simplertms

It’s interesting that the predominant “form” for the smart phone has been a single vertical screen. So the fold out phone like Samsung’s is still keeping that form, but the Surface Duo actually changes the “form” to two distinct screens.

A habit change that I think will be too hard for consumers to palate right now.

The most interesting thing about this deal outside the obvious political drama in my opinion is that this will change Big Tech landscape overnight.

Microsoft has done enterprise so well for so long but has always struggled on 'consumer tech' outside of its Windows OS. Acquiring a social media platform is going to catapault it into the heart of consumer tech.

Question is will TikTok be a parallell arm or will it help Microsoft's consumer tech ambitions for One Drive, Xbox etc?

For the uninitiated to fanfiction terminology Mary Sue refers to a character who is so perfect and competent that it becomes absurd. I believe the name was given to a parody fiction written for the Trekkie universe -- ah and wikipedia confirms (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue)

Also this gem, an excerpt from the fanfiction: "Gee, golly, gosh, gloriosky," thought Mary Sue as she stepped on the bridge of the Enterprise. "Here I am, the youngest lieutenant in the fleet - only fifteen and a half years old." Captain Kirk came up to her.

"Oh, Lieutenant, I love you madly. Will you come to bed with me?" "Captain! I am not that kind of girl!" "You're right, and I respect you for it. Here, take over the ship for a minute while I go get some coffee for us." Mr. Spock came onto the bridge. "What are you doing in the command seat, Lieutenant?" "The Captain told me to." "Flawlessly logical. I admire your mind."

The issue is that there is a race to the bottom in terms of price. Effectively chasing margins in an already margin squeezed industry.

If you think about what a food delivery platform is doing - they are trying to service convenience for customers - they need to deliver on speed at the lowest cost possible. How do you do this when your task is labour intensive and there are few barriers to competitors? You’ve got to drive price down.

Likely there will be a period of consolidation until one service rules a region and then maybe a slow grind back up to profit.

Collectively the web has become a cacophony of voices, yelling loudly over each other. Discourse, let’s agree to disagree, I can respect your view and your right to that view - none of these sentiments can exist in the current mentality of you are either with us or against us. Who this “us” are remains a mystery. SSC will be deeply missed but as a last bastion of rational heaven Scott deserves his anonymity.

Australia passed an assistance and access law a couple of years ago that forces messaging providers to provide access to E2E encrypted messages. But of course Signal and WhatsApp can’t do it because of the nature of the encryption.

In a completely dystopic move towards a surveillance state the government in Oz has been on tech companies’ cases to give them back door access.

Better not to be complacent. These things start as just winning easy political points but erode digital citizen rights over time as we normalize surveillance states.