schubidubiduba

You severely underestimate the market capture of the Google Play Store, the related network effects, their control over Android OS, and their power and motivation to use all of that to prevent any competition from ever getting traction.

F-Droid is not doing too bad. And yet, the vast majority of people will never ever use it after Google Play implenents their developer verification scare screens.

None of your examples succeeded in an environment that was even remotely as hostile, neither Windows nor Palm could have done what Google does today, without risking a fatal user backlash.

It's one thing for something to be thinkable and imaginable. Of course you can imagine Google Play getting dethroned. It's just so incredibly unlikely to happen without regulatory antitrust intervention that it is pointless to consider seriously.

All of the alternative stores are systematically disadvantaged time and time again due to Google's and Apple's near-absokute control over their respective OS. They are as anti-competitive as they are allowed to be. And the US seems incapable or unwilling to rein them in.

I'm sure Microsoft and Apple could have been able to afford a cheap office given their parents' generous financing.

And, regarding the original topic, we wouldn't have many of these privacy issues if the US had not strategically failed to regulate its obnoxious tech monopolies

I'm sure the employees are (rightfully) worried. However, that does not at all preclude hidden motivations of the CEO behind acquiescing such worries.

It should be noted that GrapheneOS had similar criticisms about almost every smartphone vendor, including Motorola before their upcoming cooperation IIRC.

Most of their criticisms are valid, but they seem to be absolutely unwilling to make any compromise at all.

Not sure if they want to protect their brand, if any of those criticised issues would increase the work needed by them significantly, or why they are like that.

But I would prefer to have a slightly less secure GrapheneOS on many phones, that helps many many more users than just Pixel owners, over the current all or nothing situation.

I am running that on a single 6000 96GB with 4-bit quants for both weights and PLE table. Needs just 32GB RAM and fits snugly into the 96GB VRAM with KV cache equalling ~300k context tokens. Not sure if I quantized the KV

They are certainly trying to

These laws apply to US companies in a more limited way because if we fine them too much they complain to US government that other countries have laws they have to follow. And then the US government intervenes to protect their money and data/intelligence extraction machinery (big tech companies). Usually with at least partial success.

That just sounds like exactly the same as the US companies are doing with their government (trying to get a lot of money out of them)

Corporations being only "groups of people" is kind of wishful thinking. They are one cog in a large machinery that is steered by a few very rich people.

Corporations should not be absolved of criticism. But at the same time it makes little sense to put a hamster in hamster wheel and then blame him for running.

That's because browsers should be free. They are infrastructure, just like bridges. And nobody wants a bridge troll sitting on the single bridge crossing the internet river, demanding money from everyone.

Google is making it much more difficult and annoying to install F-Droid and any apps from there RIGHT NOW.

To the point where it will cease to be a viable way of distribution for any app that wants to attract an audience larger than the handful of power users.

There is no reason at all to defend them.

Not really. Google sets strict boundaries for smartphone brands on what they can do software-wise. For instance, iirc, shipping the phone primarily with a non-Google alternative ROM means you won't get any play services on them, even if you want to have a secondary version with a standard Google ROM.

Google has essentially full control. Because they own security updates. Because banking apps already now often do not work without Google services. Etc. Etc.

It is a monopoly (regarding Android app developers), and is increasingly exploiting that to cash in.

The system in which those companies exist is explicitly designed though to strip away any humanity or moral qualms as much as possible. Dividing it on the shoulders of many people, making nobody in particular feel responsible for the damages themselves. Gaslighting employees into thinking they are doing the "lesser evil" or something. Just following commans of their boss.

I wish we had a system where companies are incentivized to enable interoperability

Do you really believe that there is no racism involved?

Unnecessarily euphemistic descriptions of cruelty should be rightfully called out

Pretty sure the stretview part is still WIP

That has been possible for a long time, by pressing the location button to toggle it. And recently some more edge cases regarding this were fixed.

There is actually work being done to integrate exactly this API into Comaps! Although it will certainly take some more time, especially until these more niche routing features are available

Economics only make the country work when societal costs are not externalised by those that cause them. Which they have been, always, by fossil fuel companies.

It's comforting to believe that actual voters have that kind of political influence over these things, but really it's about a million little talls, primarily driven by lobbyists commanded by big companies

At this point it is neither

Instagram does, in fact, have such a dialog in the EU. Because they are legally required to, like everybody else.

Not sure what is more appalling. Silently injecting javascript tracking, or writing a marketing-speech response like this without any substance at all

You need to differentiate between citing everything, and citing a select few prior works which are integral to your own. For the latter, it is very natural to mention and cite them, unless you have motive not to do so.

Having your public administration be dependent on the whims of a foreign government (and yes, Microsoft is subject to whims of the US government if it comes down to it) is just a bad idea in general. And in particular since 2 years ago.

Then there's the ridiculous license costs that could be saved.

Even with a spec on github, a protocol can still be proprietary, e.g. if companies have to pay to use it legally in products

How does any government make decisions? The workings of the EU are maybe a tad more complex than most nation governments, but it largely functions the same with parliament etc. (because why wouldn't it)

Maybe a special case is the European Council with all the individual nations governments. That makes the system similar to Germany's federalism I suppose

CoMaps does have this exact UX flow actually. Unfortunately it is somewhat flaky and frequently falls back to not doing it.