You need photo ID to verify your age to access "adult content" (which definition is ever-expanding outside the boundaries of smut) and now police begin using this new pool of facial data to surveil the public en masse.
They didn't even wait half a year to show their hand. That's how confident they are.
Been using Firefox since release. It's not as good as it once was, but then, nothing is anymore, on the internet. Still recommend it for every reason in this article. Honestly just UBo is enough of a reason.
They actually like being featured on Google News and Facebook's news sections. They just want to be paid for it, or else force the tech giants to redirect traffic to them, directly. But as long as Google et.al. have the ability to walk away from the deal, they will exercise it, since they know the newspaper will feel more pain from the separation than the they will.
It's sad, but this isn't going to work. Facebook and Google don't need these newspapers. The newspapers need Facebook and Google. We already saw a law exactly like this one in Spain, after the EU tried protecting its local news outlets from Google, and the result was Google calling the bluff and simply pulling every newspaper in Spain from Google News until the nation capitulated and created exemption rules that essentially returned everything to status quo ante.
These kinds of laws are written by people who clearly do not understand the relationship between the tech giants and traditional media, and have no comprehension of who holds the leverage.
On a related note, Australia successfully pass a similar law that forced Facebook and Google to re-negotiate with newspapers and sign a deal. I don't know whether it was actually a good law or not, but it seems to me like there could be different approaches to making such laws and some might work and some won't.
I haven't gotten round to reading that article in detail yet, but I find him pretty insightful when it comes to the harmful impacts of market consolidation.
It's why I despair of smart phones dictating the course of the internet. These are platforms that are locked down to a degree that slowly strangles the rest of the internet. It's censorship not through the heavy hand of the state arresting people and confiscating servers, but creating a climate of fear and uncertainty over ruinous lawsuits and chasing advertising dollars. The censorship effect is obfuscated through so many apparently voluntary and open transactions that the public at large has no idea it is happening. It's extremely hard to talk about this with people in my life without sounding like a paranoid conspiracy theorist.
It's not that they're "anti-porn" it's that they're anti-risk. Porn sites have been getting in increasingly hot water for years for a variety of legal reasons, and all it takes is one major lawsuit against them trickling up to the payment process for enabling harm to set legal precedent and then they're getting sued for anything and everything on the basis they are enabling almost all kinds of web content.
It's an understandable fear. It's just a sad fact that they are an effective global duopoly so if they chicken out there's no alternative for people to turn to. More competition would help with this, but the threat of the lawsuit floodgates opening would still be there and create a chilling effect on payment processing. That has to be handled by legislation, but that's going down a whole other thorny road with many possible bad outcomes. The legislation we get may introduce new problems even worse than the ones it attempted to solve.
But I think it's still worth trying. The present situation is very bad for the future of an open internet.
Valve's issue is pretty much just a lack of serious competition against Steam. They do occasionally put out something new, just at their own pace. They aren't in any rush since their core business is virtually unassailable at this point.
They have less to fear about "professional executives" worming their way in because Valve is not a publicly traded company, unlike the other examples you mentioned. It's private, Gabe Newell calls the shots at the end of the day. There's no real avenue for people to buy their way onto a board of directors and exert influence on the company from on high, or oust its historic leadership. Valve's pretty well protected from that. But it can't protect itself from sloth induced by a lack of competition.
Realistically how does this end though? Unless technology is created to immortalize Gabe in a machine, at some point he presumably will want to sell or die.
Does it just become a bozo filled public-company at that point, chasing quarterly numbers? I think it's the biggest risk to Valve, speaking as a customer who loves their products/services today.
I would not at all be surprised to see it end in a Microsoft acquisition or joint venture of some kind, given their current appetites.
I’m not ruling that out - naming a successor is much the same as selling - ownership still transfers to an entity which at this time is unknown. There’s all manner of odd ball alternative ownership structures in existence that can be considered, but each of them would be still a transfer of ownership.
Passing to “people you really trust” is not an ideal foundation for an entity which has the potential to exist for many decades.
I mean, if Valve was just a deli or a corner store sure. It is very likely one of the most profitable-per-employee companies in the history of the world, and probably in the running for one of the most valuable privately-held companies in the world too. We also know Gabe adores making money, so... I think it to be very unlikely it just gets passed to a kid, but who knows.
Being private, we also don't really know how much of Valve Gabe actually owns - there may be other sizeable stakeholders with a say too.
So it's not turning off mobile networks in particular, it's just a general power shortage, a consequence of which might be some cell service being interrupted. They made it sound like they were going to shut off mobile networks specifically to save power, which doesn't make sense for a couple of reasons.
Starting to feel like Reuters isn't worth my time anymore. Too many clickbaity titles like this lately.
I was reading the other day that they've made dramatic cuts in most of their local offices, and their material is now largely produced in a central hub in a low-cost Eastern European country. It shows.
Even if the wave isn't very tall, if it is fast-moving it can knock you off balance. Once you're down, wave doesn't have to be very tall to drown you. There's also the fact that rip currents are commonplace phenomena on beaches all over the world, so you combine that with a single unexpectedly fast wave and it's easy to believe a few people would die.
They didn't even wait half a year to show their hand. That's how confident they are.