throwGuardian

But Andrew, they don't care if you put effort in to curate ads that your listeners might find valuable, they just want to skip the ads regardless.

They want you to keep working your tail off, and entertaining them for free - they are apparently entitled to it.

This is why we can't have nice things. Podcasts rely on advertising for revenue, and given the static nature of pre-recorded ads, they are the least intrusive in this era of AI driven hyper real-time ad-targeting. Reminiscent of print ads on newspapers.

So respect the effort of the creator and stop automating ad skipping. Heck, I even implore you to listen to the ads that make your favorite shows available for free, but you always have the skip-ahead button in your player

Can you imagine a Russian search engine having 90%+ market share in the U.S., making decisions on whether or not political ads should be allowed on it's US properties?

This is Google, an American company with clear political bent, indulging in election interference in a foreign country. Just defer to local laws Google, you are NOT a neutral third party, and definitely NOT local.

But but Apple has spent millions branding itself as the privacy focused alterative to Android. Is it really possible that Apple lies about how privacy friendly their products are? Are we all to trust the Apple apologists who'll jump through hoops to excuse these findings?

Were we, the users, holding the phone wrong and causing antenna-gate? [1]

Were our tight pants to blame for the bending iPhone plus models? [2]

When Apple purposefully slowed our 1.5 year old iPhone to a crawl, after an iOS update, was it us hastening the degradatiom of the measily iPhone batteries? [3]

[1]: https://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia/term/62034/antennagate

[2]: https://youtu.be/qkNlfMC1lzE

[3]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-42615378

Or rich software engineers who consider themselves to be socially progressive, should give their money to the poor, instead of into 401Ks. Because, who knows if the company managing the the 401K is backing share buyback programs of the Apples of the world

Act of war against .... Merck, a company? I've heard of some circuitous logic to deny insurance claims, but this was not an act of war against Merck, which BTW isn't a country, so by definition, one can't go to war with it? Well, maybe hyperbolically a competitor might, but unlike real war, they're bound by the rules and laws of civil society

This is the very definition of an accident, if the article is to be believed, with Merck not even being the target. Pay up insurers, this is why you exist.

Further, what is the point of insurance, especially for sensitive IP laden companies like pharma research, if there's no protection against nationa-state attacks, which isn't outside the realm of possibility for such companies.

This is probably an admission that bets outside core Google [YouTube, Maps, Photos, cloud] & Android haven't paid off. Time to run alphabet in a more disciplined, less "risky" manner? I'm expecting cuts to come in Alphabets' "bets"

Another variable to consider: I don't be this for a fact, but I believe HN has some sort of weighing parameter that might affect your submission: like if your past submissions and comments are upvoted more than average, they might fast track you into the top 90(??). Again, I don't know this for a fact, maybe the mods can clarify

Framing this as China vs USA is disingenuous. After all the British BBC, and all foreign media not bending the knee to the great firewall, are just as equally blocked as American media, tech. If anything China is an equal opportunity censor

This kind of shock-bait headline doesn't even deserve a one-time click.

Third post about oxide/it's founders in the top 5? Either HN loves marketing spiels or the founders have a passionate upvoting cartel, propping up the exact same non-informative marketing in 3 different posts.

The be honest, American companies never had a monopoly in any of the parts needed to build a commercially viable phone. Unlike say in the PC world, where the dominant OS/Software stack has an almost impenetrable reliance on x86, phones were mostly ARM based (in an attempt to prevent Intel's chokehold). And communication standards require FRAND patent grants allowing anyone to build for the spec.

That said, even as recently as a decade back, China was routinely written off as a cheap imitation of US/Japan/Korea in the electronics industry, Huawei & friends have proven otherwise. Their flagships are on par with the Apples and Samsungs, and even lead them on velocity of feature releases, especially hardware

It's like a Hollywood sci-fi writer first wrote a bad script describing tech in fictioud terms, and someone though it a good idea to use the movie script as the site copy, user manual and FAQ.

How can anyone take this seriously if there's not even a half attempt to describe the product and features honestly

What kind of email volume are you dealing with. Middle to higher level execs routinely receive 500+ legitimate emails, and an equal amount of spam everyday, and they use Outlook without issues

Who's to say software won't turn out like oil/energy. Before tech companies took the mantle of "highest market cap", Exxon & friends ruled the roost. [Google, Apple, Microsoft] look a lot like Exxon today, with their biggest defensive moat being scale.

