I literally just found out that I can play final fantasy 3 through 6 and I am super hyped. I've never played a final fantasy game before, but I'm definitely gonna spend a bunch of time playing for sure when I get those games.
I actually don't mind that Robert voice as my default either. But again, that's just me. Can't really put my finger on why, but also that voice somehow makes clearer consonants at 16000 and above, so beyond some minor tweaks it'll probably be kept
> the Working Group requires participants to either be a paid W3C member or to be an Invited Expert. There are only two organisations that are active in the fediverse that are a paid member of the W3C: Meta and the Social Web Foundation. With the Social Web Foundation also receiving funding from Meta [...]
Hey, can anyone on Tahoe confirm if VSCode works properly with VO? I'm still stuck on some old version of Sequoia and want to update at some point soon.
It depends on what you mean by "works properly". It works, yes! My biggest gripe is probably with VoiceOver. If you are happy with what you see in your setup, I don't anticipate any big surprises though.
I've said it before now, but I'll repeat it in the context of FIFA or the Olympics: Please don't come here. The rule of law is gone. I could never have really "guaranteed your safety" before, one can't. But now, I can't even guarantee that we'll get you out of this.
Do not come to the US, which is currently busily become a failed pariah state with no rule of law.
The latest generation of Ubiquiti equipment is looking fast and good enough to form the foundation of my network rebuild. Plenty of 10 gigabit ports to go around, SFP+ and twisted pair, WiFi7, yah mahn! Time to hit that checkout button and watch the wallet cry.
I've been using UniFi stuff for years. I think you will find it great and frustrating in equal measure. It'll be interesting to see what you think of it.
Yah, I don't expect it to be networking with accessibility on a silver platter, but I figure if you and many others are using it, its obviously a fair bit better than useless, which is just about where the Asus and Netgear shit I've got sits.
I do as much as I can from the mobile app, because it's just faster, but where you need to use the web interface, I.E. for detailed policy and VLAN stuff, things get a little bit weird, especially concerning the drop-downs for firewall rules, and finding things in the first place.
So, the surface-level stuff is easy. The more advanced stuff is potentially hair-pulling.
A friend has a huge file with links to stuff in the interface, because some of it is not straight forward to find. I should get that for you, and me, for that matter, as I am probably going to soon upgrade my router to a UDM Pro. I've been using an Edgerouter since 2018.
@BorrisInABox Wellp, that'sabout the crucks of the Asus and Netgear stuff too. If all you need is plug in and power on, it works. If you want to manage the management, it grades from shit to utterly useless. Any resource you might have would certainly be appreciated. I really got this stuff so I could diversify and more secure my VLAN configuration, have it synced to all networking devices, and have proper effective WAP isolation, which the Asus does not do correctly or properly. As for the firewall, block-all on inbound, and allow all outbound on the WANs is probably okay for me, but will probably need more advanced stuff to ensure VLAN security, and perhaps some selective inter-VLAN routing.
Yah, open sounds pretty dumb for VLAN, considering isolated is typically what they're used for? LOL. Well, what I'm really hoping I can do with it is have VLANs split by SSID for the WAPs, and have those tagged on the switches and Dream Machine, so traffic from designated ports can be sent on those same VLANs. Will want a management VLAN where all the UI gear will go, with selective routing to only my machine on the trusted VLAN. a trusted VLAN which will act like a dumb network and allow anything to everything on it, plus Internet. a guest VLAN with Internet-only, an IOT VLAN with the same policy, and a custom VLAN for the room mates devices, with Internet, and access to only the printer.
That part, at least, is relatively easy. For a while, at this house, I had an SSID called "YouAreNowCanadian" which routed all internet traffic through a Montreal VPS over Wireguard, and put all the LAN stuff on it's own little subnet.
@BorrisInABox LOL. Well, that's good that my config appears easily doable with this new gear. My current gear can do all that too, but making it do so across all devices is impossible with its lack of accessibility, and on the devices that are impossible, a lack of CLI as an alternative. So having all this stuff sync up and a single control center will be helpful for sure.
Yep. I don't have quite that kind of integration, because at home, I'm still using an old Edgerouter, and here, it's all UniFi stuff except for the switches, so I still have to do manual VLAN tagging on the one switch here that supports it, which fortunately is accessible. It's also cheap junk, and not what you would want.
