Just an observation, but this California meme seems like the go-to talking point for anti AI regulation crowd lately.

That's a weird comparison, hadn't heard that one yet.

I'm very much in favour of regulating (and heavily taxing) AI. But I very much dislike silly warning labels that miss the point. Owning wooden furniture is not carcinogenic. Inhaling tons of wood dust (e.g. from sanding wood in a poorly ventilated room) could be carcinogenic. But putting such warning labels on furniture is just ridiculous scaremongering.

It's not even a good argument. Studies have demonstrated it reduces toxic chemicals in the body, and also deters companies from using the toxic chemicals in their products.

The AGPL accomplishes the same thing, except there is no ambiguity and you never have to wonder "could I be sued for using this software?"

> I don't really see how it's possible to mitigate client compromise

Easy: pass laws requiring chat providers to implement interoperability standards so that users can bring their own trusted clients. You're still at risk if your recipient is using a compromised client, but that's a problem that you have the power to solve, and it's much easier to convince someone to switch a secure client if they don't have to worry about losing their contacts.

You seem to think the government wants your messages to be private and would "pass laws" to this effect.

Methinks you put far too much faith in the government, at least from my understanding of the history of cybersecurity :)

> Easy: pass laws requiring chat providers to implement interoperability standards so that users can bring their own trusted clients.

In Europe that's called the Digital Markets Act.

That's not permissionless afaik. "Users" can't really do it. It's frustrating that all these legislations appear to view it as a business problem rather than a private individual's right to communicate securely.

Right, I get what you mean.

But in a way, I feel like sometimes it makes sense to not completely open everything. Say a messaging app, it makes sense to not just make it free for all. As a company, if I let you interoperate with my servers that I pay and maintain, I guess it makes sense that I may want to check who you are before. I think?

We probably can't make it free for all, but for something like a messaging app, we also need to recognize that it isn't optional to function in society. It should be regulated more like a utility:

- Facebook can still control the identity, but there needs to be a legal recourse for getting banned, and their policies can't discriminate against viewpoints, for example

- The client specs should be open so that an alternate client can be implemented (sort of like how Telegram is currently)

Telegram isn't E2EE by default in the first place (and isn't E2EE for group messages at all).

I meant the platform openness aspect, that you are allowed to use alternate clients, but the identity is centralized E2EE is largely independent of this choice.

> but there needs to be a legal recourse for getting banned

Agreed.

> The client specs should be open so that an alternate client can be implemented

An example that comes to mind is Signal, where they don't want that. They get a lot of criticism for it of course, but I think it the reasoning actually makes sense: in terms of security, allowing third-party clients is a security risk. If your threat model is "people who risk their life using it", it makes sense, right?

Under the EU's Digital Markets Act, WhatsApp is considered a gatekeeper (Signal is not) and has to be open to interoperability. It seems like they do audit the implementations in order to make sure that the security is not too bad. Which makes sense again, but has a cost. For Meta, that's fine. For Signal... I don't know.

Also WhatsApp will - if I understand correctly - make it very clear that you are talking to someone on a third-party client (and again they get a lot of criticism for that). But I think it makes sense... If WhatsApp was so open that every second client was pretty much a spyware, that would defeat the purpose of E2EE messaging.

Not that I strongly disagree, but just saying that it seems... complicated.

I was intending that the alternate client should exist to function as an escape hatch. I fully expect most people will still use the default one, just like how people used the official reddit/telegram client when third party ones were available. The existence of an alternative constrains how much Facebook can enshittify the experience.

E2EE is about secure transport between the endpoints. What happens to the message after the endpoint is not something an app can feasibly enforce. Having control of the clients can at most do things like enforcing deletes, which IMO is not a good idea anyway.

> every second client was pretty much a spyware

Very few people will actually use one since the official app won't be outwardly too hostile, and those who do should be sufficiently discerning.

I don't think that it can work like that. If you make it fully open, you don't know what can happen. It cannot improve the security, it can only worsen it.

Suddenly you go from people using WhatsApp to people using random apps that you have no idea about, I think it's a step backward.

The "escape hatch", IMO, is an alternative messenger (like Signal). If Meta makes WhatsApp really bad, people can just switch to Signal. It's infinitely easier than moving away from AWS or the Microsoft Suite. The lock-in effect is really just that people can't be arsed to install it.

I think that the mere existence of Signal already forces Meta to keep WhatsApp relatively good. And to be fair, around me people like WhatsApp better because it has features they want and that Signal doesn't have.

You think that's bad? Grugnar charge 80% to sell rocks in front of cave, but Grugnar killed by Bugluk and then cave belong to Bugluk. Bugluk eat you and take rocks if you try sell in front of cave.

I'm replying to the statement that 30% was always a bad deal, by providing an example that shows that it was a clear improvement on the market of mobile development (as others did the same in this comments section).

In your cavemen logic the closest example would be that nobody killed the first guy; he was forced out of business because a new cave opened nearby and they were selling rocks much cheaper.

Yes, and that is also excessive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

I have to respond to your point, though. Whether 30% cut is excessive depends on whether devs feel like they are getting a good deal. As far as I can tell, game developers don't seem to complain about Steam cut very much, it seems like the value you get is worth it.

For example, this thread https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/10wvgoo/do_you_think... seems like majority is positive about it, even though people debate. When Apple tax is brought up, there's almost never even a discussion there, it's pretty universally hated.

Apple seems to have almost adveserial relationship to its developers. I deploy to App Store and I feel like I'm getting screwed. Even compared to Google, which takes the same cut, but does bahave a lot more nicely to its developers.

I'm not judging that, it just seems to contradict the "But Steam shows us another model..." sentence, so I'm trying to make sense of that.

You're right, I didn't know it was 30%.

Checking an LLM, it sounds like they more or less all charge 30%. That's shit.

I will never understand this from software engineers/tech people in general. That demographic knows how technology works, and are equipped to see exactly where and how Microsoft is taking advantage of them, and how the relationship is all take and zero give from their end. These people are also in the strongest position to switch to Linux.

The only explanation that makes sense to me is that there's an element of irrationality to it. Apple has a well known cult, but Microsoft might have one that's more subtle? Or maybe it's a reverse thing where they hate Linux for some equally irrational reasons? That one is harder to understand because Linux is just a kernel, not a corporation with a specific identity or spokesperson (except maybe Torvalds, but afaik he's well-regarded by everyone)

Or maybe Windows just works better for their use-case? Did you consider that?

It's convenient to attribute the reason to irrationality or cult-like behavior than to actually accept the real reasons.

Who is being irrational?

Librewolf disables webgl out of the box to combat fingerprinting. You have to enable it by setting `webgl.disabled = false` in about:config, OR maybe it'll work if you add an exception for the site in settings under the tracking protection section.

The site works on my Librewolf version 146.0-2 installed via Flatpak

Probably because they don't allow their own children to use the product.

This is a fun idea, especially if you make those functions procedurally generate garbage to get them stuck

Afaik, I think the way people are making money in this space is selling courses that teach you how to sell mass produced AI slop on Amazon, rather than actually doing it