Montenegro

Spammers won't pay even $0.08 per message because their whole model depends on sending millions for free.

Your LLM forgot that SMS exists. Even a 0.01% success rate on tens of thousands of messages can be lucrative.

What makes you think that they see bombing civilians as a bug, not a feature?

Yes, sent*, not sends. Before they got called out, it was opt-out. No consent dialog, warning, or any other sort of confirmation before sending audio to OpenAI. The keyboard is auto-enabled.

Almost half a year after the controversy started, they added a consent dialog (https://gitlab.e.foundation/e/os/murena-voice-to-text/-/comm...). A few months later, they actually made the consent dialog function as intended (https://gitlab.e.foundation/e/os/murena-voice-to-text/-/comm...). Mistakes happen, but initially Murena:

1. sent voice messages to OpenAI

2. did not anonymise said voice messages, only their origin

3. did not ask the user for consent

4. ignored the user's consent after they started asking for it

That is not a good look for a privacy-focused OS. There is now a working consent dialog before using this feature, and audio is actually anonymised (random pitch shifting + filtering + noise), but it took them nearly 8 months to address all of this after getting called out.

open-source means auditable privacy

This is what that auditing actually reveals:

* /e/OS sends user speech data to OpenAI without consent [1], and thought this was ok until they got caught [2].

* /e/OS massively delays security patches, and calls this a "standard industry practice" [3]. Meanwhile, GrapheneOS' opt-in security preview releases provide early access to security updates prior to official disclosure [4]. Also see [0] (Security update speed) and [7] (WebView being 40 security updates behind).

* microG downloads and executes proprietary Google binaries in a privileged environment [5] [6]. You can obviously not audit these, nor should this count as "degoogled".

* microG still phones home to Google by default (android.clients.google.com for device registration check-in, mtalk.google.com for FCM push, firebaseinstallations.googleapis.com for SIM activations) [7].

[0] has a comparison of popular privacy and security-focused Android-based OS, which paints the whole picture. Privacy-friendly does not necessarily mean secure, but in this case "privacy-friendly" is quite a stretch already.

[0] https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm

[1] https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114880528716479708

[2] https://community.e.foundation/t/clarification-about-voice-t...

[3] https://community.e.foundation/t/e-os-and-security-updates/7...

[4] https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/27068-grapheneos-security-p...

[5] https://github.com/microg/GmsCore/blob/e19a9985204ec8329c1d9...

[6] https://github.com/microg/GmsCore/blob/e19a9985204ec8329c1d9...

[7] https://www.kuketz-blog.de/e-datenschutzfreundlich-bedeutet-...

I wonder how this compares to GrapheneOS in practice.

https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm is a fairly complete comparison. One of GrapheneOS' biggest features is that they sandbox Google services (if you choose to install them), whereas e/OS gives them privileged access by default (via microG). Calling it a "degoogled" OS while microG uses Google's proprietary blobs is... a choice.

The GrapheneOS developers are very sceptical of e/OS (https://xcancel.com/GrapheneOS/search?f=tweets&q=e/os), but you should obviously take biases into account here. Murena's CEO occasionally participates too: https://xcancel.com/gael_duval/search?f=tweets&q=grapheneos

By 'Rust compiler' and 'C++ compiler', they refer to the LibJS bytecode generator implemented in those languages. This is about the generated JS bytecode.

People can curate their profiles, but not search results. Their posts and comments will still show up if you just search on their user page.

My feed has devolved into AI generated propaganda with a scary amount of genuine support. Police brutality against minorities and other politically relevant groups; all fake but with hundreds of seemingly real replies cheering them on.

Kinesis also offers custom switch options through Upgrade Keyboards: https://upgradekeyboards.com/collections/kinesis-advantage36...

Lead times are long, and Kinesis products are expensive. It gets a little more bearable if you take into account that you're using this tool 8 hours a day for years and years, but still. Cheaper options exist.

A split keyboard might still bring you some relief. Modifiers/enter/backspace/etc are usually moved away from your weakest fingers (pinkies) to your strongest (thumbs). I have Ctrl, Alt, backspace, delete, space, enter and shift all on my thumb clusters.

Here's an example of what that might look like: https://kinesis-ergo.com/wp-content/uploads/KB360-GBR_FRONT-... (though in the default configuration, shift is still on your pinky; you can customize this on most keyboards, or on OS level).

The rabbit hole goes very deep. Another option is home row mods: https://precondition.github.io/home-row-mods. A combination of thumb clusters and home row mods can reduce your finger strain a lot.

Additionally, the official F-Droid app creates unnecessary friction for GrapheneOS users they refuse to address: https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroidclient/-/issues/2914

I really enjoy using Codeberg (as well as my own self-hosted Forgejo instance). It's fast and responsive, and if something is broken or inconsistent, it's trivial to create a PR and get it merged with minimal friction. It's a breath of fresh air after having dealt with GitHub's bs for many years.

Some other FOSS apps I use daily:

Aegis - 2FA (https://github.com/beemdevelopment/Aegis)

Breezy Weather - A very good looking weather app (https://github.com/breezy-weather/breezy-weather)

OnlyOffice Documents - MS Office suite replacement (https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/documents-app-android)

Fossify Calendar (https://github.com/FossifyOrg/Calendar)

Fossify Messages (https://github.com/FossifyOrg/Messages)

Aves - Local gallery with great organization (https://github.com/deckerst/aves)

Termux - Terminal emulator (https://github.com/termux/termux-app/)

Unexpected Keyboard - A unique keyboard that pairs nicely with Termux (https://github.com/Julow/Unexpected-Keyboard)

WG Tunnel - WireGuard client (https://github.com/wgtunnel/wgtunnel)

These are all easily installed through Obtainium: https://obtainium.imranr.dev/

This one works for me https://support.wero-wallet.eu/hc/en-us/articles/25599074240...

What realistic open source alternatives to Discord are there? I'm currently considering moving to one of these with my friend group:

- Matrix

- Stoat, previously revolt (https://stoat.chat/)

- IRC + Mumble

- Signal

These songs sound like royalty-free stock music at best. Bland and inoffensive, with the same uncanny and compressed quality that AI-generated images have too.

Borderline acceptable for elevator music is a long way from the paradigm shift you claim it is.

They've already changed the wording to

  > At a major manufacturer, agents reduced production optimization work from six weeks to one day.

This is really funny coming from Durov, CEO of an IM app that doesn't even have E2EE on by default (or even available for group chats). Both WhatsApp and Telegram are terrible choices.

  > all classic signs of centralisation.

  >  I lost my Mastodon account history because I moved once

  > couldn't interact with half the network or apps because I was on a non-Mastodon codebase instance

  > lost my account again because I stopped paying for access to the instance I was on

On Mastodon, if something goes wrong, nobody can cut you off the network entirely. On Bluesky, the author deleted an empty test account and is now blacklisted network-wide until Bluesky support decides to help. That is a classic sign of centralization.

Unfortunately most people couldn't care less. Bluesky has been lying about being decentralized since day 1, and yet they have millions of users.

Codeberg _wants_ to host open source projects; it isn't leeching any more than adding articles to Wikipedia.

If you feel guilty, you can self-host Forgejo, contribute to Forgejo, or become a Codeberg member and pay them a yearly fee of your choosing (https://join.codeberg.org/).