@steve@mastodon.nexusuk.org
@steve@mastodon.nexusuk.org avatar

steve

@steve@mastodon.nexusuk.org

|🦆| Climber, windsurfer, Welsh speaker, Technical Director of https://social.opendium.com/@opendium |🐱| Dringwr, hwylfyrddwr, siaradwr Cymraeg, Cyfarwyddwr Technegol https://social.opendium.com/@opendium |🦆|

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Edent, to random
@Edent@mastodon.social avatar

🆕 blog! “Silence Isn't Consent”

I was in one of those interminably dull video-conferences a few weeks ago. The presenter was pitching their grand vision of what our next steps should be. "So!" They said, "Any comments before we launch?" No one said anything. After half a minute the presenter said "As there are no objections, we'll proceed. Silence is […]

👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2023/04/silence-isnt-consent/
⸻

steve,
@steve@mastodon.nexusuk.org avatar

@Edent So whilst it seems possibly unreasonable for web hosts to have to play whack-a-mole and opt out of bots, it also feels unreasonable for bot operators to get everyone to opt-in too, especially where their bot has little utility until the majority of people have opted in. IMHO there is some middle-ground to be had. 3/3

steve,
@steve@mastodon.nexusuk.org avatar

@Edent What is important though, is being a good citizen. e.g. try to respect people's wishes WRT copyright, for example, don't hammer the server, etc. I can certainly remember that when MS originally launched Bing, it was buggy as hell and did create a denial of service for small web hosts. So a lot of people blocked it. The result is neither good for the websites, nor the tool itself. 2/

steve,
@steve@mastodon.nexusuk.org avatar

@Edent I can see both sides of this, I'm not sure its as clear cut as you make out (hear me out on this one): When Google launched their search engine, its utility would have been greatly reduced if only websites that opted in were indexed (ok, so these days you'd probably be insane not to want your site indexed by Google, but not when they first started out). 1/

bloor, to random
@bloor@bloor.tw avatar

I find this rather odd, and I cannot work out what law Twitter is abiding by, especially in the UK jurisdiction, withholding RT's twitter account from view.

I thought the only stuff mandated was DNS related?

Seen on twitter:

steve,
@steve@mastodon.nexusuk.org avatar

@bloor is RT owned by any of the sanctioned Russians?

revk, (edited ) to random
@revk@toot.me.uk avatar

That was crap, one phone seems to have done nothing (Voda NL SIM), and another (EE UK) beeped quietly for a fraction of a second, showed something full screen, which vanished before it could be read. And no indication of any message to anything.

Fill in response survey here: https://surveys.publishing.service.gov.uk/s/A7XZXQ

Survey does no ask even which country you are in, or which network you are on. That is really useless!

steve,
@steve@mastodon.nexusuk.org avatar

@rachel_norfolk @revk A real broadcast has to be sent at the lowest data rate so that all the clients can receive it, whereas sending it separately at each client's full speed can often a shorter timeslot. (Again, I'm talking from my wifi knowledge here, but I wouldn't be surprised if it is similar for cellular protocols) 2/2

steve,
@steve@mastodon.nexusuk.org avatar

@rachel_norfolk @revk I suspect "cell broadcast" doesn't mean what you think it means. I'm not terribly familiar with cellular tech, but at least on wifi, "broadcasts" are actually often unicast to each client individually by the access point. This is because the noise environment for each client is different, so it will be connected to the AP using different modulation/error correction modes. 1/

steve,
@steve@mastodon.nexusuk.org avatar

@revk Maybe the alert should've included a link to the survey - I had no idea they were even asking for responses.

steve,
@steve@mastodon.nexusuk.org avatar

@revk @rachel_norfolk Still, its good to have some perspective from both worlds :)

steve,
@steve@mastodon.nexusuk.org avatar

@revk @rachel_norfolk I did enough time writing parts of SS7 protocol stacks (especially SIGTRAN stuff) to not be surprised at telecoms stuff, TBH :)

steve,
@steve@mastodon.nexusuk.org avatar

@revk @rachel_norfolk Definitely. I came from an internet background, then spent a few years doing SS7 stuff (Intel / Dialogic), then moved back to internet stuff. I prefer the "internet approach". And there are also things like the IETF standards being free which makes a lot more sense to me than having to pay to see standards. Telecoms stuff tends to embed a lot more logic in the network instead of just passing packets end-to-end, and binary-only packets, so harder to understand, IMHO.

neil, (edited ) to random

deleted_by_author

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    steve,
    @steve@mastodon.nexusuk.org avatar

    @neil On my phone (LineageOS), the link in the message was not clickable. Also, for real emergencies, I hope they don't rely too much on "follow this link for more info" since some people who receive the alert won't have any internet access...

    neil, to random

    Is it just me charging every mobile device I have lying around, SIM or no SIM, to see which get an emergency alert at 15:00?

    steve,
    @steve@mastodon.nexusuk.org avatar

    @neil So what was the "no-SIM" result then?

    steve,
    @steve@mastodon.nexusuk.org avatar

    @neil I suppose that might sort of make sense. I think SIMless phones aren't actually connected to any towers, so probably can't get the alert (I think they find a tower and make an ad-hoc connection when you make a 112/999 call)

    revk, to random
    @revk@toot.me.uk avatar

    Hmm, stuck. What is it for "beeped briefly and flashed up something full screen for maybe ½ second"

    steve,
    @steve@mastodon.nexusuk.org avatar

    @proactiveservices @revk Hmm, who "shared data" in that context. the website linked to third party websites and your browser made requests to them. So its possible that the data sharing was done by your browser rather than the website operator? (I honestly don't know who would be considered responsible legally - both arguments seem to make sense to me)

    neil, (edited ) to random

    Not that we were planning on going anytime soon anyway, but Sandra and I were chatting about holidays and felt that the uncontrolled gun culture and rampant radical "Christianity" seeking to erase gay and trans people in the USA means America is off the list for now.

