To be fair, the system in question does the math for you. It is still contra to European tipping culture though.

The circus maximus (the big hippodrome in Rome) also hosted gladiatorial fights and athletics competitions. The meme is misleading in the way it selects the venues.

It (potentially) allows them to charge at both ends. I don’t know if that’s what happens in Brasil specifically but it happens in a couple of countries.

The providers charge the users for the data use and the services for being exempt from the data caps.

It’s just AI doing AI things

The vote was framed as stopping the automated renewal of an existing law.

So in favour means “in favour of not having mass surveillance”

My guess (which I admittedly haven’t checked) is that that’s also why a simple majority wasn’t enough (because they essentially would have been overturning law)

I mean, we don’t know for sure since WA is closed source. But group chats are supposed to be encrypted. You’re thinking of Telegram.

If I read the documentation correctly then the bridge uses WA Web. That means you still need an Android or iOS device to act as the primary phone. Or am I wrong?

Side note: I wonder how practical it would be to build a bridge that uses the DMA mandated interop instead. I would donate a couple of € to such a project.

Signal instead of WhatsApp is generally a good idea, but WA is not covered by this law as they are end to end encrypting all messages. Switching to Proton Mail would help, using a VPN (most likely) would not.

What changes with the return of Chat Control 1.0—and what stays the same:

• What is coming back: US tech companies are once again allowed to scan private messages without a warrant or prior suspicion. This affects direct messages on platforms like Instagram, Discord, Snapchat, Skype, and Xbox, as well as emails via Google’s Gmail and Apple’s iCloud.
• What remains unchanged: Public social media posts and files hosted in cloud storage could already be scanned without this law. Furthermore, private messages can always be reported by users, or monitored by authorities using targeted, court-ordered wiretapping.
• What is still NOT being scanned: End-to-end encrypted chats, such as those on WhatsApp, have always been exempt from these scans. Additionally, European providers of messaging and email services have never implemented chat control measures.

What changes with the return of Chat Control 1.0—and what stays the same:

• What is coming back: US tech companies are once again allowed to scan private messages without a warrant or prior suspicion. This affects direct messages on platforms like Instagram, Discord, Snapchat, Skype, and Xbox, as well as emails via Google’s Gmail and Apple’s iCloud.
• What remains unchanged: Public social media posts and files hosted in cloud storage could already be scanned without this law. Furthermore, private messages can always be reported by users, or monitored by authorities using targeted, court-ordered wiretapping.
• What is still NOT being scanned: End-to-end encrypted chats, such as those on WhatsApp, have always been exempt from these scans. Additionally, European providers of messaging and email services have never implemented chat control measures.

They have. But he isn’t talking about the banking bit. He is talking about 2FA. Banks all over Europe have all but dropped SMSTan in favour of app based solutions. You need your banks app to authorise any transaction.

The upside for this is (other than that the communication is encryted now while SMSs are not) that you see the transaction details on your phone while authorising which prevents certain types of scam.

The problem is that this isn’t a standardised solution. Instead every bank either built its own thing or bought a white label solution from a different vendor. There is some EU legislation that would allow a motivated developer to built a banking app for your phone (and if you’re German then Saldo already exists) but that doesn’t matter because the 2FA problem means that you still need an Android or iOS device.

To be fair… Currently the law also states that the data processing needs to happen locally and no data may leave the car. The new law certainly introduces potential for abuse, especially since auto makers have proven themselves in recent years to be willing to break laws if it benefits them (Dieselgate anyone?). But as of now your fears are mostly unfounded.

https://houseandwhips.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/graham-platner-totenkopf-tattoo.jpg

It certainly doesn’t hurt. But no you don’t. Google will give you an opt out. It’s a stupid system that still gives Google too much power over the Android ecosystem, but it is there

Google is rolling out their new app verification scheme first in those counties and then later in the rest of the world.

The counties in question are basically beta testing the system in production for a year and then everyone else gets locked down as well

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe_of_Sovereign_Nations_Group

Scroll down to MEPs

Some countries even explicitly allow you to break DRM to make a backup copy of your physical media.

To pick one country, Germany for example: There it’s called the “right to make a security copy”. Paragraph 69d (nice) of the copyright law states:

The creation of a backup copy by a person authorised to use the programme may not be prohibited by contract if it is necessary to ensure future use.

That means physical copies have, legally speaking, an endless shelf life.

Flatpak

Israel probably doesn’t need a tribunal. Not because they didn’t commit war crimes or anything like that, but because this tribunal exists for one very specific reason.

When you read “Nuremberg-style tribunal” you probably thought “crimes so bad they had to create a new court for them” but that’s not really the case. Because after the Nuremberg trials the international community set up the international courts in The Hague to deal with crimes against humanity. Unfortunately they made a mistake. They forgot to include one crime in the jurisdiction of the courts. So, to prosecute this specific crime they need an additional court, while all other crimes will be judged by the existing ICC and ICJ.

The crime in question is “aggression”, basically the “crime of starting a war without provocation”. And that’s a lot easier to prove for Russia than for Israel, where the conflict includes other parties that also acted militarily.

I’m not defending Israel, I’m really not. All I’m saying is that the Israeli war crimes fall under the jurisdiction of the ICC and ICJ. You don’t need a dedicated tribunal to prosecute them. The same is true for Russia, except for this one crime that they definitely committed and Israel maybe didn’t commit. This one crime and only this crime needs a dedicated tribunal. That doesn’t make the other crimes any less serviere. It just means that the international community made a mistake and forgot one war crime when setting up the international courts.