Well, the fact that its accessible is kind of a celebratory victory these days. Pretty damn sad, but I don't run the world, and I can't make laws that user interfaces legally need to be usable by all. But definitely looking forward to a bunch of boxes showing up with a Dream Machine Pro Max, Pro Switch 48-port PoE XG, and two U7Pro XGS WAPs.
@BorrisInABox I started using Ubiquity stuff after my Ciscorouter couldnāt keep up with 100mbps in 2018. I still wish everything was command line, but at least Ubiquity offers enough features to keep the network engineer in me happy.
I'll add this... Crosstalk Solutions got me into UniFi and has a lot of getting started and tutorial material available on their website and YouTube. Chris is very good at walking people through exactly how to do something. You're not at all a beginner so you probably won't find most of the tutorial material (like explanations of what everything is) very useful, but if you ever get stuck or there's someone else who asks for some good getting started with UniFi stuff, definitely consider sending them there.
I've got a Raspberry Pi stuck in a dusty corner behind a chair, in a place where no one ever goes, next to a fire place that no one ever uses. I think it's only ever been lit once since my parents moved into this house a little more than 8 years ago.
This Raspberry Pi is connected to a cheap Behringer audio interface, which is, in turn, connected to a pair of cheap Behringer microphones that lives outside, such that it is always capturing, streaming and recording the ambient sounds in the neighborhood in stereo. I've been doing this for almost 16 nearly uninterrupted years, other than some time around a move in 2017. It's a blind man's webcam, as it were.
Since I don't actually live where this is anymore, I sometimes find it nice to just listen in on the place when I'm at home. Sometimes, interesting things happen. It's generally pretty peaceful, though.
Anyway, maybe two years ago (can't remember exactly when now), I was experiencing some major issues with the Raspberry Pi's built-in WiFi connecting to the network. Unfortunately, this Pi is not where I can run Ethernet, which is also the case for most devices in this house.
My solution was to get a cheap TPLink Archer something-or-other USB WiFi adapter and use that instead. It was less than $20, and only supports what is now being called WiFi5, I guess... 802.11AC. It's one of those adapters where the antenna is in the same housing as the dongle itself. I don't really like anything about that design. It's way too top-heavy.
It turns out that the Realtek chip TPLink used wasn't natively supported by the rPi kernel, requiring a third party driver that some random user compiled.
I installed this driver, got terrible performance and crappy throughput, switched back to the built-in WiFi, and managed to make it work OK by adjusting some stuff on the access point.
Apparently, I just left this USB adapter connected to it and forgot about it, because according to my UniFi controller, that host had two IP addresses assigned to it.
The UniFi wireless access points all have iperf (not iperf3) installed on them, so I installed iperf on the Pi, and did speedtests between the access point and the Pi from both IP addresses, since they were both active. Because of another unrelated stupid compromise situation that currently exists involving a much narrower than intended wireless mesh channel bandwidth that I am still trying to find a solution for that isn't just not using wireless mesh, which is what I would really like to do, I knew that measuring with another device on the network would probably be slower than theoretical achievable speeds to/from the wireless interface and the access point itself, so I opted to use iperf directly from the access point, since it was already installed, albeit an older protocol and a binary from 2016, for some reason. And, yes, this is with a firmware from December of 2025.
Anyway, turns out that the forgotten WiFi adapter provides significantly more throughput than the built-in chip, not to mention a stronger signal (-47 dBm vs -60 dBm), so I have once again disabled that Pi's onboard WiFi, and am now using the USB adapter again.
The end-result: probably no one at all will ever notice the difference but me, and even then, only under some very specific circumstances.
Oh well.
All that for that.
Completely unrelated: This Pi is still running Raspbian Buster, and probably should be upgraded. It isn't hosting anything that is directly exposed to the internet, though. Liquidsoap is streaming to a local Icecast server, which is then being relayed by a larger server over a Wireguard VPN. The ISP here only does CG-NAT, so I can't serve things from the IP address directly even if I wanted to, which I don't care about as much these days thanks to how easy things like Wireguard and Tailscale makes it to do on damn near any type of connection, combined with a properly configured exit node.
If you want to listen to the live stream that this thing provides, feel free to click here, or plug this into your media player of choice.
I'm hearing some electrical noise in there. Also seems like you're getting some winter precipitation over there. Freezing rain maybe, it doesn't sound like snow or sleet. Also, nice clock.
Hi, so just noticed that in the stream metadata you have something like Jamestown, NC: Clouds, 31.96 degrees f, wind: 8.05 mph, humidity: 89 percent, as of 08:20 am How did you make this if I might ask?
