this is really a case against the author's poor choices for smart devices.

setting things through Apple's HomeKit is one way to guarantee you won't be locked away by the brand.
It creates a single point of failure, but one that will hardly ever be discontinued.

Sure there is. It’s a device you control, on your network. You simply tell the device to trust a CA you set up, serve up a fake cert, MitM yourself, and then read the unencrypted packets. You can even do it in realtime if you use something more powerful than a Pi. This isn’t rocket science and there are plenty of tools to help researchers do this sort of thing. You can even find people who strip ads out of encrypted packets going between the YouTube app on an Apple TV and Google’s servers as a fun, personal project.

Stop spreading FUD.

How did you get modded Insightful? Texas generates more than twice the wind power of the next closest state in the US and is second only to California when it comes to solar generation. And of course the oil and gas industry is hedging their bets. They see the writing on the wall, just like everyone else, which is why they’re all rebranding as “energy” companies and pivoting into new sectors. And while they’ve certainly sabotaged things in the past, the market is out of their hands at this point: if they don’t supply the clean energy, someone else will and they’ll be bankrupt, so they’re along for the ride at this point.

And you do realize that Texas has some of the largest concentrations of technically competent people in the nation, right? I mean, NASA and SpaceX ring a bell? Did none of your SV friends mention thoughts about moving to Austin yet? Texas isn’t supporting four of the top ten most populous cities in the nation with a promise of jobs in oil fields. In fact, even the oil and gas industry is getting more technically competent as a whole: Petroleum Engineering jobs aren’t dipping much or at all, but the number of jobs for extracting oil and gas in the US have dropped by nearly half in the last decade.

That’s basically what happened, but it still resulted in prices going up due to the MFN clause. Amazon switched to an agency model and took a smaller cut, but consumers continued seeing the same prices at both stores, regardless of Amazon’s cut vs. Apple’s cut, so prices rose to ensure profitability at the store that took the largest cut: Apple’s. And publishers benefitted from increased profits at Amazon.

I have no idea what you’re referring to. Everything I’m talking about involves increased prices. No one outcompeted anyone else by lowering prices, which, as you suggest, would be fine. An MFN clause may sound like it’ll ensure lower prices, but what it actually does when paired with an agency model is ensure that other’s prices are raised to match yours, preventing them from competing on price/cut/fees.

Agreed, but if you look at the historical price data, that shift only began once the settlements and rulings against Apple started coming out. Prior to that, prices climbed steeply when Apple entered the market, which was used as evidence against Apple at trial.

Not so! The Apple eBooks case from a decade ago is a great example of this.

Apple's agreement with the publishers had two important conditions:
1. An agency model that allowed publishers to set their own prices while Apple took a percentage cut.
2. A Most Favored Nation (MFN) clause that ensured Apple's store would always have the cheapest price for any given book.

The combination of those two factors ensured that prices would go up industry-wide because Amazon, who wasn't part of this, was still operating on a wholesale model. Trying to match/beat Amazon's price in Apple's store—a requirement of the MFN clause—wasn't tenable, so the only alternative publishers had was to raise their prices with Amazon to match the prices they had at Apple's store.

Even though none of the publishers sat in a room together or made agreements with each other to raise prices across the industry, they were all aware that the others were entering this same agreement with Apple and understood the effect these conditions would have on the industry. They knew that their collective actions were going to result in prices going up, hence why they all settled out of court as soon as regulators came after them for colluding. Only Apple tried to fight it out, and they lost.

I'm reminded of a cooperate card game called Hanabi in which players can't see their own cards. They are instead only permitted to provide limited hints about the cards others are holding. Those other players then read between the lines to understand the logical implications of the hints that have been given. In much the same way, algorithms of this sort can be recognized by others and, once discovered, amount to an implicit, open invitation to engage in price fixing. Whether or not that's "collusion", I actually don't have a stance (I may argue that you can collude without ever meeting each other, but that doesn't mean Inecessarily think that's what happened here), but I think it's fair to say that this sort of algorithm should be illegal, due to its very nature.

Collusion isn't a synonym of "cooperation" that has a negative connotation. It means something entirely different that is in no way applicable to the activities of (lawful) unions.

As a general rule, you have the freedom to do pretty much anything you want to do with other people (see: Freedom of Association), so whether you want to work together with fellow employees at a business to outcompete others in the market, work together with fellow volunteers to feed the hungry, or work together with fellow union members to engage in collective bargaining, it isn't collusion. Where cooperation crosses into collusion is when entities work together to do something that they're not allowed to do. Price fixing is one such example, since there are laws specifically prohibiting the activity.

Now, you might be tempted to argue that collective bargaining is no different than price fixing, so it should be illegal, but that argument fails to account for the imbalance of power. A business is itself a collection of people, so when a non-union employee asks for a raise they're fighting against the collective bargaining power of the entire organization without any help. Allowing them to unionize simply levels the playing field. But if you think that unions give their members an unfair advantage, do you have suggestions for how we should remove the advantage businesses have when they're bargaining with individuals?

Again, the fact that people cooperate in the pursuit of a proper and lawful end is not, by definition, collusion.

If that were true, please explain this accusation, given that it's an allegation based on facts that have a technical basis.

The green bubbles represent SMS messages, which have been the industry-wide messaging standard for decades. None of the "limited" functionality cited by the DOJ is supported via SMS, so how is Apple the cause of the degraded user experience?

