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Crickets

...

But consider this: if collectively all drivers would go on strike indefinitely (or at least, stop using platforms and instead hustled their rides old school). Would that mean the end for Uber and Lyft? Off course not. They'd take a few punches financially, but they'd be able to pivot, build something else. They have great engineers and money, and no one is forcing them to take such a huge cut.

Similarly, there are Uber and Lyft drivers that don't have the economic freedom or level of education to work anywhere else.

So yeah, the comparisons are hyperboles, but I totally feel why they're upset and hope collective bargaining helps better their situation.

Why is there prostitution?

Why are slaves doing work for their masters?

Why are children going through our garbage in some distant country, if they hardly earn enough to eat?

Isn't the problem that someone on board was using a phone with Bluetooth relay, gps and cellular enabled?

> Big donations like this tend to flow toward well-established foundations, while the countless smaller projects that hold up just as much critical infrastructure quietly struggle for resources.

And still every day it continues, it becomes a little bit harder to back out. Like Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan this war cannot be won.

And if they had it their way, Oracle would have similarly strangled every last customer of Java, MySQL, OpenOffice, Solaris, etc. to squeeze out every last dollar.

And then make it look like they're innovating.

First and foremost, this is about Oracle. For the short period I worked there, my impression about culture and tech was: mediocre. Not excellent, not poor but just a around average.

Which raises the question: why is it such a successful company commercially? I believe it's being ruthless to customers, employees and suppliers combined with cooking the financials.

Which bring me to your remark about output being difficult to measure. Imho Oracle had been exceptionally good at manipulating and obfuscating their output. And this was true long before AI came to the scene.

I suppose the silver lining is that they are putting the responsibility for age verification adults. Which imo is better than requiring everyone; kids get a free pass to the kids stuff...

Because we have such limited control over our devices, they effectively provide the security of a jail locking down what users can do. That is appealing from a healthcare or banking perspective because it obfuscates the client-server API and gives exact control over the UI. As a bonus, the coffee chain gets to glean lots of details from your phone that would be unavailable in a browser.

As individuals we can do little more that push back: don't let yourself be trapped by coffee chains (go to a different one) and bother your bank's service line about having to use their app. The rest is up to government intervention, I fear.

The problem here isn't that Patreon is centralized, but that the app store is. Apple could easily require a cut from any app using nostr and related protocols. Or simply ban them altogether.

Not saying government mandates are ideal, but I don't see any other way to force some sense into Apple (or Google). App stores should be some sort of independent institutions (non-profits) but companies have no incentive to cede that revenue. Until that happens, best not download from app stores unless absolutely necessary.

Meanwhile I continue doing the Lords work by telling kids that apps are not the internet. Hopefully, that 95% percentage will eventually decrease.