@bender@twtxt.net To add some context, I’m not one to write open letters often, nor do I expect to become some kind of martyr, the European Union will unite over, to fight Google.

However Google did loose to Epic Games in European courts, that determined Google maintains a monopoly over its Play Store, restricting competition and developers choices. And pretty much right after courts determined this, Google gives them the middle finger and proposes changes, that would destroy F-droid - the biggest and really the only competing app store, that’s actually competing and not just taking the apps from Googles Play Store and passing them on.

There are many more qualified and likable parties, who already reached out to them, with these concerns, I just think it’s important everyone impacted by this, politely contacts them too, to convey this is not just some niche non-issue, a few IT nerds made up.

@thecanine@twtxt.net alright, a canned reply. Better than nothing! (or equal to nothing, LOL).

@movq@www.uninformativ.de I submitted it via the form on their website (https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/contact-dma-team_en) and got the following response:

Dear citizen,

Thank you for contacting us and sharing your concerns regarding the impact of Google’s plans to introduce a developer verification process on Android. We appreciate that you have chosen to contact us, as we welcome feedback from interested parties.

As you may be aware, the Digital Markets Act (‘DMA’) obliges gatekeepers like Google to effectively allow the distribution of apps on their operating system through third party app stores or the web. At the same time, the DMA also permits Google to introduce strictly necessary and proportionate measures to ensure that third-party software apps or app stores do not endanger the integrity of the hardware or operating system or to enable end users to effectively protect security.

We have taken note of your concerns and, while we cannot comment on ongoing dialogue with gatekeepers, these considerations will form part of our assessment of the justifications for the verification process provided by Google.

Kind regards,
The DMA Team

@movq@www.uninformativ.de I am betting he will not. The letter was not focused, nor used, politician’s “lingo”. If it was sent via email then it will be even easier to dismiss. I wish I was not such a cynic! 😩

@thecanine@twtxt.net Got any responses from any politicians? 🤔 (Assuming you send this letter directly to them, of course.)

@bender@twtxt.net So far so good 😊 I’ll let you know how things go though!

@prologic@twtxt.net is iMessages iCloud synchronization disabled? Applications might stop working, and functionality rendered worthless the more you block.

@klaxzy@klaxzy.net Yes, if Germany actually opposes this. But so far, there’s only one guy that said something on a press conference. He does speak for the “CDU” party, which is “in command” at the moment, but that’s about it. I don’t trust these people – not until I’ve actually seen them voting against Chat Control. 🥴

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Yeah, it’s lovely out there right now.

@movq@www.uninformativ.de That’s satisfying. :-) Not all my clocks are radio-controlled, though.

I’ve got a digital alarm clock from the Netherlands (no idea where I got this) and it always runs an hour late. No clue. I put it on a shelf in the workshop where it causes the least amount of confusion.

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Good glad to hear it 😄

@prologic@twtxt.net Where do I stand on “Chat Control”? How long of a response/rant do you want? 😅 It’s a disaster. As I understand it, they want to spy on me directly on my devices before encryption even happens – jfc, no, fuck off. And since there are so many devices, they want to automate the scanning, which is the worst idea you could possibly have.

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Where do you stand on this nonsense? 🧐😆🤣

@bender@twtxt.net I guess most clocks don’t support that. 😅 My wrist watch can do it, you can select it in the menu:

In general, different transmitter means different frequency and different encoding, for example these two:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DCF77
  
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_from_NPL_(MSF)

@klaxzy@klaxzy.net Why, because Germany is now listed as “opposed” on fightchatcontrol.eu? I’m not so sure. This is just one guy (Jens Spahn) saying “no we don’t want it”. That’s not an “official” stance, it’s very fragile and could change any minute. https://netzpolitik.org/2025/eu-ueberwachungsplaene-unionsfraktion-jetzt-gegen-chatkontrolle-innenministerium-will-sich-nicht-aeussern/

@klaxzy@klaxzy.net Fuxk yeah 🙌

@movq@www.uninformativ.de how do you set your clock to use a specific time signal radio station? I have one wall clock in my office, it works great, but no way to set that.

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org As the kids on imgur say: I always updoot birbs 👍

So green, so many mushrooms. 🤯

@prologic@twtxt.net Oh, I will certainly check this out! Thanks for the tip, mate! <3

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Cool! 😎 You might be interested in my own learnings and toying around with building my own container engine / tooling (whatever you wanna call it) box. I had to learn a bunch of this stuff too 😅 Control Groups, Namespaces, Process Isolation, etc.

@prologic@twtxt.net Oh, that’s cool! :-) Feeding magpies seems to be an Aussie thing, the Cutting Edge Engineering Australia videos usually also include a cute magpie feeding clip.