@jonathan859 I wrote a very crappy PHP script that pulls data from OpenWeathermmap, and Liquidsoap hits the PHP script every 60 seconds and imports it as Metadata.
(everything is a LOT right now and you don't have to be perfect for me or anyone else, and we are multi-faceted beings that are capable of feeling many things simultaneously, so choose everything applicable)
Hey #blind #linux users. Quick question. What is the most accessible linux desktop these days? Is it still mate, or how are we doing. Context: I want to try to switch from Windows, and I'm fine spending some time setting things up, but I don't want to have a 30 min debug session every time I want to use my computer
A VA nurse and a UMN alum who decided to stand up for what's right. He was just an ordinary Minnesotan. He could have been your brother, your son, your neighbor, your colleague, your friend. Executed by ICE face-down, like a contract mob hit. How many more will there be?
Incidentally, yesterday's event(s) are why I ALWAYS switch off video autoplay in all browsers and social media apps and refuse to use TikTok or other video media platforms.
I do not need to see that kind of shit, and you should think twice before sharing it with strangers without a content warning.
In the rare instances I do choose to share extremely disturbing things, I don't even solely rely on CWs since many people - myself included - auto expand them. I'll make the URL unclickable so someone has to copy paste it if they want to see it. Surround it with backticks if your software supports markdown. Put a space in the URL. Something so only those who actually choose to see things that may haunt dreams see it.
I dunno who needs to hear this today, but: ādonāt look awayā is metaphorical. It means donāt pretend itās not happening. Youāre allowed to not watch the videos.
New SpeechPlayer update, adds voice: Robert. Fixes Hungarian language rules by mapping new phonemes for them and not contaminating other languages with these. I can say that Hungarian is more understandable, it's not fully there, but it's getting there, so call it experimental support. Both Hungarian and Brazilian Portuguese have the most phonemes in their table now. Not much else. Still sad. I know people still hate SpeechPlayer. I use it as my primary voice now. Part of me is proud of it for sounding very American, part of me is super ashamed. So ashamed and sad inside today. eurpod.com/synths/nvSpeechPlayā¦
Keep it going. I can see the improvements. It's going to be a long process, but I think you'll get there, but you will need some serious stick-to-itness.
Hey man, don't feel sad or ashamed at all, you're doing amazing work, and the fact that this synth is open source means that others can and probably will end up contributing.
but I'm sad, it sounds too much like Keynote Gold, LOL. Eventually I do plan to tune more voices, I think it's just that the defaults don't really set a lot of the characteristics either. So that's why I created that Robert voice as an experiment but it's very easy to give it the wrong multipliers and end up with something that doesn't sound like a voice at all. Probably like 3 hours of manual tuning work just to get Robert to sound distinct, but it taught me a lot on what and how you control it. There's 5 axis you control voices on: Prosody feel , Noise integration , Glottal tension Resonance sharpness, Vocal tract size. And you tune parameters within those 5 core areas. What a learning.
No need to be ashamed. Speech synthesis is probably one of the hardest audio processing tasks to do, because there are so many moving parts. It's taken me two years just to get a working "ah". I really admire your efforts.
It sounds very American? I hadn't noticed, it still sounded off, but I guess as someone who lives here I'd be more able to notice that. Not ragging on you, though, eSpeak's own phonemes for that aren't very good, used to be a lot worse, and making this shit is hard. Hopefully we can get some more people to help with that. Lot more phonemes, especially the vowels, should be fully dependent on language.
"perheorkesterimme" KaiunsƤde, vuosien varrella vaikka minkƤlaista ohjelmistoa soittanut bƤndi, on tulossa esiintymƤƤn Espoon Sellosalin lƤmpiƶklubille lauantaina 31.1 klo 19. Luvassa on elokuvamusiikkia, tangoa meiltƤ ja maailmalta ja uutta originaalimusiikkia akustisina, pienen bƤndin elƤvƤisinƤ sovituksina. Tervetuloa! TƤƤltƤ lisƤtietoa ja liput: espoo.fi/fi/uutiset/2026/01/soā¦ #keikat
Quebecās Ministry of Cybersecurity and Digital Technology (MCN) is adopting measures to regulate the use of generative artificial intelligence (GAI) by public bodies.
I could suspend disbelief to the point of agreeing that yeah, ok, maybe Tim Cook needed to be at the inauguration.
