From what I read, the app worked fine, but the backend didn't. They switched from a testing backend controlled by the devs that worked to one controlled by the DNC which rejected data sent to it.
So the problem came with the interfacing of the two : it wasn't tested enough. The stories I read didn't say which side generated wrong data or failed to parse valid data.

Also, it's not a voting app, it's just a tool supposed to help count the votes, no? The real question to push would be why the counting system and the fallbacks failed. The app is just the sensational part that people like to bash.

In practice, you'll most likely hit the IP address of a popular CDN or cloud service, so no one can know which website you visited from that.

But the hostname of the website you try to reach with HTTPS isn't encrypted, so it's possible with deep packet inspection to figure out what you requested. For this, ESNI (Encrypted SNI) is a solution being deployed making all your communications private. See https://blog.cloudflare.com/en... for more information.

It's not using Electron, it's using CEF, which is another library derived from the Chromium code base.

Browsers don't use resources. Websites do.
Some of them will continuously load data in the background and never make it available for the browser to free.

And boom, you get a new user blaming the browser.

Payments for streaming (or radio) are quite different from classic sales. It's easy to send the money for each track or album sold to the account who put it up for sale with the proper reporting, and they handle the payments later on. But for streaming, quite often, payments are done to national companies that are supposed to redistribute the money properly. But if the metadata is wrong, then it will not happen.

But yes, the publisher puts the music on the streaming services and they are responsible to ensure the metadata is correct, or to fix it if necessary. If artists have issues, they need to turn to them.

I worked in the music industry. Similar constraints there which were severely limiting too.

Like the one where we had to protect our binaries with an obfuscating compiler on desktop. One that would create bad code from time to time, crash on some constructs and not support "modern" (aka C++11) standards. It took a while to get that changed. But on iOS? Everything was fine and dandy.

You didn't read the article.

The problem isn't doing a website and host your own payment platform for your service, but it is that Apple prevents any company from contacting their own customers about payment options that are not linked to Apple.

Even if you create a Free Spotify account, on another platform, use it on your iDevice, then Apple can tell you that you have breached the developer terms of service if you contact them with an email saying they could upgrade to premium on your website.

The margins in this business are thin, and honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple made more money from the 30% tax (all expenses accounted for) than Spotify providing the actual service. And that's with Apple providing their own competing service too which isn't limited to those ridiculous rules (and honestly would be surprising if they made a profit too, but that's not an issue for Apple to operate this at loss anyway).

If a merchant is paying 5%, then they should change payment processor.
I help some small association from time to time, we have a card reader and the entry level fee is only 1.85%. It's probably lowered if you have high volumes of payments too.

And that's 1.85% to get all the services, including getting a certified "cash" register for the tax agencies in the country. No real cash in there, but that's the terminology of payment devices, even if it's just a small add-on to a phone.

Cash is still useful in Sweden!

Have you ever lost or had your wallet stolen? You need to save a little bit of cash for expenses just in case.
Happened to me a couple years ago, I had my card skimmed just before Midsommar. The new one obviously didn't arrive in 2 working days and I needed to buy all the celebration necessities.

More forced royalties makes the services more expensive to run, which in turn is making the subscription more expensive.

A more expensive subscription means lots of users will drop out and go back to pirating, meaning absolutely no revenue from them for copyright owners. Models probably predict that more people would leave than is offset by the increased revenue.

The notable difference between Apple Music and the other services is that Apple never cared for it and can afford to run it at a loss.

There are file managers with recent Android.
Maybe older ones as well, it probably depends on the phone maker too (my Galaxy S4 had one bundled from Samsung for example).

Admittedly, the issue with large APKs is that you need double the space. First to download and then to install the files. That's why so many games are using installers (though usually done downloading private files in the main game, not as a separate app).

There's absolutely nothing new about Vulkan though.

We have something similar in France. It's about 20 euros per month to get a card that let's you go to the cinema as many times as you want. There's also a 30 euros one for the card holder and a friend (works great for couples).

Since they started doing that, they fill all the screenings, sell so much more popcorn that they never really considered removing them. It is worth it for them!

I'm surprised by the low price though, how do they manage with less than $10 per month? From experience, going to the theater once always costed more!

I'm guessing that it's easier to update an "external" app than getting all the phone providers to update their OS in time when making changes.

Pretty much why Chrome on Android is a separate app too.

You can also use NFC enabled Yubikeys, which are available.