Telegram and EU Regulatory Consolidation: Trouble Ahead
October 6, 2025
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
Imagine you are Pavel Durov. The value of TONcoin is problematic. France asked you to curtail some content in a country unknown to the folks who hang out at the bar at the Harrod’s Creek Inn in rural Kentucky. Competitors are announcing plans to implement Telegram-type functions in messaging apps built with artificial intelligence as steel girders. How can the day become more joyful?
Thanks, Midjourney. Good enough pair of goats. One an actual goat and the other a “Greatest of All Time” goat.
The orange newspaper has an answer to that question. “EU Watchdog Prepares to Expand Oversight of Crypto and Exchanges” reports:
Stock exchanges, cryptocurrency companies and clearing houses operating in the EU are set to come under the supervision of the bloc’s markets watchdog…
Crypto currency and some online services (possibly Telegram) operate across jurisdictions. The fragmented rules and regulations allow organizations with sporty leadership to perform some remarkable financial operations. If you poke around, you will find the names of some outfits allied with industrious operators linked to a big country in Asia. Pull some threads, and you may find an unknown Russian space force professional beavering away in the shadows of decentralized financial activities.
The write up points out:
Maria Luís Albuquerque, EU commissioner for financial services, said in a speech last month that it was “considering a proposal to transfer supervisory powers to Esma for the most significant cross-border entities” including stock exchanges, crypto companies and central counterparties.
How could these rules impact Telegram? It is nominally based in the United Arab Emirates? Its totally independent do-good Open Network Foundation works tirelessly from a rented office in Zug, Switzerland. Telegram is home free, right?
No pesky big government rules can ensnare the Messenger crowd.
Possibly. There is that pesky situation with the annoying French judiciary. (Isn’t that country with many certified cheeses collapsing?) One glitch: Pavel Durov is a French citizen. He has been arrested, charged, and questioned about a dozen heinous crimes. He is on a leash and must check in with his grumpy judicial “mom” every couple of weeks. He allegedly refused to cooperate with a request from a French government security official. He is awaiting more thrilling bureaucracy from the French judicial system. How does he cope? He criticizes France, the legal processes, and French officials asking him to do for France what Mr. Durov did for Russia earlier this year.
Now these proposed regulations may intertwine with Mr. Durov’s personal legal situation. As the Big Dog of Telegram, the French affair is likely to have some repercussions for Telegram and its Silicon Valley big tech approach to rules and regulations. EU officials are indeed aware of Mr. Durov and his activities. From my perspective in nowheresville in rural Kentucky, the news in the Financial Times on October 6, 2025, is problematic for Mr. Durov. The GOAT of Messaging, his genius brother, and a close knit group of core engineers will have to do some hard thinking to figure out how to deal with these European matters. Can he do it? Does a GOAT eat what’s available?
Stephen E Arnold, October 6, 2025
Big Tech Group Think: Two Examples
October 3, 2025
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
Do the US tech giants do group think? Let’s look at two recent examples of the behavior and then consider a few observations.
First, navigate to “EU Rejects Apple Demand to Scrap Landmark Tech Rules.” The thrust of the write up is that Apple is not happy with the European digital competition law. Why? The EU is not keen on Apple’s business practices. Sure, people in the EU use Apple products and services, but the data hoovering makes some of those devoted Apple lovers nervous. Apple’s position is that the EU is annoying.
Thanks, Midjourney. Good enough.
The write up says:
“Apple has simply contested every little bit of the DMA since its entry into application,” retorted EU digital affairs spokesman Thomas Regnier, who said the commission was “not surprised” by the tech giant’s move.
Apple wants to protect its revenue, its business models, and its scope of operation. Governments are annoying and should not interfere with a US company of Apple’s stature is my interpretation of the legal spat.
Second, take a look at the Verge story “Google Just Asked the Supreme Court to Save It from the Epic Ruling.” The idea is that the online store restricts what a software developer can do. Forget that the Google Play Store provides access to some sporty apps. A bit of spice is the difficulty one has posting reviews of certain Play Store apps. And refunds for apps that don’t work? Yeah, no problemo.
The write up says:
… [Google] finally elevated its Epic v. Google case, the one that might fracture its control over the entire Android app ecosystem, to the Supreme Court level. Google has now confirmed it will appeal its case to the Supreme Court, and in the meanwhile, it’s asking the Court to press pause one more time on the permanent injunction that would start taking away its control.
