Log in
|
Resident of the world, traveling the road of life
|
Exclusive Apple's grudging accommodation of European law – allowing third-party browser engines on its mobile devices – apparently comes with a restriction that makes it difficult to develop and support third-party browser engines for the region.
The Register has learned from those involved in the browser trade that Apple has limited the development and testing of third-party browser engines to devices physically located in the EU. That requirement adds an additional barrier to anyone planning to develop and support a browser with an alternative engine in the EU.
It effectively geofences the development team. Browser-makers whose dev teams are located in the US will only be able to work on simulators. While some testing can be done in a simulator, there's no substitute for testing on device – which means developers will have to work within Apple's prescribed geographical boundary.
Prior to iOS 17.4, Apple required all web browsers on iOS or iPadOS to use Apple's WebKit rendering engine. Alternatives like Gecko (used by Mozilla Firefox) or Blink (used by Google and other Chromium-based browsers) were not permitted. Whatever brand of browser you thought you were using on your iPhone, under the hood it was basically Safari.
Browser makers have objected to this for years, because it limits competitive differentiation and reduces the incentive for Apple owners to use non-Safari browsers.
Apple's designation under Europe's Digital Markets Act (DMA) as a gatekeeper for the App Store, iOS, Safari, and just recently iPadOS forced Cupertino to make concessions.
One such allowance – realized in iOS 17.4 – was letting iOS (and subsequently iPadOS) apps in the EU use alternative browser engines.
But rivals have complained that Apple's concessions are designed – as Mozilla put it – to make it "as painful as possible for others to provide competitive alternatives to Safari."
That can be seen in Apple's extensive list of requirements to offer a third-party browser engine on iOS in the EU.
Parisa Tabriz, VP of engineering and general manager of Chrome at Google, dismissed Apple's rule changes earlier this year. "Apple isn't serious about supporting web browser or engine choice on iOS," Tabriz wrote in February. "Their strategy is overly restrictive, and won't meaningfully lead to real choice for browser developers."
- Samsung takes bite out of Apple over its mega marketing misstep
- Aghast iOS users report long-deleted photos back from the dead after update
- Google, Apple gear to raise tracking tag stalker alarm
- As one Apple Store votes against forming union, another may go on strike
When Apple announced its plan to make changes in response to DMA in January, developers expressed concern that supporting a separate EU browser might be a problem. And those concerns persist.
"The contract terms are bonkers and almost no vendor I'm aware of will agree to them," lamented one industry veteran familiar with the making of browsers in response to an inquiry from The Register.
"Even folks that may have signed something to be able to prototype can't ship under the constraints Apple's trying to impose. They're so broad and sweeping as to try to duck most of the DMA by contract … which is certainly bold."
In March, the European Commission opened an investigation into Apple based on concerns that Cupertino's "steering" rules and browser choice screen fell short of DMA requirements.
"By blocking browser engineers across the globe from working on their real browsers unless they are physically located in the EU, Apple is preventing them from being able to compete or perhaps even ship on iOS," declared Alex Moore, executive director of Open Web Advocacy, in a note to The Register.
"This is clearly absurd, has no reasonable justification and can only be described as malicious compliance. As a plausible scenario, imagine as a browser vendor you have a security issue but your top expert on that type of vulnerability is in the US. They have to fly to the EU so they can test and fix on a real device?
"At a minimum, Apple should issue guidance that this is a misunderstanding and that browser vendor test devices are exempt."
Asked about Apple's geofencing of devices for development, an Opera spokesperson replied that it hadn't heard about the issue – but that's not surprising given that the organization is headquartered in the EU.
Jon von Tetzchner, CEO of Vivaldi, also admitted he hadn't heard about the requirement. "Our dev team is all based in the EEA – mostly Norway and Iceland – so I presume this would not have applied to us," he explained. "But again, I cannot see how they could have a rule like that.
"I would think that would be seen as another anti-competitive move," he added.
"[Apple's] team is in the US and so are the teams for Microsoft, Google, Mozilla and most of the other larger browser companies."
Google and Mozilla didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. Nor did Apple – which seldom does.
Mozilla and Google have explored versions of Firefox and Chrome for iOS based on non-WebKit engines, but have yet to release anything. Firefox users have requested a Gecko-based version of Firefox for iOS, but are yet to receive any release commitment. ®
Aber auf der anderen Seite gibt Apple hier der EU einen weiteren fetten Sieg in die Hand, denn das schafft ja Spezialisten-Arbeitsplätze in der EU. :-)
Today's links
- You were promised a jetpack by liars: AIs and self-driving cars are the new jetpacks.
- Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
- This day in history: 2009, 2014, 2019, 2023
- Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.
- Recent appearances: Where I've been.
- Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
- Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
- Colophon: All the rest.
You were promised a jetpack by liars (permalink)
As a science fiction writer, I find it weird that some sf tropes – like space colonization – have become culture-war touchstones. You know, that whole "we were promised jetpacks" thing.
I confess, I never looked too hard at the practicalities of jetpacks, because they are so obviously either used as a visual shorthand (as in the Jetsons) or as a metaphor. Even a brief moment's serious consideration should make it clear why we wouldn't want the distracted, stoned, drunk, suicidal, homicidal maniacs who pilot their two-ton killbots through our residential streets at 75mph to be flying over our heads with a reservoir of high explosives strapped to their backs.
Jetpacks can make for interesting sf eyeball kicks or literary symbols, but I don't actually want to live in a world of jetpacks. I just want to read about them, and, of course, write about them:
https://reactormag.com/chicken-little/
I had blithely assumed that this was the principle reason we never got the jetpacks we were "promised." I mean, there kind of was a promise, right? I grew up seeing videos of rocketeers flying their jetpacks high above the heads of amazed crowds, at World's Fairs and Disneyland and big public spectacles. There was that scene in Thunderball where James Bond (the canonical Connery Bond, no less) makes an escape by jetpack. There was even a Gilligan's Island episode where the castaways find a jetpack and scheme to fly it all the way back to Hawai'i:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0588084/
Clearly, jetpacks were possible, but they didn't make any sense, so we decided not to use them, right?
Well, I was wrong. In a terrific new 99 Percent Invisible episode, Chris Berube tracks the history of all those jetpacks we saw on TV for decades, and reveals that they were all the same jetpack, flown by just one guy, who risked his life every time he went up in it:
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/rocket-man/
The jetpack in question – technically a "rocket belt" – was built in the 1960s by Wendell Moore at the Bell Aircraft Corporation, with funding from the DoD. The Bell rocket belt used concentrated hydrogen peroxide as fuel, which burned at temperatures in excess of 1,000'. The rocket belt had a maximum flight time of just 21 seconds.
It was these limitations that disqualified the rocket belt from being used by anyone except stunt pilots with extremely high tolerances for danger. Any tactical advantage conferred on infantrymen by the power to soar over a battlefield for a whopping 21 seconds was totally obliterated by the fact that this infantryman would be encumbered by an extremely heavy, unwieldy and extremely explosive backpack, to say nothing of the high likelihood that rocketeers would plummet out of the sky after failing to track the split-second capacity of a jetpack.
And of course, the rocket belt wasn't going to be a civilian commuting option. If your commute can be accomplished in just 21 seconds of flight time, you should probably just walk, rather than strapping an inferno to your back and risking a lethal fall if you exceed a margin of error measured in just seconds.
Once you know about the jetpack's technical limitations, it's obvious why we never got jetpacks. So why did we expect them? Because we were promised them, and the promise was a lie.
Moore was a consummate showman, which is to say, a bullshitter. He was forever telling the press that his jetpacks would be on everyone's back in one to two years, and he got an impressionable young man, Bill Suitor, to stage showy public demonstrations of the rocket belt. If you ever saw a video of a brave rocketeer piloting a jetpack, it was almost certainly Suitor. Suitor was Connery's stunt-double in Thunderball, and it was he who flew the rocket belt around Sleeping Beauty castle.
Suitor's interview with Berube for the podcast is delightful. Suitor is a hilarious, profane old airman who led an extraordinary life and tells stories with expert timing, busting out great phrases like "a surprise is a fart with a lump in it."
But what's most striking about the tale of the Bell rocket belt is the shape of the deception that Moore and Bell pulled off. By conspicuously failing to mention the rocket belt's limitations, and by callously risking Suitor's life over and over again, they were able to create the impression that jetpacks were everywhere, and that they were trembling on the verge of widespread, popular adoption.
What's more, they played a double game: all the public enthusiasm they manufactured with their carefully stage-managed, canned demos was designed to help them win more defense contracts to keep their dream alive. Ultimately, Uncle Sucker declined to continue funding their boondoggle, and the demos petered out, and the "promise" of a jetpack was broken.
