We're #1!!!

As The Register notes in an an article titles, "Google breaks Alibaba’s record for Europe’s largest DMA fine." Google has beaten the Chinese at something.

Alibaba’s reign as the worst offender under the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) lasted just four days, after the European Commission yesterday fined Google €890 million for breaches of the law –€340 million more than the Chinese e-commerce company will pay.

Europe even fined Google twice – once for treating its own services more favorably in search rankings and the second time for failing to properly inform users of its “Play” app store.

The search infractions attracted a fine of €460 million ($523.5m/£393m) and the Play offenses will cost the Chocolate Factory €430 million ($490m/£367.5m).

In US dollars, the fines total $1.013 billion – or one quarter of one percent of the $402 billion in revenue that Google’s parent company Alphabet won in its last full financial year. The Big G’s net income was $132 billion in the same year, making these fines less than one percent of its profits.

It's literally just a cost of doing business to them, so I expect them to repeat this. 

Of Course They Are

It appears that some of Elon Musk's DOGE Bros are redesigning government websites to spy on US citizens.

Tech bros gotta tech bro.

An opaque White House office staffed largely by veterans of Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) has quietly rebuilt some of the federal government’s most sensitive websites – for passport applications, voter registration, prescription-drug pricing and children’s savings – in ways critics say appear to violate federal law.

The National Design Studio (NDS) was established by a Donald Trump executive order last August, and is led by Trump-aligned Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia and staffed by Doge veterans.

A Guardian investigation has found the office has apparently been developing or redeveloping sensitive federal websites, including those connecting Americans with prescription drugs, children’s savings accounts, passports and voter registration. The investigation corroborates and advances earlier reporting by the Drey Dossier, a YouTube and Substack investigative outlet.

The NDS built and now operates four public federal websites: ndstudio.gov, trumprx.gov, realfood.gov and trumpaccounts.gov. All four ran commercial visitor-tracking software, configured to evade the privacy tools many web users install, and none carry the public filings federal privacy law requires under laws including the Privacy Act of 1974 and the E-Government Act of 2002.

They all need to spend the next decade or two in jail. 

Tech Bros Not Thinking Things Through

Generally, when a story starts with, "A German court ruled," you should expect bad news.

Not this time.

This time, a court in Munich has ruled that Google can be held liable false AI generated summaries.

Potentially impacting all AI search engines and chatbots known to poorly paraphrase source links, a German court has ruled that Google is liable for false statements in AI Overviews.

The preliminary ruling came in a case flagged by The Decoder, where two publishers found that Google’s AI Overviews incorrectly linked them to scams and other sketchy business practices. After smearing publishers by making affirmative statements like “Yes, [it] is known for dubious business practices and is often perceived as a scam,” Google failed to correct the misleading output, even after the publishers sent a cease-and-desist letter earlier this year.

Google tried the usual arguments to shield itself from liability for false statements in AI Overviews, such as arguing that most users understand that AI outputs aren’t always accurate and must be verified.

But the court found that, unlike traditional search engines that merely present lists of links to third-party statements, Google’s tool made “independent, new, and substantive statements” based on its own misinterpretation of links on the Internet.

That’s a problem, the court said, because while publishers may have been able to sue to stop third parties from publishing defamatory statements appearing in Google search results, only Google can correct the underlying algorithm and outputs displayed in AI Overviews. And because, at least initially, the company did not, it therefore “must be held accountable,” the court ruled. Beyond that, Google’s argument was deemed particularly weak, since the AI overview in this case “contains statements that do not appear in the search results at all.”

Google's AI generated content is Google generated content, just the same as if one of their flesh and blood employees drafted and published this.

The ruling is sound, which makes it an outlier for a German court, and it is just, which also makes it an outlier for a German court.

Part of the allure of AI systems is the belief that they subvert accountability for the company that uses them. 

Not so much. 

Quote of the Day

I have been a professional tech journalist for nearly 15 years, and before today, I cannot think of a single time when a Bing search result was more valuable than the Google equivalent. There really is a first time for everything!

