Zak
@Zak@lemmy.world
- Comment on Why can't we go back to small phones? 6 hours ago:
That phone isn’t actually small. It has a small screen, but it’s 25mm thick and weighs 300g.
- Comment on Mozilla is already revising its new Firefox terms to clarify how it handles user data 19 hours ago:
Great, but a web browser still does not need terms of service. There’s no ongoing relationship between the user and the creator of the browser, at least, there shouldn’t be unless the user signs up for additional optional services.
It’s great if Mozilla wants to offer some optional services users can opt in to, and those services probably need terms. I use Firefox Sync, though I’ve started to reconsider that given the recent fuss. The browser itself? I’ll move to a fork first, and stop recommending Firefox to others.
- Comment on Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian says AI should moderate social media 1 day ago:
It already does, though not in the individualized manner he’s describing.
I don’t think that’s entirely a bad thing. Its current form, where priority one is keeping advertisers happy is a bad thing, but I’m going to guess everyone reading this has a machine learning algorithm of some sort keeping most of the spam out of their email.
BlueSky’s labelers are a step toward the individualized approach. I like them; one of the first things I did there is filter out what one labeler flags as AI-generated images.
- Comment on Firefox deletes promise to never sell personal data, asks users not to panic 2 days ago:
Depending on how the requirement to accept the ToS is implemented, a config file might be able to disable it and any features that depend on it.
- Comment on Amazon Restricted Vaginal Health Products for Being ‘Potentially Embarrassing’ 3 days ago:
The product is a vaginal dialator, which has evidence supporting its use in treatment of several medical conditions. The distinction from a dildo has more to do with intended use than form.
The magnets are just woo.
- Comment on France is about to pass the worst surveillance law in the EU. 4 days ago:
I don’t think the current proposal in France sanctions individuals for using E2EE; it sanctions service providers for providing it.
- Comment on France is about to pass the worst surveillance law in the EU. 4 days ago:
But then what’s stopping someone in France from sideloading the app and using a VPN?
The need for a phone number and SMS verification to create an account. Signal should do something about that.
There are ways around that, but the goal isn’t to stop everyone from using E2EE; it’s to make E2EE non-mainstream.
- Comment on Former Apple designer Sir Jony Ive has said he feels “responsible” for the “not so positive consequences” of the iPhone. 1 week ago:
Facebook was a mostly-harmless multimedia blog site before smartphones. Both its addiction algorithm and being in everyone’s pocket contribute to its current harms, but both would have happened even if Apple hadn’t made a phone.
Smartphones resembling what we have now would have come out of a likely Windows/Android rivalry. They might even still have headphone jacks.
- Comment on ‘The tyranny of apps’: those without smartphones are unfairly penalised, say campaigners 1 week ago:
Any time I’m required to use an app for something that could be a website, I leave the app a one star review.
- Comment on ‘The tyranny of apps’: those without smartphones are unfairly penalised, say campaigners 1 week ago:
Contributing to that Kinderficker changes my opinion of Publix.
- Comment on I spent the last year working on the Fediverse. Here's what I've learned. 1 week ago:
It doesn’t exist, and some people get really mad whenever someone tries to make one.
- Comment on Is making user interaction between instances easier even possible in current state of fediverse and the protocol? 3 weeks ago:
Seems to me the solution to this is registering protocol handlers for URLs, which Mastodon tried and gave up on because they weren’t happy with how web browsers handled it.
- Comment on Public Firehose Project Shutters After Backlash 3 weeks ago:
There’s a small, but extremely loud segment of the Mastodon userbase that seems to view presenting public posts in any manner that’s different from how a vanilla Mastodon server does as an invasion of their privacy. There have also been a few projects that raised reasonable concerns about privacy and moderation, but this page doesn’t seem to make a distinction.
It appears to contain misinformation about FediFirehose, which ran client side and just showed the output of a public relay.
- Comment on Everyone knows your location 4 weeks ago:
Preferring websites to apps when possible makes this approach more effective. If you use apps with ads in them, they will likely get sensitive information as described in the article.
System wide ad blocking helps more. Private DNS is the easiest way; Mullvad provides a free option.
- Comment on Is the Fediverse Too Complex? Can It Embrace Simplicity Without Losing Its Identity? 1 month ago:
From what I can tell, Bluesky is both decentralized and federated in terms of the protocol and software, but in a practical sense, trying to run the whole thing independently doesn’t seem quite there yet.
