Rather than comply with a UK order to make a backdoor into encrypted data, Apple has announced it will no longer offer Advanced Data Protection in that country. appleinsider.com/articles/25/0…
@klittle667 they're not bowing down to anything. The option was remove the facility for end to end backups (which has been very slow to uptake in the UK anyway), or risk not being able to sell here. More worrying is our government's slide toward further stupidity, I'd say.
@cachondo That's kind of what I meant. I mean my partner's argument to it was ""what's the big deal? What have you got to hide" and she didn't seem to understand the prinsipal. It doesn't matter what I have, but I should be able to at least semi-trust a provider not just to blindly hand over my data to whomever comes asking.
@cachondo @klittle667 Yes exactly. I don't know anyone who had actually switched this feature on. The protection we get now is the same as OneDrive, Dropbox et al. I'm not happy with the government for making this request but think Apple did the only thing they could. I'm happier they didn't add a backdoor to the system.
@andrew @klittle667 and of course the important thing to keep in mind is if you use apps that already do e2e that carries on. So all your messaging apps, outside of iMessage and Telegram.
Starting today, the #Obsidian Commercial license is optional. Anyone can use Obsidian for work, for free. Explore the organizations that support Obsidian on our site.
Starting today, the Obsidian Commercial license is optional. Anyone can use Obsidian for work, for free. Explore organizations that support Obsidian on our new Enterprise page.
Here are some issues that should be doable in a few hours even without prior knowledge of the project, maybe even without Android dev knowledge. Let me know if you want to take one of them on, I'm glad to help!
github.com/tuskyapp/Tusky/issu… Find where this badge is hidden when wellbeing mode is active, and change the code so it will always be shown.
Using the "Hide quantitative stats on profiles" toggle in the settings hides the badge that shows if someone follows you. I found this surprising and unwanted — I don't think of the information tha...
Hmm, I must really like the Material Design language, or at least I'm a bit nostalgic for the older versions of it. Check out this screenshot of my desktop using the Materia Dark theme, but with the default Fedora Mate 41 wallpaper... I'd love to know if the use of Roboto is obvious or not. Sorry to my visually impaired followers, as trying to give this an extermely detailed description is a bit difficult. #Fedora #Mate #GTKThemes #MaterialDesign #MateriaDark
Steve Bannon, který byl v Trumpově týmu v Bílém domě během jeho prvního prezidentského mandátu, vyzýval příznivce k boji, když jeho pravice vystřelila vzhůru.
"jeví se jako hajlování"? co to je za newspeak? Bannon a Musk prostě hajlovali, až začnou nosit hákenkrojc na rukávu, bude seznam psát, že "používají symbol který může připomínat svastiku"?
I tried to find when #Signal has published the most recent #security audit, and it turns out they either never published an audit or their code was never audited at all.
The closest thing I found is the list community.signalusers.org/t/ov… which only cites research papers and some evidence that in 2018 Signal paid Doyensec, but nothing got published as the result. Even then, it looks like the apps were not audited for more than 5 years since then.
Let’s collect past security audits here: Formal audits Year Auditor(s) Sponsor App/Component Published Link Last update / extended 2013 iSEC Partners (NCC Group) Open Technology Fund RedPhone and TextSecure ❌ Blog post 2014 Frosch et al.
Let’s collect past security audits here: Formal audits Year Auditor(s) Sponsor App/Component Published Link Last update / extended 2013 iSEC Partners (NCC Group) Open Technology Fund RedPhone and TextSecure ❌ Blog post 2014 Frosch et al.
Why don't you include the federated #XMPP (aka Jabber) protocol as an alternative? There are plenty of good clients for the phone and PC, like #Conversations, #gajim, or #dino. With the modern extensions like Omemo E2EE and various improvements for mobile use, it is very useable even on phones, while keeping the flexibility and resilience of a federated service (just like the Fediverse).
