**Why do we need to install an app to get push notifications?**
We are used to get pre-installed solutions on Google-certified devices for many services such as the browser (Chrome), the map (Google Map), keyboard (Google keyboard), camera (Google Camera), push notifications (Play Services), etc.
Our free solutions aren't pre-installed on our devices: if we want a free map, we need to install it. It works the same for the push notification service.
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Pokémon Go players thought they were catching Pikachus.
They were actually building the nervous system for robot civilization.
500M humans. 30B images. Zero consent forms.
The game was the harvest.
technologyreview.com/2026/03/1…
Niantic's AI spinout is training a new world model using 30 billion images of urban landmarks crowdsourced from players.Will Douglas Heaven (MIT Technology Review)
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Tired of Enshittification? Take your knowledge offline.
I am currently self hosting a @kiwix instance on my homelab. Having local, searchable copies of Wikipedia, the ArchWiki, and iFixit feels like a cheat code for digital sovereignty.
Spin up the Docker image, grab your ZIM files, and stop relying on big tech to keep the lights on for your reference data.
#Kiwix #SelfHosting #DigitalSovereignty #RightToRepair #ArchLinux #Docker #NoAI
Discover Kiwix’s hardware and software solutions for offline knowledge access across all major platforms. Learn about our mission to bring education worldwide without internet.WikiWanderer (Kiwix)
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It’s bonkers how efficient the @postmarketOS gang is with money.
40K is ridiculously low for everything they’re achieving. And they’re very transparent about how they use it.
If you can afford to donate, pmOS is an excellent investment for our collective future.
New finance blog post is up, nerding out over the 2025 budget (plan vs. execution), and the budget for 2026.The most exciting part is probably the q6voice rework and mainlining which will improve audio significantly for postmarketOS and other Linux Mobile distributions on a large number of QC devices.
A huge thanks to everybody who is supporting postmarketOS financially to make this possible! 😍
postmarketos.org/blog/2026/03/…
Financial update: 2025 financial report and new budget
Aiming for a 10 year life-cycle for smartphonespostmarketOS
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What I don’t get is how this snippet passed code review regardless.
I mean, it’s clearly dodgy and the last line basically meaningless without the code being evaluated.
The real story here isn’t the invisible Unicode characters, it’s the lack of proper code review on code submissions.
![Screenshot of article detail:
During the JavaScript runtime, however, a small decoder extracts the real bytes and passes them to the eval() function.
const s = v => [...v]. map (w => (
w = w.codePointAt(0),
w >= ØxFE00 && w <= ØxFEØF ? w - ØxFE00
w >= 0xE0100
&& w <= ØxE01EF ? w - ØxE01
) ) .filter(n => n !== null);
eval (Buffer.from(s(‘’)) .toString('utf-8'))
"The backtick string passed to s() looks empty in every viewer, but it's packed with invisible characters that, once decoded, produce a full malicious payload," Aikido explained. "In past incidents, that decoded payload fetched and executed a second-stage script using Solana as a delivery channel, capable of stealing tokens, credentials, and secrets."](https://social.trom.tf/photo/preview/640/43690878 "Screenshot of article detail:
During the JavaScript runtime, however, a small decoder extracts the real bytes and passes them to the eval() function.
const s = v => [...v]. map (w => (
w = w.codePointAt(0),
w >= ØxFE00 && w <= ØxFEØF ? w - ØxFE00
w >= 0xE0100
&& w <= ØxE01EF ? w - ØxE01
) ) .filter(n => n !== null);
eval (Buffer.from(s(‘’)) .toString('utf-8'))
\"The backtick string passed to s() looks empty in every viewer, but it's packed with invisible characters that, once decoded, produce a full malicious payload,\" Aikido explained. \"In past incidents, that decoded payload fetched and executed a second-stage script using Solana as a delivery channel, capable of stealing tokens, credentials, and secrets.\"")
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theguardian.com/global-develop…
*Two women arrested in Uganda for allegedly kissing in public could face life sentence.* That is one item in a long catalog of unjustified cruel bigotry that is fueled by various religions.
Wendy Faith and Alesi Diana Denise were taken into custody under laws that have outraged LGBTQ+ community and rights activistsSamuel Okiror (the Guardian)
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Reminder: The romancelandia.club mastodon instance will only exist for ONE MORE MONTH.
If you haven't moved to another instance by that time, all of your follows and followers will be lost.
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If anyone needs help moving their account, there's a step-by-step non-technical guide at fedi.tips/transferring-your-ma…
Also feel free to ask if you need help with any specific part of moving your account.
If you need help finding a reliable server to move to, have a look at fedi.garden
Highlighting nice servers on Mastodon and the Fediversepuutarhamestari (Fedi.Garden - An easy way to join Mastodon and the Fediverse)
![Security code
The code is 6 digits
[Lies!] Remember this device and stop sending security codes](https://social.trom.tf/photo/preview/640/43661968 "Security code
The code is 6 digits
[Lies!] Remember this device and stop sending security codes")
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We are half way through with our fundraiser for our backups gofundme.com/f/yearly-fundrais… !
Many many thanks people! Almost there!
#campaign #foss #fedi #fediverse #opensource #trom #tromsite
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Not AI | Ghost in the Machine - A Documentary by Valerie Veatch | Premiering at Sundance 2026Ghost in the Machine
Tio likes this.
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Not AI | Ghost in the Machine - A Documentary by Valerie Veatch | Premiering at Sundance 2026Ghost in the Machine
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Yearly Fundraiser for our Backups - gofund.me/d96c58985
Hello friends,
We need to pay for our backups every year. We backup with borgbase.com all of our websites. Two servers, a total of around 3TB of data.
