4
points
benoau
Joined 1,196 karma
Python/Google Cloud/ML/AI aficionado in Copenhagen
- benoauI think people should be very afraid: the jobs are only safe if it peaks in adoption and stops improving, but it shows no signs of slowing.
- > European-style digital speech laws
AKA Meta and X have to disclose who is funding ads and why their algorithms served w/e content to you.
> these systems aim to “impose hard-left ideological strictures” on American discourse
The law (Digital Services Act) doesn't distinguish between left-wing and right-wing, but fostering political division and radicalizing vulnerable people seems a lot more likely to be done for right wing purposes and this kind of transparency undermines their effectiveness.
Another thing it does is ban advertising based on sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, or political leanings, which "ironically" disproportionately affects one side more than the other too.
- Steam do on Windows through "Big Picture" mode.
- I wish the EU would hurry up and decide if up-to-20% fee for using external payment services abides with their April instructions "must be free". It seems like Apple needs a good nudge to move past rent-collector and now debt-collector mentality.
I wonder if Japan will react to Apple's newly announced conditions for them, where you can use IAP and pay 15 or 26% commission, or not use IAP and pay 10% or 21% commission + your payment provider so the prices are effectively the same either way + other terms like those in the article, which basically means you get nothing but headache for not using IAP.
This tactic is specifically illustrated in Japan's compliance hypotheticals (on page 51):
> Hypothetical Scenario 73: A designated provider, when individual app providers use alternative payment management services, demands fees or places financial burdens at a level that creates a high likelihood of making the use of such services practically difficult
https://www.jftc.go.jp/file/MSCA_Guidelines_tentative_transl...
- The $20ish billion was revealed through Google's antitrust. That by itself accounts for a fifth of their total annual profit, ignoring all the App Store ads, News ads etc.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/14/google-pays-apple-36percent-...
- Nobody would say they aren't in the PC, tablet or audio business, yet they make more off ads than they do off Macs, iPads, headphones, speakers... everything but iPhone.
- A full 20% of their profit comes directly from Google Ads, then there's their own ads strewn throughout apps and the App Store on top so their total profit from ads is probably close to a quarter of all their profit.
- I installed FirefoxOS on a phone years ago, it wasn't even bad really.
- > While it is not prohibited to use AI as a learning aid or a development tool (i.e. code completions), extension developers should be able to justify and explain the code they submit, within reason.
> Submissions with large amounts of unnecessary code, inconsistent code style, imaginary API usage, comments serving as LLM prompts, or other indications of AI-generated output will be rejected.
Sounds like they're only going to catch the painfully-obvious stuff.
- They can't with git by itself, but if you're also signed in to GitHub or BitBucket's CLI with an account able to approve merges they could use those tools.
- You can set up your repo to disable pushing directly to branches like main and require MFA to use the org admin account, so something malicious would need to push to a benign branch and separately be merged into one that deploys come from.
- He loved their policy. He wrote it.
> “I think this is all pretty simple — iBooks is going to be the only bookstore on iOS devices. We need to hold our heads high. One can read books bought elsewhere, just not buy/rent/subscribe from iOS without paying us, which we acknowledge is prohibitive for many things.”
https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/30/21348130/apple-documents-...
- It's a little more nuanced than simply "some compensation" - and IANAL but it seems like the court is saying this fee should as Sweeney posits be very small:
> Apple should be able to charge a commission on linked-out purchases based on the costs that are genuinely and reasonably necessary for its coordination of external links for linked-out purchases, but no more.
> In making a determination of Apple’s necessary costs, Apple is entitled to some compensation for the use of its intellectual property that is directly used in permitting Epic and others to consummate linked-out purchases.
> In deciding how much that should be, the district court should consider the fact that most of the intellectual property at issue is already used to facilitate IAP, and costs attributed to linked-out purchases should be reduced equitably and proportionately;
> Apple should receive no commission for the security and privacy features it offers to external links, and its calculation of its necessary costs for external links should not include the cost associated with the security and privacy features it offers with its IAP;
https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/lgvdqxweopo/...
- The contempt and deliberateness of it was upheld, but the injunction was ruled to overstep in two ways:
- Apple is now allowed to ensure links to competing payment services are not emphasized more-so than their own, which is reasonable enough
- Apple is to be allowed, pending court approval or agreement with Epic, "a commission on linked-out purchases based on the costs that are genuinely and reasonably necessary for its coordination of external links for linked-out purchases, but no more" that excludes "commission for the security and privacy features it offers to external links" and "the cost associated with the security and privacy features it offers with its IAP"
So now it will return to court if Apple and Epic can't agree on what this cost is that Apple incurs if an app links to Stripe or PayPal, and TBD whether this is a cost that warrants a fee for every usage of the link or recurring payment stemming from it.
- Big step forward considering Meta previously took an adversarial approach to this amidst all the ... generosity ... big tech were showing Trump to have him attack the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act. Hopefully they show some teeth now and investigate this potential bribery as crimes that can be tried within the EU too.
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat...
- It's not widely recognized because you are still netting the most cash by earning the most you can.
- Section 230 immunity for doing whatever they want, as long as they remove it if you complain.
- Firefox. If it weren't for them the entire internet would be controlled by Google and Apple, who have an ad-revenue sharing agreement that perhaps has already influenced ad blocking in their browsers, who keep mobile browsers ten steps behind desktop browsers where they each have a massive financial interest in driving users to apps instead.
- God yes.
> Ten years ago they started to build apartments just across the street and I had to get used to close neighbors, about 10 meters from window to window. Soon it became clear that my closest neighbors had roller blinds which they shut down day and night, so the need for me to get something in front of my windows wasn’t very urgent.
I bet they never wondered if they cause the other person to keep their blinds shut all the time...