Techcrunch reporter Russell Brandom on the discovery that a Google search on the word, "Disregard," will not return the definition of the word.

If this is not end stage enshittification, I do not know what is.

Earlier this week, Google rolled out a completely new Search experience, foregrounding AI summaries and kicking the traditional “10 blue links” far down the page. But the sheer scale of Google Search means there are lots of edge cases that the company doesn’t seem to have considered.

For instance, this is what you’ll now get if you type the word “disregard” into Google Search.

Bing, in contrast delivers the definition as the first link.

This is real end of the world sh%$. 

Best Ad Blocker Software Ever

Someone has forked the popular antivirus software uBlock Origin and made tweaks to replace ads with "Glasses On" images from the John Carpenter movie They Live.

This is brilliant. 

A fork of uBlock Origin Lite doesn't just remove the ads from web pages; it replaces them with tiles containing slogans from John Carpenter's 1988 film They Live.

Published by Australian Dave Lawrence, the Chromium add-in (so it'll work in browsers such as Chrome and Edge) takes the uBlock Origin Lite content blocker (also known as uBO Lite) and tweaks it so that rather than simply hiding the ads, the ads are replaced with white boxes containing slogans from the movies. 

Lawrence listed them: "OBEY, CONSUME, WATCH TV, SLEEP, SUBMIT, CONFORM, STAY ASLEEP, BUY, WORK, NO INDEPENDENT THOUGHT, DO NOT QUESTION AUTHORITY." 

………

They Live is a science-fiction horror film in which the protagonist dons a pair of glasses that allow him to see the world as it truly is: run by ghoulish aliens using subliminal messaging to keep the population under control.

I would note that that They Live is a great movie, and great social commentary.  Watch it.

Meanwhile, I need to chew some bubblegum or kick ass. 

Why Use Ad and Javascript Blockers?

Because The New York Times homepage loads 49 MB of data, that's why.

If active distraction of readers of your own website was an Olympic Sport, news publications would top the charts every time.

I went to the New York Times to glimpse at four headlines and was greeted with 422 network requests and 49 megabytes of data. It took two minutes before the page settled. And then you wonder why every sane tech person has an adblocker installed on systems of all their loved ones.

We need to burn this sh%$ to the ground. 

 

Unsurprising

After working with AI content, the management at Wikipedia came to the conclusion that AI was total pants, and so they have banned it from the crowd sourced encyclopedia.

Gee, I could have told you that. 

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales once described his creation as a “temple of the mind.”

Now, a decade on, it’s taken on another role: a refuge against AI slop.

Late this month, the English version of the online encyclopedia officially banned the use of AI to generate or rewrite articles, after years of piecemeal experimentation and heated internal debate among its volunteer editors, 404 Media reports.

That debate finally came to a vote on March 20, which ended in an overwhelming 40-to-2 decision to place heavy restrictions on how large language models are used to maintain the site.

“Text generated by large language models (LLMs) often violates several of Wikipedia’s core content policies,” the new policy states. “For this reason, the use of LLMs to generate or rewrite article content is prohibited, save for the exceptions given below.”

As the exceptions stipulate, it’s not a wholesale ban on AI: “Editors are permitted to use LLMs to suggest basic copyedits to their own writing, and to incorporate some of them after human review, provided the LLM does not introduce content of its own,” the policy continues. “Caution is required, because LLMs can go beyond what you ask of them and change the meaning of the text such that it is not supported by the sources cited.”

This has happened almost everywhere that AI has been applied.

Guck Foogle

So, the Artist former known as Google is selling Google Fiber to a private equity firm, which will doubtlessly enshittify it beyond recognition, because that is what PE firms do.

Google Fiber, now officially called GFiber, is being sold to private equity firm Stonepeak and will be combined with cable-and-fiber firm Astound Broadband to create a larger Internet service provider.

Google owner Alphabet announced Wednesday that it will keep only a minority stake in the fiber ISP that launched with grand ambitions in 2012 but scaled back its expansion plans in 2016. Alphabet and Astound owner Stonepeak announced “an agreement to combine GFiber with Astound Broadband, creating a leading independent fiber provider,” with the merged company to be “majority owned by Stonepeak, an investment firm specializing in infrastructure and real assets.”

