Saturday, May 31, 2025

Polaris of Enlightenment

USB-C is now a common standard in the EU

Published 31 December 2024
– By Editorial Staff
The idea is that all electronics can be charged with the same cables.

This week, USB-C officially became the standard for chargers in the EU, meaning that all new mobile phones, tablets and other portable electronic devices sold in the Union must use this particular variant as a charging socket.

The rule aims to reduce electronic waste and simplify for consumers by eliminating the need for multiple chargers. Existing products will not be retroactively affected, but new devices will have to comply with the new requirements.

Advocates describe the standardization as an important step towards uniform charging solutions across Europe, and many manufacturers have already started adapting their products to meet the new rules.

It means better-charging technology, reduced e-waste, and less fuss to find the chargers you need”, the European Commission says.

Note that laptops are temporarily exempt from the new rules – but they will also be subject to the requirements in 2026.

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Orbán: EU leaders want to replace the people of Europe

Population replacement in the West

Published today 10:47
– By Editorial Staff
Orbán with Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico.

At the opening of CPAC Hungary 2025 in Budapest, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán launched his vision for “making Europe great again”. With a four-point “patriot plan”, he wants to restore peace, sovereignty, freedom, and security in Europe.

Orbán also pointed out that an organized and systematic population replacement is underway in Europe and that Europeans today have become strangers in their own cities and communities.

CPAC Hungary is the Central European edition of the American Conservative Political Action Conference, where right-wing politicians, strategists, and opinion leaders gather.

– This is not a gathering of the defeated, but of those who have endured, Orbán said, praising leaders who, according to him, have withstood political storms and directing harsh criticism at liberal and socialist politicians, whom he accused of weakness:

– They cry at the first sign of criticism and hide behind progressive journalists

“Stolen the European dream”

Orbán contrasted his vision with what he called a liberal plan for a post-Christian, post-national Europe, characterized by war, mass migration, and increased central control.

– Brussels has stolen the European dream, he warned, accusing the EU’s left-wing elite of replacing national identity with bureaucratic control.

Orbán’s program is based on four fundamental principles:

  • Peace: “We don’t want the Eastern front”, he said, rejecting Ukraine’s EU membership.
  • Sovereignty: Hungary opposes joint debt and the financing of wars in other countries.
  • Freedom: Political freedom and freedom of expression must be restored.
  • Security: Europe must be protected from mass migration and Europeans must take back their neighborhoods.

“They have destroyed our future”

He also emphasized the importance of local political victories:

– Everyone must return home and win their own battles, he said, highlighting Poland’s upcoming elections as a key issue for Europe’s patriotic movements.

According to the Hungarian leader, the people of Europe dreamed of unity and peace, of a continent where citizens lived in prosperity and security and cooperated with each other – instead of viewing each other as enemies. But today, the grim reality is very different.

– They have destroyed our future. Instead of the European dream, we are receiving a nightmare. Europeans no longer feel safe in their own countries, Orbán stated.

Not in their own cities. Not on their own streets. They have become strangers in places where, twenty years ago, they felt at home. It’s simple math – their cities are being taken away from them. This is not integration – it is an organized population replacement, he continued.

“Led by lightweights”

The prime minister also pointed out how European companies are going bankrupt, how electricity and gas are becoming more expensive, and how the green transition is killing Europe’s economies.

It’s slowly becoming a parody, and now, when we should be negotiating trade and tariffs with a heavyweight US president, it turns out that we are led by lightweights”.

Orbán also praised Donald Trump’s return to the White House, which he called “the greatest comeback in the Western world”, and described Trump’s policies as a “truth serum” for peace and stability.

Among other political role models, he mentioned Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, who, according to Orbán, “was shot five times and still returned as if nothing had happened”, as well as Andrej Babiš (Czech Republic) and Santiago Abascal (Spain).

“Following our own path”

He also repeatedly criticized the EU political establishment in Brussels, which he accused of wanting to silence dissent.

– The left does not want debate – they want submission, Orbán continued.

The Hungarian leader’s final message was clear:

– The liberal plan leads to a centralized, indebted, war-driven Europe.But Hungarians are a free people – we were born to follow our own
path.

Orbán concluded with a call to Europe’s patriots to take back their continent.

KYC is the crime

The Coinbase hack shows how state-mandated surveillance is putting lives at risk.

Published today 7:36
– By Naomi Brockwell

Last week, Coinbase got hacked.

