Notices by Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)

@dushman
> I stopped using Firefox cuz Mozilla can't get their shit together and their products are constantly getting less performant and more buggy

I remember similar criticisms being made, just before some massive performance improvements to Firefox made it (for a while) the best web browser on the market. I agree that the problem at present is at the governance level. Especially the spectacularly incompetent parasite CEO who pockets huge chunks of their funding. She has to go.

@icedquinn

Hot take: blocking accessibility tools, like Reader Mode in Firefox-based browsers, ought to be illegal.

I could go further and say that ensuring digital interfaces are fully accessible ought to be compulsory. But punishing companies that make dickhead moves to block adversarial accessibility is the minimum viable regulation.

#accessibility #ReaderMode

(1/2)

@deutrino
> welcome to The Mastodon Network™ Development Process, itsfoss!

There are so many poor engineering decisions leading to this problem. But it could be worse; each client could generate its own unique link preview, instead of each server creating one for the people using it.

Maybe this points to a solution for @Gargron and co? What if the account posting the link generated the link preview, and sent it as part of the post metadata?

#Mastodon #SlashDotting

@MNNHNewsEnglish

@aral @Tutanota @solstice It might make you sleep better at night to believe your personal morals beliefs are based on universal moral laws. But I'm sorry, they're not (see: https://meaningness.com/fixation-and-denial).

As I said, I think homophobia is dopey. But comparing it to a fascist regime that caused the deaths of millions of people is hyperbolic in the extreme. Just like the people demanding Nuremberg trials, to punish politicians for their pandemic measures.

@aral@ar.al
> this is what Brave is actually about: basicattentiontoken.org

Why didn't you lead with this?

If the software itself respects the people using it, and does its job well, who cares if someone in charge has dopey opinions about some things? I mean, everyone has dopey opinions about something ....

I'm vegan. If I boycotted all software written by corpse eaters, I might feel righteous and pure, but I wouldn't be using computers much ....

@solstice @Tutanota

It's now impossible to login to dReddit without running JavaScript from no less than 2 Goggle-controlled domains;

google.com and gstatic.com
(the latter just to make a f&*king button work urrggghhh)

Plus one at cdn-apple.com

The web is no longer 5 websites with screenshots of the other 4. It's functionally just one 1 big website controlled by 5 DataFarming corporations.

#Reddit #Google #Apple #DataFarming

@Zergling_man
> install lynx

I tried that. It kept chasing the mouse, and after I got bitten for the third time, I gave up : P

@dmarti
> The 2 tools I recommend

What about NoScript and Ghost?

@aral @SecurityWriter

@LaurensHof
> A proposal to enable portability of identity and object storage within ActivityPub through the use of DIDs

I believe this work has already been done, in a series of FEPs based on the Zot/Nomad protocols developed by Mike Macgirvin for Hubzilla/ Zap. Including;

* FEP-ef61: Portable Objects

https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/fep/ef61/fep-ef61.md

* FEP-61cf: The OpenWebAuth Protocol

https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/fep/61cf/fep-61cf.md

* FEP-c390: Identity Proofs

https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/fep/c390/fep-c390.md

#ActivityPub #FEP #PortableIdentity

"If we move our economies and societies towards these measures, we could easily, within a couple of decades or even less, achieve prosperity and, yes, freedom, for all, within planetary boundaries, realising what George Monbiot has called ‘private frugality and public luxury.’ We could have beautiful, lush, safe living spaces, lower working time, more time for family, friends and community care, with greater autonomy and emancipation."

#JuliaSteinberger, 2024

https://jksteinberger.medium.com/what-we-are-up-against-2290ba8c4b5c

(2/2)

Hey @smallcircles, it just occurred to me to wonder, why is Fediverse Ideas a Codeberg repo? Couldn't it just as easily be a SocialHub category, like Fediversity? Then it could then be federated over AP, using Discourse forum federation, and people could follow and reply with their fediverse accounts.

Thoughts?

#fediverse #FediverseIdeas

(1/?)

@smallcircles
> fedi ideas might lead to become FEP's and then they can cross-reference

Has that actually happened? Would crosslinking from FEP to FI forum category be almost as good?

> folks don't like to participate on a forum apparently, prefer a code forge

So they say. The events of the last week or 2 suggest otherwise.

(2/?)

Also, being a repo doesn't seem to be helping us get eyes on Fediverse Ideas. The last 19 FI issues were opened by me. The last one by anyone else was 4 months ago. Very few of these have attracted any comment.

More importantly, are developers the main target audience for FI? Isn't this something where we want "power users" to describe our pain points in careful detail, for the edification of devs? Making it a forum category instead of a repo may make it easier for non-devs to join in.

Great post, hits the nail right on the head. Thanks for sharing this @rysiek.

This kind of journalistic malpractice is usually caused by ignorance, in which case they need to be called in and patiently educated. But in some cases I think there is an intent to mislead, by people who ought to know better. They need to be contacted in private and given a chance to retract and apologise, and if they don't, they need to be publicly called out on their wilful malpractice.

#journalism #TechJournalism

"Indeed, it no longer feels amusing to see the Telegram organization urge people away from default-encrypted messengers, while refusing to implement essential features that would widely encrypt their own users’ messages. In fact, it’s starting to feel a bit malicious."

#MatthewGreen, 2024

https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2024/08/25/telegram-is-not-really-an-encrypted-messaging-app/

#TeleGram

#Telegram always smelt like a honeypot to me;

* centralised, tick (like Signal)

* encryption doesn't work for groups, only 1:1, tick (like Signal)

* opt-in E2EE for 1:1 chats while heavily promoted as "encrypted messenger", tick (unlike Signal)

* Roll-Your-Own cryptography, tick (maybe like Signal, but crucially...)

* no source code published for server, so no independent auditing of cryptographic primitives or implementations, tick (unlike Signal)

I can't fathom why anyone uses it.

In the late 1990s/ early 2000s the Mozilla project, and its not-for-profit foundation, was one of the most pioneering rallying points in the software freedom ecosystem;

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/details/

But for years now, most of their projects have either been hived off into for-profit subsidiaries (eg Firefox, Thunderbird), failed utterly (eg FireFoxOS), involved proprietary code or DataFarming tie-ins (Pocket), or all of the above (Firefox Hello).

Whatever happened to Mozilla?

#Mozilla

(1/?)

Cue another round of 'Meta is bad, therefore fediverse admins shouldn't allow anyone on their servers to talk to anyone on Meta's server'. As usual, all the wailing and gnashing of teeth;

https://cyberpunk.lol/@FediPact/112871261753041389

... totally misses the point. Nobody here is defending Meta. Literally *nobody*.

I'm for federation with Meta's server because it helps people leave it. Simple as that.

(1/2)

#fediverse #Meta #AntiMetaFediPact

This is a fascinating read from the end of 2023, about the #ActivityPods team's plans for v2.0 and the v1.0 limitations it's being designed to overcome;

https://activitypods.org/the-road-to-activitypods-2-0/

#ActivityPub #SOLID

I wonder how this might fit with the work done to extend easy account migration across the fediverse, with Portable Objects (FEP-ef61)?

https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/fep/ef61/fep-ef61.md

The developer of Streams contributed a lot to this FEP, based on the NomadicIdentity features it's shared with Hubzilla for years(1). So it's already been implemented in Streams.

I'm curious to see it added to other ActivityPubs apps so I can test an app-to-app migration.

#NomadicIdentity #PortableObjects #Streams #ActivityPub