Notices by Mark Stosberg (markstos@urbanists.social)

@billstatler It's not universally good or bad. The question will be how much it's useful vs confusing for any organization, because the warning doesn't specify what policy was violated, what content violated the policy of what exact rule or patterns were matched to check for a policy violation.

There's also the part of the message that says the issue with our organization's policies, but Google created and enabled these policies without our approval, furthering confusion.

Google does not disclose exactly how their rule matches that warns users about emails that mention gender identity, but the content that triggered it was a sentence similar to this:

"We’ve also removed gender preference as a default field in an effort to reduce the amount of information we’re requesting."

Admins have options to change the default from Warn to Block or Allow.

#google #privacy #uspol

I'm a Google Workspace admin, and a team member sent me a screenshot showing that a message they wanted to send was being blocked because it violated an organizational policy-- which was news to me-- I hadn't put in place to block messages based on their content.

Turns out Google Workspace now warns by default when the message content mentions gender identity.

#google #privacy #politics

Time to learn another configuration language: KDL, apparently pronounced "cuddle" is supposed to deal with some of pitfalls of XML, JSON, YAML and TOML.

The author kindly asks that you stop sending them to a link to the XKCD "One more standard..." comic strip.

https://kdl.dev/

#Linux

The Framework 16 laptop detects when it's booted partially assembled. It boots into a special mode to walk you through completing the assembly. The screen updates to reflect your progress and prompt the next step. This requires no tools to complete. Impressive! Watch:

@frameworkcomputer

#Framework #FrameworkLaptop #Framework16 #Linux #Video

@carmensandiego When stealing fedoras, please @ the victim.

Otherwise, the fedora search space will be exponentially larger. It could be, like, anywhere in the world.

For those #Linux users who use the #Sway window manager, have you tried Jay?

Jay just released 1.10.0.

https://github.com/mahkoh/jay/releases/tag/v1.10.0

Same vibes as Sway, but in Rust but without an attempt to maintain compatibility. For example, the config file is in TOML.

#JayWM #Wayland

@aral So what browser do you recommend?

@vancura @aral @Vivaldi That’s the recommended alternative to Firefox, a browser engine made by Google and reskinned by Vivaldi?

@vancura @aral @Vivaldi There’s no perfect browser, and it’s good to hold Firefox to a high standard along with all the others, but context matters.

It seems like there are two primary options: either a browser based on Chromium or one based on Firefox.

And the Chromium family already has more than 70% market share, creating a kind monoculture.

Maybe one day there will be a strong third option based on LadyBird or something else, but that’s not today

@vancura @aral @Vivaldi Orion, WebKit-based, is interesting. It claims to support some Firefox and Chrome extensions.

@ozzelot @Ninji Once you get through the dangerous slightly-out-date era, there are years of calm waters when you are so out of date even the exploits quit supporting your OS.

Browsers are tinkering with ways to display multiple web apps at once: An AI chatbot in a sidebar or "workspaces".

A more flexible solution that allows you to mix and match windows as you please are tiling window managers like Sway for Linux or Amethyst for macOS. They support many virtual desktops first-class options for supporting windows side-by-side.

https://swaywm.org/
https://ianyh.com/amethyst/

Shouldn't need different ways to switch normal apps & web-apps within a browser.

#Linux

355 small and mid-sized towns in the US now have AI-generated newsletter sites that appear to local. They make money by summarizing local news and adding ads.

Here’s the story of how investigating one such site led to discovering a whole network of doppelgängers with questionable practices.

https://limestonepostmagazine.com/today-in-bloomington-not-local-newsletter/

#ai #journalism

Bookshop.org launches a way to buy #ebooks that supports local bookstores

…with the catch that they don’t support eReaders. Reading on iOS, Android and the web is supported.

I will not be surprised if Apple and Google earn more from eBook purchase than the local bookshops do.

https://bookshop.org/ebooks

Tip for getting a change you want into an #opensource project:

Given limited time to triage a busy project, maintainers are more likely to focus their time on "pull requests"--- proposed code changes-- than bug reports and feature requests.

Yes, A contributor risks more time by creating a PR that will get ignored or rejected, but they also waste time assuming some volunteering is standing by implement their feature request or fix their bug. Sometimes they are, often the aren't.

#coding

The #Nix docs have a reputation for being not-great, and I got to experience that after reviewing the "Ad hoc Shell Environments" page and attempting to try some things there:

https://nix.dev/tutorials/first-steps/ad-hoc-shell-environments

```
❯ nix-shell -p nodejs-20_x
error: getting status of '/nix/var/nix/daemon-socket/socket': Permission denied
```

Now, why would creating an env specific to my current user require access to a socket owned by another user?

I read somewhere that to solve this #Nix error I needed to add my current user to the `nix-users` group, which I did, but then I got another error:

```
❯ nix-shell -p nodejs-20_x
error: creating directory '/nix/store': Permission denied
```

Again, I'm not running the command as root or with `sudo`, so it's unclear why Nix insists on attempting to run as another user.

`nix-shell` could also provide more useful error messages than "permission denied".

Not a great first impression.

So I created that directory and there's a new error:

```
❯ nix-shell -p nodejs-20_x
error: creating directory '/nix/store/.links': Permission denied
```

Created that directory, and there's another error:

```
❯ nix-shell -p nodejs-20_x
error: creating directory '/nix/var/nix/temproots': Permission denied
```

#Nix has an missed opportunity to here to check for these error states and produce a more useful diagnostic message than "permission denied".

I manually resolved those directory issues with #nix, only to reveal a new category of error:

```
error: file 'nixpkgs' was not found in the Nix search path (add it using $NIX_PATH or -I)
```

Sorry, if trying Nix was supposed to a step towards using #NixOS, the out of the box experience has been poor for me on Arch Linux.

Apparently this issue might be that first `nix-channel` needs to download something? That could have been done automatically or the diagnostic message could say that.