I think this is a misevaluation of the trust involved. NFT's are using the blockchain to whitewash trust, the blockchain contains a smart contract and a URL. It provides no assurance that the URL contains the same contents as when the NFT was first minted.
With how most NFTs are implemented you need to have trust in the blockchain it self, in the implementation of the smart contract, in the server hosting the referenced metadata URL, and the server hosting the actual digital asset the NFT represents. If trust in any one of these is misplaced it can undermine the trust placed in the others.
The blockchain can not provide more trust than the least trustworthy part of the rest of the NFT chain. Since the URL referenced in the blockchain is likely stored in some single organization's SQL database, the maximum trustworthiness of an NFT is never going to be larger than the trustworthiness of that SQL database.
That is complicated, but also not related to the 5th amendment. Warrants are a part of 4th amendment rights.
The 4th amendment is intended to ensure (among other things) that the government can't search some locations for evidence without first proving they have a good cause for that search.
The 5th amendment is intended to ensure (among other things) that the government can't use force or threats to make you admit to a crime, regardless of if you committed or didn't commit that crime.
The distinction is that a court could grant the right to force someone to put their thumb on a phone, or look at a phone's camera, but they (in some but not all cases) cannot force you to type in your passcode.
The argument is that your fingerprint or face is not "testimony" but a fact of who you are, but your passcode is a testimony, a declaration that you have some specific knowledge.
A phone unlocking is equivalent to it saying "Yes that is my owner/user", and that is not that person testifying, it is the device testifying against that person. Similarly it would be as if someone kept a picture of them committing a crime that was found with a valid warrant, they could not claim that having taken the picture it is their own testimony and can't be used against them. Taking the picture is a past event and requires no compelling of testimony to be used as evidence.
Getting biometrics without a warrant is a contentious issue. There are situations where a warrant is not needed, and these have also been abused to gather biometrics in situations that should have required a warrant but it was denied.
The opposite question is also important. Should the mobile network my phone is on get a share of all transactions made from my phone? Should my home ISP get a share from purchases made on my home computer? Or the hardware vendor? Or the OS vendor?
The reason Apple gets to ask for a cut of all transactions made on my phone is because they are in a position to control those transactions, not because it's right for them to ask for that cut. They can remove any app that tries to bypass their cut, as was recently ruled in their case against Epic Games.
Like wise Doordash has control, if you want them to pay a driver to carry your food from the restaurant to your home, then they get a cut.
The difference between Doordash and Apple is that Apple forbade anyone with an app in the app store from even telling people that they could pay for a purchase outside the app. For a time the Kindle app would send you to a checkout page in Safari, but Apple forced them to remove that. The comparison would be that any restaurant that worked with Doordash being forced to remove mention that they do pickup orders, if you don't want dine in then you must order with Doordash, even if that technically isnt't true.
To me there is no magic percent where these behaviors should or should not be allowed or regulated. To me it's more about the pattern of 'soft' extortion. "You get value from our platform so we deserve a cut of what you make", sounds a bit too much like "You sure do have a nice app there with some dedicated users, it sure would be bad if something happened to it..."
I don't know that I would pay for and read a tenth as many books as I do if I didn't always have the Kindle app in my pocket. On the other hand if Apple ever removed the Kindle app I'd have a strong reason to switch to Android. Both gain value from the other. Apple insentience to always get the better of that trade seems counter productive.
You started off well but then veered off into the wrong lane. The difference between DoorDash and Apple is that Apple built, runs, and owns the platform that's providing the value for the service whereas DoorDash only owns the service. Your example would only be analagous if DoorDash told restaurant owners that they couldn't advertise Uber Eats or Postmates services on their restaurant listings within the DoorDash app.
Apple didn't forbid people from telling people they could pay for a purchase outside the app. They just didn't let people do that from within the app itself.
One of the rules in Apples App Store policy is that developers are not allowed to communicate with customers out side the app, even if they asked for permission in the app. (They were enjoined against doing this in the recent Epic Games v. Apple ruling [1])
Apple also forbit apps from directly telling people about other purchasing options in the app.
If a customer did download an app, and set up an account, and that app's creator wanted to say hey you have other options to pay us how would they do that? Yes they could do a generic advertising campaign and reach mostly non-customers, but they could not by Apple's rules directedly talk to their own customer base. To use the Doordash analogy this is like saying you can't include a menu with direct ordering phone number with a delivery. I do think this qualifies as "forbid people from telling people they could pay for a purchase outside the app."
