fblp

Is there any way i can sponsor or support this! So needed! Thank you!

Update: fire has been contained and their plan is to let it burn down.

I'd imagine regulations requiring better fire control may follow. Toxic plumes of smoke impacting residents for 100s of miles won't be acceptable.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-30/tesla-battery-fire-mo...

"it seems like" https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=1&prefix=false&qu...

It seems like all indexed results for "one does not simply" are over 5 years old

This is a great example of a non-profit using data to make an impact. Let's support them hn fam! https://act.oceana.org/page/73742/donate/

I think it's worth noting that united received $5 billion dollars in federal aid last year. I wonder if they'll pay any of it back or if the surplus this year is going into purchases like this?

Great analysis, thank you!

Congrats zulip team! A very inspiring open source product.

I would pay for a hosted version and would love to donate to this in general.

Great response. Thank you!

I wonder what the internal discussion at Apple was about whether or not to include a loophole in the product.

The fact that fixit has gone out and shown how you can add a loophole rather than wasting $13 on an accessory is a bit of a facepalm moment.

Hey sorry i don't see how stating these mechanisms are a concern = calling on them to give up control (or "threatening banishment") per your comments. Your comments seem presumptive given the actual content of the preliminary report.

In what part of the report do they call on Google and Apple to "give up control over the mechanisms which have allowed them to clamp down on malicious financial activity including some (but not all) subscription traps and scams." ?

It's important to note that competition law is broader and more broadly enforced than antitrust law in the US. A particularly relevant area for these issues is "Section 46 - Misuse of market power". This is distinct from laws in relation to price fixing, monopolies and merges. The ACCC (and possibly the later, Australian courts) will be trying to answer if Google / Apple are misusing market power as part of this inquiry.

One area that is particularly ripe is "the market for in-app payments". The ACCC would be looking whether it can establish whether under s46: a) does the company have substantial market power? and b) is it engaging in conduct for the purpose, effect or likely effect of substantially lessening competition? More info is available here: https://www.accc.gov.au/business/anti-competitive-behaviour/...

s46 - Misuse of market power was revised for easier enforcement/litigate under in 2017, and you can see a list of active cases include a case from Epic Games vs Apple and Unlockd Ltd v Google (Filed in Australia): https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=34d307e2-1d63... It is a BIG deal for a private company to take action under s46. There used to only be a couple cases every decade.

It is possible that an undertaking or court-order that could emerge out of this inquiry would require Google/Apple to make it easier for apps to accept in-app payments from providers other than Google and Apple in Australia.

As far as I know, the USA does not have an equivalent area of law, and if it does, it certainly is not enforced.

*disclosure: I worked at the ACCC 2008-2011 and these are opinions of my own.

This is an interim report. It's okay for it to be proposing multiple directions that benefit consumers and competition.

I know, but i don't know the (academic research on it)

I think you can improve grit or conciensiousness practicing "not-doing". I have no research to support this, but if i think of something i find meditating or slowing down can help when I'm facing adversity.

Hi there! 1) I think you may have missed this from my post? > "The ACL currently limits penalties to $10 million per contravention for corporations. Only parliament can increase that limit by amending legislation." The ACCC can't give itself more teeth, your elected representatives can.

2) Also, as far as I know Australia is the only country that has a regulator that has gone to court and won against Apple (A few foreign regulators have fined them or made decisions without going to court).

Would you rather an agency with "no teeth" or one that doesn't bite at all? :)

3) I want to highlight that "I would be embarrassed to admit I had ever worked for ACCC in any capacity." felt condescending. I see that tone in comments you've made towards others on HN. I'd kindly challenge you to think about how that contributes the community, and what draws you to making dismissive comments rather than kind ones. It personally had the opposite affect for me - reminding me how much I enjoyed that job and the work I did there.

I worked for the ACCC from 2008 and 2011. I'd like to share some more context on the ACCC and Australian legal system that may be of interest to HN readers.

The ACCC is an independent authority empowered to enforce Australian Consumer Law (ACL) which contains consumer protection, completion product safety, anti-trust (competition) and other adjacent laws. It is most similar to the Federal Trade Commission in the US.

The ACCC leadership are commissioners who are appointed based on input of federal and state governments. The appointments tend to be "non-partisan" with the current chair leading the organization for 10 years (with 3 term renewals under multiple governments).