But at the Melania documentary VIP screening while groups of government thugs roam the country, executing people? Yeah no, heās just part of the gang now.
Rip up trade deals with the US. They're not worth the paper they're written on anymore.
Repeal anti-circumvention laws; allow companies in every nation to reverse engineer US tech, and sell better, cheaper alternatives, even to Americans - this would create leverage over the USA.
Cory Doctorow raised this idea at his 39c3 talk, recently. I agree. Those trade deals promise low/no tariffs and we let US tech walk all over us. Well now there is nothing to lose (never was).
On the night a man was murdered by ICE in Minnesota, Tim Cook spent the evening watching what must be one of the shittiest movies of all time with the people running ICE as their own personal terrorist organization. theverge.com/news/867429/tim-cā¦
If youāre wondering what kind of access a gold-and-Gorilla-Glass statue, a $1 million donation, and endless fawning buys you, well, it gets a special advanced screening of a state-sanctioned propaganda documentary film about the First Lady.
I'd like to some good non google photo *editors* for storage on my own device. Ente etc is just storage. The ones I found are deep in an ai swamp, thats not what I'm looking for. Any android suggestions for that?
I liked u added fennec and session in ur list. Still need some more like keepassdx for android, offline translator, another notes/NotallyX. Also add options for files & keyboard because ppls still using Google files & gboard. Alternatives are fossify files or right files and SwiftKey (not foss but šÆ %manageable without internet) or unexpected keyboard. With ente photo u can add aveslibre photo app
never let people tell you they are user friendly though! It really annoys me when āGoogle alternativesā get promoted that are overcomplicated, ugly, and unusable for normal people.š¤·
I honestly think many open-source developers donāt prioritise usability because they assume their products will always be fringe and non-commercial, so UX and onboarding are neglected. It becomes a badge-of-honour exercise to even get them working. š ļø 1)
I just tried Aurora Store. The homepage is full of Temu ads (ironically), thereās no clear download path, no proper instructions, and no obvious way to browse apps š.
If you want people to adopt alternatives, above all else they must be instantly easy to access, install, and use. Otherwise itās Dungeons & Dragons level niche interest.š
@TheComfortableSpotPodcast are you using Web version of aurora? Use f-droid version with no ads and easy to install any app even downgraded version of app manually.. Latest version 4.8.0with material 3 design (beta version)
Translations: - Firefox supports downloading models and running locally (either to translate page or direct access in "about:translations")
Android: also list non Android derivatives: - #SailfishOS <- I daily drive that - postmarketOS - UbuntuTouch They all have (container-based) solutions to run Android apps if necessary (AppSupport, Waydroid)
@badger3 Yeah would be dope, I am currently looking for an alternative to Gdrive/Photos too. Would be neat to minimize the amount of logins and different subscriptions to keep track of.
Never downloaded anything ever again from google since It wouldn't let me uninstall some program/app back when they started. How did yall not know they were bad back then?
Habe letzte Woche die Notizbuch App " OpenNotes" auf F-Droid entdeckt. FĆ¼r mich ( fast optimal ) . Es fehlt mir nur Fett, Kursiv etc. fĆ¼r Nachrichten und ein funktionierender Import Export. Hat bei mir nicht funktiniert. JSON Datei. Vieleicht blockiert auch Android oder Xiaomi den Download, das Installieren.
I think we made a mistake trying to get rid of Karens, we just need to reroute their powers. We definitely need someone to speak to the manager right now, and demand some rights.
I have the feeling I have bought my last Apple products. They make me productive and I love how they work for me. But my conscience canāt handle giving this company more money.
On the night a man was murdered by ICE in Minnesota, Tim Cook spent the evening watching what must be one of the shittiest movies of all time with the people running ICE as their own personal terrorist organization. https://www.theverge.
I think #Signal seems to be a really good app. Both from UX perspective and privacy (as far I've heard from others).
But it's still US software hq:ed in Mountain View California (with Alphabet, Google, LinkedIn), so switching to it does nothing (0) towards European digital independence. It doesn't help promote the emergence of strong European alternatives to US tech. It actually does the opposite when the European alternatives miss out on an influx of new users. #digitalsovereignty #diday
Using Signal takes people away from large corporations and gives them private communication. So Signal does offer something after all. As long as the programme's code is open and encryption mathematically protects the transmission of messages, the US government is irrelevant.
Yes, it could be said that switching to Signal means that alternatives will not get users. But today it is difficult to persuade anyone to switch to something else
so you can promote it for digital privacy and "no to big tech" purposes.
But it still does zero nada zilch for promoting European digital sovereignty. I would even claim that switching people to Signal does the opposite, since those users will be less likely to switch again to a European product, having already switched once.
Please promote signal as "US privacy software". But not as European digital sovereignty. It's OK to like signal. But it's wrong to say it helps our sovereignty
Large corporations will cooperate with all governments (including the US), and Signal cannot mathematically leak your data. Between today's reality and switching to Signal, I would choose Signal.
Yes, it would be good if there were a strong European alternative that would gain popularity, but I don't see such a āplayerā.
#DeltaChat, it is decentralized, doesn't require phone numbers or any private data, onboarding is smooth much easier than in signal, similar UI (it is a signal fork) it has much better multi-device and multi-profile support, secure in-chat mini-apps like notepads, to-do lists, shopping lists, etc
there are alternatives, but they will not gain momentum if you don't promote them and stop misinforming people selling a centralized silo running on amazon as sovereign @leanderlindahl
Disclaimer: None of this is written by AI, Iām still a real person writing my own blog like its 1999 I finally figured out how to do Gigabit Ethernet over my existing phone wires. Powerline adapterā¦
Google is now marking EVERY SINGLE APK at our repository as "Malware site issue". Congrats, "Safe" browsing.
Of course there is not a single malware there, everything is scanned multiple times. And I bet they excluded *.google.com from their scan or the entire PlayStore would be red by now, tooā¦
Applications in this repository are official binaries built by the original application developers, taken from their resp. repositories (mostly Github, GitLab, Codeberg), with additional screening applied.
Applications in this repository are official binaries built by the original application developers, taken from their resp. repositories (mostly Github, GitLab, Codeberg), with additional screening applied.
And this time they not only MARK it as POTENTIALLY malicious ā they block the entire site. So if you have a browser with "SafeBrowsing" enabled, you cannot download a single APK.
Yupp, trust Google. The one running googleapis.com, where you can find your daily scam. They marked us once more for an APK their own scanner marks clean. See gitlab.com/-/snippets/4909577 for more details.
And always keep in mind: that's the actor that wants to define which apps are safe for you to install on your Android devices, and disable you from installing the others. Because, security, you know?
@leandro The .apk they tell us is "malware" (it isn't, we scanned it repeatedly) is https:// apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/repo/com.apkupdater_52.apk. But right now every single .apk link under https:// apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/repo/ is blocked, almost 1300 safe, scanned, open source apps :(
Applications in this repository are official binaries built by the original application developers, taken from their resp. repositories (mostly Github, GitLab, Codeberg), with additional screening applied.
I just tried one of my apks in Chrome (MediLog) and it came down without a warning. However, apkupdater_52.apk produced the red screen warning. Maybe not all links are affected,which doesn't make this any better
@thomas It seems it depends on device? Maybe the "malware list" from Google is only pulled every X hours. Some of my devices block every single link, others don't. Google "Safebrowsing" works in mysterious ways...
@SylvieLorxu and the same ones blocking now, might no longer block it after a second device did not ā heard that before, on one of our previous cases. Their entire "safe" browsing thingy is out of control. I'm glad it's not active in any of my browsersā¦ @thomas
It also doesn't make it better that they do not tell us WHICH files are affected and WHY. Their console just gives a single example (the linked APK), and says "go figure yourself".
And isn't it funny that the APK triggering this insane BS is an APK downloader? What was that with "allowing alternative app stores" (even Droid-ify is blocked now)? And the crap with "developer registration"? One ring to rule them all?!?
@thomas Dunno if it is related, but it seems that besides Google, Ikarus is misdecting StreetMeasure APK from izzy as being infected by "Trojan-SMS.AndroidOS.FakeInst"
e.g. I've downloaded de.westnordost.streetmeasure_7.apk from izzy, and it is exactly the same file as one downloaded ages ago from Google Play (with sha256sum 9711592efeab66fc47454a628abcb88d25356d24a80de34882b2ff4cd1f921af)
@mnalis that "combination" is not uncommon, but hadn't caused any issues in the past. What I dislike there, is that especially Google never gives a reason: "detected" ā what? "malicious" ā why? How shall you fix "blind allegations"? And as for Ikarus: SMS Trojan, huh? Very funny. The only permission the app requests is to access the CAMERA. No SMS, no Internet, nothing. Snakeoil. @thomas
@thomas Yeah, I fully agree that google is also driven by capitalism towards more and more #enshitification š¢ . And ability to reach a human there was getting very hard even decades before #AI, nowadays it is nigh impossible and incredibly frustrating.
