I think I don't really need to explain what SKG is. The initiative has been discussed here on Lemmy enough that I think most people have heard of it.

For the hand full of people who haven't: It's a movement aiming to keep games legally playable after support has ended by the support has ended by the devs. Check the official website for more details: https://stopkillinggames.com/

The European Citizens Initiative still accepts signatures for two days. If you have not signed it yet and you are eligible to do so (EU citizen of voting age - that's either 16 or 18, depending on the member country) please do so now. The link for it is on the official website linked above.

That's not the only avenue to reach our goal however. The EU's Digital Fairness Act just reached its public consultation phase. The new law attempts to provide a lot of consumer protections in the digital realm, such as a ban on dark patterns. It currently doesn't cover the planned obsolescence of video games, but it is open to amendments. And that's where you come in: If you are an EU citizen of voting age, then you can provide feedback to the proposed law and maybe we can get protections for gamers in there.

You can give the feedback on the EUs official website: https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/14622-Digital-Fairness-Act_en

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/15197104

https://www.stopkillinggames.com/

Stop Killing Games is an European Citizens Initiative aiming to keep games playable even after their developers and publishers have stopped supporting it.

To get the initiative onto the EUs agenda so it has the chance to become EU law, it has to both reach 1 million signatures total and minimum thresholds in at least 7 countries. Now both of those goals have been reached. But that's no reason to stop signing! Some signatures will get thrown out in the validation phase because the signee made a mistake. So keep signing and show the world just how many people are in favour of saving videogames.

https://www.stopkillinggames.com/

Stop Killing Games is an European Citizens Initiative aiming to keep games playable even after their developers and publishers have stopped supporting it.

To get the initiative onto the EUs agenda so it has the chance to become EU law, it has to both reach 1 million signatures total and minimum thresholds in at least 7 countries. Those national thresholds have been thresholds have been reached. Now it's all about getting to 1 million signatures total.

Even if you are from a country that already reached the threshold you can still sign. Your signature counts to the 1 million goal.

He added he planned to hold a call with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week to tell him "to not overdo it," though for "historical reasons," Germany would always be more guarded in its criticism than some European partners.

"But if lines are crossed, where international humanitarian law is really being violated, then Germany, the German chancellor, must also say something about it," Merz said.

Germany's spy agency BfV has labeled the entirety of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party as an extremist entity.

The BfV domestic intelligence agency, which is in charge of safeguarding Germany's constitutional order, said the announcement comes after an "intense and comprehensive" examination.

"The ethnicity-and ancestry-based conception of the people that predominates within the party is not compatible with the free democratic order," the BfV said on Friday.

Hopefully this inspires the other parties to to start the process to see the AfD banned. I know the report might not look like much, because of how obvious the findings are. But previous attempts at banning them have failed because such an official report was missing. So maybe our political system starts getting its shit together.

As we say in Germany: Hope dies last

Article both in German and behind a paywall. I've translated the most relevant parts:

Donald Trump's most important security advisors discussed a military strike via signal chat. Research by [the German magazine] SPIEGEL now shows that the problem is even bigger. [...] Private contact details of US President Donald Trump's most important security advisors are available on the internet. Research by SPIEGEL revealed mobile numbers, email addresses and, in some cases, passwords.

For the research, information from commercial personal search engines and customer data published online was used. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, US Intelligence Coordinator Tulsi Gabbard and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth are demonstrably affected by the leaks.

Most of the publicly accessible numbers and email addresses are probably still being used by those affected. Some of them are linked to profiles on Instagram and LinkedIn, among others. They were used to create Dropbox accounts and profiles in apps that track running data. There are WhatsApp profiles for the respective phone numbers, and in some cases even Signal accounts. [...] It is therefore conceivable that foreign agents were reading along when Gabbard, Waltz and Hegseth discussed a military strike in a signals chat with others.

A float at today’s Rose Monday parade in Düsseldorf. Float by Jacques Tilly and his team, photo by Christoph Schroeter

Other floats from the parade:

The floats where made by Düsseldorf based artist and long time float builder Jacques Tilly. All of the floats (including some I didn't include in this post) can be seen here

geteilt von: https://feddit.org/post/8357814

The left side of the graph shows the results, the right side shows possible coalitions

https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/bundestagswahl-2025-ergebnisse-so-hat-deutschland-gewaehlt-aktuelle-daten-a-6ace92df-43cc-48de-b183-2c98c7c19c2f