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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • “The industry is at a pivotal point - new technologies like Gen AI are rapidly shifting how we shop and manage our finances,” said Jack Forestell, Chief Product and Strategy Officer, Visa.

    This is so cringey. I get that investors are randomly throwing cash at companies that talk up “generative AI,” but it has nothing to do with anything they announced. Is it impossible to just be content with ridiculously sophisticated algorithms? Did someone hold a gun up to these people and demand they spit out some drivel that uses the buzzwords du jour?

    Also, the headline feature was solved a decade ago when Apple Pay was released (and no, not by the janky predecessors of Apple Pay but specifically with the launch of Apple Pay, which everything was then changed to replicate). One device that can hold an entire wallet of cards and I can choose what to use right when I pay? Wow! So new.


  • You’re leaving out the most import part. Class members are:

    Individual persons who are United States residents and who own or owned an Apple iPhone 7 or 7 Plus between September 16, 2016 and January 3, 2023, and reported to Apple in the United States issues reflected in Apple’s records as Sound-Speaker, Sound-Microphone, Sound – Receiver, Unexpected Restart / Shutdown, or Power On – Device Unresponsive

    Based on the amount of money allocated for the settlement, the class members represent significantly less than 1% of iPhone 7 owners.



  • The “bento box” graphic during the presentation yesterday said AV1. From the press release:

    The Media Engine of M4 is the most advanced to come to iPad. In addition to supporting the most popular video codecs, like H.264, HEVC, and ProRes, it brings hardware acceleration for AV1 to iPad for the first time. This provides more power-efficient playback of high-resolution video experiences from streaming services.


  • The main reason sales fell this year compared to the year-ago quarter is because the quarter before that Apple wasn’t able to keep up with iPhone 14 demand leading to shortages and depleted channel inventory. The following quarter they were able to meet demand and replenish the sales channel leading a boosted year-ago quarter that was $5 billion bigger than it really should have been. Apple didn’t have the same production shortages for the 15 launch. It makes this quarter they just reported look like a big decline but that’s not really the whole story.



  • This means absolutely nothing. How much of their advertising revenue comes from the US.

    To quote the article again, “The U.S. accounted for about 25% of TikTok overall revenues last year, said a separate source with direct knowledge.” Honestly, I think that makes the case for shutting it down even stronger. TikTok isn’t in some growth-at-all-costs phase in the US. It’s likely near its peak potential userbase. If they haven’t been able to make it profitable by now, that doesn’t bode well for it ever becoming significantly profitable. Absent the legal issues, they think it’s still worth at least trying, but as it stands, it’s just a lot of money in and, just as quickly, out, with nothing to show for it at the end of the day.




  • I agree that it seems like inconsistent thinking though. (EU vs China)

    The EU is ostensibly capitalist democracies. Publicly criticizing arbitrary and ill-conceived regulations, that can perhaps be improved, is useful. China makes no pretense about being a free country and I think the moral calculus is rather simple: are Chinese citizens better off with Apple there, doing the bare minimum to comply with Chinese law, or with Apple taking the “principled” stand of leaving?

    China banned Signal and WhatsApp but has not banned iMessage. If you want secure end-to-end encrypted messaging, iPhones offer that built right in. Apple could leave, but the inevitable result of that is less privacy for Chinese citizens. It’s a binary choice. Apple can’t make China free, but they can at least offer services without bending over backwards to go above and beyond the CCP’s demands, as Chinese companies do.

    I think Apple’s position is quite consistent: it tries to change the things it can change, fights the things it can fight, and does the bare minimum to comply with things that it doesn’t want to but must.



  • absolutely do drive through to get loaded up after shopping. Many of those customers are retirees that absolutely could not carry their purchases down to the parking garage.

    Maybe we shouldn’t be encouraging elderly citizens to drive through a street that is crowded with pedestrians? If you can walk through the market, you can take an elevator to Western.

    The market is a very unique place and if it caters only to the tourists it will kill what makes it a tourist destination in the first place. It would become even more hollowed out as it drives away locals.

    Locals are also walking on Pike Place, dodging cars that don’t belong there. Making the market safer isn’t going to drive people away.





  • Then why did you waste time describing what you believed was the intention behind it earlier when you said

    I never said that was the intention. I said that’s what I think of it as. In practice all it does is underline a point. These same people also totally screwed up how we chose the president and vice president and failed to provide a proper mechanism for replacing a dead president.

    horribly incompetent at writing legal language

    Horribly incompetent? No. Flawless, or even particularly prescient? No. They got a lot of big stuff right; they got a whole lot wrong.