@spla +1 for Deltachat. Requires an auto-crypt-compatible email address. @Tutanota , would you please add #deltachat compatible auto-crypt goodness to your offerings?
PS: I have tuta, proton, and posteo.net email addresses (and thanks for the free service!). I pay for, and favor the posteo.net one the most. Why? Because of the auto-crypt support. (BTW: I am not paid in any way to endorse one over the other.)
I need to say it : #XMPP is also a good replacement. The first step to use it is not easy for everyone but once it is done it is way simpler than Matrix. My mother use XMPP with no problem! 😊
@feudjais Your mother uses it because you set it up for her and you are willing to be her tech support if things don't work. Most people don't have a "you" (someone who is that passionate about #xmpp that they are willing to do all the heavy lifting) in their lives.
@maple @feudjais my mother uses quicksy because I told her to install it, I have not done more "tech support" than this and it has been more than 5 years, and we have a/v calls regularly. (And she really is not technical, I regrettably have to do a lot of tech support on other stuff; XMPP just worked)
Quicksy is a "branded" XMPP client (iOS/Android) and provider for a WhatApp-like experience: quicksy.im/ There are also other providers, self-hosting XMPP is _not_ required: providers.xmpp.net
I switched to Signal and convinced my friends, mom and sister but the rest of the family, no way. They stick to WhatsApp too lazy to change. The number of people who don't give a shit about their online privacy is crazy
The main problem I see isn't finding a good alternative, but finding a person who is willing to abandon #meta I have multiple alternatives(#signal, #element #telegram #discord ) but what to do when I'm the only one using them?
My current concern is interoperability. I can’t convince colleagues and family to escape from Meta (fortunately I can convince friends, but you can’t force colleagues or cousins to change their habits). I have a terrible impression of social fragmentation behind multiplying new walled gardens. How easy is it to bridge Element with Whatsapp and Telegram? And does it require a mirror account on those platforms?
Непогана стаття про альтернативні мессенджери, але зовсім не відкрили тему #Android #Google #Messages це гуглосміття без попередження та запиту встановлює з 2025 року пару програмуль на ваші мобільні пристрої – слідкують заради вошого добробуту! Раджу перевірити пристрої та видалити: 1) Android System #SafetyCore 2) Android System #KeyVerifier
Addressing Reader Feedback on the Transition of the Top Tech Tidbits and Access Information Newsletters from Email Client To Web Browser | Aaron Di Blasi | AT-Newswire.com at-newswire.com/reader-feeedba…
Greetings everyone. Well I'll say one thing, there's never a dull moment here at Top Tech Tidbits. Last week we were forced to make a pretty major change to the way that we deliver news to you each week, and plenty of blind readers had plenty to say about it.
I was embarrassed at reading some of the comments you highlighted. It's not my place to act as a spokesman for the blindness community but I do wish to apologize for some of these over the top comments.
Zveme českou veřejnost 23. února 2025 v 15:00 na shromáždění Společně za Ukrajinu na Staroměstském náměstí v Praze k 3. výročí ruské války proti Ukrajině.
I can't help but think a company doing this is irredeemable. Their understanding of business has drifted so far from what's healthy that I think they should be shut down, and regulators should do some long reflection on how to keep others from getting this bad. theregister.com/2025/02/20/hp_…
Top Tech Tidbits, Access Information News and AI-Weekly Transition From Email Client To Web Browser To Better Serve The Needs of Readers All Over The World - AT-Newswire groups.io/g/tech-vi/message/86…
Seems that floss.social has marked the #antifa hashtag as forbidden fruit on their instance. It's not the first weird thing I hear about that instance.
UPDATE: Also #noAfD, the hashtag used in Germany to oppose the far-right AfD party.
I was on the instance for several years and IMHO they are overdoing moderation. But this doesn't fit in their long term stance. Hopefully just a mistake.
