• 0 Posts
  • 34 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: June 11th, 2023
  • 00@kbin.socialtoTechnology@beehaw.org•Making sense of the EU’s fight for user-replaceable smartphone batteries
    6·
    1 year ago

    A manufacturer can easily argue his device is intended for water immersion or intended to be washable. And the exception is fulfilled.

    But the text says:

    to be used, for the majority of the active service of the appliance

    While a phone might be intended to be able to withstand rain and slight immersion, its not intended to be used in such an environment for the majority of its active service. Nobody is actually going to believe that imo.

    Only if someone starts a motion that this would not be legal, then they can start the argument I mentioned above. And that’s all it takes.

    For some time now the EU has shown a willingness to bite tech companies in such matters. I hope the EU keeps doing that and extends that willingness. But yeah, for now we can only guess. Although I do think manufacturers wont try to weasel out of this, and if they do, i hope they get bitten.

  • 00@kbin.socialtoTechnology@beehaw.org•Making sense of the EU’s fight for user-replaceable smartphone batteries
    16·
    1 year ago

    To quote the actually adopted text:

    (38) […] A portable battery should be considered to be removable by the end-user when it can be removed with the use of commercially available tools and without requiring the use of specialised tools, unless they are provided free of charge, or proprietary tools, thermal energy or solvents to disassemble it […]

    (39) To ensure the safety of end-users, this Regulation should provide for a limited derogation for portable batteries from the removability and replaceability requirements set for portable batteries concerning appliances that incorporate portable batteries and that are specifically designed to be used, for the majority of the active service of the appliance, in an environment that is regularly subject to splashing water, water streams or water immersion and that are intended to be washable or rinseable. This derogation should only apply when it is not possible, by way of redesign of the appliance, to ensure the safety of the end-user and the safe continued use of the appliance after the end-user has correctly followed the instructions to remove and replace the battery. Where the derogation applies, the product should be designed in such a way as to make the battery removable and replaceable only by independent professionals, and not by end-users.

    This is absolutely not the same as having an IP rating. A portable toaster could have an IP rating, but that doesn’t mean it’s intended to be submersed a lot in its life time.

  • 00@kbin.socialtoTechnology@beehaw.org•How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse)
    3·
    1 year ago

    But if Meta enters the space and siphons off a bunch of users, there’s no reason the rest of us can’t continue here as before, without it. It may be a relatively small community but it can still function.

    It could lead to fracturing. If, for example, different forks of the software showed it with varying degrees of giving into Metas direction, that could fracture the community. Or simply the question of how to cope with the new imbalance.

    You cant have a curve ball being thrown into traffic and expect your car comes out fine just because you are closing your eyes.

  • 00@kbin.socialtoTechnology@beehaw.org•What browser extensions do you use?
    1·
    1 year ago

    Sure, but there’s no other alternatives to it, at least none which give the same matrix/grid style editor. I’m willing to accept the potential attack surface caused by running an unmaintained addon, as it currently does reduces it far more than i would think increase.

    Fair, for me personally running a privacy oriented addon that is unmaintained and thus cant keep up with new developments seems not worth it. But I get your point. I wish uMatrix wasnt abandoned.

    i’ve never seen this occur

    uBlock Origin isnt just an adblocker, but a wide spectrum blocker. It wouldnt necessarily show itself by ads suddenly appearing. At least, thats what Gorhill himself says.

  • 00@kbin.socialtoTechnology@beehaw.org•Kev Quirk, one of the admins of Fosstodon (a Mastodon instance), destroys Meta in an email exchange.
    8·
    1 year ago

    More freely available content would be great, wouldn’t it?

    I doubt most people moved to the fediverse simple because of better content. Personally I didn’t. And quantity doesn’t mean quality.

    And certainly they are likely to be data-hungry greedy shit, but there is a chance that they are actually good ideas - there are actual people working at meta after all.

    Contributions are open for these people. But the moment the contributions are facilitated through Meta, they represent Metas business interests.

    What are the downsides?

    Control. Meta could swamp the fediverse and just because its open source the current platforms wouldnt necessarily continue to exist in the same way they currently do. We could see even bigger fragmentation or breaks, some Admins might feel forced to federate with Metas service, leading to the currently existing community breaking up.

    But maybe, just maybe, goals align here, and Meta can make money and improve the Fediverse and the Internet with it.

    Imo the last years has proven, without a doubt, that those things simply do not align.

    To conclude: We have seen these things before and they havent ended well. People here seem to undererstimate the power Meta has and the impact that this power has. Even if all current instances were to defederate from Meta, simple association, user demand caused by an influx of Meta users and hard to guess power dynamics would make the fediverse a far different place than it currently is. To make a comparison: you cant drop the gravity well of a black hole into a small, complex planetary system and expect it to be unaffected.