The difference is between Apples actual rules and the hypothetical Doordash behaving badly is more about degrees of control and likely hood of working that actual intent. Your own examples don't fit to Apple's behavior any better, DoorDash saying you can't advertise Uber Eats on your menu is nothing like Apple saying Amazon can't advertise Amazon in Amazons own Amazon app. Your using the example of a competitor advertising in the competitions app, that is an apples to oranges comparison, Apple owns the platform, you could argue that Apple can say that Amazon can't advertise their Android tablets in the Kindle app, maybe that would be like your example, but that was never what the issue was.
No, it's not. Amazon's App Store application doesn't exist without the Apple ecosystem and Apple's customers. Amazon is allowed to advertise anything they want outside of the Apple App Store, including on Android and any other platforms not run by Apple. The rule is only about advertising for other services within the platform that Apple runs. They absolutely can communicate with their customers but that can't advertise to Apple's customers to promote circumventing the App Store's systems.
My example isn't at all like what you're describing unless Amazon's app is outside of the Apple ecosystem. There is literally no business that allows companies using their property to advertise their competitors. Your example about a direct ordering phone number is not analogous at all. A better example would be a restaurant allowing DoorDash to post advertisements but specifying that they can only advertise for their own services, not promote other companies who pay DoorDash more for priority.
Your whole argument is based on an incorrect understanding of the agreements made to use the App Store and an inaccurate understanding of the limits imposed by apps. I am not using the example of a competitor advertising in the competitions app. I'm using the example of someone advertising on a business's property or platform to advertise a different platform.
> No, it's not. Amazon's App Store application doesn't exist without the Apple ecosystem and Apple's customers.
When did I talk about Amazon's App Store? This is about Amazon's Apps on Apple's App store and on iOS.
> Amazon is allowed to advertise anything they want outside of the Apple App Store
True, I mentioned that and rebutted it in my last post.
> The rule is only about advertising for other services within the platform that Apple runs
False, at least in the respect that the Kindle Store is not a platform Apple runs, Apple runs the installations system on iOS, they use that to extend their reach into what other companies run.
> They absolutely can communicate with their customers ...
Amazon can, to use the Kindle app you must have an Amazon account created outside the app, they have the right to communicate outside the app because that point of contact originated outside the app.
Any one not already the size of Amazon that starts as an app on iOS is not allowed to try to extend that relationship outside of iOS. That is why a federal judge felt it necessary to rule that Apple's behavior was against California law.
> There is literally no business that allows companies using their property to advertise their competitors.
Except news papers, TV stations, movie studios, ISPs, phone companies, etc. All of these allow competitors to buy add space on their platforms, or use their platforms to communicate competing offers.
Did you know movie studios once refused to let theaters run their movies if the previews/trailers were for any movies not from the same studio? Courts put a stop to that, now at most a studio can require that some but not all of the previews/trailers be for their films.
Back when long distance phone companies were a thing people cared about in the US, AT&T tried to block their competitors from cold calling companies to get them to switch, they also lost that case.
Yes, none of these companies want to allow their competitors to use their platform, but none of them are allowed by law to stop it.
> Your example about a direct ordering phone number is not analogous at all.
It's not analogous to Apple preventing Amazon from providing links in the app to Amazon's own web site? How?
This is the point of the similarity, you use the Doordash app or website (you use the Apple App Store), you order food (you download an app), when you get your food there is a menu inside that suggests you order direct, maybe even including coupons that give a discount on pickup orders (you open the app and when you pick something to buy you are provided a link to their site instead of an App Store button).
Can you explain where I'm going wrong on that analogy? I know it's not 100% the same, it's an analogy, they are never exactly the same.
> Your whole argument is based on an incorrect understanding of the agreements made to use the App Store and an inaccurate understanding of the limits imposed by apps.
Right back at you. It's curious to me that you seem so adamant to defend a behavior was just ruled illegal. Was the judge wrong? How?
Thought experiment, if Microsoft tomorrow said they own the Windows platform, and they have the right to a cut of all transactions done inside apps on the Windows platform, would you be ok with applications like say Steam or Epic Games Store being required to use the Windows Store to process payments and give some percent to Microsoft? If this is not ok how is it different from Apple's policy for iOS?
I'm not talking about Amazon's App Store. I'm talking about Amazon's applications on the Apple App Store. I will try to be more explicit in the future.
