Thymos

This is something I worry about all the time as well, especially since I’ve started to learn how to code and experienced how easy it is to mess up and send a list with all registered users to everyone opening a page. (This was in a test environment.)

As a user, there is no proper way I know of to verify an app’s security. Most apps are closed source, but even if you could view the code, what would you look for?

Both Apple and Google have a verification process for apps that are published in their app stores, but if these worked, we wouldn’t see this happening.

There are academic researchers working on apps and privacy as well, but it’s not like you can ask them for a report on an app you’re thinking of installing.

I think it basically comes down to trust. Check if a developer has messed up in the past and how they dealt with that, that sort of stuff. And for dating apps there is this interesting article: https://www.privacyguides.org/articles/2025/06/24/queer-dating-apps-beware-who-you-trust/#reducing-the-risks-when-using-dating-apps

It’s a long read (haven’t fully read it myself yet) and it paints a bleak picture, but that’s the world we live in today.

From the article: “Even after completing the tasks with AI, the developers believed that they had decreased task times by 20%. But the study found that using AI did the opposite: it increased task completion time by 19%.”

I’m not saying you didn’t save time, but it’s remarkable that the research shows that this perception can be false.

Oh boy, there is political drama here in the Netherlands right now.

The most right wing party in the coalition stepped out of the government because the other parties refused to sign its “strictest immigration policy ever”, so we’re heading towards elections again. Meanwhile parliament approved a law making being an illegal resident or helping one a crime. It needs to pass through the senate yet, but still. The minister of agriculture was found by a judge to abuse her power to obstruct freedom of information. There’s still no plan to solve the nitrogen pollution crisis, leading to building projects being on hold throughout the country. Against their promise of not drilling for gas in the northern province of Groningen anymore they’ve allowed it again, leading to more earthquakes. A singer was accused of antisemitism by politicians because he refused to play at a gig that had posters promoting Zionism, which led to him having to flee the country with his family because of death threats. Don’t speak out against Israel here either. There were border patrols done by a group of “activists” looking for illegals (“we found no brown people or anyone looking like that” they said), which were small and luckily stopped, but still. Then there are the government cuts in all social sectors, killing all services slowly over the years. Public transport, education, healthcare, municipal services, welfare, it’s all going downhill. And while the government still has to pay back thousands of parents it had wrongly accused of daycare fraud, the next screw-up was discovered a few months ago and they now also have to pay thousands of people on welfare for being sick because they had underpaid them for years.

The election campaign is probably gonna be a bunch of screaming matches about immigrants and refugees and name calling again even though there are far more pressing issues going on. It’s not as fascist here as it is in the US yet, but that’s only because we have a more reasonable electoral system.

I started learning Swedish yesterday. My native language is Dutch. I started by reading a pronunciation guide, but (and this is so childish) I had to put the book away for laughing so hard after reading the Swedish word for meatballs: köttbullar.

Today I will make a second attempt. I hope I can keep it contained to a short chuckle.

I just wrote a few lines of PHP and put my posts in a SQLITE database. Simple, built to last and no dependance on others.