Zak
@Zak@lemmy.world
- a16z-Backed Startup Sells Thousands of ‘Synthetic Influencers’ to Manipulate Social Media as a Servicewww.404media.co ↗Submitted 15 hours ago to technology@lemmy.world | 23 comments
- Comment on Ruby Central tries to make peace after 'hostile takeover' 5 days ago:
Maybe it doesn’t work. Maybe it could under circumstances you haven’t tested. Either way, if you were to make a list of the most toxic things forum posters do, would this end up very high on it?
- Comment on Ruby Central tries to make peace after 'hostile takeover' 6 days ago:
From their profile:
Imagine a world, a world in which LLMs trained wiþ content scraped from social media occasionally spit out þorns to unsuspecting users. Imagine…
So yes, it’s for trolling, but we’re not the ones being trolled. I, for one think it’s funny.
- Comment on On January 1st of 2026, Texas will be required to give ID to download apps from the app stores. It doesn't matter if it's NSFW or not. 6 days ago:
Reading the text of the law makes me pretty certain. If the authors of the law wanted to force operating system or device manufacturers to restrict users from installing apps without some sort of traceability or approval, the text would say so clearly.
Google’s own statements about the policy are also a factor. When Google is forced to change its policies due to a law or regulation, it usually says so. Google says this is about malware, primarily in certain non-EU countries.
Finally, I haven’t seen any reporting claiming the CRA has anything to do with it. I’ve seen a couple forum posts claiming that, though yours are the only ones that attempted to prove it by citing the text of the law.
- Comment on Ruby Central tries to make peace after 'hostile takeover' 6 days ago:
The decision to take over projects without discussing it with existing maintainers should be reserved for situations like someone adding malware to a project. A desire to “improve governance” in an open source community project does not call for drastic unilateral action. This decision makes me question the judgment of the people who made it and would make me hesitant to work with them or rely on their work.
It looks like Matz, the creator of Ruby is now overseeing things. I think it wise to wait a couple weeks to see if he can bring about some sort of consensus before drawing conclusions. Rumor has it, he’s nice.
DHH doesn’t seem nice. I’d be happy about a change to Rails governance.
- Comment on On January 1st of 2026, Texas will be required to give ID to download apps from the app stores. It doesn't matter if it's NSFW or not. 1 week ago:
The who has supplied them part is the critical point here.
I’ll give an example outside of digital technology. If Ford sells a car with Michelin tires on it, Ford has some responsibility for those tires even though I can also buy them from Joe’s Tire Shop and put them on any car with the right size wheels. I can also buy Continental tires from Joe’s Tire Shop and put them on my Ford car. Ford has no responsibilities in relation to Continental Tires or Joe’s Tire Shop.
If Samsung preloads WhatsApp and Android on a phone, Samsung has to know where it got WhatsApp and Android. If I download Signal from signal.org/android/apk/ and install it on a Samsung phone running Google Android, neither Samsung nor Google is a party to that.
The CRA, including the parts you’re quoting does not impose any obligation on anyone with respect to a product or component they never touch.
- Comment on On January 1st of 2026, Texas will be required to give ID to download apps from the app stores. It doesn't matter if it's NSFW or not. 1 week ago:
The OS or a phone both fit that definition.
Yes it does, and it means someone making and selling either has to have a certain level of knowledge about it supply chain.
An app fits the definition of a component.
If it’s bundled with the OS, it probably does. In that case, the OS vendor is a manufacturer and has a variety of obligations relative to the app detailed in article 13.
If the user is obtaining it directly from the developer and installing themselves, it doesn’t really matter if it’s a component or a product because the OS vendor is not distributing or manufacturing anything. If the app/OS combination were to be treated as a system of which the app is a component, it is the user who has manufactured that product by combining the two. If the user is not selling that system, they have no obligations under the CRA.
- Comment on On January 1st of 2026, Texas will be required to give ID to download apps from the app stores. It doesn't matter if it's NSFW or not. 1 week ago:
Apps definitely qualify as products with digital elements. The term that determines whether Google has obligations is this scenario is ‘economic operator’ Here’s the definition for that:
‘economic operator’ means the manufacturer, the authorised representative, the importer, the distributor, or other natural or legal person who is subject to obligations in relation to the manufacture of products with digital elements or to the making available of products with digital elements on the market in accordance with this Regulation
When Google distributes apps via the Play Store, it is very obviously the distributor, which is defined:
‘distributor’ means a natural or legal person in the supply chain, other than the manufacturer or the importer, that makes a product with digital elements available on the Union market without affecting its properties
If someone else distributes apps using other infrastructure that happen to run on an OS that Google made, Google is not the distributor and does not incur any obligations that apply to distributors. (For completeness, Google is obviously not the manufacturer, authorised representative, or importer either.)
- Comment on On January 1st of 2026, Texas will be required to give ID to download apps from the app stores. It doesn't matter if it's NSFW or not. 1 week ago:
I’m saying there’s no reasonable interpretation of this provision where a dev would be seen as supplying to Google by distributing an app that runs on Android without using Google’s store. Given the broader context of the CRA, it should be more clear; the CRA is about supply chains, and generally imposes obligations on entities acting as links in the supply chain. Google can’t sell apps if it doesn’t know where they came from.
The fact that Google plans not to forbid installation of unsigned apps via ADB would be a huge loophole if the intent was to force OS vendors to control all app distribution for those operating systems.
- Comment on On January 1st of 2026, Texas will be required to give ID to download apps from the app stores. It doesn't matter if it's NSFW or not. 1 week ago:
What I quoted was CRA Article 23.
