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

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

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.

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.

Nice. I hope it makes Signal suitable for public official required to archive communications.

Currently signal users probably have no backup, or use a Signal fork that support archiving in a less secure way.

I quikly gave up on correting those bots. Either you’re lucky and made a prompt that induced it to generate a decent answer. Or you’re not, and there’s no point in correcting it. In that case you’re better off doing whatever you were going to do without a LLM.

Providing feedback isn’t much, but it’s better than nothing. Closing an account and going to a competitor is another option, if competitors were not as bad.

I can’t talk directly the person responsible, the employee is more likely to be able to.

I was once an employee in a similar situation, getting feedback/complaint from a customer. As an employee you can’t do much if you alone think management is making a dumb decision. But if a (enough) customers thinks and say it, employees who agree may jump on that occasion and ensure that feedback gets noticed by management.

It’s sad that gouvernments require adhering to some corporation’s terms of service, and tracking, to access public service.

Public service are a right, it shouldn’t be a choice between public service and privacy, but it’s also important to have access to healthcare. It’s fine to both complain about an app, and to use it to avoid being excluded.

I try to use alternatives (websites, physical mail, phone) instead of apps whenever possible. When a provider announced their website would be retired and told customers to install apps, I email them to request they send monthly invoice by snail mail. They’re required by law if requested, at least here. And it’s probably more costly to them.

Refuse apps that require Google Play Services or trackers and tell it to your bank / utility provider… when they invite you to install it.

A bank employee was confused when I refused their app because of trackers from Google and others, telling me they’re not big fans of Google themselves. I showed an Exodus privacy report about their app to that employee to show that they integrated Google tracker.

I wasn’t familiar with Drop Site News and had a quick look, seems legit:

• Jeremy Scahill is co-founder of this outlet. He’s a well known investigative journalist. Also co-founder of The Intercept. Author of Dirty Wars.
• Lee Fang is co-author. He’s also investigative journalist, formerly at The Intercept.
• Media Bias / Fact check assessment rate the outlet Mostly factual, with a Left bias.