Welcome to Incremental Social! Learn more about this project here!
Check out lemmyverse to find more communities to join from here!

abhibeckert

@abhibeckert@lemmy.world

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

Paris votes to crack down on SUVs | Non-Parisians will be charged almost $20 per hour to park large gas or hybrid vehicles within the city center in a bid to address pedestrian safety and air pollu... (www.theverge.com)

Paris votes to crack down on SUVs | Non-Parisians will be charged almost $20 per hour to park large gas or hybrid vehicles within the city center in a bid to address pedestrian safety and air pollu...::Parisians have voted to increase parking charges for out-of-town SUV drivers as part of the city’s efforts to address road...

abhibeckert ,

Honestly, they should just ban all SUVs from entering altogether.

That's not going to convince me to sell my SUV. It'd just cause me to buy a second car.

abhibeckert , (edited )

I don't know what it's like where you live, but where I live rent in the city works out to about two thirds of my annual income and I have a well paying job (above average for my city).

So - living in the suburbs is not really a life style choice. I can afford a very comfortable home in the outer suburbs, while in the inner city I could only afford to rent a small bedroom with a shared kitchen/bathroom/living space. And since we have a child, a share house isn't really an option (I did live that way when I was younger).

And while I love cycling to work I can't do it often, because it takes almost 4 hours (two hours each direction). I can take a bus, but that's even slower (since I have to go to the CBD first, then take another bus across town to the non-CBD area where I work). The bus also costs more than twice as much as driving. Driving, by the way, takes 30 minutes.

Since I live in the outer suburbs anyway, with nice wide roads, unlimited free parking, I choose to take advantage of it by spending a lot of time outdoors where if you want a cold beer, you need to bring a fridge. If you want a hot meal, you need to bring a full kitchen. If you want to take a canoe out the water, you need to bring a canoe with you, etc etc. So, we have an SUV. And we're not going to give it up. Sorry.

If my city banned SUVs, I'd probably just start taking taxis instead. I'm not sure that would be better for the environment or local traffic. Definitely wouldn't affect my daily life, since I don't live or work in the CBD.

abhibeckert , (edited )

IPv6 is here, and has been for a long time. But if, for example, your web or email server can only be reached over IPv6 some people will not be able to load the site or send emails to you.

The entire internet is configured to work with IPv4. Some of the internet (less than a quarter) is also configured to also work with IPv6.

Imagine if your home had two driveways on different streets. Do you tell everyone both addresses, or do you pick one of them? Probably just one right? Now imagine if the second address can only be reached if someone has an off road capable vehicle. And you don't know what vehicle someone has - which address would you give them? Is it even worth having two driveways?

That's the situation we're in. IPv4 support is required and works perfectly. IPv6 is optional and doesn't always work.

abhibeckert ,

a lot of sys and net admins really don’t like the idea of every lan device being globally addressable

Those admins don't know what they're talking about. IPv6 has a region of the address space that can only be reached locally - similar to the 192.168.x.x space in IPv4. The only difference is it's really big (way bigger than the entire IPv4 space).

As for NAT... there's nothing stopping you from using it with IPv6. It's often unnecessary, but if you disagree you can use it. And in practice NAT is often part of the transition process to IPv6 - my cell network carrier for example gives my phone an IPv6 address on their internal network but routes all my traffic to the regular internet via IPv4. They are using NAT to do that. If you try to ping my phone's IPv6 address, it won't reach my phone.

abhibeckert ,

it’s just never used or enabled in the software by default

...and most people who own those devices have never heard of IPv6 and don't know how to enable it. They just won't be able to access your website. If Amazon dropped support for IPv4, there wouldn't be anything i'd be able to do to deal with the fall out. I'm not going to send a technician to every single home of every customer I have. What I could (and would) do is move all my stuff off Amazon.

abhibeckert ,

From the article, 79 million IPv4 addresses

So that's how many IPv4 addresses Amazon has? For comparison, if I ask my server provider nicely they will give me a huge block of IPv6 addresses. For free. The largest block they will give a single customer (again, for free) is a /56 block which is 4,722,366,482,869,645,213,696 IP addresses.

To give you an idea how big that is... if I had ten billion customers, I could allocate several hundred billion unique IP addresses to each customer. And that's just with a section of the IPv6 address space that networks will hand out for free.

abhibeckert , (edited )

Why do you need to transition from jpeg to anything else? Just keep using jpeg for old files.

