Zak
@Zak@lemmy.world
- Comment on [deleted] 2 days ago:
You can editorialize in the body on Lemmy; there’s no need to use a title that obscures what the link is about.
It passed the house with a veto-proof majority and the senate unanimously. It is almost certain to become law whether the governor signs it or not.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 days ago:
Isn’t Microsoft Authenticator just a password manager and TOTP app? You can replace it with Bitwarden and Aegis (or a dozen alternatives).
- Comment on FBI Wants Access To Encrypted iPhone And Android Data—So Does Europe 5 days ago:
This is a battle big tech cannot afford to lose.
I don’t like this framing. This is about privacy for all of us, and some of the most important providers of encryption software and encrypted services are nonprofits and small companies.
- Comment on Fediverse for teens 6 days ago:
It’s interesting the number of comments about parenting advice as opposed to technology suggestion.
Was this unexpected? It has been my experience online that people are more likely to tell you what they think you need to hear than what you asked for.
- Comment on Fediverse for teens 6 days ago:
I don’t know you, your daughters, or their friends so I can’t make specific recommendations. What I can say is that it’s really common for teenagers who are sheltered from the dangers of the world to make more and bigger mistakes once they’re unsupervised than those who get a gradual introduction.
The two main dangers of social media for most people are:
- Encountering assholes. For girls and women, there’s a high probability assholes will try to sexually exploit them. Since there are minimal consequences most of the time for sending “show me your tits”, they’re going to encounter that behavior eventually, and it may be easier to deal with for the first time when they have parental support.
- Algorithmic rabbit holes. These can create the perception that problematic attitudes and behaviors are common and widely accepted when they are not. Having an open dialog with parents about anything from eating laundry detergent to Jordan Peterson can be a strong stabilizing influence.
I don’t think a closed Fediverse server is likely to serve as a first step in a gentle introduction because it has neither danger and presumably no strangers to talk to. The full Fediverse might work better, as it does offer interaction with strangers. Encounters with assholes will be less frequent than on corporate social media, and any rabbit holes will be much more self-directed.
That said, when one of them is likely within a year or two of leaving home or at least having full control of her digital life, if she wants to use some corporate social media, she’s probably better off doing that with some parental supervision and support than jumping in completely unprepared when you’re no longer in a position to prevent it.
Her friend group has a group text and she wants to keep up with everyone but doesn’t want to get the ding notifications constantly.
This seems like a good opportunity to learn how the notification settings on her phone work.
- Comment on how do I stop being a sucker for alcoholic stuff on sale? 6 days ago:
The behavior you’re describing does not sound like addiction. People with an addiction to a drug feel compelled to use the drug and become distressed if the drug is unavailable.
This is also not binge drinking by any commonly-used definition. Two pints of beer a day is generally considered moderate drinking, and you’re not doing it every day, only when beer is on sale. Research does seem to be converging on drinking alcohol at all being bad for your health, however the effect size for occasional moderate drinking is small enough that it has been difficult to measure.
What you are describing is impulsive behavior. When you see beer on sale, you can’t resist taking advantage of the offer. When you have beer, you drink it faster than you meant to. If you think about other areas of your life, can you find more examples where you struggle with impulse control?
- Comment on Google Play’s latest security change may break many Android apps for some power users. The Play Integrity API uses hardware-backed signals that are trickier for rooted devices and custom ROMs to pass. 1 week ago:
Mobile check deposit is a moderately important use case in the USA. It would be possible to do that via the web, but banks usually don’t.
Regardless, any apps refusing to run will annoy users, and they would likely blame the one brand of phone where that happens instead of the app developer or Google who actually deserve the blame.
- Comment on Google Play’s latest security change may break many Android apps for some power users. The Play Integrity API uses hardware-backed signals that are trickier for rooted devices and custom ROMs to pass. 1 week ago:
Correct, but it is necessary to unlock the bootloader to gain root access.
- Comment on Google Play’s latest security change may break many Android apps for some power users. The Play Integrity API uses hardware-backed signals that are trickier for rooted devices and custom ROMs to pass. 1 week ago:
Their goal is to ensure OEMs only bundle Google-approved Android for which Google charges licensing fees and which funnels users into Google services. If a phone won’t run your banking app, you probably won’t buy it.