For any of my Finnish speaking followers, I recently uploaded a copy of Mikropuhe version 5.1 that was part of a massive BTSync folder that contained 80 or so GB of text to speech voices. datajake.braillescreen.net/tts… If anyone has a CD of this lying around, I would like to get an official ISO image of the disk to replace this 7z archive.
I know I am late to the party, but I am just now getting into Remote Incident Manager (RIM) by @pneumasolutions. So far, I am only testing with myself, from one Mac to another, but I am finding it a very cool solution. With RIM, a blind person can assist another person, regardless of that person also being blind and needing a screen reader, or not. I plan to use it to log into my home computer from the road occasionally, but also have purchased the weekend add-on so I can help others if the need arises. I can see how RIM can be a great training tool also.
@cachondo Not currently, and I'm not sure if it's actually possible to do fully transparent keyboard input, complete with the usual screen reader modifiers, on iOS.
I just want to be able to use my phone to control my windows machine the way I could another windows machine. I might just have to buy a cheap stick, I suppose. i wonder what sort of battery life to price-point ratio I could get. I want a dumb terminal, really.
@Jonathan @Sean Randall @Marco Zehe If you would be okaish only transmitting sound and video instead of accessibility events, perhaps you can make some use of #rustdesk. I had some luck controlling a windows machine running NVDA from linux with it. There is no way to accessibly switch fullscreen rustdesk window into windowed mode, so I've moved it into another desktop workspace so I can easily switch back and forth within controlled and controlling machine. On Android it implements accessibility service for hooking keys but I haven't played with it on android.
Ich weiß, ich bin spät dran damit, aber ich probiere gerade ein Tool namens Remote Incident Manager (RIM) aus, mit dem auch Blinde plattformübergreifend (Mac und Windows) jemand anderem technische Hilfe leisten können, egal ob die Person einen Screenreader braucht oder nicht. Bisher teste ich natürlich nur mit mir selbst von einem Mac zum anderen, aber das ist schon ziemlich cool. Und ja, ist speziell auf Blinde zugeschnitten, weil andere Lösungen nicht gut funktionieren. getrim.app
Ever wonder how we help keep millions of users safe while delivering thousands of apps and their updates?
We’ve written up a bit about the journey an app takes behind the scenes from its source code all the way to running on your device—with all of the safety nets along the way. 🔒
Mastodon has announced it will add quote posts to the platform, and some more news.
The News
Mastodon has announced it is adding quote posts to the platform, a long-awaited feature. Mastodon got a grant by NLnet in 2024 to add quote posts, and they are now sharing an update on their work. Mastodon is adding a variety of features to quote posts, such as giving people the ability to opt out of being quote posted. They will publish the technical work to support quote posts as Fediverse Enhancement Proposals, and Mastodon is currently in the process of writing these proposals. The organisation does not say when quote posts will be added, only noting that it ‘will still take more time to develop.’
For a long time, Mastodon had not implemented quote posts because CEO Eugen Rochko saw them as bad. His main concern is that quote posts lead to ‘dunking’ and toxic behaviour. Dunking refers to the behaviour where people use quote posts to ‘dunk’ on other people’s post, often with the intent that this mocking will lead to their followers to also mock and harass the original poster. Dunking was a visible part of Twitter’s culture, and in popular belief dunking and toxicity became linked together. Research showed a more complicated picture. Hilda Bastian analysed over 30 studies on quote tweeting, and concludes: “There’s conflicting evidence on whether QTs [quote Tweets] increase or decrease incivility, and whatever effect there is, it doesn’t seem to be major.“
In 2023 Mastodon changed their opinion, and first started saying that the organisation was open to implementing quote posts. Still, toxic behaviour via dunking continued to be a main concern. This is visible in the accompanying design research that Mastodon has done in their work on quote posts. Mastodon’s view seems to be that quote posts are toxic at it’s core, saying that “the team started out with a shared view that Quote Posts can be misused.”
