In April, Nigeria asked Google, Microsoft, and Amazon to set concrete deadlines for opening data centers in the country. Nigeria has been making this demand for about four years, but the companies have so far failed to fulfill their promises. Now, Nigeria has set up a working group with the companies to ensure that data is stored within its shores. Just onshoring the data center does not solve the problems. You can't be sure no data travels to the US servers, some data does need to travel to the US servers, and the entire DC is still subject to US software and certificate keychains. It's better, but not good or safe. I need to channel my inner Mike Ehrmantrout to the US tech companies and government: you had a good thing going you stupid son of a bitch. You had everything you needed and it all ran like clockwork. You could have shut your mouth, cooked, and made as much money as you needed, but you just had to blow it up, you and your pride and your ego. Seriously, this is a massive own goal by the US government. This is a massive loss to US hegemony and influence around the world that's never coming back. It has never been easier to build sovereign clouds with off the shelf and open source tooling. The best practices are largely documented, software is commoditized, and there are plenty of qualified people out there these days and governments staring down the barrel of existential risk have finally got the incentive to fund these efforts.

It's likely their priority is continuing to collect all the fees they can for as long as they can rather than the fine itself.

That's always worth considering. A phone app doesn't take a big operating budget to launch and maintain. Especially for state-actors.

I have like a dozen Gmail accounts, and I know plenty of others who do too. Before I owned my own domain, I used the different accounts for different things.

From the same source, Blacklight is really good. https://themarkup.org/series/blacklight Blacklight is a Real-Time Website Privacy Inspector. Enter the address of any website, and Blacklight will scan it and reveal the specific user-tracking technologies on the site So you can see what's happening on a site before you visit it

I remember an Arthur Clarke novel where a space ship needs water from the planet below. The easiest thing is to lower cables from space and then lift some ice bergs.

This is not a typical home or office printer, very specialized.

It's a shame. AI has potential but most people just want to exploit its development for their own gain.