The 3D printing service Shapeways, originally from Eindhoven, is bankrupt, both in the Netherlands and the US.
Shapeways started in 2007 as a spin-off from Philips. The company let users design and upload their own 3D files, after which Shapeways could print the objects.
The company has been listed on the American stock exchange since 2021. At the time, sales were expected to grow to $250 million by 2024, but that was not achieved. In 2023, the company posted a net loss of $43.9 million, compared to a loss of $20.2 million in 2022.
The company already reported to the US Security and Exchange Commission in May that it did not have sufficient liquid assets .
In the Netherlands, the company was declared bankrupt on July 3 by the court in East Brabant.
NEW YORK, July 1 (Reuters) – Investors in GameStop (GME.N)
, opens new tab have for now withdrawn their lawsuit accusing Keith Gill, who is known as “Roaring Kitty” and helped spur the meme stock mania of 2021, of defrauding them through a “pump-and-dump” scheme for the videogame retailer.
A proposed class action accusing Gill of securities fraud was filed on Friday in the Brooklyn, New York, federal court, but voluntarily withdrawn on Monday without explanation. The lawsuit can be refiled
Lawyers at the Pomerantz law firm, which represents the investors, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Investors led by Martin Radev, who lives in the Las Vegas area, said Gill manipulated GameStop securities between May 13 and June 13 by quietly accumulating large quantities of stock and call options, then dumping some holdings after emerging from a three-year social media hiatus.
They said Gill’s activities caused GameStop’s share price to gyrate wildly, generating “millions of dollars” in profit for him at their expense.
“Defendant still enjoys celebrity status and commands a following of millions through his social media accounts,” the complaint said. “Accordingly, Defendant was well aware of his ability to manipulate the market for GameStop securities, as well as the benefits he could reap.”
Gill did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Monday.
On May 12, he posted a cryptic meme on the social media platform X that was widely seen as a bullish signal for GameStop, whose stock he cheerleaded in 2021.
GameStop’s share price more than tripled over the next two days, then gave back nearly all the gains by May 24.
On June 2, Gill revealed that he owned 5 million GameStop shares and 120,000 call options, and on June 13 revealed he had shed the call options but owned 9 million GameStop shares.
Investors said the truth about Gill’s investing became known on June 3 when the Wall Street Journal wrote about the timing of his options trades and said the online brokerage E*Trade (MS.N)
The meme stock mania was fueled in part by investors stuck at home during the pandemic, and led to a “short squeeze” that caused losses for hedge funds betting stock prices would fall.
So the investors starting the sueball were manipulating the stock by repeatedly shorting it, also with stocks that did not exist. Roaring Kitty showed this up a few years ago with the result that people started buying GME and raising the price. The shorters did not like this, as it cost them loads of money and they had to roll over their shorts. They are still clinging on to their shorts (at huge costs) and a bit ago Roaring Kitty broke his silence and posted a picture. That led to a spike in GME, probably at a time where the shorters needed to re-roll their shorts, which is why they are pissed.
[…] if you’re rich enough, says the US supreme court, you can now pay off state and local officials for government acts that fit your policy preferences or advance your interests. You can give them lavish gifts, send them on vacations, or simply cut them checks. You can do all of this so long as the cash, gifts or other “gratuities” are provided after the service, and not before it – and so long as a plausible deniability of the meaning and intent of these “gratuities” is maintained.
That was the ruling authored by Kavanaugh in Snyder v United States, a 6-3 opinion issued on Wednesday, in which the supreme court dealt the latest blow to federal anti-corruption law. In the case, which was divided along ideological lines, the court held that “gratuities” – that is, post-facto gifts and payments – are not technically “bribes”, and therefore not illegal. Bribes are only issued before the desired official act, you see, and their meaning is explicit; a more vague, less vulgarly transactional culture of “gratitude” for official acts, expressed in gifts and payments of great value, is supposed to be something very different. The court has thereby continued its long effort to legalize official corruption, using the flimsiest of pretexts to rob federal anti-corruption statutes of all meaning.
The case concerns James Snyder, who in 2013 was serving as the mayor of small-town Portage, Indiana. Late that year, the city of Portage awarded a contract to Great Lakes Peterbilt, a trucking company, and bought five tow trucks from them; a few weeks later, Snyder asked for and accepted a check for $13,000 from the company. Snyder was found guilty of corruption and sentenced to 21 months in federal prison. He argued that the kickback was not illegal because it came after he awarded a contract to the company that ultimately paid him off, not before.
Absurdly the US supreme court agreed, classifying such payments as mere tokens of appreciation and claiming they are not illegal when they are not the product of an explicit agreement meant to influence official acts in exchange for money.
In so doing, the court has narrowed the scope of anti-corruption law for state and local officials to apply to only those exchanges of money, goods and official favor in which an explicit quid pro quo arrangement can be proved.
[…]
The court’s narrow vision of corruption – one in which only explicit, whispered deals in shadowy, smoke-filled back rooms count as “corruption”, and all other forms of influence and exchange are something other than the genuine article – also fundamentally misunderstands how influence-peddling works. In his controlling opinion, Kavanaugh emphasizes that in order to be an illegal bribe, a gift or payment must be accompanied by “a corrupt state of mind” on behalf of the official or benefactor. But corruption, influence-peddling, and unfair and undue methods of persuasion are more subtle and complicated than this in practice.
For an example, we need look no further than the conservative justices of the supreme court itself, who have become notorious, in recent years, for accepting lavish gifts and chummy intimacy from rightwing billionaires. According to investigative reporting by ProPublica, Clarence Thomas has accepted vacations, real estate purchases, tuition for his young relatives, and seemingly innumerable private jet trips from the billionaire Harlan Crow, as well as financing for an RV from another wealthy patron, Anthony Welters. Thomas has argued that these gifts and favors are merely the “personal hospitality” of “close personal friends”.
Boozt AB, an online Nordic department store, has banned thousands of customers for returning an excessive number of purchased items.
The retailer has blocked about 60,000 of a total 3.5 million customers, in a bid to reduce the significant costs associated with “serial returners,” the company said in a statement. “Their behavior is too expensive for both the company and the environment,” it added.
Returns are costly for retailers both in lost revenue and in the cost of trying to turn around an item to be sold again. In some instances items returned aren’t fit to be sold again, leading to waste. In the UK alone, returns are expected to increase to more than £7 billion ($8.9 billion) by 2027, according to GlobalData. The biggest driver of returns is ill-fitting clothing and footwear.
Boozt’s savings by blocking customers amounts to “many millions,” the retailer said, without specifying an exact figure.
The European Commission said in a formal ‘statement of objections’ on Tuesday (25 June) that Microsoft had violated EU antitrust rules by bundling its Teams app with its Office 365 and Microsoft 365 productivity suites.
The statement follows almost a year-long investigation, and the tech giant told Euractiv it would work to “address the Commission’s remaining concerns”.
Teams is a communication and collaboration tool, while Office 365 and Microsoft 365 are comprehensive productivity software suites that include applications like Word, Excel, and Outlook for businesses.
Business software suppliers, like Microsoft, offer software as a service (SaaS) on their own cloud platforms, the Commission wrote in a press release. This allows new companies to provide SaaS solutions and customers to use different software from various providers.
However, Microsoft combines many software types in one package. When Teams was launched, Microsoft included it in their Office 365 and Microsoft 365 business suites, the Commission said.
Margrethe Vestager, the Commission’s executive vice president in charge of competition policy, said the EU executive was concerned that “Microsoft may be giving its own communication product Teams an undue advantage over competitors, by tying it to its popular productivity suites for businesses.”
This might have hindered competition and innovation, harming customers in the European Economic Area, the press release stated.
If confirmed, these practices would violate the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), which prohibits abuse of a dominant market position.
Brad Smith, vice chair and president of Microsoft, told Euractiv the company was taking the Commission’s assessment seriously:
“Having unbundled Teams and taken initial interoperability steps, we appreciate the additional clarity provided today and will work to find solutions to address the Commission‘s remaining concerns,” he said.
After proceedings began in July 2023, Microsoft made changes to offer some suites without Teams, but the Commission found these changes insufficient and required more action to restore competition.
Statement of Objections
The Commission began its investigation last July, following a complaint from Slack Technologies, now owned by Salesforce. A second complaint from alfaview GmbH raised similar issues about Teams.
