Year of the Windows desktop here we go!

(credit)

Fuck every Axel Springer Publication, which includes Politico

Can we stop needlessly sharing Elmo’s deranged utterances? The topic of social media policy (much as anything else) is too important than to concern ourselves with his weird tweets.

Relevant 39c3 talk (but dealing with civilian sattelites): Don’t look up

For Germans (and anyone who cares about German politics), suffice it to know that Politico is Springer-Presse.

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I also read it as “left=left-wing” at first, but read closely: Here, “left” is the participle of “leave”, i.e. “the populists are left reeling” (and not “the populist left is reeling”).

And, most importantly, it’s about so much more than just the banners. For example:

(1) A new GDPR loophole via “pseudonyms” or “IDs”. The Commission proposes to significantly narrow the definition of “personal data” – which would result in the GDPR not applying to many companies in various sectors. For example, sectors that currently operate via “pseudonyms” or random ID numbers, such as data brokers or the advertising industry, would not be (fully) covered anymore. This would done by adding a “subjective approach” in the text of the GDPR.

Instead of having an objective definition of personal data (e.g. data that is linked to a directly or indirectly identifiable person), a subjective definition would mean that if a specific company claims that it cannot (yet) or does not aim to (currently) identify a person, the GDPR ceases to apply. Such a case-by-case decision is inherently more complex and everything but a “simplification”. It also means that data may be “personal” or not depending on the internal thinking of a company, or given the circumstances that they have at a current point. This can also make cooperation between companies more complex as some would fall under the GDPR and others not.

(2) Pulling personal data from your device? So far, Article 5(3) ePrivacy has protected users against remote access of data stored on “terminal equipment”, such as PCs or smartphones. This is based on the right to protection of communications under Article 7 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU and made sure that companies cannot “remotely search” devices.

The Commission now adds “white listed” processing operations for the access to terminal equipment, that would include “aggregated statistics” and “security purposes”. While the general direction of changes is understandable, the wording is extremely permissive and would also allow excessive “searches” on user devices for (tiny) security purposes.

(3) AI Training of Meta or Google with EU’s Personal Data? When Meta or LinkedIn started using social media data, it was widely unpopular. In a recent study for example only 7% of Germans say that they want Meta to use their personal data to train AI. Nevertheless, the Commission now wants to allow the use of highly personal data (like the content of 15+ years of a social media profile) for AI training by Big Tech.

“We’re getting rid of the cookie banners” and “removing overly rigid regulation” is apparently how this massive proposal is being framed now, but what it chiefly does is—of course—benefit giant corporations, do little if anything for smaller companies, and fuck over people’s privacy.

Till Steffen is a German lawyer and politician of Alliance 90/The Greens who has been serving as a member of the German Bundestag since the 2021 elections, representing the Hamburg-Eimsbüttel district. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Till_Steffen)

Here’s why you’re getting enshittified: we deliberately decided to stop enforcing competition laws. As a result, companies formed monopolies and cartels. This means that they don’t have to worry about losing your business or labor to a competitor, because they don’t compete. It also means that they can handily capture their regulators, because they can easily agree on a set of policy priorities and use the billions they’ve amassed by not competing to capture their regulators. They can hold a whip hand over their formerly powerful tech workers, mass-firing them and terrorizing them out of any Tron-inspired conceits about “fighting for the user.” Finally, they can use IP law to shut down anyone who makes technology that disenshittifies their offerings.

You can take care to avoid enshittification, you can even make a fetish out of it, but without addressing these systemic failings, your individual actions will only get you so far. Sure, use privacy-enhancing tools like Signal to communicate with other people, but if the only way to get your kid to their little league game is to join the carpool group on Facebook, you’re going to hemorrhage data about everything you do to Meta.

https://pluralistic.net/2025/07/31/unsatisfying-answers/#systemic-problems

Today some 70% of Swedish workers are members of a trade union, and 90% are covered by a collective agreement.

Thank goodness America is spared all this Scandinavian negativity.

Most certainly yet another attempt to intimidate the peaceful protestors and Serbia’s society at large.

Non plus ultra: Download the video and then upload to whichever PeerTube instance you use. At least if you’re confident enough that this won’t cause you legal trouble (e.g. cases like “fair use” should be safe).

FreeTube has a neat function to download comfortably (but make sure to pick an option with both audio and video).

I LOVE Freetube, but can it be linked to?

Relevant Doctorow post: The enshittification of tech jobs (27 Apr 2025)

I think nothing stands in the way of doing this on local metal, as far as technology goes. Something similar has already been achieved for personal photo sorting, e.g. https://ente.io/

Americans hate that

It’s more the American capitalists and their indoctrinated followers who hate that.

+1 for Wero! We have to get it adopted. If anyone’s bank doesn’t support it yet, and you need to switch banks for other reasons, best include Wero support among your criteria. ING is among those banks whose support for it is the best.

Just gave it the first real try today, in the context of (a) understanding some programming topics and (b) finding opticians in my town.

Kagi is so. much. better than any of the DuckDuckGo, Google, Brave, SearXNG, Startpage, Ecosia, and what not.

They even have a search mode “Small Web” to show “results that favor noncommercial domains and topics”. Other modes include “Programming”, “Fediverse forums”, “Usenet/Archive”, “Forums” and “Academic” (to be selected under Settings/Search/Lenses).

And when Kagi accidentally does serve you some bullshit page, the button to block or de-prioritize the website in all future searches is right there. Conversely, one can give high-quality sites a higher priority in the results listings.

And one can set up regexes to automatically replace links to twitter.com or x.com by xcancel.com, or replace links to reddit.com by old.reddit.com, etc.

The monthly ~5€ for 300 searches (which I would use mostly for programming tasks while sticking to SearXNG or so for more mundane lookups), or even the ~10€ for unlimited searches, will definitely be worth it.