No real surprise about iMessage and Bing. They are not dominant communication methods/search engines at all, at least within my social circles (in Sweden).
It's the opposite of protectionism. European competitors for these services existed at some point, but because they lacked the advantage of a sufficiently large home market and didn't get any extra protection to make up for it, they didn't do as well.
Depending on the strength of network effects, they either quickly lost users to the biggest platform, saw the writing on the wall and took an acquisition offer instead, or continue to hold their ground within a particular niche where expanding quickly is difficult (for both foreign and local companies).
Any new European internet companies wishing to make it big at home will probably need to concentrate mainly on the US market first in order to have those same network effects work in their favor instead of against them.
> Examples of the “do’s”: gatekeepers will for example have to:
> - allow third parties to inter-operate with the gatekeeper’s own services in certain specific situations;
> - allow their business users to access the data that they generate in their use of the gatekeeper’s platform;
> - provide companies advertising on their platform with the tools and information necessary for advertisers and publishers to carry out their own independent verification of their advertisements hosted by the gatekeeper;
> - allow their business users to promote their offer and conclude contracts with their customers outside the gatekeeper’s platform.
>
> Example of the “don'ts”: gatekeepers will for example no longer:
>
> - treat services and products offered by the gatekeeper itself more favourably in ranking than similar services or products offered by third parties on the gatekeeper's platform;
> - prevent consumers from linking up to businesses outside their platforms;
> - prevent users from un-installing any pre-installed software or app if they wish so;
> - track end users outside of the gatekeepers' core platform service for the purpose of targeted advertising, without effective consent having been granted.
---
> As an aside, it strikes me as vaguely protectionist to see that it’s only 6 companies and none of them are European… (maybe that’s a hot take?)
Simply put, there are no European companies on this level. If you want a phone, you are going to have to choose Android or iOS. To chat with people on your new phone, you will use what your friends & family are on - most often WhatsApp. When you want to search something on the internet, for most people it's going to be the default search engine, so Google Search. And when you want to go on a Social Network, it's going to be... etc, etc. The EU is of course part of the western world and so has not had the same requirements to develop their own companies, or lock American companies out, like China/Russia.
Perhaps the closest that could come to mind could be some messaging apps, e.g. Threema, or perhaps Mastodon as a social network (sure, it's federated, but anyway...). But these don't qualify as they are nowhere near big enough.
Finally, I'm quite optimistic about the DMA; not just for consumers in the EU but also in the US and worldwide. I feel there has been significant consolidation of market power and stagnation/coming stagnation, and competition is often considered the way to break out of this. Perhaps we will see a new generation of companies and ideas and more options for both consumers and small/medium businesses in the future.
I disagree about the benefits for folks in the US. The EU moves comparatively quickly in law and is quite comfortable experimenting with regulations. The US by comparison feels very slow and deferential—almost as if when it’s not explicitly illegal then we should presume there’s no harm. I think any “openness” that leaks out of the EU will just be exploited in the US by platform-level companies to the detriment of individuals, and I have no expectation that US policies or laws will catch up any time soon.
I get your point. But on the other hand you can look at GDPR and see after it that California passed the CCPA, Canada passed their own PIPEDA data privacy act, etc, so there is some precedent for other jurisdictions passing similar laws in the future.
Companies and services that come out of this regulation may end up competing in the US anyway and creating a more competitive landscape there anyway, even if there is no DMA-style legislation passed there.
Updates. No guarantee that you will get the next OS update even on a brand new phone. Which stinks when financial apps require you be on the latest OS.
Yes, this happened to me a decade ago on 2 different Android devices. Since then I've moved my family and extended family to iOS and my ongoing tech support is dramatically reduced.
It's a lot harder to tell older relatives, just go buy a Samsung Android. Likely they will come back with some low end android that the salesperson said was on sale.
Where as If I tell, go get an Apple iPhone. They can pick that up and get the "right one", which ever it is.
I'm not sure I understand. Your relatives can remember to buy Apple but not Samsung?
Also, Samsung offers lower end phones with lesser but still good update policies. They're good phones but a lot cheaper than any iPhone, which should satisfy your older relatives.
If I say buy an Apple iPhone and its very likely they turn up with an iPhone maybe not the one I told them but a new Apple iPhone.
But if I say Samsung Android, they are just as likely to buy some weird no-name Android because it was a color they wanted or size or something the salesman pushed on them cause "Android is Android right?"
