I’ve given hundreds of talks over the last two decades and beyond. Here are a few of my favourites in chronological order so you can see how my focus and thoughts have evolved through the years.
I hope you enjoy them.
PS.
Google is gifting a year of Gemini Advanced to every college student in the US Got a .edu email? You can sign up for a free year of Google One AI Premium. arstechnica.com/ai/2025/04/goo…
Technological platforms are not neutral. If we truly want to resist the digital coup that is currently under way, we need to normalize the use of free, open source solutions.
(Imagine what a different world we’d be living in today if folks in tech had heeded our warnings back then. But I guess they were too busy making mint.)
PS. yt-dlp is your friend (on Mac: brew install yt-dlp). Also make sure you have ffmpeg installed (brew install ffmpeg). Finally, I had to manually tell yt-dlp where to find ffmpeg although your mileage may vary based on installation method: yt-dlp "<URL>" --write-subs --ffmpeg-location=/opt/homebrew/bin/ffmpeg (--write-subs saves the subtitles if there are any to a file in a format you can use on the web).
the Fair Tax Foundation has looked at average tax rates paid by US corporations & the effective tax rates paid the 'Silicon Six' & has concluded they've paid around $278bn less than they should have over the last decade.
So if you wondered how the big tech moguls become so rich, the answer in part is we've been subsidising them....
[I would be very surprised if the European tax situation varies much from the US]
I’m gonna say it louder for the folks in the back: Mozilla is not what you think it is. Mozilla is not what they say they are. Mozilla is just another for-profit Silicon Valley tech company that has a not-for-profit doing its PR.
Wow so the #Mozilla engineer disagrees and claims "#GDPR has done a great deal of harm" (I didn't understand his argument why) but now diverted to saying the #browser should be the platform collect all the personal data and then provide it in aggrega…
At a #Mozilla event in #Brussels this morning about "#privacy-first online #advertising". I am _very_ curious where this weirdest of things Mozilla does is going. 🤔
Speakers: Petra Wikström, policy person at #Schibsted, @rvaneijk@mastodon.
It’s a web browser. But fun. It comes with a bunch of clever features built-in. It’s super flexible and does not track you. Get the Vivaldi browser for desktop, mobile, and your car!
Vivaldi is now the first major browser to ship with Proton VPN built right in, giving uncompromising privacy from two of Europe’s most trusted tech companies.
As long as we talk about tech independence or digital #sovereignty primarily in terms of geography and jurisdiction, we will lose as users and as people with rights:
1. Because this narrative can easily be co-opted by antidemocratic, nationalistic forces.
2. It takes away attention from what actually provides us with independence: software #freedom, #interoperability, a power shift away from #bigtech to small, decentralised, ethical tech.
23andMe Sold Access to Your DNA Library to Big Pharma
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xwkaz3/23andme-sold-access-to-your-dna-library-to-big-pharma-but-you-can-opt-out
If only some of us had seen this coming and warned people… oh, wait…
…
For quite some time I knew that the #irish #dataprotection institution was an underfunded, understaffed, weak #pontemkin village #bigtech was taking advantage of - and only #noyb was really getting on their nerves.
I ordered it yesterday and will have the book in my hands tomorrow ( certainly not from #Amazon, but local bookshop! ) Well ... feels like another not so nice day coming.
It’s clear from this that Ireland should be stripped of the authority to enforce GDPR and, really, people farmers – and the business model of people farming in general – should be banned in the EU.