………

It’s unclear whether the combined firm will be called GFiber, Astound, or something else. “The combined business will be led by the existing GFiber executive team, utilizing their expertise in high-speed fiber innovation to manage the combined network footprint,” the announcement said. “The combination of GFiber’s high-growth metropolitan networks with Astound’s established infrastructure, team and capabilities creates a highly complementary, national network platform.”

Alphabet President and Chief Investment Officer Ruth Porat said the merger will let GFiber reach more parts of the country “while continuing to provide their award winning customer experience.” The announcement said that Alphabet maintaining a minority stake “reflect[s] its confidence in GFiber’s growth opportunity and leadership.” Stonepeak Senior Managing Director Andrew Thomas said that Stonepeak “look[s] forward to supporting the company with Alphabet as a co-investor.”

Bullsh%$.  Google is selling it so that Stonepeak can loot it to both of their benefits, customer be damned.

It's kind of what PE does. 

Ecch (Tweet) of the Day

pic.twitter.com/fOPnviJCVf

— Kevin May (@Yam_Nivek) February 23, 2026

Perfect.

Maybe It's Because You Are Evil Assholes?

People cannot wait to to put a boot in Comcast's ass.

It has abused their customers so badly for so long that they have no reservoir of good will to fall back on in the face of the cord cutting trend.

This is a company who made their brand so toxic that their consumer branch had to be changed to Xfinity.

In April 2025, Comcast President Mike Cavanagh bemoaned that the company’s cable broadband division was “not winning in the marketplace” amid increased competition from fiber and fixed wireless Internet service providers.

Cavanagh identified some problems that had been obvious to Comcast customers for many years: Its prices aren’t transparent enough and rise too frequently, and dealing with the company is too difficult. Comcast sought to fix the problems with a five-year price guarantee, one year of free Xfinity Mobile service for home Internet customers, and plans with unlimited data instead of punitive data caps. But the company is still losing broadband customers at a higher-than-expected rate.

In Q4 2025 earnings announced today, Comcast reported a net loss of 181,000 residential and business broadband customers in the US. The loss consists of 178,000 residential Internet customers and 3,000 business customers.

………

Armstrong said that average revenue per user grew 1.1 percent, “consistent with the deceleration that we had previewed reflecting our new go-to-market pricing, including lower everyday pricing and strong adoption of free wireless lines.” Armstrong expects average revenue per user to continue growing slowly “for the next couple of quarters, driven by the absence of a rate increase, the impact from free wireless lines, and the ongoing migration of our base to simplified pricing.”

The only thing that Comcast has is the fact that Charter is just as widely loathed.

I hope that the markets burn both of them to the ground. 

Trump Admin Goes to Bat for Pedophile Welfare Queen

Now that Elon Musk has turned Ecch (Twitter) into a Pedo Porn generator, the UK is seriously considering blocking the social media site as well as the Grok AI tools that are used to generate this material.

In response, the Trump administration is demanding that Great Britain take no sanctions against the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™. 

The State Department is issuing a blunt warning to the United Kingdom: Ban Elon Musk’s X, and the United States could retaliate.

The threat follows increased concern in Britain over a flood of AI-generated sexualized deepfakes circulating on X, including non-consensual images and material that could violate child-safety laws.

U.K. regulators are now considering whether the platform ran afoul of the country’s Online Safety Act, a decision that could trigger a transatlantic standoff—with arguments for free speech on one side and growing pressure to curb AI-fueled sexual abuse on the other.

In an interview with GB News on Tuesday, the State Department’s Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy, Sarah B. Rogers, suggested that the Trump administration is prepared to push back aggressively if Britain takes action against Musk’s platform.

“With respect to a potential ban of X, [U.K. Prime Minister] Keir Starmer has said that nothing is off the table. I would say from America’s perspective, nothing is off the table when it comes to free speech,” she said. “Let’s wait and see what Ofcom does, and we’ll see what America does in response. This is an issue dear to us, and I think we would certainly want to respond.”

