The videos from the 39C3 are all in place, and Cory Doctorow's fast-paced talk, A post-American, enshittification-resistant Internet, is among them.
That talk is worth special mention. Don't be put off by the gratuitous cursing or the CCC's misspelling of the name Internet. And because it's often easier, and always faster, to just read text than slog through a video, Cory has also posted a transcript of his presentation:
We won that skirmish, but friends, I have bad news, news that will not surprise you. Despite wins like that one, we have been losing the war on the general purpose computer for the past 25 years.
Which is why I've come to Hamburg today. Because, after decades of throwing myself against a locked door, the door that leads to a new, good internet, one that delivers both the technological self-determination of the old, good [I]nternet, and the ease of use of Web 2.0 that let our normie friends join the party, that door has been unlocked.
Today, it is open a crack. It's open a crack!
His presentation is good all the way through, even to the final Q & A.
Basically, the gist is that 1) the US dollar is no longer a (semi-)neutral platform and 2) the threat of withdrawing financial support has already been played and cannot be used for leverage any more. Countries are now forced to actively work around both points, which is inconvenient and expensive, but the result is that they have been liberated from similar future threats and thus in that way have regained a bit of independence as far as software laws go. That liberation is because economic retaliation has already occurred, nations can more or less safely undo the anti-circumvention laws forced down their throats by "free" trade "agreements". The first country to do so will be able to take a very big bite out of the trillions of dollars (or euros) which Apple and the others currently collect.
What other 39C3 presentations have soylentils found interesting in a positive way?
Previously:
(2025) The 39th Chaos Communication Congress (39C3) Taking Place Now in Hamburg Through 30 Dec 2025
(2025) 38th Chaos Communication Congress (38C3) Presentations Online
(2017) 34th Chaos Communication Congress (34C3) Presentations Online
Cory Doctorow Proposes How to Break Free From Digital Domination
So far, every country in the world has had one of two responses to the Trump tariffs. The first one is: "Give Trump everything he asks for (except Greenland) and hope he stops being mad at you." This has been an absolute failure. Give Trump an inch, he'll take a mile. He'll take fucking Greenland. Capitulation is a failure.
But so is the other tactic: retaliatory tariffs. That's what we've done in Canada (like all the best Americans, I'm Canadian). Our top move has been to levy tariffs on the stuff we import from America, making the things we buy more expensive. That's a weird way to punish America! It's like punching yourself in the face as hard as you can, and hoping the downstairs neighbor says "Ouch!"
And it's indiscriminate. Why whack some poor farmer from a state that begins and ends with a vowel with tariffs on his soybeans. That guy never did anything bad to Canada.
But there's a third possible response to tariffs, one that's just sitting there, begging to be tried: what about repealing anticircumvention law?
If you're a technologist or an investor based in a country that's repealed its anticircumvention law, you can go into business making disenshittificatory products that plug into America's defective tech exports, allowing the people who own and use those products to use them in ways that are good for them, even if those uses make the company's shareholders mad.
Simple premise, interesting ramifications - I wonder what the course corrections will look like...
« The Search for Gravitons: Modifying Gravity Waves With Light | The French University Where Spies Go for Training »
Related Stories
The presentations from the 34th Chaos Communication Congress (34C3) are online now that the conference has concluded. The 34C3 took place from December 27 through December 30, this time in Leipzig. The presentations were in English or German, with translations available from one to the other.
Some presentations are more technical, others not so much. One of the more popular non-technical presentations was author Charlie Stross on Dude, you broke the Future!
The videos are online from the 38th Chaos Communication Congress (38C3). It took place in Hamburg, from Friday the 27th through Monday the 30th 2024. The conference is organized every year by the Chaos Computer Club e. V. (CCC) which is Europe's largest association of hackers. The CCC also organizes campaigns, events, lobbying, publications, anonymizing services, communication infrastructure and even hackerspaces.
The Congress is always interesting, so picking semi-randomly from the English subset of talks at the 38C3 highlights include:
- We've not been trained for this: life after the Newag DRM disclosure - a follow up to last year's presentation on DRM in passenger trains in Poland
- From Silicon to Sovereignty: How Advanced Chips are Redefining Global Dominance - chip manufacturing
- Breaking NATO Radio Encryption - a weakend ÆSderivative
- A fully free BIOS with GNU Boot - an overview
Previously:
(2017) 34th Chaos Communication Congress (34C3) Presentations Online
(2014) The Fall of Hacker Groups
https://events.ccc.de/congress/2025/infos/index.html
The 39th Chaos Communication Congress (39C3) takes place in Hamburg on 27–30 Dec 2025, and is the 2025 edition of the annual four-day conference on technology, society and utopia organized by the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) and volunteers.
Congress offers lectures and workshops and various events on a multitude of topics including (but not limited to) information technology and generally a critical-creative attitude towards technology and the discussion about the effects of technological advances on society.
Starting in 1984, Congress has been organized by the community and appreciates all kinds of participation. You are encouraged to contribute by volunteering, setting up and hosting hands-on and self-organized events with the other components of your assembly or presenting your own projects to fellow hackers.