    We have had some lovely holidays there, and we would love to ride the Amtrak from coast to coast, but daily reports of mass shootings and vile policies don't make it attractive currently.

    (Edit: not just pro-gun policy.)

    steve,
    @steve@mastodon.nexusuk.org avatar

    @neil US has been off the list for me for a loooong time. But FWIW I can thoroughly recommend Canada - wife and I had a good (winter) honeymoon in Jasper and Lake Louise in 2014. Would love to go back. Dress appropriately though - we were skiing in -30°C :)

    steve,
    @steve@mastodon.nexusuk.org avatar

    @neil Yes, flew into Calgary, drove to Banff for one night, then drove straight up the Icefields Parkway the next day, to a log cabin just outside Jasper where we had a few nights. Then back down to Lake Louise for a week of skiing. Really good, the scenery is beautiful, the people are really nice and friendly and the food was great. As someone who's used to skiing in Europe I also really loved the way North American ski resorts work - ski anywhere instead of on piste. https://blog.nexusuk.org/2014/02/back-from-honeymoon.html

    neil, to random

    deleted_by_author

    •
    steve,
    @steve@mastodon.nexusuk.org avatar

    @neil @benhall well, my car and car charger both have SIMs... but fully expecting them to ignore the signal

    steve,
    @steve@mastodon.nexusuk.org avatar

    @neil @benhall I wasn't in the car at the time. The phone "siren" was almost a letdown TBH. :) Props to them doing 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 bilingual alerts here though.

    neil, (edited ) to random

    deleted_by_author

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    steve,
    @steve@mastodon.nexusuk.org avatar

    @neil It feels like something that should be testable without actually alerting everyone - i.e. have a "test" flag set in the message so that phones don't respond unless they are set to "test" mode. That way they could do all the testing they like with an array of phones without involving the public.

    aral, to fediverse
    @aral@mastodon.ar.al avatar

    Dear @Gargron,

    Please reevaluate your decision to incentivise centralisation on mastodon.social in the official app.

    This is the sort of design a VC-funded startup would implement, not a non-profit acting in the interests of a healthy commons.

    I’m sure you don’t want mastodon.social to become mini-Twitter and you don’t want to become mini-Musk.

    That’s not how we win this.

    More instances, not larger instances is the key.

    https://mastodon.ar.al/@feditips@mstdn.social/110233282943673558

    steve,
    @steve@mastodon.nexusuk.org avatar

    @tchambers @aral What about giving the user a choice of 5 servers with a brief summary of each?

    jwildeboer, (edited ) to random
    @jwildeboer@social.wildeboer.net avatar

    Tech bros love to whine about "The EU cookie policy" that simply doesn't exist the way they imagine it. All these popups are the most radical way to interpret the explicit consent demanded by regulations when sending data to a 3rd party or collecting personal data by the site itself. An ongoing provocation by the ad/tracker industry to blame their ruthless data hoarding on the EU.

    steve,
    @steve@mastodon.nexusuk.org avatar

    @jwildeboer @martinpallmann @kkarhan the argument would be over whether a 1st party tracking cookie is "essential"

    steve,
    @steve@mastodon.nexusuk.org avatar

    @jwildeboer @martinpallmann @kkarhan A cookie to track a session for a shopping cart would be "essential" to the operation of the site and therefore allowed. I'm not convinced a 1st party cookie to track how a user moves around the site for analytics purposes would be allowed, even if it is only 1st party, since it isn't "essential" (the site would work just fine without it).

    steve, to mastodon
    @steve@mastodon.nexusuk.org avatar

    I have never got 's media_proxy to work, so videos don't play. I had assumed that it was a problem with my Apache config... So I've just set up a new instance using Nginx instead, so I can use all the stock config files. And media_proxy doesn't work there either. !

    steve,
    @steve@mastodon.nexusuk.org avatar

    So the solution to 's media_proxy 404ing was that it turns out I didn't have installed. media_proxy uses ffmpeg, so that's a fatal error, but it doesn't bother to log it anywhere. Anyway, I now have 2 instances with working videos, so that's good.

    steve, to random
    @steve@mastodon.nexusuk.org avatar

    Another example of why the #ICO is not fit for purpose:
    "Wiza have not complied with their obligations in this instance." ... "despite contacting them on 20 March, 28 March, 11 April and 17 April 2023, I have received no response from the organisation. With this in mind, at this time I am unable to assist you further."

    So the ICO's policy is to not do any enforcement when organisations break data protection legislation but refuse to talk to the ICO about it.

    #privacy #gdpr #dpa #dataprotection

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