If Notepad is getting AI text editing then it’s as good as dead too.

The article we’re talking about?

Those dropped from the maintainer list

Assuming I accept your premise, the premise of the article is that the actions are not being done by the company.

The key point is that Musk is at fault, not his company.

You can’t just hide behind “the company” and do whatever you want.

At some point, as the EU is discussing, the individual is at fault.

So a company provides infinite protection?

“I didn’t murder that man, the company did.”

“The company paid individual X to murder them, not me.”

No, that’s ridiculous.

There is a line you can cross. Musk has crossed that line. Is it exactly written, if your name is Elon Musk and you own companies X, Y, & Z, and you perform actions A, B, C, you I’ll be fined in this exact way? No. There is a grey area, and a group within the EU is allowed to make a more specific determination.

And do you know who agreed to these rules? Elon Musk. He chose to do business in the EU. He agreed to their rules.

Actions you don’t like aren’t corrupt.

Actions Elon doesn’t like aren’t corrupt.

In fact arguably Elon is the corrupt individual in this case and the EU is simply applying the law to the corrupt individual.

But who determines

How about a governing body with systems of checks and balances? You’re pretending that laws are just out there enforcing themselves. The EU isn’t just some dude with a vendetta. It’s a large collection of people making decisions.

And in fact as a business, in order to do business in the EU, you’ve agreed that the EU has the ability to make decisions like this.

To clarify the cost of creating an LLC is a hundred bucks more or less depending on the jurisdiction. So Elon should be allowed to create “Musk Corp Oct2024 LLC” and then say or do anything under the guise of Musk Corp Oct2024 LLC, then if he’s sued or fined just declare bankruptcy and create “Musk Corp Nov2024 LLC” and do whatever he wants?

At some point you have to recognize the individual is at fault. You can’t just hide behind “Oh that wasn’t me, that was the company” or " That was Musk of SpaceX having an opinion of Musk of Tesla, they are different entities."

If someone is attempting to be genuine and truthful when it comes to personal statements, fine, we can consider the protections. But if someone is flagrant and malicious then those protections no longer apply.

Think of it as an iceberg & Chrome users as a boat.

Assuming no changes, this is landing in Chrome Canary now, so we’re watching the Chrome Canary boat hit the iceberg. The Chrome Beta boat is going to hit in a few weeks. Finally the Chrome Stable boat is scheduled to hit in mid November.

Now Google may choose to hold back actually enabling this flag immediately. It wouldn’t be the first delay. But likely in mid November is when all the posts will start to appear of people asking where their ad blocker went.

(Although I’m guessing it actually is delayed until after the holidays and in the new year, but that’s just wild speculation.)

Sure, but it’s also like, if you’re stepping away from your laptop for a few minutes should you lock the screen or shut it down completely.

The most secure option is to shut it down completely, but also it’s fine to just lock your screen.

If you’ve already got a VPN and it’s as easy as locking your screen to enable, go for it, use it. But if you don’t, you don’t need to go out and get one. You’ll generally be ok without one.

Do you feel the same way about Mastadon?

Yes.

I’m not sure that’s my reason, but I’ve never understood Twitter/Mastodon. It’s just shouting into a void.

On the one hand I agree, but also just because it can be fixed over the air doesn’t mean it’s not a major problem.

Plus imagine if a car manufacturer put VERY shitty software into their cars. If a manufacturer has 100 recalls a year, I want to know why. If they have 1, I want to know why.

Just because they are more easily fixed, doesn’t mean the recall isn’t important.

Yes but PROVE IT. Define what wrong they did. That’s my point.

Take a look at the recent monopoly trial, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/05/technology/google-antitrust-ruling.html

They claim that spending $18 billion per year to be the default search engine makes them monopolistic. That’s it? That’s all they got?

So the result will be Google stops paying $18 billion and device/browser manufacturers have to put up a Browser Choice dot EU type option.

Go back 10 years and put that law in place. AFAIK Apple has always defaulted to Google. Samsung probably would have sold out to Bing to be the default (although in this case Bing wouldn’t reach a monopoly, so I guess that’s ok for some reason).