>False, at least in the respect that the Kindle Store
It is not false. Amazon can advertise whatever they want within the Kindle Store. They cannot, however, advertise for buying something on iOS from outside the IAP system. You're conflating two different things and I feel like you're doing so intentionally.
>Did you know movie studios once refused to let theaters run their movies if the previews/trailers were for any movies not from the same studio?
That is not the same thing. The movie studios don't own the theatre. They can't prevent someone from running movies from other studios and that would be anti-competitive because they don't own the theatre. If they owned their own theatres, they could play whatever movies they want and there's nothing that would force them to play movies from other studios.
>It's not analogous to Apple preventing Amazon from providing links in the app to Amazon's own web site?
No, it's not because Apple isn't preventing links to Amazon's site. They're preventing links to purchases within the app from an external source. These are not the same thing and you're intentionally confusing them and misusing these statements.
>Can you explain where I'm going wrong on that analogy?
Yes. I already have. DoorDash does not own the restaurant. They only own the app. Therefore, they can have a rule that says that restaurants who use DoorDash for delivery cannot advertise that they deliver through other services or have discounts on pickup orders that are not made through DoorDash within the DoorDash app or the listings inside of that app. They cannot stipulate that this extends outside of a system that they do not own.
>Right back at you. It's curious to me that you seem so adamant to defend a behavior was just ruled illegal. Was the judge wrong? How?
No, the judge wasn't wrong but you're misframing the decision to make it fit a situation it doesn't. The judge did not rule that Apple's position on App Store payments was illegal. They ruled that Apple was being anti-competitive for "digital mobile gaming transactions" because the transactions happen within the game and not simply within the App Store. That means that the decision would not apply to other in-app purchases that occur within iOS specific apps.
>if Microsoft tomorrow said they own the Windows platform, and they have the right to a cut of all transactions done inside apps on the Windows platform, would you be ok with applications like say Steam or Epic Games Store being required to use the Windows Store to process payments and give some percent to Microsoft?
There's no "if" here. They do own the Windows platform and do have a right to all transactions processed through the Windows Store. If everyone who developed for Windows agreed to those terms, then Microsoft would 100% be within their right to do so as long as they aren't monopolizing that industry or breaking anti-trust laws. They don't do that because they don't currently do that and changing their policy would harm future sales irreparably but they have every right to do that and require it and shoot themselves in the foot if they choose.
The rules aren't in place to protect shitty business decisions. They're there to prevent monopolization and Apple doesn't have a monopoly.
> That is not the same thing. The movie studios don't own the theatre.
They did at one time, courts end it, but isn't even relevant to my point. You said "There is literally no business that allows companies using their property to advertise their competitors." My point is that that is exactly not true.
I am rebutting your incorrect assertion.
It seems like your playing at moving goal posts, make one argument, then when it's shown to be wrong demand that the it has to meet some unrelated criteria to be valid. You never said "There is literally no monopoly that allows companies using their property to advertise their competitors." You said no *business*. You didn't say they had to own all the property, just that it is there property, and to a movie studio, the movie, even as it's being shown in a theater, is there's. They own it and can dictate how it's shown. Except that courts have limited how far those contracts can go. The theater may be the platform to show movies, but the movies are the platform for previews/trailers, no one goes to a theater for the previews. (I mean some of them are cool, but I'm not paying $20 to watch 10 minutes of trailers)
I provided multiple examples, but for some reason you tried to find some wiggle room in one example to try and ignore the rest.
> No, the judge wasn't wrong but you're misframing the decision to make it fit a situation it doesn't. The judge did not rule that Apple's position on App Store payments was illegal. They ruled that Apple was being anti-competitive for "digital mobile gaming transactions"
Have you read the injunction? The one I linked before? It's really really short, it won't take long to read honest.
Ok read it now? How often does it mention games? Once? Exactly one use of the word games? What is the word before games? "Epic"? The word after? "Inc"? So the only mention of games is in the name of one of the parties to the litigation "Epic Games, Inc." There aren't even any phrases that could be considered synonyms. No "entertainment software" no "interactive media", nothing of the sort.
I'm sorry to be so condescending, but as you accuse me of "misframing" this, you yourself are not understanding what the judge ruled. His injunction has no limitations for what kind of applications this applies to. The injection says "Apple Inc. ... are hereby permanently restrained and enjoined from
prohibiting developers from ...". Not "digital mobile gaming" developers, not "mobile gaming" developers not even just "gaming" developers, all developers, all of them, for all types of apps.
