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slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:

Apple and Google promoted insecure native apps as "safe" thanks to "beware of dog" signs posted in front of their poorly-tended walled gardens.

It was enough to get everyone locked in, but never delivered security. Browsers, on the other hand, don't allow this sort of predation in the first place.

slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:

Back in '21, court filings recounted an Apple engineer characterising Cupertino's App Store protections as "bringing a plastic butter knife to a gunfight". And for however bad Apple has been (terrible), Play was always worse.

So how's that going? Oof:

https://www.pcmag.com/news/study-reveals-googles-play-store-is-main-distributor-of-malicious-apps

slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell") wrote:

The fundamental insecurity of native apps, and the role of App Stores in a cover-up of that essential fact cannot be stressed enough.

The always-suspect security of stores creates the mythos that enables the whole extractive App Store racket. Without the patina of security, giving away ridiculous amounts of user data and system access to any app the user installs would never pass muster.

Which is why browsers don't do that.

baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

Basically: "we were doing a great job, everybody said so! What are you talking about?"

baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason") wrote:

RE: https://toot.cafe/@baldur/116239014761650611

A criticism of this post that took me by a bit of a surprise involves replies from people completely unaware of anybody having any kind of concern about the state of software development, let alone worried to the point of thinking a crisis was developing.

Boosted by fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷"):
fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷") wrote:

How to scare us into voting for dog shit candidates:

1. Scientific data proves Trump is dictatoring! We're doomed!
2. Unless...👀 wait a minute elections still work!
3. Oh, Trump is super unpopular with voters now! Guess they'll need a new political home 🤷‍♂️

It's the same article over and over again since 2016.

It's not trying to get us to fight authoritarianism. It's priming us to reject progressive ideas in fear of losing the mythical "reasonable republican".

https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2026/mar/17/trump-is-aiming-for-dictatorship-thats-the-verdict-of-the-worlds-most-credible-democracy-watchdog

Boosted by pzmyers@freethought.online ("pzmyers 🕷"):
Pepijn@mastodon.online wrote:

Hi #fediverse. We need to talk about something.

While talking to a colleague about how I recently learned most people have never sat on a cow it came up that she has never sat on a horse. Like, not even once during childhood.

Another colleague admitted they also have never sat on a horse.

My hypothesis is that most people have at one point in their life sat on a horse.

🏇 🐎 🐴

Have you sat on a horse?

Please boost for scientific accuracy.

Boosted by glyph ("Glyph"):
gvwilson ("Greg Wilson") wrote:

rage against the mundane

dysfun@treehouse.systems ("gaytabase") wrote:

self-OH:

the static test, which just sort of... accreted improvements until it ran off to join the circus

pzmyers@freethought.online ("pzmyers 🕷") wrote:

Jeez, this joke is so stupid.

Maybe there's a reason scientists are reluctant to joke in their talks.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/03/18/biologists-arent-funny/

Boosted by glyph ("Glyph"):
mhoye@cosocial.ca wrote:

Once again I am heartbroken to remind you that the Dunning-Kruger effect is probably not real:

https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/critical-thinking/dunning-kruger-effect-probably-not-real

Like Freudian psychology, Hardin's tragedy of the commons and any number of other popular pseudoscientific narratives, it caters to our preconceptions and makes fore entertaining, easy to re-tell stories, but it's also... not true.

And - again, I am entirely saddened by this - that means that if we keep using these metaphors we're legitimizing the false ideas behind them.

Boosted by glyph ("Glyph"):
catsalad@infosec.exchange ("Cat 🐈🥗 (D.Burch) :paw:⁠:paw:") wrote:

Hi #fediverse. We need to talk about something.

While talking to a colleague about how I recently learned most people have never sat on a crow it came up that she has never been sat on by a cat. Like, not even once during childhood.

Another colleague admitted they also have never been sat on by a cat.

My hypothesis is that most people have at one point in their life sat on by a cat.

🐈🐈‍⬛🐱

Have you ever been sat on by a cat?

Please boost for scientific accuracy.

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷") wrote:

So basically an enclave in our hardware with all of our data.

They found a way to centralize our social graphs 💃🫠

Boosted by soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker"):
bullsworth@meow.social ("Bullsdonk") wrote:

@soatok being kicked out because all the freedom got me GNU/Hard

Boosted by slightlyoff@toot.cafe ("Alex Russell"):
z_everson@journa.host ("Zach Everson") wrote:

"Mullin’s Significant Investments in Companies with DHS Contracts Raise Red Flags"

(I did some research.)

via Public Citizen

#news #uspol #markwaynemullin #congress #DHS #trump

https://www.citizen.org/news/mullins-significant-investments-in-companies-with-dhs-contracts-raise-red-flags/

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
davidculley@hachyderm.io ("David Culley") wrote:

RE: https://mean.engineer/@indutny/116245283352156779

- Opens pull request with 19k added lines of code written with Claude Code.
- Claims he reviewed them all.

