Jump to content

mr moose

Member
  • Posts

    25,911
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Reputation Activity

  1. Agree
    mr moose reacted to LAwLz in Long, but excellent, article by Steven Sinofsky (in charge of Windows when it went through the EU wringer) on Apple's DMA compliance   
    Sinofsky is a massive twat. I am not surprised that he is strongly against the DMA, a piece of legislation trying to keep giant tech companies from abusing their positions of power to lock users into their ecosystems. That is exactly what Sinofsky was trying to push (and in some regards succeeded) when he was at Microsoft.
     
    I also think he is being a bit silly or maybe disingenuous when he says the legislation is "clearly aimed at specific US companies" and then goes ahead and lists companies like Samsung, ByteDance, Alibaba, AliExpress, Booking.com, and Zalando as also being affected. Is he aware that those companies aren't American? I mean, it is Sinofsky we're talking about so I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't know Samsung isn't from the US...
     
    Maybe the issue isn't that "the legislation is aimed at US companies because the EU is evil and want to harm America!" but rather "a lot of the big companies that are abusing their power are from the US"?
     
     
    There is so much bullshit in this article it's not even funny.
    Things like claiming Apple has never abused their position of power and that no consumer has been harmed by the way Apple acts. I would argue that the 30% cut Apple takes is an abuse of their position. Especially since they forbid developers from telling users about for example cheaper rates on their website. Telling developers "no, you are not allowed to tell your users that they can subscribe to the service without also paying us, Apple, is not allowed and we will take away everything from you if you do" is not exactly a friendly and non-abusive way of handling your users or developers. Sinofsky might think that's not abusive because he looks up to Apple a lot and wanted Microsoft to be like Apple, but if he is going to claim that's perfectly fine, good and not an abuse of power then he is in my eyes a dumbass.
  2. Agree
    mr moose reacted to wanderingfool2 in Apple terminates Epic Games Developer Account (again)   
    Except that Apple DID issue a developers license to Epic.  To bad for Apple.  It's funny how they essentially talk about rug pulling and yet that is effectively what they are doing here.
     
    Overall Apple also won the case in the US because it wasn't classified as a monopoly in the eyes of the law; had they been though it would have meant Epic would have won and those contracts provisions would have been void.
     
    As much as I dont necessarily like Epic, they do have a point against Apple and Apple shouldn't be allowed to essentially bar them from competing on the Apple platform.
  3. Agree
    mr moose reacted to PDifolco in Apple terminates Epic Games Developer Account (again)   
    They give a purely conjectural "reasoning" ending up assimilating criticism of their DCMA "implementation"  with "safety concern" as an excuse for their ban
    I see nothing in their text pointing to a factual breach of any ToS, it's very vague
  4. Like
    mr moose reacted to PDifolco in Apple terminates Epic Games Developer Account (again)   
    I also love the Apple utter bad faith reasoning masquerading as "law"
    In substance "oh you criticize us so (blah blah) eventually put the world in danger and should thus be terminated" 
     
    They should be renamed Arasapple 😄
     
     

  5. Agree
    mr moose reacted to PDifolco in Apple terminates Epic Games Developer Account (again)   
    Hilarious
    They p*ss off any competitor then go crying they're mean and ban them
    Apple needs another 2 billion fine 😛 
  6. Agree
    mr moose reacted to Lunar River in Apple terminates Epic Games Developer Account (again)   
    I feel like apples lawyers have been scrambling since the day they gave access back to find any reason kick them again hoping to find any reason that might stick.
     
    Pretty children
  7. Agree
    mr moose reacted to leadeater in Apple fined 1.8 Billion Euro for anti-competitive practices with music streaming subscriptions   
    The problem with every argument and example Apple has made or will ever make is that literally everything also applies to free Apps on the App Store. There can, and are, Apps available with millions to billions of downloads and installed utilizing all the Apple developer tools, frameworks and iOS APIs and Apple has never and will never get any more money than the Apple Developer fee, the App is free.
     
     They can whine and moan all they like about Spotify, Netflix etc etc but so long as they allow free Apps on the App Store with zero extra fees a widely being used by millions they have irrelevant and dead points to make.
     
    There is and forever will be zero basis for a monthly subscription fee for a services not hosted in any way by Apple to be application and even related at all in any way to their App Store associated costs. If I buy an iPhone, install Spotify once and have it only update as normal like every other App past/present/future it's going to cost Apple a small amount, no a tiny amount, individually for me so they have no grounds to be calming 30% of a subscription fee for a service that have no involvement with the ongoing operation of. The Spotify App is not the service, it's the mechanism of access to the service developed by Spotify and distributed by Apple for iOS.
     
    If Apple wants and thinks they deserve more money from Spotify than the basic Apple Developer fee then change the damn fee model for the App Store and Developers.
  8. Agree
    mr moose reacted to wanderingfool2 in Apple fined 1.8 Billion Euro for anti-competitive practices with music streaming subscriptions   
    Honestly 1.8 Billion Euro's isn't enough, and doesn't work too much as a deterrent.
     
