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 moral and social 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)

Sparda doch offenbar nicht.

(Zur GLS: fun fact, bei der ddg-Suche “gls anthroposophie” ist gleich das dritte Ergebnis dieser Feddit-Thread vom Januar: https://feddit.org/post/7263045)

HLI von GNU Talern. Sehr Interessant!

Stallman has described the program as “designed to be anonymous for the payer, but payees are always identified.”[11] In a paper published in Security, Privacy, and Applied Cryptography Engineering, GNU Taler is described as meeting ethical considerations – the paying customer is anonymous while the merchant is identified and taxable.

Dahero: Sollte bei euch irgendwann ein Wechsel der Bank anstehen (z.B. weil die alte die Gebühren erhöht), schaut bei den Kandidaten auch darauf, ob sie Wero unterstützen. Bonus natürlich, wenn es eine Genossenschaftsbank ist, wie z.B. die Sparda-Banken.

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politically/metaphorically whatever, fuck talking about euthanizing people

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.

As the article writes, matters are really gross.

Whatever happened to dhh?

I regret to inform you that, after a long struggle, he eventually lost his fight against the parasitic fungus that was taking over his brain,14 and died. The exact timeline is unclear, but we suspect he succumbed to his illness sometime in 2020.

A morbid side-effect of his condition is that his body is still alive, walking around, delivering keynote addresses at confs and screeds on social media. Yet he exists only as a macabre meat puppet, his sinews pulled taught, controlled entirely by the brain parasite he contracted from a WhatsApp group chat. This state of affairs is upsetting, and confusing, but it bears repeating: the man we knew and loved as dhh is gone.

With permissive licenses, companies can co-opt the fruit of volunteer labour to build a proprietary fork. With sufficient resources, they can bring that fork to wide adoption, leading users and potential contributors away from the free ecosystem. This is why I vastly prefer copyleft licenses, either GPL 3.0 or AGPL 3.0, and preferentially AGPL, given how many things nowadays run as web services. Always remember: The GPL is what gave us OpenWrt.

Also in contributing, I strongly prefer projects under a copyleft license. That’s because of this:

People who contribute to the development of a program released with a permissive license must be aware that the program could become proprietary at any time. For example, when a company hires the original team of developers.

https://docs.codeberg.org/getting-started/licensing/#copyleft-vs.-permissive

Erste Erkenntnis: Der Wechsel in die Wirtschaft bleibt die Ausnahme. Nur Christian Lindner, Wolfgang Schmidt (SPD) und Volker Wissing (FDP) streben (bislang) dorthin. Lindner ist bereits für die Stiftung Familienunternehmen (Kuratorium) und die [zu Axel Springer gehörende] Stepstone Group (Shareholder Board) aktiv und strebt einen Beratungsjob bei der Consultingfirma Teneo an, der von der Regierung genehmigt werden muss. Schmidt will eine Beratungstätigkeit bei Microsoft (“Technology & National Security Advisory Council”) aufnehmen, darf das wegen einer Karenzzeit aber nicht vor Ende März 2026. Wissing möchte für die Beratungsfirmen Christ Capital und Joschka Fischer & Company tätig werden. Ob die Bundesregierung das ohne eine Zwangspause durchwinkt, ist nicht bekannt.

Zweite Erkenntnis: Elf der siebzehn Kabinettsmitglieder sind weiterhin in der Politik tätig – die meisten als Abgeordnete im Deutschen Bundestag, darunter Olaf Scholz, Karl Lauterbach und Nancy Faeser. Einzig SPD-Verteidigungsminister Boris Pistorius behielt einen Kabinettsposten. Andere zog es ins Ausland: Annalena Baerbock ist heute Präsidentin der UN-Vollversammlung in New York, Robert Habeck arbeitet als Außenpolitik-Analyst am Dänischen Institut für Internationale Studien in Kopenhagen.

Wobei bei Baerbock noch daran erinnert sei, dass sie, um an ihren UN-Job zu kommen, die hochangesehene Helga Schmid ausgebootet hat. Und das als eine der Gegenleistungen für die Zustimmung der Grünen zur Lockerung der Schuldenbremse, wo man sicher auch etwas anderes hätte fordern können. Dafür ist Habecks Entscheidung, sich (und das Land) nicht an die Wirtschaft zu verkaufen und stattdessen akademisch tätig zu sein, die redlichste von allen, die da aus der deutschen Politik ausgeschieden sind.

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

Awesome work, thanks for sharing!

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.