Latest 30 Comments

Quoting: johndoe1. In Germany we still have to pay "Solidaritätszuschlag" (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarit%C3%A4tszuschlag).
This money could be given to EU Sovereign Tech Fund (EU-STF) instead.

2. Forbid (proprietary) file formats like doc, docx, ppt, pptx, xls, xlsx, rtf, tnef, ... in the EU (public and private sector). We already have ODF.
Force developers/companies of proprietary software to support ODF as first-class citizen.
Every mail server (public and private sector) should be configured to deny mails with these file attachments.

3. Force M$ to release a free converter for all their proprietary file formats into ODF. The results must be 101%😁

4. Forbid proprietary protocols and APIs.

5. Force developers/companies of proprietary software to support free SQL-Backend alternatives like MariaDB and PostgreSQL and treat them as first-class citizen.

This would be a good start... man can dream.

Edit!
Ohhh boy, I forgot the most important...
6. Forbid DirectX and Mantle.

The EU once [strongarmed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_of_Office_Open_XML) Microsoft in opening up the docx format for MS office 2007 Microsoft spend the following decade trying to put that genie back into the bottle.
This was only meagerly successfull.
As such Libre office has nowadays somewhat acceptable docx support.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Quoting: Liam Dawe

Quoting: LoudTechieOn the nitpicky side, the call for evidence is for how to steer european open source toward their objectives, not the importance.

Well, it's both. It's clearly important because they're looking to base their future on it, and they want to steer people to them.

Ah, Interperted your sentence wrong. I thought you said they were still trying to figure out how important it is.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Quoting: Pikolo

Quoting: LoudTechieMy proposals were.
Publish cryptographic hashes of restricted material, so small player can collaborate to implement filters for illegal information like CSAM and copyright protected material allowing them to more cheaply preform moderation responsibilities.

[Perceptual hashing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptual_hashing), used for copyrighted content and CSAM detection is very different from cryptographic hashing. The goal is to catch images and videos that are "sufficiently similar". It's as vague as it sounds, and unless configured with a very low sensitivity is guaranteed to cause false positives. When configured with low sensitivity, it's possible to bypass. When you take into account the quantity of CSAM perceptual hashes out there, false positives happen regularly. So you can either block everything, or block random things. Far from a solved problem

Using perceptual hashing for copyright enforcement is even worse, because the algorithm has no way to account for [exceptions to copyright](https://www.gov.uk/guidance/exceptions-to-copyright). That should always be a human's judgement call, but with copyright trolls in the picture you get a lot of pressure towards false positives.

I know this.
I asked for cryptographic hashes, because it's better than nothing and can be used as a start to build a functioning system.
Cryptographic hashes can be freely published, since they're cryptographic hashes meaning that they're sufficiently resistant to collision, decompression and other attacks.
Many parties can't get access to the perceptual hashes normally used to enforce laws, yet still want to host lawabiding servers.
A list of cryptographic hashes could be used for the following:
- public accountability of what's being removed by government mandate(throw your sensitive publications in a hashing algorithm and find out if you're being censored)
- A self hosted file server/forum/other user content providing service, which can build perceptual hashes from the lazily posted illegal content it catches on its own server(only one criminal has to be too lazy to edit a file and all instances already on the server can be caught, repeat offenders can be used as data mines for more cryptographic and perceptual hashes, trust of law enforcement can be won by reporting).
These servers would never publish the perceptual hashes they generate, just provide back cryptographic hashes to the project that enables them to automate large part of their moderation, which can use this to enable more to catch and share.

Edit:
Also cryptographic hashes are accurate, which means they won't be dealing with too much false positives and can carefully expand their coverage avoiding many of the mistakes big tech made along the way.

Beside that European copyright exception are only slightly comparable to US copyright exceptions.
They might have the opportunity to fine tune on the way.

Law based moderation software packages tend to be expensive riddled with NDA's, big tech dependencies and absolutely critical for anyone trying to solve the EU's hosting power problem.
This could be a start to a more open, accountable and sovereign European internet.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Quoting: Jarmer

Quoting: tfkOpen source mobile phones,
Open source desktops,
From there,
EU based payment systems for easy EU based online transactions,
EU based and open source security layers for said payment providers.
Educational programs to show people how to be the owner of their own system again, and how to do critical thinking again.
Ban on American cloud services like Google, Microsoft, Amazon. I mean firewall block. Boom!

Edit: gave my feedback.

This all sounds amazing as an American. Especially the payment thing. Here we are so screwed with horrible options for sending money around in friend / family groups. Most people in my social circle still use venmo for everything which is just paypal, a horrifying company.

Microsoft is so screwed in the corporate sector. I don't think they care though, right now Satya's brain has turned completely to mush with ai garbage so he can't even think properly. The entire corporate world over the next decade is going to dump office (or copilot 365 app LOLOL) and windows, so that's a TON of revenue lost. Again I don't think microsoft cares, but it'll be interesting to see what happens with windows.

This is actually making great strides.
They're fusing the national payment providers many countries have naming it Wero.