But what if I just conceded that point, the judge did only rule on games. Ok, then what is the difference between Epic Games' Fortnight and Amazon's Kindle?
You said:
> because the transactions happen within the game and not simply within the App Store.
How is Kindle different?
- Fortnight existed as a standalone game before it was an iOS app. Kindle existed as a standalone app before it was an iOS app.
- Fortnight had a way to purchase content in game before it was an iOS app. Kindle had a way to purchase content in app before it was an iOS app.
- Fortnight users when logged in see purchased items across devices. Kindle user when logged in see purchased items across devices.
What is it that makes games different? How is Kindle only inside iOS, despite being a service for about 8 months before the Apple App Store can into existence, but Fortnight is not only inside iOS? Are the Fortnight games servers run by Epic Games the magic difference? But Kindle books are delivered by Amazon not Apple, why are Amazon's servers not as magic as Epic's?
> The rules aren't in place to protect shitty business decisions. They're there to prevent monopolization and Apple doesn't have a monopoly.
This is a common misconception, but antitrust is not anti-monopoly, monopoly is not a requirement to violate anti-trust laws. One portion of antitrust is about regulating existing monopolies, another is about preventing new monopolies, but other parts cover other practices like price fixing, collusion, one of these is called vertical restraints. Apply requiring that all apps on their OS use their payment system could be viewed as a vertical restraints.
You're not arguing in good faith. A movie theatre would not allow anyone to advertise for another movie theatre within their building. That's the point. Everything else you said is irrelevant. I'm not moving any goalposts. You're twisting what I'm saying to argue something that I'm not. It doesn't have to be a monopoly. I never said it had to be a monopoly for the movie theatre example. And I'm not even sure where you're going with the trailers. A movie theatre's competitor would be another theatre or theatre chain, not a movie studio.
>Have you read the injunction?
Yes. I literally quoted the judge's decision. That's why I put that phrase in quotes. That's what quotes are for - to denote that you're repeating something someone else said. It's even bolded in the injunction.
>Ok, then what is the difference between Epic Games' Fortnight and Amazon's Kindle?
The difference is the market for which the competition is being evaluated. The judge's injunction specifically states that the only reason this injunction qualifies is because "most App Store revenue is generated by mobile gaming apps, not all apps". The judge did not rule that Apple was breaking anti-trust laws around vertical restraints but on anti-steering - that they were forcing Epic to hide information that would enable a choice. The judge ruled that, because Epic can make money off the game in other ways besides In-App purchases, that the only fault in Apple's processes was in forcing Epic to hide information about those other ways of monetization and that they were free to not allow In-App Purchases that can be made outside the platform. Again, to quote, "for the reasons set forth herein, the Court finds in favor of Apple on all counts except with respect to violation of California's Unfair Competition law (Count Ten) and only partially with respect to its claim for Declaratory Relief".
Additionally, "Apple's termination of the DPLA and the related agreements between Epic Games and Apple was valid, lawful, and enforceable".
When the Apple App Store first came out there was no in app purchases. Amazon already had a payment infrastructure so when they released the free Kindle app on iOS it used the Amazon payment system. Apple later added in app purchases and changed the contract terms (as the were allowed to do) to require all apps to only use the App Store for IAP, they allowed Kindle to remain unchanged. The exception as just not forcing Amazon to change their app.
It was allowed under the old rules, then the rules changed, then the Amazon ad these emails were referencing game out. So at the point of these email the Kindle app was out of compliance with the App Store rules, but Apple was allowing it as an exception because they viewed it as a promotion of Apple products. This ad changed their view and now though that the Kindle app on iOS was a promotion of how easy it was to move to Android.
> This ad changed their view and now though that the Kindle app on iOS was a promotion of how easy it was to move to Android.
I don't read it that way (most of your post I agree with though). I think the point was that before this email, Kindle devices had their own customers, and Apple wanted Kindle as a feature on their products to increase the appeal of iphone/ipad. But eventually those customers started doing all their "kindling" on their apple devices, so now from apple's perspective they think "we are providing you customers/making you a market, pay us". This is what the whole second paragraph is about.
> It's certainly quicker to type, but that's not a good argument enough to make such a drastic change in javascript.
