Zak
@Zak@lemmy.world
- Comment on Apple appeals EU's €500M fine over App Store payment restraints 1 week ago:
It’s likely their priority is continuing to collect all the fees they can for as long as they can rather than the fine itself.
- Comment on ICEBlock climbs to the top of the App Store charts after officials slam it 1 week ago:
This is not one of the claims made by the ICEBlock developers; their claims are only to do with notifications.
If you want to claim that a locked Android device is substantially easier for law enforcement to break in to than a locked iPhone, please cite up-to-date (from 2025) sources.
- Comment on ICEBlock climbs to the top of the App Store charts after officials slam it 1 week ago:
It makes me suspect they’re not talking about the stock systems OEMs ship.
The developers of GrapheneOS, an independent, security-oriented Android distribution are probably not only talking about stock OEM Android.
That’s a separate issue from whether users are forced to get all their software from a specific source, which is also separate from whether users will actually use other sources when given the option.
On Android, developers can offer users a way to install an app that isn’t easily traced to their identity and on iOS they can’t. Furthermore, an Android app can be both on the Play store and available from other sources; there’s no exclusivity.
- Comment on ICEBlock climbs to the top of the App Store charts after officials slam it 1 week ago:
It’s true that FCM will result in more reliability and a better UX than other ways to implement notifications. Doing something else is still the right choice for certain use cases, such as those where privacy or keeping the entire codebase open source are top priorities.
- Comment on ICEBlock climbs to the top of the App Store charts after officials slam it 1 week ago:
Maybe they want that, but the statement on their website is not wrong on a technicality because it’s oversimplified; it’s wrong because it asserts a privacy difference between the two operating systems that does not exist.
- Comment on ICEBlock climbs to the top of the App Store charts after officials slam it 1 week ago:
The link in the comment you’re replying to says which part is not true, but since you seem more willing to comment than to click a link and read, I’ll summarize:
The part about the Apple Push Notification service requiring less information that can identify an individual user than Google’s Firebase Cloud Messaging is not true. Both use a similar token system. Furthermore, it is possible to build android apps with notifications that do not use FCM.
- Comment on Kids are making deepfakes of each other, and laws aren’t keeping up 2 weeks ago:
I think generating and sharing sexually explicit images of a person without their consent is abuse.
That’s distinct from generating an image that looks like CSAM without the involvement of any real child. While I find that disturbing, I’m morally uncomfortable criminalizing an act that has no victim.
- Comment on Signal – an ethical replacement for WhatsApp 3 weeks ago:
No. WhatsApp came first, but later adopted Signal’s key exchange and encryption. One of WhatsApp’s founders is now chairman of the Signal Foundation and a major financial backer of the project.
- Comment on Mastodon: New Terms of Service IP clause cannot be terminated or revoked, not even by deleting content 3 weeks ago:
Mastodon’s federation is not at all consistent even when it could get much closer with a little effort.
Servers don’t remote fetch old posts from recent follows for example, nor replies to off-server posts from people on a third server. There’s work being done on both, but I’m surprised it wasn’t prioritized much earlier. Some other Fediverse software handles these situations better.
- Comment on Mastodon: New Terms of Service IP clause cannot be terminated or revoked, not even by deleting content 3 weeks ago:
I think the fediverse has a built-in legal risk in that any time someone posts, data is sent to a large number of servers when then make it available via the web or sometimes push it to additional servers (e.g. by user boosts or community subscriptions). This is currently done without any explicit license for the IP contained in that post.
I’m inclined to think that irrevocable permissions are the right thing here, in large part because it’s impossible to guarantee that any subsequent signal from the original poster propagates to everyone who has a copy of that post, or that the server software responds how someone else expects it will.
- Comment on Trump extends the TikTok ban deadline for a third time; there is no legal basis for the extensions and it is unclear how many times the deadline can be extended 3 weeks ago:
There is a legal basis: congress passed a law, the president at the time signed it, TikTok sued, and the Supreme Court unanimously ruled against TikTok. That’s a legal basis by definition.
Perhaps you mean that there is no rational basis. That’s a reasonable position you can argue for.
- Comment on Do instances exist where you can be 13+? 4 weeks ago:
And that is what I would recommend against, even on a server that does not ban that age. If someone’s (young) age is relevant to a discussion they wish to participate in, I would suggest a throwaway account.
- Comment on Do instances exist where you can be 13+? 4 weeks ago:
How were they revealed?
- Comment on Do instances exist where you can be 13+? 4 weeks ago:
Why do you care?