Hackers demanded a $20 million ransom after breaching a third-party system. They didn’t get passwords or crypto keys. But what they did get will put lives at risk:

  • Names
  • Home addresses
  • Phone numbers
  • Partial Social Security numbers
  • Identity documents
  • Bank info

That’s everything someone needs to impersonate you, blackmail you, or show up at your front door.

This isn’t hypothetical. There’s a growing wave of kidnappings and extortion targeting people with crypto exposure. Criminals are using leaked identity data to find victims and hold them hostage.

Let’s be clear: KYC doesn’t just put your data at risk. It puts people at risk.

Naturally, people are furious at any company that leaks their information.

But here’s the bigger issue:
No system is unhackable.
Every major institution, from the IRS to the State Department, has suffered breaches.
Protecting sensitive data at scale is nearly impossible.

And Coinbase didn’t want to collect this data.
Many companies don’t. It’s a massive liability.
They’re forced to, by law.

A new, dangerous normal

KYC, Know Your Customer, has become just another box to check.

Open a bank account? Upload your ID.
Use a crypto exchange? Add your selfie and utility bill.
Sign up for a payment app? Same thing.

But it wasn’t always this way.

Until the 1970s, you could walk into a bank with cash and open an account. Your financial life was private by default.

That changed with the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970, which required banks to start collecting and reporting customer activity to the government. Still, KYC wasn’t yet formalized. Each bank decided how well they needed to know someone. If you’d been a customer since childhood, or had a family member vouch for you, that was often enough.

Then came the Patriot Act, which turned KYC into law. It required every financial institution to collect, verify, and store identity documents from every customer, not just for large or suspicious transactions, but for basic access to the financial system.

From that point on, privacy wasn’t the default. It was erased.

The real-world cost

Today, everyone is surveilled all the time.
We’ve built an identity dragnet, and people are being hurt because of it.

Criminals use leaked KYC data to find and target people, and it’s not just millionaires. It’s regular people, and sometimes their parents, partners, or even children.

It’s happened in London, Buenos Aires, Dubai, Lagos, Los Angeles, all over the world.
Some are robbed. Some are held for ransom.
Some don’t survive.

These aren’t edge cases. They’re the direct result of forcing companies to collect and store sensitive personal data.

When we force companies to hoard identity data, we guarantee it will eventually fall into the wrong hands.

There are two types of companies, those that have been hacked, and those that don’t yet know they’ve been hacked” – former Cisco CEO, John Chambers

What KYC actually does

KYC turns every financial institution into a surveillance node.
It turns your personal information into a liability.

It doesn’t just increase risk — It creates it.

KYC is part of a global surveillance infrastructure. It feeds into databases governments share and query without your knowledge. It creates chokepoints where access to basic services depends on surrendering your privacy. And it deputizes companies to collect and hold sensitive data they never wanted.

If you’re trying to rob a vault, you go where the gold is.
If you’re trying to target people, you go where the data lives.

KYC creates those vaults, legally mandated, poorly secured, and irresistible to attackers.

Does it even work?

We’re told KYC is necessary to stop terrorism and money laundering.

But the top reasons banks file “suspicious activity reports” are banal, like someone withdrawing “too much” of their own money.

We’re told to accept this surveillance because it might stop a bad actor someday.

In practice, it does more to expose innocent people than to catch criminals.

KYC doesn’t prevent crime.
It creates the conditions for it.

A Better Path Exists

We don’t have to live like this.

Better tools already exist, tools that allow verification without surveillance:

  • Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs): Prove something (like your age or citizenship) without revealing documents
  • Decentralized Identity (DID): You control what gets shared, and with whom
  • Homomorphic Encryption: Allows platforms to verify encrypted data without ever seeing it

But maybe it’s time to question something deeper.
Why is centralized, government-mandated identity collection the foundation of participation in financial life?

This surveillance regime didn’t always exist. It was built.

And just because it’s now common doesn’t mean we should accept it.

We didn’t need it before. We don’t need it now.

It’s time to stop normalizing mass surveillance as a condition for basic financial access.

The system isn’t protecting us.
It’s putting us in danger.

It’s time to say what no one else will

KYC isn’t a necessary evil.
It’s the original sin of financial surveillance.

It’s not a flaw in the system.
It is the system.

And the system needs to go.

Takeaways

  • Check https://HaveIBeenPwned.com to see how much of your identity is already exposed
  • Say no to services that hoard sensitive data
  • Support better alternatives that treat privacy as a baseline, not an afterthought

Because safety doesn’t come from handing over more information.

It comes from building systems that never need it in the first place.