And before anyone naively exclaims "they could have adopted RCS!":
(a) They are. Specifically the RCS Universal Profile, which is the open standard. The rollout was announced months ago and will arrive later this year.
(b) There is no open version of RCS that supports the features the DOJ listed. No, not even the Universal Profile. The only widely deployed version of "RCS" that supports all of the features listed in the DOJ's complaint is Google's proprietary extension to the RCS Universal Profile that only works in Google Messages, and that version of "RCS" is every bit as closed and proprietary as iMessage.

I agree that the DOJ has a strong track record and a history of sticking to arguments that they earnestly believe they can win in court, but something seems very off with this case. While many of us would agree that Apple has misbehaved in numerous ways and deserves to be slapped down, the US lacks adequate laws to do so effectively. The contortions the DOJ is going through to make their arguments fit within the confines of the Sherman Antitrust Act are substantial. And that's before we get to the numerous factual errors in their complaint. To pick one that's related to this topic, they made the patently false accusation that SMS messages were locked to the Messages app because third-parties lack the necessary API access and background notification systems to provide a viable alternative for SMS. That news came as a shock to a podcaster I listen to who has an SMS app that does the very things the DOJ claims are impossible. The fact that it even exists immediately disproves the DOJ's assertion. And that's just one example. There's factual sloppiness all throughout the complaint.

Laws exist to push society in a direction that it isn’t reaching on its own because people are not in alignment. If your brand new law immediately has that many violators, despite having sharp teeth and the violators being properly motivated by those teeth to comply with the law (to the minimum degree necessary, of course), doesn’t that suggest the law was unclear in what would or wouldn’t be acceptable? For instance, it sounds like the EU is basically declaring Facebook’s existing business model illegal (aside: fine by me), without ever actually saying so in plain language. Why not just say so instead of writing an ambiguous law that’ll require a 12-month probe, protracted court case, and a ruling that leaves everyone unhappy at the end?

The board can lift the restriction, which is what is assumed will happen.

It doesn’t matter. This is so that he can cover his obligations to the court in New York right now, this moment. He owes something like $450M right now, and if he fails to pay up by Monday, they’ve said they’ll seize his real estate holdings in New York (e.g. Trump Tower) beginning Monday. Under the terms of this grift, he personally owns 60% of the merged company, which is worth $5B in total, so he suddenly has $3B more on paper than he did before. His hope is probably that he can stake those shares to cover his obligations, keeping him from being forced to sell his real estate holdings.

I live in Texas. Slashdot is literally the only place I have seen or heard anyone reporting on or otherwise talking about this. At all. Were I not on Slashdot, I'd have zero awareness that this was even a law on the books.

I agree with the idea that needlessly burning political capital or turning substantial portions of the public against you is a bad idea, but I'm not convinced that's happening here. Obviously, my experience is anecdotal, however, so I don't expect it to be in any way convincing, but my sense is that when you compare this topic to border control, abortion/reproductive rights, or the economy, it's like comparing a match to a multitude of blazing infernos when it comes to how much attention it's garnering.

You seem unaware that Texas and the federal government are currently duking it out in court because the federal government is saying that Texas’ attempts to pass and enforce border control laws at the state level are contrary to the US’ sovereign right to control immigration. The Supreme Court passed it back to the appeals court just a few days ago, which then blocked Texas from enforcing its own laws again. So what exactly would you like them to do?

https://www.reuters.com/legal/...
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/0...
https://www.reuters.com/world/...

Also, you do realize states are large enough that they can walk and talk at the same time, right? And that they should be doing so? This notion that governments should be focused to the exclusion of everything else on the issues you deem important is nonsensical and would result in everything coming to a standstill.

I find myself in the odd position of (kinda) defending a company that I find abhorrent, but isn't what you're talking about what Facebook is already doing in Europe with their current approach? They provide a for-pay service that users can subscribe to without consenting to the collection of data. For those willing to provide permission for data collection, they provide a free version of their service in exchange for being able to monetize that information. And having done that, the EC is now saying that's no bueno.

It seems here that the EC isn't simply saying that you need permission to collect the data (what you suggested), they're saying that you aren't allowed to monetize data that you have permission to collect. If true, that would effectively end targeted ads. To be clear, I'm fine with the utter and complete destruction of targeted ads as a mechanism for monetizing services, but (a) I don't understand how the DMA gives them any basis for that argument, and (b) a change like that would render a lucrative business model that is in widespread use completely non-viable, which will necessarily mean a massive reduction in the amount of money available to operate services in the EU.

Again, I'm fine with that if it means a return to the more "boutique" or "artisanal" Internet that we enjoyed in previous decades before big money showed up (i.e. blogs and indies regain their previous prominence because businesses see no point in investing in the space), but that, to me, seems like the inevitable outcome if this really is the direction the EC is pushing things. Of note, it'll also mean the elimination of thousands or tens of thousands of jobs across Europe for people in software development, who suddenly find that there's a lot less appetite to spend millions of dollars on web apps if they don't have a means to monetize them at today's levels.

It isn't just about knowledge. It's about putting knowledge into practice. Not once or twice. Not most times. Not exceptionally well. Not 99.9% of the time. Every. Single. Time. Without fail. For a lifetime. Because all it takes is a single mistake at the wrong moment at any point in your career for you to open the door to that class of exploits.

Oh, and it's not just you, it's also all of your less competent colleagues who are being held to that standard too. At all times. Even when they're revising your code as requirements change and it's 15 years from when you first wrote it. And they're tired because they're typically a web developer who got roped into doing these updates in an app that hasn't been updated in years, the new boss is driving them hard, and they're clueless why you wrote it the way you did because you left 10 years ago and aren't around to answer questions. It's all of that too.

I'd assume they still do, but a class or two (which is what it was down to 20 years ago when I was in college) does not produce a substantive understanding that will guide people around all of the pitfalls.