• 8 Posts
  • 1.14K Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 11th, 2023

help-circle
  • I understand Lemmy doesn’t provide a way to fuse multiple signals like the combination of a high-reputation account with a low-reputation IP address and it would be too much to ask volunteer server admins to develop their own. I’m OK with that answer. I don’t expect to dictate the terms by which they give me free services.

    The part I didn’t like was their dim view of the fact that Mullvad actually provides privacy to its users. I believe private internet access is valuable to the world even if it enables some harms.



  • Over the past few years, there has been a great increase in websites using geoblocking. Half the local news sites in the USA block traffic from the EU for example, likely because they want to inject 300 advertising trackers in a manner that would violate EU law. I’ve been using Mullvad for years, and I am happy with it.

    Sometimes lemmy.world blocks me from posting from it, which I am not happy with. They were even critical of its strict privacy stance, which I found to be a weird take from a fediverse project.




  • For this post let’s assume the people involved are or were in the past friends, and ghosting is leaving someone on “read” for more than 2 days.

    This doesn’t match how I’m used to seeing ghosting defined.

    That behavior might be unfriendly, but there are a ton of innocuous reasons people do it. People are busy and not every message merits a prompt reply. If someone sends me something that requires more time or attention than I have at that moment like a video or news article, I’m likely to make a mental note to look at it later. I might actually remember, and then remember to send a reply about it. I might not.

    It’s maybe a little rude not to respond to something more important or time-sensitive, but I can always ask again or use something more synchronous like a voice call. People are busy, life happens, tech can be unreliable. It’s best not to assume intentional disrespect.


    My understanding of the term “ghosting” is permanent or long-term cessation of communication over all channels without explanation. That should be reserved for situations where someone is a physical danger or behaved in a manner so egregious they almost certainly know what they did.







  • Something becomes an addiction when it is unreasonably difficult to stop doing it in order to address something you would consciously rate as more important. That could mean biological needs like food or sleep, social needs like work or seeing friends and family, or self-improvement like exercise or pursuing hobbies other than video games. It is not determined primarily by hours spent.

    Of course if you have no other hobbies, never exercise, don’t have friends, and actively minimize other time commitments to maximize the time you can spend gaming, most people would consider your lifestyle imbalanced. That doesn’t make it an addiction though, and if you’re an adult, what kind of lifestyle you want is ultimately up to you.



  • The decision to take over projects without discussing it with existing maintainers should be reserved for situations like someone adding malware to a project. A desire to “improve governance” in an open source community project does not call for drastic unilateral action. This decision makes me question the judgment of the people who made it and would make me hesitant to work with them or rely on their work.

    It looks like Matz, the creator of Ruby is now overseeing things. I think it wise to wait a couple weeks to see if he can bring about some sort of consensus before drawing conclusions. Rumor has it, he’s nice.

    DHH doesn’t seem nice. I’d be happy about a change to Rails governance.



  • The who has supplied them part is the critical point here.

    I’ll give an example outside of digital technology. If Ford sells a car with Michelin tires on it, Ford has some responsibility for those tires even though I can also buy them from Joe’s Tire Shop and put them on any car with the right size wheels. I can also buy Continental tires from Joe’s Tire Shop and put them on my Ford car. Ford has no responsibilities in relation to Continental Tires or Joe’s Tire Shop.

    If Samsung preloads WhatsApp and Android on a phone, Samsung has to know where it got WhatsApp and Android. If I download Signal from https://signal.org/android/apk/ and install it on a Samsung phone running Google Android, neither Samsung nor Google is a party to that.

    The CRA, including the parts you’re quoting does not impose any obligation on anyone with respect to a product or component they never touch.


  • The OS or a phone both fit that definition.

    Yes it does, and it means someone making and selling either has to have a certain level of knowledge about it supply chain.

    An app fits the definition of a component.

    If it’s bundled with the OS, it probably does. In that case, the OS vendor is a manufacturer and has a variety of obligations relative to the app detailed in article 13.

    If the user is obtaining it directly from the developer and installing themselves, it doesn’t really matter if it’s a component or a product because the OS vendor is not distributing or manufacturing anything. If the app/OS combination were to be treated as a system of which the app is a component, it is the user who has manufactured that product by combining the two. If the user is not selling that system, they have no obligations under the CRA.


  • Apps definitely qualify as products with digital elements. The term that determines whether Google has obligations is this scenario is ‘economic operator’ Here’s the definition for that:

    ‘economic operator’ means the manufacturer, the authorised representative, the importer, the distributor, or other natural or legal person who is subject to obligations in relation to the manufacture of products with digital elements or to the making available of products with digital elements on the market in accordance with this Regulation

    When Google distributes apps via the Play Store, it is very obviously the distributor, which is defined:

    ‘distributor’ means a natural or legal person in the supply chain, other than the manufacturer or the importer, that makes a product with digital elements available on the Union market without affecting its properties

    If someone else distributes apps using other infrastructure that happen to run on an OS that Google made, Google is not the distributor and does not incur any obligations that apply to distributors. (For completeness, Google is obviously not the manufacturer, authorised representative, or importer either.)



  • Zak@lemmy.worldtoLinux@lemmy.mlAntiviruses?
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    15
    ·
    9 days ago

    No. ClamAV can, for example scan Linux ELF executables and its database contains signatures for malware that could affect desktop Linux. The most common use case is servers that are distributing files, but it can be used to scan local files.

    The local use case is fairly rare because malware targeting desktop Linux is rare. That’s partly because Linux users tend to have a better understanding of computers on average than Windows users, and partly because the sort of attack vectors that work well against Windows users don’t align with Linux workflows (e.g. if you want to execute a file sent as an email attachment, you’ll have to save it and set it executable first).