It is observation time:
- The two technology giants are not happy with legal processes designed to enforce rules, regulations, and laws. The fix is to take the approach of a five year old, “I won’t clean up my room.”
- The group think appears to operate on the premise that US outfits of a certain magnitude should not be hassled like Gulliver by Lilliputians wearing robes, blue suits, and maybe a powdered wig or hair extenders
- The approach of the two companies strikes me, a definite non lawyer, as identical.
Therefore, the mental processes of these two companies appear to be aligned. Is this part of the mythic Silicon Valley “way”? Is it a consequence of spending time on Highway 101 or the Foothills Expressway thinking big thoughts? Is the approach the petulance that goes with superior entities encountering those who cannot get with the program?
My view: After decades of doing whatever, some outfits believe that type of freedom is the path to enlightenment, control, and money. Reinforced behaviors lead to what sure looks like group think to me.
Stephen E Arnold, October 3, 2025
The EU Does More Than Send US Big Tech to Court; It Sends Messages Too
October 2, 2025
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
The estimable but weird orange newspaper published “EU to Block Big Tech from New Financial Data Sharing System.” The “real” news story is paywalled. (Keep your still functioning Visa and MasterCard handy.)
The write up reports:
Big Tech groups are losing a political battle in Brussels to gain access to the EU’s financial data market…
Google is busy working to bolt its payment system into Ant (linked to Alibaba which may be linked to the Chinese government). Amazon and Meta are big money outfits. And Apple, well, Apple is Apple.
Cartoon of a disaster happily generated by ChatGPT. Remarkable what’s okay and what’s not.
The write up reports:
With the support of Germany, the EU is moving to exclude Meta, Apple, Google and Amazon from a new system for sharing financial data that is designed to enable development of digital finance products for consumers.
The article points out:
In a document sent to other EU countries, seen by the Financial Times, Germany suggested excluding Big Tech groups “to promote the development of an EU digital financial ecosystem, guarantee a level playing field and protect the digital sovereignty of consumers”. EU member states and the European parliament are hoping to reach a deal on the final text of the regulation this autumn. [Editor’s Note: October or November 2025?]
What about the crypto payment systems operating like Telegram’s and others in the crypto “space”? That financial mechanism is not referenced in the write up. Curious? Nope. Out of scope. What about the United Arab Emirates’ activities in digital payments and crypto? Nope. Out of scope. What about China’s overt and shadow digital financial activities? Nope. Out of scope.
What’s in scope is that disruption is underway within the traditional banking system. The EU is more concerned about the US than the broader context of the changes it seems to me.
Stephen E Arnold, October 2, 2025
Google and Its End Game
October 1, 2025
No smart software involved. Just a dinobaby’s work.
I read “In Court Filing, Google Concedes the Open Web Is in Rapid Decline.” The write up reveals that change is causing the information highway to morph into a stop light choked Dixie Highway. The article states:
Google says that forcing it to divest its AdX marketplace would hasten the demise of wide swaths of the web that are dependent on advertising revenue. This is one of several reasons Google asks the court to deny the government’s request.
Yes, so much depends on the Google just like William Carlos Williams observed in his poem “The Red Wheelbarrow.” I have modified the original to reflect the Googley era which is now emerging for everyone, including Ars Technica, to see:
so much depends upon the Google, glazed with data beside the chicken regulators.
The cited article notes:
As users become increasingly frustrated with AI search products, Google often claims people actually love AI search and are sending as many clicks to the web as ever. Now that its golden goose is on the line, the open web is suddenly “in rapid decline.” It’s right there on page five of the company’s September 5 filing…
Not only does Google say this, the company has been actively building the infrastructure for Google to become the “Internet.” No way, you say.
Sorry, way. Here’s what’s been going on since the initial public offering:
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- Attract traffic and monetize via ads access to the traffic
- Increased data collection for marketing and “mining” for nuggets; that is, user behavior and related information
- Little by little, force “creators,” Web site developers, partners, and users to just let Google provide access to the “information” Google provides.
Smart software, like recreating certain Web site content, is just one more technology to allow Google to extend its control over its users, its advertisers, and partners.
Courts in the US have essentially hit pause on traffic lights controlling the flows of Google activity. Okay, Google has to share some information. How long will it take for “information” to be defined, adjudicated, and resolved.