Sabastian Niles, president & chief legal officer at Salesforce, told Euractiv they are urging “the Commission to move towards a swift, binding, and effective remedy that restores free and fair choice and promotes competition”.
The Statement of Objections addresses both investigations. This formal step notifies Microsoft of the antitrust concerns, allowing them to review the case documents, respond in writing, and request a hearing to present their defence.
If the Commission finds enough evidence of a violation after reviewing the company’s defence, it can issue a decision to stop the conduct and impose a fine of up to 10% of the company’s global annual revenue.
The Commission can also require the company to take measures to end the infringement. There is no set timeline for completing antitrust investigations, as their duration depends on factors like the case’s complexity, company cooperation, and the defence process.
In March, it was the Commission that violated data protection rules in its use of Microsoft 365, leading to the imposition of corrective measures by the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS).
Apple is the first company to be charged with violating the Digital Markets Act, a law passed in 2022 that gives European regulators wide authority to force the largest “online gatekeepers” to change their business practices.
The charges signal that the European Union, already known as an aggressive regulator of the tech industry, plans to intensify its crackdown. Amazon, Google and Meta are also facing investigations under the new competition rules, while TikTok and X are facing probes under another law intended to force internet companies to more aggressively police their platforms for illicit content.
[…]
After initiating an investigation in March, E.U. regulators said Apple was putting unlawful restrictions on companies that make games, music services and other applications. Under the law, also known as the D.M.A., Apple cannot limit how companies communicate with customers about sales and other offers and content available outside the App Store. The company faces a penalty of up to 10 percent of global revenue, a fine that could go up to 20 percent for repeat infringements, regulators said. Apple reported $383 billion in revenue last year.
“Today is a very important day for the effective enforcement of the D.M.A.,” said Margrethe Vestager, the European Commission executive vice president in charge of competition policy. She said Apple’s App Store policies make developers more dependent on the company and prevent consumers from being aware of better offers.
[…]
“The European Commission would like Apple to open its ecosystem, and Apple is saying no way,” said Mr. Valletti, now an economics professor at Imperial College London. “Apple is basically saying, ‘See you in court.’”
Apple’s regulatory woes show how government scrutiny of the tech industry is growing worldwide. In the United States, Apple is being sued by the Justice Department over claims that it has an illegal monopoly in the smartphone market. It also is arguing in U.S. federal court that it has the right to take up to 27 percent of certain app sales through third-party payment systems, which developers argue violates a 2021 judicial ruling.
Japan and Britain, which is no longer part of the European Union, have advanced rules to curb Apple’s control of the App Store, as well.
Apple has been swinging it’s fuck you stick at the EU for some time now, so it’s not surprising that the EU has decided to finally do something about it.
The visualisation of US vs EU spending on NATO going the rounds is pretty suspect: The Blue area contains not just the USA, but also Canada. The US defence budget is incorrect. It fails to take into account that the US is a global player with ambitions and commitments beyond NATO. It doesn’t show that EU defence spending is larger than that of Russia and China. There is no mention of the pressure the USA exerts on it’s NATO allies to Buy American – and the staggering amount the US shop window filled with pretty poor products (such as the F-35) is valued at. There is no mention of the years of fragmentation inflicted on the EU by the US to insure that the EU was never able to create economies of scale, or even a common security and defence policy. Finally, the scale of US defence spending comes at a cost. Social and welfare spending is much much lower in the US than in the EU, which helps explain the low levels of education, happiness, social mobility, etc in the US. A sacrifice the EU does not seem to want to make.
[…] the moral high ground on which the United States stands to shame allies on defense spending is partly an illusion. There is no question Washington spends significant resources on defense, but likening total US defense expenditures to those of its allies is not an appropriate comparison. Unlike most other NATO nations, the United States is a global actor with commitments extending to the Middle East and IndoPacific as well as Europe. Most European defense capabilities are expended in theater or in direct support of NATO missions like in Afghanistan, whereas only a portion of the US defense budget is dedicated to transatlantic security.[…] the common pretense in US policy circles that the entirety of US defense spending is counted toward European security is logically unsound.
[…] In addition, continental US territory falls under NATO’s collective-defence commitment, so US forces devoted to US continental defence also in effect amount to a NATO commitment to defend the Alliance’s largest member. The same goes particularly for Canada’s commitment to North American defence. But that commitment is Alliance-wide, and – as has been often remarked – the one activation of NATO’s Article 5 collective-defence undertaking was in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on the US, when the rest of the Alliance quickly supplemented US air defences with Alliance-operated AWACS airborne early-warning aircraft.
However, America is spending its defence dollars principally for its own security needs, as well as to support a range of interests and allies in other regions around the world, not exclusively Europe. As one can see, the balance sheet is complicated to say the least – those assets and resources are developed first and foremost for national interests and therefore have a dual US/external-security use. […]
This focus on US security needs is particularly visible when you look at the amount of troops the US commits to United Nations peacekeeping operations.
The U.S. [….] currently has only 27 personnel in the peacekeepers, as of November 2023. Of them, 21 are staff officers, four are “experts on mission,” and two are police; none are troops.
Other countries that have zero “boots on the ground” include: Canada, Japan, and Australia.
US Spending is about equal to Asian spending, and only slightly higher than the largest EU contributors
This lack of actual boots on the ground but amount of expenditure points to what the United States is really supporting: it’s defence industry.
US Business interests winning – Coercion by the US to buy US products
The US uses strong arm tactics to sell their products to countries that have an indigenous arms industry – usually composed of better and cheaper to operate products. The US, however, won’t take no for an answer – and US companies profit massively. How massively? See below.
[…] NATO creates a market for defence sales. Over the last two years, NATO Allies have agreed to purchase 120 billion dollars’ worth of weapons from U.S. defence companies. Including thousands of missiles to the U.K, Finland and Lithuania, Hundreds of Abrams tanks to Poland and Romania, And hundreds of F-35 aircraft across many European Allied nations – a total of 600 by 2030. From Arizona to Virginia, Florida to Washington state, American jobs depend on American sales to defence markets in Europe and Canada. What you produce keeps people safe. What Allies buy keeps American businesses strong. So NATO is a good deal for the United States. […]
The U.S. alone represents a quarter of the world economy. But together, with NATO Allies, we represent half of the world’s economic might. And half of the world’s military might. Together, we have world-class militaries, vast intelligence networks, more defence spending, and unique diplomatic leverage.[…]
A total of 23 per cent of US arms exports went to states in Europe in 2018–22, up from 11 per cent in 2013–17. Three of the USA’s North Atlantic 4 sipri fact sheet Treaty Organization (NATO) partners in the region were among the 10 largest importers of US arms in 2018–22: the UK accounted for 4.6 per cent of US arms exports, the Netherlands for 4.4 per cent and Norway for 4.2 per cent.
[…]
Arms imports by European states were 47 per higher in 2018–22 than in 2013–17. The biggest European arms importer in 2018–22 was the UK, which was the 13th largest arms importer in the world, followed by Ukraine (see box 2) and Norway, ranking 14th and 15th respectively. The USA accounted for 56 per of the region’s arms imports in 2018–22, Russia for 5.8 per (mainly to Belarus) and Germany for 5.1 per cent.
European NATO states Largely in response to the deteriorating security environment in the region, NATO states in Europe increased their arms imports by 65 per cent between 2013–17 and 2018–22. The USA accounted for 65 per cent of total arms imports by European NATO states and the NATO organization itself (see table 2) in 2018–22. The next biggest suppliers were France (8.6 per cent) and South Korea (4.9 per cent). The arms imports of European NATO states are expected to continue to rise in the coming years, based on existing programmes for arms imports. These include orders placed before the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and several large orders announced afterwards. Some of the orders placed in 2022 were the result of accelerated procurement processes implemented in response to the war in Ukraine. For example, in the first four years of the period (2018–21), Poland’s most notable arms import orders included 32 combat aircraft and 4 missile and air defence systems from the USA; however, in 2022 Poland announced new orders for 394 tanks, 96 combat helicopters and 12 missile and air defence systems from the USA; 48 combat aircraft, 1000 tanks, 672 self-propelled guns and 288 multiple rocket launchers from South Korea; and 3 frigates from the UK. After an accelerated procurement process, Germany ordered 35 combat aircraft from the USA in late 2022. These are specifically for carrying nuclear weapons owned by the USA and will replace existing aircraft that have this task.