Find infos how to get in contact & chat with other participants and the organizing teams on our Communication page.
= More Information:
- Chaos Computer Club at Wikipedia
- Media
- 2025 Hub
Interesting talks, upcoming and previously recorded, available on their streams page --Ed.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by AnonTechie on Thursday January 08, @01:29PM (38 children)
I did read Cory Doctorow's transcript of his 39C3 presentation. He makes a lot of valid points about the status of the world today ... I wonder if his proposed solutions to The Post-American Internet are practically implementable !
Albert Einstein - "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by zocalo on Thursday January 08, @02:01PM (37 children)
It's abundantly clear at this point that the US is heading full pelt into its own version of Juche (whether it can make that work or not is another matter), and it's about time everyone else realised that is going to be the reality going forwards. The house is completely failing to provide any checks and balances, and Trump knows it so there is another 3 years of him pushing the boundaries ever further still to come, and it's not all going to magically get undone with a wave of an autopen the instant the next administration takes office. Now is not just the time to rebuild and re-arrange the global order to bypass the US, it's a requirement foisted upon everyone else by Trump's own "America First" policies.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 08, @02:18PM (29 children)
>The one thing that Trump is absolutely clear on is that the
USTrump administration doesn't give a damn about being a global partner.The question is: what course will the US, as a whole, steer after November 2026, 2028, and beyond.
I don't feel like a course is being steered at the moment, I feel like there's a gold plated bathroom with poo being flung in all directions - just to see where it sticks.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by pTamok on Thursday January 08, @02:51PM (28 children)
No, it is the US, not just the Trump Administration.
The point is that having cast aside all the goodwill built up over the years, it will take a very long time to build it up again, if it ever can be. This is a fact not appreciated by many, both from the USA and not from the USA.
From: The Line (08 Dec 2025): Matt Gurney: 'We will never fucking trust you again' [readtheline.ca]
It's been quoted in quite a few other places. The whole article gives background.
To an extent, its 'just' some people waking up to foreign relations being transactional in ways they did not expect. A fairly well known quotation about foreign policy is that "America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests". It is often misattributed to Kissinger. [wikiquote.org]. That said, he did write about Stalin:
The challenges of being a foreign country attempting to work with the Trump administration are covered in this set of reports/essays from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies :CSIS (October 2025) Navigating Disruption Ally & Partner Responses to U.S. Foreign Policy [csis.org] - the page has a link to the downloadable 83-page pdf.
It's going to be interesting: for example, if the current administration of the USA takes possession of Greenland without the agreement of the Greenlanders or Denmark, I don't know what the expected transactional response from Denmark/Europe would be. Whatever it is, it is unlikely to promote the interests of the USA.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 08, @03:37PM (21 children)
>It's going to be interesting: for example, if the current administration of the USA takes possession of Greenland without the agreement of the Greenlanders or Denmark
Take a look at the current administration's cabinet. What do they have in common? They are a bunch of highly qualified executive administrators of entertainment industries. They know how to work a crowd. How to keep people engaged, entertained, outraged, but mostly, supporting their endeavors whether willingly, directly, or indirectly through their outrage and "free publicity" of their reactions they can't help but publish.
As a US citizen, I am saddened by what we have put into control of our political systems - not just the executive administration, and their court appointments, but also the legislature and their acts of complete spinelessness. It's falling on local mayors and business owners to stand up for principles that used to be at least given lip-service by our highest offices.
Will it take 80 years to rebuild the "trusts that have been breached" in the last 14 months? I doubt anything so dramatic. Assuming there is significant course correction in November of 2026 and again in 2028... the recent demonstrations of how power can be abused will hopefully lead to more structural solutions to prevent similar abuses of power in the future. 8-12 years of demonstrating those systems of restraint / control / upholding of core values should put us on better ground with our international partners than we were even in 2016. A lot of the absolutely outrageous things in the news today are just saying the quiet part out loud: open declarations of things that were simmering under the surface for decades. Now is the opportunity to choose which of those "core values" we will continue to openly declare, and which we're going to stuff back into the closet as minority viewpoints that we will not allow to shape national policy going forward.
Or, the shitshow could continue to spiral out of control for a while longer, who knows?
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Touché) by zocalo on Thursday January 08, @05:11PM (8 children)
According to one line I read recently, they wouldn't look out of place falling out of a clown car.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 08, @05:18PM (7 children)
>>Take a look at the current administration's cabinet. What do they have in common?
>According to one line I read recently, they wouldn't look out of place falling out of a clown car.
They don't, but to focus on that aspect is to miss their true competencies, they are actually good at certain things - getting nominated to the US Presidential cabinet, for one, and that's not something just anyone can achieve. What are they really good at? What's the core set of competencies that the administration is choosing them for? It's not all brown-nosing nepotism.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by PiMuNu on Thursday January 08, @05:54PM (5 children)
> to miss their true competencies
This is an important point which the Democrats repeatedly seem to miss. Trump and co *are* very good at playing their game - it just isn't the game the Democrats are expecting.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 08, @06:55PM
>Trump and co *are* very good at playing their game - it just isn't the game the Democrats are expecting.
