LetMeEatCake

@LetMeEatCake@lemm.ee

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google witness accidentally blurts out that Apple gets 36% cut of Safari deal⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Paying over a third of all revenue generated from searches on Apple’s platform. That’s incredible. Not a lawyer so I have no idea how this will work out legally, but I have a hard time parsing such an enormous pay-share as anything other than an aggressive attempt to stymie competition. Flat dollar payments are easier to read as less damning, but willingly giving up that much revenue from the source suggests the revenue of the source is no longer the primary target. It’s the competitive advantage of keeping (potential) competitors from accessing that source.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‘Reddit can survive without search’: company reportedly threatens to block Google⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Typical corporate greed in that sense. It’s stupid but I’m not at all surprised by that attitude.

  The part that even if they were morally right in that sense… it’s already too late. This is trying to close the barn door not just after the horse left, but after the horse already ran off and made it two states over. There’s definitely value to LLM in having more data and more up to date data, but reddit is far from the only source and I cannot imagine that they possess enough value there to have any serious leverage.

  Reddit would/will survive being taken out of internet search results. Not without costs though: it will arrest their growth rate (or accelerate shrink rate, as appropriate) and make people less interested in using the site.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Top Apple analyst says MacBook demand has fallen 'significantly'⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  It could be that.

  My first thought is that it might be the post-lockdown tech demand crash hitting Apple later than it hit the rest of the industry. If I remember right Apple was holding on fairly well when the market first started to crash as society shifted into a “post-Covid” mentality, relative to their competition.

  Could be that for whatever reason the drop in demand for Apple was just delayed by about a year.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The FCC is Expected to Propose the Return of Net Neutrality Protections Oct 19th⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  To do that the current party in favor of removing rights needs to be kept out of power long enough that they conclude that removing rights is an electoral loser and changes their ideology accordingly.

  I’m not going to hold my breath.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨YouTube is cracking down on consumers’ favorite loophole - Adblockers⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  That really depends on what their goal is.

  From a business perspective it’s not worth fighting to eliminate 100% of ad block uses. The investment is too high. But if they can eliminate 50% or 70% or 90% of ad block uses with youtube? That could be worth the effort for them. If they can “win” for Chrome and make it a bit annoying for Firefox that would likely be enough for Google to declare it a huge success.

  People willing to really dig all the way in to get a solution they desire are not the norm. Google can be OK with the 1% of us out there as long as we aren’t also making it possible for another huge chunk of people to piggyback off it effortlessly.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Intel might have slipped that Windows 12 is indeed coming next year | Company CFO sees benefits of a coming "Windows Refresh"⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  The very start of that article:

  October 6 Update: A newly published report has clarified that the discovered code bits are not related to Windows “12.” Also, the next-gen Windows version will not require a subscription.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Intel might have slipped that Windows 12 is indeed coming next year | Company CFO sees benefits of a coming "Windows Refresh"⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  The stuff that made Vista shitty to most end users wasn’t truly fixed with W7. For the most part W7 was a marketing refresh after Vista had already been “fixed.” Not saying that it was a small update or anything like that, just that the broken stuff had been more or less fixed.

  Vista’s issues at launch were almost universally a result of the change to the driver model. Hardware manufacturers, despite MS delaying things for them, still did not have good drivers ready at release. They took years after the fact to get good, stable, drivers out there. By the time that happened, Vista’s reputation as a pile of garbage was well cemented. W7 was a good chance to reset that reputation while also implementing other various major upgrades.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Lasers Could Soon Power U.S. Military Bases—And Not Even Jamming Could Stop It⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Unit Ready
  Unit Ready
  Unit Ready

  Construction complete

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft Needs So Much Power to Train AI That It's Considering Small Nuclear Reactors⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  So you’re saying I need to stalk them down and introduce myself? Seems like a lot of work to avoid being incorrect, but since this is the internet I am obliged to do what I must to be correct.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft Needs So Much Power to Train AI That It's Considering Small Nuclear Reactors⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Mine was never stolen, to break your streak. I had one of the little 4GB ones.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Epic Games Cutting 870 Jobs, 16 Percent Of Its Workforce, also selling Bandcamp⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  That and the EGS seem to be where Epic funneled all their profits from the height of Fornite. That neither has worked out puts them on shakier ground. How many billions of dollars has been spent on EGS with it being way behind their revenue targets?

  As things stand, Epic has very little in the way of a next big revenue source when Fortnite starts to fade as something new takes its place. That (probably) isn’t right around the corner but it will happen eventually. Their bet was on running major digital storefronts; that hasn’t worked out. UE will continue to make good money but not anywhere near enough to sustain the company as it is. UE is simply far smaller than something like FN.

  This is likely them realizing this in conjunction with what you said. They need a new big revenue source in the pipeline, since digital storefronts won’t be it. Whatever that next thing is will need lots of money.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan stepping down in March⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Curious why everyone in the comments (as of my own comment) is happy about this?

  Sure, he exudes C-suite personality and doesn’t act like he’s a gamer. But that doesn’t matter. He oversaw Sony’s rise to dominance in the console market. That dominance is built on the foundation of their first party AAA games — which is a less than ten year old change for them. Sony porting their big games to PC was a project that was fully embraced under his leadership.

  Point being, as a gamer it seems like he’s done a fairly decent job. I don’t care how boring his interviews or speeches are or that he looks and acts like he belongs in a board room — they’re all like that anyway even if their public persona says otherwise. I care about games and treatment of consumers.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Backdoored firmware lets China state hackers control routers with “magic packets”⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  People underestimate how much production other countries are capable of. Of course, China does dominate the manufacturing game, especially mass production.