And if you don’t buy US equipment, or don’t want to? You are leant on before you buy and after you buy. The following show rare but explicitly how the US conducts ‘business’
The U.S. government expressed disappointment with the Czech Republic and Hungary for their December moves toward acquiring non-American-made fighter jets. The rare public criticism of U.S. NATO allies comes as Poland also considers purchasing new fighter jets for its air force.
Speaking December 18, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said that the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland—all of which joined NATO in 1999—should not jeopardize more urgent military needs and reforms necessary for the three countries to work more effectively with NATO’s other 16 members by purchasing advanced fighter jets, which can cost up to tens of millions of dollars apiece.
But Boucher continued by saying, “If you’re going to buy [combat aircraft], buy American.” Adding that “we think we make the best,” he said that Secretary of State Colin Powell “has raised the interest of American companies in selling airplanes” during meetings with officials from the three countries. […]
The Pentagon estimated in June that a sale of 60 U.S. F-16 fighters to Poland would cost $4.3 billion. This price tag includes missiles and bombs to arm the aircraft as well as U.S. training.
MR. BOUCHER: The Secretary has been a staunch supporter of American aircraft sales, and in his meetings from the very beginning of the Administration, he has raised the fortunes of American companies and the fact that we make the best airplanes in the world. He has pressed that in a variety of meetings. So we are disappointed that the Czech Republic and Hungary recently took steps forward in procuring advanced supersonic fighter aircraft […] The Secretary has raised these issues about the cost, the spending, the implication for other programs. But in the end, he has always said if you’re going to buy airplanes, you ought to buy American ones
QUESTION: So do you think that their purchase of these jets and using them could affect badly — adversely affect NATO in some way?
MR. BOUCHER: We have — I think we have tried to make clear all along that, as nations address these force requirements and these purchases, they needed to consider the overall impact on military reform programs and abilities to meet their broader global force obligations to NATO. And those are important questions that we think need to be considered.
[…]
MR. BOUCHER: Yes. If you’re going to buy, buy American. But consider carefully how you can meet your overall obligations.
QUESTION: Richard, you seem to be saying — let me get this straight. Do you think it was unwise of these two governments to decide to buy planes instead of doing something else with the money?
MR. BOUCHER: I don’t think I would use your language. I think I will stick to my language, thanks.
QUESTION: What was your language — you think it was what, then? You think —
MR. BOUCHER: As I said, we think that they should avoid major defense procurements, which could jeopardize other urgently needed military reforms.
QUESTION: But if they are going to make them, they should buy from the States and not from —
MR. BOUCHER: Yes
[…]
QUESTION: I don’t understand the interoperability thing that you just brought up with Barry. Because, I mean, are you saying that, say, French aircraft or British aircraft are not interoperable within the NATO scheme of things? I mean, these countries fly their own planes. Why can’t — why do the Czechs have to buy your planes, and why can’t they buy from someone — I mean, I can understand if they were buying from China, or from — (laughter) — what’s the deal?
[…]
MR. BOUCHER: Nobody said they can’t buy some other airplane. We haven’t argued that these other airplanes cannot be interoperable with NATO — with American airplanes or NATO airplanes or other airplanes that NATO maintains in its inventory. Our view has been that when it comes to airplanes, first of all, we make the best ones. And second of all, we make airplanes that have been deployed throughout the world, that have been proven in combat, that have been proven in lots of different situations. And they have a demonstrated record of interoperability, as well as performance. And we think we make the best. So we make that clear to other countries when we talk to them.
QUESTION: But can’t you let, you know, Boeing and Lockheed Martin make their own sales pitch for them?
MR. BOUCHER: We like to support American workers, American companies.
QUESTION: All right.
QUESTION: Sort of related to that. Can you just expand on how the Secretary has raised the fortunes of American aircraft companies? I’m just — that was what you said originally —
MR. BOUCHER: Perhaps it’s not the best phrase. He has raised the interests of American aircraft companies in selling airplanes.
QUESTION: But he didn’t — I just want to —
MR. BOUCHER: I didn’t say he — that he — I didn’t mean to say that he brought more money their way. No.
QUESTION: Okay. I just —
MR. BOUCHER: That was a bad — perhaps a bad choice of words. But that was not the implication. He has raised the interest of American companies in selling airplanes.
The following excerpts show the US way of thinking re common EU defence policy. The US has spent decades strong arming the EU into not working together. They used scare tactics and nonsense texts in order to assure US supremacy within NATO as well as globally. Of course, there is a lot to be said that the EU allowed themselves to be bossed around, and the weak spines of the EU politicians (and of course their wallets, as they were still paying back the Marshall Plan to uncertain terms) can be shown. At the same time, their military advisors were playing in terms of self interest – they wanted to keep playing with US toys and at US facilities and at the scale the US exercises were held and didn’t see that if they had a single EU defence policy, they would be able to play at that scale – but with toys and capabilities they got to design themselves, instead of riding on US coat tails.
From a military standpoint, the European Union’s Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) defies logic. Why would the European allies seek to create a competing military force outside NATO when worried about American isolationism and when unable and unwilling to dedicate the necessary resources? This article suggests an alternative motive behind the European Union’s establishment of a defense program—the development and enhancement of a “European identity.” In short, the ESDP is designed in no small part to further the project of nation-building in a broadening European Union. This article proposes a social-constructivist framework for analyzing this development.
The level of Europe’s defense spending and the size of its collective forces in uniform should make it a global power with one of the strongest militaries in the world. But Europe does not act as one on defense, even though it formed a political union almost 30 years ago. Europe’s military strength today is far weaker than the sum of its parts. This is not just a European failure; it is also fundamentally a failure of America’s post-Cold War strategy toward Europe—a strategy that remains virtually unchanged since the 1990s.
Europe’s dependence on the United States for its security means that the United States possesses a de facto veto on the direction of European defense. Since the 1990s, the United States has typically used its effective veto power to block the defense ambitions of the European Union. This has frequently resulted in an absurd situation where Washington loudly insists that Europe do more on defense but then strongly objects when Europe’s political union—the European Union—tries to answer the call. This policy approach has been a grand strategic error—one that has weakened NATO militarily, strained the trans-Atlantic alliance, and contributed to the relative decline in Europe’s global clout. As a result, one of America’s closest partners and allies of first resort is not nearly as powerful as it could be.
[…]
U.S. policy has consistently opposed EU defense efforts since the late 1990s, arguing that EU defense efforts would undermine NATO. State Department officials’ oft-repeated claim, virtually unchanged over the past three decades, is that an EU defense structure would “duplicate” NATO, making the treaty organization obsolete. Democratic and Republican administrations have repeated the mantra “no duplication” so often that it has become U.S. policy doctrine.5 But rarely, if ever, is the concern about possible duplication actually unpacked and assessed.
[…]
The limited nature of current EU defense efforts is no doubt the fault of the EU. But the immense agency the United States has on European defense questions is also undeniable. Since the 1990s, the United States has wielded its influence, often by mobilizing EU members that are most dependent on U.S. security guarantees to block or constrain EU efforts.
Thus, for nearly 25 years, the United States has opposed the federalization of European foreign and defense policy at the EU level.
[…]
in December 1998, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright struck a different tone than her predecessor 45 years earlier.13 In just a few short sentences, she laid out Washington’s concerns. She explained that the effort to create a European Security and Defense Identity (ESDI) must avoid “de-linking ESDI from NATO, avoid duplicating existing efforts, and avoid discriminating against non-EU members.” Secretary Albright’s address became known as the “three Ds”—no duplicating, discriminating, or delinking.
Secretary Albright’s speech was prompted by what seemed, at the time, like a stunning European breakthrough on defense. Just four days prior, a remarkable agreement was signed by U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair and French President Jacques Chirac in St. Malo, France. There, the two largest European military powers agreed to support the formation of a 60,000 strong European force.
[…]
Secretary Albright’s “three Ds,” if rigidly interpreted, left little room for the EU to expand into defense. The speech became a de facto doctrine that has been rigidly adhered to ever since, even if that was not the original intent. The subsequent two decades have shown that any EU effort could be accused of being duplicative or discriminating against non-EU states.
