Issue of blocking cookie banners

Surely you encounter cookie banners all the time. It’s the kind of minor annoyance that seems to come with being a person on the Internet: a pop-up window asking you to agree to share some kind of information with someone, for some purpose. You could learn more, but you don’t. Nobody does. Simply click “Accept” and move on.

Are these signs kind of annoying, or is it more than that? on This episode of vertcast, Kate Klonickprofessor at St. John’s University and senior editor at Lawfareshows that cookie banners are a much bigger problem than you realize. she Recently published a paper Arguing that although there are good intentions behind cookie banners, they have become bloated and useless – and in the process, they have created a new kind of interaction that means problems all over the web. The only solution is to get rid of them, and do it now.

after that, Edge‘s Allison Johnson Take us on a A Gemini-fueled trip through Seattle. With the new Ask Maps feature, Google Maps uses AI models to answer deeper, more complex questions about the world around you, and Allison has been testing the new tool. It went surprisingly well! But it raises a lot of questions about what information we want to share, and how much we want our computers to know about us.

Finally, Allison continues to help us answer a question from the Vergecast hotline (call 866-VERGE11 or email vergecast@theverge.com!) about E Ink smartphones, and whether Simpler displays It could be the solution to our smartphone problems. We have some thoughts, and some reservations.

If you want to learn more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started: