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Discord took no action against server that coordinated costly Mastodon spam attacks
  • The main thing I would point to is that Matrix itself only does text; the Element client uses Jitsi to add in audio/video calls and screensharing [...]

    Matrix VoIP is a thing, and it's usable for audio & video on many clients, element and fluffychat come to mind, but probably more.

    element call is also coming into element (and possibly other clients) for video calls and screensharing

    My other gripes are just with the user interface, [...] it really doesn’t look like Discord

    why does that matter?

  • Deleted
    *Permanently Deleted*
  • Those tests are worth more than four years of college?

    Yes a test to figure out if you can perform your job is significantly more valuable than a collage degree, this doesn't mean that college has no value, mind you, it just means that knowing how to do the job and knowing that you fit in with the company culture is vastly more important.

    Go get a bunch of I.T. certifications. Get your CompTIA A+, Network+, Security+ Get a Microsoft MCP or MCSA

    Those certifications are useless, they look good on your resume because managers love showcasing their staff's "certifications", as many companies that don't understand IT put value on the certifications more than anything else, but they don't actually provide you any value in of themselves. Sure it might be interesting how many network switches you can daisy chain according to the standards, but it has no real value most of the time, if that's information you need in your job it's something you can just look up, HOWEVER, asking you random questions that pertain to the job during the interview IS a good way to understand if you're a good candidate, and, often, the actual response doesn't matter as much as your reasoning for getting to that response.

    When an interviewer at google asks you how many pennys it would take to make a structure as tall as the empire state building, it doesn't matter what the answer is, truly, even if you got the exact number of pennys, just saying the number would mean you don't pass the interview, your answer would be worth less than an answer that gets it wrong by 75% but is well reasoned, what they care about is how you come up to the conclusion that you come up with, the solution is useless.

  • How bad is Idea of .Zip as password manager?
  • That’s not the issue. You can attempt as many passwords as you want in actually secure password managers as well. KeepassXC for instance IS secure, you can still brute force the password, but because of the hashing algorithm they use it’s extremely hard. With PKZIP if you know some of the words in the file, you can easily guess the password in just a few hours because the encryption algorithm it uses isn’t secure

  • What if I paid for all my free software?
  • Thank you! More people should do this. It may seem like $5 is nothing, but it’s actually great help. Even $1 helps out FOSS projects, as if even just 1% of the users of such projects donated $1 each month that’d be able to make a good income,

  • Centralized User Management Like Plex for eBook Server
  • How about using LDAP? It's a bit complicated to learn but it's easy to integrate it in a bunch of applications and it allows you to manage user accounts and permissions in one central place.

    Maybe try LLDAP which is a modern implementation (haven't used it myself) which is designed to be simplified and I assume more welcoming to newcomers.

  • Google Will Now Back Right-to-Repair
  • Pretty clear you either haven’t read the bill or grossly misunderstood it. What you describe is not proposed legislation - it’s the current reality that individuals and independent repair shops already live with.

    The 2024 variant of the bill isn’t actually publicly available online, but here’s last year’s WIP text:

    https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2023R1/Downloads/MeasureDocument/SB542

    Absolutely, the bill you mentioned is the one I was referring to. It does state that manufacturers must provide documentation, tools, and parts to both independent repairers and owners under fair terms. However, the real issue lies in how "fair and reasonable terms" are interpreted and applied in practice.

    Here's a quote from Google's actual response:

    User safety should be a top priority. Improper repair can be dangerous—especially if individuals use faulty parts or are unfamiliar with safety critical components, such as lithium ion batteries.** Legislation should acknowledge the risks borne by unskilled repairers and allow original equipment manufacturers (OEM) to provide parts assemblies rather than individual components to reduce the risk of injury.**

    Doesn't scream right to repair to me, let's continue.

    Right to Repair regulation should focus on: Devices that are repaired by an OEM’s existing repair offerings3 Right to Repair legislation in the United States is focused on leveling the playing field between OEM repair and independent repair offerings and putting consumers first, which we fully support

    So, if they don't repair their devices and only replace assemblies, they're not required to do anything for RTR, how convenient!

    Right to Repair regulation should focus on: Parts that are provided by an OEM’s existing repair operations

    Hmm... So the easiest way to comply with the law is to not do anything

    Policies should encourage repairers and recycling centers to recycle or to dispose of e-waste responsibly. We believe repair can be an important mechanism to reduce the large and growing problem of e-waste

    Classic corporate green washing, this doesn't mean recycling, it means break products, into as many parts as possible and dispose of them.

    This is what recycling means to big tech:

    Those are icloud locked iphone mainboards that have had their chips drilled through (this is "recycling). Some extremely smart people have figured out how to scrap them for parts, but that's the ingenuity of actual repair people, not Big tech's recycling.

  • The Boost android client for Lemmy is displaying these dark pattern ads pretending to be system notifications. What security/privacy conscious Lemmy clients do you recommend?
  • Regarding boost, yep my bad! I did not know that when I asked that question.

    As for grayjay, it's source available, that's fine to me, there is a difference naturally and it's worth discussing, but I'd rather live in a world where every piece of software is source available and we discuss the merits of source availability vs pure FOSS, than in a world where understanding our software requires days or months of work looking at asm and poking it with a stick

  • The Boost android client for Lemmy is displaying these dark pattern ads pretending to be system notifications. What security/privacy conscious Lemmy clients do you recommend?
  • there is nothing wrong to make money from their hard work

    I assume you didn't read my parent comment or perhaps you extrapolated on my beliefs without asking. I even proposed a direct way to ask users to pay.

    you cannot and should not force developers to work for free if they don’t want to.

