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It's a cute comparison but the stickers Gruber's referring to (CPU etc) are unnoticeable when you're actually using a laptop, they're static and out of the way and would never distract you or disrupt your work and they're not wasting your screen space. They also don't compromise your privacy or track and time every possible interaction.

So while they have the commonality "they are ads" they are really nothing at all alike.


And you can easily remove the stickers.

The difference is you can trust the compiler without knowing what System.out.println("Hello, World!") is going to ultimately look like, and the vast majority of what compilers output will never need human intervention to fix something or human oversight to ensure correctness and fitness for purpose.

I worry about what would happen if CloudFlare decided I was an adversary, a massive amount of the internet would become completely inaccessible if I couldn't get past their annoying gateway!

It's an even bigger issue for servers than clients, and CloudFlare's CEO understands how much power they have, and is also a bit concerned about that: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/17/cloudflare-ceo-says-removing...

I'm increasingly okay with that.

Like mom turning off the TV because I should be out running around.


It's not always frivolous stuff, like Upwork puts CloudFlare over searching and applying for work.


I use Mullvad from time to time, a ton of sites block me when it’s active.

makes you more likely to get flagged, not less

Doesn't the US too, following Google's antitrust loss last year?

> Judge Mehta said in the 223-page ruling that Google must share some of its search data with “qualified competitors” to resolve its monopoly.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/02/technology/google-search-...


> I will never understand the decision-making process that led to "Let's build an awesome VR headset that can't do gaming".

FOMO, someone else being successful in VR (and now in glasses) is a nightmare scenario for Apple because it's not their platform. They've got a lot to fear from someone else owning the platform, having written the playbook on how that platform would be controlled and exploited at everyone else's expense.

Imagine if Apple doesn't make their glasses: Meta keeps selling truckloads of them, as they get more powerful the smartphone becomes an optional accessory and then an unnecessary one, eventually they become an alternative to a smartphone and an app platform for third party devs.

It's the same story with VR, Apple does nothing and risks Meta or Steam building a viable platform where people want to use software instead of on their iOS devices, until the hardware can replace iOS devices entirely. (although VR is certainly more of a moonshot)


In what world has meta been successful with VR or glasses?

Their VR is a flop now but Apple didn't know that when they did the AVP.

Meta are selling millions of glasses and growing so it's looking like a hit.


Tweet says the EU has fined big tech €3.8 billion... but a cursory AI-powered search suggests the US has fined them much more:

- $5b fine for Meta https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2019/07/...

- $1b fine + $2.5b settlement for Amazon https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/09/...

- $170m + $136m + $34m for Google for invading children's privacy https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2019/09/...

- $425m for Google for tracking after tracking was explicitly disabled https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3dr91z0g4zo


Sounds similar to Apple's "Core Technology Fee", literally a mechanism for sabotaging third party app distribution in the EU.

This is a very big oversight in that EU law.

Allowing third-party "app stores" is completely useless when all apps must be approved by the operating system company.

It's also being abused by google (technically, will be, very soon), I guess they saw that since the legal framework for this kind of thing has now been written, they can do it too.


There was no oversight. The EU told Apple the CTC did not comply with the law. Apple's new scheme still seems bad but I don't think this is the end of it.

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_...


Google just got fined €430 million for a very similar fee scheme, practically copied from Apple, so it's highly unlikely that Apple will get away with it forever. Theoretically Apple should have a monster fine brewing since they're a repeat offender and it should be retroactively applied.

Except at least there are alternatives to Unity without replacing your entire OS and hardware.

Fascinating case and arms-race, seems like part of the issue is the bricking is too obvious...

Prescient in some ways but also rendered utterly obsolete by AI...

> You can improve the quality of your code, and if you do, the rewards for yourself and for Microsoft will be immense. The hardest part is to decide that you want to write perfect code.

... this is effectively insubordination these days lmao.


Presumably Starlink for routing throughout space. Google does under-sea cables and domestic internet access too.

They invested in SpaceX long before Starlink was a thibgy

How is that surprising? This is what investors do, don't they?

Starlink wasn't working yet, but had been announced as a thing they intended to do.

Ehh, more like Starlink was a thing they said they'd do to justify the investment at the time. Just like they said they'd build an assembly line mass producing Falcon 1's for small launch market, or send a Starship full of artists around the Moon. The first prototypes were three years later.

What are you people arguing about here? This is exactly what is argued here, i.e. that Alphabet is like an investment fund? They had a hunch and it paid off, didn't they? I.e. you're making the point for the argument made?

That 2015 Alphabet was the tail end of the Google X era where the founders were making crazy conviction bets that weee only thinly related to their core area, very different from current Alphabet that really only does make considered strategic investments.

Having your exponentially more expensive fleet of satellites constantly burning up versus dedicated cables that rarely need replacing

The big use-case for Starlink is typically for people in locations without dedicated cables.

All energy generated on earth contributes to global warming, even solar panels which decrease Earth's albedo. If you care about climate change and the earth you should want the datacenters to be in space.

The earth is limited in the amount of thermal energy it can radiate.


Ah yes, burn thousands of tonnes of methane (assuming Spacex) to launch a data centre satellite into an orbit, then burn thousands more to maintain it and update compute or burn the entire thing in the upper atmosphere, to avoid contributing to global warming by not burning all of that fuel and dry mass.

Both aluminum and iron atoms are heavy and thus make it into the ocean where they both increase the ocean's carbon sink capacity. https://phys.org/news/2021-05-aluminum-affect-climate-ocean-...

From an energy POV, the chemical launch energy required for orbital insertion is 900GJ per satellite (when amortized) whereas the satellite produces 18,900GJ over its 5-yr lifetime, and far more if it lasts longer.


Uh, that's not how global warming works, you know.

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