For example it is terribly difficult to self host email, and very few people actually do it.
I read this a bunch of times and put off trying it because it sounded like such a hassle. Eventually I did and… it wasn’t bad at all. I just had to add a few extra DNS entries. I haven’t had any delivery problems.
Sort of. This is apparently done on-protocol so anyone can issue verifications, but they’re only shown in the official client if they’re from BlueSky or someone approved by BlueSky.
A better way to do this would be to let users subscribe to verifiers the way they can labelers. Better still would be for the label to indicate what the verifier has verified about the account, like “nytimes.com says this person is an employee of the New York Times”, which is something labelers can already do.
So I really think they should have just leaned into labelers.
It appears to depend on Bluesky designating entities to do the verification.
I think the existing domain-based verification system is a better way of doing that. Something like Mastodon’s verified links might be a nice addition. This more centralized system is… not what I hoped for.
Instagram and Tiktok are usable in a web browser, though they do want you to make an account.
Terms like “safe” and “private” are not binary.
Are the contents of your Signal conversations on an iPhone private with regard to mass surveillance conducted by governments and ISPs? Probably. Apple uses security and privacy as marketing points, and there are a whole lot of people looking for vulnerabilities in its products who are incentivized to disclose them (possibly with a delay for patches). Signal itself takes steps to prevent data leaks to less secure parts of the OS and other apps.
Would your conversations remain private in the face of a targeted attack against your device by a nation state willing to spend a significant amount of time and money when you’re using Signal on an iPhone that’s presumably used for purposes other than secure conversations with a small set of people you know? Almost certainly not.
I’ve read that it’s because fairphone has to pay a fee for each unlocked device, but it sounds a little weird so no idea if that’s real.
The posts seem to suggest that Google is charging them a fee in that case, but that would be a little surprising given Pixels have a no-fuss unlock, and Google permits third parties to redistribute its proprietary add-ons to Android free of charge for installation by end users.
In any case, you’ve convinced me this probably isn’t Fairphone being evil, though some sort of public explanation would be nice.
I don’t understand why this requires a code rather than a toggle in developer settings like a Pixel. That doesn’t seem like openness and a commitment to treating users fairly since they could change their policy at any time.
That’s one I used to hold until I went looking for studies on how smaller doses of alcohol impact a person’s driving ability. What I found was a linear, dose-dependent response with no real hard cutoffs. Driving is dangerous enough; there’s little benefit to making that worse by drinking beforehand.
I might be OK with a reduced penalty at .08, but I’d like to add a slap on the wrist at an even lower level.
Tried this; continued to see no ads for anything at all. Am I doing it wrong?
I use Matrix, and I’ve moved some conversations with people I met in public rooms there to Signal because it kept failing to transfer keys rendering it unable to decrypt messages. I haven’t seen that in a while so maybe it’s fixed, but I haven’t been using it for one-to-one conversations lately.
Unfortunately, I’ve found most people have a lot of resistance to adding another messaging app. I don’t really understand why that is, but it’s true. Asking someone to install a messaging app when I’m their only contact who uses it and they have another way to contact me has a success rate near zero.
Maybe. The bad actor here seems to be the government of China, and the linked page says:
The individuals most at risk include anyone connected to: Taiwanese independence; Tibetan rights; Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic minorities in or from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region; democracy advocacy, including Hong Kong, and the Falun Gong spiritual movement.
I can imagine them casting a wide net.
What is this? A Twitter post?
Just about. JWZ is known for his cynical hot takes on tech in general.
I don’t think any of his complaints are invalid, though his conclusions are uncharitable at best. Making a communication tool that’s both reasonably secure and sufficiently palatable to people who don’t know how to use computers to achieve broad adoption is a hard problem with no perfect solutions. If he has a better idea, well… he’s a skilled and somewhat famous programmer; he’s better equipped than most to implement it.
Each participant is sent a separate copy of each message encrypted with their own key.
A problem is that some sites that don’t need cookie banners use them anyway due to a poor understanding of the law and excess of caution.
Well… sort of.
Batteries perform differently under load. A battery that delivers 10Wh under a 1W load will probably deliver less (and get warmer) under a 10W load. Power supplies also perform differently under load, and DC-DC switching power supplies perform differently based on the output voltage. Generally, a larger voltage conversion and/or a higher load is less efficient. There’s also going to be some base power consumption in the circuit, so the most output power is probably achieved at some sort of medium load.
To make things more fun, batteries are usually tested under constant current, not constant power. The increasing current as the battery drains of a constant power load will result in less total power, and constant output power often means increasing input power as the battery drains.
In short, the real world is complicated. Giving best and worst case Watt-hours could be a reasonable approach.
I’d be a little concerned about safety. A manufacturer or distributor that’s willing to lie so blatantly about capacity might also be willing to sell cells that failed QC.
Powerbanks are where it’s most problematic. They’re usually reporting the capacity of the battery cells in mAh. Those cells will be at 2.8-4.2V during operation, but the powerbank outputs 5V, or in modern powerbanks some higher number. 5000 mAh at the 3.6V average of the cells during discharge is certainly not 5000 mAh at the 9V it’s giving to my phone.
It’s not going to give my phone 2000 mAh @ 9V or 18 Wh as the math would suggest either because it’s well below 100% efficient. I’m not sure what’s reasonable to demand in terms of advertising here since efficiency will vary with output voltage and output wattage.
I guess they could still lie about watt-hours
Your battery illustrates that; 9.9Ah * 3.7V is, indeed 36.63Wh. Buying anything without trust in the seller or verification by a third party is a crapshoot.
It’s on a VPS. Whether that’s really self-hosted may depend on how much of a purist you are, but it’s fully self-managed, not SAAS.
It’s recommended to have a PTR record mapping your IP address to your domain, which you wouldn’t be able to do with a residential connection from a typical ISP. I do send mail from multiple domains though and I haven’t had issues with deliverability. What I do not send is any kind of high-volume mail, which would likely attract a different kind of scrutiny.