I hope those "it is safe" reports would make it more likely for a problem to be fixed; but I worry it depends more on luck than that š
@mnalis @thomas we're permanently rolling the dice as well, re-submitting for re-evaluation. Takes almost 24h each time to get the "failed" result back ā their bots are not as fast as one should think, when it comes to really _solving_ problems (they seem better at causing such š šØ )
Yeah, nice description: "spam service". Pun intended? Most spam (or should I say: scam?) I see here nowadays is hosted at storage.googleapis.com. But yeah, tell us whom to trustā¦
Would be interesting to know who else is affected. Only us with the APKs ā or e.g. ApkPure (which copies the APKs from PlayStore) as well? š¤
@loebas Yes, on Android every major browser, as far as I know. Not sure if you can even turn it off there. So much about being in control of the device you "own". And so much about being considered mature enough to make your own decisionsā¦
@AmonTheMetalHead Thanks! May I ask if you're speaking of a mobile browser there ā and if so, which, and where you disabled that? Could be worth mentioning that as (at least temporary) work-around in the future.
I disabled it on Firefox (desktop) I almost never use my phone to check mastodon, the setting was called Deceptive Content and Dangerous Software Protection
@ahills Heard that the second time now. And getting more reports that their entire "spam service" (haha, yeah) seems to have gone nuts ā like, marking each and every incoming mail as "spam".
So much about that "internet police". Which ā by their PR ā is the only one you can trustā¦
@ahills Thanks! And yeah, we'd know much nicer things to do than fighting such shenanigansā¦ š¢ We're just a very small team, trying to deliver you the best experience. Such actions by Goog are not exactly helpful with that (nor is that their entire system seems to be on auto-pilot, you never get a human to check. "Computer says Ā»noĀ«")ā¦
@sousse Thanks! Let's hope we're shaking something loose there ā and that it's just a quirk at their end, which they quickly fix, removing those unwarranted blocks and red pages.
I doubt they'll ever apologize for the mess they caused there. Wish they'd surprise me positively once. Like, "as reparation, we've filled your OpenCollective with a (6+ digit) sum" (that would even come out of their "petty cash")ā¦ Well, one can dream, right? *Sighā¦*
@lexinova Help with the latter appreciated! We're currently not sure if it's explicitly us (and other "app stores") being affected, or a general failure" of Google's systems (as we also got reports of "all incoming mails are being marked spam" and such).
If you know someone who would help us with such "legal stuff" (pro bono, as we could not cover much cost), please recommend.
We can also talk this when we meet at the weekend in Brussels (looking forward to meeting you!).
when you think you are targetted in a way that breach EU regulation you can talk about it with @noybeu reported an issue in the past, they answered me it was difficult or nearly impossible to prove, but since they sue often they might know if it's a violation or know people in the legal system that can help you.
@lexinova Thanks! @noybeu was also the first coming to my mind. We'd be really thankful if they'd take this up. I'm pretty sure we're not the only ones affected this way. As you've put them in copy already, let me link my snippet for reference again: gitlab.com/-/snippets/4909577 (document "02" there is about the multiple issues we had with them already, just within a single month). I'll try to keep that updated.
I'd say blocking ALL our Android app pages, can count as DMA violation, no?
I just see this screen, even on Firefox. I don't understand what Google has to do with this. Is Google hosting this page? Is Google scanning all the pages I visit even on Firefox?
This is Google "Safe browsing". Even Firefox has it enabled by default. So yes, this is Google.
As I understand it your browser downloads a list of banned sites from Google every now and then. So not actively scanning what you browse (though they can do that for most sites with all the trackers they have), but I have to be honest I don't know all the details on "Google Safe Browsing". Documentation is scarce.
@germanfr It's a "feature" called "Google Safebrowsing". In intervals, it downloads allegedly malicious URLs to your browser, which then compares each visited URL against those.
Google isn't hosting our repo ā we do that (currently at Hetzner in Germany). But yes: this way, Google has the power to decide which pages you're allowed to see ā and whichā¦ not. In this current case, one could count that as anti-competitive, and a violation of DMA.