@bender@twtxt.net Off you go to the magpie hunt! We wanna see Florida pies!

@bender@twtxt.net See the problem is you don’t live in the “busy” enough 😂 There are roaches everywhere here! 🤣 LOL snakes too! Plovers, Magpies, Crows, Spiders, even Deer for fucks sake 😂

@prologic@twtxt.net I wouldn’t know where to look for little cockroaches, or roaches, in general! LOL. We buy seeds to feed them. But not around the neighborhood, otherwise we would have a problem. 😅

@bender@twtxt.net We have quite a few that are basically part of our friendly neighborhood. They knew we won’t chase them aware, scare them, etc. In fact some of us find little cockroaches to feed them, tose ‘em up in the air and watch them sweep in and grab the little suckers 🤣

@bender@twtxt.net Dunno 🤷

@prologic@twtxt.net something happened on this one’s neck, right? Or was it a blow of wind that ruffled the feathers?

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org @prologic@twtxt.net They’re both great 😃

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Here’s my magpie 🤣

@alexonit@twtxt.alessandrocutolo.it Thanks mate! Ah cool, now I’m curious, what did you make? :-)

You used the rubber hammer to fold the metal, not to set the rivets, right? :-? I glued cork on my wooden mallet some time ago. This worked quite good for bending. But rubber might be even better as it is a tad softer. I will try this next time, I think I have one deep down in a drawer somewhere.

@zvava@twtxt.net No HEAD requests, but regular GETs with If-Modified-Since request headers if possible: https://git.mills.io/yarnsocial/yarn/src/branch/main/internal/fetcher.go#L270

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Too bad. :-/

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Yep, there’s python3-tk and a bunch more packages with extensions.

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org

I was always under the wrong impression that Tkinter is bundled with Python.

It should be. Maybe your distro splits it off. 🤔

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Nope. I think they stayed only one year. 😢

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Nice! Are there still chicken on this field?

@movq@www.uninformativ.de I never programmed with Tkinter myself and it’s been ages that I ran a program which used it. I always thought that it looks awful. But maybe there are nicer themes these days. I just wanted to give the demo python3 -m tkinter a try, but this module doesn’t exist. I was always under the wrong impression that Tkinter is bundled with Python.

@movq@www.uninformativ.de damn! those are some fine looking chickens 😆

@prologic@twtxt.net Whoop whoop 🥳

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Xfce is nice, but it’s also mostly GTK. I don’t really know the answer yet. For now, I’ll just avoid anything that uses GTK4.

For my own programs, I might have a closer look at Tkinter. I was complaining recently that I couldn’t find a good file manager, so it might be an interesting excercise to write one in Python+Tkinter. 🤔 (Or maybe that’s too much work, I don’t know yet.)

@movq@www.uninformativ.de I was never a fan of GTK, because coming from KDE, it didn’t offer remotely as much of customizability. What are you switching to, Xfce?

@zvava@twtxt.net feeds are fetched at least every 5m (if they’ve changed)

@zvava@twtxt.net yarnd fetches the feeds roughly every ten minutes:

grep twtxt.net www/logs/twtxt.log | cut -d ' ' -f1 | tail -n 20
2025-10-04T07:00:45+02:00
2025-10-04T07:10:26+02:00
2025-10-04T07:22:43+02:00
2025-10-04T07:30:45+02:00
2025-10-04T07:40:48+02:00
2025-10-04T07:52:59+02:00
2025-10-04T08:00:07+02:00
2025-10-04T08:13:33+02:00
2025-10-04T08:23:13+02:00
2025-10-04T08:31:22+02:00
2025-10-04T08:41:29+02:00
2025-10-04T08:53:25+02:00
2025-10-04T09:03:31+02:00
2025-10-04T09:11:42+02:00
2025-10-04T09:23:11+02:00
2025-10-04T09:29:49+02:00
2025-10-04T09:36:17+02:00
2025-10-04T09:46:33+02:00
2025-10-04T09:58:40+02:00
2025-10-04T10:06:54+02:00

I suspect that the timing was just right. Or wrong, depending on how you’re looking at it. ;-)

@bender@twtxt.net Wow, you’re good.

It was an edit, within a minute or two of posting. I didn’t think anyone would notice.

That’s what I call on it. 😀

@prologic@twtxt.net woohoo! Take that, micro.crap! :-D

@movq@www.uninformativ.de exactly! 🤣

@bender@twtxt.net Who?

@bender@twtxt.net I don’t think so, but I might give it a shot when the “official” drivers no longer work at all.

@itsericwoodward@itsericwoodward.com hmmm, what was this, an edit, a deletion?

@movq@www.uninformativ.de can’t you use generic drivers? I did that for an enterprise copier/printer/scanner we used to have at work, and it worked just fine!