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bergfest

62 karma · joined October 13, 2023

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bergfest··on The infinite scroll may become endangered if controversial Calif. law passes
We had a choice when there were alternative clients for all major platforms. Make open APIs mandatory for large platforms and a lot of problems will disappear. UIs will be designed for the best user experience again instead of maximizing engagement. It will hurt their revenue but so be it.
bergfest··on EU Parliament greenlights Chat Control 1.0
This has got to be rejected by any court that has not been completely corrupted.
bergfest··on PlayStation Is Deleting 551 Movies from Customers' Accounts
What will the end game in this licensing scheme be? I reckon once enough movies have been sold, the reputational damage of taking them away would become so large that streaming services will be strongarmed into accepting increasingly unreasonable fees.
bergfest··on Illinois Introducing Operating System Account Age Bill
This is exactly what will happen.
bergfest··on Paul Brainerd, founder of Aldus PageMaker, has died
I can still see that black and white splash screen in my head. Computers were so magical back then.
bergfest··on Pi – A minimal terminal coding harness
And then they will take away your right to boot whatever you want. For national security reasons and the children, of course.
bergfest··on Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright
The older manual rear view mirrors worked much better in my opinion.
bergfest··on I just want working RCS messaging
A task force of former nuclear fusion scientists has been established to fix bluetooth audio quality for once and forever.
bergfest··on Lawmakers want to ban VPNs
I don’t know about the US, but in UK and the EU they are certainly trying to do just that. And if not today, the will simply cook us slowly a little longer until they succeed. The problem is, that regular people just don’t care enough.
bergfest··on Lawmakers want to ban VPNs
It’s almost like they need these to exist.
bergfest··on The disguised return of EU Chat Control
I second this. And it would only be half as bad, if there was a chance to democratically undo this, when people realize the consequences. But no, this will stay forever and only become worse.
bergfest··on The disguised return of EU Chat Control
But they have ways to evade the law. And my dystopian inner oracle tells me, that when the pervasive online identification will soon be reality, certain people's IDs will have a special "all access, no logs" status that will allow them stay under the radar.
bergfest··on The disguised return of EU Chat Control
That's what I'm wondering too. I still hold out hope that the EU and the ECJ cannot override the fundamental rights guaranteed by the constitutions of the individual member states.

It is generally assumed that the ECJ has ultimate precedence over national constitutional courts, but I have my doubts. As a thought experiment, imagine it wasn't the EU, but the Chinese CCP with whom the treaties were concluded. It then quickly becomes clear why a national constitutional court fundamentally cannot accept the unconditional transfer of jurisdiction to a foreign entity.

The German Federal Constitutional Court (BVerfG) already stated in its judgment on the Public Sector Purchase Programme (PSPP) that it is prepared to intervene in the event of an exceeding of competences (ultra vires). Furthermore, the BVerfG has repeatedly defended the fundamental rights to privacy against the government in the past. I am relatively certain that the warrantless chat control would not succeed at the national level in Germany. The question is how the BVerfG will react if the ECJ gives the green light to chat control. As I said, I still have hope.

bergfest··on EU age verification app not planning desktop support
I fear it is already too late, thanks to the phone duopoly and bulletproof secure boot environments. The EU can now make remote attestation mandatory by law.
bergfest··on EU age verification app not planning desktop support
We have to assume this is only the first step. The next step will be mandatory identity attestation for everything and your only choices will be to either accept it or not use any services at all.
bergfest··on Tell the EU: Don't Break Encryption with "Chat Control"
Creating, exchanging and safe-keeping the keys is hard. But what if OS vendors would provide just that as a system level service?
bergfest··on macOS Tahoe
A small but important detail of Aqua was that the assumed light source was pointing straight down, whereas everybody else was usually using a 45 degrees angle. I wish Apple took a lesson from the old masters.

Also these colors make my eyes bleed. And the border radius is ridiculous.

bergfest··on Memory Integrity Enforcement
With EU chat control, the state will be on my device, having access to everything they want, decide what I can and cannot do. Once Google forces WEI on us, the whole web will get locked down. And secure boot and now MIE will make sure we can never take back our freedom.
bergfest··on Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts
They should be barred from shipping experimental or non-standardized features in Chrome to prevent them from abusing their monopoly and forcing others hands by creating de-facto standards without a fair discourse. Experimental features should be allowed in special Chrome builds targeted at developers only, and not be allowed to come preinstalled on any consumer device.
bergfest··on Bypassing Google's big anti-adblock update
Why not forbid them to ship any non-standard feature in their pre-installed default build of Chrome? Experimental features could be made available in a developer build, that would have to be manually installed in a non-obvious way, so that they cannot gain traction before standardization.
bergfest··on More assorted notes on Liquid Glass
Yes, I believe this is the reason. But it might backfire if people start to prefer Electron or Flutter apps over the native ones.
bergfest··on Liquid Glass – WWDC25 [video]
A little tongue-in-cheek speech was fine when done live on stage. But I certainly don’t enjoy their prerecorded videos anymore.
bergfest··on Petrichor
I love this scent, but my grandma used to hate it, because she somehow was led to believe that it was coming from the sewers.
bergfest··on Apple's Software Quality Crisis
Apple really should slow down their release cycles and focus on quality for a while. Apple Music on macOS is such an embarrassment. The UI is a mess. Airplay is broken. I just want my old fashioned but decent Mac applications back.
bergfest··on HyperCard Simulator
And then there was Macromedia Director. Being in love with software has become such a rare experience these days.