Operating Systems need privacy-protective friend-finding services

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The NYT headline (Did Apple just kill social apps?) is over-the-top, but a reminder of the impact Big Tech firms can have on entire market sectors with their product decisions — and why the EU was right to legislate rules for fairness and contestability in the Digital Markets Act. Indeed, further interventions might be necessary, like mandating privacy-protective friend-connecting services.

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S. Dustdar speaking in front of a European Parliament banner, alongside Francesca Bria

Towards European Digital Independence

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Congratulations to Alexandra Geese, Francesca Bria and Cristina Caffarra for organising a timely and interesting conference at the European Parliament on the idea of a “Euro-stack” (building on existing “stacks”/digital public infrastructure created by India and Brazil). You can watch the whole 5-hour event; I made a few notes (below) as I watched the middle half.

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Mario Draghi speaks at a lecturn at the European Parliament, with a slide “20th Anniversary of the Euro"

Super Mario publishes EU “competitiveness” report

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Part A of Mario Draghi’s report for the EU on “competitiveness” reform was published this morning. In one sentence, he concludes: “Europe must profoundly refocus its collective efforts on closing the innovation gap with the US and China, especially in advanced technologies.”

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Screenshot of female journalist present RT France News

The EU ban on Russian media: some worrying implications

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This analysis explains why the EU bans on Russian media outlets, and the Court of Justice judgment in RT France v. Council relating to them, are wrong. The bans limit the right of individuals in the EU to receive such information and ideas, while EU rules on sanction violations can easily lead to the use of the criminal law against individuals in the EU for non-violent political speech.

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Office Closed sign, with two screens showing the Blue Screen of Death

No, EU competition policy was not responsible for global IT chaos II

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More excitement as the world cleans up after Friday’s global IT chaos, caused directly by poor CrowdStrike testing processes and marking its software as essential to Windows booting — but indirectly by Microsoft allowing inadequately tested/sandboxed code to run in “kernel” mode on PCs, where it can/did cause a system crash on around 8.5m Windows PCs globally and billions of dollars of insured damage.

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