https://youtu.be/zDrfisZP-Us?t=135

Touché. Gotta admit I didn’t think it through properly, there’s probably a bunch of other things as well. Point is I think I’ve provided the music industry with more money than it strictly deserves.

Especially with the price of concerts these days. Jesus.

Lol, I’m a vinyl nerd, I’ve probably given more money to the music industry than to anything else except food

This is one of the things I love about Linux—press the compose key, tap dash thrice, and voilà—a beautiful em-dash for all to gaze upon.

Easier to let users play music for free when you don’t pay the artists I guess

Same, except I kinda just cut off a bit here and there as adjustments every now and then. So I never really have a new haircut, it stays somewhat stable.

“How do you do, fellow scholars”

Making Megalopolis doesn’t look like most people’s idea of fun as Coppola attempts to corral actors, crew, costumes, locations, lavish sets and special effects all in service of a sprawling sci-fi-meets-ancient-Rome story that no one fully understands. Throw in the fact that the film-maker spent $120m of his own money on the passion project by selling off part of his winemaking business to raise funds, having spent nearly 50 years trying to get it made, and that the production was beset with delays, technical headaches and bust-ups, and you feel this is more than most 83-year-olds should have to go through.

Journalist shocked to discover that world famous director finds movie making to be fun.

But at least he’s self aware! That places him in an intellectual capacity at least somewhere between a giant panda and a house mouse. Not bad for a troll.

respect, kindness and have principles that I apply uniformly

Not actions that he applies uniformly. Obviously you meet people with different actions. But you can remain constant in principles.

Its possible to respect both your mother and your partner, yet only have sex with one of them. Weirdo.

I would be very happy if anyone could explain to me in a simple and coherent way why I, as a normal user who am aware of what I am doing on my device and am not targeted by any group that’s out to get me, would need a “hardened malloc”, “secure app spawning”, “vanadium browser and webview”, or a “hardened PDF viewer”. The last of these four is the only thing that means anything to me, and it sounds dumb. Yeah, I know PDFs can be dangerous if you open random shit, but come on.

If I run Waydroid it’s only to get my banking app (trusted source) and Whatsapp (not a trusted source but not directly malware either) working. I hardly need their hardened PDF reader.

I guess if Google closes down AOSP it would get forked, and the fork would probably be a separate thing from the current Android distributions. So that the landscape would continue to look a bit like today, except that AOSP would be an independent thing.

Then I guess it’s possible that Google would seek to make android apps incompatible, gradually making the whole thing kinda pointless. I can’t say I’m using Android for the great UX - I’m using it because it supports a few apps I continue to be forced to use. If I can’t use them on Android any more I’m switching to Ubuntu Touch or PostmarketOS in a heartbeat.

I guess the parts of the fediverse that allows adult content. There’s a lot of people on the fediverse dedicated to supporting sex workers and stuff like that. None of these sites or users are in a position to sue the UK though, I’m just giving a pedantic answer to your question.

Now 4chan becomes the face of resistance to this shit, and people will think it is only being opposed by a bunch of deplorable incels. It delegitimizes the entire opposition - you can’t speak out against it any more without being associated with 4chan and whatever the fuck kiwi farm is.

At least that’s the risk, and that’s why I wish these sites would go die in a hole rather than involve themselves with things I care about.

Everything takes a long time, but things are happening. If you search for the terms “fine apple EU” or “fine apple EU” in your search engine of choice you’ll see there’s quite a lot going on.

I have some personal friends who are working with this stuff for the European Commission. It basically takes a long time to build a case against tech giants, and then once the Commission fines them these fines will be appealed in the EU court system, which will take even more years to process.

It’s annoying that there’s not a magic switch to flick to make Google and Apple comply with EU law, but that’s the world we live in. If the EU just banned Google and/or Apple it would probably backlash tremendously (never mind that I doubt they have the authority to do so even if they wanted), so they have to move a bit slowly. :)

You can’t make laws for every single possible future reality. We need courts that uphold laws even when billionaires try to dodge them using shady techniques. The problem is that big tech often gets away with murder because they can afford expensive lawyers. Especially in the US laws are essentially meaningless for the rich. This is not so much the case in Europe.

I have heard some positive signals from the European Court of Justice that they are taking the challenge from big tech seriously and that they are going the extra miles to understand these issues. If you’re particularly interested, many judges talk about this in the Borderlines podcast series by Berkley law. But it gets really dry really fast haha.

I don’t believe in signing authorities. It’s not effective - Google can’t even keep malware off the play store - and it’s an authoritarian move. Hell, most apps in the play store spy on their users, profiling usage to sell to advertisers along with ID codes that makes it possible to combine data between apps and build detailed profiles of individuals. The problem is not apps that are not signed - the problem is the whole economy of apps that work as Google intend them to.

Also, it’s a basic question of rights. It’s my phone, I bought the hardware, I own it, I install whatever the fuck I want on it.

Not unabated. They are stuck trying to find new loopholes to not comply, which are then struck down. It’s a cat and mouse game, and they think they can get away with it because they have the most expensive lawyers.

Again, enforcement is the challenge, not the laws themselves.

I have no idea as I don’t follow apple much, but I am aware that they are constantly trying to find ways to avoid complying with EU law, and that it is often rapidly struck down.

What you’re describing here is not a failure of the law, but Apple trying real hard to find creative ways not to comply with it. To me it only shows that they are desperate, and that EU law is in fact getting to them.

If they keep at it it’ll eventually end up in court, the case will take a couple of years, and they’ll be slammed with a fine and asked to get their shit together.

Imagine all the people

Does the law demand unsigned software?

The answer is no. It’s not phrased like that. But it’s all about ensuring free competition in digital markets. The sole purpose of Google’s move here is to hinder competition in their own digital market, and to keep control over it.

So the law does not have a paragraph stating that “unsigned software must be allowed”, but it has a bunch of other paragraphs that can be used to strike down on monopolistic behaviour.

Google are aware of the law, and will try to find a loophole by designing a system that they believe technically complies with it. Then someone will sue them, it will end up in the European court, and the European court will in all likelyhood tell Google to get fucked.

It seems american tech companies think they can get away with anything because that’s how it works in the US. We are repeatedly seeing that this is not how it works in Europe: the Court of Justice tends to care deeply about the intention of the law, as well as the perceived consequences of their rulings. And they don’t seem to care all that much about American capitalists.

But to answer your question very simply: No, it doesn’t. But thankfully that doesn’t matter at all.