EU leaders postpone new privacy directive under false pretense.

Today I learned that the EU is postponing the introduction of new privacy regulations that would make our on-line lives a bit less hostile than is currently the case. They claim to need more time, but yesterday a letter from a group of lobbyist organizations was made public that puts pressure on the European leaders to lessen regulatory pressure on companies operating in the EU. To me, the timing of the delay is therefore suspicious. Continue reading

Announcing operation ‘e-life reboot’

I’m going to clean up my digital life. No more google, facebook, gmx, linkedin and hotmail. From now on I’m going to be in control about who controls my data. (to the extent possible)

I’ll update this article with my progress so far.

Step 1: notify everyone that I’m leaving facebook. in progress

Step 2: notify everyone that I’m leaving linkedin.

Step 3: end the FB and LI account –done for FB

Step 4: clean up subscriptions on my previous mail addresses.

Step 5: clean up all mail addresses.

 Step 6: Annoy the hell out of FB and LI for retaining my data. (optional)

If you want to know why, read on:

Continue reading

Has thinking become a rare commodity these days?

A certain thought has struck me several times in the last few months. More and more it seems that people are just (acting?) plain stupid. An increasing amount of people in my environment seem to be acting like simpletons. They’re people who don’t think much and who can’t answer questions that require more than the simplest thought processes, or if they do attempt to answer tougher questions, they don’t seem to be able to without getting either upset first. Continue reading