Can confirm this is definitely a thing. Though in my case has to do with PC's. My mother needed a new computer and when searching online for a windows laptop, she always ended up looking at the cheapest garbage on sale. Im talking laptops that cost half as much as her iphone. But tell her to look for a mac and she will have to start looking at more expensive devices that won't be e-waste in 2 years. Pretty bizarre.
I know a lot has changed in 10 years, but I'm sure glad to be done with flashing an alternative OS onto my phone to get continued support or to rid it of bloat.
Consistency of user experience. Reliable security updates for old devices that still function. Heavy integration with the Google spyware ecosystem. Poor CPU performance and battery life. Low-quality peripherals such as cameras. Manufacturer defects in Google-branded devices.
like how the back gesture works on iphones across generation and apps?
> Reliable security updates for old devices that still function
7 years of update isn't long enough?
> Heavy integration with the Google spyware ecosystem
last I checked iOS is closed source. Run your own OS or just don't use google apps. I bet most people are using gmail and google maps on their iphones too.
> Poor CPU performance and battery life.
compared to which android phone? and is this before or after apple throttles your iphone?
> Low-quality peripherals such as cameras
flag ship androids consistently have better camera hardware compared to iphones, iphone just makes it up with better camera software. You could go the sony route if you don't live in the U.S. to get a better overall camera focused phone.
At a guess; if able to monitor over a period of time (e.g. pick up data from a parked car), a potential burglar can see when there is activity and figure what times of the day house occupants are normally at home.
More subtle; the burglar could just park up and go off for a few hours and gather the data they need - no need for a suspicious camera pointing out of the car to monitor patterns.
If the burglar only takes a 30 second look before breaking in, residents could be home but away from a window, with this the burglar can more confidently know when is a good time to break in, without exposing themselves to the same risk that looking around the house brings.
Just guessing as an outsider, but... it's a big, conservative car company trying to do software development. Reasons could include:
- Too much red tape/risk assessments/effort/time required to set up a credential store
- Devs working there may not know/understand the importance of it, and may not be up-to-date with modern software development practices.
- Assumption that Github repo will always be private, correctly configured, never leaked.
- Assumption that employee computers with code checked out will always be full disk encrypted and source code never read by a malicious program/transmitted somewhere else.
If you work in a company that makes software for a living, it's worth bearing in mind you are probably nearer the forefront of modern best practices and there are many companies in other industries that do some software as part of, but not the main part of the product, and these do not necessarily focus on software development and therefore may be "as hot" with best practices, to put it mildly.
I mean, I think it's fair to say that given they're developing their "Drive Pilot" level 2 SAE software, at least some of this code involves life-or-death systems. For that reason alone I'd expect a higher level of security awareness, so seeing how unhygienic their repos are from a sec perspective is a bit unsettling.
For what it's worth, there's some peace of mind in that this software is probably tested much more thoroughly than the average piece of Web software or whatever. Version control / security best practices / clean code may be too abstract for these old companies, but testing isn't. You'd hope.
> If it’s the case, each clown garage shop would be able to modify key characteristics of any car. And oh boy they will do it.
Car workshops would modify and compile their own distribution of the car source code? I can't say I have ever been to a workshop where I would imagine anything like that.
Open source here would clearly be a big win for security and bug identifications in cars. Better quality laws to go along with it to protect researchers would naturally be a big positive as well.
For a comparison look to Android. AOSP is open source, and whilst alternative, non-OEM, flavours of Android do exist (GrapheneOS, LineageOS, etc). But you don't see shops that fix or sell phones putting any of these on the phone. And if you did, would it be a security downgrade? I don't think so!
> Would you fly on aircraft knowing mechanic servicing it last night could have added something funny to the plane you are taking?
But... they could have done. Maybe not the software, but mechanically, of course it's possible. Why doesn't it happen though? I guess the same reasons why in general people act responsibly in society.
Curious, what does Amazon have to gain by not sending anyone? Is it that it just doesn't want to engage in any discussions at all with unions or regulators? Isn't it at least worthwhile sending someone to help legislators understand the Amazon point of view?
(3) is interesting, but when you are the phone manufacturer that has to be so easy to mitigate:
- slow = notification with "slow photo write to SD card, use a better SD card for better performance"
- failure = they could offer a built-in app with reliability stats for the SD card currently inserted
At Samsung's size and amount of money to solve these problems, the skeptic in me feels like (3) is a convenient excuse for (1), or to excuse just copying what Apple does.
