I've been in and out of this space over 20 years (nothing major, but I digress).

What has always been both frustrating and amusing is the thought that people should work on code, documentation, do testing, and other related tasks but yet not not receive compensation. Whether you paid nothing or large amounts of money to learn how to do this type of work, those skills once learned have a value.

At some point, most people - whether they admit it or not - are going to want to profit from those skills, if for nothing else, sustenance (i.e. food). Shaming people for wanting to profit is just willfully ignorant. Not everyone wants to volunteer for some feel-good feeling (I know I never have...my time and work always has a cost, that someone will pay).

That is the problem right there. Your "reasonable price" is not another's reasonable price, nor should anyone be able to dictate what a person considers reasonable.

I'm not an Apple fan by no stretch... but I absolutely understand that if a private entity built a bridge (with private money) and want to charge others to use said named bridge. They have every right. Apple owns their ecosystem - top to bottom. This isn't a hard concept. They built it, they make the rules.

Training an AI Model by using pre-existing content, IMO (which I admit may not count for much, lol) is no different than a child going to the library and reading every single book / document / periodical inside. Both are essentially blank slates (although in the case of AI, one could make the argument it can be designed to be predisposed to certain knowledge and can have perfect retainership for reference purposes).

If there was an issue, why wasn't this addressed at the beginning. Everyone has known since Apple's inception they build both the hardware and the software for their products. Only when they became a leading (if not the leading) competitor to certain products does everyone have an issue. Seems like a penalty for being successful (i.e. sour grapes).

Not to mention, they told everyone UPFRONT about the 30% cut they was going to take. You (app developers) got 70% Seems perfectly reasonable in exchange for not having to develop and maintain my own store. But again, if this was going to be an issue, why was this not addressed BEFORE it was deployed or in its early phases?

I mean, competition is nice, but it sounds like drink of pure Hator-aid if you're gonna complain because you didn't develop / implement it first.

See, I would almost agree with that, except as Hawaii is an island, you are always driving towards water. LOL It would make sense to put in a warning sign that says "GPS is wrong for this road, use xxx as alternative route. Virginia does it. North Carolina does it. Is Hawaii (the government) really that arrogant?

In some (not all), takeovers a mutual agreements. Activision may not want to sell to a smaller firm for various financial reasons (i.e. not offered enough money).

I mean, could these technologies been developed over there, sure. I'm perfectly sure of that. However, if your businesses chose not to do so or use them, its not the company (i.e. Microsoft / Amazon's) they are using fault is it?

Just curious, who do you expect to pay for the content? Obviously, you don't want to pay for a membership. Ok, cool.

You don't want to give your personal data to be monetized. Ok, fair.

Can I assume you think that a "for-profit" company should just incur that cost, for altruistic reasons? If so, please share the name of your dealer, cause I need some of whatever your taking, cause leaving reality must be nice...

"Europe/EU has the right idea ... Americans are too quick to embrace new tech without thinking of the societal (or worse, in the case of AI) consequences."

Kind of a false assumption that across the board the societal consequences are not thought about. Sometimes its about first-mover advantage.

Unplug TikTok, and produce the ammo. Nothing of use will be loss. Trust me on this...

Because monopolies are not inherently negative, nor are all of them "designed". Unless you are expecting a large company to not innovate or purchase their competitors.

Couple of interesting scenarios will probably occur here:

(1) Bunch of tech companies headquarters are gonna move (though I wonder if will consider the corruption and cartels down there).

(2) Starbucks will arrive with new tropical flavors.

(3) Housing is gonna skyrocket.

I'm sure there are more, but I don't have enough coffee in me yet to consider anymore.