Friday links for July 17th 2026

The “worst technology ever deployed” issue.

1. EU’s data centre expansion will fast-track profits and power for US Big Tech and investors

European leaders talk up data centres as a path to tech sovereignty, but the centres mostly get built by and for the same US cloud giants they claim to be escaping. Let’s declare independence from our landlord by signing a longer lease.

2. Life After Microsoft: Digital Sovereignty and Data Security at Our Law Firm

A Polish law firm ditched Big Tech and went full free software. Proof that ”there is no alternative" is a sales pitch, not a law of nature.

3. Generative AI Is an Engineering Disaster

"By economic and engineering measures, generative AI might be the worst technology ever deployed”. Another few hundred billion should sort it.

4. Smart speakers could help OpenAI lose even more money

Included purely for the title, which does more analysis in nine words than most earnings calls.

5. How I experience the web today

A sadly very accurate simulation of how most of us experience the web. The only unrealistic part is that you can close the tab without feeling anything.

On rotation

This week’s soundtrack is Please by DJ Plead.

Until the week doth return,
Colin