Gee, hypocrisy much?  (Ask the owners or TikTok)

I Prefer Firefox, But

The senior management of the Mozilla Corporation are trying very hard to kill the web browser.

I would argue that they are among the most overpaid executives in Silly-Con Valley.  (Musk is, of course in a class of his own in this category.

Case in point, in their relentless pursuit of the latest shiny object, the brand new CEO announced that he would be baking AI features into the program.

After the inevitable outcry from Firefox users, the CEO has announced that there will be a kill switch to disable AI features.

The backlash against AI invading almost every aspect of the computing experience is growing by the day.

Particularly as an onslaught of lazy AI slop subsuming news feeds, the tech is starting to feel like a massive distraction — and huge parts of the internet are disillusioned or even fuming in anger.

For instance, a vast number of Windows users refused to upgrade after Microsoft announced it would turn the operating system into a so-called “agentic OS.”

Even household names in the open-source industry aren’t safe. After being appointed as the new CEO of open-source software company Mozilla, whose Firefox browser has long been lauded as a compelling alternative to Google’s Chrome and Apple’s Safari, Anthony Enzor-DeMeo announced that it would be tripling down on AI.

In a December 16 blog post, Enzor-DeMeo announced that Firefox would become a “modern AI browser and support a portfolio of new and trusted software additions.”

But a ringing backlash quickly forced the company into damage control mode. 

………

The outcry was formidable enough for Mozilla to clarify the company’s new CEO’s comments.

“Something that hasn’t been made clear: Firefox will have an option to completely disable all AI features,” the company wrote in an update on Mastodon. “We’ve been calling it the AI kill switch internally. I’m sure it’ll ship with a less murderous name, but that’s how seriously and absolutely we’re taking this.”

I would note that Mozilla has released new and widely loathed features with some sort of kill switch, and 3 or 4 releases later, they remove the kill switch.

I had to engage in some fairly deep hacking to roll back their Mozilla add-on library requirement, for example.

 

Gee, Ya Think?

I'm not a big fan of corporate consultants.  

Mostly, they state the3 blatantly obvious, and give permission for companies to behave unethically (I'm looking at you, McKinsey)  and charge millions of dollars for this.

That being said, Gartner just stated the obvious and provided a very real public service when they recommended that companies not use AI browsers because their security is complete pants.

Everyone with half a brain should know this, but everyone is also afraid that they will be blamed for causing the tulip AI mania to collapse, so they remain silent:

Agentic browsers are too risky for most organizations to use, according to analyst firm Gartner.

The firm offered that advice last week in a new advisory titled “Cybersecurity Must Block AI Browsers for Now,” in which research VP Dennis Xu, senior director analyst Evgeny Mirolyubov, and VP analyst John Watts observe “Default AI browser settings prioritize user experience over security.”

The analysts’ definition of an AI browser encompasses tools like Perplexity’s Comet and OpenAI’s ChatGPT Atlas that include two elements:

• An “AI sidebar” that offers users the chance to summarize, search, translate, and interact with web content using AI services provided by the browser’s developer
• An agentic transaction capability that allows the browser to autonomously navigate, interact with, and complete tasks on websites, especially within authenticated web sessions.

………

But if you decide the back-end AI is too risky, Gartner recommends blocking users from downloading or installing AI browsers.

Gartner’s fears about the agentic capabilities of AI browser relate to their susceptibility to “indirect prompt-injection-induced rogue agent actions, inaccurate reasoning-driven erroneous agent actions, and further loss and abuse of credentials if the AI browser is deceived into autonomously navigating to a phishing website.”

Shorter version:  AI browsers are a Petri dish for phishing. 

Headline of the Day

Treat Big Tech like Big Tobacco

—Joel Wertheimer noting the obvious, big tech is a problem because they actively market a harmful product.

This ain't rocket science.

The tech bros are making their money by promoting body dysmorphia, bigotry, discrimination, ethnic cleansing, fraud, etc.

They want engagement (or in the case of crypto, marks) and they will actively harm people to get this.

