Ars Technica: “The EU made Apple adopt new Wi-Fi standards, and now Android can support AirDrop”

Google has updated Android’s Quick Share feature to support Apple’s AirDrop, which allows users of Apple devices to share files directly using a local peer-to-peer Wi-Fi connection. Apple devices with AirDrop enabled and set to “everyone for 10 minutes” mode will show up in the Quick Share device list just like another Android phone would, and Android devices that support this new Quick Share version will also show up in the AirDrop menu.

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But earlier this year, the EU adopted new specification decisions that required Apple to adopt new interoperable wireless standards, starting in this year’s iOS 26 release. If you don’t want to wade through the regulatory documents, this post from cloud services company Ditto is a useful timeline of events written in plainer language.

The rulings required Apple to add support for the Wi-Fi Alliance’s Wi-Fi Aware standard instead of AWDL—and in fact required Apple to deprecate AWDL and to help add its features to Wi-Fi Aware so that any device could benefit from them. This wasn’t quite the imposition it sounded like; Wi-Fi Aware was developed with Apple’s help, based on the work Apple had already done on AWDL. But it meant that Apple could no longer keep other companies out of AirDrop by using a functionally similar but private communication protocol instead of the standardized version.

Andrew Cunningham

I didn’t pay much attention to the initial reports about this – AirDrop always struck me as the type of feature Apple fanboys incessantly fawn about while everyone else shrugs off because there are many alternatives to share files between people that aren’t confined to Apple devices – but this angle of reporting is certainly intriguing. This would not be the first time Apple was compelled by regulation to relax its tight control on its devices and users, the most famous being the forced adoption of USB-C on iPhones.

heise online: “EU launches its own DNS service with practical functions”

The EU now offers its own DNS resolution service (Resolver) and wants to help its citizens to become less dependent on offers from large US companies such as Cloudflare and Google. The service is called DNS4EU and pre-filters internet addresses at the user’s request: In addition to phishing and fraud sites, it blocks websites and advertising that are harmful to minors.

A DNS resolver is one of the almost invisible basic services for stable Internet access: it works in the background, usually at the provider, and ensures that Internet addresses such as www.heise.de are translated into IP addresses such as 2a02:2e0:3fe:1001:7777:772e:2:85. However, in many countries – including Germany –, blocking orders by lobby associations or youth protection authorities are often implemented at DNS level. For this reason and for reasons of speed, users often make do with alternative providers such as Google, which not only uses one of the most beautiful IP addresses with the resolver 8.8.8.8, but also answers over a trillion queries a day. Cloudflare (1.1.1.1) and Quad9 (9.9.9.9) also operate open resolvers. The problem is that many of these servers are located in the USA, which is why the Quad9 consortium has already moved its headquarters to Zurich.

Dr. Christopher Kunz

Good to see the European Union taking – albeit small – steps towards that elusive digital sovereignty and autonomy from US-based companies. While far from the flashy headlines about AI and quantum, DNS over HTTPS improves user privacy and security by preventing eavesdropping and manipulation of DNS data by man-in-the-middle attacks.

Financial Times: “Weather forecasting takes big step forward with Europe’s new AI system”

While tech companies and meteorological offices around the world are already applying AI to the weather, the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) said its operational model broke new ground by making global predictions freely available to everyone at any time.

This milestone will transform weather science and predictions, said Florence Rabier, director-general of ECMWF, an intergovernmental organisation. Making the AI Forecasting System operational produces the widest range of parameters using machine learning available to date.

An experimental version tested over the past 18 months showed the system was about 20 per cent more accurate on key predictions than the best conventional methods, which feed millions of worldwide weather observations into supercomputers and crunch them with physics-based equations.

The new European system could predict the track of a tropical cyclone 12 hours further ahead, giving valuable extra warning time for severe events, said Florian Pappenberger, ECMWF director of forecasts.

Clive Cookson

Improved weather forecasting with better accuracy and predictions over longer timespans seems like a genuinely positive application of machine learning, unlike the multiple pitfalls of generative AI. Google’s DeepMind announced similar results from its GenCast AI model recently – which incidentally was trained on historical weather data from the same ECMWF. Turns out European AI models are not that far behind as many Americans insist on fearmongering.

Euractiv: “Internal documents reveal Commission fears over Microsoft dependency”

The EU’s data protection watchdog, the EDPS, has ordered the Commission to bring its Microsoft use into compliance. This implies exploring less intrusive alternatives than Microsoft, but little has been done in this regard.

The case offers a stark example of the chasm between Europe’s desire for autonomy in highly sensitive areas such as IT, and the on-the-ground reality of its dependence on American tech.

