Miren @[email protected]

🤬 Really sad news for #freesoftware

FairEmail - Fully featured, privacy oriented email app
https://email.faircode.eu/

All my projects have been terminated after Google falsely flagged FairEmail as spyware without a reasonable opportunity to appeal. There will be no further development and no more support.

Please act now! Send your feedback to developer or against this Google action!!!

@EU_Commission please do something about this. And @eff please intervene and support the open-source developers who are victims of Google's abuses.

#FairEmail, an open-source email client for #Android that allows you to manage multiple accounts, has been taken down from the Play Store.

Even if its source code is freely available, and both the code and the app's activities have been inspected and audited before being submitted to F-Droid, Google keeps harassing the developer as it considers the app as "spyware", but it refuses to provide ANY details about their findings, or inform the developer on what they are supposed to change to get the app approved again. An appeal request from the developer only resulted in an automatic response from Google.

The developer was advised to appeal to the EU, but (maybe rightfully) he said "what's the point? it's going to take them five years anyway just to come with a decision, and in the meantime my app won't be distributed on the major Android channel, and I'll have no incentive to keep working on it". We, as open-source developers, should NOT end up in this situation. We should NOT have the feeling that the institutions are not protecting us because they're just too slow to intervene or even to understand an issue.

This isn't the first time that #Google harasses open-source developers and gets away with it. Email clients alternative to Gmail, as well as any app that accesses what Google deems "sensitive user data" (including emails, calendar, fit data etc.) will now require an expensive (talking of at least $4500 a year) and intentionally cumbersome certification process, and such a certification needs to be renewed on a yearly basis: http://www.pmail.com/newsflash.htm. This will mean the end for most of the alternative apps that support Google services.

This isn't about users' security. Most of these apps are open-source, owned by the community, and regularly audited by F-Droid - a store with far higher security standards than the Play Store.

This is just Google declaring their final war against those who dare to access their email, calendar or maps without using Google's apps. This is Google showing the middle finger to the world and saying "the only way to interact with your email and calendar must be through my apps".

More and more open-source developers are being so discouraged by Google's efforts, requests for money and the Kafkaesque labyrinth that they've set up for appeals that they are pulling their apps and services for good.

This shouldn't happen, and the EU has a duty to defend us against this evil corp, because we can't keep defending ourselves. Enough with all the talk about new EU unicorns: if the EU really wants to battle Google, they should do so by defending an enthusiastic community that is already building the alternatives - often without being paid a single dime, while being regularly harassed by big tech.

https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/app-5-0-fairemail-fully-featured-open-source-privacy-oriented-email-app.3824168/page-1087

Living in the #Netherlands?

Sign this #petition to the #Dutch Government with a plea for fair #education in the classroom and to keep children away from #privacy-infringing #SurveillanceCapitalism platforms they (and their teachers) are forced to use.

https://eerlijkdigitaalonderwijs.petities.nl/?locale=en

Linux life hack: say you have a page open in Firefox on your Linux machine and you want to view it on your phone (and you don’t have some fancy integration between the two)…

Instead of typing in the URL, get the FxQRL extension that shows you a QR code of the current tab’s URL and aim your phone’s camera at it.

Boom! :)

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/fxqrl/

#linux #lifeHack #firefox #extension #web #QRcode #mobile #browser

Someone should write a @bookwyrm plugin for #Calibre. I'd love to create a project for it myself, but I have far too many #FLOSS projects on my plate, as it is.

It looks like plugins are in #Python, so the barrier-to-entry shouldn't be too high. https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/creating_plugins.html

I am angry. These companies and their CEO deserve bankruptcy and prison.

Special note to the people constantly telling me that fighting for privacy has nothing to do with fighting against gender-based violence: go f*** yourself.

You wonder what I'm talking about? Read this https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7vzjb/location-data-abortion-clinics-safegraph-planned-parenthood

So if you write an article and give image credits, you don't credit the place you found it, you credit the SOURCE.

Stealing an image, and pointing to a place that has also stolen that image isn't how it works.

If you find an image you'd like to use, you check to see if this is the original source of the image.

If it is, then see if there are any usage rights shown - and follow them.

If there aren't any, you contact the publisher and ask permission to use the image.

Why do women feel sick before their periods? We don't know. "This has been grossly understudied. I can’t really tell you if you’re more likely to get a cold or have infections, because the more detailed studies just haven’t been done." -Sabra Klein, PhD
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/03/well/sick-before-period-symptoms.html

"And on the fourth day The Developer created the End Users in likeness of their Software"

@aral put in strongest terms that we should avoid the term "User" in software development.

I've been practicing this, which is not always easy. What I found is that it is not the alternative terminology and language we use that is most important, but the extra attention, added awareness and the thought process we follow that makes the difference.

> Best practice: By trying to avoid referring to people as “Users” we force ourself to be more focused on their actual needs

https://discuss.coding.social/t/humane-design-avoiding-the-term-user/61

Inkscape tutorial: How to draw a cat. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xZIMIqS2Rm4

Arguments in favor of plain text files.

An online #mindmap created with #myMarkmap :

https://mymarkmap.vercel.app/#https://raw.githubusercontent.com/eyssette/mindmap/main/arguments-plain-text.md

Feel free to share, fix errors or suggest new ideas !

Plain text file : https://raw.githubusercontent.com/eyssette/mindmap/main/arguments-plain-text.md

#markdown #plain-text

Someone on Tumblr said walking around in your PJs with your cellphone flashlight was the modern equivalent of the nightgown and cap dude with the candle and now I think of that every time I have to get up and get something in the middle of the night.

I've made a deliberate choice against a quoting feature because it inevitably adds toxicity to people's behaviours. You are tempted to quote when you should be replying, and so you speak at your audience instead of with the person you are talking to. It becomes performative. Even when doing it for "good" like ridiculing awful comments, you are giving awful comments more eyeballs that way. No quote toots. Thank's

#EUVoice & #EUVideo are the new #EU social platforms to engage with you in a privacy-friendly environment!
Discover the #EDPS channels and follow us!
👉EU Voice https://europa.eu/!kJNYwV
👉EU Video https://europa.eu/!cpkCKh

This is wild. WILD. #EU orgs have an official #fediverse home.

https://edps.europa.eu/press-publications/press-news/press-releases/2022/edps-launches-pilot-phase-two-social-media_en

Colleges should run their own ActivityPub servers and create a life-long social network for their students, faculty, alumni.

Is anything like this happening anywhere?