Yes it is. Is it… really so incredibly hard… to check simple facts… before posting?

Nope, Mozilla gave up on Servo in 2020. It‘s now governed by the Linux Foundation Europe.

I always enjoy recognizing a specific developer’s handwriting in a finished product. Luckily, Valve’s misyltoad, a proud inhabitant of “Frog Cult”, United Kingdom, makes this very easy. From their work on frog-fifo-v1 for Mesa, to frog-color-management-v1 and frog protocols for Wayland, to their talk Rainbow Frogs: HDR + Color Management in Gamescope/SteamOS, they seem to follow a very strong theme. I’d be surprised if they weren’t responsible for this frog as well.

Hey now! They’re called „weapons enthusiasts“ or „firearms aficionados“! They just needed lots and lots of ammunition to appreciate it! The more the merrier, you see? Stop badmouthing our dear completely harmless right wing extremist gun fans!

Do I really need to put a /s here?

“Wir aber sagen, dass sich in einer gleichberechtigten Gesellschaft niemand freiwillig für die Prostitution entscheidet. Denn am Ende geht es hier um männliche Gewalt an Frauen und um Machtmissbrauch.”

Ich finde diese Gleichsetzung von Sex und männlicher Gewalt an Frauen sehr befremdlich. Haben wir nicht spätestens in den 60ern gelernt, dass Frauen genauso Spaß an Sex haben können wie Männer? Kann es nicht vielleicht eher an der extremen Stigmatisierung von Sexarbeit liegen, dass so wenige Menschen so einen Beruf ergreifen wollen?

Vielleicht ist meine Einschätzung sehr naiv, aber ich finde, ein Verbot sollte immer die Ultima Ratio in der Gesetzgebung sein. Und gerade in einer Gesellschaft, in der immer mehr junge Männer unfreiwillig gar keinen Sex haben, sollte man meiner Meinung nach umso dankbarer dafür sein, dass es Frauen gibt, bei denen jene ihre Triebe abkanalisieren können, sodass vielleicht die ein oder andere Entwicklung zum Incel vermieden werden kann.

Ich finde auch die vermeintlichen Erfolgsstatistiken des nordischen Modells immer etwas fragwürdig. Da Schweden Teil des Schengen-Raums ist, ist beispielsweise nie wirklich klar, ob sich der Menschenhandel tatsächlich reduziert hat oder ob er jetzt nur verstärkt in anderen EU-Ländern stattfindet. Das wäre dann also nur eine positive Auswirkung, wenn man Aus den Augen, aus dem Sinn für ein gutes Motto hält.

Am Ende würde ich einfach viel lieber in einer Gesellschaft leben, in der die Inanspruchnahme von Sexarbeit genauso normal ist wie der Besuch beim Friseur, als in einer, in der sexuell frustrierte junge Männer einen signifikanten Anteil der Wählerschaft stellen und in der Sexarbeit noch extremer stigmatisiert wird, als es eh schon der Fall ist.

I have already read that article, and while I think that Patrick does a great job in general, this particular post contains overly dramatic and, in parts, misleading arguments. For example:

The text aims to make the temporary “Chat Control 1.0” regulation permanent. This allows providers like Meta or Google to scan all private chats, indiscriminately and without a court order.".

This is a bit strange. Chats without E2E encryption, especially the ones on Google or Meta platforms, were never private. I think it would be better to raise awareness of that fact and encourage E2E messaging instead of complaining about law enforcement having access to those chats.

His argument regarding age verification is also very weak:

[…] This means every citizen will effectively have to upload an ID or undergo a face scan to open an email or messenger account. […] This creates a de facto ban on anonymous communication […]

This is misleading at best. The implementation details of the age verification are not specified in this proposal. There are absolutely ways of verifying someone’s age anonymously (Privacy Pass comes to mind). It’s totally possible that it’ll be a far worse system, but that’s just not as set in stone as Patrick suggests.

It’s definitely necessary to keep an eye on the further development of this legislature. But Patrick’s Reality Check unfortunately stretches the meaning of the word Reality a bit too much.

I have to disagree with the statement that there is no voluntary law. For example, GDPR certifications (Art. 42) have been a thing for years, are encouraged by the EU, but have remained completely voluntary for organizations.

I totally agree with you that it’s important to stay vigilant and keep an eye on the further development of this specific regulation, especially as it still has a long way to go before actually becoming law. But I think seeing the compromise as some sort of trickery is purely speculative right now and doesn’t really do justice to the activists inside and outside EU organizations who have spent the last few years successfully preventing a mandatory chat control. A lot of the comments here seem very doom-and-gloomy, sometimes almost resigned, as if nothing has been accomplished by protesting these initial proposals. And I think, while there are definitely further battles ahead, it’s also a good idea to celebrate and remind ourselves of the accomplishments we’ve made here.

