Sergey Shkundaleu @archit3ct@social.ssbx.dev

Today's smartphones designed to track everything. It's a joke that companies like Google and Apple selling those, they could have just given them away, since they make way more on information. Same goes for every app that you have on your phone, not hard to understand why many of these apps are free. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/05/opinion/capitol-attack-cellphone-data.html

Bill Gates never liked open systems, since the very beginning MS declared war on open source. Fast forward in today's world open source software is potentially more secure that closed systems, which could accidentally hide questionable practice, backdoors in compiled code until some researches would manage to stumble upon it. So now he pushed Oxford to "team up" with big pharma to hide all research behind IP, what a shame... This is not a story you'll find in media https://www.mintpressnews.com/bill-gates-oxford-ditched-plans-open-source-covid-19-vaccine/274698/

Free speech conducted over internet had threatened media corps, especially here, they lost their viewers to different mediums online video platforms, podcasts and so on. Now they employ an army of so called "journalists" to feed people with their fake agenda, appear relevant, they'll do everything just to bring people back and get their bonuses paid, return to investors, read this really nice piece from Glen Greenwald https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-journalistic-tattletale-and-censorship

Lovely it looks like we didn't know everything about SolarWind hack, looks like there is more... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cyber-solarwinds-china/exclusive-suspected-chinese-hackers-used-solarwinds-bug-to-spy-on-u-s-payroll-agency-sources-idUSKBN2A22K8

Massive surveillance carries no public good what so ever. It just allows government to spend millions of dollars on technology that can't help with crime prevention, because it has never been designed for such mission. China is an example of what government could do when it's not constrained by people, I don't want to live in country like that. Privacy is a human right. https://www.wired.com/story/there-are-spying-eyes-everywhere-and-now-they-share-a-brain/

They planned to build what? "Spacetime modification weapon"? https://gizmodo.com/u-s-navy-documents-discuss-creating-a-spacetime-modifi-1846139142

So there is precident when FTC required from company who misused users data to train facial recognition models to delete those as a part of the settlement. Why G and FB of the worlds were never required to delete algorithms they derived from misused data? https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-15/how-to-make-google-and-facebook-care-about-privacy

Some sad news, PinePhone looked like a really good contender, which eventually could become phone that respects users privacy and runs on Open Source software, well as many good things everything comes to an end. However I am hopeful about what future holds. Let's see. https://www.pine64.org/2021/02/02/the-end-of-community-editions/

Never liked Spotify tried multiple times, and some how it never felt home, always going back to Pandora or local music. Now they want to track what? No thank you. https://pitchfork.com/news/new-spotify-patent-involves-monitoring-users-speech-to-recommend-music/ #privacy

When it comes to health related apps, think twice before you enter any of your data, whether it's fitness tracker or something more intimate. One way or another your data could end up in wrong hands, through hacks, data leaks or just because they partner with some one like FB to sell it. When you are not paying for product you are the product. https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/13/flo-gets-ftc-slap-for-sharing-user-data-when-it-promised-privacy/ #privacy

Looks like Flutter is getting more attention, since the very beginning it looked like solid cross-platform alternative. Given that Flutter is also first class on Android and iOS it looks way better than Electron which is desktop only. Essentially with Flutter you can achieve true convergence between mobile and desktop platforms. https://snapcraft.io/blog/canonical-enables-linux-desktop-app-support-with-flutter

I guess Amazon want to become FB of the real world retail, track you everywhere you go. Any type of biometric device has serious implications on a privacy side. Surveillance capitalism at it's best. It's not about making things more convenient to you it's about ability to sell you more. No thank you. https://gizmodo.com/amazon-officially-rolls-out-touchless-palm-readers-1846176311

I've previously shared about Google removing Element app from the store, they already restored it. Now this is opposite example, same Google deliberately removed reviews from angry users who were deceived on what they can do within this app. What that is if not corruption ... https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/28/22255245/google-deleting-bad-robinhood-reviews-play-store

Unfortunately it looks like Google is squeezing open source products that doesn't share tracking information with them or does not even track people off the market. Sad story if you are still using Chromium time to upgrade. https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2021/01/chromium-sync-google-api-removed

Here we go again, Google just censored another app and removed it from PlayStore. This time it's Element, well known communication app for Matrix servers. App has nothing to do with Matrix servers and content on those servers, it's just a gateway for users to communicate on particular server. It's a messenger app with no infrastructure of it's own, thus Google used of their monopolistic position against app they don't like. Time to #dumpgoogle https://element.io/blog/element-on-google-play-store/

Tracking people is a large industry with it's own economy, it's past due to take control back in all we do. https://puri.sm/posts/mobile-app-stores-and-the-power-of-incentives/

You bought your way into Apple universe. Are you still under impression that something you paid big money for is yours, read this article then. https://puri.sm/posts/apple-users-got-owned/