They're also trying to work with India to [bypass swift.](https://www.cnbctv18.com/personal-finance/what-the-upi-tips-link-means-for-india-europe-digital-payments-19770000.htm)

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Quoting: ChrisznixOkay, you got me, i have to have this. Did you play it on the deck yourself? I'll take a look if i get the soundtrack with it, too, it seems to be really good.

I played it entirely on the Deck. Very cool UI for controllers. The game itself is an absolute blast, and the OST is opium for my ears.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

I haven't checked it in months, but the only reason that I've kept my Twitter account is cause parts of the world haven't switched over to Bluesky (yet). Lots of Japanese people and things are still on Twitter and so are a lotta people in the global south. Though Trump and Musk are trying to stamp out resistance in and by the global south. So that might not matter much longer. D:

Also, Mastodon sometimes makes me think of the "morphin' time" thing from Power Rangers. I suppose there's people that'd default to the metal band too. XD

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

1. In Germany we still have to pay "Solidaritätszuschlag" (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarit%C3%A4tszuschlag).
This money could be given to EU Sovereign Tech Fund (EU-STF) instead.

2. Forbid (proprietary) file formats like doc, docx, ppt, pptx, xls, xlsx, rtf, tnef, ... in the EU (public and private sector). We already have ODF.
Force developers/companies of proprietary software to support ODF as first-class citizen.
Every mail server (public and private sector) should be configured to deny mails with these file attachments.

3. Force M$ to release a free converter for all their proprietary file formats into ODF. The results must be 101%😁

4. Forbid proprietary protocols and APIs.

5. Force developers/companies of proprietary software to support free SQL-Backend alternatives like MariaDB and PostgreSQL and treat them as first-class citizen.

This would be a good start... man can dream.

Edit!
Ohhh boy, I forgot the most important...
6. Forbid DirectX and Mantle.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Quoting: Numerfolt

Quoting: AsciiWolfAnd Mastodon is sadly even more toxic than X/Twitter.

Oh, that's interesting, I haven't encounterd much toxicity on Mastodon so far 🤔

Isn't Mastodon designed to be sort of . . . patchy? Different sub-communities could be very different.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Okay, you got me, i have to have this. Did you play it on the deck yourself? I'll take a look if i get the soundtrack with it, too, it seems to be really good.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Quoting: AsciiWolfAnd Mastodon is sadly even more toxic than X/Twitter.

Oh, that's interesting, I haven't encounterd much toxicity on Mastodon so far 🤔

Excited for Hytale tho!

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Quoting: JarmerHow hard is it to setup a mastadon or bluesky account?

Don't want to be a devil's advocate here, but if you want to target wider audience, Mastodon is out of the game. And Mastodon is sadly even more toxic than X/Twitter. Avoiding "social media" altogether is wiser, in my opinion.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Quoting: LoudTechieMy proposals were.
Publish cryptographic hashes of restricted material, so small player can collaborate to implement filters for illegal information like CSAM and copyright protected material allowing them to more cheaply preform moderation responsibilities.

[Perceptual hashing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptual_hashing), used for copyrighted content and CSAM detection is very different from cryptographic hashing. The goal is to catch images and videos that are "sufficiently similar". It's as vague as it sounds, and unless configured with a very low sensitivity is guaranteed to cause false positives. When configured with low sensitivity, it's possible to bypass. When you take into account the quantity of CSAM perceptual hashes out there, false positives happen regularly. So you can either block everything, or block random things. Far from a solved problem

Using perceptual hashing for copyright enforcement is even worse, because the algorithm has no way to account for [exceptions to copyright](https://www.gov.uk/guidance/exceptions-to-copyright). That should always be a human's judgement call, but with copyright trolls in the picture you get a lot of pressure towards false positives.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Man those numbers are so insane. Good! Love it!

Also the top games are just so funny. CS & Dota. LOL

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Quoting: tfkOpen source mobile phones,
Open source desktops,
From there,
EU based payment systems for easy EU based online transactions,
EU based and open source security layers for said payment providers.
Educational programs to show people how to be the owner of their own system again, and how to do critical thinking again.
Ban on American cloud services like Google, Microsoft, Amazon. I mean firewall block. Boom!

Edit: gave my feedback.

This all sounds amazing as an American. Especially the payment thing. Here we are so screwed with horrible options for sending money around in friend / family groups. Most people in my social circle still use venmo for everything which is just paypal, a horrifying company.

Microsoft is so screwed in the corporate sector. I don't think they care though, right now Satya's brain has turned completely to mush with ai garbage so he can't even think properly. The entire corporate world over the next decade is going to dump office (or copilot 365 app LOLOL) and windows, so that's a TON of revenue lost. Again I don't think microsoft cares, but it'll be interesting to see what happens with windows.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

That's excellent! Can't wait to try it tomorrow! I don't expect it to be better than Vintage Story, but I'm sure its still going to be lots of fun.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

whoa this looks AWESOME. Definitely wishlisted. Thanks for the rec :)

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Quoting: vic-bayTo force tech giants contribute back to open source, the open source projects should force GPLv2 licence. And have actual auditing entity to ensure compliance. EU can enforce that.

