People deserve to be paid for their labor. This is Lemmy; that's the default position given our history. There are plenty of free as in beer and speech apps out there if someone doesn't or can't pay the price. But software development is hard work, especially if it isn't a hobby. And a lot of Lemmy apps are hobbyists. That's the communtiy phase we are in right now. And we are a smaller community, which means fewer paying customers, which means a higher overall cost. LJ can't throw out an app for $5 and expect a hundred thousand to convert into paying customers off the backs of over a million downloads.
I'll never understand this criticism of Sync. I hate subscriptions as much as most people, but with software it sort of makes sense because the work never ends. It isn't like buying a bookcase or any other static item. And Sync, in this case, isn't like what companies such as LG are doing where they are intoducing forced subscriptions into static firmware to extract maximum wealth from customers.
Microsoft has been slowly building toward requiring these subscriptions for enterprise for some time now. That is where Windows365 is ultimately going at an enterprise level, management just doesn’t realize it yet or are aware of how powerless they are to stop it.
Because Microsoft should’ve been broken up in the 90s. They definitely need to be broken up now. Same with a number of companies really, but Microsoft has a unique position to really hold enterprise and government by the balls.
Well one thing we can all agree on: it is a blessing to non-working capitalists who own huge stakes of Microsoft.
Because this will require expensive per-seat subscriptions to their Power Platform or Azure Services. And if Power Platform is any indication, likely some features of Python will be gated behind per-use models on top of that.
Great breakdown! Given that this is Lemmy and we trend toward more tech focused, people might gel better with Apple and Microsoft. If anyone is confused about what you wrote but the my understand big tech tax evasion, it is basically the same set of steps.
Big tech just doesn’t pay residuals.
Apple is well known for their Irish tax haven holding all of their IP and other rights so Apple can lease it back from themselves and account for pure profit as expenses. That’s also how Amazon pays little to no taxes. Or sometimes these company’s pay negative tax rates meaning they get government welfare to buy billionaires fudge rounds presumably, in conservative populist parlance.
Also to add on to my earlier comment, after some research it appears that the standard union contract prior to the strike has always been based on gross revenue instead of net. So it is consistent with why the WGA put this out.
Revenue is used because this industry is notorious for “Hollywood accounting” to avoid having any actual profits to avoid residuals based on net.
Some of the biggesr blockbusters of all time are, thanks to Hollywood accounting, net losers. Forrest Gump is a classic example: it made almost a billion dollars in revenue vs a $55 million budget. But thanks to tax evasion techniques the movie is actually a huge financial loser on paper, losing more than $65 million if you look at net.
You can’t trust non-workers, who exist entirely off the wealth they can cheat out of workers, to be honest.
So that is why gross revenue is used in Hollywood.
Edit: to add on to that Gump example, the author was supposed to be paid based on net. He got totally fucked which is why no sequel was made. His IP created a billion+ dollars out of thin air, but blood sucking capitalist parasites leech it all away with tax evasion.
Others have pointed out that the article is jumping to conclusions by excluding the very and actually well documented economic factors at play here.
It is crunchy/granola technophobia. People need to keep in mind that popular (scientific, for the time) opinion used to be that excessive reading was had for children and adults. It is as old as our written records actually, going back to a handful of Greek historians warning about it even.
If people wanted the best for babies then we’d be raising them in collectives, with multigenerational households being the norm and free food, healthcare, and childcare widely available with few string attached. Some places already are close to all of those things.
But it is so much easier to clutch pearls and blame the iPad. It isn’t like brains shut off. They also used to argue that video games causes inadequate social and motor skill development and now fucking surgeons play games to build motor skills.
I’m sure we’ll hear that screentime proclaims “hail Satan” just as soon as they find a way to play the iPad in reverse.
Considering they are probably on the side of iMessage, I’m going to venture a guess and say the company size has nothing to do with it.
Meta is deeply unethical, even for a giant company.
I agree that most people don’t need SUVs. And even more don’t need a truck. But few others are forced to drive as much nor as far as Americans on a daily basis, so we don’t give a shit if people in other countries with robust public transport sometimes have to drive places in their (comparatively) small countries with their families.
TIL that a dubious 15% is also === 95%.
Edit: that is to say, this isn’t as simple as “LOL Americans fat, Americans dumb.” The same old Euro arguments don’t work on this one. Civil planning is completely fucked here. It isn’t just bad, it is actively hostile to non-drivers.
And SUVs in particular can get these massive tax advantages that cars don’t get. Same with some models of truck. Plus, marketing is highly effective and nearly totally unregulated like so much else over here.
You have morons giving themselves brain damage for the right to own gas stoves, and we have similar morons suffocating themselves and everyone else by insisting they need huge vehicles. And the government actively encourages it.
The US should really just directly employ regional workers to handle these projects. Corruption and nepotism are rampant in public construction projects, and the profit motive requires an inefficient use of tax dollars since we must pay a completely useless margin just so somebody can become richer for doing zero work.
We also need to stop expanding highways since additional lanes have been proven to not help congestion, and actually worsens it because it encourages more driving.
@glockenspiel
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