Djoerd @djoerd@mastodon.social

I was tasked to recover an email account for a friend, access to which was lost when their prior computer ate itself. They are in possession of prior (though not current) passwords, of security questions, and of access to the recovery email account.

After entering the verification code from the recovery email account, we received this message:

[BEGIN TRANSCRIPT]
Thanks for confirming that you can access the contact email you provided.

Unfortunately Google couldn't verify that _____@gmail.com belongs to you. Learn more about how to recover your account.
[END TRANSCRIPT]

Google's recommendation on the linked page is to give up and make a new account. No means of appeal are provided.

Unfortunately this means the loss of many years of information, connections, personal letters, and photographs.

What makes this a PSA: We _have_ the recovery email address, it _verified_ and access was _denied_.

If you are using Google as an identity centralizer, _this could happen to you_. Google has broken the compact of what a recovery email address is, and should be trusted to hold _nothing_ of value.

Me: we should have emoji domains!

Techies: Impossible, you idiot, because security.

Me: Bullshit. Emoji don't look like normal characters, there's zero risk here. Just whitelist the smileys already.

Techies: OK, you're batshit insane, we're just going to ignore you now.

Me: https://☻.302.is

JavaScript in browsers can access localhost HTTP network, even on HTTPS pages. Can run port scans, for example. https://twitter.com/davywtf/status/1131718205221822464

i have successfully done a democracy

**Shell maakt wel winst, maar betaalt geen winstbelasting in Nederland**

"Shell betaalt geen winstbelasting in Nederland, terwijl het bedrijf wel degelijk flinke winst maakt. Over de 1,3 miljard euro winst die in 2017 op Nederlandse bodem werd verdiend met onder meer benzinestations en de raffinaderij werd geen cent winstbelasting betaald, met dan…"

https://joop.bnnvara.nl/nieuws/shell-maakt-wel-winst-maar-betaalt-geen-winstbelasting-in-nederland

#opinie #nieuws #bot

Facebook doet niet wat het belooft:

https://www.bitsoffreedom.nl/2019/05/20/facebook-liegt-tegen-tweede-kamer-over-verkiezingsmanipulatie/

Over a million pro-repeal-of-net-neutrality comments were autogenerated https://medium.com/@jeffykao/more-than-a-million-pro-repeal-net-neutrality-comments-were-likely-faked-e9f0e3ed36a6

Real peoples' identities appear to have been used without their consent by the autogenerated repeal campaign https://medium.com/@AGSchneiderman/an-open-letter-to-the-fcc-b867a763850a

Google uses Gmail to track a history of things you buy — and it’s hard to delete

Google tracks a lot of what you buy, even if you purchased it elsewhere, like in a store or from Amazon.

Last week, CEO Sundar Pichai wrote a New York Times op-ed that said “privacy cannot be a luxury good.” But behind the scenes, Google is still collecting a lot of personal information from the services you use, such as Gmail, and some of it (...)
https://etraces.constantvzw.org/informations/14345

This is good to see... http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1905/S00087/report-digital-threats-to-democracy.htm but it misses a key component... the centralised global dominance that these systems implicitly represent. That is the underlying problem. Facebook's incentive to do the wrong thing is too strong, and it's far far too powerful. It's beyond the ability of any government to rein it in. We need to put it, and any similarly domineering and exploitative tech, out of business. We do that by abandoning it en masse.

So whether or not you're vegetarian or vegan, cutting down on your meat intake is a good idea for various reasons – high among them being environmental concerns and overuse of antibiotics on farms. It would be foolish to think otherwise.

The thing is, some cultures have been using meat substitutes in food for centuries. Either for religious reasons, like some schools of Buddhism, or among people who don't always have access to meat. So it can be worth following their example.

Humans are not evolved to be herbivores, and I really don't like all the people who say "go vegan" without also telling people exactly what that means. So in case anyone finds it useful, here's a little thread about meat substitutes to include in your diet, and nutrients to make sure you're getting enough of!

To remove #google fonts from Wordpress default theme Twenty Sixteen, edit the file functions.php, and make sure that the function twentysixteen_fonts_url() returns an empty string. #lifehack

"Federation does not mean decentralisation"

The Federation Fallacy by Alyssa Rosenzweig.
https://rosenzweig.io/blog/the-federation-fallacy.html

#federation #centralisation #decentralisation #mastodon
/via @cblgh

#Firefox without Librefox crawls like it's carrying a backpack full of weapons-grade Naquadah ​

But Firefox + #LibreFox feels like holy shit my internet connection speed has doubled but I know it hasn't so what the fuck was wrong with this browser before? ​

https://github.com/intika/Librefox

If you'd read one article today, please make sure is this one #IPBES https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/06/human-society-under-urgent-threat-loss-earth-natural-life-un-report

“het punt wat ik wil maken is dat door een aantal open bouwstenen van het indieweb, mijn site met die van Ton kan communiceren. Zonder tussenkomst van een derde partij die die reactie of like opslaat, monetariseert (is dat een woord?) of als data-punt opslaat voor een algoritme. “

Het kwartje valt met de Indieweb lees/schrijf bouwstenen - Digging the Digital
https://diggingthedigital.com/indieweb-lees-en-schrijf-bouwstenen/

Sadly, this is a true story and I hit the same problem multiple times in the past: "Google Is Eating Our Mail":

https://www.tablix.org/~avian/blog/archives/2019/04/google_is_eating_our_mail/

After years of insisting that DRM in HTML wouldn't block open source implementations, Google says it won't support open source implementations
https://boingboing.net/2019/04/03/i-hate-being-right-2.html

#DRM #EME #Google

Partij zo breed mogelijk maken in navolging van GOP in VS: samenbrengen keurige conservatieven en alt-right en zo VVD leegeten. Berekenend: clickbait voeren aan nieuwsmedia. Opnieuw met succes. Fijne paasdagen. https://twitter.com/lamyaea/status/1119506874146148355