You can start with the quote "smart people don't like me very much." How smart? IQ over 101? Right there, those people make up a minority of the population, by definition. The ballot box doesn't have an I.Q. weighting on it, and while "smart people" may command the respect of similarly smart people, a lot of them fail to recognize just how much their "smartness" turns off, frightens, and otherwise turns the majority of the population against them.
Projecting "smartness" is taking a side, and it's not necessarily the majority side.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Disagree) by epitaxial on Friday January 09, @12:52AM (3 children)
Democrats made the mistake of playing by the rules. You can't win in that situation.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 09, @02:39AM
Too many candidates the Democrats have been providing have been really bad considering the US has 300+ million people.
You'd think they'd be better than candidates from countries with 30 million people or even 3 million people.
But no they picked a warmonger bitch and they picked some obviously senile person - who was arguably even more mentally incompetent than Trump. Trump wasn't as far gone as Biden: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/vZQ24xe2nNo [youtube.com]
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/19/trump-speech-shooting-transcript-00169706 [politico.com]
And the Democrats keep blaming everyone else when they lose. Facebook, The Russians, etc.
When you keep serving stuff as shitty as your competitor, why blame others if not enough people want to eat your shit?
It's too late that the Democrats swapped in Kamala later, they proved their intentions were to serve shit.
There countries with 3+ million people who have leaders who aren't as senile as Biden nor bad as Trump. Is it all down to luck?
BTW the US is making the CCP way of selecting leaders look good. You can say it's corrupt, undemocratic, etc but at least more of them have to do a better job of pretending to be able to govern (from smaller areas to larger): https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-19876372 [bbc.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by PiMuNu on Friday January 09, @09:13AM (1 child)
> Democrats made the mistake of playing by the rules
This shows a complete lack of imagination by the Democrats. There are no rules and there never have been. "Playing by the rules" is just being lazy.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 09, @02:28PM
William Turner to Jack Sparrow:
"You'd lose in a fair fight."
Jack:
"Well, then that's not much incentive to fight fair, is it?"
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 10, @08:59PM
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/interviews/article/21270-sturm-und-drang.html [publishersweekly.com]
(Score: 2) by Ingar on Thursday January 08, @06:00PM (2 children)
Given the current state of the entertainment industry, they surely know how to milk a crowd.
Love is a three-edged sword: heart, soul, and reality.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 09, @10:52AM (1 child)
"Given the current state of the entertainment industry, they surely know how to milk a crowd."
I wouldn't know...I have completely lost interest in them.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 09, @02:33PM
>I wouldn't know...I have completely lost interest in them.
I _never_ had even a passing interest in WWE - my "deepest" exposure to that world was the Marvel Spiderman movie. Nonetheless:
https://wrestlenomics.com/wwe-historical-attendance/ [wrestlenomics.com]
and even though those in-person attendance numbers aren't Red Army levels of impressive for the head-count, they're funneling (a declared) $1.4B annually out of that fan base and their various media outlets.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by pe1rxq on Thursday January 08, @06:10PM (7 children)
Don't be surprised if it takes up to 80 years again. The US did not learn much in 8 years elected Trump again. It will take a pretty dramatic change of attitude before the US will be trusted again. I will not trust the US again untill a significant part of the MAGA crowd has died of old age. (This is the optimistic estimate where the MAGA crowd does not cause a nuclear Armageddon)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 08, @07:03PM (6 children)
>Don't be surprised if it takes up to 80 years again.
Well, that's deeply into "not my problem" territory. I don't think the US ever really had "magic trust" with the rest of the world. I was in Germany when Iraq invaded Kuwait, and it was remarkable to me how the locals were all wringing their hands about how terrible it was, but kind of ignoring the question: "what's the U.S. response going to be?" I mean, sorry, of course we'll consult the U.N. - eventually - but maybe the U.S. will just step in and take some action first, rather than let things progress further than they need to by having committee meetings about it.
In the 1980s there was not-so-joking talk about us all learning Russian or Chinese a few years in the future, after some unfortunate turn of affairs on the military conflict side of things. I'm not getting that vibe now, now it's more like the U.S. is trying to fade into relative irrelevance, the way that France and the U.K. did through the 1900s... hopefully without any significant shooting wars in the process.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Thursday January 08, @07:47PM (5 children)
I wonder if 'Europe'/the 'Coalition of the Willing' will step up to giving sufficient support to Ukraine to prevent Russia from achieving Putin's objectives?
Speaking as a European, I am sorry to say, somehow I doubt it.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday January 08, @08:00PM (4 children)
As a fellow Euro I think the best we can hope for is to turn the Ukraine in a "eternal" proxy war. We don't want a real war with Russia. We hope that this will keep them occupied. So we push in the resources. It's brutal and cruel but better to fight over there then at home. I just don't see the EU or Europe going to war with Russia for Ukraine. Not sure what the boots on the ground there will do except to train troops, watch and do spook things.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 08, @08:30PM (3 children)
> I think the best we can hope for is to turn the Ukraine in a "eternal" proxy war.