  There’s no shortage of alternatives all the same. Vietnam in particular has been doing quite well taking manufacturing work that companies are moving out of China so as to diversify their production chain. India is rising on that front too. Not to mention that the west truly does far more manufacturing than people give credit for — I’ve found that nearly every category of general goods that I try to buy will have some US made options. That’s not even touching the rest of the west. The big exception being electronics, but those have Vietnam and India as growing alternatives, with Taiwan, Japan, Malaysia, and Singapore all as solid players in that market.

  The overall point being: it’s entirely possible to remove China from the manufacturing chain if there’s enough money behind the push. The US economy is probably large enough to do so with some meaningful struggle. The US and major allies could do so more easily. The difficulty is more political and temporal. Getting everyone on board and committed plus going through with the multi-year long process.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Developers fight back against Unity’s new pricing model⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Unity cares. This whole fuckup is Unity trying to further monetize mobile games and get a stranglehold on mobile game advertising. Console/PC games are just collateral damage.

  If this costs Unity enough money it might work. I’m not holding my breath but stuff like this has a better chance of working than PC indie devs abandoning Unity does.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Wait, is Unity allowed to just change its fee structure like that? | Confusing, contradictory terms of service clauses leave potential opening for lawsuits.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Based on their comment, I don’t think they’re the person deciding what engine is used. They work for someone else that has already selected an engine. They need to keep their skills employable first and foremost here.

  Hopefully Godot takes off a bit here, I think there’s good room for it to advance with indie devs and maybe use that growth to be able to be more of an alternative to UE sometime afterwards.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Apple's new iPhone 15 is an underwhelming 'slap in the face,' say disappointed fans⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m planning to upgrade from a 12 mini, which partly influenced my choice of years too (having seen 3 year data was the main part!). If I had a 12 Pro I think I’d have kept it for an extra year, but the battery is just not sufficient for how my phone use has changed.

  I think furthering your extra details here too is I saw someone point out that one of Apple’s slides for the base 15 was comparing its performance to the base 12. Apple knows how often people upgrade. Picking the 12 as a comparison point wouldn’t be an accident — we’re the single largest target audience for the 15. And in a year, they will in all likelihood compare the 16 to the 13 for the same reason.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Apple's new iPhone 15 is an underwhelming 'slap in the face,' say disappointed fans⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  This year’s new phones are for people that last bought a phone in 2020 or earlier. If the average user is on a three year upgrade cycle (what the data shows as I recall) then you’d expect roughly 1/3 of people to upgrade every year.

  This is better for Apple, as it keeps their revenue more spread out instead of heavily concentrated in year one of a three year cycle.
  This is better for consumers, as it means new features and upgrades are constantly being made. If they want to upgrade early they can, and they’ll get new features even if it’s only been two years.
  This is also better for both Apple and consumers because there’s more opportunities to course-correct or respond to feedback over issues. If Apple only released a phone every other or every three years, it’d take that much longer for the switch to USB-C.

  Just because a new product is launched does not mean you need to buy it. Nvidia released a new GPU last year, but I didn’t buy it even though it’s newer than what I currently have. Arguing that new phones shouldn’t come out each year is like arguing that new cars shouldn’t come out each year. It makes no sense.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨A.I. tools fueled a 34% spike in Microsoft’s water consumption, and one city with its data centers is concerned about the effect on residential supply⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I wonder what the practical implementation would be here. I assume current water infrastructure is two sets of pipes, one for clean water and one for wastewater. Would the solution here be to add a third parallel set of pipes for greywater?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The End of Airbnb in New York⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  This doesn’t need to immediately lower housing costs to have a positive impact.

  Hypothetical numbers… If housing was going to go up 5% in the next year and this change causes that to go down to a 1% increase, it will have made things better. Of course, we’d all like to just go straight to lowered housing costs. But individual changes can still do good and bring us towards that goal without strictly accomplishing it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Senate confirms Biden FCC pick as 5 Republicans join Democrats in 55-43 vote. Anna Gomez confirmation means "FCC can act swiftly to restore net neutrality."⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  That depends on how long FCC is able to keep it implemented for, IMO.

  Something that gets lost a lot in policy discussion is that once you implement a business regulatory policy like this, you create a constituency for that policy. It’s an advantage in preserving hard fought gains but that also means the timelines need to work for it. The problem net neutrality faced the first time is that it was (a) late in Obama’s presidency, (b) held up by court cases, and © reversed early on by Trump’s FCC. There wasn’t much time for the internet business community to build a business model around it.

  If net neutrality is regulated into existence for 5+ years, at that point businesses will have come to rely on its existence. Taking it away will be harder, especially for a big pro-business party if it’s getting an earful from megacorporations that want things to stay as they are.

  Of course, I do agree that legislating it is the most robust option and would be the best course of action. I just don’t see legislation as the only option with any longevity. FCC rules can be that if the timelines work.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Senate confirms Biden FCC pick as 5 Republicans join Democrats in 55-43 vote. Anna Gomez confirmation means "FCC can act swiftly to restore net neutrality."⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Hopefully we’ll see the return of net neutrality. It was implemented the last time that the FCC was 3-2 dem, then it was revoked when that switched to 2-3. This is the first time that dems are in charge since that revocation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mullvad Browser (no TOR, no VPN)⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  First question I had was what it was based on. Based on the FAQ answer of default outgoing connections, it would seem to be Firefox (has two connections to Mozilla for script and domain updates).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Amazon CEO Andy Jassy warns remote workers: 'It's probably not going to work out for you'⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  In other unbiased polling, the wolf spoke to all the other wolves in the pack and they all prefer that the sheep be eaten.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  In this case Mozilla likely has staff and contributors working out of France. Chances are they make money from there too. Mozilla would either need to forfeit the above or comply if the law is implemented.

  Enforcement from decent sized economies can often be as simple as having too much economic power to ignore, which often isn’t that high of a threshold.