@clacke Ehh. I said I agree with Drew's points. That doesn't mean he's the baseline I'm using.

Whether people are generally nicer than on Twitter (again, *really low bar*) isn't the question; I agree that they are.

The question is whether the *format* of Twitter is a good one. My answer is very much "no". You're welcome to disagree. Twitter is designed to be a dopamine network. The fediverse copied twitter. Ergo, the fediverse is designed to be a dopamine network.

https://drewdevault.com/2022/07/09/Fediverse-toxicity.html

I don't disagree with a lot of this. I think Fosstodon in particular is better than many other places (and I mostly stick to the local timeline), but... I've been thinking about leaving for a while. Still not sure.

@StroomAfwaarts Sure - as I've said elsewhere, I'm skeptical of the idea that human extinction is likely to occur within the next century.

But even if, say, 50% of the global food supply goes away, that's still a *huge problem* for a *lot* of people, even before factoring in the knock-on effects on transportation and imports/exports.

It *is* a threat to billions of people, but not the species. I think that justifies calling it an extinction-level threat, but that's inherently subjective.

https://doctorow.medium.com/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors-bc93f471b9c8

This is important. Very, *very* important.

Like, "human extinction"-level important.

> John Deere’s decision to build ag-tech that can be remotely controlled [and] disabled, along with its [total monopoly], means that anyone who compromises its system puts the world’s food-supply at risk.

> John Deere has extraordinarily terrible information security.

This is great. So, so great.

@minervissa The issue is that their tractors are, themselves, an attack vector. By design.

Because they want to be able to exploit the people they're selling to.

This isn't a mistake on their part, or them not realizing the consequences of their actions. This is a deliberate act of *evil* for profit.

Profit isn't inherently evil, but there's something about doing evil *for the sake* of profit that makes it even worse.

@Tay0 Personally, I don't think it's terrible here right now at all. There's a ton of problems, and a lot of pointless suffering, all of which NEED to be addressed ASAP, but *on the whole*, I think America is a net positive for (most) citizens.

My sole concern right now is whether it's getting *better* or *worse*. Certain trends indicate the answer is worse: the increasing concentration of corporate power, worsening corruption, dismantling of civil rights, radicalization, ...

@Tay0 (Of note: net positive doesn't mean *great*. It means that if the government were to implode tomorrow, most citizens would be worse off.)

@Graycot I just need to make sure to read *three* great books (instead of two) *and* go to another concert on one day in the future, so I have an even better one :D

How was your day?

@Graycot Today was terrible, actually :(

Because yesterday was the GREATEST DAY OF MY LIFE.

So now, every day, there will be a constant background hum, "2022-06-26 was better."

@atomicpoet There's not billions of hours of creativity on YouTube. There's a small percentage of *awesomeness*, a slightly larger percentage of goodness, and a vast majority of literal trash.

Though, even if only 1% of it is good, that's still a *lot*. I hope it doesn't disappear, I just think "literal tragedy for the human race" is a *tad* too strong.

@theavidhorizon @TheEvilSkeleton Not quite; there are practical options.

Security is possible. The failure of a single model does not prove otherwise.

Absolute security is actually quite *trivial*: turn off your computer, and never turn it back on.

The hard part is getting the functionality *without* the risk. Flatpak errs on the side of greater risk, functionality, and performance. Other models do the opposite.

My issue is only that people *pretend* flatpak is secure. It's not *meant* to be

@dajbelshaw Trick question: all four.

@TheEvilSkeleton The claim about security is flat out wrong.

File system access *is* full access.

If you can write to the file system, you can write a script, mark it executable, and tweak ~/.profile etc to run it on startup. This doesn't even require being able to mark a file executable, because you can simply add e.g. 'python malicious.py' to the end of the login script.

@TheEvilSkeleton More generally: anything that an application outside of flatpak can do, or anything inside of ANY of your "sandboxes" can do, can be done by *EVERY* one of your "sandboxes".

Heck, the easier option: write a small python script to listen for local text on a TCP port, and add starting it to .profile. In the malicious flatpak, write arbitrary commands to that port if it's open. If it's not, just wait until the next time the user reboots.

@TheEvilSkeleton Requiring extra steps is *not* increasing security. It's security theater.