[…]
U.S. Secretary of Defense William Cohen warned in his final NATO summit in 2000—in what The Washington Post described as an “unusually passionate speech” at a NATO Defense Ministerial—that “there will be no EU caucus in NATO” and that NATO could become “a relic of the past” should the EU move forward with its proposal to set up a rapid reaction force.16
[…]
Indeed, when the Bush administration took office in 2001, it pushed NATO to create an alternative to the EU’s rapid reaction force proposal, the NATO Response Force.
[…]
In a letter that caught Brussels completely off guard, the State Department’s Under Secretary of State Andrea Thompson and Under Secretary of Defense Ellen Lord warned the EU of retribution if it did not include the United States or third parties to participate in PESCO projects.33 Returning to the concerns that Secretary Albright had voiced 20 years prior, they argued that there was a risk of “EU capabilities developing in a manner that produces duplication, non-interoperable military systems, diversion of scarce defense resources, and unnecessary competition between NATO and the EU.”34 Yet the inclusion that the Trump administration demanded is not reciprocal, as the United States would not allow European defense companies similar access to the U.S. defense procurements.35 The U.S. Congress wants American taxpayer dollars to go to American companies, and yet the United States expects the EU to operate differently.
The Trump administration maintained U.S. opposition to EU defense, less to preserve NATO equities and more for petty, parochial purposes: the interests of U.S. defense companies. As Nick Witney of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) points out, the United States “aggressively lobbied against Europeans’ efforts to develop their defence industrial and technological base.”36 This exposes the contradictory nature of U.S. policy: The United States expects Europe to get its act together on defense but to not spend its taxpayer euros on European companies. Indeed, it is hard to see Europeans spending robustly on defense if that spending does not support European jobs and innovation.
[…]
The problem with the current state of European defense is not fundamentally about spending. Collectively, European defense spending levels should actually be enough to put forth a fighting force roughly on par with other global powers. While it is difficult to compare in absolute numbers given the differences in purchasing power, when taken together, the EU spends more on defense than either Russia or China, at nearly $200 billion per year.38
RAND is enormously respected and see the fear instigated in each of their possible scenarios for a common EU defence policy – they apparently lead to greater conflict in the world and otherwise NATO suffers.
This study explored three possible futures of European strategic autonomy in defence to understand their policy implications
[….] Experts varied in their views of which scenario was most plausible, with European interviewees tending to lean towards Scenario 1, which envisages development of a strong European pillar of NATO, on the basis of current trends; and US interviewees expressing some scepticism of this being plausible in the short term (next five years or so). As a result, several US interviewees noted that elements of Scenario 2, which envisage a faltering EU defence integration and transatlantic fragmentation, might be more plausible. A strong Europe that does not rely on NATO for access to military capabilities and structures, as envisaged in Scenario 3, was generally perceived as implausible in the short (five year) term considered by this study
A militarily stronger EU has clear benefits for NATO and the U.S., but the path towards it is not without risks – particularly if it diverges from NATO
A strong European pillar within NATO was largely seen by experts as advantageous for all actors considered: bringing greater military strength to NATO, while creating a militarily stronger partner to the U.S. in a time of intense global competition. Conversely, a capable EU that duplicates or disregards NATO was seen as a threat to transatlantic relations. A number of US interviewees also perceived a risk that the U.S. would lose influence in Europe and would risk divergence of foreign and security policy. This was seen as particularly concerning vis-à-vis other countries the U.S. perceives as competitors and adversaries (e.g. China, Russia) but which some in the EU may not perceive in the same way. The risks accompanying such divergence due to a militarily independent EU were seen as not too dissimilar to those of the opposite extreme of a fragmented Europe.vi A militarily fragmented EU, then, could weaken NATO in terms of defence capabilities but could also mean a further relative increase in US influence within NATO, potentially driving greater coherence of the Alliance. Overall, however, NATO’s credibility – tightly knit with the strength, effectiveness and coordination of military capabilities of the 30 allies – would likely suffer in this scenario. This is because most EU member states are also NATO members and the forces and capabilities they have are the same – whether used for EU CSDP missions or operations through NATO. US foreign and security policy ambitions could also suffer if one of its crucial allies were to become fragmented and militarily weak
As you can tell, the EU seems to care a lot more for it’s citizens.
The EU also believes in prevention. Delivering Official development assistance (ODA) is a way to prevent conflicts globally. The EU spends around EUR 50 billion per year on ODA, the US requested $10.5 billion in bolstering humanitarian assistance 2023. The EU is also set to spend around EUR 578 billion on climate spending in the period between 2021 – 2027, around 82.5 billion per year. The US around $2.3 billion in 2023. Climate change affects refugee streams, changing ecosystems and their economic attractiveness. It also makes working conditions harder for people in the defence industry:
The security threats of climate change
With the alarming acceleration of global warming and weather extremes across the globe, environmental issues have become more severe and climate change has become a defining issue of our time. Climate change causes complications for fresh water management and water scarcity, as well as health issues, biodiversity loss and demographic challenges. Other consequences like famine, drought and marine environmental degradation lead to loss of land and livelihood, and have a disproportionate impact on women and girls, and poor and vulnerable populations.
Climate change is also a threat multiplier that affects NATO security, operations and missions both in the Euro-Atlantic area and in the Alliance’s broader neighbourhood. It makes it harder for militaries to carry out their tasks. It also shapes the geopolitical environment, leading to instability and geostrategic competition and creating conditions that can be exploited by state and non-state actors that threaten or challenge the Alliance. Increasing surface temperatures, thawing permafrost, desertification, loss of sea ice and glaciers, and the opening up of shipping lanes may cause volatility in the security environment. As such, the High North is one of the epicentres of climate change.
Climate change affects the current and future operating environment, and the military will need to ensure its operational effectiveness in increasingly harsh conditions. Greater temperature extremes, sea level rise, significant changes in precipitation patterns and extreme weather events test the resilience of militaries and infrastructure. For example, increases in ambient temperatures coupled with changing air density (pressure altitude) can have a detrimental impact on fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft performance and air transport capability. Similarly, preventing the overheating of military aircraft, especially the sensitive electronic and airbase installations, requires an increased logistical effort and higher energy consumption. Many transport routes are located on coastal roads, which are particularly vulnerable to weather extremes. These are not only challenges to engineering and technology development, but must also be factored into operational planning scenarios.
The US does indeed spend more than the EU on its’ armed forces, but the amount ‘spent on NATO’ is not a true reflection. The US budget also includes homeland forces as well as the expeditionary ambitions of the USA. It also turns out that the USA thwarts attempts by Europe to form a common security and defence policy, both through their vocal stance against “duplication” by the EU of NATO forces and their strong arm tactics that force the EU to buy American to the detriment of the EU arms industry.
The US budget props up an arms based economy, to the detriment of the US population. US citizens notably less happy than EU citizens, most likely due to the relatively tiny amount that the US spends on social protections, relative to the EU countries.
Apple’s grudging accommodation of European antitrust rules by allowing third-party app stores on iPhones has left users of its Safari browser exposed to potential web activity tracking.
Developers Talal Haj Bakry and Tommy Mysk looked into the way Apple implemented the installation process for third-party software marketplaces on iOS with Safari, and concluded Cupertino’s approach is particularly shoddy.
tl;dr: The way Apple has added support for third-party app stores lets any website, when visited by Safari on iOS at least, to ping a chosen approved software marketplace with a unique per-user identifier. That means as users move from website to website, or use a website, these sites can quietly disclose that activity to a non-Apple app store – revealing the sort of things individual netizens find interesting. That info can be used for targeted app promotions, ads, and so on. This appears to apply to iOS 17.4 users in the EU. Whether anyone will exploit this in the wild remains to be seen – but the potential is there.
“Our testing shows that Apple delivered this feature with catastrophic security and privacy flaws,” wrote Bakry and Mysk in an advisory published over the weekend.
Apple – which advertises Safari as “incredibly private” – evidently has undermined privacy among European Union Safari users through a marketplace-kit: URI scheme that potentially allows approved third-party app stores to follow those users around the web.
[…]
The trouble is, any site can trigger a marketplace-kit: request. On EU iOS 17.4 devices, that will cause a unique per-user identifier to be fired off by Safari to an approved marketplace’s servers, leaking the fact that the user was just visiting that site. This happens even if Safari is in private browsing mode. The marketplace’s servers can reject the request, which can also include a custom payload, passing more info about the user to the alternative store.
[…]
Apple doesn’t allow third-party app stores in most parts of the world, citing purported privacy and security concerns – and presumably interest in sustaining its ability to collect commissions for software sales.
