... so if the police of these countries gets their hand on this data they could sanction people with phone numbers from these countries.

So, this is not "just phone numbers and pictures" but could result in serious consequences for some people.

Also they found some drug dealers advertising their portfolio in their account description. This is a case where the police should actually try to "hack" Meta.

How reliable is this data? China is also known for embellishing official data, not only for the international community but also for its own government.

You are confusing Saudi Arabia with Russia. The latter is the one famous for people falling out of windows after they have already fallen out of favor. In Saudi Arabia people just get shot, stabbed or poisoned like everywhere else in the world.

We already live in a society where theft is normal. I'm not talking bout shoplifting here though.

On the other hand: If you buy their subsidized solar panels you get them to partly pay for your panels. So: Chinese tax payers subsidizing American solar installations. Isn't that a big win for 'murica?

"that it will continue to be voluntary for the tech giants to search for child sexual abuse material"

All they want to do is continue allowing the "voluntary scanning" by the "tech giants" (meaning mostly Google and Microsoft) for CSAM. This arrangement expires in spring 2026, so they want to extend it. Once this is done, they will immediately resume their efforts to introduce Chat Control.

Note that "voluntary" here means it's voluntary for the "tech giants" not voluntary for the users of their products.

But maybe we should stop ruining the planet first, otherwise it won't matter much whether we have asteroid defense or not.

It's not the either or you describe. It's either we get rid of ICE cars as soon as possible or the future of humanity is in peril. But also either the car manufacturers get it, that ICE cars have no future, and start producing cheaper electric cars, or the Chinese car manufacturers will take over the market. Both "or" scenarios mean that the car industry in Germany is done for.

Apparently Google's customers haven't yet figured out that advertising on the web no longer works (if it ever did).

That's not true. It's more pronounced in the US, yes, but not unique to it. There was a time in the 1960s and 70s where maybe not whole cities but new developments were designed around the car in other countries too. And even nowadays this happens way too often.

> A basic calculator app is hemorrhaging more memory than most computers had a decade ago

32 Gigabytes is still more memory than most computers have nowadays (which would be around 16 GB). A decade ago it probably was more like 8 GB or even just 4 GB.

Two things happened:
1. Complexity increased to a level where you don't have enough eyes any more
2. Many of the remaining eyes are not competent to spot these bugs.

Apart from the price tag: You would need many more ports for connecting SSDs on the server than you would need for HDDs with a higher capacity each.

This has always been the case: Amateurs screw up, professionals have to fix it later. This happens not just with vibe programming (anybody remember "programs" written in MS Access or Excel?) or even just in software development. Amateurs build huts that then collapse or leak, or do electric wiring that then causes outages or worse.

The part that has changed is companies thinking they can get way (again) with amateurs doing the work that would require a professional, because the former are using AI now, and the use of AI makes their output look good on first glance.

My bank also has a website, but unfortunately I need an app from that bank as second factor to log in. And even worse: That app also doubles as a banking app, making a joke of that second factor on my smart phone.