There are no known credible offerings from European providers, reads an internal Commission document seen by Euractiv.

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In another recent report by the Directorate-General for Digital Services (DG DIGIT), also seen by Euractiv, concerns about excessive power in the hands of a few non-European companies, risks associated with a single supplier (price hikes, migration difficulties), and the potential loss of in-house competencies were mentioned – concerns the Commission has not yet publicly acknowledged.

The report also gives a very positive description of member state initiatives to develop open and sovereign alternatives to Microsoft, yet concludes only that DG DIGIT will plan to evaluate them internally as a possible complement for small scale initiatives with very restricted scope.

Jacob Wulff Wold

In terms of digital sovereignty, I think this is a far more pressing issue than, say, the amount of VC funding for EU startups or whether these companies end up listing on a European stock market. It should have become a priority a decade ago when the Obama administration was caught spying on Angela Merkel’s conversations. And it is undoubtedly imperative now, with geopolitical pressure on European states mounting from all sides.

Ars Technica: “Mastodon’s founder cedes control, refuses to become next Musk or Zuckerberg”

The news comes after leaders of other social networks, like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, have sparked backlash over sudden changes to popular apps like Facebook, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter). For years, Musk has drawn criticism for changing Twitter's hate speech policies through his X rebranding. And more recently, Zuckerberg this month defended Meta’s decision to relax hate speech policies (permitting women to be called “property” and gay people to be called “mentally ill”) by calling bans on such speech out of touch with mainstream discourse.

Mastodon is hoping to provide an alternative social network for users who are potentially frustrated with their lack of control over their timelines and content on other networks.

But to achieve the envisioned independence for all users, Mastodon’s structure needed to evolve, the blog said, as the community grew to about 1.5 million monthly active users in 2023. Remaining headquartered in Europe primarily, Mastodon’s day-to-day operations will be managed by the new European not-for-profit entity, establishing a new legal home for Mastodon.

Ashley Belanger

Good intentions, but there is already precedent of a company starting out as a nonprofit with good intentions on paper, only to succumb to investor pressure once its product became a hit – on course, I’m talking about OpenAI.

Financial Times: “Klarna’s US listing is a sad reflection of Europe’s failings”

But the biggest investors and venture capital funds were in the US, and over time that pull of its markets became irresistible. Spotify listed in New York in 2018. Now, Klarna is looking at something similar, filing listing documents in the US last week. Bankers and investors talk of a possible listing in the first half of next year that would value the company at up to $20bn. That would be a far cry from the $46bn Klarna was valued at in 2021 but better than the $6.7bn it achieved a year later in its last official fundraising round.

There is just no question: the US has the customers, the market; it has the VC funds; it has the investors. If you are going to list, why would you choose Europe today? asks one of the continent’s biggest industrialists, one of whose companies is examining a potential move from Europe to the US to try to boost its flagging share price.

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That underscores the scale of the challenge for European policymakers: it is not just simply about developing a better financing ecosystem for start-ups of all sizes, there is also a need to properly complete the EU single market in so many areas from services to capital markets. Until it does, more like Klarna are likely to choose the US.

Richard Milne

This article is a good example of what happens when you start with a predefined notion (the EU is hopelessly behind and absolutely must chase the American VC-centric startup model) and force facts to fit the desired narrative (amusing to see the author being vigorously slammed in the comments).

Politico: “Europe should hope for a Trump victory”

A Trump win would immediately revive plans for more common EU debt for the bloc’s security and defense. That idea — initially pushed by Macron and supported by the EU’s new High Representative Kaja Kallas — had even won the tacit support of frugal Northern Europe, but it lost momentum after the French president’s election gambit. The shock of a second Trump term would undoubtedly rekindle it, not least because Germany — the country most reluctant to support Macron’s ideas — is also the country that fears losing America’s security guarantee most.

The same would be true for the Continent’s gloomy economic outlook. Former Central Bank President Mario Draghi’s diagnosis of an €800 billion-per-year investment gap can only be filled by more common financing. It also requires a different approach to EU-wide industrial and fiscal policy that, again, would start in Germany and spill over to rest of the EU — something that a trade war with Trump could help unlock.

Mujtaba Rahman

That may have been the case if Trump would have won a second term back in 2020, but I fear that now in 2024 and beyond the prospects of catalyzing European unity are much slimmer. European leaders have had another four years of ‘American leadership’ under Biden to lull them into complacency – I am using ‘leadership’ here in quotes as this was rather America pursuing its militaristic haphazard foreign policy and European leaders tagging along and pretending US interests perfectly match our own.