That's the point. They do not have a contract with apple but with the app manufacturer who promises to forward payments from the users to them. But they can't make contracts on funds they don't get from apple - who THEY have their contracts with. No one takes money from people they don't have contracts with. And if their contract partner promises something like that they have to match it out of their own pockets.

But this whole thing is bonkers anyway. When I want to get a product or service, I want to have ONE contract for that. I don't want to have to pay 5 different people for eating a steak at a restaurant. When I buy a chair I don't want to pay three parties for the wood, shipping it to the carpenter and then for making the chair.

..and only once I have to side with Apple here.

It may be a "pay as much as you want" system, but when you are receiving a service, and you are returning money, that's a business transaction and in no way a present, gift, donation, tip or charity.

I can't say my employer is donating my salary to me and refuse to pay taxes either.

I mean yes, fighting Apples 30% monopoly is important, too, but that's a try to weaponize tipping culture (or minimal wage culture) which is none the better..

Cameras always could be disabled by smashing them. So that's old news.

Shouldn't those cameras record locally, too for exactly such scenarios?

It's just a hunch, but I'd guess that at some point during the writing of the story a generative AI was involved....

I may have missed the joke but... how?

It's safe to assume that that guy is NOT Satoshi.

It is also safe to assume that the real author of that paper made a conscious decision to prevent anyone including himself to come out as that author.

I mean, you are writing a paper that is about a currency based on cryptographically signing transactions to guarantee authenticity... wouldn't you think of cryptographically signing that paper itself?

So anyone who claims to be Satoshi can't be Satoshi!

(or would have to explain how someone clever enough to invent bitcoin is stupid enough to not digitally sign his paper)

Yes... that was back in the days of screensavers and before the advent of power management for CPU and Monitors...

Yes... that whole lean production wasn't till later 90s. Didn't help acceptance that VW worded it in a way that they are turning German roads into their "rolling warehouses" with just in time delivery - and never mentioned paying rent....

Sounds cheesy, but I guess until then the best QA was to give every worker a chance to be proud of the cars they made. Same story I heard about an US motorcycle company. Laid of all the expensive but expirienced workers and immediatly having problems. And it seems to be the same with Boeing before they sold of part of their manufacturing hoping to save money.

And beer at the workplace is now frowned upon over here, too. In most jobs, it's no longer OK to be a functioning alcohlic.

It's a guess, but.... am I right if I narrow down the three to the 2 of them from Bavaria? :-)

I remember the time when that wasn't too unusual. And honestly.. at the time you went there.... do you remember anyone speaking of "quality issues" with German brands? That was later when management ordered those cheating devices...

I mean still, everyone wants to have a Tesla, but they also say the mechanical build quality is really bad with uneven gaps between parts that would never have left a German factory.

But that matches the history of Tesla - they started with the new "disruptive" technology and the rest of the car was an afterthought. And that's the part of evolutionary invention the traditional car makers completely missed. Sometimes I wonder what could have been if the new Tesla Technology had been combined with someone who knows how to build the rest of a car.

Yes. That's a good point.

I mean, the theory with competition driving all that stuff is not completely made up and used to work amazingly well for an amazingly long time, but with market concentration going up and the only way for many companies to grow is only by mergers, competition is getting less and less. You probably have seen that chart where 90% of food brands are owned by only four companies.

uhmm.. on second thought.... let me add a big "in general" to my last statement :-)

Well, "regulate their way to last place" only if the ranking is based on the amount of regulation. But the amount or lack of regulation is not a value in itself!

You want to get to the top of the list? Scrap all laws! Hooray, Number one! Well, you'll also have highest murder and poverty rate, but the lowest crime rate because nothing is regulated as crime!

You can't just count "Europe has x unit of regulation, the US has y regulation" and put it on an arbitrary ranking. The question is, if those regulations improve peoples lives! And for example consumer and environmental protection do that.

Well, "profit drives investment and innovation" sounds like another "trickle down" trope, just with another funnel where it is supposed to trickle down into.

Yes, if nothing get's poured into on top,. nothing CAN trickle down. But just pouring money in on top will NOT MAKE anything trickle down automatically.

For any kind of profit I make I have to decide: Do I let them trickle down or do I keep them? Well, I'd choose to keep mine.

Probably some guys with fragile masculinity are afraid that some guy could be demoted from "NFL Player" to "Celebrity boyfriend"