Upstarts prove a new market (Pebble, Roku, etc.) only to have entrenched players take over and dominate. Or, you have to relegate yourself to very small SMBs differentiating yourself with support-costs:revenue ratios that bigger players simply aren't interested in

How are they "cheating"? It appears like the city is the one cheating, refusing to enforce criminal law, which taxes are paying for. The city is cheating so much that they make some of the highest per capita tax revenue disappear without providing commensurate services

Maybe you can mention the statute relevant to HQs? I'm not aware of any

Tax avoidance "scam". Moving to Texas to reduce taxes, especially SF taxes which are basically useless to the payer [1], [2] is a "scam"? What's the legal framework preventing moves out of SF? Is it indentured slavery to the city council if you ever open an office in SF?

[1]: https://www.newsweek.com/san-francisco-district-attorney-pub...

[2]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2019/04/15/map...

Disagree with this move. Uber & co. have been a net positive to the country, people and the economy. After pouring billions into creating and proving a market, the government is baselessly capping their earnings.

Here's a fair proposal:

1. Encourage competitors and allow the free market to set prices and revenue shares. A vendor undercutting prices will get higher ridership

2. Prevent price gouging via collusion - do not let the companies cartel up

3. Limiting surge pricing to 2X is the only reasonable policy in their proposal

After all, every stakeholder in this vertical is an at-will participant, with no compulsion to stay if the economics do not work out

If this were true, drives would quit en-mass. This is entirely an at-will engagement, any party can back out at any time if things don't work out

> illegal to fire someone for union activities regardless of what their contract says.

Pretty sure Google hires good lawyers. If us ramdom HN-ers know this, they probably went through the motions of covering their ass, legally

But this sophistry of comparing Marlbro to Google is tiring. While at it, why not just compare things to 1943 Germany?

I say this as an ardent critic of Google: An individual finding irreconcilable differences with a bona fide good employer like Google is unlikely to find any other company fault-free. Tsk tsk: The issue is likely not with the companies.

This is a two sided marketplace - which side are you focusing on first? Developers or sponsors?

The GP is free to suggest anything, but without statistical backing, it's merely that: a suggestion.

India has had the world's largest middle class emerge from poverty in the last three decades, and to somehow claim that economic (& social) upliftment has only benefitted the upper strata is mathematically false. If people were truly weighted down by caste,etc. this uplifted wouldn't be possible

Again, India still reels from literacy problems, and one's likely to see more inequity among the uneducated with regard to social strata.

Your accusations need proper, large scale statistical backing. As pointed out in another comment, with quotas in education and employment, and laws protecting the historically oppressed, social equality has seen a massive increase in India.

That doesn't mean casteism is dead, just that statistically things are much much better for the historically oppressed.

I have hope for the new, educated Indian.

Wow - that is a strong accusation against a nation with laws to prevent just this, with oodles of "quotas" in education and government employment. Do you have any large scale research or evidence to back this?

Au contraire, the largest upliftment from povery, and massive social mobility is what has driven India's 8%+ growth rate for more than 2.5 decades

The rise of China in tech is commendable. From being a low cost alternative to innovation leader (arguably, premium Chinese phones bring features out these days that the Apples of the world follow a few quarters/years later) in many verticals, is indeed a testament to the hard work and policy support for tech.

I'm the first the criticise China where due, but in mere abilities to get the job done in tech, hats off

The mysterious thing about activists at Google is the overestimation of their importance to the company. There are many many smart programmers in the world, if these activists quit en-mass, it will do exactly $0 damage to Google's bottom line.

It's important for Google to rightfully emerge from this as a centrist, logical, evidence based company that isn't a breeding ground from mindless activism, as that Avatar has already cost it tens of billions in revenue, and is probably driving away centrist, smart programmers from being employed there

The entire value proposition of an article such as this, is a summary in non-legalese for regular Joes, with a clear citation to the original case document, for those further interested.

Verbatim reproduction of large swaths, and oodles of unnecessary opinions forming the first few paragraphs drives readers away, not towards the article.

But Apple only abides when it has to:

1. USA: Apple denies access to the FBI on known/convicted terrorist's phone, iCloud. China: Apple moves entire iCloud operation over to a government cloud, with no privacy guarantees.

2. USA: Apple blocks app stores within third party apps. China: WeChat/govt. threaten Apple with censure, to which Apple succumbs allowing "apps" on WeChat-china.

3. Apple sure as heck won't approve/deny apps based on government input, but they damn well will remove Taiwan emojis, Hong Kong protestors apps, etc at China's behest.

So no - Apple only punches down, never up. They aren't complying with local law, they are routinely violating their own moral grandstanding on privacy, freedom, tracking, ...

Just like with China, Apple will simply roll over, like an obedient puppy, and do whatever's asked of them.

It's funny how Apple only punches down - against app devs or other companies that it can bully, but the moment it faces a formidable adversary (China, Russia, ..), it cowers to safety.