danpattn

It isn't hard. It is basic managerial accounting. You just need access to lots of internal data. Ultimate parent level GAAP accounting won't provide the specific details you need. Apple definitely knows what the number is, every 10k they won't shut up about how much growth is coming from services.

I've been using Linux for 7 years. It has never been better than it is now and every year the alternatives look worse and worse. I honestly get sick every time I try to use Windows. The ads and dark patterns are glaringly apparent once you are used to Linux desktops.

A few months ago I was at a car dealership filing out paperwork on a new car. The sales guy asked me what I did for work. I told him I was in finance. He immediately perked up and asked "Are you into crypto? We all trade it here."

Turns out the whole dealership, or at least most of the employees, traded crypto as a hobby. I asked a few questions, mainly about Proof of Work, and the salesman had no idea what that was. He was completely ignorant of how crypto worked.

The most common feature of assets bubbles is that they draw in people who would normally never engage in risky financial speculation. People early to the party get rich and that draws in everyone else. Its hard to stay out of the market when your neighbor has short-term gains larger than your salary.

In the tulip bubble, everyone was a botanist. In the tech bubble, everyone was an equity trader. In the housing bubble, everyone was flipping houses or getting their real estate license. Now everyone is a crypto trader. Regardless of how useful crypto will be in the future, there is only one way this party ends. Pumping trillions of dollars into the economy can delay the pain, but the pain seems inevitable at this point.

If the FTC did file prematurely for political reasons they should've known that the case didn't have a chance. I hope they kept working behind the scenes on a well-formed one. Maybe that was the original plan, rush in with a case to please the Trump administration then follow up with the actual complaint once they finish it. Then again, this may be wishful thinking. Incompetence is a much simpler explanation.

Tesla doesn't have a problem selling the cars it makes. Why take on an additional financial risk in order to increase demand?

TL;DR: Open source software has high costs to adoption. The lack of standardization leads to unnecessary work. Proprietary platforms with stable tool chains are more efficient to use. Therefore, everyone should use proprietary platforms.

The author has no problem ceding the entire future of computing to a few mega-companies that have the scale the 'lithify' all the components of a platform. I doubt I am the only person who feels that no amount of efficiency gains would justify giving in to that future.

Most open source software never reaches version 1.0. Few projects gain enough support to compete with polished proprietary software. The answer isn't to abandon open source, but to increase support for existing projects. If no good open source software exists then use whatever proprietary software you need to, but also find the best comparable open source project and contribute to it. Paying for proprietary software but not contributing to open source is like paying interest on debt but never paying down the principal balance. That course of action will never lead to the debt going away.

The other problem with the author's take is that he ignores the other solution to high transactions costs, open standards. There is a reason why we can visit any site on the web with zero transaction costs. The web enabled cross-compatibility by creating open standards for sharing and viewing remote content. Open standards like OpenGL, WebGl, ActivityPub, Open Document Format, and RSS do a lot to allow compatibility between different platforms. Standards like these can allow open source software to match the functionality of proprietary platforms.

Open source may lag behind in a few notable areas. Syncing application files between devices is a pain. Discoverability within federated networks is poor. Quality between applications varies a lot. Open source isn't perfect but the goal of public domain software is non-negotiable. As more economic and social processes become automated, the knowledge consumed within these processes will move from the brains of workers and into the software that runs the machines. This is a massive transfer of power from labor to capital. If this software is owned and controlled by a few large corporations, which would be inevitable if all operating systems were proprietary, then these few corporations would wield significant control over all economic and societal processes. This is as dystopian of a future as I can imagine and this seems like the only result that could come about if we followed the advice in this article.

I used to live in Scottsdale, AZ. They can fine you up to $3,000 a day if your yard isn't up to code. They say debris could be hidden in the yard and someone could get hurt. I don't know if the police would get involved though.

Antitrust would help, maybe even a lot, but would the world be that different if Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and WhatsApp were independent companies? Things might be a bit better but we'd still be stuck with the same handful of platforms we already have.

Facebook is just the final form of the monster that silicon valley continually creates. Every unicorn software startup has the same strategy: create a competitive app, get VC backing, blitzscale until you are dominant, then abuse your power to monetize the platform.

The only difference is how far along a market is in the cycle. Desktop operating systems went through this in the 1990s, eCommerce went through this in the 2000s, smartphone operating systems went through this in the late 2000s, social media went through this in the 2010s, ridesharing is going through it now, autonomous vehicles will go through it soon, and AI platforms will go through it when they arrive.

It's the same story everywhere you look and the process begins at the startup stage. Attacking companies that reach the end of the cycle won't stop the cycle from happening.

I would love to see Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, and Google broken up. I would cheer it. But it won't save us. It will only change who owns the leash we're controlled by.

I don't know about anyone else, but I don't care whether I'm being controlled by a millionaire, a billionaire, or a trillionaire. I just care that I'm being controlled. The only way to escape is to own digital infrastructure that you rely on and that possibility only exists with free and open source software.

No doubt the pivots and acquisitions were how Facebook stayed on top. My point was that it doesn't matter which company wins.

All breaking up Facebook would do is start the process over. No healthy market equilibrium can form when the winners benefit from increasing returns.

If it wasn't Facebook abusing the system it would just be someone else. The Chinese software market ended up the same way the US market did. Very different legal systems, almost identical outcomes.

If we want to solve the problem for good we need to correct what is causing the monopolies to form and we need to counter the strategies that monopolists use to stay in power.

Using free and open source software platforms that are built on top of open protocols is the way to solve both problems.

Linux's monopoly in the server market and the Internet's open protocols have been effective at preventing corporate monopolies. We just need to copy these solutions and apply them to social networks, consumer operating systems, and cloud services.

The article ignores one of the biggest drivers of tech concentration, network effects. This is where 'tech exceptionalism' really stems from.

Facebook got big, not just from the failures of competitors or from acquiring them, but because the platform became more useful as more people joined. Network effects took over once Facebook hit a critical mass of users.

This happens with most social platforms, they either wither and slowly die or they hit a critical mass and grow towards monopolies. There is a reason everyone in a society speaks the same language. There is a reason why we only have a few operating systems. There is a reason everyone gravitated towards a few social platforms.

Enforcing antitrust laws is only a temporary fix. Unless everyone moves onto free and open source platforms where network effects can't hand control over to a central authority, this story will just repeat itself again and again with a new boogeyman each time.

This trend was identified 25 years ago. Before the internet took over business and before Facebook and Google were founded. https://hbr.org/1996/07/increasing-returns-and-the-new-world...