Notices by BjarniBjarniBjarni 🙊 🇮🇸 🍏 (herrabre@mastodon.xyz), page 3

On the topic of not owing people my time: I mute people who piss me off.

Then I un-mute them when I've forgotten how they pissed me off.

I also un-follow people who turn out to be overly hostile, manipulative or just plain negative. Even if I agree with their main themes. Sorry kids, life's just too short.

So far, I like how this is working out for me.

I'm really enjoying the interactions I have here, and nipping crap in the bud is part of that.

We've actually seen this dynamic before - in e-mail.

Because of spam, the weird technical hoops you had to jump through to run a mail server kept getting more and more insane.

And at the same time, people demand more and more functionality, fancy web interfaces, high availability.

Fast forwared to today: even big universities and governments with dedicated IT departments have given up and pointed their MX records at GMail.

Is the web headed the same way?

I think it's really interesting to follow Dave Winer (inventor of RSS) on Twitter - he's very concerned about the current push towards HTTPS.

He's afraid raising the secrity bar will make the web less open and less accessible. And he's right; adding technical requirements favours the entrenched big players with big budgets.

Dave also fears for the historic web, in the (unlikely?) event that browser vendors actually deprecate HTTP.

I don't agree with everything he says, but the POV has value.

One of the paradoxes I struggle with in my work, is the conflict between crypto and reliability.

Crypto is important. But it is very binary in nature - either the stars align and you can decrypt, or it fails and there's no recovery. With that kind of binary, reliability suffers. This is inevitable.

As an example, most of the Mastodon downtime I've experienced has been related to minor SSL certificate blunders.

I feel like most of the #InfoSec community wilfully ignores this dynamic.

Apparently some silly USians want to extend copyright again: https://boingboing.net/2018/05/18/orrin-fucking-hatch.html

Repeating my Twitter reaction:

When will musicians realize that their biggest competitor is ALL THE PAST RECORDINGS EVER and revolt against this madness?

The Internet is not what makes music hard work. Never was! It's competing with Elvis & Mozart.

Demand the right to build on the past, not compete with it.

@galaxis @rysiek Actually, to clarify further: poor HTML parsing and poor error handling is to blame.

Even when rendering HTML, #Mailpile is not vulnerable as far as I can tell.

We sanitize the content so their malformed snippets get cleaned up and we check the GnuPG error codes so their gadgets will fail.

I need to write a boasting blog about this, this is actually a resounding endorsement of why baking security in from the start matters.

@trevdev Noooo, noooo, don't say that!

Getting up early isn't a virtue! That sort of thinking is how society oppresses and kills night owls! 😱

http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-night-owl-death-20180412-story.html

#drama #moredrama #omg #6am

I installed a bunch of @fdroidorg apps on my phone last night.

I'm impressed!

Simple Calendar, Simple Gallery, Simple File Manager ... very nice! Also Tasks and Omni Notes and Orgzly. Phone Saver, PhotoBackup, Vinyl Music Player... My phone suddenly feels like a useful computer!

These apps may be simpler than mainstream alternatives, but no ads and no spying is a HUGE feature.

The Google Play Store is so full of crapware, I dread using it. F-Droid is very refreshingly better in that regard.

The actual lesson people should take from the Twitter thing is: logs are evil.

Stop logging everything, nasty sysadmins! 😜

You'll inevitably record something you shouldn't have and user privacy will suffer.

Watching very politically correct toons with the 2yo.

A cute brown girl doctor heroically heals hurt toys. So far, so awesome!

She has a command-and-control centre where she and her team spy on kids, so they can rescue the toys.

Oops. Spying and surveillance are this century's smoking. It's normalized and glorified in all media. All the cool kids have a wall of screens and CCTV and wiretaps.

Even in shows meant for toddlers. 😱

@seanl @cwebber @bob @pettter @nolan @CobaltVelvet I'm with Chris here. Yay p2p over Tor!

However, I want to throw shade on the absolutely ridiculous idea that the USG functions as a monolithic all-seeing entity.

The USG funds Tor because parts of the USG use Tor and parts of the USG love Tor and want it to succeed.

The fact that OTHER PARTS of the USG hate Tor and want to compromise it is normal, expected. The USG is big.

Contradictions are the rule in human systems, not the exception.

Interesting times. I'm starting to see bits and pieces of Twitter-style spam on here.

Advocates for the federated model believe the improved moderator/user ratio will keep things from getting out of hand. I'm on the fence.

Until now, the lack of spam has been mostly a result of this being a niche, obscure, tiny part of the Internet. Spamming it wasn't worth the effort.

As the Fediverse grows, theories will be tested! Fingers crossed.

The steady stream of folks with money problems on here makes me want to inject money into the Fediverse.

My budget is pretty constrained, but there are a couple of jobs I could use help with. Some web design, some coding. Some artsy stuff too, actually.

So I'm going to try posting job ads here before I go elsewhere. Maybe some butterflies or foxes or even normies will want to help me out.

The casual, cheerful glee with which InfoSec people punish non-technical users, in order to put pressure on the vendors which sold them flawed products, is a bit sickening once you realize what is going on.

If you feel the urge to argue with me about this, tread lightly or prepare to be muted.

I'm not interested in hearing people justify these particular abusive behaviours. I've heard it all before.

Note to self: Remember to mention #Signal and #Wire and all the other #WhatsApp alternatives any time I toot about WhatsApp's relationship with #Facebook.

Otherwise the entire Fediverse will try to "help me" by promoting their favourite alternative... 😛

I wish #Briar were out of beta. It's the only one that is actually radically decentralized!

Next on my test plan is actually Delta Chat (https://delta.chat/). It's based on e-mail and #Autocrypt, so it should play nice with #Mailpile.

Countries where the rain just comes straight down are so odd!

Like, you can hang laundry out on the balcony and it doesn't get wet because of the balcony above.

OMG WTF!

And umbrellas are useful!

I'm used to rain being a sideways affair that takes pride in not only mocking your puny umbrella, but also getting in your ears and up your nose.

Thunder in #Italy is pretty cool though. #Iceland doesn't have much thunder.

@rixx Slightly off topic, but I've wished for a scheduled toot feature (like Tweetdeck has), because when inspiration strikes and when it makes sense to post don't always coincide.

I hadn't considered that giving people tools to spread things out would also improve the shared time line!

My request was shot down IIRC because people thought only marketing types would use it...

@pettter @bjoern I am just full of surprises!

Also, that's what #Mailpile is.

@bjoern Isn't it? Is it also unrealistic to expect everyone to run their own word processor?

Now... which is more complicated, more lines of code, Mastodon or LibreOffice? The web browser we've both got installed is probably more complex than both of those.

The difference is mainly cultural, and how it's presented to the user.

The biggest difference between a client and a server, is that the server author hasn't yet made it easy to run.

@pettter Yes, of course if you are lucky enough to have benevolent governance then problems are mitigated.

The design of the tool is not neutral though. A tool designed to give admins more power plays into the hands of bad actors, a tool designed to give end-users autonomy does the opposite.

Mastodon and the Fediverse fail this test badly, the tools are geeky and technical and the design doesn't allow for easy account migration.

This exaggerates the power imbalance.