The problem with Big Tobacco was not that it could charge excess prices because of its market power. The problem with Big Tobacco was that cigarettes were too cheap. Cigarettes caused both externalities to society and also internalities between the higher-level self that wanted to quit smoking and the primary self that could not quit an addictive substance. So, we taxed and regulated their use.

The fight regarding social media platforms has centered around antitrust and the sheer size of Big Tech companies. But these platforms are not so much a problem because they are big; they are big because they are a problem. Policy solutions need to actually address the main problem with the brain-cooking internet.

I love that bon mot, "Brain cooking internet."

………

For three decades, internet providers were merely passive hosts of third-party content, immune from liability faced by publishers. That grant of immunity was foundational, and the costs of such freedom were wildly outweighed by the benefits of the internet.

Both of these facts are no longer true. Social media companies are no longer passive hosts but active curators. And the costs of these products are now too high to ignore. They make us addicted to their apps with slot machine-style precision, and they are now helping creators fake reality with text-to-video generation.

The answer is not to destroy these companies or pull the government into the messy and probably unconstitutional world of directly regulating speech. The answer is to remove the special protections they have been granted and finally allow people harmed by these products to hold these companies liable.

………

Recommendation algorithms have allowed large platforms to turn our attention into a solved game. I say this with a lot of trepidation at a time when free speech is seriously threatened, particularly after seeing the harms that the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act wreaked on sex workers. But the time has come to amend Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA 230). Specifically, lawmakers should remove protections for platforms that actively promote content using reinforcement learning-based recommendation algorithms.

 The argument behind the safe harbor provisions was that websites which allowed users to share their opinions were like bookstores, and bookstores are not held liable for the content of their books.

On the other hand, newspapers ARE held liable for the content of the letters ot the editor that they publish, because they make a conscious decision about which letters to publish.

Their algorithms, and  soon their AI slop are conscious editorial decisions, and these decisions are made to the detriment of their users.

Quote of the Day

Many of These Are in Blood-Red States, the Kind of Places Where It’s Impossible to Find a Readable Copy of Atlas Shrugged Because Every Page of Every Copy Is Stuck Together. 

—Cory Doctorow, discussing how much people love their municipally operated internet service providers, even in the reddest states

Truer than taxes this is. 

Franc Kafka to the White Courtesy Phone

From the Anna Russel Department, ⃰ we have a decision from the FCC deciding not to require ISPs to list all of their junk fees because they charge so many that it would be an undue burden on them.

Yep, you got that right, their wrongdoing is so egregious that it would that they should not be required to tell the consumer the consumer.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr says Internet service providers shouldn’t have to list every fee they charge. Responding to a request from cable and telecom lobby groups, he is proposing to eliminate a rule that requires ISPs to itemize various fees in broadband price labels that must be made available to consumers.

The rule took effect in April 2024 after the FCC rejected ISPs’ complaints that listing every fee they created would be too difficult. The rule applies specifically to recurring monthly fees “that providers impose at their discretion, i.e., charges not mandated by a government.”

ISPs could comply with the rule either by listing the fees or by dropping the fees altogether and, if they choose, raising their overall prices by a corresponding amount. But the latter option wouldn’t fit with the strategy of enticing customers with a low advertised price and hitting them with the real price on their monthly bills. The broadband price label rules were created to stop ISPs from advertising misleadingly low prices.

This week, Carr scheduled an October 28 vote on a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that proposes eliminating several of the broadband-label requirements. One of the rules in line for removal requires ISPs to “itemize state and local passthrough fees that vary by location.” The FCC would seek public comment on the plan before finalizing it.

………

The proposal is part of Car’s “Delete, Delete, Delete” initiative that aims to eliminate as many rules as possible. In the Delete, Delete, Delete proceeding, cable lobby group NCTA and other broadband industry groups asked the FCC to ditch the list-every-fee requirement and other broadband label rules.

The FCC was required by Congress to implement broadband-label rules, but the Carr FCC says the law doesn’t “require itemizing pass through fees that vary by location.”

Sure, Jan.  

^*As Anna Russel would say, "I'm not making this up, you know."

