timorl @timorl@qoto.org

Flutter and Chromium accept contributions from anyone. Anyone who's rich enough to buy modern hardware capable of building the software from source.

Like no, I don't want my computer to be unusable for hours just so I can attempt a Flutter build.

Daily reminder that software has a carbon footprint. How many devs buy new hardware because they need to build software like this while running Discord/Slack/Spotify? How much e-waste is your software responsible for?

New #blog post: The right thing for the wrong reasons: FLOSS doesn’t imply security . A longer post, ~3623 words.

I think free and open source software is super important and avoid proprietary software (the only proprietary software on my machine is firmware and Zoom, which I’m required to use). But too many people support it for the wrong reasons: they assume that proprietary software is impossible to audit and that source availability is therefore necessary for security. Quote from the article:

One of the biggest parts of the Free and Open Source Software definitions is the freedom to study a program and modify it; in other words, access to editable source code. I agree that such access is essential; however, far too many people support source availability for the wrong reasons. One such reason is that source code is necessary to have any degree of transparency into how a piece of software operates, and is therefore necessary to determine if it is at all secure. Although security through obscurity is certainly not a robust measure, this claim has two issues:

Source code describes what a program is designed to do; it is unnecessary and insufficient to determine if what it actually does aligns with its intended design.
Vulnerability discovery doesn’t require source code.

I’d like to expand on these issues, focusing primarily on compiled binaries. Bear in mind that I do not think that source availability is useless from a security perspective, and I do think that source availability is required for user freedom. I’m arguing only that source unavailability doesn’t automatically imply insecurity, and source availability doesn’t imply security. It’s possible (and often preferable) to perform security analysis on binaries, without necessarily having source code. In fact, vulnerability discovery doesn’t typically rely on source code analysis.

There’s also a gemini version.

Good article about a bad subject, all the more because it confirms things I've believed for some time.

You have to design for anti-harassment from day one. Waiting until the project is in the hands of the public and then adding it is much, much too late and you will always be playing catch-up. If you bother trying at all, like those YouTube alternatives I mentioned.

One thing I applaud Mastodon for is actually thinking about it during the design stage.

https://blog.mollywhite.net/abuse-and-harassment-on-the-blockchain/

you go to school to study "the brain" and then the next thing you know you're learning how to debug surveillance in PDF rendering to understand how publishers have so contorted the practice of science for profit. how can there be "normal science" when this is normal?

Update: My Sci-Hub injector has been approved on AMO, so you can download it on Firefox now: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/scihub-injector/

(other browsers can use the userscript)

The original author has taken down his repo, so this is the primarily-published fork at the moment. I intend on maintaining it and merging PRs for a while.

I'm now working on a release that will add several other websites. I'm trying to consolidate code from the other forks to make more available.

#Firefox #addons #scihub #amo

@devinprater Terminals are not "more accessible" to blind users because they lack metadata. Screenreaders need to know when a piece of text has a different locale because they can switch TTS settings; they need to know semantic meanings because blind users can't just "see" text with different meanings.

Single-locale line-mode interfaces without any ascii art or other prettification *is* quite accessible, but this is a subset of programs for the terminal.

I say this as someone who hardly uses GUI apps besides the browser and inherently graphical tasks (e.g. viewing images/videos). Whenever I do a "blind for the afternoon" challenge (something I highly recommend), accessible widget toolkits (ideally supporting AT-SPI) are ten times easier to operate.

I'd recommend reading documentation for assistive technologies/standards like AT-SPI to see what all is required; not all of this maps well to a terminal.

simulation theory is boring
who cares if we're in a simulation? it doesn't change the fact that if there are gods we should kill them

i was thinking about how I ask questions that I can look up on a search engine. even more than a book, it's not too expensive to get an answer from a search engine, so people might say "let me google that for you", implying that you might have just typed your question into Google's search engine to get an answer more efficiently. leaving aside that crafting a good query can be nontrivial, especially if the subject matter is new to you, I think asking a *person* a question also serves to inform that person that there's a question to be asked. in other words, a person may not realize there was any confusion about a term or phrase, and would continue to use it, assuming everyone knows the meaning or will find out, but if someone asks, then they might learn that, in that context, it's good to unpack the meaning.

« Today, #FFmpeg made a new release, numbered 5.0, called Lorentz. This release is a major release, with numerous API changes, a few new features, and because we hope to have this one as LTS. » http://www.jbkempf.com/blog/post/2022/FFmpeg-5.0

Good read: You block ads in your browser, why not in your city?

The article reminded me of this quote:

People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. … Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.

— Adaptation from a Banksy essay in defense of remixing (“vandalising”) public advertisements.

Fundamentally, all these ads share the quality of showing people content they didn’t ask for to lure consumers into spending money they otherwise wouldn’t have. Why the wouldn’t I block them everywhere? It’s disgusting.

I know many people like to argue that they’re a “necessary evil” to pay for content, but I have little patience for this argument because it assumes that vendors are entitled to the success of their flawed business models, and people should give up freedoms to support the industry.

My consciousness is not for sale, sorry.

Polecam obserwować👌🏻

https://mastodon.social/@razem

#job #parttime #freelancing #translation #teaching #chinese #cantonese #mandarin #english #Germany

A good friend of mine has relocated from China to Germany (full legal) and now is looking for some extra income.
Possibilities:

-- Language teaching for English speakers: Cantonese, Mandarin
-- Translation English <--> Chinese
-- Cultural & language assistance and consultancy for all contacts with Chinese counterparts.
The gentleman in question is young, competent, discreet, UK schooled and trustworthy. Not to mention his contacts back in China.

I hope someone may benefit from his services.

modern mental health erroneously views the brain and mind as some kind of like "academic soul" when it is actually a physical organ that has physical problems like any other organ does

@rysiek @brie @robert_wolniak @mkljczk I jeszcze jedna kwestia: mam też poczucie, że stawianie często nierealistycznych wymagań odbiorcom/użytkownikom/konsumentom nie przynosi ostatecznie jakichś pozytywnych skutków. Bo jakie niby przynosi?
Oczekiwanie, że użytkownik będzie wszystko wiedział o produkcie/firmie/platformie i na tej podstawie podejmował decyzje (korzystać/nie korzystać itd.) jest nie zrealizowania. Po prostu. No i nie da się żyć w takim świecie, w którym jest się obarczonym tak wielką odpowiedzialnością za swoje decyzje, które dotyczą korzystania z jakiegoś medium, czy zakupu jakiegoś produktu.

W historycznej sali sądu w Poznaniu, gdzie odbywały się procesy robotników w 1956 roku, zaczął się właśnie największy od czasów PRL proces polityczny.
32 osoby, które w październiku 2020 protestowały przeciwko stanowisku kościoła rzymskokatolickiego w sprawie praw kobiet, stają dziś przed sądem, oskarżone o złośliwe zakłócanie praktyk religijnych.
Przed budynkiem sądu odbyła się spontaniczna pikieta solidarnościowa, która zebrała liczne grono osób z różnych środowisk.



#katedra #poznań #protest #aborcja #kobiety

Boost please.