 

Yours in privacy,
Naomi

Naomi Brockwell is a privacy advocacy and professional speaker, MC, interviewer, producer, podcaster, specialising in blockchain, cryptocurrency and economics. She runs the NBTV channel on Youtube.

Wallenberg and Nvidia to build “cutting-edge” AI center in Sweden

Published 27 May 2025
– By Editorial Staff
Marcus Wallenberg believes that the AI initiative is absolutely crucial for Swedish industry.

US chip manufacturer Nvidia is establishing a new AI center in Sweden in collaboration with the Wallenberg sphere and several major Swedish companies, including Astra Zeneca, Ericsson, Saab, and SEB.

The aim of the initiative is to strengthen Sweden’s position in artificial intelligence by building the country’s first AI supercomputer for business. The center will be run by a joint venture formed by the parties involved.

– Investing in cutting-edge AI infrastructure is a crucial step toward accelerating the development and adoption of AI across Swedish industry, said Marcus Wallenberg, chairman of Wallenberg Investments, in a statement, adding:

– We believe this initiative will generate valuable spillover effects – by enabling upskilling, fostering new collaborations, and strengthening the broader national AI ecosystem.

The initiative was announced during a visit to Sweden by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. During his visit, he was also awarded an honorary doctorate at Linköping University.

– As electricity powered the industrial age and the Internet fueled the digital age, AI is the engine of the next industrial revolution. Through the visionary initiative of Wallenberg Investments and Sweden’s industry leaders, the country is building its first AI infrastructure – laying the foundation for breakthroughs across science, industry, and society, and securing Sweden’s place at the forefront of the AI era, argues Nvidia’s CEO.

AI-driven drug development

And the players have clear ambitions for the initiative. Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca will use the system for AI-driven breakthroughs in drug development, with advanced models and data processing.

Ericsson wants to develop AI models to improve performance, efficiency, and customer experiences, as well as enable new business models.

Saab will invest in AI to accelerate the development of advanced defense capabilities in its leading systems, and SEB will integrate AI for increased productivity, new customer offerings, and long-term competitiveness, with a focus on critical infrastructure.

The ambition with this initiative is to establish a next generation AI compute infrastructure that is both a production facility and at the same time serves as a reference installation, unlocking new possibilities for AI adoption”, the companies said.

One in two young Brits long for a world without the internet

Published 26 May 2025
– By Editorial Staff
In recent years, there have been a number of reports and alerts showing that social media has a very negative impact on young people's mental health.

A new survey from the British Standards Institution mapping young people’s relationship with social media and digital life reveals that nearly half of young Brits wish they had grown up without the internet.

Of the 1,293 respondents aged 16 to 21, 46% said they would prefer to be young in a world where the internet did not exist. Almost 70% said they felt worse and had lower self-esteem after using social media, with 68% saying their time online had been directly detrimental to their mental health.

A quarter of respondents spent four hours or more a day on social media. Of these, 42% admitted to lying to parents or guardians about their online use. The same number said they had lied about their age online at some point, while 40% used so-called “burner” accounts – hidden or alternative profiles. 27% had even pretended to be a completely different person and the same number had shared their location information with strangers online.

The survey was conducted in the aftermath of coronavirus-related restrictions during the lockdown policy, a period which, according to three-quarters of participants, led to a marked increase in screen time.

Experts don’t believe in “digital curfew”

Against this backdrop, the UK’s technology minister, Peter Kyle, has recently opened the door to introducing mandatory digital “curfews” – i.e. blocking certain apps, such as TikTok and Instagram, after a certain time in the evening. Although critics have dismissed the proposal as repressive, it is gaining some support among young people: half of those surveyed, 50%, said they would support a digital curfew after 22:00.

However, several experts, including Rani Govender, policy manager for children’s online safety at the NSPCC, say the proposed restrictions are not enough.

We need to make clear that a digital curfew alone is not going to protect children from the risks they face online. They will be able to see all these risks at other points of the day and they will still have the same impact

She added that the focus should instead be on making the online environment safer and less addictive for children and young people, and preventing them from visiting obviously harmful sites and apps.

“Rabbit holes of harmful material”

Andy Burrows, CEO of the Molly Rose Foundation, also highlights the need for legislation to protect young people from harmful content:

– It’s clear that young people are aware of the risks online and, what’s more, they want action from tech companies to protect them.

He points out that algorithms often display content that can quickly lead young people into destructive flows and spirals:

– Algorithms can quickly spiral and take young people down rabbit holes of harmful and distressing material through no fault of their own.

Burrows calls for new laws to force a “safe by design” approach that puts the needs of children and society ahead of corporate profits.

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