Welcome to Vietnam. Watch your Military-Industrial Complex blossom and grow - they are the real drivers behind the conflict(s), anyway.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday January 08, @08:53PM
Indeed. Or Iraq or any of the other post-WWII conflicts. I just hope it doesn't turn into Afghanistan. We have basically gotten sucked into a proxy war. One we can't win. But we probably can't lose either. Russia doesn't appear to be able to win it either. If anything it's surprising that they have not managed to do better or more. So we turned the Ukraine into the worlds largest testing ground for new military technology. I guess we are sticking around for as long as it seems worth it ...
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday January 12, @07:52PM (1 child)
I tend to think of South Korea more than Vietnam. Didn't we just up and abandon Vietnam? As far as losses go, that was pretty much a total loss on the American side, yes?
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Monday January 12, @09:54PM
>Vietnam? As far as losses go, that was pretty much a total loss on the American side, yes?
That depends, were you a stock holder in Northrop Grumman, or any of the other defense contractors?
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 09, @01:26AM
Not spineless... they are fully and knowingly complicit, and there is no "both sides", they speak as one, all from the same money. The only really sad thing is that not one vote is lost for it.
(Score: 3, Informative) by jelizondo on Friday January 09, @12:46AM
Thank you for the link. The document is a very succinct summary of recent events. Really, nothing someone half-way informed doesn't know, but it is one place and talks about the different regions/countries and the impact of current administration policies. Very interesting.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 09, @01:37AM (3 children)
Well, the requirement of NATO is that if any member of NATO is attacked, ALL OTHER members of NATO will come to that one country's aid! Denmark is one of the founding members of NATO, so I think it's "fairly clear" what the result of a military attempt or embargo on Greenland would be. :-)
I don't believe the NATO provision on defense excludes the defense if one member attacks another. That would be an interesting time indeed.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by janrinok on Friday January 09, @08:01AM (2 children)
I am afraid that you are wrong AC. It specifically prevents a NATO member from carrying out any unilateral act and then calling for NATO to defend or support them. It is entirely defensive regarding its interests and protects against non-NATO attacks.
Politically, individual nations could become involved by providing their own support or defence of the US' act, and that would certainly cause a reshuffle of the NATO membership.
There would be no obligation on other NATO nations to provide defence although they might individually chose to do so.
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by whibla on Friday January 09, @12:59PM (1 child)
I believe, in this instance, it is you who is wrong, albeit perhaps only insofar as incorrectly 'correcting' GP - though perhaps you can provide a quote from the treaty, or accompanying notes, that will persuade me otherwise. It's possible, however, that you've misunderstood GP's point. They're not saying that the US can attack another state, then call for assistance; they're saying that if a NATO member is the aggressor, against another NATO member, then article 5 obliges the remaining NATO members to come to the aid of the member being attacked, regardless of the fact that the attacker is also a signatory of the treaty. In this they are correct!
As an aside, in my opinion the US (well, specifically the Trump administration) has already violated: Article 1 - "The Parties undertake ... to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations."; and Article 2 - "The Parties will contribute toward the further development of peaceful and friendly international relations by strengthening their free institutions, ... and by promoting conditions of stability and well-being. They will seek to eliminate conflict in their international economic policies..."
Anyway, back to your post, this is also kind of wrong, or open to misinterpretation. The NATO treaty doesn't preclude members taking unilateral action, nor, having taken that action, does it preclude that member calling for support from other members. The difference is that the other members are under no obligation to render assistance. They may still choose to do so, or may be obliged to do so via other treaties (not that I can think of an example where this would be the case, off the top of my head). You are correct though when you say that NATO is defensive.
If the US invades Greenland the NATO treaty obliges the other signatories, "each of them, ... [to] assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area."
Again, reading your last couple of lines makes me think you've misunderstood what the GP was saying.
Yes, there absolutely would be an obligation to provide assistance to Greenland / Denmark, provided "two conditions are met: an Ally has sustained an ‘armed attack’ ... and the attacked Ally requests or consents to collective action under Article 5."
Of course, "An attacked Ally may choose not to seek assistance under Article 5, and instead address the situation through other avenues." but that would be Greenland's / Denmark's decision to make, not the other signatories, and definitely not the US's.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by janrinok on Friday January 09, @03:10PM
I agree that Trump has already past the point of making unacceptable threats of military action against a peaceful nation.
Which is exactly what I said. America can take unilateral action. But the response of the other NATO partner nations has to be agreed, and if the USA is part of NATO then it would not be agreed, would it? The US would simply over-rule the others. That would not stop any of the partner nations from each taking a stance on the issue unilaterally. I think that most partner nations would stand against the US but with the emphasis on political means rather than militarily.
"including the use of armed force" does not mean that such force MUST be used but it is always available to it, (very much echoing Trumps own claims that "military force is always on the table). NATO already exercises other options quite frequently and where there is no supporting consensus then other partner nations can take action unilaterally too.