I am so glad this argument has not been winning out in the JavaScript language design community. There are so many wonderful constructs that have been added in the last 20 years that are just sorter ways to write things that could mostly already be done in the language. Many of these features focused on allowing developers to write what they intended to do without having to explicitly construction the intermediate steps to express the mechanics of how that should be carried out using basic language features.
After all why do we need arrow functions when we could just sprinkle our code with `var self = this;` declarations for anonymous functions to bind to, the way it was done in the late 90's and early 00's.
I'd much rather JavaScript adopt succinct ways to write common code patterns and let the developers and the community decide if those constructs are the correct ones to use on a case by case basis.
> I am so glad this argument has not been winning out in the JavaScript language design community. There are so many wonderful constructs that have been added in the last 20 years that are just sorter ways to write things that could mostly already be done in the language.
Beware of survival bias, though. There have been many proposals that aren't part of JS today.
> APIs have been around for a while. For instance, the painful Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) used APIs in the early 2000s, but they really started getting interesting when representational state transfer (REST) came along. REST, which used the ubiquitous HTTP protocol, was lightweight and fun to work with.
Umm, yes, there were no APIs before the 2000s. Even ignoring non-web APIs there were plenty of pre-SOAP attempts at APIs on the web. XML-RPC was created in 1998 and is the direct predecessor to SOAP.
It feels like the author of this post has no historical perspective on the technology he is trying to explain, and if he skipped all the "What is an API" preamble that would be fine, but with it there it feels like an attempt at sounding like an authority that backfired.
I tried to see who this "Jesse Menning" is, but the author link goes to a twitter page for "Jeremy Menning" that hasn't seen use in 10 years. I'm not sure I should really put much trust in a blog post by an author that doesn't even know his own Twitter handle.
> Umm, yes, there were no APIs before the 2000s. Even ignoring non-web APIs there were plenty of pre-SOAP attempts at APIs on the web. XML-RPC was created in 1998 and is the direct predecessor to SOAP.
They didn't say SOAP was the first. They said APIs have been around for a long time, and brought up an older method that's probably relatable for many as an "old" attempt.
> I'm not sure I should really put much trust in a blog post by an author that doesn't even know his own Twitter handle.
Understanding of APIs and ability to avoid typos are likely extremely unrelated.
If the data is not stored in the git repo itself there is no workable solution. Any offered standard is just a bandaid on the problem.
If a project is renamed or relocated from one name to another it might (and should) preserve issue and merge related information and discussion, but any full URLs will have changed, making full URLs fail in specific cases. Using any form of shortened sequential identifiers will fail when referenced in commits merged in from forks of the project that have their own conflicting identifiers.
To solve this in any real way there needs to be a way that when a project is forked it carries information about issues and merges with it, and when commits from that fork are merged back into the main project, or merges from a fork of a fork are merged all the way back to the original project, all metadata about those merges are carried to the original project.
Linus' argument is that the correct place to store that is in the merge commit's message. That it is the responsibility of the person doing the merge to provide that information, and that GitHub does a bad job of providing tools to do that.
Standard Apple cables already have a chip inside, and USB 3.1 cables are also supposed to have chips inside.
I would also assume they are not paying enough attention to even notice, there is no regulation against them so there is no reason to even train to notice differences in USB cables.
> They probably see thousands of cables and it'd be pretty easy to spot the difference.
If anything seeing thousands of cables will make them less likely to notice anything, change blindness is a real problem in jobs like that.
These are more general purpose than just those attacks, the author of the firmware has demo videos of cables attached to Android and iOS devices that when the payload runs they open the system browser and loads a specific page. Depending on what you can do with a web page at any given time on those devices it could be a springboard.
You could also do some passive/active data gathering. On Windows when you plug in an iOS device, if the device trusts the computer it will allow it to access all the photos and videos on the device. The cable it self could then start grabbing those images and sending them over the WiFi link. I don't know if these cables support that, but the concept is valid.
With how most NFTs are implemented you need to have trust in the blockchain it self, in the implementation of the smart contract, in the server hosting the referenced metadata URL, and the server hosting the actual digital asset the NFT represents. If trust in any one of these is misplaced it can undermine the trust placed in the others.
The blockchain can not provide more trust than the least trustworthy part of the rest of the NFT chain. Since the URL referenced in the blockchain is likely stored in some single organization's SQL database, the maximum trustworthiness of an NFT is never going to be larger than the trustworthiness of that SQL database.