The law does not require Apple to grant all permissions to all apps for all users. It just requires Apple to ask users if the user wants to grant elevated permissions to specific apps that they download. The user can always say "no", which should obviously be the default.
The situation is that Apple won't even allow users to grant elevated permissions to any 3rd party app, even if the user wants to.
But then third party apps can force users to accept this before they work (here I am especially thinking of school and work apps that people might be forced to use).
Apple loves to play dumb about this stuff. The EU imposes a pretty straightforward regulation regarding equality of access. Apple seems to come up with all sorts of "solutions" to this "problem", and each one never amounts to true equality of access. They could easily just allow users to decide "Do you want to give this app unfettered access to all your device data, including other apps' data?". Let users decide. 99% of Apple users in the EU will probably click "no". I'm sure they'll make the user warnings scary enough to ward off anybody who doesn't know what's going on.
There are 2 potential outcomes: either the sky really does fall, and there's a meaningful uptick in bad things happening to iPhone users, in which Apple can easily point the finger at the EC and say "they made us do this". Apple looks like the good guys who put up a good fight for their users, but ultimately their hands were tied, and they'll probably get the revisions to EU law they're so desperately fighting for.
The other possibility is that the sky does not fall, and Apple looks both silly and malicious at the same time for ever having suggested that it would, which was clearly in bad faith.
Clearly, Apple cannot afford scenario #2, so I think they will probably never give their users the actual freedom that the MDA requires them to. They will just exit Europe entirely before allowing that to happen.
> Do you want to give this app unfettered access to all your device data, including other apps' data?
Which Facebook and instagram will present as “tee hee updated terms of service” in the first 15 seconds, and people will tick it, because they’re not interested in reading T&C’s, just want to message their friend about dinner, and aren’t suddenly expected be deceived like that.
Obviously there should be a system dialog to grant system permissions. I'm not aware of any kind of system with a capability-based permissions system (e.g. Android, MacOS, browsers, etc.) where apps are allowed to show their own dialog to request permissions. You always have to do something in the system settings to grant permissions.
That's how it should be done. And that would be the responsible way to comply with the DMA.
Yes, heaven forbid governments impose any constraints on Microsoft, Apple, Google, or Facebook, because they've been handling things so well on their own.
> There are 2 potential outcomes: either the sky really does fall, and there's a meaningful uptick in bad things happening to iPhone users, in which Apple can easily point the finger at the EC and say "they made us do this". Apple looks like the good guys who put up a good fight for their users, but ultimately their hands were tied, and they'll probably get the revisions to EU law they're so desperately fighting for.
>
> The other possibility is that the sky does not fall, and Apple looks both silly and malicious at the same time for ever having suggested that it would, which was clearly in bad faith.
I think the most likely outcome is between these two extremes. My personal data ends up sold to shady companies who use it to target ever more invasive advertising at me in places I wouldn't expect/. Like a boiling frog, I won't really notice the difference and my life will gradually become a little shittier.
Then just click "no" if your phone ever asks you to grant permissions like this to a third party app, which should obviously be the default option. Or better yet, don't install the third party apps to begin with. For you, it will be as though nothing has changed.
For the people who want a bit of freedom though, their lives will suddenly get a lot better.
> There are 2 potential outcomes: either the sky really does fall, and there's a meaningful uptick in bad things happening to iPhone users, in which Apple can easily point the finger at the EC and say "they made us do this". Apple looks like the good guys who put up a good fight for their users, but ultimately their hands were tied, and they'll probably get the revisions to EU law they're so desperately fighting for.
I'd prefer they focus on safeguarding my data instead of playing a ridiculous game of brinksmanship with regulators to make a point.
> There are 2 potential outcomes: either the sky really does fall, and there's a meaningful uptick in bad things happening to iPhone users, in which Apple can easily point the finger at the EC and say "they made us do this". Apple looks like the good guys who put up a good fight for their users, but ultimately their hands were tied, and they'll probably get the revisions to EU law they're so desperately fighting for.
I don't think that is what will happen. People, and the media, will blame Apple: it is them after all giving that data over because they hold it. No that doesn't make logical sense, but that has never mattered before why would it matter now.
