In Germany, the Federal Cartel Office fined Amazon[^2] 59 million euro (68.7 millions US dollars) because of "abuse of market power" with anti-competitive practices.

The European Commission[^3] also opened an investigation regarding Amazon's practices regarding Prime and the "Buy Box" (I had to look this up, apparently it means being picked as the default seller for a product where multiple sellers are offering it), since you need to pay extra for FBA to have your products marked as Prime (appearing before on the search results, and being the "buy box") and Amazon itself competes with you sometimes, being both a marketplace and a seller.

[1]: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/09/... [2]: https://www.politico.eu/article/german-regulator-fines-amazo... [3]: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_...

Yeah, collaboration usually requires some sort of centralisation. Whether that is the LKML+git.kernel.org, gitlab.gnome.org, salsa.debian.org or Sourcehut, or GitHub. At least Sourcehut isn't completely proprietary and shoving AI down your throat at every possible chance. The same can be said for Codeberg and almost any GitLab CE, Gitea or Forgejo instance

You can't compare someone checking your document before entering a strip club (or even a pub, or asking for alcoholic drinks) vs a computer system getting and logging an attestation and verifying it against a government database (or third party) where the Govt knows who the credential belongs to, and who's checking it. Along with my government "compelling me" to run software (even if it's open source itself) that requires me to have a binding contract with a foreign third-party company known for privacy violations, and running their proprietary software stack on my device for said government software to work, so I can participate in most parts of the digital society.

Of course the existing "identity verification" done by scanning yourself and your ID document (passport, national ID or driving licence) is not acceptable, unless counted exceptions where said documentation is needed (banking and others, because of KYC/AML)

The damage is already being done, whether you are a 401k/IRA holder with a position on the S&P 500 way too overweighted by the Mag7&co and their circular dealings, or just needing to buy computer parts way over their market value because some companies are over-leveraging to outcompete you for that hardware (or electricity), or even at a smaller scale by increasing software costs because everything is "AI-powered" now and of course you wouldn't want only "deterministic" software that just works and doesn't have a slop machine integrated.

Sure, any regular SME can just install Postgres or MySQL without even setting much up except with `mysql_secure_install`, a user with a password and an 'app' database. But you may end up with 10-20 database installs you need to back up, patch and so on every once in a while. And companies value that.

There's a "data encryption key", encrypted with a hash derived of your username+master password, and that data encryption key is used locally to decrypt the items of your vault. Even if everything is stored remotely, unless the provider got your raw master password (usually, a hash of that is used as the "password" for authentication), your information is totally safe.

A whole other topic is communications, but we're talking decryption keys here

>In order to increase transparency and avoid cross-subsidies, where a public service operator not only operates compensated services subject to public transport service obligations, but also engages in other activities, the accounts of the said public services must be separated so as to meet at least the following conditions: [...]

Another topic is: should France be allowed to keep the TGV monopoly in their country because they need it to finance the rest of their network, while they are allowed to operate abroad (like in Spain), taking away business from Renfe through the free market competition they try to impede on their country anyway?

[^1]: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32...

Regarding the former Minister (Ábalos), he's awaiting trial and not yet convicted (even though, IMHO he is probably guilty), and he hasn't been in the ministry since 2021[^2] so it makes no sense to bring it up when he has been out for nearly 4.5 years now.

[^1]: https://www.lavozdegalicia.es/noticia/espana/2026/01/18/osca... [^2]: https://www.elconfidencialdigital.com/articulo/otros/jose-lu...