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Zak

@ Zak @lemmy.world

Posts
7
Comments
875
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • On January 1st of 2026, Texas will be required to give ID to download apps from the app stores. It doesn't matter if it's NSFW or not.

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  • I'm saying there's no reasonable interpretation of this provision where a dev would be seen as supplying to Google by distributing an app that runs on Android without using Google's store. Given the broader context of the CRA, it should be more clear; the CRA is about supply chains, and generally imposes obligations on entities acting as links in the supply chain. Google can't sell apps if it doesn't know where they came from.

    The fact that Google plans not to forbid installation of unsigned apps via ADB would be a huge loophole if the intent was to force OS vendors to control all app distribution for those operating systems.

  • On January 1st of 2026, Texas will be required to give ID to download apps from the app stores. It doesn't matter if it's NSFW or not.

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  • What I quoted was CRA Article 23.

    It clearly doesn't impose any obligations on an OS vendor with regard to app installation where the OS vendor isn't a party to the transaction.

  • On January 1st of 2026, Texas will be required to give ID to download apps from the app stores. It doesn't matter if it's NSFW or not.

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  • Economic operators shall, on request, provide the market surveillance authorities with the following information: the name and address of any economic operator who has supplied them with a product with digital elements

    That says when Google distributes an app via the Play Store, Google must be able to name the developer.

    It does not say that when I distribute an app via my website, Google has any obligations whatsoever.

  • On January 1st of 2026, Texas will be required to give ID to download apps from the app stores. It doesn't matter if it's NSFW or not.

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  • I'm not aware of any EU law requiring an OS vendor to restrict how users install software. The DMA requires Google to collect certain information from developers using Google's store for distribution.

  • What five scheduled executions in eight days tell us about the death penalty

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  • The article's first example of a case that will convince me the death penalty isn't used for the "worst of the worst" is a man who raped a 15 year old girl, then stabbed her to death. The article implies his recent diagnosis with autism diminishes his responsibility for those crimes.

    From Wikipedia:

    Roy Lee Ward, who claimed he was looking for a missing dog. He then forced himself inside, cut the phone lines, and attacked Payne with a knife and dumbbell. Payne was then raped and mortally wounded by Ward, who stabbed and battered her multiple times.

    The Wikipedia article goes on to describe her injuries in detail; they're horrific.

    What I'm taking from the Boston Globe article using this case as an example of the death penalty being applied to someone sympathetic is not that but a false and defamatory portrait of autism. Autistic people know as well as anyone else that it's bad to rape and murder children.

    I'm against the death penalty in practice because it's often applied to those least able to defend themselves in court rather than those whose crimes are most vile, but I won't be shedding any tears for Roy Lee Ward.

  • New Rules Could Force Tesla to Redesign Its Door Handles. That’s Harder Than It Sounds

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  • This doesn't pass a sanity check.

    A mechanical handle that actuates when deflected 30 degrees can trip a microswitch at 10 degrees to slightly open the window.

  • New Rules Could Force Tesla to Redesign Its Door Handles. That’s Harder Than It Sounds

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  • I've seen three designs for purely mechanical flush door handles in production use:

    • A handle with a central hinge where one side is pushed inward to make the other side stick out to be pulled. This design has been used on aircraft for many decades, and has also made its way to a few cars.
    • A pull-up door handle with an additional flap in front of the access area. This was used on the Subaru XT/Alcyone/Vortex.
    • A handle that pushes in to open, usually found on a portion of the door that's more horizontal to the ground. Used on the C3 Corvette, among others.

    The push-then-pull central hinge is probably not a great choice for the application because its operation will be less obvious to a rescuer trying to get the door open quickly. It's still better than something that requires electronics.

  • New Rules Could Force Tesla to Redesign Its Door Handles. That’s Harder Than It Sounds

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  • The rental cars in question were, in fact Corvettes. Corvettes are still using them.

  • New Rules Could Force Tesla to Redesign Its Door Handles. That’s Harder Than It Sounds

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  • After renting a couple cars with electronic door poppers, I find them plainly worse than mechanical door latches. They're a solution in search of a problem, and some implementations are hazardous.

  • Wafrn is for People Who Miss Tumblr’s Chaotic Energy

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  • Reddit has that, and the ability to follow a user and get notifications when they post. I'm not sure it's widely used there, but I think it would be a decent feature to add to Lemmy.

  • Wafrn is for People Who Miss Tumblr’s Chaotic Energy

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  • Lemmy doesn't have a concept of a post that isn't attached to a community. It's probably possible to post to Lemmy from Wafrn by tagging a community as it is with Mastodon.

    You can follow Wafrn users from Mastodon, Misskey, Pleroma, etc....

  • Removed

    Do some actors or actresses date "normal" people?

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  • She's 52; he's 61.

