Sure, but it’s still a serious problem even if it’s a side channel attack.

Almost everyone rely on the OS/hardware providing some isolation. People often install shady apps, and browsers automatically execute JS/bytecode from random website they visit. It’s best to have defense in depth, not assume people are perfect at avoiding malicious apps/websites.

Well done noyb!

Meanwhile, Nvidia has promised to pump $100 billion into OpenAI over the next decade, a move that will conveniently help OpenAI pay for Nvidia’s own chips.

OpenAI and NVIDIA’s future are getting tied together more than they already were

Police and government agencies can track phones even when they’re connected to a genuine cell towers, via mobile operators. It’s just slightly more convenient for them to use an ISMI catcher because they collect data without going through a third party.

Assume a mobile phone can be tracked if it’s powered, regardless of iOS or Android version and settings.

It’s not possible to continue releasing ever-more powerful hardware every few years, while remaining affordable. Xbox Series X and S are still relatively expensive 5 years after release. Their price is apparently higher than before, possibly due to inflation.

Hopefully they consider doing a refresh of series X / S, with slightly more efficient hadware but similar computing power. Adding more compute has diminushing return on game quality anyway. And there’s probably room to fit more without changing storage/compute by optimizing games and software.

It’s probably a harder sell marketing wise to release new hardware with the same capacity. So they’d have to innovante another way.

That’s right, the commission probably isn’t involved on those cases. I interpreted “The EU” literally by including its various components, ie the EU commission, the member states governments, companies and individuals in those countries.

There’s no central “EU government” that decides everything. The EU is not a centralized country, not even a federation. Members states takes many decisions on their own, and often need to approve EU comission proposals.

You’re talking about a great number of organisations, with different decision makers. It takes time and political will to coordinate and execute this kind of big switch. This needs to happen to become independant from foreign monopolies, but I’m not surprised it hasn’t already happened.

The EU commission decides for some EU institutions. Member countries decide for their own institutions and military. Each country and military has its own labyrinth of bureaucracy with lengthy decision making, and large+complex IT infrastructures. All of this has inertia. And switching cost money, even if it’s possible to save on license cost on the long run.

The EU does contribute to free software to some extent. But not enough.

At least 7% of Linux contributors are in Germany+France. An extra 2% from the UK. This is probably underestimated since the source has country info on only half of contributors. https://insights.linuxfoundation.org/project/korg/contributors?timeRange=past365days&start=2024-10-06&end=2025-10-06

The EU commission funded free software via NGI, and indirectly via NLnet. It’s a great initiative helping many small projects, but its future is incertain. https://nextgraph.org/eu-ngi-funding/

I doubt “Not on Amazon” would be a selling point. If merchant have put up with it this far, it’s probably because Amazon bring sales.

If leaving allow selling at a lower price, that would definitely be a selling point. But they would need a solid online store, their own or another markeplace.

The path to a better Amazon doesn’t lie through consumer activism, or appeals to the its conscience. Corporations, being artificial, immortal colony-organisms that use humans as their inconvenient gut flora, do not have consciences to appeal to.

A great argument for efficient regulation.

That surprised me. I always try to buy from the manufacturer’s website or official reseller rather than Amazon to avoid such bullshit. Apparently that’s not enough.

If brands selling on Amazon are overpriced, everywhere, could favoring brands that do NOT sell on Amazon help find products with a fair price?

Ford and General Motors have come up with a temporary solution: buying all their own EVs before the credit expired, then leasing those vehicles to customers through dealerships at a $7,500 discount

Nice loophole

Agreed. A passive RFID chip, that require an external signal to power itself, is better than a mobile app.

The new digital ID will be held on people’s phones

It’d be wise to separate digital IDs from expensive tracking devices (smartphones).

What’s wrong with an actual card with a chip (but no wireless capability) on it?

Kudos to Microsoft workers who risked and lost their job to protest the company providing services to the israelly military.

LOL

Given the duration of the outage, I guess the company has both a complex computer system that’s all networked, and doesn’t have a solid disaster recovery plan.

Neat.

DNS over Quic would be nicer, but that’s still a move toward more privacy.

Yep, using ChatGPT is a way to increase one’s environmental footprint.

And the energy cost doesn’t appear to be fully passed to users yet, as OpenAI isn’t profitable yet. There are even free LLM services. So users don’t have an insentive to prefer less polluting alternatives, such as classic search engines.

Another downside is that Google is no longer releasing the source code for monthly security updates, only for quarterly ones. This, in conjunction with other delays in OS source code, means most custom ROMs can’t ship monthly updates anymore. Add this to the pile of other things that make it harder to mod your Android phone in 2025.

Great, Google is making AOSP-based, Google-free ROMs less secure. To accomodate corporate partners that are unable to do monthly bug fixes.