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.

Licensing terms only govern the legal aspects, not social and moral aspects.

And not to forget: FUTO is evil.

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)

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Interesting, thank you. From the text here,

"As we collectively identify and validate slop across the web, Kagi’s SlopStop initiative will help transform those insights into a comprehensive, structured dataset of AI slop – an invaluable resource for training AI models.

Access to the database will be shared soon. Use this form to express your interest if you’d like to receive updates.

especially the part “an invaluable resource for training AI models”, and the absence of any community-focused language, and the fact that Kagi iirc is still operating at losses and are looking for ways to become profitable, I fear it will be essentially commercial. But who knows, and even if it will be so, that still is not to say it’s all bad.

On the one hand, that’s nice for improved Kagi results. On the other hand, I dislike how community efforts will end up being owned by a single company.

Keep organizing and slowly things will get better

Not to say such knowledge gaps can’t limit her effectiveness, but from what (little) I’ve read and heard of her, she seems to be fundamentally a community organizer and as mayor will probably work accordingly: She may or may not successfully make up for such gaps by knowing whom to trust both integrity- and competence-wise.

Not to forget: FUTO is evil.

The video he apparently got sued for.

And here a follow-up video where he repeats the trick on a freshly delivered lock (cause the company was whining about allegedly foul play).

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.

SyncThing only syncs when both devices are online at the same time.

So a comon scenario is: You change the DB on your laptop, then shut it down. You open the DB on your desktop. Since the lapotp isn’t online at the same time, you are working with the old DB version. If you change it, you have two competing versions.

I don’t know exactly what happens then; I’m facing it and am procrastinating dealing with it ^^

RSS

Poincaré? (I know, his insight somehow still came short of Einstein’s, but it’s interesting how close he came.)

One addition: On the right, “A computer from this decade?” — I think this can easily be widened to “A computer older than 15 years?” (swapping “yes” & “no”, of course). The laptop on my lap is exactly 10 years old, wasn’t high end back then, and runs OpenSUSE with KDE easily. Well, in all fairness, it’s now got 12 GB RAM, but that’s mostly for development purposes. Perhaps one could ask directly: “At least 8 GB RAM?”

I appreciate that. It’s important to note though that there’s much more wrong with their headline and subtitle than just the word “spam”. They’re trying hard to make it look as if it was really just some single peasant, who didn’t stay in his lane, abusing the powers accorded to him through modern technology, and the policymakers were so foolish as to fall for it:

One-man spam campaign ravages EU ‘chat control’ bill

A software developer from Denmark is having an outsized influence on a hotly debated law to break open encrypted apps.

They seem to think the only person allowed to have an outsized influence is Friede Springer, their owner.

Chris Hedges? A leftist with conservative-like aesthetics, a Presbyterian minister who was brought up among the rich.