Once Apple loses that trust re. data privacy, its gone forever. I get why they're being particular about it.
People will absolutely not blame Apple if the exact thing they warned would happen, and said would be really bad, actually turns out to happen and be really bad.
Apple has very well-funded PR. They will make sure that the EC is blamed.
Then, they get to be the heroes once the law is changed to allow them to come to everyone's rescue by banishing all third-party app access forever. They would ultimately be the saviours.
Conventional commits made it easier to generate changelogs and automate semantic version bumps. I suppose LLMs can usually do that the right way with looser structure, but in the before times it made a lot more sense, and even now is much less ambiguous
They're hand-waved away by saying the changelogs are bad and the semver isn't always accurate. While I mostly agree with, that doesn't mean they don't provide _some_ value. You get categorized changelogs (even if the messages are technical) and semver that's generally correct. The alternative of good changelogs and perfect semver isn't free.
My understanding (very informal armchair) is that someone could relatively easily wipe out aedes aegypti using a gene drive with a sort of sex-selective infertility:
Release a few thousand females carrying a gene drive that produces all infertile males, and all fertile females (who all also have the same gene due to it being a gene drive). Every generation, there are more and more infertile males, and more and more fertile females carrying this extinction gene. After several generations (a.k.a. a few years), the population collapses completely.
Gene drives are such amazing and such frightening technology. No one puts them in the same conversation as nukes or engineered pandemics, but they share the same pattern of "technology improvements giving smaller and smaller actors globally reaching powers", and have even more potential for consequences not intended by those actors. It's pretty scary to imagine a world where one lab or one rich farmer has the power to (after a few dozen generations) globally make arbitrary edits the DNA of entire species. Even smart and goodhearted people can screw up that world.
So from this armchair, I'm glad to see that at least for aedes aegypti (which seems like the clearest case for deploying a gene drive), there's an alternative like debug.
You'd want fertile males and infertile females (it's different from the idea on the article), so you could contaminate the population faster.
But any claim of completely wiping out a thriving species with a single action is doubtful. I'm all for trying this one, but I'm not bullish on its long-term success.
I'm hoping that at some point someone just disregards all the "safety" debate, does it, and succeeds. There is something deeply upsetting about being in the position humanity is on earth and still being expected to tolerate being eaten alive.
I wonder why we don't just try it on some remote island that has had mosquitoes introduced to it, but is otherwise considered isolated from the rest of the ecosystem (at least as far as mosquitoes are concerned).
It's ok. AI will have replaced most VCs by then and increase the efficiency of capital allocation. The right people will get funded, competition will work it's magic, and consumers will benefit mightily. Nobody's profit margins are safe.
Of course, who knows. There's always another angle you can look at this from
Finally being able to stop paying Intuit $150 every year as a reward for their lobbying against tax code simplification and free e-file is one of the most exciting possibilities for AI imo
I used Claude Code to prepare my personal income tax return this year, and so far the IRS hasn’t come after me.
Had Claude generate yaml files for the input/source documents, then had it generate code to process the return into output yaml files.
Manually typed the results into the IRS Free File Forms website, and was pleased to see that it did some input validation.
Had it generate Code modules to match the IRS forms and schedules by name, keeping the nomenclature in code as close as possible to that in the official IRS instructions.
Spot checked a whole lot of it and found very, very little of it that needed correction.
Stored all of it in git so that I could monitor the diffs as it went along.
Maybe the neatest part was when I asked Claude why I wound up owing so much it gave me a list of reasons and dollar amounts in descending order.
A lot of people in the UK file their taxes (~12 million, roughly 35% of employed adults, not taking into account those unemployed with assets and pensions), but the self assessment is straightforward and very easy to use.
In my country income taxes are automatically deducted. If you've got a single job and don't own large amounts of properties there's a decent chance your tax bill is exactly €0 and that there's no requirement for you to file.
In the UK tax on interest earned on plain savings accounts isn't deducted at source - so if you have a rainy day pot chances are you're required to register for self assessment and pay tax on it (particularly now that interest rates are higher and it's relatively easy to go above the tax free threshold, which has been frozen for a long time).
