Ryan Whitham, writing for Ars Technica back in April:

European regulators are proposing several broad changes to the way AI tools operate on Android phones. Some of this is straightforward, like allowing third-party AI tools to be invoked system-wide via hot words or button presses. This might also include allowing AI tools to view screen context when the user opens them. Context also extends to allowing alternative AI systems to access local data to generate proactive suggestions and summaries. The report actually describes something that sounds like Google’s Magic Cue, which relies on Gemini to offer suggestions based on your activity.

Google has also started experimenting with allowing AI to control certain apps. As we saw when this feature debuted on the Galaxy S26, Gemini is currently pretty bad at using apps on your behalf. The commission wants to explore allowing other AI services to autonomously control installed apps and system features on Android phones. Maybe someone else could do better?

Maybe! But also maybe it’s a bad idea for complex system architecture design to come from non-technical government bureaucrats. One of these maybes strikes me as a lot more likely than the other.

Many of the Gemini AI features in Android, including Magic Cue, rely on running local models, and Google has been slow to allow third parties the system access to make that work effectively. So the EU is also suggesting a mandate that would ensure developers have the necessary hardware access to run local models “with high levels of performance, availability and responsiveness.”

What could go wrong?

Finally, Google may be required under the DMA to create new APIs and offer technical assistance to other AI makers who want to plug into Android. The commission also specifies that these tools must be made available free of charge.

Of course, it’s not free of charge to provide technical assistance to one’s competitors. It’s actually a great expense.

Here’s the European Commission, announcing these “preliminary findings”:

The proposed measures aim to ensure that competing AI services can effectively interact with applications on users’ Android devices and execute tasks accordingly, such as sending an email using the user’s preferred email app, ordering food or sharing a photo with friends. Currently, Google largely reserves these capabilities for use by its own AI offerings on Android phones and tablets. For example, the measures would allow competing AI services to be easily activated by users, using a custom ‘wake word’, a phrase that the user can speak to activate an AI service.

The proposed measures will also enable competing providers of AI services to innovate and offer deeply integrated AI experiences to users on Android phones and tablets, along with Alphabet’s own AI services, such as Gemini. Opening up access to these capabilities will provide Android users across the EU with a wider choice of AI services.

The difference between Google and Apple on this front is that Google just blazed ahead and shipped Gemini integrated into Android in the EU, and is now facing compliance problems after shipping. (Ask forgiveness.) Apple isn’t shipping Siri AI in the EU in iOS 27, knowing that it’s going to be deemed non-compliant. (Ask permission.)

The EC presumes that these measures “will also enable competing providers of AI services to innovate and offer deeply integrated AI experiences to users on Android phones and tablets”. Again: maybe! But really all they can enforce is that “competing providers of AI services” will have the same level of system-level integration that Google’s AI services have. The easiest way for Google to achieve that is by withdrawing Gemini integration in Android from the EU, not by building APIs and privacy protection mechanisms to enable the capabilities for third-party providers that the EC is demanding.

Google is learning the lesson Apple learned the hard way with all the existing features of iOS that were deemed noncompliant with the DMA when it went into effect. The “ship it first and ask forgiveness / hope it’s deemed compliant” strategy is not a good one in the EU.

In Switzerland, a MAGA-like political party got an anti-immigration population cap put to a national referendum and lost. It is instructive to consider the reasons it lost:

Others, in particular Swiss business leaders, feared losing Switzerland's crucial access to Europe's single market.

Over half of all Swiss products are sold into the EU, but their access to Europe's markets depends on Swiss commitment to Europe's free movement of people. Had the population cap been approved, Switzerland would have had to terminate that agreement.

...

Only Swiss citizens were allowed to vote, but in the cities, which have larger immigrant communities than in the countryside, the proposal got a particularly resounding no.

In the capital city Bern, for example, almost 84% of those voting rejected a population cap.

...

"The EU is still by far the most important trading partner for Switzerland," explains Minsch, adding that is it is "in our interest to have stable and clear relationships with our main trading partner".

Swiss employers were also worried about labour shortages, and losing access to a Europe-wide pool of skilled workers.

The issue of losing the EU as a trading partner strikes me as something the proponent Swiss People's Party might have demagogued as bureaucratic overreach, or an issue of national sovereignty. But free movement is an individual right, and recognizing that right is part of that country's trading agreement. The issue of labor shortages -- easily solved through immigration -- shows that respecting individual rights is in the self-interest of the businessmen, the immigrants, and their customers alike.

One issue that plausibly seems worsened by a high immigrant population -- bigger costs related to the welfare state -- is a red herring: As I and others have argued in the past, the problem is the welfare state:

Were the educational and medical sectors privately run, we would not attract or encourage freeloaders, and non-citizens who used these facilities would be paying customers.

I am glad for Switzerland's sake that its voters ignored the scapegoaters and chose freedom, the path of prosperity, in this referendum.

If only voters in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave had half as much sense!

-- CAV

 

 

"Inciting a people to rise up, abandoning them to the slaughter, then making deals with their executioners: does history's diplomatic record know a more consummate moral swindle?"

~ Emmanuel Ruimy (translated from the original French)

 

"After a war that has cost an estimated $30bn, killed thousands and destroyed hundreds of millions of dollars worth of US military hardware, have any of Trump's declared objectives been fulfilled?

"Five big nos:

• No on Iran's nuclear programme ... It remains far from obliterated.
• No to changing the regime: Ayatollah Khamenei and a slew of top-ranking commanders have been killed but have been replaced by even more hardline figures, apparently in no mood to compromise.
• No to helping the Iranian people who rose up against their government. ...
• No to destroying Iran's ballistic missile arsenal. ... 70% of Iran's missiles remain serviceable.
• No to reining in Iran's proxies. These are not part of any deal ...

"Iran has acquired leverage through this war that it never enjoyed before. Its control of the Strait of Hormuz gave it a grip on a fifth of the world's oil supply. It can wield that power at will in the future.

"It is likely, therefore, to be even less accommodating in these negotiations.

"Attacking Iran turned out to be a massive miscalculation ...

"It has cost America's standing in the world dearly and left Iran potentially stronger.

"It will go down as one of the greatest strategic blunders in US history."

~ Dominic Waghorn from his op-ed 'Trump just admitted defeat on Iran war after historic blunder'

Collected from various online wags: “He got Aristhrottled.” Thief gasps: “I’m dying.” Professor says: “All of us are dying. The question is: Did you ever live?” “If a car thief dies in the woods … “ “I breathe, therefore I am. I can’t breathe, therefore … “