Would sending Google a cease and desist help? I feel like there should be some sort of DMCA/online weapon that can be used against (instead of by) google, probably wishful thinking
@kneoghau We're just a small team here, with no financial backing to speak of (by far not in the dimension THAT would require). A proper cease-and-desist would require a proper lawyer, which we cannot effort to pay, unfortunately.
Maybe you could send out a call for help to the community for crowdfunding. That could yield enough money to pay that lawyer (despite me having no idea of the necessary amount of money). @kneoghau
The IzzyOnDroid team maintains the repository for F/LOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software) Android apps launched by Izzy in 2015/2016, which has since become quite well-known ā¦
So far, we have hints on Firefox and Brave. If you know it for other browsers, please let me know and I'll add it.
Note that, while I'm very much tempted to, this is no "recommendation to disable it". For our site it is safe (to our knowledge), but there are real dangers out there (like, googleapis.com š). So be careful, please!
Ah, so to follow the instructions on the error message you have to know how to bypass their attempts to block mobile users from using about:config. Lovely.
I filed a bug report with Mozilla too. As far as I'm concerned this is a serious UI defect, especially considering that the desktop version offers significantly more detail and also a bypass link. So sick of mobile users getting screwed over by Mozilla...
Done! With a scathing message for ~them~ the AI bot to enjoy.
I can't WAIT to turn my back on #Android, literally my last and only tie to #Google.
We can only hope that this attack on 3rd party app stores, and #FOSS in general, leads to accelerated development of #mobilelinux and motivate devs to start porting their apps to it.
It's HIGH TIME to end this duopoly of iOS and Android as our only choices for our mobile phones and tablets.
We've requested another review yesterday evening. But despite of that system being fully automated, and quite obviously no single human involved, there's still no response ā 15+ hours later.
They still flag us for files which no longer exist even.
Are they incapable of running their own services properly? But then, powerful enough to decide how others have to run theirs? This is ridiculous.
@penguin86 Not just that page (and yes, we've heard that before) ā that entire system is broken. 26h since our review request, which is done bot-only. Still no response. What is that running on? A nano or pico? Don't they have the computing power to process such things in timely manner? Heck, those files they blame us for don't even exist anymore, gone for 27h already (despite of having been clean)ā¦
We got a response now: appeal denied, listing a "malware URL" which literally 404s since we requested the appeal...
I have been told to never attribute malicious intent to what can be explained by incompetence, but this level of incompetence is getting hard to explain...
As a reminder, the apps in question are 100% clean, but given Google is holding almost 1300 other clean FOSS apps hostage what can we do except comply in the narrowest sense possible...
@leeloo I wish it was a gorilla, you can at least attempt to plead your case with them as they understand some type of communication. This is more like bashing your head against a wall hoping it will eventually break down š„²
It's taken them more than 36h to reevaluate their "finding". The files are non-existing for at least 38h. Still: review failed. They now mark us red for a file that does not even exist! How should one trust such a service to be safe ā and not just a random annoyance?
Honestly, if it's THAT reliable, rather turn it off. It seems to be rather useless (for you and me), and utilized for censorship (or how else should one understand this?)
For those attending #FOSDEM and interested in the topic: make sure to attend Marc's talk "Fear and Loathing in the App Stores: when FLOSS principles collide with the Gatekeeper interests" (fosdem.org/2026/schedule/eventā¦), which covers this topic. We will be there, and also be ready to answer questions.
Of course we can also be found at our stand in UD2-02 š
Big thanks to @marcprux from the @fdroidorg board for picking this up!
You know who needs to add high friction? Banks and financial apps. People are scammed out of their hard earned money under stress. Banks can easily say there is no IRS or digital arrest required to send money or gift cards to individuals because it is scam. There should be multiple warnings and holding large fund transfers to new accounts. This is where I want to see high friction added and I think it will protect innocent people. You know something like this shown on money transfer page/app:
We are pleased to announce a new minor release from our stable branch.
Welcome to another minor release from our stable branch!
We encourage any deployments using 13.0.
"loading mod_mam (globally or directly on a MUC component) will automatically load mod_muc_mam on the MUC component. This means most people (e.g. who have mod_mam loaded globally on their server) can now remove āmuc_mamā from modules_enabled in their MUC component configuration. It will be loaded automatically." - thank goodness
Not sure how many of you use ChatGTP, but you might want to scale back.
"The latest model of ChatGPT has begun to cite Elon Muskās Grokipedia as a source on a wide range of queries, including on Iranian conglomerates and Holocaust deniers, raising concerns about misinformation on the platform.
