Monopolies and Proprietary Traps

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Sep 04, 2023

• Canada’s Big Tech Bill Compels Google, Facebook to Compensate Media Houses

  Under a legislative mandate demanding big tech corporations remunerate media houses for Canadian journalism, the federals intend for Google and Facebook to shell out $172 million and $62 million respectively in annual compensation. This proposal forms a part of the Online News Act, a policy approved during the recent summer, that mandates tech firms to negotiate agreements with media houses whose work they link or repurpose.

  For the first time, the government has outlined draft regulations on Friday, aiming to establish equilibrium between Big Tech and Canadian news media sector, and indicating which businesses will be included. Newly appointed Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge remarked in a post-proposal interview that the Act aims to ensure businesses benefitting most from the Canadian market, are included in the bill.

• Microsoft Patents Bizarre AI-Powered Backpack, Bristling With Sensors

  First flagged by the MSPowerUser blog, the backpack patent, which was approved by the US Patent and Trademark Office last week, includes some very strange specs, including that the would-be wearable may be able to detect user speech and make suggestions Siri-style and also, for some reason, have the ability to record and store audio.

• Apple already shipped attestation on the web, and we barely noticed

  This feature is largely bad for the web and the industry generally, like all attestation (see below).

  That said, it's not as dangerous as the Google proposal, simply because Safari isn't the dominant browser. Right now, Safari has around 20% market share in browsers (25% on mobile, and 15% on desktop), while Chrome is comfortably above 60% everywhere, with Chromium more generally (Brave, Edge, Opera, Samsung Internet, etc) about 10% above that.

  With Safari providing this, it can be used by some providers, but nobody can block or behave differently with unattested clients. Similarly, Safari can't usefully use this to tighten the screws on users - while they could refuse to attest old OS versions or browsers, it wouldn't make a significant impact on users (they might see statistically more CAPTCHAs, but little else).

  Chrome's usage is a larger concern. With 70+% of web clients using Chromium, this would become a major part of the web very quickly. With both Web Environment Integrity & Private Access Tokens, 90% of web clients would potentially be attested, and the "oh, you're not attested, let's treat you suspiciously" pressure could ramp up quickly.

• The boiling frog of digital freedom

  Note: the dates of past events are only approximate. The other half of the timeline is wildly speculative and hypothetical.

• Microsoft Cloud tools vendor Skykick streamlines operations, lays off 140 staff

  While the statement did not specify the exact percentage of employees affected by the layoffs or provide a final headcount post-layoff, it did disclose that a total of 140 employees were released globally, with 98 of these individuals located in the United States.

  SkyKick's LinkedIn profile indicates an employee count of approximately 320. However, it remains unclear whether this figure represents the workforce before or after the recent reduction.

  In 2021, the company secured $130 million in a financing round and had approximately 250 employees at that time. This suggests that there has been notable growth and changes in the company's staffing levels over recent years, culminating in the recent workforce reduction.

  According to its website, the vendor boasts a global network of over 30,000 partners.

  The information provided by an online database from the state of Washington suggests that 181 employees were let go, but this figure has been deemed inaccurate according to the statement from SkyKick.

  Additionally, it has been reported that the vendor conducted layoffs in March of an undisclosed number of employees, as reported by the Puget Sound Business Journal.