But Apple has been designated as a “gatekeeper” under Europe’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) for iOS, the App Store, Safari, and just recently iPadOS.
That designation means the iBiz has been ordered to open its gated community so that European customers can choose third-party app stores and web-based app distribution – also known as side-loading.
But wait, there’s more
According to Bakry and Mysk, Apple’s URI scheme has three significant failings. First, they say, it fails to check the origin of the website, meaning the aforementioned cross-site tracking is possible.
Second, Apple’s MarketplaceKit – its API for third-party stores – doesn’t validate the JSON Web Tokens (JWT) passed as input parameters via incoming requests. “Worse, it blindly relayed the invalid JWT token when calling the /oauth/token endpoint,” observed Bakry and Mysk. “This opens the door to various injection attacks to target either the MarketplaceKit process or the marketplace back-end.”
And third, Apple isn’t using certificate pinning, which leaves the door open for meddling by an intermediary (MITM) during the MarketplaceKit communication exchange. Bakry and Mysk claim they were able to overwrite the servers involved in this process with their own endpoints.
The limiting factor of this attack is that a marketplace must first be approved by Apple before it can undertake this sort of tracking. At present, not many marketplaces have won approval. We’re aware of the B2B Mobivention App marketplace, AltStore, and Setapp. Epic Games has also planned an iOS store. A few other marketplaces will work after an iThing jailbreak, but they’re unlikely to attract many consumers.
“The flaw of exposing users in the EU to tracking is the result of Apple insisting on inserting itself between marketplaces and their users,” asserted Bakry and Mysk. “This is why Apple needs to pass an identifier to the marketplaces so they can identify installs and perhaps better calculate the due Core Technology Fee (CTF).”
They urge iOS users in Europe to use Brave rather than Safari because Brave’s implementation checks the origin of the website against the URL to prevent cross-site tracking.
Back when Apple planned not to support Home Screen web apps in Europe – a gambit later abandoned after developer complaints and regulatory pressure – the iGiant justified its position by arguing the amount of work required “was not practical to undertake given the other demands of the DMA.” By not making the extra effort to implement third-party app stores securely, Apple has arguably turned its security and privacy concerns into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
In its remarks [PDF] on complying with the DMA, Apple declared, “In the EU, every user’s security, privacy, and safety will depend in part on two questions. First, are alternative marketplaces and payment processors capable of protecting users? And, second, are they interested in doing so?”
There’s also the question of whether Apple is capable of protecting users – and whether it’s interested in doing so.
HP “sought to take advantage of customers’ sunk costs,” printer owners claimed this week in a class action lawsuit against the hardware giant.
Lawyers representing the aggrieved were responding [PDF] in an Illinois court to an earlier HP Inc motion to dismiss a January lawsuit. Among other things, the plaintiffs’ filing stated that the printer buyers “never entered into any contractual agreement to buy only HP-branded ink prior to receiving the firmware updates.” They allege HP broke several anti-competitive statutes, which they claim:
bar tying schemes, and certain uses of software to accomplish that without permission, that would monopolize an aftermarket for replacement ink cartridges, when these results are achieved in a way that “take[s] advantage of customers’ sunk costs.”
In the case, which began in January, the plaintiffs are arguing that HP issued a firmware update between late 2022 and early 2023 that they allege disabled their printers if they installed a replacement cartridge that was not HP-branded. They are asking for damages that include the cost of now-useless third-party cartridges and an injunction to disable the part of the firmware updates that prevent the use of third-party ink.
In a March filing [PDF], HP claimed it went “to great lengths” to let customers know its printers are intended to work only with cartridges with an HP “security chip.” While the plaintiffs say it uses software updates to block consumers from using cheaper rival cartridges in HP printers, the hardware giant characterizes this as “dynamic security” measures “to prevent the use of third-party printer cartridges that copy HP’s security chips (i.e. cloned or counterfeit cartridges).”
“HP does not block cartridges that reuse HP security chips, and there are many such options available for sale. Nor does HP conceal its use of dynamic security,” the company said.
It added that the printer owners can’t claim damages for being overcharged under federal antitrust laws because consumers who buy products from an intermediary can sue the manufacturer for injunctive relief under those laws, but they can’t sue the manufacturer to recover damages resulting from an alleged overcharge.
HP customers claim firmware update rendered third-party ink verboten
“None of the named plaintiffs allege that they purchased printer ink directly from HP after receiving a dynamic security firmware update,” HP said.
And why should they?
It also said Robinson and co. hadn’t “plausibly alleged” that HP “acted without authorization” or “exceeded authorized access” when the software tweaks came through.
HP CEO Enrique Lores has made no secret of the fact that it hopes to pull customers into a print subscription business model.
Lores said in an interview earlier this year that if a “customer doesn’t print enough or doesn’t use our supplies, it’s a bad investment.” However, in fairness, when it comes to ink cartridges, HP is far from alone in charging steep prices, with some estimates placing printer ink prices at $439-$2,380 per liter. Some printer makers make a loss on retailing the devices.
Ubisoft’s online-only racing game The Crew stopped being operable on April 1. Some users are reporting, however, that things have gone a bit further. They say that the company actually reached into Ubisoft Connect accounts and revoked the license to access the game, according to reports by Game Rant and others.
Some of these users liken this move to theft, as they had purchased the game with their own money and received no warning that Ubisoft would be deleting the license. When attempting to launch the game, these players say they received a message stating that access was no longer possible.
On its face, this sounds pretty bad. People paid for something that was snatched away. However, there’s one major caveat. The Crew is an online-only racing game, so there really isn’t anything to do without the servers. Those servers went down on April 1 and the game was delisted from digital store fronts. Also, this move only impacts the original game. The Crew 2 and The Crew Motorfest are both still going.
When Ubisoft announced that the servers would be taken offline, it offered refunds to those who recently purchased the The Crew. The game’s been around a decade, so this refund likely didn’t apply to the vast majority of players. Some of these people said they had planned to set up private servers to play the game, an option that is now impossible.
[…]
We pay money for these products. We think we own them, but we don’t own a damned thing. Read the terms of service from Ubisoft or any other major games publisher for proof of that. Philippe Tremblay, Ubisoft’s director of subscriptions, recently told Gamesindustry.biz that players will become “comfortable with not owning” their games.
It will become mandatory for payment service providers, such as banks, that offer standard credit transfers in euros to offer the sending and receipt of instant payments in euros. The regulation relating to this has now been published.
Thanks to the regulation, people will be able to transfer money within 10 seconds at any time of the day.
The situation varies widely from Member State to Member State as regards the availability of instant payments and any associated fees. At the beginning of 2022, only 11 percent of all euro transfers in the EU were instant.
On October 26, 2022, the European Commission presented a proposal for a regulation on instant payments in euros. With the proposal, the Commission fulfilled a key commitment in the Commission’s 2020 Retail Payments Strategy.
The regulation provides for a longer transition period for countries outside the eurozone, as they need more time to adapt to the new rules.
It’s pretty silly that it’s 2024 and only now are database bits being forced to flip within 10 seconds, but that shows how long overdue this kind of regulation is.
Lately, though, there’s been a very disturbing trend. A company will make its program using open source, make millions from it, and then — and only then — switch licenses, leaving their contributors, customers, and partners in the lurch as they try to grab billions. I’m sick of it.
The latest IT melodrama baddie is Redis. Its program, which goes by the same name, is an extremely popular in-memory database. (Unless you’re a developer, chances are you’ve never heard of it.) One recent valuation shows Redis to be worth about $2 billion — even without an AI play! That, anyone can understand.
For those of you who aren’t open-source licensing experts, this means developers can no longer use Redis’ code. Sure, they can look at it, but they can’t export, borrow from, or touch it.
Before this latest round of license changes, MongoDB and Elastic made similar shifts. Again, you might never have heard of these companies or their programs, but each is worth, at a minimum, hundreds of millions of dollars. And, while you might not know it, if your company uses cloud services behind the scenes, chances are you’re using one or more of their programs
Who’s really furious about this, though, are developers. It’s their work, after all, that’s disappearing into semi-proprietary vaults, never to be touched by them again.