This particular situation was never expressed because it was never envisaged as a possibility. The fallout from such an action by the US would have dire consequences for NATO as an organisation, which must make both Trump and Putin very happy. The rest of NATO including Europe is already beginning to develop an alternative plan should the once-unimaginable become a reality.
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by oregonjohn on Friday January 09, @02:30AM
The remedy is correction of the laws and Constitution. It's like we fell down the stairs and now need to put up new guide rails.
Democratic leadership currently in power does not have the guts to do that, plus they have their own ties to extreme wealth that they feel a need to protect.
On the other hand, maybe some will step up who do have the gumption. We'll know soon enough.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by looorg on Thursday January 08, @03:17PM (6 children)
I'm starting to think that that is what he actually want. As long as nobody really oppose him he'll just continue.
If the Greenland fantasies persist it will tank everything between Europe and the US. If the next President is Vance, or someone like him, then it will persist for at least another decade or more.
While the EU can't really do a military conflict with the US. What they can put up is a trade war to end all trade wars.
So perhaps time to get used to the idea of a minimum of political and diplomatic contacts and learn to enjoy the trade-war that will ensue. So all companies that does business or depend on business or users from across the pond, in either direction, prepare to tank your user base and stock-price.
I guess the only winner will be BRICS countries. The rest of us will lose, some more the others.
Regarding Doctorow. I guess someone has to do it first. The question is whom. I guess he is sort of hoping that the EU will do it first. In that regard have not like China and Russia already kind of done it? They don't appear to give to craps about copyright and anti-circumvention laws. They do them and if anything all promises to the contrary are just words and a "crackdown" every so often to show they mean business. That is before they get back to the actual business of not enforcing it at all.
If Jailbreaking was all that mattered. I think that could be done. But it also has to be undetectable or in the next second Apple will brick the device as it phones home. If you just never want or can prevent that they the jailbreak or crack could be fairly ugly.
He mentions several companies beyond just Apple and Deere that does this booby-trap-phone-home-bricking. So it's not a uniquely American thing.
Also NOKIA used to make rubber products and tires long before they became a tech company. They'll be around. They'll just make other products if the phone thing fails, and it sort of did already.
That said I think it will have to go a lot further for the EU to balls up and repel Anti-circumvention laws. I'm not holding up hope that it will happen any time soon, or ever.
That is more important then jailbreaking iphones. Stop sucking on the Amazon/Google/Meta titties.
If companies buying things in Europe just realized, they have, buying American is a security risk and a liability and that should count for something beyond "buy cheapest" or "buy tech leader" then things could change. I doubt they will tho.
Not really. Everyone has known. It wasn't sunshine and rainbows pre-Trump either. It's the deal we made. US wanted to play world-police and we accepted that. We did business with them on that playing field. If the field changes, which is clearly seems to have. The deal will change to. So far the change is fairly one sides, cause EU bureaucracy is slow and they are stuck in wishful-thinking-land that they'll somehow can manipulate or understand Trump. Instead of just telling him to go and f*ck himself with a baseball bat and enjoy the lube trade war that is incoming.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday January 09, @09:21AM (1 child)
> the Greenland fantasies
My guess is that the Greenland fantasies are a negotiating position for mineral rights. In Trumpland, "give us mineral rights or we will invade your ass" is a stronger position than "please give us mineral rights". Maybe he is right.
> Stop sucking on the Amazon/Google/Meta titties.
I recall that EU made exactly this plan last year. However it takes a few years to develop a parallel to the Microsoft ecosystem, train IT staff, migrate data etc (think Windows, word, teams, shitpoint etc). It is my belief that this is exactly what EU is doing.
I don't know about infrastructure (government websites etc). It is a bit more nuanced because the hardware can be physically in Europe, even if the software is US-owned. I guess there are similar conversations going on.
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Friday January 09, @09:24AM
The US already has mineral rights and the privilege of maintaining military bases in Greenland. This is about something very different.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Friday January 09, @10:40AM (3 children)
If not Apple, Microsoft.
https://www.naturalnews.com/2026-01-08-microsoft-ends-offline-phone-activation-for-windows.html [naturalnews.com]
Looks like you must have a Microsoft account to activate Windows now.
Oh, well. A lot of people have worked hard to bring us Linux.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1) by anubi on Friday January 09, @12:17PM (2 children)
Another link ( just another source for confirmation )
https://www.techpowerup.com/344704/windows-and-office-now-require-microsoft-account-sign-in-as-phone-activation-ends [techpowerup.com]
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday January 09, @12:28PM (1 child)
There was a story already in the submissions queue, but you have beaten us to it.
https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=67524&title=Microsoft+Silently+Kills+Windows+and+Office+Phone+Activation+and+Forces+Online+Activation
Microsoft silently kills Windows and Office phone activation and forces online activation with a Microsoft account [tomshardware.com]
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]
(Score: 1) by anubi on Friday January 09, @06:46PM
Run it!
Not everyone reads all the stories ( or the submissions queue ! )
People come here to share the good stuff.