The European Union is printing out invoices for Google to pay for assorted violations. Guess what? That’s the cost of doing business.
Net net: The Google will find a way to monetize its properties, slap taxes at key junctions, and shape information is ways that its competitors wish they could.
Yes, there is a new Web or Internet. It’s Googley. Adapt and accept. Feel free to get Google out of your digital life. Have fun.
Stephen E Arnold, October 3, 2025
Graphite: Okay, to License Now
September 24, 2025
The US government uses specialized software to gather information related to persons of interest. The brand of popular since NSO Group marketed itself into a pickle is from the Israeli-founded spyware company Paragon Solutions. The US government isn’t a stranger to Paragon Solutions, in fact, El Pais shares in the article, “Graphite, the Israeli Spyware Acquired By ICE” that it renewed its contract with the specialized software company.
The deal was originally signed during Biden’s administration during September 24, but it went against the then president’s executive order that prohibited US agencies from using spyware tools that “posed ‘significant counterintelligence and security risks’ or had been misused by foreign governments to suppress dissent.
During the negotiations, AE Industrial Partners purchased Paragon and merged it with REDLattice, an intelligence contractor located in Virginia. Paragon is now a domestic partner with deep connections to former military and intelligence personnel. The suspension on ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations was quietly lifted on August 29 according to public contracting announcements.
The Us government will use Paragon’s Graphite spyware:
“Graphite is one of the most powerful commercial spy tools available. Once installed, it can take complete control of the target’s phone and extract text messages, emails, and photos; infiltrate encrypted apps like Signal and WhatsApp; access cloud backups; and covertly activate microphones to turn smartphones into listening devices.
The source suggests that although companies like Paragon insist their tools are intended to combat terrorism and organized crime, past use suggests otherwise. Earlier this year, Graphite allegedly has been linked to info gathering in Italy targeting at least some journalists, a few migrant rights activists, and a couple of associates of the definitely worth watching Pope Francis. Paragon stepped away from the home of pizza following alleged “public outrage.”
The US government’s use of specialized software seems to be a major concern among Democrats and Republicans alike. What government agencies are licensing and using Graphite. Beyond Search has absolutely no idea.
Whitney Grace, September 24, 2025
Pavel Durov Was Arrested for Online Stubbornness: Will This Happen in the US?
September 23, 2025
Written by an unteachable dinobaby. Live with it.
In august 2024, the French judiciary arrested Pavel Durov, the founder of VKontakte and then Telegram, a robust but non-AI platform. Why? The French government identified more than a dozen transgressions by Pavel Durov, who holds French citizenship as a special tech bro. Now he has to report to his French mom every two weeks or experience more interesting French legal action. Is this an example of a failure to communicate?
Will the US take similar steps toward US companies? I raise the question because I read an allegedly accurate “real” news write up called “Anthropic Irks White House with Limits on Models’ Use.” (Like many useful online resources, this story requires the curious to subscribe, pay, and get on a marketing list.) These “models,” of course, are the zeros and ones which comprise the next big thing in technology: artificial intelligence.
The write up states:
Anthropic is in the midst of a splashy media tour in Washington, but its refusal to allow its models to be used for some law enforcement purposes has deepened hostility to the company inside the Trump administration…
The write up says as actual factual:
Anthropic recently declined requests by contractors working with federal law enforcement agencies because the company refuses to make an exception allowing its AI tools to be used for some tasks, including surveillance of US citizens…
I found the write up interesting. If France can take action against an upstanding citizen like Pavel Durov, what about the tech folks at Anthropic or other outfits? These firms allegedly have useful data and the tools to answer questions? I recently fed the output of one AI system (ChatGPT) into another AI system (Perplexity), and I learned that Perplexity did a good job of identifying the weirdness in the ChatGPT output. Would these systems provide similar insights into prompt patterns on certain topics; for instance, the charges against Pavel Durov or data obtained by people looking for information about nuclear fuel cask shipments?
With France’s action, is the door open to take direct action against people and their organizations which cooperate reluctantly or not at all when a government official makes a request?
I don’t have an answer. Dinobabies rarely do, and if they do have a response, no one pays attention to these beasties. However, some of those wizards at AI outfits might want to ponder the question about cooperation with a government request.
Stephen E Arnold, September 24, 2025
UAE: Will It Become U-AI?
September 23, 2025
Written by an unteachable dinobaby. Live with it.