- Comment on Google Play’s latest security change may break many Android apps for some power users. The Play Integrity API uses hardware-backed signals that are trickier for rooted devices and custom ROMs to pass. 1 week ago:
Many devices, including Google’s own Pixel devices have user-unlockable bootloaders. No security vulnerabilities are involved in the process of gaining root access or installing a third-party Android distribution on those devices.
What’s going on here isn’t patching a vulnerability, but tightening remote attestation, a means by which a device can prove to a third party app that it is not modified. They’re selling it as “integrity” or proof that a device is “genuine”, but I see it as an invasion of user privacy.
Google can’t exactly make root access and custom ROMs easier to use in 2025.
Sure they can. They’re in a much stronger position to dictate terms to app developers than they were in 2010 when it was not yet clear there would be an Android/iOS duopoly.
They don’t want to though, because their remote attestation scheme means they can force OEMs to only bundle Google-approved Android builds that steer people to use Google services that make money for Google, and charge those OEMs licensing fees. A phone that doesn’t pass attestation isn’t commercially viable because enough important apps (often banking apps) use it.
- Comment on Is it OK to leave device chargers plugged in all the time? An expert explains 1 week ago:
I’ve encountered a number of outlets in American airports that should be replaced due to wear. They have very little friction on the prongs after millions of uses.
- Comment on “How you design the beep is important.” Behind the movement for calmer gadgets. 1 week ago:
Heat is bad, but the battery could be positioned below the oven. Disposable would be cheaper.
- Comment on “How you design the beep is important.” Behind the movement for calmer gadgets. 1 week ago:
The burner valves operate mechanically. It has an additional shutoff valve that closes when there’s no electrical power. A battery backup for the igniters would be a great feature though - a Li-ion battery stored at half charge would last pretty much forever.
- Comment on “How you design the beep is important.” Behind the movement for calmer gadgets. 1 week ago:
I encountered an infuriating example of the opposite a couple years ago: a gas stove that wouldn’t work without electricity.
A gas stove normally operates with a mechanical valve to control gas to each burner, and while modern ones have electronic igniters, it’s possible to use a match or the like instead. These assholes went out of their way to add an electronic valve that shuts it off when there’s no power. It’s probably in the name of safety, but the scenario where someone leaves the valve open without igniting the gas is possible even with power by failing to engage the igniter correctly, and gas is smelly.
I should be able to use a gas stove when there’s no electricity or the igniter is broken if I supply my own source of ignition.
For your example of a flashlight, consider one with USB charging. If the charging port or circuit fails, I should be able to easily take out the battery and charge it in another charger (Li-ion charging is pretty standardized). If the battery is dead but the USB port works, I should be able to use it as a USB-powered lamp.
- Comment on New Cars Don't All Come With Dipsticks Anymore, Here's Why 1 week ago:
I don’t like it because:
- I want to look at the oil and smell it, not just check the level.
- I don’t know the failure modes for the sensor, so I can’t trust that the absence of a complaint from it means the oil level is correct.
- Comment on Apple executives ban Fortnight from the App store 2 weeks ago:
Epic was planning to distribute it in its own store in the EU.
flashlight man.
I’ll take it.
- Comment on Apple executives ban Fortnight from the App store 2 weeks ago:
It appears phones as old as the Android 8 era can support this and phones that shipped with Android 13 or newer always do. I had the impression it had been universal a little longer.
- Comment on Apple executives ban Fortnight from the App store 2 weeks ago:
No, Google is also trying to stop hobbyists running custom builds from accessing services built on their software (the aforementioned SafetyNet). Hackers keep finding ways around this, but Google keeps trying to lock them out.
That’s a side effect. If Google really wanted to interfere with hobbyists, they would mandate hardware-based attestation and all the current workarounds would be broken. It would be much harder to create workarounds for that.
- Comment on Apple executives ban Fortnight from the App store 2 weeks ago:
The DMA should never have allowed Apple any oversight of apps distributed outside their store.
- Comment on Apple executives ban Fortnight from the App store 2 weeks ago:
If manufacturers had their way, there wouldn’t be any phones for one side.
There’s nothing stopping manufacturers from permanently locking the bootloader. Some do and others don’t suggesting that the industry does not have a universal preference.