If it’s just about following the rules as a matter of principle, I suggest not doing that. Nobody is checking, and saying your exact age on public social media is oversharing anyway.
If it’s about content moderation being strict enough to satisfy some comfort level, I wouldn’t rely on that, but I also think 13 is old enough to start learning there are shitty people online and how to deal with them, preferably with some adult support.
- Comment on WhatsApp is officially getting ads 4 weeks ago:
Android, iOS, or desktop?
I’ve noticed the occasional slow delivery, but I have had reason to believe the recipient has an unstable internet connection when that has happened.
- Comment on [deleted] 4 weeks ago:
When I have a reason to use a Chromium-based browser, it’s usually Ungoogled Chromium. Otherwise, I use Firefox, and I’ve been playing with Waterfox in case Firefox ever asks me to agree to the terms of service that were discussed a little while back.
- Comment on WhatsApp is officially getting ads 4 weeks ago:
signal got overloaded, experience degraded
I did not experience this, and I’ve been using Signal daily for years. Prior to 2020 or so, I experienced more unreliability and hesitated to recommend it to the average person.
I’m familiar with the problem though; in most of the EU and probably other places WhatsApp usage is so high that it’s a major inconvenience to avoid it entirely.
- Comment on WhatsApp is officially getting ads 4 weeks ago:
A fair number of my contacts from countries where this is true also have Signal. If you don’t, I suggest installing it and seeing how many people are there.
If it’s hard to remember who uses what, start conversations from the contacts app instead of one of the messaging apps; in most cases it will tell you.
- Comment on WhatsApp is officially getting ads 4 weeks ago:
I don’t think any evidence has come to light that WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption of message contents is broken, but it’s also impossible to prove that it is correct because the client is not open source.
- Comment on Menstrual tracking app data is a ‘gold mine’ for advertisers that risks women’s safety – report 4 weeks ago:
I think even something like Drip is not sufficient in this kind of situation. If the police can compel someone to unlock their phone and decrypt data, then being local-only won’t stop them. Of course it’s a lot easier to ensure that no data exists if it’s local-only and something happens that might attract the interest of the police.
Nothing in this comment should be construed as legal advice.
- Comment on Android 16 is here 5 weeks ago:
I suppose the distinctions between the OS and “just an app” are blurred on any OS. One might argue anything that isn’t the kernel is just userland software on conventional Linux.
On Android, anything a third party could deliver without system or root privileges is “just an app”. That includes keyboards, launchers, messaging apps, image editors, and smarthome device managers, but not direct management of network connections, notifications, or direct interaction with other apps (i.e. outside of intents or over the network).
If you’ve used an Android device with root access, you’ve seen things that fail this test. Anything that needs root to work can’t be delivered to most Android users unless it’s part of the OS or a system app.
- Comment on Menstrual tracking app data is a ‘gold mine’ for advertisers that risks women’s safety – report 5 weeks ago:
I’m not sure what the best answer to that is. I don’t think it’s forcing Google to improve its search results.
I want it to be the average person gaining a baseline level of computer and media literacy such that they seek out and find apps that cannot send sensitive data to third parties without the user’s clear intent, but I don’t think we’ll ever get there.
- Comment on Android 16 is here 5 weeks ago:
The launcher is, but not everything new in Android 16 could be just an app. The new desktop mode, for example likely requires much deeper integration with the OS.
- Comment on Menstrual tracking app data is a ‘gold mine’ for advertisers that risks women’s safety – report 5 weeks ago:
Would the cops come beating my door down claiming I had an abortion? 🤔
I don’t think that has happened starting from a period tracking app yet. There was a case involving an unencrypted messaging app used to discuss a criminalized abortion.
- Comment on Menstrual tracking app data is a ‘gold mine’ for advertisers that risks women’s safety – report 5 weeks ago:
So why the fuck don’t women just use that?
They probably don’t know about it. If I search “period tracker” on Google Play, Drip is in about 40th place in the results. That’s several screens down, past a bunch of search suggestions, and the parts where it’s open source, on-device, and optionally encrypted aren’t clear until I tap on it and read the description.
And you probably can’t even get drip on iPhones.
There’s some irony in a comment dealing with people making decisions that are against their interests because they’re insufficiently informed speculating incorrectly about something like this when it’s easy to check. Drip is, in fact available for iPhone.
- Comment on Android 16 is here 5 weeks ago:
These are all app features, not OS features.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month 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] 1 month 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 1 month 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 1 month 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.