The European Commission is set to present a legislative proposal on Thursday to force manufacturers to use a common charger for electronic devices, according to a Commission official closely involved in the file.
The proposal will require all manufacturers to harmonize the charging points on devices — using a USB-C charging point — and to make their software protocol for fast charging interoperable between brands and devices.
The main target of the new legislation is U.S. tech giant Apple, which has pushed back against EU attempts to standardize chargers through binding requirements, arguing that it will hamper innovation.
This is such a fundamentally stupid proposal.
How can you enforce all phone manufactures to use the same charging port?
What happens when USB-C isn’t good enough anymore?
What about the massive number of lightning cables that would be unusable by the current iPhone users? Does that waste not matter?
What if a manufacturer wants to only support wireless charging?
And people in the E.U. wonder why England wanted out, and why nearly all the major tech companies are from the U.S. and Asia.
Of course, it was the UK that left the EU, not just England. But I think everyone gets the point. ↩︎
The UK Home Office Accidentally Shared Personal Email Addresses of 240 EU Citizens #
The Home Office are the people who deal with EU citizens requests seeking for settled status in the UK (among other things, of course), but it appears they made a bit of a mistake when sending emails to some of them asking to resubmit their information:
The Home Office sent the email on Sunday 7 April asking applicants, who had already struggled with technical problems, to resubmit their information.
But it failed to use the “blind CC” box on the email, revealing the details of other applicants.
In another message apologising to those who had been affected, the Home Office wrote: “The deletion of the email you received from us on 7 April 2019 would be greatly appreciated.” – Ross Hawkins, BBC.
Basically, someone doesn’t know the difference between CC and BCC, and now the department may have to make an apology in Parliament. Along with the fact that they breached the Data Protection Act.
American teens have had it with this authoritarian crap #
The nation’s youth, raised on The Hunger Games and Harry Potter, are reminding the baby boomers that considering what their own parents went through in the Great Depression and World War II, they should fucking know better than to slam the door on succeeding generations.
That was the bit I laughed at. But overall it’s an intriguing idea.
Syria Joins Paris Climate Accord, Leaving Only U.S. Opposed #
Syria announced during United Nations climate talks on Tuesday that it would sign the Paris agreement on climate change. The move, which comes on the heels of Nicaragua signing the accord last month, will leave the United States as the only country that has rejected the global pact.
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The Paris agreement, struck in 2015 under former President Barack Obama, calls on nearly 200 countries to voluntarily curb greenhouse gas emissions. At the time, only Nicaragua and Syria did not join, for very different reasons.