Your suggestion feels like a lot more work and effort that still leads to terrible UX, slow phones and unhappy customers.
1. Customers being nagged their SD card is slow will hate the phone, not just the SD card they just bought and can't return. How will the users know which cards are fast enough? Most average users are not tach savvy at all and are easily duped by marketing fluff.
2. SD cards can also die out of the blue. Good luck trying to predict when with an app. You might as well just offer them data recovery services while you're at it for when they loose all their photos.
It's easier to just skip SD cards and offer fast and solid UFS storage at a higher cost, that you can vouch for, instead of something that could always be flaky for reasons outside of your control.
Assuming the average user wants to look at apps or believe the phone sure. If not there's no winning here and I can see why making it so the user just can't mess up on choosing storage and doesn't have to be presented all this information/responsibility when they do is still a much better image of the phone's storage quality.
Doesn't mean it's any less aligned with getting to charge more for storage. Just means it can still make plenty of sense as an excuse. Power users have consistently turned out to be a poor target for phone makers.
Many differences between the US and EU, not just workers benefits.
IMO, more likely to affect startup company success in becoming big:
- One common language, one culture, one currency across the US (sure, differences between states in culture but not as diverse as in Europe). This is gradually converging via the EU, but the US has a couple of centuries headstart...
- VC funding concentration in California (think about how many of those "US" companies are from California); VC investors in US are global names if you work in the industry, in EU they are regional names.
- Generalising a bit here, but from my experience, I find work/life balance generally considered more important in EU compared to US. In the US, work is given a higher priority and if your boss asks you to stay late/work on a weekend, many colleagues in the US would do it, European colleagues would put e.g. family first instead.
- Side note; work/life balance point can be reflected in terms of national culture, e.g. "The American Dream"
Hmm. I can't think of any time I've thought the app was really missing something, or didn't work. In fact, I always thought the app was pretty smooth and "just worked".
By comparison, several years ago, I was regularly streaming Netflix content without any trouble. One day I streamed a show on the HBO app on mobile data and it ate up almost all of my month's data usage. I guess it's behind the scenes work, and not so exciting, to e.g. stream a smaller resolution for a mobile phone, but in moments like that you realise there are a substantial amount of things to think about when making such an app.
If you live in the US there is a good chance that was your phone company throttling Netflix and the app automatically switching to 480p to adjust to the reduced bandwidth. They probably do that more broadly now but when they first started it was only Netflix.
I don't live in the US, but how would this work? Isn't the video sent over SSL? In that case how would the phone company know what to send back?
I just assumed that Netflix had different video formats on its' servers, ready to go, and when the app requested the video it also sent the screen size/resolution to get the smallest file size, that would also look good on my phone. If that was 480p then all well and good, it was fine to watch.
It was a while ago now, but IIRC the amount HBO used was pretty horrendous, like a GB for 30 mins or so of video, so I guess they just downloaded a big file and let the player on the phone handle that.
Like a say, a few years ago now so the situation may well be better with HBO now.
This is a nice intention and would be great for security. It works fine for displaying opening hours and upcoming events, etc. However, as soon as you want to search for books, or you want some log in feature to see which books you have loaned out and when they need to be returned, it's clear that a purely static site just doesn't cut it for today's expectations.
Sorry the dumb question, but why not?
Can't I make a static page that offers search (reload on every query with results) or profile (reload every time soemthing is changed in the profile)
I think your understanding of "static" website is off.
A static site does not have any backend, thus cannot provide you with search results because it cannot do any computing at all (just provide you the same (static) content again and again).
Actually some subset of this functionality is possible with static or semi-static pages but actually the problem is not so much about a page being static or dynamic but about being read-only vs getting user input. As soon as you need to deal with user input, there are inherent security issues.
You can go around these by having some presets in the profile and providing cached results for the most common search types but this is more or less as far as you can go.
Strictly speaking, you are correct. But in this case dealing with user input such as headers and their modifications is the responsibility of the server just like dealing with potentially malformed HTTP replies is the responsibility of the browser. What we are talking here though is the possibility of interaction with the remaining elements of the system (application, database). If these are read-only, the attacker loses these attack vectors.
Any reason it can't just have a JSON page somewhere, and then the search simply be a JavaScript app that looks through that static JSON for all the entries that contain a given token in it's list of keywords?
Some useful info about who the gatekeepers are/which parts of their platforms have been designated at gatekeeping: https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/gatekeepers_en . Includes a nice diagram!