    My word, of course not! Where did you get the impression that I want that from? I would NEVER propose something like that, as it stands against everything I believe in; in fact if you read through my history on lemmy I am certain that you're gonna find plenty of proof of that.

    I stand by the original meaning of the word when I say FOSS. It does NOT mean gratis; the misuse of the term FOSS as gratis is my biggest pet peeve. I don't care how much you charge for your software, if I like the software I will pay for it, exactly how much you're asking, without a problem.

    The F in FOSS stands for Freedom, not price. I have paid for most FOSS software I use on a regular basis and I'm a HUGE proponent of paid FOSS and I have, multiple times, asked FOSS developers that release gratis software to PLEASE open up donations; I do this constantly and I think I may even have done it here on lemmy once or twice.

    If you want free software then there are FOSS options out there and nobody forces you to use Boost.

    Indeed. My preferred client at the moment is the web ui on desktop and jerboa on mobile. Those are FOSS and developed by the developers of lemmy themselves (to whom I HAVE donated to). But I was thinking about switching client, which is why I asked for the code for Boost to see if it's software I would be willing to run on my device (and pay for!).

    In fact I will even go as far as to say that it is your RESPONSIBILITY as a user of FOSS applications to donate if you can.


    To me if software is not FOSS it signals one thing: they are doing something they don't want me to know about, sometimes this is acceptable (tho never preferred), but that's the exception, not the rule.

    Being able to decide what software runs on your machine should never be a point of contention. Non FOSS software is always a trade off, and for most things (including lemmy clients), it's not one I'm willing to make, nor should you!

  • Google Will Now Back Right-to-Repair
  • Yes, it basically just reinforces the usual "Authorized Service Providers" spiel, i.e. it's not a real right to repair bill.

    Special Access for ASPs: manufacturers have to share repair manuals, tools, and parts ONLY with ASPs under "fair and reasonable terms".

    This means if you're not part of their club and haven't signed their agreements to become an ASP you may not be allowed to purchase parts. And to be clear, becoming an ASP can restrict you in the kinds of repairs you can provide, and the kinds of information you can tell your customers, under legal threat, and may require you to hit impossible sales quotas.


    Parts and Conditions: It gets trickier with parts. Manufacturers aren't actually forced to give you, the little guy, access to individual parts. What they're obligated to do is to provide full assemblies to ASPs. So, if you need just a tiny part for a fix, tough luck – they can legally turn you away or make you buy a whole assembly, which is neither practical nor cost-effective.


    Do you have a license for that?: It's like asking, "Do you have a permit for that fishing rod?" before you even get to the lake. The bill implies that if you want to repair these devices, you better have some sort of certification or license. This could be a huge barrier for independent repair shops, especially those who don't have the best relations with the company they repair devices of, or even DIY fixers. You want to repair something? First, prove that you're qualified according to their standards, which can be pretty steep or even unrealistic for many. It's another way of keeping the repair circle closed and controlled while pretending to be the moral authorities of social and environmental justice.


    "Can't you see just how great a company we are? We're allowing you to repair YOUR device, (assuming that we like you, that is), aren't we such good people? After all you're our dear cust---------"

    ERROR: CONSUMER ACCOUNT NR. 48570 TERMINATED FOR INAPPROVED WRONGSPEAK. PLEASE INSERT CREDIT CARD TO CONTINUE READING MESSAGE.


    Thank you for buying from Google, we support you, we love 😍 right to repair, we love 💚 the environment and we 💕 you, dear consumer 😘... errr.... customer

  • Hackers can infect network-connected wrenches to install ransomware
    arstechnica.com Hackers can infect network-connected wrenches to install ransomware

    Researchers identify 23 vulnerabilities, some of which can exploited with no authentication.

    Hackers can infect network-connected wrenches to install ransomware

    I'm a software engineer and I love actual technology, but I think we have reached the peak of mt. stupid

    11
    Apple's Privacy Faceplant: A Cautionary Tale for Closed-Source Giants
    escapebigtech.info Apple's Privacy Faceplant: A Cautionary Tale for Closed-Source Giants

    Hello, Penguins! We will interrupt this week’s showcase friday to bring you a breaking news story. Apple just released an update to iOS 17 that fixes a bug that has been leaking users’ Wi-Fi MAC addresses for the past three years. This is a major privacy faceplant for Apple, and it’s a cautionary ta...

    10
    The Audacity of Big Tech - The Irreparable Failures of Surveillance Capitalism
    escapebigtech.info The Audacity of Big Tech - The Irreparable Failures of Surveillance Capitalism

    Recent events highlight the need for companies to continuously evaluate and improve how sensitive data is handled. Microsoft revealed that AI researchers had inadvertently exposed 38 terabytes of internal information since 2020. Additionally, Google agreed to pay settlements totaling $155 million ov...

    0
    InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)DA
    Danny M @lemmy.escapebigtech.info

    🚀 Seen my posts and want more? Dive deep into the issues with Big Tech at Escape Big Tech!

    💡 Need FOSS-focused software solutions? Reach out on Matrix at @dannym:balooga.xyz!

    Posts 9
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