The ACCC has been taking action against Google since mid 2000s. The last case against Google that they won was in relation to consumers being misled about what were advertisements vs native results. [1]

The main provision of law protecting Australian consumers that is invoked in these cases is s18 of Australian consumer law that states: "A person [or entity] must not, in trade or commerce, engage in conduct that is misleading or deceptive or is likely to mislead or deceive."

Laws with this wording have existed in Australia since the the 1970s.

This law is enforced widely and there are also state agencies that enforce similar laws. All kinds of industries have received enforcement action ranging from retailers to supplement providers. As far as i know it's one of the but most broadly enforced consumer protection laws in any country.

The ACCC won a case against Apple under this same law in 2018 for misleading consumers about their warranty rights after third party repairs were done. Apple was fined $9 million dollars.

The action against Apple included 254 complaints from customers impacted. You can literally call or email the ACCC to log a complaint about any business and it will use this complaints to identify patterns of misconduct thst then enforce enforcement priorities.

The ACL currently limits penalties to $10 million per contravention for corporations. Only parliament can increase thst limit amending legislation. Individuals can also be fiend up to $5million.

Litigation is typically the last resort, and businesses have many oppurtunities to resolve or settle the matter. I am not in any way privy to this case, but typically a remediation action the ACCC seeks is notifying and posting notices that it engaged in misleading conduct, sometimes with a way for the consumer to seek a remedy. It's likely Google was not willing to do this without a fight.

Individuals and businesses can also privately take action if they were misled or deceived.

The Australian Court system that enforced this law is also relatively non-partisan. The australian government and judicial system was formed relatively recently - in the late 1800s and there was a strong intention to prevent political patronage in tbe public service and court system. [2]

Australian Consumer law also has other specific protections that i like such as requiring businesses to make the price the consumer has to pay most prominent (as opposed to making the price exclusive of taxes and fees most prominent).

The ACCC has just under 1000 employees and a small team would have worked on this case with support from outside lawyers. Congrats to them and hopefully this will encourage Google and other vendors to be more thoughtful about their data collection opt-ins.

[1] https://www.australiancontractlaw.com/cases/google.html

[2] https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Depart...

There are assumptions about how the bounty could work here. What if the bounty is $1000/mo for 12 months? What if it is split amongst contributors in a pre - determined way?

As someone who doesn't have enough technical expertise to build the features in open source projects an active donor to projects I support this kind of idea. I wouldn't call it a bounty though, more like gofundme for certain features. In some cases i'd pay $1000+ for some features to be built, and ideally others would join me.

Here's an example of a feature I'd want to financially contribute to that has a lot of support: https://github.com/RocketChat/Rocket.Chat/issues/2049

From my perspective it is the killer feature that enables me to switch from slack, saving my business hundreds of dollars a month. I can't just "hire a developer to do it" - the best deal would be if one of the existing contributors did it.

Also, some open sources struggle with funding and priorities - I'm sure there's features out there where the community would commit tens of thousands of dollars (Kickstarter style)

Great summary, thank you for sharing!

Great quote, thank you for sharing.

Hi Josh, thank you for taking questions. Can you speak to the financial distribution of coins/funds for the employees and foundation?

There is only a "contact us" link on that page.

Some videos of boats celebrating by honking their horns here. You can't really see the boat moving, but I hope someone's filmed a timelapse!

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/suez-ca...

You can donate to the trust for the Legal Defense of Steven Donziger here: https://www.donzigerdefense.com/

This is interesting. I can't think of a comparison for foreign currency where the seller would reserve the right to refund you with an alternate currency (such as USD), rather than the currency you paid in.

However, often brands like Apple incorporate currency risk into their higher foreign prices.

Hey glad to see some more established airtable competition, however one thing you've copied from airtable which you should differentiate on is pricing of storing data. Like airtable, your most expensive self-service (non-enteprise) plan has a cap of 1 year of historic data storage. This is pathetic when compared to basically every other collaboration tool ranging from Google sheets to Trello.

Sure, charge users for gb of storage, or data transfer - but arbitrarily deleting (or hiding) data that is more than 52 weeks old from customers who are paying you $18/user/month feels very hostile.

Some background on their crowd funding is here. Looks lkke they raised 20k last year. Scrappy! https://ioby.org/project/help-nyc-drivers-launch-platform-co...