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Captainant

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by Captainant

  1. Gotta say, invoking lebensraum as a national policy for Israel was not on my bingo card. "Voluntary emigration" (the phrase quoted in the linked AP article) isn't really voluntary when it's that or getting JDAM'd https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-cabinet-approves-expansion-gaza-offensive-broadcaster-kan-reports-2025-05-05/ The decision to expand the operation was immediately hailed by Israeli government hardliners who have long pressed for a full takeover of the Gaza Strip by Israel and a permanent displacement of the population, along the lines of the "Riviera" plans outlined by Trump in February. "We are finally going to conquer Gaza. We are no longer afraid of the word 'occupation'," Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich told a pro-settler conference in an online discussion.
  2. Denying Ukraine the aid already promised and paid for has some new details... https://www.reuters.com/world/us/order-by-hegseth-cancel-ukraine-weapons-caught-white-house-off-guard-2025-05-06/
  3. I mean, it generally connotes being at worst an outright lie or at best a dishonest representation of the facts. Neither of those is great, imo
  4. Apple had policies such that they would not approve updates for an app if it included any messaging informing users they could go to a different platform to make a purchase. This isn't about their appstore rake at time of app purchase and download. This is about how they're actively preventing developers from even communicating to their customers that they can pay for digital content in a different way if they choose to. Mind you, that digital content isn't even served by Apple's servers. That cost to service the digital content is covered by the developers, not Apple. So WHAT is that "proprietary infrastructure"? Once an app package is downloaded from the app store, it's not an Apple-owned device spending the computing cycles - it's a personally owned device. Is apple entitled to a peice of EVERYTHING that occurs on an iPhone because the iPhone itself is "propriety infrastructure - backed by intellectual property"? It certainly doesn't work that way in literally any other personal computing paradigm. I think you're jumping past this pesky little technical detail, because moots Apple's whole claim.
  5. It really is wild how the Chris Rufo thread here on Surly was a bellweather for national politics yet to come.
  6. https://www.npca.org/articles/8495-president-trump-s-proposed-budget-could-decimate-at-least-350-national-park Goddamn I'm so pissed my daughter won't get to see National Parks like I've been able to.
  7. Realistically speaking though - what is the value that Apple is bringing to customers by forcing payments to go through their payment system instead of directly to the vendor they're dealing with? They seek rents on all digital good sold, even if they're not the ones paying for the bandwidth. An old example was how you couldn't buy a Netflix membership on your iPhone, but you could sign into an existing membership. Apple supplies ZERO utility to Netflix customers, aside from happening to be the device you're using to access a 3rd party service. In this particular lawsuit and legal action, Apple LIED ON THE WITNESS STAND IN COURT about their policies in place and the court was able to identify and record the internal policy Apple had through contemporaneous business doucmentation. From the CBS news article that I guess you didn't read: "In stark contrast to Apple's initial in-court testimony, contemporaneous business documents reveal that Apple knew exactly what it was doing and at every turn chose the most anticompetitive option," the judge wrote on Wednesday. She accused Apple's vice-president of finance Alex Roman of "outright" lying under oath. Since the injuction in 2021, only thirty four of Apple's 136,000 developers have even APPLIED to be able to process their own payments. The judge agreed that contemporaneous business documents show definitively that Apple actively worked to prevent developers from directing customers to their own websites or payment platforms. edit: if you lie to the court, you're gonna incur some adverse consequences and punitive response from the court. I don't see how they're gonna be able to make an argument and be taken seriously when they've already perjured themselves as a corporate entity
  8. The Houston Chronicle just won a Pulitzer, here's some more of their excellent reporting: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/education/article/dps-troopers-allegedly-questioned-palestine-20310952.php State troopers apparently questioned their ability to arrest students during a pro-Palestinian protest last spring at the University of Texas at Austin, according to an audio recording obtained by the Houston Chronicle. ... The audio recording appears to take place as some students found themselves boxed in by officers on a major pedestrian area on campus, the plaintiffs' attorneys said in the lawsuit. They identified the speakers as troopers from the Texas Department of Public Safety. “What are they doing illegal?” a first unidentified law enforcement official said in the recording. “What if this was after a game or something? … We do this after the Aggie games?” A second trooper responded, "No." “The ones on the side here are students, they’re just watching," one of the troopers said. "These back here are the protesters they want gone.” Much of the recording then becomes inaudible against the backdrop of students. Eventually, a third trooper indicated they should begin making arrests. “Alright, let’s s--- or get off the pot," he said. “We’re going to do it so they won’t get agitated,” a fourth trooper said. “Which one are we going after?” the third trooper said. "I don’t know. Gray shirt, long hair."