UAE is moving forward in smart software, not just crypto. “Industry Leading AI Reasoning for All” reports that the Institute of foundation Models has “industry leading AI reasoning for all.” The new item reports:
Built on six pillars of innovation, K2 Think represents a new class of reasoning model. It employs long chain-of-thought supervised fine-tuning to strengthen logical depth, followed by reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards to sharpen accuracy on hard problems. Agentic planning allows the model to decompose complex challenges before reasoning through them, while test-time scaling techniques further boost adaptability.
I am not sure what the six pillars of innovation are, particularly after looking at some of the UAE’s crypto plays, but there is more. Here’s another passage which suggests that Intel and Nvidia may not be in the k2think.ai technology road map:
K2 Think will soon be available on Cerebras’ wafer-scale, inference-optimized compute platform, enabling researchers and innovators worldwide to push the boundaries of reasoning performance at lightning-fast speed. With speculative decoding optimized for Cerebras hardware, K2 Think will achieve unprecedented throughput of 2,000 tokens per second, making it both one of the fastest and most efficient reasoning systems in existence.
If you want to kick its tires (tAIres?), the system is available at k2think.ai and on Hugging Face. Oh, the write up quotes two people with interesting names: Eric Xing and Peng Xiao.
Stephen E Arnold, September 23, 2025
AI Poker: China Has Three Aces. Google, Your Play
September 19, 2025
No smart software involved. Just a dinobaby’s work.
TV poker seems to be a thing on free or low cost US television streams. A group of people squint, sigh, and fiddle as each tries to win the big pile of cash. Another poker game is underway in the “next big thing” of smart software or AI.
Google released the Nano Banana image generator. Social media hummed. Okay, that looks like a winning hand. But another player dropped some coin on the table, squinted at the Google, and smirked just a tiny bit.
“ByteDance Unveils New AI Image Model to Rival DeepMind’s Nano Banana” explains the poker play this way:
TikTok-owner ByteDance has launched its latest image generation artificial intelligence tool Seedream 4.0, which it said surpasses Google DeepMind’s viral “Nano Banana” AI image editor across several key indicators.
Now the cute jargon may make the poker hand friendly, there is menace behind the terminology. The write up states:
ByteDance claims that Seedream 4.0 beat Gemini 2.5 Flash Image for image generation and editing on its internal evaluation benchmark MagicBench, with stronger performance in prompt adherence, alignment and aesthetics.
Okay, prompt adherence, alignment (what the heck is that?), and aesthetics. That’s three aces right.
Who has the cost advantage? The write up says:
On Fal.ai, a global generative media hosting platform, Seedream 4.0 costs US$0.03 per generated image, while Gemini 2.5 Flash Image is priced at US$0.039.
I thought in poker one raised the stakes. Well, in AI poker one lowers the price in order to raise the stakes. These players are betting the money burned in the AI furnace will be “won” as the game progresses. Will AI poker turn up on the US free TV services? Probably. Burning cash makes for wonderful viewing, especially for those who are writing the checks.
What’s China’s view of this type of gambling? The write up says:
The state has signaled its support for AI-generated content by recognizing their copyright in late 2023, but has also recently introduced mandatory labelling of such content.
The game is not over. (Am I the only person who thinks that the name “nana banana” would have been better than “nano banana”?)
Stephen E Arnold, September 19, 2025
Qwen: Better, Faster, Cheaper. Sure, All Three
September 17, 2025
No smart software involved. Just a dinobaby’s work.
I spotted another China Smart, U S Dumb write up. Analytics India published “Alibaba Introduces Qwen3-Next as a More Efficient LLM Architecture.” The story caught my attention because it was a high five to the China-linked Alibaba outfit and because it is a signal that India and China are on the path to BFF bliss.
The write up says:
Alibaba’s Qwen team has introduced Qwen3-Next, a new large language model architecture designed to improve efficiency in both training and inference for ultra-long context and large-parameter settings.
The sentence reinforces the better, faster, cheaper sales mantra one beloved by Crazy Eddie.
Here’s another sentence catching my attention:
At its core, Qwen3-Next combines a hybrid attention mechanism with a highly sparse mixture-of-experts (MoE) design, activating just three billion of its 80 billion parameters during inference. The announcement blog explains that the new mechanism allows the base model to match, and in some cases outperform, the dense Qwen3-32B, while using less than 10% of its training compute. In inference, throughput surpasses 10x at context lengths beyond 32,000 tokens.
