Web developer, gamer, reader, and a true ligma male

  • 5 Posts
  • 24 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 8th, 2023

help-circle

  • It seems that while this update once again contains lots of (unncessary) AI bullshit, it also has some other positive changes, such as :

    • More End-To-End encrypted functionality
    • Improved file upload (apparently 6x as fast)
    • Better performance
    • Converting documents
    • Native desktop client UI (hopefully the new appImage does work for Linux, because it does not work right now.
    • Improved AppAPI for other developers to develop plugins / apps / extensions in different programming languages
    • Added pronouns to account profile
    • Right-To-Left text for the Arabic users (and whoever uses RTL instead of LTR)
    • PGP/MIME support for Nextcloud Mail
    • Chunked file upload on desktop app
    • Improved OpenID Connect API

    Overall, I am still disappointed by the direction towards AI that Nextcloud has taken, but I suspect that it makes them more money. Also, apparently large organizations / enterprises who pay Nextcloud GmbH for support, are also allowed to influence the roadmap of the software, which probably has something to do with jumping on the AI bandwagon.

    However, despite this new direction, Nextcloud still does the job for me: Easy file syncing, with document collaboration, calendar, contacts and basically act as a whole replacement for Microsoft 365 / Google Workspace / whatever with little to no problems.





  • There’s Ryot.

    Besides that, there’s also Movary, which has contributions from yours truly, but it only supports tracking movies at the moment. I’m planning on adding TV show support later, probably after the first stable 1.0 has released (In my mind it’ll probably be major release 2.0 or 3.0). The main dev and I don’t have much time these days, so it might take a while…




  • My IT teacher from high school put a major emphasis on online privacy.

    He thinks the internet is a major threat to individual freedom and while it brings benefits, the negative effects are too big for him.

    While I don’t agree with the last statement, I do think privacy is very much under attack nowadays and while I am not very concerned what other people and corporations know about me, I still care about privacy simply because I have the right to do so and because if I don’t pay attention, a dozen different trackers will know what I have done without me granting permission.

    Corporations basically take advantage of people and give nothing in return and that is bad imo.










  • My ELI5 version:

    Basically, the ‘Web Environment Integrity’ proposal is a new technique that verifies whether a visitor of a website is actually a human or a bot.

    Currently, there are captchas where you need to select all the crosswalks, cars, bicycles, etc. which checks whether you’re a bot, but this can sometimes be bypassed by the bots themselves.

    This new ‘Web Environment Integrity’ thing goes as follows:

    1. You visit a website
    2. Website wants to know whether you’re a human or a bot.
    3. Your browser (or the ‘client’) will send request an ‘environment attestation’ from an ‘attester’. This means that your browser (such as Firefox or Chrome) will request approval from some third-party (like Google or something) and the third-party (which is referred to as ‘attester’) will send your browser a message, which basically says ‘This user is a bot’ or ‘This user is a human being’.
    4. Your browser receives this message and will then send it to the website, together with the ‘attester public key’. The ‘attester public key’ can be used by the website to verify whether the attester (a.k.a. the third-party checking whether you’re a human or not) is trustworthy and will then check whether the attester says that you’re a human or not.

    I hope this clears things up and if I misinterpreted the GitHub explainer, please correct me.

    The reason people (rightfully) worry about this, is because it gives attesters A LOT of power. If Google decides they don’t like you, they won’t tell the website that you’re a human. Or maybe, if Google doesn’t like the website you’re trying to visit, they won’t even cooperate with attesting. Lots of things can go wrong here.




  • No, I disagree. When you ask the average person to show you their private chats, emails and passwords, they will refuse because of privacy.

    Instead of not caring about privacy, people prioritize convenience over privacy. Big tech companies such as Google, Meta, Microsoft offer really good, stable products which are mainstream and generally don’t cause problems. At least, Windows 10 is way less troublesome than Linux and it’s easier to use the stock Android with Google instead of installing a custom ROM such as GrapheneOS.

    To really push the privacy friendly alternatives towards the mainstream, the alternatives should become more user-friendly, less tech-savvy, and preinstalled.