Chromium is literally the only reason jpeg-xl isn’t being adopted right now

That's not a "reason" it's a "decision". Their actual reason is pretty good — they don't want to support every image format that comes along. That's a slippery slope, there are several hundred image formats - should they all be supported? How many of them have security flaws? How much work is it to check for security flaws even if none exist?

The original image formats for the web, jpeg, gif, png, svg, all have major benefits compared to each other. That's why they were successful. There used to be other widely used image formats but they all fell by the wayside because the goal is to try not to have many formats. Ideally we'd only have one.

And WebP moves a long way in that direction, it does basically everything except vector images. AVIF is still around for efficiency reasons (it's very really easy/fast/low battery consumption for camera hardware to create an AVIF).

JPEG-XL has advantages but unlike those two they are really small and not worth the effort.

abhibeckert ,

That is so weird, f’ed up and dystopian.

It's not as weird as the Meta Quest, where you literally have no idea wether the person wearing it is looking at you or not.

The view of someone's eyes is very low quality - I'll give you that. But it's better than nothing at all. And I'm not sure they could've done better without doubling the price of the product.

abhibeckert ,

the only difference is that the bolster has some notches in it for the BATTERY to lock into

Um, it has twice as many pins. The same number of pins as thunderbolt which likely isn't a coincidence.

abhibeckert ,

The USB-PD spec can cover a verity of voltage and amperage combinations

That's not really true - it maxes out at 5 Amps which is only a decent amount of power if you use (relatively) high voltages. Vision Pro runs at 13 volts, which isn't supported by USB and if it was that would only be 65 watts - nowhere near enough to power this product.

Running at higher voltages (USB can do up to 48 volts) would likely have problems, it might be less efficient for example (which would mean they have to give it a larger battery).

abhibeckert ,

I bet it does have power pass through. Lots of people are going to use this all day at a desk and you'd get to a thousand cycles in just three months if plugging it into the wall just charges the battery. It needs to be passthrough.

abhibeckert ,

What? That's not a fire hazard at all. Your second battery would provide at most 100 watts which is perfectly safe and not going to cause any fires.

If you submerge the battery in water or stab it with a knife... sure it might catch fire. But that's pretty much the only risk so long as you stick to reputable brands that comply with safety standards.

How Quora Died (slate.com)

“Why Do So Many Music Venues Use Ticketmaster?” “What’s It Like to Train to Be a Sushi Chef?” “How Do Martial Artists Break Concrete Blocks?” If you were looking for answers to such questions 10 years ago, your best resource for finding a thorough, expert-informed response likely would have been one of the most...

abhibeckert ,

Would be interesting to get a fediverse version of Quora

A Fediverse version of Stack Exchange would be easier - since the content is creative commons you could start with a full catalog of already answered questions...

But honestly, competing with the real Stack Exchange on one end and Large Language Models on the other end... never going to work.

Kids Don’t Think Congress Has Their Best Interests In Mind With Their Grandstanding ‘Protect The Children’ Hearing (www.techdirt.com)

Kids Don’t Think Congress Has Their Best Interests In Mind With Their Grandstanding ‘Protect The Children’ Hearing::We’ve covered a few stories this week related to the Senate hearing on “kids safety” and there’s going to be a lot more in the coming weeks as those same Senators grandstand and yell about “protect...

abhibeckert ,

Um… as a parent, there’s no way kids know what is good for them.

Not saying congress is right, but we shouldn’t be asking kids. Sorry to any kids reading this.

Will Technology Replace Teachers In The Future?

According to my opinion No, it is unlikely that technology will fully replace teachers in the future. While technology can aid the teaching process, it cannot fully replicate the role of teachers. Teachers play a crucial role in not only imparting knowledge but also inculcating values, being inspirational role models, and...

abhibeckert ,

I wouldn't look at this from the teacher's perspective.

Large Language Models, in particular, are an incredibly valuable tool for students. It provides instant high quality answersa to questions like "Will technology replace teachers in the Future?" — see the answer ChatGPT 4 gave me at the end of this post.

For most students such a high quality answer to the question just isn't available - you can't ask a teacher, because unless the question happens to be part of the unit they're teaching right now they won't have time to give you an answer this detailed. The student's best option (before Generative AI) was to try to find an article or book that was specifically written for your question. But even if that exists, it's likely really difficult to find and there's a very high probability of failing to find a good article/book.

