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Evolution

30/11/2025 Steve WoodsSocial Media, Tech

Life forms are not the only things that undergo evolution, i.e. a change in characteristics over generations and/or time.

This is also true of technology. One only has to compare and contrast one’s present operating system and its applications and what was in use twenty years ago, for example.

That brings us neatly to the graphic below acquired from social media, which sarcastically tracks the progress of the trash icon on Microsoft’s Windows desktop over the decades.

For those unfamiliar with the final icon on the bottom right, it’s that of MS’ Copilot generative artificial intelligence chatbot, which has not been without criticism. Indeed, one Microsoft Tech Community post has even called the software a “frustrating flop in AI-powered productivity“.

More specifically, the post states:

Here’s the problem: when you ask Copilot to alter a document, modify an Excel file, or adjust a PowerPoint presentation, it’s practically useless. Instead of performing the tasks as requested, it often leaves you hanging with vague suggestions or instructions. Users don’t want to be told how to perform a task—they want it done. This is what an AI assistant should do: execute commands efficiently, not just offer advice.

If the MS tech enthusiasts are less than impressed, your ‘umble scribe need say no more!
Commission eyes up Microsoft and Amazon – again

27/11/2025 Steve WoodsPolitics, Tech

Last week the EU Commission announced it had opened three market investigations into cloud computing services under the Digital Markets Act (DMA). Two of these investigations will assess whether Amazon and Microsoft should be designated as gatekeepers for their cloud computing services, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure under the DMA, i.e. whether they act as important gateways between businesses and consumers, despite not meeting the DMA gatekeeper thresholds for size, user number and market position. The third market investigation will assess if the DMA can effectively tackle practices that may limit competitiveness and fairness in the cloud computing sector in the EU.

Market investigations into Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure

Recent analyses of cloud markets seem to indicate that tMicrosoft Azure and Amazon Web Services occupy very strong positions in relation to businesses and consumers. The Commission will also assess if certain features of the cloud sector may further reinforce the position of Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services.

If the Commission finds that Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services qualify as important gateways under the DMA, these would be added to the list of core platform services for which Amazon and Microsoft have already been designated as gatekeepers.

Market investigation on the DMA’s application to cloud markets

Furthermore, the Commission is also gathering information from relevant market players to assess whether the current obligations under the DMA are effective in addressing practices that limit competitiveness or are unfair in the cloud sector. Amongst other things, the investigation will cover obstacles to interoperability between cloud computing services, limited or conditioned access for business users to data, tying and bundling services and potentially unfair contractual terms.

Next Steps

Should the Commission conclude Microsoft and Amazon meet the criteria to be designated as gatekeepers for their cloud computing services under the DMA, Amazon and Microsoft would have six months to ensure full compliance of their designated cloud computing services with the DMA obligations.
The market investigation on the DMA’s application to cloud markets will result in a final report to be published within 18 months, which may propose the update of DMA obligations in respect to cloud by way of a delegated act pursuant to Article 12 and 49 DMA.
Advice to an elderly aunt in legal difficulties

11/11/2025 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics

Panorama is a current affairs documentary news programme broadcast by the BBC. First aired in 1953, it is the world’s longest-running television news magazine programme.

However, Panorama’s longevity has not shielded it from controversy, especially when it has committed a foolish act, as has come to light in the past few days.

A Panorama programme broadcast in Novermber 2024 about one of the runners’ suitability as a candidate for the presidency of the United States touched on the storming of the US Capitol on 6th January 2021 following an inciteful speech given to rioters by the disgraced former 45th president and current disgraceful 47th president of the United States of America, insurrectionist, convicted felon, adjudicated sexual predator, business fraudster, congenital liar and golf cheat commonly known as Donald John Trump, who is on a personal mission to Make America Grate Again (or something similar. Ed.).

Panorama’s great sin was to edit Trump’s speech (a necessity for the sake of coherence in most instances whenever President Felon opens his north and south for more than 10 seconds. Ed.) so it appeared even more inciteful than it already was, even though the hardcore MAGA louts had no intention of peacefully protesting. The editing was criticised in an internal BBC report, which somehow found its way into the hands of the Telegraph. Often regarded as the in-house journal of the Conservative Party, the Telegraph is no great fan of Auntie.

Once the leaked memo’s contents became known the media, media spokespeople and politicians all reacted. In particular, Karoline Leavitt (President Rapist’s Mouth of Sauron. Ed.) characterised the BBC as “100% fake news”.

Heads rolled as a consequence of the subsequent furore, namely those of the Director General Tim Davie and the broadcaster’s head of news, Deborah Turness.

