Silicon wafers are the wrong thing to compare against. The CZT semiconductors are like photodiodes (for other radiation), not what they make the logic out of. It would make more sense to compare with InGaN (for blue LEDs), which plays a similarly specific role in common devices.

They, in fact, have 58% of the U.S. cellular phone market, which is more than enough control over the market to regulate them under antitrust law.

This. When Steve first introduced the App Store, he said they weren't trying to make a profit off of it. That was quickly proven to be a lie, because the economies of scale brought the costs way down, but the fees never decreased.

And the fact of the matter is that the decision to make apps go through the app review process is a decision made by Apple primarily for their benefit, not for the user's benefit. No other general-purpose platform (as opposed to game-only platforms like primitive cell phones and game consoles and iPod) ever did anything like that prior to Apple doing it, and it was never a security disaster.

Because the user has no choice about whether to buy apps from Apple or from a third-party, it isn't reasonable for Apple to charge fees on the review process. Doing so is effectively rent seeking, interposing themselves in commerce while adding zero value to that commerce compared with other alternatives. Doing so distorts the free market for in-app payment processors by basically making that market not exist. And so on.

And Apple already charges a fee for the review process. Every developer has to pay a $99 a year to distribute apps through the store. That's paying for app reviews and a couple of DTS incidents. If that isn't adequate to cover the costs, then Apple needs to make that reflect the actual cost of app review.

And IMO, Apple should be forced to open up the platform to third-party app stores globally, allowing companies to choose whether to pay that fee or distribute their app through a third-party store instead. Building a platform should not give you carte blanche authority to say what apps run on that platform, because Apple does not own the hardware once a consumer buys it. It looks like a sale, so it is a sale. And at that point, the law recognizes customers' rights to do pretty much whatever they want to with the hardware, up to and including wiping it and running Android if they can figure out how.

There's no clear security justification for not requiring Apple to provide a switch on iOS similar to the one on macOS that lets you install apps signed by Apple and distributed outside the store, nor for providing a switch that lets you install and run unsigned apps with the same security mechanism that macOS provided prior to code signing. It worked well enough to keep users safe for decades, and the code is already there. All they have to do is turn it on, provide a little bit of UI integration, and maybe unify the keychain implementation if they haven't already done so by now.

Users who want the current model would just not go into Settings and change the setting. Apple can have three or four dire warnings about how doing this reduces the security of the phone before allowing users to do so, ensuring that only users who understand what they are doing throw the switch.

And there's no clear justification at all for Apple demanding that third-party app stores pay money for sales of apps that Apple doesn't actually review. That is *pure* rent seeking. Apple isn't providing *any* value in those transactions, but is still charging money ("core technology fee"). No way should that be allowed. Users already pay for the operating system as part of the cost of buying the device. Those fees are pure double dipping, and that's really not okay to charge two parties for the same purchase.

The more Apple clings to control over the platform, the more fines they are going to get, both in the U.S. and the European Union. One company exercising near-monopolistic control over a large chunk of the cellular phone market is inherently problematic, and using that monopoly to control an unrelated market (apps) by deliberately preventing consumers from being able to install alternative app stores that avoid those fees is IMO a flagrant violation of antitrust law. I'm glad the courts have affirmed that.

PHB1: "We have to do something AI-ish, everyone else is!"

PHB2: "Here's one, have bots compile podcasts from our news articles."

PHB1: "Brilliant! Make it so."

[months later]

PHB2: "Um, the podcast bot has been making silly errors. Should we keep it?"

PHB1: "How is our competition doing with their AI?"

PHB2: "They suck also."

PHB1: "Okay, let's keep it so we can have AI on our brochures and resumes."

Yes. And when the "think of the children" lie has run its course, they will just continue with one of the other horsemen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

These are malicious people, plain and simple. They want everybody monitored and dislike anybody having freedoms. And they will stop short of nothing to get there.

It is a lot of historic reputation. But I actually know 3 (!) Swiss numbered account systems personally (don't ask). They used to be anonymous a long time ago. They are not these days. The identity of the account holders has to be verified carefully in each case and has to be given to the government. The reputation of the Swiss banks refers to a situation that does not exist anymore and has not existed for quite a while.

Indeed. But they have to win this first. So far they convinced 2% of the voters to sign and they had 18 months for that. In the end, the Swiss voters are usually pretty pragmatic.

CS has gone out of business due to management incompetence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The largest Swiss bank is rank 23: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
And the 2nd largest Swiss bank is rank 97.

Funny how that goes when hallucinations collide with actual facts ...

I was unlucky once to buy a roundtrip flight on a trumpistani airline and participate in the trumpistani airport "security" theater, in airports not on trumpistani territory. What is different from a person flying in/out the same airports not using an airline of an idiocracy obsessed with "terrorists"?

I was "preselected" for a "random check" that involved a trumpistani thug who appeared not to be there in an official capacity and nevertheless ransacked my luggage and left it in a messy pile that I had to repack myself. This is something that I've never experienced from any other airport security.

When I complained, the thug got rude, argumentative and uppity. It tried to order me to take off various items of my (light) clothing for no good reason, it threatened me that it would make sure I miss my flight, not to mention that it was trying to speak to me in its own dialect, ignoring the fact that wasn't an official language at the airport.

I've never been a subject of such treatment by any other security service before or after that. Moreover, it was made quite obvious that the issue was not me threatening security, but what the thug was seeing as "lack of compliance". LOL. So we had a little more of "non-compliance" chit-chat until the the local crew managed to have the thug removed and let me through with apologies. Apparently it wasn't only my own opinion that the trumpistani thug had gone a bit too far.

  Lesson learned, I now schedule around that shithole and its thugs.

You think half a person of teaching personnel per student is too much? Well, being one of these, I can assure you it is money well spent. In fact, every CHF spent on the universities returns 4 CHF in profits. These are current numbers, just updated. You think that somehow is a problem?

Why are you still beating your wife and children?

That little mushroom is a real pain in there, said Stormy.

Ugh. Was it Adecco?

I wanted to stay contractor if I couldn't become a FTE, but I was told that there was a 1.5 yrs limit. :(

It looks like this is a "Man in the middle" attack in one way or another. Try to access your bank from another place and computer. Consumer routers are known to be hacked easily, and turn off UPnP in the router since that's a security hole the size of Grand Canyon.

If your bank don't do Multi-Factor Authentication you shall leave asap for another more secure bank.

A login and password might have been enough in the 1970's.