In reality the only reliable way for a student to get a good answer to any random question is to spend months researching it. And while that certainly should be encouraged... there are only so many things you can research in a life time. And a lot of questions just aren't worth that much effort.

It's a shortcut to a reasonably good answer to any question no matter how trivial and it allows students to quickly elevate their understanding on any particular subject to a level where they will have questions that are genuinely difficult for anyone (or any thing) to answer.

Going back to teachers - I think LLMs can replace a subset of the work teachers currently do. But that doesn't replace teachers at all - it just frees up some of the teacher's time so they allocate more of it to other parts of their job.

ChatGPT 4's response to "Will technology replace teachers in the Future?"

The question of whether technology will replace teachers in the future is complex and involves multiple factors, including advances in technology, educational theory, societal values, and economic considerations. Here's a breakdown of key points to consider:

  1. Technological Advancements: With rapid advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and virtual reality, technology is increasingly capable of delivering personalized learning experiences. Tools like adaptive learning software can tailor educational content to meet individual students' needs, potentially improving outcomes. However, these technologies are typically seen as supplements to, rather than replacements for, human teachers.

  2. Role of Teachers: Teachers do more than just deliver content; they mentor, inspire, motivate, and understand the emotional and social needs of their students. The nuanced understanding and emotional intelligence of human teachers in fostering a supportive learning environment are currently beyond the reach of technology.

  3. Hybrid Models: The future is likely to see more of a partnership between technology and teachers rather than a replacement scenario. Hybrid models that combine online learning with traditional classroom instruction can leverage the strengths of both teachers and technology, providing a more flexible and personalized learning experience.

  4. Societal and Cultural Factors: Education is not just about transferring knowledge; it's also about building communities, socializing, and developing soft skills. The value placed on these aspects by societies will influence the extent to which technology is integrated into educational systems.

  5. Economic and Accessibility Considerations: Technology can potentially make high-quality education more accessible to students in remote or underprivileged areas. However, the cost of implementing and maintaining advanced educational technologies, and ensuring all students have access to necessary devices and internet connectivity, poses significant challenges.

  6. Continuous Learning and Professional Development: As educational technologies evolve, so too will the role of teachers. There will be an increasing need for teachers to adapt and integrate new technologies into their teaching practices, emphasizing the importance of continuous professional development.

In summary, while technology will undoubtedly play an increasingly central role in education, it is unlikely to fully replace teachers. Instead, the future of education will likely be characterized by a collaborative relationship between technology and teachers, with each complementing the other to enhance the learning experience. The human aspects of teaching, such as emotional support, understanding, and real-world problem-solving, remain critical components that technology cannot replicate.

FCC to declare AI-generated voices in robocalls illegal under existing law (arstechnica.com)

Robocalls with AI voices to be regulated under Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the agency says. I'm pretty sure this puts us on the timeline where we eventually get incredible, futuristic tech, but computers and robots still sound mechanical and fake.

abhibeckert ,

But how stupid would you have to be to take a call from half way around the world and listen to their advice about the upcoming election? A phone call that claims to come from a local politician is a lot more believable if it comes from a local number.

Amazon could soon be on the hook for safety of third-party products it sells and ships — Government order could classify it as a distributor, potentially exposing it to more legal claims (www.wsj.com)

Amazon could soon be on the hook for safety of third-party products it sells and ships — Government order could classify it as a distributor, potentially exposing it to more legal claims::undefined

abhibeckert ,

Um, no. Normally you would use a regular male to female extension cable for that. Your electrical panel would have a male plug on the wall which is specifically wired up to safely provide power to your home.

Apple’s Vision Pro battery pack is hiding the final boss of Lightning cables (www.theverge.com)

Apple’s Vision Pro battery pack is hiding the final boss of Lightning cables::The Vision Pro’s battery connector is removable once you press the eject button, and it uses a 12-pin connector that looks like a wider version of a Lightning cable.

abhibeckert , (edited )

I think it's reasonable.

First of all they didn't want to put a battery on the headset. Fair enough, even without a battery it's heavier than most headsets.

That decision means the cable doesn't just need to provide average power consumption, it also needs to be able to handle peak power consumption. It seems reasonable that the headset has similar peak power to a Mac Mini - which has a 185 Watt power supply.

USB can provide up to 240 Watts, however it needs relatively high voltage to do that over thin cables permitted in the USB specification. 48 Volts for 240 Watt power delivery and 20 Volts for 100 Watts.