In tests done by the Guardian, GPT-5.2 cited Grokipedia nine times in response to more than a dozen different questions."
The only relevant feature for any instant messaging app (or social app, for that matter) is: Are my friends using it? People will gladly overlook minor inconsistencies or missing features as long as they can communicate with their friends. We shouldnāt recommend #Signal as a stepping stone before Jabber/XMPP becomes "good enough," if goodness is defined by the number of people using it.
Yeah, similar to recommending silo-to-fedi bridges for example. As long as others can find your content in the silo, there's no incentive to use the open alternative.
@zash @raucao anecdotical data point to support this: I started using XMPP because it had good bridges to silos. It lead me to (modestly) contribute to slixmpp, gajim and write some prosody modules. I very much doubt bridges between proprietary silos and open networks hinder adoption of the latter. Of course, this is very hard to quantify objectively.
@nicoco Where's the incentive for people to switch to XMPP if they can communicate with me there without having to leave #WhatsApp, #Signal, #Telegram, and whatever other bridges there are?
People don't like change, worse even, they actively resist it. I have friends and family on #Snikket, who are on each other's roster, but amongst themselves they _still_ use WhatsApp!
I'm under no illusion that they are only on Snikket to humour me.
And the only friend who took me up on my offer to set up his own Snikket server for his family, and recently closed his WhatsApp account, is migrating all his contacts toā¦ š„š„š„ Signal! Because it's 'easier' to get them on Signal than XMPP. My suggestion to recommend #Quicksy as an easy way to get people onto XMPP went unanswered.
People hate change and love silos. Replace WhatsApp with Signal, X with Bluesky, Windows with macOS, Android with iOS, iOS with Androidā¦
In my experience, telling people "you won't be able to reach me unless you use XXX" is both (a) giving myself way too much importance and (b) blackmail. People switch when they agree that XXX is "better" (not necessarily from a technical point of view, something which non-computer nerds generally don't care about).
It is a wider problem than anything computer-related. I mean, most of us buy clothes made by children in sweatshops, I wish we stopped that too (just a random example).
@ableijs The Matrix ecosystem is primarily dominated by one VC funded company. The server that everyone uses is developed by them. The client that everyone recommends is developed by them.
There are some baby steps towards a slightly more diverse ecosystem but for now it's a toss up between whether that's going to happen and enshittification once the VCs want their money back.
XMPP on the other hand is a healthy diverse ecosystem with various stake holders.
@ableijs I develop a client for Android and I basically can't make any unilateral decisions without involving two client developers (Desktop + iOS) and/or two different server developers from the two major server implementations. And that's a good thing!
There are a bunch of server and even more client implementations. Yes, @element still has a lot of influence, but The @matrix Foundation is doing it's best to get independent and is funded by a really diverse ecosystem.
For example I'm the founder of a company based in #Dresden building on #matrix. Our Open Source client SDK #trixnity is used in the TI-Messenger of every German public health insurance company but one - so possibly millions of users. We also have an Open Source client #Tammy. Yes, we still have the problem, that Element is recommended by a lot of people but the same problem applies to a lot of Open Source ecosystems including #xmpp.
I'm pretty sure the ecosystem would survive without Element despite the fact that Element is doing a good job in pushing the ecosystem in the right direction despite the VC.
Signal is an E2EEād concurrent to Telegram and WhatsApp, whereas XMPP is a concurrent to MSN, Facebook, and ICQ. Recommending XMPP to someone looking for state-of-the-art E2EE and asserting Signal on every use case are both unacceptable.
@oceane You knowledge about XMPP is very outdated. It literally uses the Signal encryption algorithm for it's OMEMO e2ee. There are a few things that can be still improved about it (mostly clients catching up to the latest version of the OMEMO specs), but it is very much a viable alternative to Signal in regards to e2ee.
@kris @oceane i was an xmpp user 20 years ago.But the fall wasnt only due to defederation. It was also cause it wasnt working properly when u had several devices connected simultaneously(depending on priority &connectivity messages were arriving to one device or the other).There was a fix(some server storage) but not all servers implemented it.With the encryption most are using omemo but there is still no encryption and pgp based...I think its easier to attract people to signal&matrix
XMPP is not suited for mobile devices. Thatās a myth that has been around for ages. It is mostly spread by people who want to sell you their own proprietary instant messaging solution.
Chilly š”ļø
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