So, as they’ve done before and they’ll do again, at least two sets of programmers are forking it. First off the mark was Drew DeVault, founder and CEO of SourceHut, with Redict. He was quickly followed by Madelyn Olson, principal engineer at Amazon ElastiCache, itself an open-source fork of Elastic. However, as Olson observed, this as-yet-unnamed Redis fork is not an AWS project. AWS is working on its own response.
Why is this a problem? Using open source also means you get free contributions whilst creating the code – that could be programming done for free, but also quality assurance done for free. So basically you take other people’s work and steal it to sell as your own.
Part of the problem is caused by the Free Open Source Software (FOSS) die-hard fundamentalists, a bunch of tenured university based software developers on a payroll, who absolutely refuse to allow other FOSS developers – who may not have a payroll – to make any money whatsoever on a FOSS license. This is a problem I have been addressing for years and which has gained quite a lot of traction since then.
Court filings unsealed last week allege Meta created an internal effort to spy on Snapchat in a secret initiative called “Project Ghostbusters.” Meta did so through Onavo, a Virtual Private Network (VPN) service the company offered between 2016 and 2019 that, ultimately, wasn’t private at all.
“Whenever someone asks a question about Snapchat, the answer is usually that because their traffic is encrypted we have no analytics about them,” said Mark Zuckerberg in an email to three Facebook executives in 2016, unsealed in Meta’s antitrust case on Saturday. “It seems important to figure out a new way to get reliable analytics about them… You should figure out how to do this.”
Thus, Project Ghostbusters was born. It’s Meta’s in-house wiretapping tool to spy on data analytics from Snapchat starting in 2016, later used on YouTube and Amazon. This involved creating “kits” that can be installed on iOS and Android devices, to intercept traffic for certain apps, according to the filings. This was described as a “man-in-the-middle” approach to get data on Facebook’s rivals, but users of Onavo were the “men in the middle.”
[…]
A team of senior executives and roughly 41 lawyers worked on Project Ghostbusters, according to court filings. The group was heavily concerned with whether to continue the program in the face of press scrutiny. Facebook ultimately shut down Onavo in 2019 after Apple booted the VPN from its app store.
Prosecutors also allege that Facebook violated the United States Wiretap Act, which prohibits the intentional procurement of another person’s electronic communications.
[…]
Prosecutors allege Project Ghostbusters harmed competition in the ad industry, adding weight to their central argument that Meta is a monopoly in social media.
The U.S. Department of Justice and 15 states on Thursday sued Apple (AAPL.O)
, opens new tab as the government cracks down on Big Tech, alleging the iPhone maker monopolized the smartphone market, hurt smaller rivals and drove up prices.
Apple joins competitors sued by regulators, including Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O)
“Consumers should not have to pay higher prices because companies violate the antitrust laws,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. “If left unchallenged, Apple will only continue to strengthen its smartphone monopoly.”
The Justice Department said that Apple charges as much as $1,599 for an iPhone and makes larger profit than any others in the industry. Officials also said Apple charges various business partners – from software developers to credit card companies and even its rivals such as Google – behind the scenes in ways that ultimately raise prices for consumers and drive up Apple’s profit.
Dating back to its time as a marginal player in the personal computer market, Apple’s business model has long been based on charging users a premium for technology products where the company dictates nearly all of the details of how the device works and can be used. The Justice Department seeks to unwind that business model by forcing Apple, which has a market value of $2.7 trillion, to offer users more choices around how apps can tap in to the hardware that Apple designs.
[…]
The Justice Department, which was also joined by the District of Columbia in the lawsuit, is seeking changes at Apple. An official suggested some form of breakup or reduction of the size of Apple was a possibility when they noted “structural relief is also a form of equitable relief.”
The 88-page lawsuit, filed in U.S. federal court in Newark, New Jersey, said it was focused on “freeing smartphone markets from Apple’s anticompetitive and exclusionary conduct and restoring competition to lower smartphone prices for consumers, reducing fees for developers, and preserving innovation for the future.”
In the lawsuit, the U.S. accused Apple of making it harder for consumers to block competitors and cited five examples where Apple used mechanisms to suppress technologies that would have increased competition among smartphones: so-called super apps, cloud stream game apps, messaging apps, smartwatches and digital wallets.
For example, the U.S. alleges Apple made it more difficult for competing messaging apps and smartwatches to work smoothly on its phones. It also alleges that Apple’s app store policies around streaming services for games have hurt competition.
[…]
On Thursday Reuters reported that Apple, Meta Platforms and Alphabet’s Google will be investigated for potential violations of the European Union’s Digital Markets Act that could lead to hefty fines by the end of the year, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter.
In Europe, Apple’s App Store business model has been dismantled by a new law called the Digital Markets Act that went into effect earlier this month. Apple plans to let developers offer their own app stores – and, importantly, pay no commissions – but rivals such as Spotify (SPOT.N)
Epic Games has already accused Apple of “malicious compliance” with the EU’s new competition laws, and now it’s making the same allegation stateside. In a new legal filing, it accused Apple of non-compliance with a 2021 ruling that allowed developers to bypass Apple’s 30 percent cut of in-app payments and is asking the court to enforce the original injunction.
Once the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of the ruling, Apple released revised guidelines, forcing developers to apply for an “entitlement,” while still offering the option to purchase through Apple’s own billing system. Moreover, Apple still charged a 27 percent commission on any sales made through links to external payment systems (or 12 percent for participants in the iOS Small Business Program).
Epic argued that those fees are “essentially the same” as what it charges using its own in-app payment (IAP) system. To that end, it accused the company of failing to comply with the order, with the fees making the links “commercially unusable.”
It also said that Apple requires a “plain button style” for external links that’s “not a button at all” and violates the injunction forcing Apple to remove restrictions on “steering” users to alternative payment “buttons, external links or other calls to action.” It added that Apple violated the injunction in a third way by prohibiting multi-platform apps like Minecraft from showing external payment links. Epic included statements from other developers including Paddle and Down Dog.
“Apple’s goal is clear: to prevent purchasing alternatives from constraining the supracompetitive fees it collects on purchases of digital goods and services,” the document reads. “Apple’s so-called compliance is a sham. Epic therefore seeks an order (i) finding Apple in civil contempt, (ii) requiring Apple to promptly bring its policies into compliance with the Injunction and (iii) requiring Apple to remove all anti-steering provisions in Guideline 3.1.3.”
Since Apple implemented a browser choice screen for iPhones earlier this month to comply with Europe’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), Brave Software, Mozilla, and Vivaldi have seen a surge in the number of people installing their web browsers.
It’s an early sign the Europe Union’s competition rules may actually … get this … enhance competition – an outcome that skepticsdeemed unlikely.
The DMA applies to a set of six technology giants that have been designated as “gatekeepers” in order to limit their tendency to boost the usage of their own offerings – such as their own browsers, webmail, and marketplaces – to the detriment of rivals, which are pushed out of the way.
This walloping of competitors, which slashes choice and innovation, is usually achieved through default settings, contractual requirements, and other mechanisms that favor the big players over smaller upstarts. Apple and Google, as two of those gatekeeper firms, must now under Euro law make concessions to competitors to avoid further harm.
As a direct result of Europe’s DMA, Apple announced plans to implement a browser choice screen on iOS devices in January.
For Google, the DMA compliance means a browser choice screen and search choice screen on Android smartphones and tablets during device setup, as well as a search choice screen for its Chrome browser on non-Android platforms.
Choice screens can be an effective way to reduce market dominance. For example: in 2010, when Microsoft was required to provide a browser choice screen in Windows in Europe, Opera reported that its download numbers had doubled.
[…]
Brave’s figures suggest the number of daily browser installs jumped from around 8,000 on March 6, 2024 to around 11,000 a week later. And in a social media post, the developer cited those results as evidence that Apple and Google have made it hard to switch default browsers specifically to block competition.
“Monopoly defenders argue that the monopolies simply offer better products,” Brave declared. “But as you can see, when consumers get a clear choice of iOS browsers, they’re choosing alternatives to Safari. Maybe that’s why Google still hasn’t implemented a browser choice screen on Android.”
[…]
For most of us, Apple requires browsers on iOS to use Cupertino’s WebKit engine – Europe has strong-armed the iGiant into ditching that stipulation in its region.
[…]
The monopolistic practices employed by Big Tech have often hindered Firefox’s ability to innovate and offer users competitive alternatives,” a Moz spokesperson told The Register. “It is no small feat for us to cut through their tricky tactics to keep consumers locked within their own ecosystems.