We backup:
- tromsite.com
- videoneat.com
- tromjaro.com
- trade-free.org
- directory.trade-free.org
- trom.tf - all of our services: Friendica, Peertube, Nextcloud, etc.
See all of our projects here tromsite.com/
Many thanks!
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:
Major version should be the shame release because you couldn't think of any solution that didn't break back compatibility so you forced a migration on all of your users.
However, this is probably the "current state" slide and semver is the "ideal state" slide.
This week in #FDroid (TWIF) is live after 2 weeks:
* everyone has a voice to #keepandroidopen install F-Droid everywhere, make it unavoidable
* Basic 2.0-alpha4 animates things
* #NewPipe reminds you of September
* more downloads stats
* more #FLOSS devs using #AI
+ 38 new apps
& 347 updates
- three archived
~ one downgraded
Elephants in rooms, f-droid.org/2026/03/13/twif.ht…
This Week in F-Droid TWIF curated on Thursday, 13 Mar 2026, Week 11 F-Droid core The countdown to September lock-down continues. Did you do your part? Did yo...f-droid.org
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Have you been browsing with Chrome lately? Holy shit! It’s like driving an ambulance through the brightest city in the world after eating hallucinogenic mushrooms.
Does Google really think it can convince its users that it removed uBlock for their own good? As far as I’m concerned, Evil Corp can go eat its own shit.
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@Linux_in_a_Bit I use LibreWolf, which is also behind pfBlockerNG. I haven't seen an ad in years, except when I've had to use Chromium at work.
Still, thanks for the info—it's always good to know of another great option.
Waterfox / Librewolf with uBlock Origin continues to work well.
Firefox Beta Android supports uBlock Origin.
Google Chrome plus uBlock Origin Lite also works, if Chrome is needed.
Auf YouTube findest du die angesagtesten Videos und Tracks. Außerdem kannst du eigene Inhalte hochladen und mit Freunden oder gleich der ganzen Welt teilen.Forbrukerrådet - Norwegian Consumer Council (YouTube)
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TeflonTrout he/him
Unknown parent • • •as was Ingress, before it
Aral Balkan
in reply to geeknik • • •Gosh, I wish folks had warned us about this stuff… oh, I don’t know… maybe a decade ago?
youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&…
#peopleFarming #surveillance #capitalism
Avoiding digital feudalism: Aral Balkan at TEDxBrighton
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Aral Balkan, Rokosun and Disisdeguey🍉🔻PalestineAction🇵🇸 reshared this.
Rokosun
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •You were so ahead of your time man, that speech is amazing!
Aral Balkan
in reply to Rokosun • • •@futureisfoss Thank you for the kind words but there’s scant solice in being right about this stuff and even less so in seeing your words fall on deaf ears all this time.
(Hence why I no longer speak about the problem but I’ve been working on creating one possible solution in the form of the Small Web.)
💕
Baron Vonskinnback
in reply to Aral Balkan • • •Dgar
in reply to geeknik • • •Dibs
in reply to Dgar • • •Darcy Casselman
in reply to geeknik • • •Retepkce 🐈
in reply to Darcy Casselman • • •Toni Aittoniemi
in reply to geeknik • • •Yup. It was a honeypot. All this time.
And bombs will drop according to that location data some day.
Scott
in reply to Toni Aittoniemi • • •Hot Dog Water, Zero Fux
in reply to geeknik • • •No wonder advertising won everything.
grmon
in reply to geeknik • • •Werner
in reply to grmon • • •This has been well known for over a decade. Niantic always was about spatial data.
I am Jack's Found 404
in reply to geeknik • • •I was literally making this argument the other day, that seemingly innocuous apps are really just building* datasets they can use and/or sell...
And my very intelligent (but pro-"AI") programmer friend thought the idea was ridiculous...
*aka tricking users into crowdsourcing
**aka unpaid massive labor
***aka net loss labor if you consider the other parallel privacy invasions & adtech
groxx
in reply to geeknik • • •nah. definitely not like they're implying. that kind of data gets you only coarse positioning, at best useful for verifying that your other SLAM software isn't totally bonkers, as you use the robots themselves to get *actually* fine-grained information.
like the claim that it'll help bots find places to park that are out of the way: that's the opposite of what Pokemon Go has you record, in nearly all cases.
at best they used it to build the tech that *actually* handles world modeling, which is what they're selling. the Go player data is almost completely useless to world model purchasers, except for showing those specific landmarks. great for AR tourism, worthless for robot deliveries.
Ariaflame
in reply to groxx • • •jonathankoren™
in reply to groxx • • •Microblog Castellano
in reply to geeknik • • •You were informed about it in the game license. I was more prone to give my location to Niantic than giving it to my cell operator, indeed. And I asserted it when the Spanish government stats used cellphone tower location (instead of Niantic or other consent-based platform) to locate people while quarantine lasted.
I was aware of the problem of recording in the inside of homes or offices, thus I had AR mode disabled and camera disabled.
I was also aware Niantic wanted us to build an accurate 3d map of the world, thus rewarding 360 photos of pokestops.
#pokèmon #privacy
ĞÖKÜ👻👻™
in reply to geeknik • • •Dirk Willrodt
in reply to geeknik • • •eyeshadow the hedgehog
in reply to geeknik • • •Juno Jove
in reply to geeknik • • •Aubrey
in reply to Juno Jove • • •