However, that was not the end of the fallout. tRump, a man with a very thin skin and a vindictive lust for vengeance against every perceived slight, has threatened the BBC with a lawsuit for $1 bn. if there is no retraction of the “false, defamatory, disparaging, misleading, and inflammatory statements” allegedly made by Panorama.

The letter from President Golf Cheat’s lawyers state that the demand is being made under Florida Statute § 770.011, which as far as your ‘umble scribe’s limited legal knowledge stretches, is not applicable under the law of England and Wales. If defamation litigation is planned in Florida, it would not stand a chance if the Panorama programme in question – Trump: A Second Chance? – has not been broadcast in Florida itself.

Furthermore, if the case were held in England and Wales under the applicable law, there’s a further snag: a term limiting litigation for libel cases. The Independent notes that when interviewed by the BBC, British media lawyer Mark Stephens explained as follows:

The UK defamation claim is now out of time. He had one year from Monday October 28, 2024, when Panorama aired so he is 14 days out of time or so in the UK.

President Business Fraud’s lawyers’ letter to the BBC merits a reply, of course. Your correspondent’s opinion is that Auntie’s legal advisers should reply along the lines of the 1971 Arkell vs. Pressdram case. Pressdram is the proprietor of the satirical magazine Private Eye and its reply in this matter was as follows.

We acknowledge your letter of 29th April referring to Mr J. Arkell. We note that Mr Arkell’s attitude to damages will be governed by the nature of our reply and would therefore be grateful if you would inform us what his attitude to damages would be, were he to learn that the nature of our reply is as follows: fuck off.

The case was subsequently dropped.
Core VLC developer receives European SFS Award 2025 at SFSCON

07/11/2025 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Tech

The VLC media player is a great piece of software which your ‘umble scribe has been using since he was rookie on Windows 9* machines

What makes it greater is that it’s open source software and is one of the recommendations on my free and open source software page.

It’s just been announced that the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) and the Linux User Group Bolzano-Bosen-BUlsan (LUGBZ) have presented VLC president and core developer Jean-Baptiste Kempf with the European SFS award at the Bozen Free Software Conference (SFSCON) for his long-term dedication to the project. What began as a student initiative has, through his continuous effort, evolved into one of the most widely used media players with hundreds of millions of users worldwide.

Picture by NOI Techpark – Marco Parisi CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Born as a student project in 1996, this software has evolved into an essential, all-in-one media player that plays almost anything effortlessly. Originally a simple network streaming client, it has grown into a powerful universal media player that continues to evolve and impress.

“For many people running non-free operating systems, it was the very first Free Software they ever installed. For many people running Free Software, it saved them from installing and booting into a proprietary operating system”, declared FSFE president Matthias Kirschner during the award ceremony.

Jean-Baptiste Kempf joined the project as a student and when it was in danger of dying after the graduation of its original developers, he took the reins. With the help of other core developers, he transformed it into the indispensable media player we enjoy on today.

Over the years, Mr Kempf has become not only the president of VideoLAN, which hosts the project itself, but also one of the lead developers of VLC media player and the founder of VideoLabs. “It’s small, fast, friendly, and seems to understand everything you throw at it. I have always thought of it as the program that eats everything”, said Raphael Barbieri, a member of LUGBZ, during the winner’s announcement.

Accepting the award, Mr Kempf said: “I am extremely honoured to receive the European SFS Award. The Free Software multimedia community is quite niche and unknown, but we work hard so that video content can be free, can be played and processed. The work done around the VideoLAN community has been tremendous, despite its little resources. I want to thank the whole VideoLAN and FFmpeg teams, who spend their time on those projects, often with little recognition“.

The European SFS Award recognizes individuals whose work has made a significant and sustained difference in advancing Free Software across Europe. Since 2023 it has been presented jointly by LUGBZ and the FSFE and honours those whose efforts strengthen software freedom, community building and the ethical foundations of technology.
Australia initiates consumer protection proceedings against Microsoft

02/11/2025 Steve WoodsLanguage, Tech
The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission, which is responsible for ensuring individuals and businesses comply with Australian competition and consumer protection laws has announced that it has initiated proceedings in the Federal Court against Microsoft Australia and its parent company Microsoft Corporation for allegedly misleading approximately 2.7 million Australian customers when giving notice of subscription options and price increases after it integrated its Copilot AI assistant into Microsoft 365 subscription plans.

