Notices by Phil (pcrock@fosstodon.org)

10 years ago I started using ad blockers because I thought ads were annoying. Now I think that's the _least_ important reason to use them.

I think we should call them "browser firewalls." That more accurately describes their purpose.

@codesections
It's a matter of tradeoffs and context I suppose. Small and understandable is the ideal. Deleting code is better than writing it. However a huge program that can be understood by reasonably intelligent people is probably still better than a small program that looks like this: https://m.xkcd.com/1513/

I'm about to recommend an iPhone Mastodon app to some aging parents, but I don't have an iPhone to test things out myself.

Tootle mentions regular expressions in the screenshots. Mast costs $5. Pawoo isn't in English. Amaroq and Mustor have lower ratings.

What do you iPhone users use? Is it good for technologically challenged people?

I filled out a survey today that had a "comments" field, which was restricted to 50 characters. So I wrote:

"50 char restriction makes useful comments impossib"

These days, if you have a laptop or desktop PC, you can choose from a wide variety of OSes that will run on your hardware at least to some degree. Yet for mobile devices, you have to find a specific build of an OS for your specific device. So if you have a cheap, unpopular device, you're kinda stuck with what you got from the factory.

Why is this? Is there something about SoC hardware that makes hardware support all-or-nothing?

#introductions

I'm Phil, an American living in Germany and software developer.

Topics that interest me: Computer security, encryption, privacy, the outdoors, and lately, Rust (the language), Linux, FOSS. Hence the new account.