It clearly doesn’t impose any obligations on an OS vendor with regard to app installation where the OS vendor isn’t a party to the transaction.
- Comment on On January 1st of 2026, Texas will be required to give ID to download apps from the app stores. It doesn't matter if it's NSFW or not. 1 week ago:
Economic operators shall, on request, provide the market surveillance authorities with the following information: the name and address of any economic operator who has supplied them with a product with digital elements
That says when Google distributes an app via the Play Store, Google must be able to name the developer.
It does not say that when I distribute an app via my website, Google has any obligations whatsoever.
- Comment on On January 1st of 2026, Texas will be required to give ID to download apps from the app stores. It doesn't matter if it's NSFW or not. 1 week ago:
I’m not aware of any EU law requiring an OS vendor to restrict how users install software. The DMA requires Google to collect certain information from developers using Google’s store for distribution.
- Comment on New Rules Could Force Tesla to Redesign Its Door Handles. That’s Harder Than It Sounds 1 week ago:
This doesn’t pass a sanity check.
A mechanical handle that actuates when deflected 30 degrees can trip a microswitch at 10 degrees to slightly open the window.
- Comment on New Rules Could Force Tesla to Redesign Its Door Handles. That’s Harder Than It Sounds 1 week ago:
I’ve seen three designs for purely mechanical flush door handles in production use:
- A handle with a central hinge where one side is pushed inward to make the other side stick out to be pulled. This design has been used on aircraft for many decades, and has also made its way to a few cars.
- A pull-up door handle with an additional flap in front of the access area. This was used on the Subaru XT/Alcyone/Vortex.
- A handle that pushes in to open, usually found on a portion of the door that’s more horizontal to the ground. Used on the C3 Corvette, among others.
The push-then-pull central hinge is probably not a great choice for the application because its operation will be less obvious to a rescuer trying to get the door open quickly. It’s still better than something that requires electronics.
- Comment on New Rules Could Force Tesla to Redesign Its Door Handles. That’s Harder Than It Sounds 1 week ago:
The rental cars in question were, in fact Corvettes. Corvettes are still using them.
- Comment on New Rules Could Force Tesla to Redesign Its Door Handles. That’s Harder Than It Sounds 1 week ago:
After renting a couple cars with electronic door poppers, I find them plainly worse than mechanical door latches. They’re a solution in search of a problem, and some implementations are hazardous.
- Comment on Wafrn is for People Who Miss Tumblr’s Chaotic Energy 1 week ago:
Reddit has that, and the ability to follow a user and get notifications when they post. I’m not sure it’s widely used there, but I think it would be a decent feature to add to Lemmy.
- Comment on Wafrn is for People Who Miss Tumblr’s Chaotic Energy 1 week ago:
Lemmy doesn’t have a concept of a post that isn’t attached to a community. It’s probably possible to post to Lemmy from Wafrn by tagging a community as it is with Mastodon.
You can follow Wafrn users from Mastodon, Misskey, Pleroma, etc…
- Comment on ISPs created so many fees that FCC will kill requirement to list them all 2 weeks ago:
This is so dumb, how could anyone at the FCC even humor such a request?
- Comment on Threadiverse... on ATProto?! 2 weeks ago:
Early Reddit didn’t have those either, so I suppose it’s a proto-Reddit-like.
- Comment on Logitech will brick its $100 Pop smart home buttons on October 15 - Ars Technica 2 weeks ago:
How? Is the mouse reliant on their servers to operate?
- Comment on Threadiverse... on ATProto?! 2 weeks ago:
It’s not the first.
- Comment on Google Confirms Non-ADB APK Installs Will Require Developer Registration 2 weeks ago:
This is basically the same as Apple’s notarization scheme for direct app installation on iOS in the EU. I do not believe the EU has sued Apple over that yet, and they’ve had plenty of time to do so.
- Comment on 2 weeks ago:
That’s true but not useful.
It’s probably better to describe both ideologies as extreme-authoritarian or totalitarian. They’re about equally undesirable; when someone has a boot on your throat, it doesn’t matter much whether it’s the right boot or the left boot.
- Comment on Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme crushes Apple M4, Intel, and AMD in new benchmarks 3 weeks ago:
I imagine things would be much closer if they put a giant heatsink that Ryzen 370 they’re comparing and ran it at its 54W configurable TDP instead of the default 28W.
- Comment on 4 weeks ago:
This was never the concern that caused people to call users “glassholes”.
- Comment on 4 weeks ago:
Meta spying is its own issue, and I think a very legitimate concern.
I’m understanding the concern the article mentions about smart glasses in general (independent of who manufactures them) being the user recording people. That’s what people seemed to be upset about when Google Glass launched as well.
- Comment on 4 weeks ago:
Smart glasses also raise many privacy concerns, as their cameras and microphones may be recording at any given time, which can be unnerving to people.
This reaction has always struck me as, at best ill-informed. If I search for spy camera glasses on Amazon, I can find much cheaper and less obvious options to record people without their knowledge. If glasses are getting extra scrutiny lately, maybe I’d be better off with a spy camera pen or something like this which can be disguised as part of a button-up shirt.
Of course actually using any of these to record people without their consent in most situations makes you an asshole, but that capability already existed and is continually expanding.
- Comment on Self-hosted bloggers : welcome Fediverse comments directly below your posts 4 weeks ago:
I used that code with a couple tweaks. I tag !flashlight@lemmy.world in the posts so they appear there as well.
- Comment on Self-hosted bloggers : welcome Fediverse comments directly below your posts 4 weeks ago:
I’ve been using a similar solution with my static site at zakreviews.com for years.