    They had $85 billion in net sales for services (so this should include the 30% fee, although there is a chance they rolled it into products) in 2023.  They had $24 billion on the cost of services in 2023
    If one were to assume that Apple services from apps only accounted for 10% of the services (which is unlikely and very low), then it still means they made $6.1 billion in 2023.
     
    But based on what Apple has stated in 2022 numbers, they claim $104 billion in digital sales (not including their advertising which they forced on people which amounts to an additional $100 billion).  Which if you assume 15% would make it still over $6 billion of profits.
     
    After all, the $400 million USD fine for price fixing by Apple (on ebooks) showed how little Apple really cares about these larger fines.  It's the cost of doing business.
     
    Overall though, the biggest issue I had with Apple in this whole ordeal is that they willingly used their monopoly to profit by draconian rules.  While I haven't seen it mentioned, it's important to also remember that Apple once upon a time also tried enforcing that pricing could not be different from the Apple price vs other stores.
     
    I do agree that Apple created it and should be able to reap a certain amount of profits from it, but it's not like they are losing money on iPhones and I feel when a company gets to this large of dominance in a market they should have to charge reasonable rates (or allow the companies to essentially cover the costs).
     
    One way to actually look at it is look at Twitch.  They are losing money on their current model, and yet many streamers are taking sponsorships etc which effectively is ad revenue that could be going to Twitch.
  9. Agree
    mr moose reacted to Stahlmann in NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang: Don't learn computer science. The future is human language (AI code generation)   
    But not nearly as many. I visited a Mercedes factory a few years ago and most of the processes were completely automated. And Mercedes is still one of the more "individual" car manufacturers. Other brands that offer less customisation of their cars are probably automating even more of the production line.
  10. Like
    mr moose reacted to Stahlmann in NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang: Don't learn computer science. The future is human language (AI code generation)   
    Look at the difference between now and just a year ago. It's amazing how fast these things evolve. Do you still remember the "Will Smith eating pasta" video from about a year ago?
     
    I've been an avid Google user before, and Bing, with its copilot feature, has completely replaced "googling" for me. It can search through dozens of pages and filter out the most relevant information in an instant. Doing the same research myself would probably take hours. It's not perfect, of course, and there are errors from time to time, but generally Copilot has got it right far more often than it has got it wrong. These horror threads about LLMs hallucinating are often after quite a lot of prompts or long conversations and jumping to different topics mid-conversation. If you just ask a normal question and then 2 or 3 follow up questions (and create a new thread whenever you want to switch to another topic) then there are almost no problems.
     
    Personally, I'm all for the advances in AI, ML or whatever umbrella term you want to use. It makes the work of developers both more accessible and more efficient. And of course, increased efficiency means that some jobs will be cut. That's how it works. Where was the outcry when assembly lines were taken over by robot arms? I guess it's just that the average assembly line worker isn't a Twitter user, so that's the main reason why no one cared about their lost jobs.
  11. Agree
    mr moose got a reaction from Holmes108 in NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang: Don't learn computer science. The future is human language (AI code generation)   
    I don't think he is wrong, I mean look how far it has come in the last 5 years alone then follow the trajectory. 
     
    Also people can't have it both ways, you can't argue it will take too many jobs and at the same time argue it will never be good enough to replace humans for the one thing it likely will be best at (language interpretation).
     
    This won't be the first time people have to eat their hats.  
  12. Agree
    mr moose got a reaction from Mark Kaine in NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang: Don't learn computer science. The future is human language (AI code generation)   
    I don't think he is wrong, I mean look how far it has come in the last 5 years alone then follow the trajectory. 
     
    Also people can't have it both ways, you can't argue it will take too many jobs and at the same time argue it will never be good enough to replace humans for the one thing it likely will be best at (language interpretation).
     
    This won't be the first time people have to eat their hats.  
  13. Agree
    mr moose reacted to jagdtigger in iOS 17.4 Kills Web Apps in the EU - You can no longer install PWAs on Apple devices   
    Apple is a bitter loser, like a toddler having a tantrum lol........ 🤣
  14. Agree
    mr moose got a reaction from leadeater in Sam Altman seeking 5-7 TRILLION in backing for Open AI CPU Creation   
    I've seen it too, I've built those factories as well.  Most of the time it's because the companies expending the capital are not big enough to weather all the issues that inevitably occur on the way and they stumble or they are so big that they can afford to change plans mid exercise and just sit on the project.  I seem to recall Intel did that with fab42,  they started building and planning then shelved it,  then started again.  And to be honest I don't even know if they finally moved in any equipment in the end.
     