Oh, You Poor Dears

It appears that internet service providers in California  are having major butt hurt over the new law that prevents landlords from taking kickbacks from ISPS in order to force them to pay for over-priced connectivity.

Will someone think of the children?

Rejecting opposition from the cable and real estate industries, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill that aims to increase broadband competition in apartment buildings.

The new law taking effect on January 1 says landlords must let tenants "opt out of paying for any subscription from a third-party Internet service provider, such as through a bulk-billing arrangement, to provide service for wired Internet, cellular, or satellite service that is offered in connection with the tenancy." It was approved by the state Assembly in a 75–0 vote in April, and by the Senate in a 30–7 vote last month.

"This is kind of like a first step in trying to give this industry an opportunity to just treat people fairly," Assemblymember Rhodesia Ransom, a Democratic lawmaker who authored the bill, told Ars last month. "It's not super restrictive. We are not banning bulk billing. We're not even limiting how much money the people can make. What we're saying here with this bill is that if a tenant wants to opt out of the arrangement, they should be allowed to opt out."

This is classic anti-competitive behavior, and this bill is a good thing.

Predictable Fail

The UK has a law, the Online Safety Act of 2023, which requires all online services to age verify all of their users. 

This has created a market niche for firms which collect user data, images of their identification, and other personally identifiable information (PII) to do this.

Well, one of these verifiers has leaked over 70,000 Discord users PII.

I when this legislation was first mooted, this one of the problems that opponents cited:

Communication platform provider Discord has admitted that around 70,000 users had their government IDs stolen as part of its recent data breach.

The breach, which Discord insists occurred at an unidentified third-party customer service provider, involved government ID scans that users upload to verify their age.

Some countries have introduced legislation requiring platforms to vet users and ensure only those that meet a certain age threshold are allowed access. The most recent example is the UK with its Online Safety Act.

The UK says in-scope platforms, like Discord, must implement mechanisms to verify their users' ages "without collecting or storing personal data, unless absolutely necessary." 

Discord's help article on how users can verify their age details two methods.

The first sees users take a photo of themselves holding a photo ID and a piece of paper with their username on it. This process is completed through Discord itself.

This was foreseeable, and foreseen.

The Tory passed law could be changed to make it less risky and draconian, but draconian infringements on personal rights are kind of a brand for Keir Starmer,  so I would expect any adjustments to make it worse.

Skeet of the Day

> It is 2025 BC. I am a soldier from one of the outlying provinces called to defend the pyramid in Memphis > It is 2025 AD. I am a soldier from one of the outlying provinces called to defend the pyramid in Memphis

[image or embed]

— 👁🌻🦊⚙️⚓ Bob, Engineer, Pusher of Paper (@navmecheng.bsky.social) October 11, 2025 at 1:32 PM

This is perfect.

Guck Foogle

Once again, Google has shown that its new motto is, "Be Evil," removing the ICE tracking app Red Dot from their app store. )

When juxtaposed with their recent attempts to make side loading apps impossible, it's even more evil.

There justification is that the masked abductor of random people is somehow a threatened class:

Both Google and Apple recently removed Red Dot, an app people can use to report sightings of ICE officials, from their respective app stores, 404 Media has found. The move comes after Apple removed ICEBlock, a much more prominent app, from its App Store on Thursday following direct pressure from U.S. Department of Justice officials. Google told 404 Media it removed apps because they shared the location of what it describes as a vulnerable group that recently faced a violent act connected to these sorts of ICE-spotting apps—a veiled reference to ICE officials.

The move signals a broader crackdown on apps that are designed to keep communities safe by crowdsourcing the location of ICE officials. Authorities have claimed that Joshua Jahn, the suspected shooter of an ICE facility in September and who killed a detainee, searched his phone for various tracking apps. A long-running immigration support group on the ground in Chicago, where ICE is currently focused, told 404 Media some of its members use Red Dot.

………

The app allows people to report ICE presence or activity, along with details such as the location and time, according to Red Dot’s website. The app then notifies nearby community members, and users can receive alerts about ICE activity in their area, the website says.

This is totalitarian bullsh%$.

We really need to