The ACCC alleges that since 31st October 2024, Microsoft has told Microsoft 365 Personal and Family plan subscribers with auto-renewal enabled that to maintain their subscription, they must accept the integration of Copilot and pay higher prices for their plan, or else cancel their subscriptions.

Following the integration of Copilot, the annual subscription price of the Microsoft 365 Personal plan increased by an eye-watering 45% from $109 to $159. In contrast, the annual subscription price for the Microsoft 365 Family plan increased by a mere 29% from $139 to $179.

Microsoft’s communications with subscribers did not refer to the existence of the “Classic” plans without Copilot integration and the only way subscribers could access them was to begin the process of cancelling their subscriptions. This involved accessing the subscriptions section of their Microsoft account and selecting “Cancel subscription”. It was only on the following page that subscribers were given the option to move to the Classic plan instead.

Click on the image for the full-sized version

Maximum penalties

Should Microsoft lose the case, the maximum penalty for each breach of the Australian Consumer Law is the greater of the following three options:
- $50 million;
- three times the total benefits that have been obtained and are reasonably attributable; or
- if the total value of the benefits cannot be determined, 30 per cent of the corporation’s adjusted turnover during the breach turnover period.
For Microsoft Australia, not to mention its parent company, the emphasis in the word consumer is firmly on its first three-letter syllable.
LibreOffice 25.2.7 released

31/10/2025 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Tech

The Document Foundation (TDF) has today announced the release of LibreOffice 25.2.7, the final maintenance release for the LibreOffice 25.2 family, which is now available for download. Users of LibreOffice 25.2.x should update to LibreOffice 25.8.x, as LibreOffice 25.2.x is approaching the end of its support period.

LibreOffice 25.2.7 fully supports two ISO document format standards: the open ODF or Open Document Format (ODT, ODS and ODP) and the closed proprietary Microsoft OOXML (DOCX, XLSX and PPTX) formats.

Products based on the LibreOffice Technology are available for all major desktop operating systems (Windows, macOS, Linux and ChromeOS), mobile platforms (Android and iOS) plus the cloud.

For business use, TDF recommends a LibreOffice version optimised for businesses from one of its partner companies, with dedicated value-added features and other benefits such as service level agreements (SLAs) and security patch backports for three to five years.

Manuals for the LibreOffice 25.2 family are also available in many languages for download. Furthermore, end users can get first-level technical support from volunteers on the user mailing lists and the Ask LibreOffice website.

Finally, LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support The Document Foundation and the LibreOffice project by making a donation.
ICC to ditch Microsoft

30/10/2025 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Politics, Tech

The International Criminal Court (ICC/CPI) in The Hague wants to become independent of US technology out of fear of reprisals from Donald Trump, the vindictive and bullying forty-seventh president of the United States (who is on a mission to Make America Grate Again, or something similar. Ed.), German news site heise reports.

The International Criminal Court in The Hague.
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

The institution plans to replace the Microsoft software currently used in its workplaces with OpenDesk, an open source software suite currently being developed by Zendis, a company owned by the German Federal government.

The decision was taken due to the sanctions imposed by the current US Trump regime against court employees such as Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan, under which Microsoft simply blocked Mr Khan’s access to email account. He was therefore forced to switch to the Swiss email service Proton. Back in May the ICC/CPI stated its work had virtually been paralysed due to its heavy reliance on service providers like Microsoft.

Furthermore, it is believed the US government in Washington is considering further measures against the International Criminal Court, which could also severely restrict its ability to function.

Achieving Digital Sovereignty

While the International Criminal Court only has 1,800 employees that need to be freed from dependency on US software, this can be regarded as a sign that geopolitics is increasingly concerned with technology. Business and politics recognise the dependence on US tech companies is a problem, particularly because the current US regime is using technology as a bargaining chip.

The ICC/CPI is not alone in moving away from the Beast of Redmond: for example, the German Army has also concluded a framework agreement with Zendis for “sovereign communication and collaboration solutions” such as OpenDesk.
High gains grifter

29/10/2025 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics, Social Media

In the May 2024 general election, the constituency of Clacton returned a member of parliament to the House of Commons, not just an ordinary MP, but a party leader, in this instance one Nigel Paul Farage, head honcho of Reform UK, the latest incarnation of the Farage Fascist Fan Club (see also UKIP and the Brexit Party. Ed.).

During his days as a member of the European Parliament, Farage was not the most regular attendee in the debating chamber, although he was more than prepared to take the parliament’s generous salary and allowances, even misusing the latter for his own ends rather than those for which they were intended.

