Reading List 347
This reading list is courtesy of Vivaldi browser, who pay me decent money to fight for a better web and don’t moan at me for reading all this stuff. If you prefer to keep browsing human, without a planet-burning plagiarism-fulled hallucinating helper inserting itself between you and the Web, Vivaldi has you covered. Version 7.6 for Desktop was released last week, with even more customisation and personalisation options.
- Link of the month is Apple’s Antitrust Playbook: If it’s good enough for Big Oil and Big Tobacco, it’s good enough for Cupertino – Big Al yells ‘J’accuse’ at Not-Steve for asking the EU to repeal the Digital Markets Act, and for using astroturf sock-puppets to whimper on Apple’s behalf.
- Apple’s Assault on Standards – Big Al again. “Apple’s centralisation through the App Store entrenches the positions of peer big tech firms, harming the prospects of competitors in turn. I submit that Apple have been, over the course of many years, poisonous to internet standards and the moral commitments embodied in that grand project.
- Microsoft forced to make Windows 10 extended security updates truly free in Europe – “You won’t have to enable Windows Backup to get extended Windows 10 security updates in the European Economic Area”. Damned regulators stifling innovation again.
- Inclusive Design 24, 2025 edition – the playlist of all the accessibility talks is on YouTube, courtesy of Tetralogical and Friends (thanks for the invitation to co-host, Pattypoo!)
- Fact from Fiction: Correcting the Record on EuroStack and European Digital Sovereignty
- JAWS HTML Support tables from your friends at Tetralogical
- California Legislature Advances Bill Empowering Consumers to Easily Exercise Privacy Rights at Scale – California has passed the Opt Me Out Act that will require browsers to include functionality that enables consumers to limit the sale and sharing of their information by sending an opt-out preference signal to businesses.
- EU slaps Google with €2.95B fine despite Trump trade threat
- Judge Mehta’s Google Antitrust Remedies: Threading The Needle Between Overkill And Underkill
- Meta to stop its AI chatbots from talking to teens about suicide – ‘two weeks after a US senator launched an investigation into the tech giant after notes in a leaked internal document suggested its AI products could have “sensual” chats with teenagers”. If Meta were a person, you wouldn’t let your kids within a mile of them.
- UK government trial of M365 Copilot finds no clear productivity boost – “AI tech shows promise writing emails or summarizing meetings. Don’t bother with anything more complex”
- OnlyFans owner paid $701m in dividends as platform readies for potential sale – “Streaming platform known for subscription-based adult content reports $1.4bn revenue and rising usage”, coincidentally at the same time I launched my own channel “The Bruce Juice Sluice”
- Hosting a WebSite on a Disposable Vape – amazing what those l33t haxxors can do.
Buy "Calling For The Moon", my debut album of songs I wrote while living in Thailand, India, Turkey. (Only £2, on Bandcamp.)