     
    BHP has done it twice at Olympic damn as well.   but don't get me started on that (single largest Uranium deposit in the world and nuclear is not viable/feasible in Australia???? WTF to that) 
     
  15. Like
    mr moose got a reaction from leadeater in Sam Altman seeking 5-7 TRILLION in backing for Open AI CPU Creation   
    I never said TSMC can't invest.  I said it would be a shame if a new company invested the GDP of a large country only to have that investment obsoleted long before it paid for itself.
  16. Like
    mr moose reacted to Mark Kaine in Sam Altman seeking 5-7 TRILLION in backing for Open AI CPU Creation   
    ya, until someone comes along and makes something better and they become obsolete overnight?  wouldn't be the first time (*scrambles to find historical examples*)
     
    like, i dunno,  kodak, nokia... 
     
    ps: Boeing seems on their way out too! i never thought that'd be possible...  
     
     
  17. Agree
    mr moose got a reaction from Dabombinable in The US Government Blocks Export of NVIDIA’s A100 AI GPUs to a Chinese Firm   
    We had a little trade war with them not long ago,  they tried to stop buying our coal,  they went back to it after they realized they had no choice.   I feel a little more comfortable about our economy after that.
  18. Like
    mr moose reacted to Sauron in Student arrested after sending private joke over snapchat before boarding a plane, message was viewed by security as he was connected to public Wi-Fi   
    Further, knowing or suspecting that your messages could theoretically be accessed by snapchat is not the same as knowing for a fact that they will be, or that there are automatic filters that will alert international police based on keywords like "taliban". We're not even sure that's what happened considering it could also have been reported by someone in the chat (in which case, I'd say the person to be charged with causing a false alarm would be the one who reported it, knowing perfectly well it was a joke) - this may even be more likely considering they knew not just the name of the person but also which plane they would have been boarding, although I'm sure snapchat also collects location data.
     
    I also question the legitimacy of just mass screening people's private conversation without a warrant or prior suspicion, if that's what actually happened, and using it as evidence in a trial. I'm almost certain this is illegal where I live (we even had a big case about the police not being allowed to use intercepted phone calls as evidence, and that was with significant evidence of wrongdoing). You can't even be certain that the person using a given account or phone number is who they claim to be.
  19. Agree
    mr moose got a reaction from Sauron in Student arrested after sending private joke over snapchat before boarding a plane, message was viewed by security as he was connected to public Wi-Fi   
    It doesn't matter who said what about it in the media or courts etc.  I was showing why it is reasonable for someone to assume a message they send through snapchat to a closed group would remain private.
     
     
    I think you are missing my point all together.  In reference to encryption I said quite clearly:
     
     
     
     
    The position I was defending was not a technical one, it was simply showing how it is unreasonable to assume someone of negligence when any other reasonable person would also have made the same assumptions.
     
     
     
  20. Agree
    mr moose got a reaction from RockSolid1106 in Student arrested after sending private joke over snapchat before boarding a plane, message was viewed by security as he was connected to public Wi-Fi   
    It doesn't matter who said what about it in the media or courts etc.  I was showing why it is reasonable for someone to assume a message they send through snapchat to a closed group would remain private.
     
     
    I think you are missing my point all together.  In reference to encryption I said quite clearly:
     
     
     
     
    The position I was defending was not a technical one, it was simply showing how it is unreasonable to assume someone of negligence when any other reasonable person would also have made the same assumptions.
     
     
     
  21. Agree
    mr moose got a reaction from kpluck in It’s Not Just You – The Internet is Dying - But what would fix it?   
    you can't fix it. like every human invention, if it can be used by someone to further their own personal agenda then it will be and the human race be damned.
  22. Like
    mr moose reacted to Heats with Nvidia in Any smps guru's in here?   
    The DMM cap test basically only tells you if they have a short orsome capacitance left. For capacitors in SMPS that is basically useless. They will measure OK, even if they don`t work at all in that application since their ESR got too high.
    If you want, i can ship you a small bucket full of "mostly OK" capacitors that failed in such power supplies. The vast majority of them will measure totally fine with your DMM.
  23. Agree
    mr moose got a reaction from Lunar River in It’s Not Just You – The Internet is Dying - But what would fix it?   
    you can't fix it. like every human invention, if it can be used by someone to further their own personal agenda then it will be and the human race be damned.
  24. Agree
    mr moose got a reaction from RockSolid1106 in Student arrested after sending private joke over snapchat before boarding a plane, message was viewed by security as he was connected to public Wi-Fi   
    Public nuisance my arse,  given both the authorities that be and the social media companies go out of their way to make you believe all your messages are private, how on earth could anyone insinuate and random user would know his "private message" was being read?
     
    Even if he was dobbed in by a recipient, to prove guilt of any nature they have to prove he knew it would reported.    But given the way today's legal systems work I wouldn't be surprised if he wasn't found guilty of something.   I mean,  it's really hard to save face once you have publicly announced your intentions when they are wrong.
  25. Agree
    mr moose got a reaction from Needfuldoer in Fed up with Apple. What do I switch to?   
    switching platforms for that reason is liking jumping form the pot into pan.  They all have their downsides that make consumer life shit, that is why I haven't invested in any ecosystem or "smart tech" beyond a basic smart phone. 
     
     
×