EU alternative — 25/05/2026

In case you want to start a small project, but want to avoid the US or Chinese hyperscalers, here are some EU-owned solutions for you. I like this list, not because I want to promote these services, but rather because it shows that the EU is gaining traction on providing credible and competitive basic services. Now if we could just get some gigawatt GPU factories online for homegrown LLM training and inference, we'd really be in business.

Simon Willison's Weblog — 25/05/2026

Now even the pope chimes in on giving his ideas how to use LLMs in a responsible way. His name predecessor, Leo the XIII, had many things to say about responsible capitalism. Now is the time to set the agenda straight with regards to LLMs: the pope puts the human in the center again, asks for inclusion of the poorer nations, and to actually using this technology for the good of all. A very interesting read!

The Register — 18/05/2026

Whether you are in favour or against age checks, it is in no one's interest to undermine legitimate privacy and security tools. Instead of using the sledgehammer approach to enforce ill-conceived laws, governments should focus their efforts on providing privacy-friendly ways of passing age checks to boost the public's acceptance.

The Register — 16/05/2026

It's encouraging to see digital sovereignty discussions beginning to bear fruit, though much of that fruit is still unripe. The more closely the non-US community examines the issue, the more complex it becomes: 'sovereign' cloud computing means little if the underlying hardware is produced in the US or China. A server is not just one CPU and some memory, it has many CPUs, some with management engines that operate below the OS and cannot be disabled. I'm eager to see how the EU navigates this hardware-layer challenge. It will be a critical test of how far digital sovereignty can truly extend.

Rest of World — 12/05/2026

The global tech industry has concentrated the production of its most critical hardware on a single island, with almost zero redundancy. It is worth noting that a disruption would not necessarily require an invasion; a grey-zone coast guard quarantine could result in the immediate cessation of chip exports. The article also highlights the vulnerability of compliance: strict U.S. export bans can be circumvented through transshipment hubs such as Malaysia, undermining the effectiveness of enforcement measures.