Notices by Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz), page 76

#DuckDuckGo claim they keep the lights on selling advertisers the ability to have their ad displayed when keywords relevant to their products are searched, regardless of who is doing the searching. Anyone know otherwise? Got evidence to back up the counterclaims? Genuinely curious here, as I've used DDG a lot:
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-revenue-generation-model-for-DuckDuckGo/answer/Gabriel-Weinberg

"#UltraReach says their security considerations mean they prefer third party expert review to open source review."

... and we know that "third party" isn't of the Chinese Communist variety ... how? I have no idea what to recommend to Chinese nationals for getting out the Great Firewall. But I would strongly advise them against using anything that doesn't make it's source code public. It's the most basic security precaution there is.

The #MoralMajority is neither and the fact they now claim to represent the "left" makes them all the more Orwellian. George and #BillHicks must be turning in their graves.

I still enjoy the songs of #RolfHarris, despite his being a walking anus of a human being. I continue to think #HouseOf Cards was a masterwork of political satire, despite Spacey's personal flaws. I continue to appreciate the sentiment of #MichaelJackson songs like 'Black or White', even though his music isn't really my speed, regardless of the crimes he's accused of.

@popefucker it seems to me that you find the idea threatening. So much so that you've spent a number of posts talking yourself out of considering it as a serious risk. I imagine that's how other teachings have ended up devolving into the folk forms we call "religions". Take Buddhism. The core teaching is totally atheist. "Buddha" literally means "one who is awake", and his whole teaching is that everyone can awaken. Yet folk Buddhism made him into a god, and added a pantheon of others.

@chillgamesh if someone accuses renewable energy developers of being motivated by "fuck you got mine", and not towing the current party line on the drama of the day, I hope we would see that someone is trying to hijack our politics against our own long term interests (*including* those of marginalized people). Free code and federation are the renewables of the net.
@xj9 @ebassi @brainblasted

@charlag the desktop version is the web version inside an Electron shell. On GNU/Linux the desktop client is officially still in beta, so the web version may have features it lacks.

@popefucker all teachings in his time were religious. The distinction between scientific and metaphysical philosophy wasn't created until hundreds of years later.

@deejoe @alexl imagine how much work could have been saved in building the #fediverse if FB or the birdsite released their whole server stack under AGPL.

@deejoe @alexl the benefit is it allows the whole system to be studied independently, including for security audits. You can stand up your own version of the server, check it for backdoors, and see whether messages are actually secure when you connect clients to it. It also gives the user community the freedom to run their own service for private use, and to fork if the original developer is exposed as a bad actor. So it's quite important.

@alexcleac @alexl all Wire clients have E2E turned on by default, including the desktop clients.

@popefucker a lot of those things began as religious teachings. Have you looked into the occult schools run by people like Pythagoras?

@jeffcliff so how would you sum up the attitude of the alt-right towards speech?
There have always censors on the left too, particular the more dogmatic Marxist and feminist factions of it, and principled conservatives who defended even speech they profoundly disagree with. Free speech is neither a "left" not "right" value. Like defending the human rights of minorities, it's a democratic value.

@popefucker there's a book of short stories called 'Galaxies Like Grains of Sand', where in one story, set a few hundred years in the future, a similar kind of devolution has happened to science.

I just spent half an hour trying to connect to the hotel WiFi. Then my wife absent-mindedly turned off the router, and I have to start again from scratch. For fucks sake people! No one is going to be #wardriving more than 20 floors up! You don't need a WiFi passcode, and if you must have one, give it to us at reception with our room key. #GrumpyForeigner #FirstWorldProblems

@alexl @stragu no, it isn't. #XMPP is much more advanced than #Matrix when it comes to server performance. But what's key is whether the company recognises that having servers they control at the centre of the entire service is a bad idea (#SinglePointOfFailure) or not. Wire does. Telegram hasn't even released their server code.

@alexl BTW all chats and calls on #Wire are #E2E by default, and they do not use roll-your-own crypto

@tao

@jalcine willdo, sorry. Only just saw this after I sent that last post.

@alexl sure, but all the code #Telegram use on the server-side is proprietary. If you can't audit the server, you can't guarantee the #E2E the client claims to offer. If I was willing to compromise on #SoftwareFreedom to reach more people, I'd use #WhatsApp. Unlike with social media (when used for activist purposes), I don't care about reach. All I want to do is voice chat with people I already know, and we can use email and other tools to agree on which chat app to use.