Glad to get a response. I was starving for feedback.

I probed into a closed-source Android app that’s state-endorsed which collects sensitive personal info (and a touch of Art.9 data), and contains undisclosed trackers. Not only is it closed-source but the license prohibits reverse engineering, thus pro-actively blocking data subjects from understanding how their data is processed, consequently breaking a lot of transparency and fairness guidelines. I will expose this in greater detail eventually.

AFAICT, the GDPR just vaguely says be transparent and be fair. The EDPB published a couple lengthy guidelines covering what that means. CSS seems to quite starkly violate many of those guidelines. EDPB guidelines are not legally binding. But GDPR Art.5(2) places the burden on data controllers to prove fair and transparent processing:

The controller shall be responsible for, and be able to demonstrate compliance with, paragraph 1 (‘accountability’).

The EU and UK will change the law long before they ban closed source software.

Perhaps, but the discussion should happen because I’m sure they need to draw lines. IMO it’s inevitable. It would likely be argued that “software code is far from being a simple plain understandable language to most people”, but the sensible compromise that I can imagine being reasonably forced is: publish the code, or publish a detailed statement of everything that app does with personal data. And if the latter turns out to dominate that’s still a big stride from today’s reality. As it stands right now transparency and fairness is a complete joke as soon as user-executed closed source apps come into play. It’s a glaring loophole.

It is just not economically viable for them to interact with the rest of the world.

Worth noting that the GDPR does not imply the need for all 4 software freedoms… just the code inspection freedom. I’m not convinced that would have any notable harm on the economy.

I also cannot imagine a ban on reverse-engineering prohibition clauses having a noteworthy negative impact on the economy. It would be an injustice to not have a rule or guideline that says effectively “data subjects have a right to reverse engineer apps that process their data”.

I don’t recall exactly what I used it for, but one day, out of the blue, my account was deleted. Maybe due to a dormancy policy?

I think that’s where I discovered some radio related stuff, like a streaming radio and a schedule where people could sign up to broadcast at certain times. But I only tinkered with it every few months or so.

I heard about someone else getting deleted from SDF without reason. They were a digital rights activist so maybe SDF had something against their movement.

I’m not sure what the word “spread” means here. Seems to have a specific meaning.

I use the KOMA packages. So I tweak the DIV parameter as a final step in my doc creation. I start with trying DIV=8 and DIV=80 to see how many pages it works out to at both extremes. Then I play with numbers to ideally ensure the text reaches the bottom of an even numbered page (assuming I will print on both sides). It would be useful if a LaTeX tool could optimize the DIV for me. But at least I can tune things to give the biggest margins for a fixed number of full pages.

If DIV=14 produces a widow, then I’ll try DIV=15 but if 15 has a dramatic effect and wastes ½ a page, then I will go back to 14 and try to look for a place where text can be shortened to remove a line. I don’t understand that code but I might try increasing \widowpenalty if shortening text is difficult.

What I love about this article is that it concretely demonstrates how the EFF gives zero shits about how Cloudflare has MitMd ~¼ of all the world’s web traffic for the past ~5—8 years. Not a single article in the EFF’s history of blogs or campaigns about that. But they get very loud when govs do it in a way that compromises substantially less than ¼ of the world’s web traffic.

Any interception is fucked up. As is EFF’s double standard. EFF has always been hyper focused on gov snooping with a blind eye on corp surveillance (when corps are sharing their info with govs without restraint).