Here was the first place I went with it when I got wind of it over at Natural News, so I grabbed the link and dropped it here. But Natural News is not very high on my list of credibility , so I went back to ChatGPT for verification, and it gave me a confirming link, else I was going to post any variants.
Well, it gave me a variant. I thought it only applied to Win11. I didn't know it went all the way back to WIN7. I thought that issue was closed a decade ago, no longer supported, and on life support workarounds, and dependency on aging hardware, as is XP. Steve Gibson ( GRC ) did a lot of pre-dmca work to preserve the earlier tech from enshittification. So did several others. Toward the end, it hit WIN7 hard. Hit XP too. With obvious intent to kill. Now why would one want to kill an old OS that the modern stuff won't even run on? This reeks of Atwater-Kent, Philco, Stromberg-Carlson rounding up old AM radios and crushing them, using Congress as their enforcement agent, so the little guy not only has to work to earn money to pay for the radio, pay tax on money earned to do so, then pay yet more tax to support legislators that pass law to enforce planned obsolescence of what was sold as a perpetual licence to use a durable good. I still have a lot of my grandpa's tools.
I have to admit I am finding AI extremely useful as a design assistant, however I also find it just as susceptible to goose chases as I am. I have caught it barking up the wrong tree, however it has also referred me to better ways of doing things. I figure AI has ingested, correlated, cross-referenced, everything on the web, but experienced nothing, so I relate to it as such. It is one helluva encyclopedia. It is subject to it's upbringing ( we all are as well ), and appears to do some critical thinking, but limited by lack of empirical experience.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 5, Touché) by namefags_are_jerks on Thursday January 08, @02:36PM (7 children)
The "Post-American Internet" became a thing 28 years ago.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Freeman on Thursday January 08, @02:56PM (6 children)
Remind me who was the "creator of the internet"?
You mean it was collaborative effort from the start? Yes, indeed.
Furthermore, the internet as we know it. (And certainly the experience of any kid born since about 1985.) Was actually created by a British computer scientist in Switzerland.
All that said, it's not terribly surprising that the more technologically developed nations have lead the course of the Internet over the last few decades. However, there's no certainty that the USA will remain dominant in the future.
There's no guarantee that the Internet as we know it, won't become some weird niche thing that grandpa uses, either.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by turgid on Thursday January 08, @07:18PM (5 children)
You make a good point. The network and the things that run on it are two different things. We still have freedom of choice. We can choose not to use the harmful things. I think in light of recent events more ordinary people will be questioning just what they use and looking for better alternatives.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 4, Interesting) by canopic jug on Thursday January 08, @07:34PM (4 children)
We still have freedom of choice. We can choose not to use the harmful things.
... for now.
If there is another revision of the GPL, then I'd like to see the freedom to continue to be able to choose what software to avoid.
I can't find the articles about it any more, but a blogger somewhere brought up the idea of a fifth freedom in regards to software. That is the freedom to not run software. I think he was addressing systemd specifically but it applies more generally as more and more figurative toxic waste is dumped out onto the net and into real life (such as parking meters which require "apps" to pay with).
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Bentonite on Friday January 09, @05:40AM (3 children)
That is out of scope when it comes to copyright licenses and all free software under GNU licenses already give you the choice to not run the software (as not running the software is part of freedom 0).
It's only the case that proprietary software is ever forced on people, which is becoming more and more common every day.
You are free to not run systemd - I don't have systemd installed on this GNU/Linux-libre install and there are still several GNU/Linux{-libre} distro available without systemd.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Friday January 09, @12:35PM (1 child)
Parking Apps:
Why can my government require me to use a specific private-enterprise good?
Isn't this some sort of conflict of interest?
Isn't that like requiring I use Apple Pay to remit tax?
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 09, @02:38PM
>Parking Apps:
>Why can my government require me to use a specific private-enterprise good?
>Isn't this some sort of conflict of interest?
When your government spends your tax dollars on construction projects, they are requiring you to use specific private-enterprise vendors - and you don't even get a choice to not participate.
Yes, it's virtually the original conflict of interest, which is why transparency is so important.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Freeman on Monday January 12, @07:50PM
Back in the day, it was common practice to pay for your employee's cellphone plan, if you required them to use it for work. Now, my work expects me to install authentication software on my cellphone. They don't compensate me for this. It's just expected that I shouldn't have any problem with that. Let's not forget the healthcare tracking I need to do for insurance through work or pay extra for the same service. The slippery slope has already lead us to a nice tar pit. Unfortunately, I think this is where we die.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by shrewdsheep on Thursday January 08, @04:00PM (11 children)
His idea that anti-circumvention laws could be seen as business opportunity is wishful thinking, unfortunately. American bullying and European lobbying will quickly stifle any initiatives to abolish the relevant laws.