Vision Pro is only 13 Volts - which means that cable almost certainly has thicker wires than a standard USB cable. If you tried to power a Vision Pro over a standards compliant thin USB wires it would likely be a fire risk at only 13 Volts.

Apple could solve that by using 48 Volts... but then they'd have to convert 48V down to 13V... and they need to do it with very light weight and small components. Those conversions are not free, especially with DC power. It might even be that the conversion is so inefficient that you need more than 240 Watts to power the headset.

But even if 240 W is enough (it probably is), it would also reduce battery life. And battery life is already an area where the headset isn't really good enough. So, in summary, yeah I do think it's reasonable to use a proprietary power cable. This headset is just too close to the technical capabilities of a USB cable.

Worse... a lot of USB cables aren't even compliant with the specification. You could burn someone's house down if the cable is non-compliant.

abhibeckert ,

For what?

abhibeckert ,

The law does apply to "this specific thing".

The law is essentially that (most) battery charge cables must use USB-C, and Apple's headset does use a USB-C cable to charge the battery.

abhibeckert ,

It has 24 pins. Power would be two or three pins.

24 is exactly the number you'd need to have a thunderbolt connection... which could be interesting, though I don't think Apple has said anything about it being used for that.

abhibeckert , (edited )

Every social media site does the exact same thing

I sure hope Blåhaj Lemmy isn't doing any of that crap.

the US government buying people’s information from data brokers. How is that any different?

Um, isn't that obvious? The US government accesses information collected by private companies. The Chinese government controls a source of news that is used by billions of people. Those are totally different things.

Sure, TikTok insists they have no ties to the government. But there's plenty of evidence exposing that as a blatant lie.

Not sure what Meta/Twitter/YouTube have to do with this. Bringing them up is at best a distraction. If you don't trust them (I don't, for the record) don't use those platforms. Simple.

Making a PDF that’s larger than Germany (alexwlchan.net)

Some version of this has been floating around the Internet since 2007, probably earlier. This tweet is pretty emblematic of posts about this claim: it’s stated as pure fact, with no supporting evidence or explanation. We’re meant to just accept that a single PDF can only cover about half the area of Germany, and we’re not...

abhibeckert , (edited )

I’m guessing (gut feeling) Acrobat probably supports the most features overall, Firefox probably supports the vast majority of those used in practice, and Preview only allows Apple Approved™ PDF features and extensions deemed worthy of Their Appleness’s consideration.

OK... stepping out of gut feelings into reality:

  • Adobe originally had a maximum page size of 45 inches square.
  • In 2001 they increased that to 200 inches
  • And in 2004 Adobe increased it to 15,000,000 inches (a bit larger than Germany) which is still kinda sucky if you want to show a map on a PDF

As for "Their Appleness's consideration" they generally use floating point numbers for coordinates and sizes. Which is how, as it says in the OP's article, it's able to handle a PDF trillions of light years in size. A double precision floating point number can be really big.

More important though, it means you can process it with hardware accelerated floating point operations which are incredibly fast. And Apple's PDF renderer needed to be fast because for years PDF was the data format used by the window manager for pretty much all screen drawing operations. They weren't doing that on modern fast hardware either, they were doing it decades ago on slow hardware. With decent performance.

If there are features missing it's probably because they would slow things down too much.

UK law that could ban Apple security updates worldwide is an unprecedented overreach (9to5mac.com)

UK law that could ban Apple security updates worldwide is an unprecedented overreach::Proposed amendments to the UK’s Investigatory Powers Act (IPA) which could ban Apple security updates worldwide are an “unprecedented overreach,”...

abhibeckert , (edited )

No there’s teeth to this law. They have to wait for the government to “review” the change before it can be deployed. And the government can order them not to make the change.

The guardrails are basically “if it might hamper intelligence or police work, we can reject it”.

As an example Apple has been doing foundation work that will likely lead to photos having similar protection to passwords. Photos are obviously incredibly valuable for spooks and cops since most photos have location metadata and face recognition.

They could easily reject that change.

abhibeckert ,

People are still going to do it regardless.

Would they? Last year a woman was awarded $1.2b in damages after her ex boyfriend distributed revenge porn.

How many people would hit that retweet button, if they knew it might lead to damages on that scale? Presumably her ex-boyfriend went bankrupt and lost everything he owned, having to give all of it to her (and her lawyers).

Sure, some people would still take that risk but not very many. And at least the victims would get a nice pay day out of it.