Yes

As this version of the law is completely voluntary, I don‘t think it will change anything. Secure chats won‘t implement it, because it‘s practically impossible, and insecure chats won‘t implement it, because there‘s absolutely no profit in it.

It‘s still completely unnecessary to have a law like this, as it won‘t help with anything. But at least it doesn‘t force any messaging applications to either break their encryption or leave the EU.

Also, as this is proposal is finally put into law, there‘s one less battle to be fought by privacy activists (for now).

So all in all: The worst has been successfully averted, I think we can celebrate that. But the next privacy invading proposal will come soon enough.

Must have been a great harvest that year.

Bei einem reinen Featurevergleich hast du Recht. Aber hier geht es ja primär um die momentan bestehenden Abhängigkeiten. Und wenn man sich die aktuelle Verbreitung von Alternativen beispielsweise anhand des öffentlichen Sektors in der EU* anschaut, spielt Open Source bisher leider kaum eine Rolle.

* Es sollte erwähnt sein, dass die Open Cloud Coalition eine Lobbyorganisation mit Beteiligung von Google ist, das Framing in dieser Quelle also verzerrt sein könnte. Die Zahlen wirken aber zumindest plausibel.

In 2023, it was €5.000/month (source).

That‘s about as much as a full stack software developer makes in Germany working a 40h week (source).

Seeing that he was a CEO, definitely worked more than 40 hours per week and was the driving force behind Mastodon, I, as someone who supports them financially, am totally okay with him getting a big payout now.

Yes, exactly. I didn‘t get that he was talking only about AAA from the article, but haven‘t watched the video. If these are the only games he meant, I agree with him.

This article leaves out that the same proposal would completely undermine the GDPR, massively reducing data protection and selling out EU citizen’s data to big tech.

I‘d love to have a browser based cookie solution. They should have implemented it like that in the first place. But not at the cost of my privacy and the ownership over my data.

For now this is just a proposal by the commission, so it has a long way to go before becoming law. But it‘s really exhausting having to fight those ridiculous ideas time and time again.

I think this is an overly generalizing perspective at best. Sounds a bit like someone just listening to the Billboard Hot 100 and complaining about music trying to appeal to too broad of an audience.

Sure, AAA publishers might often try to create games which appeal to everyone and end up being worse for it. But that‘s completely ignoring independent developers. And claiming that Balatro, Megabonk, Silksong or Ball x Pit aren‘t focussed enough would simply be untrue. And it‘s not like these games aren‘t successful enough to matter.

Das ist zwar immer noch nicht sinnvoller, als eine verpflichtende Chatkontrolle, aber immerhin so weit abgeschwächt, dass es vermutlich gar keinen Einfluss haben dürfte.

Die meisten Chats können ja technisch gar nicht sinnvoll kontrolliert werden, weil sie starke Ende-zu-Ende-Verschlüsselung nutzen. Und bei Anbietern unverschlüsselter Chats wird wohl kaum jemand extra in so eine Kontrolle investieren wollen, ohne davon zu profitieren.

Man muss aber natürlich trotzdem achtsam bleiben und schauen, dass sich so eine Kontrolle nicht doch noch normalisiert und der nächste Anlauf für eine verpflichtende Überwachung dadurch seine Erfolgschancen vergrößert.

These figures just haven‘t gone up all that much over the last decade. Sure, you can get 128GB of RAM and 24GB of VRAM if you‘re willing to pay for it. But if you don‘t want to spend upwards of $5000 for your PC and you‘re maybe not that experienced, you might just look for a gaming rig from a vendor you‘ve heard of before and get 16GB RAM and 8GB VRAM even in 2025 with current-gen hardware.

I‘d like to think that Asus and Lenovo would build „console-beating“ Steam Machines, but they‘ve also tried building more powerful Steam Deck alternatives and those were meh at best and terrible at worst.

Steam Machines are probably easier to design, as they‘re just PCs. But seeing how much thought and care Valve puts into their hardware designs and how little of both Lenovo and Asus have put into theirs in the past, I‘m not going to expect great products from them.

I’d be very happy to be wrong, though.

My gut feeling really isn‘t good on that. The very slow pace of improvement Cities Skylines 2 had, and the multitude of issues it still has, seem like strong indicators for deeper technical issues to me. Fixing those will be a lot harder for a development studio, if it doesn‘t even have the original developers onboard.

It‘s really sad to see, because Skylines 2 could be a lot of fun if it wasn‘t for the glitches, the bugs and the performance issues. I‘m unfortunately not optimistic that changing the developer will improve things.

Note that this is an issue from 2021. Firefox has implemented countermeasures since version 85, Chrome seems to have done the same.

So while this is definitely interesting, it shouldn‘t be an issue anymore.