The things that are easy to do are use a domain name as an identifier and host your own personal data server
- Comment on Is the Fediverse Too Complex? Can It Embrace Simplicity Without Losing Its Identity? 1 month ago:
Choosing an instance has gotta be culled.
The trouble with that is having many instances is the core trait that makes it a federated system.
There are certainly ways to de-emphasize that step during onboarding; an onboarding site that picks an instance from a curated set of general-purpose instances would be a good way. Bad ways include joinmastodon.org making mastodon.social the default, and join-lemmy.org asking a couple questions and presenting a list.
- Comment on Startup will brick $800 emotional support robot for kids without refunds 2 months ago:
What they probably can do is issue an update that lets owners point it at third-party servers, and publish the API. They might even be able to publish the source code, though there’s a chance they don’t own all of it.
- Comment on What is the difference between lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works? 3 months ago:
I have seen that lemmy.world apparently has a very poor reputation among other instances.
It’s the largest by far, with five times the monthly active population of #2. One of the main things people want out of federated systems is decentralization, and having one huge dominant server goes against that goal.
I should note .world wasn’t the biggest when I signed up. I picked it because mastodon.world was a known quantity, which led me to believe the same team would run a stable server.
- Comment on What is the difference between lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works? 3 months ago:
Most servers don’t micromanage community moderation. That sort of thing could happen almost anywhere.
- Comment on Is there any truth to this? 3 months ago:
If you have millions of people on a social network, and you go looking for toxic shit there, you will find it.
Well, on Mastodon, you might not because by default it doesn’t have a useful text search feature. If you’re on a server running a modified version, or something else with decent text search, you might. My self-hosted server was on a relay that briefly pulled in content from a famously toxic server. At first, I didn’t see it because I didn’t follow those accounts, but later, I added an improved search feature and tried searching for some terms of abuse. I did find a few absolutely vile posts.
Bluesky has had a working search from early on. Turning off some of the default moderation filters and searching for terms of abuse does, in fact find people using terms of abuse.
- Comment on How Bluesky, Alternative to X and Facebook, Is Handling Growth 3 months ago:
It’s kind of not. It does appear to be at least theoretically possible to self-host any or all of the major components. Unlike ActivityPub projects, however, it doesn’t seem like anybody is doing that and offering services to the public.
- Comment on Do people actually use Mastodon for something else than posting cats and hiking photos? 3 months ago:
Yes. I use it to post pictures of birds.
Discovery built into Mastodon and ActivityPub microblogging in general isn’t great (and some people claim that’s a good thing). One place to look for people to follow is fedi.directory
- Comment on Apple Removes Ability to Run Unsigned Apps in macOS 15.1 3 months ago:
It’s absolutely an issue for hobby level open source projects.
- Comment on Apple Removes Ability to Run Unsigned Apps in macOS 15.1 3 months ago:
It looks like you have to have a paid Apple developer account to do it.
- Comment on The Great Migration to Bluesky Gives Me Hope for the Future of the Internet 3 months ago:
That’s interesting. This post had suggested it isn’t yet possible to host an AppView. It seems the reality is more complex.
- Comment on The Great Migration to Bluesky Gives Me Hope for the Future of the Internet 3 months ago:
Whether it soon becomes possible to self host an AppView, the one remaining centralized component will tell us a lot about where it’s headed.
- Comment on Why BlueSky Isn’t the Alternative to X (Formerly Twitter) You’re Looking For — and Why Mastodon Is the Better Choice Over X, Threads, and BlueSky 3 months ago:
Apple does have an email service, but I think “Apple Mail” is the name is the client, not the service.
- Comment on Why BlueSky Isn’t the Alternative to X (Formerly Twitter) You’re Looking For — and Why Mastodon Is the Better Choice Over X, Threads, and BlueSky 3 months ago:
This looks like it’s conflating service providers and clients. Thunderbird doesn’t provide email accounts to the public as far as I know.
- Comment on Is it currently possible to completely self-host ATProto and interact with BlueSky users? 3 months ago:
That’s enlightening. It links to an article about self hosting a relay, which explains that, as I suspected, a relay does not have to mirror the entire network. It also seems that using a relay at all is an optional optimization.
It looks like the BlueSky AppView is not (yet?) open source. I wonder why nobody has built an alternative yet.
- Submitted 3 months ago to fediverse@lemmy.world | 3 comments