I agree though that digital sovereignty will have some impact, I'm just not sure how much. European politicians have been weapons-grade stupid to allow the current situation. Not only is all information from Europe available to US companies and institutions, also software license and service cost ranging in the hundreds of billions each year are transferred from Europe to the US (well, parked in Ireland). The ramifications were clear from the start but incompetent politicians on all levels have allowed the current situation. Some initiatives have started (transition of Schleswig-Holstein in Germany that was recently discussed here). OTHO once they become relevant and make an impact (which the current initiatives have not) they will have to withstand the full force of the US tech industry. I am not sure how this will all shake out, it is certainly not guaranteed the Europe will achieve digital sovereignty. Never underestimate the combined force of incompetence and corruption.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 08, @04:56PM (2 children)
> American bullying and European lobbying will quickly stifle any initiatives to abolish the relevant laws.
My takeaway point was that American bullying has overstepped its influence. How did anti-circumvention laws get mandated in the first place? Threat of tariffs. Where are we now? Actual tariffs, arbitrary, capricious, and with demands far more outrageous than anti-circumvention laws attached. For those countries that are simply saying "fine, not shipping our ABC to the USA is going to hurt our economy, but no way in hell are we going to comply with the garbage that's being demanded for "ABC tariffs, or ELSE!" it's a liberating moment. You accept the tariffs have been raised to a level making export of ABC to the USA economically unfeasible, you'll figure out another way to live besides selling ABC to the USA, and by the way, all those things the USA made you do in the past with the threat of tariffs on ABC? Welp, they're fair game now.
Will John Deere be directing drone strikes on DMCA circumvention enablers next? That sounds like a Netflix production just begging for funding.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by Bentonite on Friday January 09, @05:44AM (1 child)
No, as if John Deere started using missiles against freedom enjoyers, freedom enjoyers would respond by producing cruise missiles and firing them at every last John Deere office and retail location.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 09, @12:28PM
The interesting part is when John Deere's parent country's military industrial complex gets the country to declare the violators' actions "terrorism" and uses their clients' national military to execute the strikes by proxy. Will the violators' parent countries get military support from "the other side's" MIC to "defend their freedom" and perpetuate the consumption of bombs, guns and artificial limbs?
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Touché) by Unixnut on Thursday January 08, @05:04PM (6 children)
Not to mention any country that actually stands its ground, refuses American bullying and EU pressure will be sanctioned, financially frozen out of trade, have their leaders kidnapped or just have the country occupied and/or bombed to destruction, like so many examples in the last 30 years that I can't really be bothered to even list them all (Trump is not the first by far, but he is the most tactless and brutally honest about it, no real attempt at cloaking the action as a noble cause unlike previous instances, which seems to offend people far more than the actions themselves).
The only countries that could do something like that are those that are fully self-sufficient, allowing them to sustain and prosper without needing any external trade, and also have a powerful enough military and nuclear deterrent to keep NATO/USA at bay, and I am not sure there is any country out there that qualifies.
So yeah, this whole concept of rebel country that will host a neutral free internet for the world and de-shittify the empires exports (effectively robbing them of their control and rentier-income) and survive in one peace is pretty much a pipe dream IMO. The world does not work like that, and its doubtful it ever did. They would essentially be painting a huge country-sized bullseye on themselves.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 08, @05:29PM (2 children)
> this whole concept of rebel country that will host a neutral free internet for the world and de-shittify the empires exports
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirate_Bay [wikipedia.org] - still kicking, with actual people living in actual countries clearly attached to its operations.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Unixnut on Thursday January 08, @06:07PM (1 child)
That is a small fry in comparison to what is being proposed here. It is one thing to pirate copies of American media, as at the end of the day people consuming American media has benefits beyond pure monetary value.
It is quite another thing to disconnect the source of information from billions of smart-devices to the likes of NSA/Google/Palantir and co who use it for mass surveillance, AI modelling and manipulation, not to mention companies like Apple who directly make billions of dollars from having total control of their ecosystem.
The USA is very much king of the hill when it comes to the modern smart-networked world, and I doubt they will quietly allow that position to slip away from them.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 08, @07:07PM
>It is quite another thing to disconnect the source of information from billions of smart-devices
Yes, it is, but that's also at the core of the GDPR... and there are perfectly legal movements, like https://community.home-assistant.io/ [home-assistant.io] providing viable alternatives for so much of that crap.
But, the market options for John Deere big ag equipment are more limited. At the end of the day, you can just unplug their brains and plug in replacement brains, if there aren't laws stopping you from developing and sharing the replacement brains in the open.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by PiMuNu on Thursday January 08, @05:59PM (2 children)
> American bullying and EU pressure
> keep NATO/USA at bay
One of the points is that there may well be a big split between Europe and America, in which case a rebel country can play them off one against the other.
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Thursday January 08, @06:12PM (1 child)
There will be no split unless Europe gets the American bases off their soil, along with setting up their own independent payment system that is sanctions proof, and non-US sources of energy. Since the whole thing with Russia kicked off, the EU sanctioned Russian energy so now has become dependent mostly on US LNG to survive, not a position that will make it easy for them to "split up" with the USA.
Is it possible they will split? In theory yes, but I don't think its likely, and definitely not in the next few years I think.
