skullgiver

Dit kan alleen maar de bedoeling zijn van de BBB. Ze zijn tegen het concept van veestapelvermindering, dus door zo veel mogelijk onzekerheid en spanning te creëren rond de plannen die we al hadden, wordt het bestaande werk van politici die wel iets nuttigs willen doen langzaam ongedaan gemaakt. Met een beetje geluk worden de boeren er boos van, kunnen ze weer lekker wegen blokkeren, dat heeft de BBB eerder ook al aan de macht geholpen!

PII includes any information that can be used to link or correlate personal information. That includes usernames and account IDs. Every like/upvote contains that information, as well as a timestamp, indicating a unique account but also behaviour. The system doesn't just share a list of names, it shares a list of names with a lot of context. Stuff like this is also why pseudonymisation isn't sufficient to avoid GDPR obligations.

Usernames aren't sensitive information, so you can handle it without too much special care (although you do need to ensure basic protection of login credentials against data leaks, for instance by encrypting databases as a minimum requirement). They are PII, though, which means you're obligated to take some level of care and ensure that the information can be corrected or redacted everywhere.

The GDPR simply wasn't written with something like the Fediverse in mind. My server knowing when your account upvoted what posts on a third server would be ridiculous if we're talking about Twitter and Facebook, but it's the core of vote counting on Lemmy.

Their reasoning isn't necessarily bad:

They do explain their reasoning:

They use Threads as an example of what could happen to the Fediverse, but who knows how many companies are out there with fake Mastodon/Lemmy servers, subscribing to as many feeds as they can, letting the Fediverse handle delivering structured, scrapable data for them so they can work on their AIs or thread intel or marketing profiles.

They also have a point with their attempts to keep likes/follows private: that's something a lot of users want, and something a lot of users are surprised to learn doesn't exist on the Fediverse. The Fediverse is more metadata than data and that's not something everyone likes sharing. With monoliths like Veklar, you only need to trust one server not to datamine your every move rather than thousands of servers.

Speaking of privacy, most of the Fediverse isn't compatible with any privacy laws I've seen. For a bunch of hobbyists that's probably fine because privacy enforcement agencies have better things to do, but for a company that intends to make money and wants to actually become an alternative, that's a problem. A GDPR-compliant Fediverse server would need to record which other servers which bits of PII have been shared, how that information is protected (does lemmy.world even encrypt their database?), and with what other servers that information was shared in turn. That's practically impossible. The Fediverse exists in Europe because it's unimportant and unprofessional enough not to attract lawsuits.

They also have a good point about moderation. I could trivially spam every Lemmy server full of CSAM with maybe $100 in cloud credit to the point the FBI becomes interested. The Fediverse, and in particular Lemmy, is a bit like the Old Internet, assuming everyone has good intentions and that the minority with bad intentions can be handled by human interaction. New servers don't get vetted, new moderation environments don't get verified, and server administrators are left to their own devices to get rid of botnets and other malicious entities if they don't want their server to become a spam relay.

I think the upsides of the Fediverse are worth the risks. Veklar clearly thinks otherwise. They're not necessarily wrong, they just have different priorities.

De wetenschap zit vol met internationale samenwerkingen tussen wetenschappers. Projecten kunnen (deels) door Amerika betaald worden zonder dat wetenschappers direct in dienst zijn. Aangezien de Amerikanen de afgelopen honderd jaar nogal hebben geïnvesteerd in dingen als hun geologische dienst en hun maritieme onderzoek, zijn veel landen van samenwerking afhankelijk om productieve wetenschap te bedrijven.

Onderzoeken die vele jaren lopen, kunnen abrupt stop worden gezet als data en eventueel geld door de Amerikanen wordt afgesneden. Met de huidige politieke mix verwacht ik ook niet dat de Nederlandse overheid het potentiële geldtekort voor gaat schieten. Ik vrees dat dit voor een heel stel Nederlandse wetenschappers gaat betekenen "meewerken of je onderzoek stopzetten".

MLS is designed to support that use case, but the spec to actually intercommunicate between services is still being developed by the MIMI group. MIMI is the logical but entirely optional extension of MLS.

I don't think carriers will want random chat apps to send messages for free to their infrastructure for spam prevention alone. Companies like Element and Wire are probably going all in on this, but Signal doesn't even want you to use clients they didn't compile, let alone federate between services.