Mastodon takes a technical approach to dealing to the purported problem of toxicity of quote posts, and the blog posts lists three features to mitigate it: people can choose if their posts are able to be quoted, people get notified if they are quoted, and there will be the ability to withdraw your post from the quoted context. Bluesky also has these features for quote posts, and they’re generally received well. What I find missing here is a take by Mastodon on the effect of these features on Bluesky. Mastodon sees quote posts as being dangerous, and that is why they will implement some features to mitigate the risk. But do they think that quote posts are being used well on Bluesky? Is Bluesky’s behaviour and culture around quote posts something that Mastodon is striving towards? I’m not clear to me what Mastodon’s answer is here.
Mastodon’s design research also says that they will display quotes in a different way to ‘steer away from dunk culture”‘, a feature not mentioned in Mastodon’s announcement blog post. Mastodon is planning to display a quote post by first showing the quote, and showing the reply below it. This is similar to how Tumblr does quote posts. But it differs from how all other platforms that interoperate with Mastodon display quote posts: fediverse native platforms like Misskey, Akkoma and Streams, as well as connected networks like Bluesky and Threads, all display quote posts by showing the reply at the top, and the quoted post below.
Mastodon’s position is that quote posts are a risky feature invite misuse, and thus need a variety of safety features. But Mastodon is not an isolated platform, it is connected to various other platforms that all have their own ideas about quote posts. If displaying quote posts Tumblr-style (quote above, comment below) is preferred over displaying them Twitter-style (comment above, quote below), what is the expectation on how other platforms should interact with Mastodon quotes? Is Misskey expected to display Mastodon’s quote post differently? Meanwhile, Mastodon is planning to display quotes that originate from Misskey not in the way that Misskey does (Twitter-style), but in their own manner (Tumblr-style), saying that it has “very little impact on the semantics”.
I find these statements hard to square: on the one hand, Mastodon says it how quote posts are displayed has little impact on the semantics of a post, but at the same time it is assumed to have enough of an impact in that it can reduce “dunking culture”. But if the manner a quote post is displayed can impact people’s behaviour, it automatically follows that the manner a quote post is displayed impacts its semantics, as otherwise there would be no impact on people’s behaviour either. But if the semantics of a post are altered by using a different display method for quote posts, than it means that Mastodon is taking an active decision to alter the semantics of posts made on other networks like Misskey and Bluesky.
Mastodon’s choice to use a different way of displaying quote posts than the other platforms in their network opens up a new interesting avenue for federated diplomacy. We’ve seen both ways of displaying quote posts be successful, the way posts are quoted is a significant part of how conversations flow on Tumblr. But what is new here is Mastodon is part of a federated network, and that means that their decisions impact other players, and their decisions have impact on Mastodon as well. This interaction between different display types of quote posts is something we have not really seen before, leading to some interesting new types of negotiations: how Mastodon expect Misskey to display Mastodon quote posts on Misskey? How does Threads feel about having their quote posts being displayed differently on Mastodon? What is the expected behaviour of Bridgy Fed, the bridge that connects Bluesky with Mastodon? All those questions are still open, and I’m curious what the answer will turn out to be.
Tumblr is still planning to join the fediverse. I reported this recently, and now TechCrunch got a followup and a confirmation from Automattic, saying that ‘Automattic declined to share a time frame as to when the migration would be complete, given its scale, but a rep for the company called the progress so far “exciting.”’
The Social Web Foundation (SWF) has announced they are now a formal member of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The W3C tends to favour institutional membership, but the W3C Social Community Group that concerns itself with ActivityPub is open to everyone. The SWF is working on various improvements to ActivityPub, such as adding end-to-end encryption and supporting data portability.
Event Federation is a WordPress plugin that extends the ActivityPub support plugin for WordPress by adding support for WordPress events. The plugin is now officially released as a 1.0 version.
Hexbear is a controversial Lemmy server that let domain expire. The Hexbear domain is now for sale, and an avid bidding war has driven up the price for the domain to over 2300 dollar at time of writing.