I’m not saying paying to be the default didn’t help, but is that the reason they have 90% of the searches? No.

Did they do some else? Maybe. Someone should prove it and we can have an actual change.

Being a monopoly and engaging in negative monopolistic behaviors are also different things.

For example if the only two burger joints in the world were McDonalds and Burger King, and Burger King decided to replace their burgers with literal shit, actual human and animal feces, would McDonalds be a (I hope and assume) monopoly? Probably. Are they engaging in negative monopolistic behavior? Not necessarily.

Obviously, as a quick aside, fuck Google for their shitty software decisions, their cancelling of great products and their enshittification of a majority of their applications.

However simply having 90% of the market does not technically mean they have done anything wrong. You can’t say they have 90% of the market therefore they have done something illegal or have abused being a monopoly.

You have to be specific. You have to call out payment to companies to be the default. But even that isn’t quite enough because companies sold access. Can a company be at fault for buying access as the default? It was for sale. It’s a weak argument, or at least an incomplete one. You need to prove they abused their position. Or you need to make a case that the industry they are in requires additional regulation as a whole.

I say this because although it sounds like I’m defending Google I’m not. There is a difference between something feeling illegal and something being illegal. Technically, although a recent judgement would disagree with me, they haven’t done anything wrong. It feels like they have. I agree it feels like they have. But they haven’t (or there are further pending results which will prove otherwise).

A feel a little bad for the Logitech CEO here. It was basically a softball question, do you ever think you’ll have software subscriptions, which is a common thing, and he answered “Yeah, that’s possible.”

Obviously for a mouse it doesn’t really make sense, but paid software updates are common in the industry so who knows.

Obviously it’s stupid, but it’s funny to see it play out.

Some players in the ecosystem have not been transparent with their use of Reddit’s content, and in those instances, we block access to protect Reddit content and user privacy.

Aka “Fuck you, pay me”, at least Reddit is transparent that data is for sale and they think they own it.

They killed support for the first gen Chromecast and the YouTube “app” has been broken for 3+ years. They’ll just stop supporting it one day and you’ll have to buy a new one.

“the annoying webp” AFAIK is the same problem as JPEG XL, apps just didn’t implement it.

It is supported in browsers, which is good, but not in third party apps. AVIF or whatever is going to have the same problem.

To frame this question differently, why is Apple able to sell default access on their devices?

Quick math shows Apple makes ~100 Billion per year. The article states Google pays ~20 Billion to Apple per year. That’s a significant value to Apple.

I’m not necessarily disagreeing with the decision, but curious how Google paying Apple is a monopoly, but Apple offering search to the highest bidder isn’t also a problem (or maybe it is).

As another example, how well did the EU browser choice ruling have on consumers choosing a browser.

Obviously I don’t know what the details of he suit against Disney but the truth is Disney fucked up and they knew it.

Disney tried to gain a few extra bucks at the cost of a legal battle with Johansson. If Disney won it would have been a clear signal that Disney is willing to screw over top talent for a few million dollars.

Not to compare “Black Widow” to “Endgame”, but that’s squabbling over millions when billions are at stake.

Looking at someone like Johansson that’s squabbling over millions when tens of hundreds millions are at stake. Contracts with top talent now take longer, top talent is a little less likely to work with Disney.

It all but guaranteed a loss for Disney.

The settlement was Disney’s way of saying “we fucked up”, and truth be told was probably at least partially responsible for Bob Chapek being replaced as CEO.

Layoffs also shake every other employee in an immeasurable way.

Even if you didn’t lay someone off they may now change their priorities. Maybe they focus on the people pleaser tasks. Maybe they focus more on what is good for them to keep their job vs what is good for the company.

Layoffs should be a last resort but tech companies are just playing follow the leader right now. In a few years we’ll see memoirs and books stating “in hindsight we may have made a mistake, but we made the best decision we could with the information we had at the time”, it’s all absolutely bullshit. This is all being done for a temporary stock boost.