I believe WhatsApp has chosen to license its API in a documented fashion rather than implement a cross platform messaging protocol after they were forced to open up by the DMA. That said, there are a bunch of Facebook emails in the MIMI protocol discussions, so at least one of their messengers may still end up implementing MIMI when it's finally finished.

I believe booze can be exported as concentrated syrup and turned back into liquid in the country of destination for tax purposes. I know for sure at least one European whiskey company exports part of its inventory this way. If Jack Daniels uses that system, that would explain why it'd show up as being of UK origin.

H1-B is a great boon for the American economy and it'd be absolutely idiotic to get rid of it, but the current American government runs on a platform of xenophobia, racism, and plain lies. They're stupid enough to kick out all the illegal residents that harvest the crops and take care of trades, so I don't see why they wouldn't be stupid enough to end the programs that essentially bring in cheap, highly-educated labour into the country.

I know Elon is profiting massively of H-1B, but that doesn't mean there won't be some kind of special exception for Elon's companies. The current government is also getting rid of electric chargers along federal roads, while at the same time peddling Teslas at the white house.

As for a source rather than a generic feeling: Project 2025's handbook, basically a step-by-step guide of what the current American leadership is working on, page 150, mentions H-1B reform as a goal:

H-1B reform. Transform the program into an elite mechanism exclusively to bring in the “best and brightest” at the highest wages while simultaneously ensuring that U.S. workers are not being disadvantaged by the program. H-1B is a means only to supplement the U.S. economy and to keep companies competitive, not to depress U.S. labor markets artificially in certain industries.

Read to me like they're trying to restrict H-1B to what it was originally intended to be: supplementing highly-educated labour where necessary, rather than allowing tech companies to cheaply import labour from poorer countries. Thing is, the US doesn't need that much extra highly-educated labour in fields like computer science. When I see these people write down "reform", I interpret that as "completely tearing down and replacing whatever was there with a new system".

If you're in the US, you're probably right. After the cancerous growth VC companies dumped the unused software people they hired for no reason other than paper growth, the market showed it's not as desaturated as statistics would make it seem.

On the other hand:

• H1-B is a political tool, and I doubt that visa still exists by the end of the year. Plus, the people coming in on H1-B visas are still software developers. They're just from another country.

• The software already built is good enough

  I have worked at several companies whose terrible, buggy software sold like hot cakes because the competitors were even worse. General consumer software and apps may be pretty saturated, but B2B is an unending race to the bottom, racing for "better than before without being much more expensive".

• Destruction of the public sector

  Helps not to be American. Or if you are, look for software jobs in defence.

• AI is going to change the industry for sure. Lots of dumb framework copy/pasting jobs are going to disappear, but among the mess people with actual knowledge are going to be incredibly valuable.

I do expect programmer careers to start paying out significantly less over the coming times, but mostly if you're used to the ridiculously high wages software development pays in the US.

I've found a new software dev job within biking distance in less than three weeks, after submitting my CV a total of three times. The B2B sector is still growing.

As in group texts having shitty image quality: that's already solved by their current RCS implementation. This just makes it possible for the spec to support encryption (which Apple may still choose not to do).

As in blue bubbles being a status symbol: no.

How is performance in has-text() these days? Last time I checked it was slow enough that I didn't bother adding it to things like ad blockers because it bogged down websites.

It kind of depends on how long the American shortage goes for. If they can't get their supply chains in order for a year or so, making a deal could later prove good leverage material against the Americans. Get them hooked on cheap European eggs, then threaten to tariff them or cut off the supply, making prices soar all across the USA.

An egg can easily be stored for 3-4 weeks unrefridgerated (unless you wash them with chemicals like often happens in the US, then they need to be kept in the fridge for a shorter period of time). European food law puts the maximum consume-before date of eggs at 28 days, but usually you can keep them for a while longer.

If you don't reserve cargo space in advance, shipping across the Atlantic can easily take 20-40 days, depending on how annoying customs is being. The ship itself can be there in 9 days, weather permitting. Most ships also make stops at islands and other countries, so shipping time kind of depends on how direct the route can be.

If you're sure the eggs will be used within a reasonable time frame (a week), and you pre-arrange the transport ahead of time, you can have the eggs on US soil for a week before they spoil. If you keep them refrigerated during transport probably longer.

Other options also exist. For instance, one could pre-crack the eggs in Denmark, collect the yolk/whites/scales, and transport them in dehydrated form to the US. That's good enough for bakeries and factories, which would no longer need to buy eggs from the local markets, relieving pressure for non-industrial consumption.