This passage emphasizes the value of the mixture of experts approach in the faster and cheaper assertions.
Do I believe the data?
Sure, I believe every factoid presented in the better, faster, cheaper marketing of large language models. Personally I find that these models, regardless of development group, are useful for some specific functions. The hallucination issue is the deal breaker. Who wants to kill a person because a smart medical system is making benign out of malignancy? Who wants an autonomous AI underwater drone to take out those college students and not the adversary’s stealth surveillance boat?
Where can you get access this better, faster, cheaper winner? The write up says, “Hugging Face, ModelScope, Alibaba Cloud Model Studio and NVIDIA API Catalog, with support from inference frameworks like SGLang and vLLM.”
Stephen E Arnold, September 17, 2025
Microsoft: The Secure Discount King
September 10, 2025
Just a dinobaby sharing observations. No AI involved. My apologies to those who rely on it for their wisdom, knowledge, and insights.
Let’s assume that this story in The Register is dead accurate. Let’s forget that Google slapped the $0.47 smart software price tag on its Gemini smart software. Now let’s look at the interesting information in “Microsoft Rewarded for Security Failures with Another US Government Contract.” Snappy title. But check out the sub-title for the article: “Free Copilot for Any Agency Who Actually Wants It.”
I did not know that a US government agency was human signaled by the “who.” But let’s push forward.
The article states:
The General Services Administration (GSA) announced its new deal with Microsoft on Tuesday, describing it as a “strategic partnership” that could save the federal government as much as $3.1 billion over the next year. The GSA didn’t mention specific discount terms, but it said that services, including Microsoft 365, Azure cloud services, Dynamics 365, Entra ID Governance, and Microsoft Sentinel, will be cheaper than ever for feds. That, and Microsoft’s next-gen Clippy, also known as Copilot, is free to access for any agency with a G5 contract as part of the new deal, too. That free price undercuts Google’s previously cheapest-in-show deal to inject Gemini into government agencies for just $0.47 for a year.
Will anyone formulate the hypothesis that Microsoft and Google are providing deep discounts to get government deals and the every-popular scope changes, engineering services, and specialized consulting fees?
I would not.
I quite like comparing Microsoft’s increasingly difficult to explain OpenAI, acqui-hire, and home-grown smart software as Clippy. I think that the more apt comparison is the outstanding Microsoft Bob solution to interface complexity.
The article explains that Oracle landed contracts with a discount, then Google, and now Microsoft. What about the smaller firms? Yeah, there are standard procurement guidelines for those outfits. Follow the rules and stop suggesting that giant companies are discounting there way into the US government.
What happens if these solutions hallucinate, do not deliver what an Inspector General, an Independent Verification & Validation team, or the General Accounting Office expects? Here’s the answer:
With the exception of AWS, all the other OneGov deals that have been announced so far have a very short shelf life, with most expirations at the end of 2026. Critics of the OneGov program have raised concerns that OneGov deals have set government agencies up for a new era of vendor lock-in not seen since the early cloud days, where one-year discounts leave agencies dependent on services that could suddenly become considerably more expensive by the end of next year.
The write up quotes one smaller outfit’s senior manager’s concern about low prices. But the deals are done, and the work on the 2026-2027 statements of work has begun, folks. Small outfits often lack the luxury of staff dedicated to extending a service provider’s engagement into a year or two renewal target.
The write up concludes by bringing up ancient history like those pop archaeologists on YouTube who explain that ancient technology created urns with handles. The write up says:
It was mere days ago that we reported on the Pentagon’s decision to formally bar Microsoft from using China-based engineers to support sensitive cloud services deployed by the Defense Department, a practice Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called “mind-blowing” in a statement last week. Then there was last year’s episodes that allowed Chinese and Russian cyber spies to break into Exchange accounts used by high-level federal officials and steal a whole bunch of emails and other information. That incident, and plenty more before it, led former senior White House cyber policy director AJ Grotto to conclude that Microsoft was an honest-to-goodness national security threat. None of that has mattered much, as the feds seem content to continue paying Microsoft for its services, despite wagging their finger at Redmond for “avoidable errors.”
Ancient history or aliens? I don’t know. But Microsoft does deals, and it is tough to resist “free”.
Stephen E Arnold, September 10, 2025
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