Even if that were true and even if he hadn't used any AI, I would shout that guy out of the room.

Pray that this PR doesn't get merged.

#JavaScript #nodejs #LLM

fromjason ("fromjason.xyz ❤️ 💻 ✍️ 🥐 🇵🇷") wrote:

End-to-end encryption for Instagram is gone.

Boosted by soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker"):
Stephanie@thetransagenda.gay ("Stéphanie") wrote:

@soatok@furry.engineer So that's what "use after free" means

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
emilymbender@dair-community.social ("Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)") wrote:

RE: https://dair-community.social/@emilymbender/116246999502878371

My language nerd self just can't wait to have copies of the translations into different languages all lined up next to each other :)

Boosted by kornel ("Kornel"):
vagina_museum@masto.ai ("Vagina Museum") wrote:

Happy Sheelah's Day. This feast, largely no longer celebrated in Ireland, commemorates either St Patrick's wife or mother, who probably didn't exist. So let's celebrate a similarly-named mysterious figure today instead: the sheela na gig!

Boosted by soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker"):
cwebber@social.coop ("Christine Lemmer-Webber") wrote:

Here is the screenshot @sleepyowl posted on her site of her being tipped off. She also says:

> Who I am NOT
>
> Some of you think of me as such a big deal that you think I am some threat actor wanted by the Five Eyes.
>
> (screenshot)
>
> I am not this "Gideon Teagarden" person and have no idea who they are or if they even exist. Whatever they've done however, I certainly don't envy their position.
>
> If the Internal Security Department is paying attention, you think maybe it's a good idea to consider recruiting more... reliable persons as third-party fixers if you have to recruit fixers at all in the first place, and not someone like Mercury Jamie Alice?
>
> I don't want to tell you how to do your business, but you do realize that this isn't a good look for Singapore in the global intelligence community, right?

https://bitowl.online/about

Boosted by soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker"):
cwebber@social.coop ("Christine Lemmer-Webber") wrote:

If you have seen me posting about the dangers of ID laws, and about the need to have hardware options we can trust, a lot of the information on that stuff comes from talking to @sleepyowl

That's the kind of person she is: someone who wants to build solutions and use computing skills to advance human rights. You can see that stuff just by reading her fediverse feed. My experience is that Joyce in private is exactly like how she is in public. She isn't a threat actor, she's someone who wants to help people.

I hope she is safe.

Boosted by soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker"):
frosty@furry.engineer ("...Frosty! ❄️🦊") wrote:

@soatok Does systemd count as Masochism?

Boosted by soatok@furry.engineer ("Soatok Dreamseeker"):
marlena@kif.rocks ("/Users/marlena") wrote:

@soatok I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're refering to as Bottom, is in fact, GNU/Bottom, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Bottom. Bottom is not an sexual role unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning BDSM scene made useful by the GNU coresubs, submission utilities and vital sexual components comprising a full BDSM scene as defined by Wikipedia.

kornel ("Kornel") wrote:

Visual Basic's `On Error Resume Next` can be galaxy-brained to `On Error LLM("rewrite the program to stop doing that")`

Boosted by dysfun@treehouse.systems ("gaytabase"):
mudkip@wetdry.world ("enderman0125 :neofox_flag_nb: :neofox_flag_pan:") wrote:

in a world where all the news is bleak atleast there is some good out there

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
aworkinglibrary@mstdn.social ("mandy brown") wrote:

“What must be done is to bring the future into the present, to make power tangible *now* by means of actions which demonstrate to the workers their positive strength.” https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/reformed

Boosted by baldur@toot.cafe ("Baldur Bjarnason"):
tante@tldr.nettime.org wrote:

Audre Lorde's "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." is not just a statement about a tool being tainted by its origin. It's about what kind of tool a "master" would create: Whips. Chains. Violent suppression.

That's the meaning: You cannot just take tools whose purpose and politics is dominance and violence and "make them liberatory". This goes deeper than "just" embedded politics or lofty talks about ethics, it comes down to what kind of relations you believe do and should and must not structure the world.

pzmyers@freethought.online ("pzmyers 🕷") wrote:

Marisa Simonetti is a monster. Don't vote for her.

https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2026/03/18/republican-landlord-abuses-tenants-and-spiders/

dysfun@treehouse.systems ("gaytabase") wrote:

RE: https://types.pl/@koronkebitch/116248000434747343

Real or Slop PL papers quiz

This is hard. I just identified a logical inconsistency in a paper and used that as 'evidence' to guess it was slop.

So clearly it's difficult to detect slop papers with just a skim already. imagine you waste a few hours trying to review this shit...

I got 6/10