  • Deleted

    Permanently Deleted

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  • I can think of a few things I do not like about the world today that I imagine I could improve in a scenario like that. They include:

    • Much of the world's communication is mediated through centralized social media platforms that use opaque algorithms to determine what content people see. (Yes, this is a very Lemming concern)
    • There is a significant rise in (mostly) right-wing populism worldwide, driven, I think in part by the above.
    • Corporations and governments are increasingly able (and motivated) to block access to their digital systems from general-purpose computers that their owners fully control. Even the mainstream press saw Microsoft Palladium as a nightmarish power grab in 2002, but did not react the same way to Google SafetyNet in 2014.
    • I do not own a Gordan Murray Automotive T.50.

    Social media

    2002 is before anybody had a convincing lead in this field, but blogs were already popular, and on the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog kid. I could start planting the seeds of more advanced federation capabilities through open source development right away. I'm assuming I have a computer of course, but I think even if I didn't I could probably get my hands on something older just by expressing interest and aptitude.

    After laying the technical foundations and establishing some credibility as a developer and technologist, my goal would be to build something with significant mainstream appeal by the time Facebook opens to the public in late 2006. I'd need access to money at that point, whether my own or through investors, though as a federated system, I wouldn't have to bear all of the costs (nor would I have the ability to extract all the profits, but even a hundredth of Zuck's net worth is obscenely wealthy).

    Populism

    I honestly do not know how much of this is due to the present day social media environment, but I'm sure it's a significant factor. I like to think that by tuning the design of social communication tools for more thoughtful discussion, more thoughtful leaders would thrive. Barring that, if I was obscenely wealthy, I could put my thumb on the scale by less honorable means, and I like to think I wouldn't be so terribly corrupted by the money and power as to use it for evil.

    One idea that comes to mind for political discussion is used in Pol.is and (perhaps ineffectively) Twitter community notes: surface points where people who usually disagree are in agreement.

    Protecting general purpose computing

    This one is hard to the point I'm not sure it's achievable, but It's so important. The obvious approach is to launch a mobile operating system, which would have to at least stay even with Android. Microsoft tried this in 2012, and that was too late despite their entry attracting some diehard fans. If I have the superior OS and majority market share, I'm in a good position to resist attempts to mandate locked bootloaders and remote attestation.

    The good news is it's not hard to do a better job with some fundamental design decisions given perfect hindsight, and with Android being open source, it wouldn't be hard to support Android apps. There weren't a lot of dependencies on Google's services in the early days.

    This one would be reliant on the social media play for capital and credibility. It would need to be well underway by 2010, which is a tight timeline, but not impossible.

    An absurdly expensive sports car

    If either of the above plays works even moderately well, I can have my 11,500 RPM redline V12 three-seater. If not, I'd still be in a position to make a bunch of money, and I'd be trying some of them in parallel.

    Nobody's going to give a ten year old control of an investment account just because they say they have some good ideas about the stock market, but if my hypothetical parents are anything like my real ones, after a couple months of demonstrating nearly-unbelievable skill at investing fake money, I'd be able to talk them into letting me invest a couple hundred dollars of real money and snowball things from there. I'd also know which startup ideas worked, what decisions were important in their success, and which founders I wouldn't feel bad about ripping off.

    Even as reality diverges, I think certain trends were inevitable. Social media will happen. Smartphones will happen. Streaming will happen. EVs will happen. Generative AI will probably happen, but I think I might try to push that one back a few years if I was in a position to do so. Flying cars, fusion power, and space colonies probably aren't happening by 2025 regardless of how many butterflies flap their wings.

  • ISPs created so many fees that FCC will kill requirement to list them all

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  • Threadiverse... on ATProto?!

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  • Early Reddit didn't have those either, so I suppose it's a proto-Reddit-like. Nookie does look better.

  • Logitech will brick its $100 Pop smart home buttons on October 15 - Ars Technica

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  • How? Is the mouse reliant on their servers to operate?

  • Threadiverse... on ATProto?!

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  • Google Confirms Non-ADB APK Installs Will Require Developer Registration

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  • This is basically the same as Apple's notarization scheme for direct app installation on iOS in the EU. I do not believe the EU has sued Apple over that yet, and they've had plenty of time to do so.

  • Tiny Tiny RSS is dead

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  • That's true but not useful.

    It's probably better to describe both ideologies as extreme-authoritarian or totalitarian. They're about equally undesirable; when someone has a boot on your throat, it doesn't matter much whether it's the right boot or the left boot.

  • What's a popular opinion on Lemmy that's unpopular in the real world?

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  • AI is untrustworthy and shouldn’t be used

    I have a more nuanced take. AI is simultaneously untrustworthy and useful. For many queries, DuckDuckGo and Google are performing considerably worse than they used to, while Perplexity usually yields good results. Perplexity also handles complex queries traditional search engines just can't.

    About a third of the time, Perplexity's text summary of what it found is inaccurate; it may even say the opposite of what a source does. Reading the sources and evaluating their reliability is no less important than with traditional search, but much of the time I think I wouldn't have found the same sources that way.

    Of course there are other issues with AI, such as power usage and Perplexity in particular being known for aggressive web scraping.

    Nuance and depth isn't as popular as I'd like on or off Lemmy.