“Despite less than ideal compliance, the recent implementation of the DMA choice screen is a promising step toward true competition online in the EU, which is why we’re not surprised to have seen a more than 50 percent increase in Firefox user growth in Germany and close to 30 percent increase in France just since its implementation. Still, there is a lot of room for improvement, and we’ll continue to fight for a web that puts people over profits, prioritizes privacy and is open and accessible to all.”
[…]
“We are still reviewing the technical details but are extremely disappointed with Apple’s proposed plan to restrict the newly-announced BrowserEngineKit to EU-specific apps,” Mozilla’s spokesperson lamented. “The effect of this would be to force an independent browser like Firefox to build and maintain two separate browser implementations – a burden Apple itself will not have to bear.
“Apple’s proposals fail to give consumers viable choices by making it as painful as possible for others to provide competitive alternatives to Safari. This is another example of Apple creating barriers to prevent true browser competition on iOS.”
[…]
Von Tetzchner criticized the way the browser choice screen has been implemented, noting that the user has to first click on Safari before being presented with the choice screen that provides non-Safari options. He also observed that if a user has gone ahead and chosen a default browser that’s not listed on Apple’s choice screen, when iOS next presents the choice screen, it won’t include the user’s already designated browser.
He expects Apple will be asked to make further accommodations, based on the fact that it has already had to backtrack several times.
“The point of all of this is to create competition,” noted von Tetzchner. “The point of this is there are certain companies that are gatekeepers that cannot control access to other applications with which they compete. And the point is to create a level playing ground. I think it’s very clear that there isn’t a level playing ground with this.”
Von Tetzchner told us he hasn’t seen Google’s choice screen, because it hasn’t debuted yet.
“I’ve been told by Google that it’s something that they came to an agreement about with the European Commission and the fact that I got that from Google is one of the differences that we see with different organizations here. We actually have a contact at Google. They have a contact with Microsoft and we’ve still not managed to get any contact at Apple, which is rather special.”
According to von Tetzchner, Cupertino has been telling the European Commission that no one will talk to Apple, when it’s the opposite situation.
“We’ve been trying really hard to get hold of anyone at Apple who will talk to us,” he said. “And that’s not happening. And again, I’m hearing the same from the other browser makers.”
Apple’s compliance measures with the EU’s Digital Markets Act haven’t exactly been universally well received, so the iMaker is making a few tweaks to appease the software-developing masses.
In a post to its developer site today, Apple said it is modifying not only how developers can distribute apps, but also changing the structure of alternative app marketplaces and linking out for purchases that are made away from the official iOS App Store.
Let’s get the quick news out of the way first, starting with changes to alternative app marketplaces. Whereas previously alternative app marketplaces in the EU had to allow apps from other devs, Apple now says that marketplaces “can choose to offer a catalog of apps solely from the developer of the marketplace.”
Think a Meta market that contains just Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and the like – but not an Epic Games store, as developers still need to be part of the Apple Developer Program.
European Commission on Apple’s announcement:
“Gatekeepers are required to demonstrate and ensure effective compliance with the relevant obligations. The designated gatekeepers have submitted and published a compliance report explaining their proposals to comply with the relevant obligations.”We will now carefully analyse the compliance reports and assess whether the implemented measures are effective in achieving the objectives of the relevant obligations and DMA in general.”
The Commish added that “if needed,” it would “not hesitate to take formal enforcement action, using the entire toolbox, to fully enforce the DMA. The Commission can open proceedings against such gatekeeper for non-compliance, prescribe specific compliance solutions and impose fines.”
Apple also loosened its link-out rules, and will now allow developers pushing users outside the App Store for purchases to display their offers however they want. Up until now, developers had to use Apple-provided design templates to “optimize for key purchase and promotion use cases,” Cupertino said. Those templates are now optional.
Screw app marketplaces – let’s distribute on the web
The biggest announcement Apple made was the one that didn’t go live today: Allowing developers to distribute apps directly from their websites. Dubbed “Web Distribution,” Apple said the feature will be available following a software update later in the spring.
The new function will provide APIs “that facilitate the distribution of developers’ apps from the web, integrate with system functionality, back up and restore users’ apps, and more,” Apple explained on a new developer support page.
“Using App Store Connect, developers can easily download signed binary assets and host them on their website for distribution,” the company added. Users will have to give the OK for a developer to install apps on their device and this will require users to be presented with an App Store-esque system sheet that includes information about the app submitted to Apple.
Of course, not everyone will qualify for Web Distribution, which is limited to companies enrolled in the Apple Dev Program with a registration location based in an EU nation, and in good standing (that includes Epic again… for now). Developers distributing apps on the web also can’t offer anyone else’s software, have to publish transparent data collection policies, “be responsive to communications from Apple,” and have to handle their own taxes.
And let’s not forget Apple always ensures it gets a slice of the pie. Like Apple’s previously announced DMA provisions, devs distributing apps via the web will still be subject to a Core Technology Fee that will force them to pay €0.50 for each first annual install over one million in the past 12 months. That could add up quickly for big-name devs, though waivers are available for nonprofits, educational institutions and government entities.
Developers who want to sideload apps on Android, or offer apps outside the Play Store, will have to pay for this .
It has been possible to have so-called apk files installed on Android smartphones and tablets for some time, but now Google is going to charge money for this. The company does this on the basis of the new European Digital Markets Act (DMA).
Firstly, there is a 10 percent purchase fee for in-app purchases or 5 percent for two-year subscriptions. In addition, there will be an ongoing fee for processing in-app purchases. This amounts to 17 percent (7 percent for subscriptions).
iOS 17.4 is the first version of Apple’s operating system to comply with the regulatory framework of the European Digital Markets Act. Apple must also support alternative app stores, where apps can be installed around the App Store.
The availability of this functionality is only geographically limited to the EU, and Apple has revealed for the first time that alternative app stores will stop working if you leave the EU for too long.
Furthermore, your Apple ID must be set to one of the following countries: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden.
The exact period during which you can travel outside the EU is not specified.
Apple’s anti-steering provisions that prevent music streaming apps from directing users outside the App Store for paid services were smacked down in the European Union today and earned the iGiant a fine of more than €1.8 billion ($1.95 billion).
The European Commission said Apple’s policies “amount to unfair trading conditions” and “are neither necessary nor proportionate for the protection of Apple’s commercial interests.”
“Apple will have to open the gates to its ecosystem, to allow end users to easily find the apps they want, pay for them in any way they want, and use them on any device they want,” EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager said of the decision.
Apple’s anti-steering rules have prevented developers from directing users outside the App Store – thereby circumventing Apple’s 30 percent commission – for in-app purchases and subscriptions. As part of the EC decision, Apple is being forced to end the use of anti-steering provisions in the bloc, but this restriction applies only to music streaming apps, an EC spokesperson told The Register.
Vestager described Apple’s anti-competitive conduct as having gone on for nearly a decade, resulting in iOS users paying “significantly higher prices for music streaming subscriptions.” The anti-steering provisions also led to a “degraded user experience,” Vestager said, as users were forced to “engage in a cumbersome search” to find cheaper prices outside the App Store because the anti-steering rule also prevented developers from telling users about cheaper prices available elsewhere.
Update:
They are now excusing it all with this error.
Update 2:
I argue it is fully artificial override since when loading the webpage it does momentarily flicker your true asset value and it gets then updated to zero when page finishes loading, even after one purges the browser data. So their data comes through, it is just forced to go zero to disable trading. I wait to be debunked. I do have some funds over there purely for science.
Update 3:
I now see my assets again after 70 minutes since the initial downtime began, missing a lot of “valuable” volatility. Trading is still disabled though.
And in particular BTC-USD advanced trading doesn’t seem to load whatsoever.
…issues with Coinbase may have more significance these days, considering the outsized role the company plays in helping to manage the new spot-Bitcoin ETFs. Coinbase provides a variety of services to the fund issuers, including serving as custodian for eight of the 10 spot Bitcoin ETFs.
Basically trading from Coinbase has been suspended now that BTC is flying up. A bit like how Robin Hood and a few other traders stopped people from selling Gamestop when it flew up.
SINGAPORE – Android users here will be blocked from installing apps from unverified sources, a process called sideloading, as part of a new trial by Google to crack down on malware scams.
The security tool will work in the background to detect apps that demand suspicious permissions, like those that grant the ability to spy on screen content or read SMS messages, which scammers have been known to abuse to intercept one-time passwords.