EU has created a GPL compatible license - [EUPL v1.2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Public_Licence). It's actually translated into every single EU language, and by lawyers, not volunteers, so it's more likely to hold up in court.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

^ I hate game devs using twitter as well. Especially as you said it's now a pay-for-child-porn landscape. How hard is it to setup a mastadon or bluesky account? Oh well.

And this game I'm not familiar with, I guess it looks like a more modern minecraft maybe?

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

The [inkscape](https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/16213-European-Open-Digital-Ecosystems/F33363220_en) post is an interesting read

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Quoting: LoudTechieEdit:
What would you guys propose?

I was thinking about stuff like this about a month ago and I’d like to see 2 things, both giving more state funding towards open-source I think could work:

1. Requirement that all software commissioned by European states be open sourced – so that it is easily maintable, available to citizens, and providers of that software can be changed (there could be exceptions for specific use-cases, like I understand to keep new military tech classified for some time; I’d still require that to eventually become open-sourced after, say, 20 or 30 years).
2. Maybe a separate open-source fund working similarly to private copying levies and the like – with a tax on income from products involving the use of open-source components. The idea would be that, say, if a company has annual income of over ~1 million euro and the product they’re selling or the infrastructure they maintain uses open-source components (libraries, databases, operating systems…), they pay some low tax (0.5%? 1%? I’ve no feel for what a specific good value would be) of the income. They could avoid paying that tax by either showing that they use absolutely no open-source (and thus don’t benefit from open-source directly) or that they are already contributing back by releasing their stuff (so if they release open-source and earn by maintaining it themselves, they’d be free from the tax). The money would be used by the state to pay foundations, societies, and other organizations maintaining and supporting open-source projects.

Point 2 is pretty much treating open-source as the public infrastructure it de facto is and fund it from taxes from the institutions that use it, as normally it’s done with public infrastructure (roads, media, health-care…).

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Gonna nitpick here, but

Speaking on X/Twitter

...actually puts me off caring about this game. I know it's shallow, but there it is. I don't care if you're "reaching your audience" - first of all, you're not reaching me, and second of all, you're helping fund and justify the child porn platform.

I wonder what it'll take for genuine brands to realise that association with Musk's toxic hellscape rubs off on them. At least for me.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Open source mobile phones,
Open source desktops,
From there,
EU based payment systems for easy EU based online transactions,
EU based and open source security layers for said payment providers.
Educational programs to show people how to be the owner of their own system again, and how to do critical thinking again.
Ban on American cloud services like Google, Microsoft, Amazon. I mean firewall block. Boom!

Edit: gave my feedback.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Oh god, that looks really good. If it was just a numbers puzzle game, I'd be vaguely interested... but the sub-narrative reminds me of things like Doki Doki, or Antichamber.

And argh!!! Just went to buy it, and you've sold me a dummy! It's "out in 2026". What does that mean!?!? Goddamit!! 😆

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Quoting: LoudTechieOn the nitpicky side, the call for evidence is for how to steer european open source toward their objectives, not the importance.

Well, it's both. It's clearly important because they're looking to base their future on it, and they want to steer people to them.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Quoting: syylkThe sooner the EU realizes that the US are not an ally anymore, the better.

That sound like input that's best directed at the "strategic foresight report" call for evidence.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

The sooner the EU realizes that the US are not an ally anymore, the better.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

this looks interesting, right now i'm editing my mangohud config per hand and sometimes with mangojuice. but sometimes mangojuice messes up the UI for like no reason

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

Quoting: benjamimgoisThanks for the post Liam ! GamingonLinux recognition makes a lot of difference.

Goverlay started as a GUI for overlay (mangohud), but the scope got broader. I'm thinking about rebrand the project. Maybe some community feedback / suggestions would be cool.

I like the word conductor for an app like this, as it's managing many parts of a performance. Game Conductor is the obvious choice if that word is included, but I'm sure there are other variations that would work too. I'll admit, Goverlay was a technical enough sounding name that I did not do the research I should have when hearing it for the first time. I assumed this was something lower in the stack that I wouldn't be interested in configuring, but it's quite the opposite and I'll be trying it out immediately!

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

To force tech giants contribute back to open source, the open source projects should force GPLv2 licence. And have actual auditing entity to ensure compliance. EU can enforce that. MIT licence and similar ones won't work, they don't require even crediting authors and contributors. That's why I don't like those "permissive" licences. We don't need another intel management engine, also known as Minix.

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment

My proposals were.
Publish cryptographic hashes of restricted material, so small player can collaborate to implement filters for illegal information like CSAM and copyright protected material allowing them to more cheaply preform moderation responsibilities.
Back export controls up with sovereign hosting, iron clad NDA's and money.
Simplify copyleft enforcement.

Edit:
What would you guys propose?

View this comment - View article - View full comments - Report this comment