Boeing withdraws bid for safety exemption for Boeing 737 MAX 7 (www.reuters.com)

Boeing withdraws bid for safety exemption for Boeing 737 MAX 7::Boeing confirmed late on Monday it is withdrawing a request it made to the Federal Aviation Administration last year seeking an exemption from a safety standard for its 737 MAX 7 that is awaiting certification.

abhibeckert ,

There's nothing wrong with requesting an exemption. It's only a problem if the exemption is granted when it shouldn't be.

abhibeckert ,

That doesn't mean the servers are physically located in Russia. It just means they are controlled by an organisation that considers Russia their primary country.

abhibeckert ,

Sure - but was the "quibble" a mistake or intentional?

abhibeckert ,

The web was already flooded with human generated spam, adding AI spam to the mix hasn't really changed anything meaningful - you still can't find useful content on the vast majority of webpages.

What we really need is a better search engine, one that doesn't include low quality content... that might be something AI can help with.

abhibeckert , (edited )

I don't see it either... but everyone who's actually worn one seems to think it's a huge deal. Including people who own other headsets and never use them.

At this point, I'm willing to assume they're right. A bit like how phones were terrible until suddenly the technology improved a bit (better touch screens, faster CPUs, faster cellular networks, better cameras, better software...) and suddenly smartphones became awesome.

If Apple is onto something, other brands of headset will match them soon enough. They all have access to the same hardware suppliers, it's just a matter of putting it together and writing some decent software.

abhibeckert ,

Apple's headset does both AR and VR.

abhibeckert ,

Meh. Ride a bicycle for an hour, if you never do it, and your ass will hurt for days.

Ride a bicycle once a week for a little while... and it'll be perfectly comfortable no matter how long you sit on the seat. Your muscles will strengthen as necessary to compensate for the new load.

abhibeckert ,

Keep in mind they probably spent more than that amount of money on R&D / aqua-hiring.

It's a lot of money, but still not enough to be a commercially successful product for at least a few more years.

abhibeckert ,

Or, run docker and have actual Linux.

abhibeckert ,

That's mostly about Light Seal and optical lenses which come in literally thousands of combinations.

You can buy them separately - and you will have to with a scalped (or secondhand) headset.

abhibeckert , (edited )

Our necks are really strong. Far stronger than, for example, our arms or even our shoulders. In cultures that hadn't invented the wheel, it was commonplace to carry heavy things with your neck. Your neck can carry loads similar to a wheel barrow, comfortably, all day long.

I'd be a lot more worried about eye health than your neck.

abhibeckert ,

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/10b97e6d-f6d4-426f-ba72-d882e55d1bbf.png

If our necks can handle that, I think they can handle a headset.

abhibeckert , (edited )

There have been credible leaks that this was a management level problem.

They specifically didn't want the aircraft to be inspected - as it had already been inspected and doing it again would have delayed delivery... so they had a policy in place where the door was worked on "off the books" so to speak, and therefore almost nobody even knew that the work was being done. Including the people who were responsible for checking if it had been done properly.

Boeing management originally blamed Spirit for the mistake because at first glance of the work log Spirit were the only engineers who worked on the door. It was only when they checked a second backchannel work log that they discovered maintenance had been done which required removing the door even though according to the log the door was never removed (the leak is someone at Boeing replaced the rubber seal that sits in between the door and the cabin...).

Yes, someone forgot to insert the bolts however the reality is mistakes happen and telling people not to make mistakes doesn't work. You need to create an environment where mistakes don't get anyone killed and management has failed to do that.

An engineer should not do any work at all unless they have been instructed, in writing, on a well defined schedule, to do that work. And that task should be left open until it has been fully checked to verify it was done properly. That didn't happen here, and apparently it's a regular thing.

Sure, 99.999% of the time those checks are a waste of time. But when you're doing thousands of jobs a day those checks will find problems regularly and that should be all the motivation management needs to make sure the inspections are never skipped.

abhibeckert ,

I disagree. Chrome is a simple well designed browser that happens to be run by a company that tries to push things we don't like, such as FLoC.

Edge is full of bloatware and dark patterns. You're probably thinking of the early versions of Edge when none of that crap had been added yet... but trust me it's a very different browser now. In fact it's worse than IE ever was.

abhibeckert ,

The fact they have 4% marketshare also protects them.

abhibeckert ,

Not at all. In fact wind powered cars are able to drive faster than the wind speed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCsgoLc_fzI

abhibeckert ,

The difference is to turn a large coal generator off, then back on again generally takes about a week. Which makes them completely useless for providing overnight power when solar isn't available.