Anyway, enough of past history, let’s come up to the present. Since being elected to the green leather benches, Farage has had difficulty finding the Palace of Westminster to do the job he’s supposed to do for the good burghers of Clacton. Furthermore, he’s also had problems finding Clacton, although his partner has bought a house in the constituency, although the source of the funds for the deal is unsure.

However, just because he’s happy to take his MP’s salary of nearly £94,000 per year for the work he is expected to do for his electorate and mostly manages to avoid, this does not mean Farage is workshy. Indeed, one glance at his Register of Financial Interests (which runs to two pages. Ed.) reveals the Reform leader is earning over £1m from sources other than the largesse he receives courtesy of the taxpayer.

This has prompted the Led By Donkeys collective (posts passim) to film a video of his extra-parliamentary earnings and trundle it around the streets of Clacton, as well as its being circulated on social media.

This latest activity has not escaped the attention of the local media, including the Clacton Gazette, which prefers to refer to Farage’s income declared in the parliamentary register as a claim from Led By Donkeys. This places the Clacton Gazette in clear breach of article 1 – accuracy – of the IPSO guidelines. The Gazette claims (their word. Ed.) to be regulated by IPSO, another of the UK’s regulators, all of whom seem to come with rubber teeth as standard equipment.

Furthermore, in the comments below the piece most of the constituents of Nigle, as some call their dishonourable member, seem to believe he can do no wrong.
News of Irish independence bypasses Shropshire

28/10/2025 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics

In December 1921 the Anglo-Irish Treaty established the Irish Free State as a largely self governing and autonomous dominion within the British Empire. It came into existence one year later on 6th December 1922. This marked the first step towards Irish independence and the beginning of the end of English meddling on the island of Ireland which had started with the Anglo-Norman invasion back in the 12th century, i.e. some eight centuries.

As a political entity, the Irish Free State endured until the end of December 1937 when a new Irish constitution was adopted and the state became a de facto republic.

However, news of these events between eighty and one hundred years ago still seem not to have reached some remote areas of Englandshire, like the county of Shropshire and its main local newspaper, the Shropshire Star, which today published this story under the UK News category (screenshot below).

It’s clearly going to take centuries for the British/English to lose their tendency to regard large swathes of the world and other peoples’ countries as belonging to the British/English state.
Pizza places to close in two non-existent counties

21/10/2025 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities
According to Wikipedia, “A county is a type of officially recognized geographical division within a modern country, federal state, or province.”

Within England shires were established in the Anglo-Saxon period, shires were established as areas used for the raising of taxes and usually had a fortified town at their centre. This became known as the shire town or later the county town. In many cases, the shires were named after their shire town (for example Bedfordshire).

Middlesex is one of the thirty-nine historic counties of England. Its name is derived from its origin as a homeland for the Middle Saxons in the early Middle Ages, with the county subsequently part of that territory in the ninth or tenth century. As a county it managed to survive for the best part of a millennium, finally being abolished by the London Government Act 1963, which came into force on 1 April 1965.

The cardboard county of Avon has a rather different history to the former shire named after the home of the Middle Saxons. It was a non-metropolitan and ceremonial county in the west of England which existed between 1974 and 1996. Named after the Bristol Avon, it comprised the cities of Bath and Bristol plus parts of south Gloucestershire and Somerset, which formed the other two local authorities – Northavon and Woodspring – within the county. Avon proved to be deeply unpopular, with locals bemoaning in some instances Bristol’s loss of county status in its own right, as well as traditional affiliations to both Gloucestershire and Somerset respectively. In 1996, the county was abolished and its administrative area split between four new unitary authorities: Bath and North East Somerset, Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire.

Although both Middlesex and Avon have officially been abolished that does not mean their use has been discontinued, usually by the uninformed. There are still organisations out there which believe Bristol is part of Avon and that the county named after the Middle Saxons still exist. One of these is currently in the news.

One of those organisations is Pizza Hut, which has announced a number of closures of its outlets in the Untied Kingdom, as reported by the Bristol Post/Live.

All told, 68 Pizza Hut restaurants will close after the company behind its the US brand’s UK venues entered administration. These include the following five outlets in the aforementioned non-existent counties, as listed by Bristol’s paper of (warped) record:
- Bristol, Avon;
- Cribbs Causeway, Avon;
- Enfield, Middlesex;
- Feltham, Middlesex; and
- Hayes, Middlesex.
A few news outlets, such as the BBC, actually took the trouble to remove the erroneous county labels instead of blindly copying and pasting the list verbatim from the original press release.

For those still in need of a junk food fix, plenty of other pizza outlets are still open to the public in both real and non-existent counties. 😀