ForgeFed is an ActivityPub extension that adds federation support to software forges such as Forgejo. It has gotten a new NLnet grant, with the project now focusing on user research and documentation.
A few weeks ago, Fedidb removed fediverse platfrom GoToSocial from the database after refusing to honor robots.txt, and the GoToSocial developer spoofed data as retaliation. Fedidb developer Daniel Supernault later decided to properly add support for robots.txt, but stopped crawling for the entire fediverse in the meantime while it was implemented. Supernault now confirms that Fedidb honors robots.txt and has added GoToSocial back to the data set.
The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne has set up their own Mastodon server for all community members, including students.
Meanwhile, I don't like it at all. Now admittedly I don't know if I don't like it because I'm not notified of it when it happens about my content, whether I don't like it because of the non-standard use at the moment, I have to click a link to read the original post, or if I don't like it on a fundamental level because I agree about the potential toxic nature of quote-posting in-general. Of course on twitter (when it was a useful platform) it was possible to be quoted and see the result. Here, it isn't unless you use some specific clients, but due to the non-standard nature of this, not every client. That, I have a problem with.
Daniel shows off the plumbing, related scripts and how to keep the #curl RELEASE-NOTES file in sync during development so that it is ready and in good shape at release time.
Daniel shows off the plumbing, related scripts and how to keep the curl RELEASE-NOTES file in sync during development so that it is ready and in good shape a...
World's largest on-the-nose metaphor the 990-ft long abandoned ocean liner SS United States is being towed to its final resting place at the bottom of the ocean off the Florida coast after decades languishing at a port in Philadelphia.
Gaining access to photograph the SS United States in Philadelphia took years. It remains one of the most unique and significant abandoned sites I've visited. By Matthew Christopher of Abandoned America.
☁️ Vítejte na OSCloud! OSCloud je komunitní server pro všechny, kdo hledají jednoduché a funkční online řešení. 📢 Co nabízíme? 🔹 Hosting a správu open-source aplikací – bezpečné a soukromé alternativy ke komerčním službám. 🔹 Od e-mailu, přes kancelářské aplikace a bezpečnostní prvky, až po snadno spravovaný webhosting. V následujících dnech vám postupně představíme dostupné aplikace a jejich možnosti. Sledujte nás a objevte svět bezpečného cloudu!
@LibreOffice is the best! I'd love to donate. Am I correct that if I donate, the money goes to the Open Document Foundation which is seated in Germany? I can't donate to organisations from the USA, so double checking to make sure.
@gmc Cheers! It's "The Document Foundation" (registered in Berlin). For donating from the US, click the box "additional information for US residents" on libreoffice.org/donate/ 😊
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"Auf der Suche nach der zukünftigen Stadt“ – #Wege in die #Zukunft der #Blinden- und #Sehbehindertenseelsorge.
Herzliche #Einladung zur
6. #DeBeSS-Fachtagung von Freitag, den 28. Februar, bis Sonntag, den 02.
I'm Daniel Stenberg, maintainer and lead developer in the curl project. I stream curl related stuff. Release presentations, curl development and related topics.
NLnet Labs celebrates twenty-five years as an independent, non-profit foundation working on #opensource and #openstandards. Our mission remains to make the core of the Internet a better, safer place by developing open-source software, through applied research and by promoting and contributing to open standards. Have you been along for the ride as a user of our #DNS or #routing software, worked with us on #IETF standardisation, applied research or policy advocacy? Share your story!
Sean Randall
in reply to AppleInsider • • •Kieran L
in reply to Sean Randall • • •Sean Randall
in reply to Kieran L • • •More worrying is our government's slide toward further stupidity, I'd say.
Kieran L
in reply to Sean Randall • • •Andrew Hodgson
in reply to Sean Randall • • •Sean Randall
in reply to Andrew Hodgson • • •Andrew Hodgson
in reply to Sean Randall • • •