Singapore is the first country to begin the gradual roll-out of the security feature over the next few weeks, done in collaboration with the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore, according to a statement on Feb 7 by Google, which develops the Android software.
The update will progressively arrive on all Android users’ devices and will be enabled by default through Google Play Protect, said Google’s director of android security strategy Eugene Liderman, in reply to questions by The Straits Times.
Users who are blocked from downloading a suspicious app will be notified with an explanation.
Users cannot deactivate the pilot feature without disabling all of Google Play Protect, said Mr Liderman, adding that deactivation of the program, which scans Android devices for harmful behaviour like suspicious apps, is not recommended for user safety.
[…]
The update, which will be automatically activated, will roll out to all Android devices with Google Play services – a security program built into Android devices that scans for potentially harmful apps – here, starting with a small number of users to assess the effectiveness of the tool, he said.
Sideloaded apps can come in the form of apps used by overseas businesses that do not use the Google ecosystem, to device customisation tools and free versions of paid apps.
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The feature marks Google’s most heavy-handed feature to stamp out malicious sideloaded apps.
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Samsung, which runs on Android, also launched Auto Blocker for Samsung Galaxy device users who are using the One UI 6 software in November. The tool, which has to be activated in the settings menu, bars sideloaded apps from unverified sources.
So basically they are citing user safetly to limit what you do on your phone and enforce their marketplace monopoly. Something both Apple and Google have been slammed with explicitly in the EU and US as part of antitrust lawsuits – which they have lost.
Of course, Google Play Protect is itself spyware – everything it scans (which is your whole phone) is sent to Google without an opt out. So you can decide to stop this insanity by disabling the Google Spyware.
Google has removed links to page caches from its search results page, the company’s search liaison Danny Sullivan has confirmed. “It was meant for helping people access pages when way back, you often couldn’t depend on a page loading,” Sullivan wrote on X. “These days, things have greatly improved. So, it was decided to retire it.”
The cache feature historically let you view a webpage as Google sees it, which is useful for a variety of different reasons beyond just being able to see a page that’s struggling to load. SEO professionals could use it to debug their sites or even keep tabs on competitors, and it can also be an enormously helpful news gathering tool, giving reporters the ability to see exactly what information a company has added (or removed) from a website, and a way to see details that people or companies might be trying to scrub from the web. Or, if a site is blocked in your region, Google’s cache can work as a great alternative to a VPN.
A page’s cache has typically been accessible via a couple of different routes. There was a “Cached” button that would appear at the bottom of the “About this result” panel accessible from the three button menu next to a search result. And, for those in the know, you could also append the prefix “cache:” to a URL before searching for it to hop instantly into Google’s cached version.
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It doesn’t sound like Google has any immediate plans to replace the feature, but Sullivan says he hopes that Google could add links to the Internet Archive that could instead be used to show how a webpage has changed over time. “No promises,” he cautions. “We have to talk to them, see how it all might go — involves people well beyond me. But I think it would be nice all around.”
The EU single market holds many advantages. To be able to travel, work or purchase goods effortlessly across numerous different countries creates all kinds of opportunities for consumers. But there are still areas where it is not working or has simply not been accomplished, even if it would be the most logical and appropriate thing to do.
International intra-EU calls are one of them. It is often still prohibitively expensive to call someone who lives in a different EU country.
Since the end of roaming charges in 2017, which used to apply when you travelled to another country and called somebody back home, consumers have enjoyed their phones without the risk of a bill shock on a trip inside the EU. But they are confused that, today, calling their friends and family in another country from the comfort of their own home can cost up to €0.19 per minute on top of what they pay for their phone subscription.
Caps in place
At least since 2019, there have been EU price caps on what telecom operators can apply as a surcharge for this call. EU decision-makers then placed limits rather than remove the surcharges altogether to review the caps by 2024.
But that review has not taken place. The price caps will lapse in May this year if no action is taken, threatening to dramatically increase the prices consumers pay for a call to another country.
This could mean consumers end up with less usable alternatives like online messaging apps, with all the data protection and privacy risks they can sometimes entail, or simply stop calling another EU country.
How can we face this situation today, six years after roaming ended?
Good for telecoms, bad for everyone else
Consumers and companies who do business across borders are losing out daily by paying higher prices, while telecom companies pay the difference for their shareholders.
This is despite telecom companies admitting that costs for such calls are decreasing yearly as better, more efficient infrastructure gets rolled out.
Companies like Telefonica or Deutsche Telekom have argued passionately over 2023 for the need to loosen EU competition rules so that they can consolidate across borders because we live in a European single market. But strangely, they do not want to let consumers benefit from a market without borders. It is time for the single market to work for consumers, not just telecom companies.
Intra-EU call surcharges are a gift from a bygone era to a sector asking for all kinds of advantages today. The surcharges should be banned, just as they were for roaming.
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The Gigabit Infrastructure Act and its expected final round of negotiations on Monday, 5 February, is the last chance not only to ‘save the caps’ and continue the status quo, as many want but also the opportunity for the EU to go one step further and finally ban the surcharges altogether.
Oddly enough, Dutch telecom providers don’t charge to call another EU country, so for Dutch people, it will be a surprise that other countries telecom providers do charge
In response to new EU regulations, Apple on Thursday outlined plans to allow iOS developers to distribute apps outside the App Store starting in March, though developers must still submit apps for Apple’s review and pay commissions. Now critics say the changes don’t go far enough and Apple retains too much control.
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney: They are forcing developers to choose between App Store exclusivity and the store terms, which will be illegal under DMA (Digital Markets Act), or accept a new also-illegal anticompetitive scheme rife with new Junk Fees on downloads and new Apple taxes on payments they don’t process. 37signals’s David Heinemeier Hansson, who is also the creator of Ruby on Rails: Let’s start with the extortion regime that’ll befell any large developer who might be tempted to try hosting their app in one of these new alternative app stores that the EU forced Apple to allow. And let’s take Meta as a good example. Their Instagram app alone is used by over 300 million people in Europe. Let’s just say for easy math there’s 250 million of those in the EU. In order to distribute Instagram on, say, a new Microsoft iOS App Store, Meta would have to pay Apple $11,277,174 PER MONTH(!!!) as a “Core Technology Fee.” That’s $135 MILLION DOLLARS per year. Just for the privilege of putting Instagram into a competing store. No fee if they stay in Apple’s App Store exclusively.
Holy shakedown, batman! That might be the most blatant extortion attempt ever committed to public policy by any technology company ever. And Meta has many successful apps! WhatsApp is even more popular in Europe than Instagram, so that’s another $135M+/year. Then they gotta pay for the Facebook app too. There’s the Messenger app. You add a hundred million here and a hundred million there, and suddenly you’re talking about real money! Even for a big corporation like Meta, it would be an insane expense to offer all their apps in these new alternative app stores.
Which, of course, is the entire point. Apple doesn’t want Meta, or anyone, to actually use these alternative app stores. They want everything to stay exactly as it is, so they can continue with the rake undisturbed. This poison pill is therefore explicitly designed to ensure that no second-party app store ever takes off. Without any of the big apps, there will be no draw, and there’ll be no stores. All of the EU’s efforts to create competition in the digital markets will be for nothing. And Apple gets to send a clear signal: If you interrupt our tool-booth operation, we’ll make you regret it, and we’ll make you pay. Don’t resist, just let it be. Let’s hope the EU doesn’t just let it be. Coalition of App Fairness, an industry body that represents over 70 firms including Tinder, Spotify, Proton, Tile, and News Media Europe: “Apple clearly has no intention to comply with the DMA. Apple is introducing new fees on direct downloads and payments they do nothing to process, which violates the law. This plan does not achieve the DMA’s goal to increase competition and fairness in the digital market — it is not fair, reasonable, nor non-discriminatory,” said Rick VanMeter, Executive Director of the Coalition for App Fairness.
“Apple’s proposal forces developers to choose between two anticompetitive and illegal options. Either stick with the terrible status quo or opt into a new convoluted set of terms that are bad for developers and consumers alike. This is yet another attempt to circumvent regulation, the likes of which we’ve seen in the United States, the Netherlands and South Korea. Apple’s ‘plan’ is a shameless insult to the European Commission and the millions of European consumers they represent — it must not stand and should be rejected by the Commission.”