If you have investments outside of an ISA (tax free investment wrapper) then same story - you need to report disposals and dividends for tax purposes.
That's before we get into side hustles/self employment and investment properties, etc.
> In the UK tax on interest earned on plain savings accounts isn't deducted at source
Yes, but as you point out you should really be using the ISA wrapper or a pension of some sort for most investments. I suspect most of those doing self assessment will either (a) be in the upper 25% of earners or (b) self-employed (~4.5m people).
It is annoying how the government has chosen to make tax slightly more annoying with "making tax digital" for self-employed people with quarterly reporting.
No, you don't have to. If you are employed through a company, stay below £100K income and don't have other income then (generally) you don't need to do a tax return - it's all handled automatically through pay as you earn payroll. However, as shown, a lot of people are self employed, want to claim deductions, have some side income etc. However, for those that do need to, it is really straightforward.
Until you have to deal with bed and breakfast rules for RSUs. Good luck getting free software to understand that. There are a couple of open source attempts but they are skeleton at best.
Here in Portugal, tax comes pre calculated from the government on a free web application. It works very well!
I just need to do very small adjustments every year before deliver the taxes.
In the US every Republican takes the Grover Norquist pledge to always make taxes as salient and as unpleasant as possible. The idea being that it will make voters more anti tax
I wish this were true but they get paid by taxes. Besides, there are few things more unpleasant than having your hard earned money taken away from you, regardless of how it happens. I don't think it takes fancy paperwork to make people oppose it.
Once you get habituated to it, it really is easy. When I was younger I was appalled by how much I was losing to taxes. Now I don't even glance at the line items. All that matters is that the end numbers. Hell, if I didn't need to enroll my kid in school which requires a receipt for property taxes, I wouldn't even know that literally 80% of my local taxes to schooling. My property taxes are pretty invisible to me. I don't file, my bank does. It really puts into frame why when a city gets old, they start cutting taxes and squeezing schools.
If taxes were filed automatically, honestly, I'd pay no attention at all to them, but having to sit once a year an actually look at the amount I paid, does get me to think about taxes and what they go towards, at least a little.
I’d wager the money from lobbies and companies like Intuit more than make up for it.
Also, republics are “anti-tax” in word and pro-tax in practice, as is the American way. When it comes to particularly republicans, anti-tax is code for removing social safety nets. They want taxes if it pays them, or pays the right contractors, or funds the military etc but when those tax dollars could go to social welfare they suddenly think it’s time to trim the fat.
To have the tax code easily dealt with and returns filed by IRS's own software will be a happy day. At that point maybe most of Intuit's employees can find other jobs.
There's a lazy habit from some folks to say something they either disagree with or don't understand was "written by AI" without backing up that statement.
I don’t think it’s AI. AI would at least keep the article body consistent with the title even if it had to bend over backward and hallucinate new facts.
>>There's a lazy habit from some folks to say something they either disagree with or don't understand was "written by AI" without backing up that statement.
Thank you for saying this, I keep arguing the same. "This is llm" has become lazy for "I dont like this so I will pretend its llm"
People usually make the determination by reading at least part of the text and then find multiple smoking guns / llm-isms
The comment you responded to did not have those.
Fwiw, the article we're commenting on was likely not LLM written. The sentence structure is too convoluted, no LLM would've generated it like that - unless very carefully prompted ... But at that point it's no longer pure AI slop (imo).
That kinda sounds like draft PRs. You can make all PRs drafts by default. I guess it would be cool to have a setting where only maintainers can change it to ready-for-review.
It's called a signaling game. Of course it's dumb, but how else do you measure traction besides revenue? Building good software is a small part of running a business.
I don't know, and I think there is no easy answer. The point is: the investors don't know how to measure traction either, so they just measure GitHub activity instead, even at the very moment in which it becomes obvious that it does not capture actual traction.
The absurdity lies in the statement that the developers still need to gain actual traction while putting additional effort into gaming that metric to satisfy their investors.
The situation is that Apple won't even allow users to grant elevated permissions to any 3rd party app, even if the user wants to.
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