Coal can only really be paired with something like hydro where you know well in advance that the hydro power plant is going to run out of water.

These days coal power plants often actually pay for the grid to take power from them. They are fine with making a loss during the day if it means they can make a profit at night when nobody has solar. This significantly impacts the financial viability of solar power and is the main reason there aren't very many large scale solar plants in the world.

Because of coal - you can only make significant profits selling power to the grid at night. And nearly all solar power is primarily intended to be consumed by whoever owns the solar panels.

abhibeckert , (edited )

It's not about methane stored in gas tanks - the problem is methane trapped underground which we intentionally release in order to store it. The way we release it is far from a controlled process and it's impossible to capture all of the released methane. In any developed country they are required to monitor (and minimise) methane releases however there are widespread allegations of under-reporting and failures to capture as much as they could.

If you ask the gas mining companies, they claim it's a minor issue but if you actually measure methane in the atmosphere, which we are doing (it's easy to do), then it's pretty clear this is a massive problem. There's far too much methane in our atmosphere for all of it to be coming from other sources.

When you burn gas, it becomes CO2 and is released into the air. When methane is released without being burned, it's so much worse than CO2 that even with very low rates of methane release it still has a bigger impact on the climate than all of the burned gas in the world.

Exactly how much methane is released by mining is unclear but what we do know for sure is how much methane is in the atmosphere right now, and we know that it accounts for about a third of the climate change we are experiencing.

Having said that - gas is still better than coal. There are several reasons but one of them is coal mining also releases methane.

abhibeckert , (edited )

Just one pound of methane released into the air is as harmful as if you were to burn 85 pounds of it.

Human emissions are responsible for an estimated 300 billion pounds of methane in our atmosphere right now and we're adding huge amounts every day.

It's really, really, bad. Yes, so is coal... but realistically coal can be cleaner than gas. The only real thing Gas has going for it is the ability to run intermittently and increasingly less often as we bring other energy sources online. Of course, that's a massive benefit.

abhibeckert ,

Wheels that don’t puncture have been around for centuries

What does that have to do with it? Those were a different design. Sure, this invention shares a couple of features with past inventions but that doesn't mean it's the same invention.

Most puncture proof tires are too hard. A good tire is soft enough to have a large flat area where it touches the road (or some other shape, if the road is bumpy).

Apple was just forced to crack open its App Store — but the changes are already being called 'hot garbage' (ca.finance.yahoo.com)

Apple was just forced to crack open its App Store — but the changes are already being called 'hot garbage'::Changes to how apps are distributed on iPhones should be welcomed by developers, but many are unhappy with some describing them as "hot garbage."

abhibeckert , (edited )

I'm not upset or surprised.

But I do believe Apple has failed to comply with the law, and they either need to start complying or else I'd like to see the EU apply the maximum penalty. Which, by the way, is to split Apple into multiple companies.

Being split up has happened before and it generally doesn't go well for anyone - it'd be a lot better (including for Apple) if they just complied with the law and stopped being so anti-competitive... but ultimately I'm fine with either outcome.

I'm definitely not ok with things continuing as they are right now... but that's not going to happen so I'm not putting any energy into that.

abhibeckert ,

They aren’t even allowing sideloading. They are allowing alternative app stores that they approve

Meh. It's basically the same thing - an alternative app store is the most user friendly way to do this anyway and the EU courts will force Apple to approve any reasonable app store.

and Apple expects a 27% cut from all app sales after it hits a million downloads.

No you're thinking of the changes Apple just made to comply with their recent loss in the USA court. That only applies to the USA.

In the EU (and only the EU) instead of charging a percentage fee there's going to be two* 50 cent fees (per user, per year). Spotify, for example, would pay $100 million per year if they choose to "sideload".

(* the app developer pays 50 cents per user per year, and whoever distributes the app also pays 50 cents per user per year)

abhibeckert ,

It will take harsher regulatory action

Have you seen the maximum penalty for this action? It's pretty harsh.

"the Commission is also empowered to adopt additional remedies such as obliging a gatekeeper to sell a business or parts of it, or banning the gatekeeper from acquiring additional services related to the systemic non-compliance"

Imagine if they forced Apple to sell their iPhone business. The USA did that once when Ma Bell had a monopoly on phones.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • random
  • incremental_games
  • meta
  • All magazines
    •