Daily Archives: February 26, 2025

After Snowden and now Trump, Europe  Finally begins to worry about US-controlled clouds

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In a recent blog post titled “It is no longer safe to move our governments and societies to US clouds,” Bert Hubert, an entrepreneur, software developer, and part-time technical advisor to the Dutch Electoral Council, articulated such concerns.

“We now have the bizarre situation that anyone with any sense can see that America is no longer a reliable partner, and that the entire large-scale US business world bows to Trump’s dictatorial will, but we STILL are doing everything we can to transfer entire governments and most of our own businesses to their clouds,” wrote Hubert.

Hubert didn’t offer data to support that statement, but European Commission stats shows that close to half of European enterprises rely on cloud services, a market led by Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, Salesforce, and IBM – all US-based companies.

While concern about cloud data sovereignty became fashionable back in 2013 when former NSA contractor Edward Snowden disclosed secrets revealing the scope of US signals intelligence gathering and fled to Russia, data privacy worries have taken on new urgency in light of the Trump administration’s sudden policy shifts.

In the tech sphere those moves include removing members of the US Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board that safeguards data under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, alleged flouting of federal data rules to advance policy goals. Europeans therefore have good reason to wonder how much they can trust data privacy assurances from US cloud providers amid their shows of obsequious deference to the new regime.

And there’s also a practical impetus for the unrest: organizations that use Microsoft Office 2016 and 2019 have to decide whether they want to move to Microsoft’s cloud come October 14, 2025, when support officially ends. Microsoft is encouraging customers to move to Microsoft 365 which is tied to the cloud. But that looks riskier now than it did under less contentious transatlantic relations.

The Register spoke with Hubert about his concerns and the situation in which Europe now finds itself.

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Source: Europe begins to worry about US-controlled clouds • The Register

It was truly unbelievable that EU was using US cloud in the first place for many reasons ranging from technical to cost to privacy but they just keep blundering on.

Ron Wyden asks for rules about knowing whether you own your digital purchases

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Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) has sent a letter to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) chair Andrew Ferguson urging the FTC to require that companies admit when you’re not really buying an ebook or video game.

Wyden’s letter, shared with The Verge, requests guidance to “ensure that consumers who purchase or license digital goods can make informed decisions and understand what ownership rights they are obtaining.”

Wyden wants the guidance to include how long a license lasts, what circumstances might expire or revoke the license, and if a consumer can transfer or resell the license. The letter also calls for the information “before and at the point of sale” in a way that’s easily understandable. “To put it simply, prior to agreeing to any transaction, consumers should understand what they are paying for and what is guaranteed after the sale,” Wyden says.

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Source: Ron Wyden asks for rules about whether you own your digital purchases | The Verge

You Should Download Your Kindle E-Books Now, Before It’s Too Late

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This week, Amazon is eliminating the “Download & Transfer via USB” option for Kindle users. If you own a vast library and hope to take your reading elsewhere, this may be your last opportunity.

Amazon has stated in a note on users’ library management page that, starting Wednesday, Feb. 26, it was eliminating “Download & Transfer via USB. All Kindle e-book owners will be restricted to downloading Kindle books via WiFi. The former option was one of the last loopholes readers could use to take their proprietary Kindle format e-books off Amazon’s closed ecosystem. This deposited files in the AZW3 format, and there are more tricks for disabling DRM with those files than with the more modern KFX format. The USB download option also backed up Kindle books in case something happened to your device or your Amazon account.

There are a growing number of non-Amazon e-book brands, like Bookshop.org, but the issue is Amazon uses its market dominance to source exclusive deals, both in audiobooks and e-books. Considering that, we suggest you do your best to download your current library before it’s too late. If you want to send your e-book library to your computer, go to Amazon first, then click Accounts & Lists. Scroll to Content Library, then click on Books. Click on the “More actions” option for the book you want to download, then select the Download & transfer via USB button.

When they’re downloaded to your PC, you may be able to convert them to other viable reading formats. “Download & Transfer via USB” is a known hack in the Kindle community, used to remove the DRM locks on some older e-book formats. So, if you want to lend your friend an e-book like you would any paperback, this was one of the few ways to do so without dealing with Amazon’s arcane subscription infrastructure.

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As the Kindle terms of service make it clear, owning any Kindle content means you own a “license” for that e-book, not the e-book itself. You only have a right to view the content “solely through Kindle software” and only on “supported devices specified in the Kindle store.” Some open-source apps like Calibre can read most e-book formats, and if you download your books now, you can use them to read your Kindle library without Amazon’s blessing.

That’s why we suggest you also check Libby, a library app that connects with local libraries and allows you to get in line to download and read e-books for a set period (and yes, this does support your local library). Don’t forget to check out Project Gutenberg if you’re trying to find a classic title in EPUB format. If all you want is DRM-free literature, try e-Books.com.

Source: You Should Download Your Kindle E-Books Now, Before It’s Too Late

Under: You don’t own what you buy.

DIY Open-Source Star Tracker Gets You Those Great Night Shots can also be bought

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What does one do when frustrated at the lack of affordable, open source portable trackers? If you’re [OG-star-tech], you design your own and give it modular features that rival commercial offerings while you’re at it.

What’s a star tracker? It’s a method of determining position based on visible stars, but when it comes to astrophotography the term refers to a sort of hardware-assisted camera holder that helps one capture stable long-exposure images. This is done by moving the camera in such a way as to cancel out the effects of the Earth’s rotation. The result is long-exposure photographs without the stars smearing themselves across the image.

Interested? Learn more about the design by casting an eye over the bill of materials at the GitHub repository, browsing the 3D-printable parts, and maybe check out the assembly guide. If you like what you see, [OG-star-tech] says you should be able to build your own very affordably if you don’t mind 3D printing parts in ASA or ABS. Prefer to buy a kit or an assembled unit? [OG-star-tech] offers them for sale.

Frustration with commercial offerings (or lack thereof) is a powerful motive to design something or contribute to an existing project, and if it leads to more people enjoying taking photos of the night sky and all the wonderful things in it, so much the better.

Source: DIY Open-Source Star Tracker Gets You Those Great Night Shots | Hackaday

Google pulls plug on Ad blockers such as uBlock Origin by killing Manifest v2

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Google’s purge of Manifest v2-based extensions from its Chrome browser is underway, as many users over the past few days may have noticed.

Popular content-blocking add-on (v2-based) uBlock Origin is now automatically disabled for many in the ubiquitous browser as it continues the V3 rollout.

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According to the company, Google’s decision to shift to V3 is all in the name of improving its browser’s security, privacy, and performance. However, the transition to the new specification also means that some extensions will struggle due to limitations in the new API.

In September 2024, the team behind uBlock Origin noted that one of the most significant changes was around the webRequest API, used to intercept and modify network requests. Extensions such as uBlock Origin extensively use the API to block unwanted content before it loads.

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Ad-blockers and privacy tools are the worst hit by the changes, and affected users – because let’s face it, most Chrome users won’t be using an ad-blocker – can switch to an alternative browser for something like the original experience, or they can switch to a different extension which is unlikely to have the same capabilities.

In its post, uBlock recommends a move to Firefox and use of the extension uBlock Origin, a switch to a browser that will support Manifest v2

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Source: Google continues pulling the plug on Manifest v2 • The Register