I do think Google wants it to be inconvenient enough to run a version of Android they haven’t blessed as one’s main phone that it has no chance to become mainstream, but that’s about the prospect of an OEM not bundling Google’s apps and store, not hobbyists running custom builds. If that sounds like an attempt to use market power to exclude competitors in violation of fair trading laws in a multitude of jurisdictions, you might be on to something.
- Comment on Apple adds red exclamation mark warnings on EU App Store listings for apps using third-party payment systems, not Apple's “private and secure payment system” 2 weeks ago:
“Butthurt” implies personal offense. This is about maximizing profit, nothing else.
- Comment on Nextcloud cries foul over Google Play Store app rejection 2 weeks ago:
It is, and it looks like the bad press got to Google and it will soon be fixed on Play Store.
I’d generally recommend getting things from F-Droid where possible anyway, but that could be a tech support headache for a larger institution using Nextcloud and requiring people to install the client.
- Comment on How can I federate my ghost blog? 2 weeks ago:
They probably will once it’s not in early alpha as the readme says it is.
- Comment on How can I federate my ghost blog? 2 weeks ago:
If you’re hosting it yourself, ActivityPub is a separate component. If someone else is hosting it for you, they will have to add support.
- Comment on Google Says iPhone Adoption Of RCS Has Led Users To Share 'More Than A Billion' Messages Daily, Yet SMS/MMS Still Reign Supreme In The U.S. 2 weeks ago:
Google could theoretically build a Google Messages counterpart to iMessage and skip the Carrier as the middleman, but then it wouldn’t be interoperable with iPhones since it wouldn’t be an “open standard”
Google did that, in 2013. Hangouts was briefly the default SMS client on Android, and it would upgrade conversations from SMS to its protocol when available. It was available for iPhone, but couldn’t be an SMS client there.
Rumor has it, carriers whined about it, and Google caved out of fear they would promote Windows Phone devices instead. I think that was a foolish move on Google’s part, but I think I’m glad Google doesn’t own a dominant messaging platform.
- Comment on Nextcloud cries foul over Google Play Store app rejection 3 weeks ago:
They bullied Syncthing the same way. Fortunately, Syncthing-fork is still developed and available on F-droid.
I understand a well-curated app store (which Play Store is not) placing some limits on apps getting all files access. In a modern security model, that’s not a permission most apps should have, however synchronization and file management apps obviously should have it.
- Comment on Losing my Meta account because of release delays 3 weeks ago:
If you’re willing to endure a lot of inconvenience to maybe move the needle a tiny bit, I admire you. It also differs from place to place; if no restaurants exclusively put their menus on Instagram where you live, and most people do use SMS, then it wouldn’t be as painful for you as for the author.
- Comment on Losing my Meta account because of release delays 3 weeks ago:
every cafe that only distributes its menu solely via Instagram will not be visited by me
There’s a good chance I’d walk out over that too. I’ve never encountered it in the USA or Germany, but the author made it sound common in Australia.
you can write an SMS or call me
The author specifically mentioned people telling her “Oh I don’t text, do you have Insta or WhatsApp?” This is also true in Europe; WhatsApp is essentially universal, and some people have to pay per SMS sent. Some people also have another messaging app (Signal is reasonably common among my social group), but that won’t cover everyone, and group chats with more than three or four participants just aren’t going to happen.
If you are not willing to do that much, you do not really understand what meta is doing.
The average person does not really understand what Meta is doing. I do, and I think the author does, but neither of us is in a position to change the behavior of a majority of people in our regions.
- Comment on Losing my Meta account because of release delays 3 weeks ago:
The author goes into detail about the problems she experienced as a result of not having access to Meta products. She seems to recognize that it’s bad that there’s no way to read a cafe menu without an Instagram account or that the only messaging services some of her contacts use belong to Meta.
These are not problems the author can fix. She would be negatively impacted in the real world by not having access to Meta products.
- Comment on “No Apple tax means we will lower prices” - Proton announces lower prices for users by up to 30% after US ruling against Apple fees 4 weeks ago:
Companies that were app-first like mobile games probably won’t cut prices much if any. Companies that were web-first like Proton and Patreon probably will.