(Score: 4, Informative) by pTamok on Thursday January 08, @08:01PM
>There will be no split unless Europe gets the American bases off their soil, along with setting up their own independent payment system that is sanctions proof, and non-US sources of energy. Since the whole thing with Russia kicked off, the EU sanctioned Russian energy so now has become dependent mostly on US LNG to survive, not a position that will make it easy for them to "split up" with the USA.
European Payments Initiative [wikipedia.org]
European Payments Alliance [wikipedia.org]
Admittedly fully not there yet, both are operating in some EEA countries now.
There's also SEPA [wikipedia.org].
Can't speak for energy, but I suspect it is being worked upon.
(Score: 3, Touché) by anubi on Friday January 09, @12:38PM
It gets worse. Someone else has a kill switch wired into my company!!!!
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 08, @06:12PM
From the other side of the border, one can only repeat what the poet wrote more than 50 years ago:" Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States." (Nemesio García Nájera, improperly attributed to Porfirio Díaz.)
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ShovelOperator1 on Friday January 09, @08:37AM (2 children)
There are countries that tried to liberate from the dollar dominance. They have been called "terrorists" and USA pays Europe to invade these countries. The same arguments Russia used talking about Ukraine straight before invasion are used, both in EU and USA media, against these countries. These arguments work perfectly and every time.
The problem is that even having a general purpose devices will not win for general purpose device-friendly world. I wrote about it a few times when writing about smartphones and PDAs. I decided not to "be haved"? by smartphone (sorry, in my language this is also difficult to say but looking at this ecosystem I cannot completely confirm that the user has a smartphone :) ) as the device is too strict when it comes to the freedom to choose software. So I went with a portable gaming console transforming it to the PDA. I can use the PDA to do many things smartphone users can do. I can do navigation using GPS. I can browse the Internet and use productivity applications. I can play games, watch videos or music. However, the problem is in the services which are smartphone-only going to enormous cryptography-grade measures to prevent users run the software how they want. Instead of using even heavyweight web applications, they use heavyweight web applications plus verification can they steal verified data from a real device. When looking at forks of Android discussion forums, it can be seen that any talk about messing with this part causes a massive outbreak of strange opinions among developers, leaving a general impression that they are terrorized by reading even the shortest proposal of doing it.
The most important part is that now we're going back to fragmented Internet. These situations in which users could not communicate with each other if they were not on the same services, we had this in early 1990s. This is in favour of corporations as will increase profits and make numbers grow. Erosion of democracy, especially the non-retroactive law principle which has been bribed out from people's minds, has successfully installed the opinion that the internet must not be free from domination of one side. Sorry, wishing otherwise is noble, as wishing peace on an entire world, but its practical implementation cannot be successfully made.
An interesting way for non-USA countries will be to sanction the USA out like it was tried with Russia. I have my typewriter prepared. Do all Europeans and Canadians have?
(Score: 3, Touché) by The Vocal Minority on Sunday January 11, @04:17AM
Do you have examples of this? Libya?
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday January 12, @08:02PM
While there may be some "funny business" going on. "Labeling" groups as "terrorists" when they actively support terrorism is not disingenuous.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 10, @12:08PM (1 child)
Free speech blocks, great firewalls, digital ID.. yea that was all america. Nobody else enshitifies the internet except for Trump, who has been in for only a year after a close to half decade absence. And all the companies being a thorn in our side are "american" too. None of them are international or anything like that.
Canada, where you go to jail for saying something not so inclusive and germany where you can't call politicians fat. Much freedom, much wow. It's as if dude can see the big picture but his own shit doesn't stink.
(Score: 5, Touché) by turgid on Saturday January 10, @07:52PM
It's much worse than that in England. Patriots who go online and call for buildings housing brown people to be burnt down [bbc.co.uk] get locked up in jail. They've still got an Undemocratic Marxist NHS [wikipedia.org] there making them all sick [goodlawproject.org]. A MAGA patriot said so, so it must be true.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by VLM on Saturday January 10, @08:02PM (1 child)
Nobody seems to understand the Greenland situation.
What he's trying to do is get his son Barron married to that princess of Denmark and in compensation for marrying a zoomer-ette (think of all the DEI propaganda she's been exposed to in her education, ewwwww) a fair exchange for that kind of headache would be the Isle of Greenland as a wedding present.
Not sure if I'm kidding or serious. About 50/50.
Note the princess is legal age and she's 2nd in line for the throne of Denmark. Better off marrying her to one of Trump's kids than the alternative of making her a plaything for one of those Epstein-alike globalist creeps.
It would be hard for Denmark / NATO / EU etc to declare war over Greenland if its literally a wedding present and the princesses father-in-law is supposedly the bad guy. It would be a hard propaganda sell that he's abandoning europe by literally marrying into a euro royal family LOL. Also megacorps like Disney would love a wedding in Greenland/Denmark think of the "Frozen" movie product tie ins. So its kind of a win-win for all.
Well except maybe Baron. "Come on dad, stop trying to set me up with that hot chick when we're out in public, its cringe when you do that fr fr no cap"
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday January 12, @08:05PM
All I have to say on the matter is, if the USA could buy Greenland. I wouldn't mind it, but I certainly don't think we should forcibly acquire them.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"