  9. I mean, she's got em on paper saying they don't intend to abide the court order. That's pretty black and white, or at least it used to be
  10. Apple is gonna get its peepee whacked pretty hardfor acting in bad faith with the courts. Their business model relies on the revenue stream from the captive transaction processing on their platform, it'll be interesting to see how this shakes out through appeals https://www.cbsnews.com/news/apple-violated-injunction-antitrust-case-judge-finds/ Although Gonzalez Rogers had rejected the monopoly claims, she ordered Apple to lower the barriers protecting its previously exclusive payment system for in-app digital transactions and allow developers to display links to alternative options. The Supreme Court rejected Apple's appeal in the case in January 2024. "In stark contrast to Apple's initial in-court testimony, contemporaneous business documents reveal that Apple knew exactly what it was doing and at every turn chose the most anticompetitive option," the judge wrote on Wednesday. She accused Apple's vice-president of finance Alex Roman of "outright" lying under oath. "Internally, (longtime Apple executive) Phillip Schiller had advocated that Apple comply with the injunction, but (CEO) Tim Cook ignored Schiller and instead allowed Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri and his finance team to convince him otherwise. Cook chose poorly," Gonzalez Rogers wrote. The judge referred the matter to the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California to investigate whether criminal contempt proceedings are appropriate.
  11. This is predatory against idiot executives who don't know how genAI technology works but they're staking their market positioning on it
  12. Along those lines, Sabrina Carpenter showing up in ads with the Empire is pretty funny
  13. The supreme Court that presides over our entire court system was certainly receptive to Trump's bullshit. They made him untouchable
  14. It's two parts: antitrust suit is reactive, and the data privacy is proactive
  15. True to form, DOJ is about a decade late to the party to prevent the actual market harms. Much of the erosion of our fundamental privacy has been driven by their need for user data to enable finer and finer microtargetted ads. Goddamn we need a US GDPR so badly
  16. And yet, the entire legal profession takes him at his world and treat his words as serious, even when it's clearly a lie. Thats how we got into this mess
  17. He's just gonna keep repeating #bothsides like he did in the article
  18. Man your dad is missing out if he doesn't like Halal Guys. A gyro sandwich with jalapenos added is 10/10
  19. Moving this to a different thread - crazy timing but Jeff Gerstmann just happened to already have a podcast lined up with VGBees. He talks pretty in depth about what's going on, from his perspective.
  20. I wonder if she's going to end up being a sleeper agent, along the lines of Ysanne Isard's antics in the old Rogue Squadron book series. Thematically it would line up, right down to a loved one being forced to put them down
  21. Not sure if serious - Ryan Hall (yall) would be a semi-competent hire, so I doubt you
  22. Journalism was co-opted by the infinite growth movement. It doesn't lend itself well to a financialized model, there's better profit margins in just advertising without actually doing any original journalism. When Sinclair bought up all the terrestrial TV news channels a decade ago or so it was the harbinger of what was to come: consolidation and profit extraction in journalism in general. Just as happens in every other industry. Gotta pay back those investors that bought your company and then transfered that debt into the company they bought!
  23. Jeff Gertsmann is still a threat. And Jeff Grubb too. It sucks that for all his effort the corporate overseers still killed GB. Jan Ochoa is an absolute badass too, I hope he lands on his feet. Giant bomb really had something special with their live studio production quality and the level the write and discussed at. There's still Nextlander and reMap with a bunch of the OGs that left over the years, if you yearn for GenX and millennial editorial on games
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