As I listened to the 99 Percent Invisible episode, I was struck by the familiarity of this shuck: this is exactly what the self-driving car bros did over the past decade to convince us all that the human driver was already obsolete. The playbook was nearly identical, right down to the shameless huckster insisting that "full self-driving is one to two years away" every year for a decade:
The Potemkin rocket belt was a calculated misdirection, as are the "full self-driving" demos that turn out to be routine, pre-programmed runs on carefully manicured closed tracks:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tesla-autopilot-staged-engineer-says-company-faked-full-autopilot/
Practical rocketeering wasn't ever "just around the corner," because a flying, 21 second blast-furnace couldn't be refined into a practical transport. Making the tank bigger would not make this thing safer or easier to transport.
The jetpack showman hoped to cash out by tricking Uncle Sucker into handing him a fat military contract. Robo-car scammers used their conjurer's tricks to cash out to the public markets, taking Uber public on the promise of robo-taxis, even as Uber's self-driving program burned through $2.5b and produced a car with a half-mile mean time between fatal collisions, which the company had to pay someone else $400m to take the business off their hands:
It's not just self-driving cars. Time and again, the incredibly impressive AI demos that the press credulously promotes turn out to be scams. The dancing robot on stage at the splashy event is literally a guy in a robot-suit:
https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musks-ai-day-tesla-bot-is-just-a-guy-in-a-bodysuit-2021-8
The Hollywood-killing, AI-produced video prompting system is so cumbersome to use, and so severely limited, that it's arguably worse than useless:
https://www.wheresyoured.at/expectations-versus-reality/
The centuries' worth of progress the AI made in discovering new materials actually "discovered" a bunch of trivial variations on existing materials, as well as a huge swathe of materials that only exist at absolute zero:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/23/maximal-plausibility/#reverse-centaurs
The AI grocery store where you just pick things up and put them in your shopping basket without using the checkout turns out to be a call-center full of low-waged Indian workers desperately squinting at videos of you, trying to figure out what you put in your bag:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/31/neural-interface-beta-tester/#tailfins
The discovery of these frauds somehow never precipitates disillusionment. Rather than getting angry with marketers for tricking them, reporters are ventriloquized into repeating the marketing claim that these aren't lies, they're premature truths. Sure, today these are faked, but once the product is refined, the fakery will no longer be required.
This must be the kinds of Magic Underpants Gnomery the credulous press engaged in during the jetpack days: "Sure, a 21-second rocket belt is totally useless for anything except wowing county fair yokels – but once they figure out how to fit an order of magnitude more high-explosive onto that guy's back, this thing will really take off!"
The AI version of this is that if we just keep throwing orders of magnitude more training data and compute at the stochastic parrot, it will eventually come to life and become our superintelligent, omnipotent techno-genie. In other words, if we just keep breeding these horses to run faster and faster, eventually one of our prize mares will give birth to a locomotive:
https://locusmag.com/2020/07/cory-doctorow-full-employment/
As a society, we have vested an alarming amount of power in the hands of tech billionaires who profess to be embittered science fiction fans who merely want to realize the "promises" of our Golden Age stfnal dreams. These bros insist that they can overcome both the technical hurdles and the absolutely insurmountable privation involved in space colonization:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/09/astrobezzle/#send-robots-instead
They have somehow mistaken Neal Stephenson's dystopian satirical "metaverse" for a roadmap:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/18/metaverse-means-pivot-to-video/
As Charlie Stross writes, it's not just that these weirdos can't tell the difference between imaginative parables about the future and predictions about the future – it's also that they keep mistaking dystopias for business plans:
Cyberpunk was a warning, not a suggestion. Please, I beg you, stop building the fucking torment nexus:
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/torment-nexus
These techno-billionaires profess to be fulfilling a broken promise, but surely they know that the promises were made by liars – showmen using parlor tricks to sell the impossible. You were "promised a jetpack" in the same sense that table-rapping "spiritualists" promised you a conduit to talk with the dead, or that carny barkers promised you a girl that could turn into a gorilla:
https://milwaukeerecord.com/film/ape-girl-shes-alive-documentary-november-11-sugar-maple/
That's quite a supervillain origin story: "I was promised a jetpack, but then I grew up discovered that it was just a special effect. In revenge, I am promising you superintelligent AIs and self-driving cars, and these, too, are SFX."
In other words: "Die a disillusioned jetpack fan or live long enough to become the fraudster who cooked up the jetpack lie you despise."
Hey look at this (permalink)
- Ada goes to the set: let’s make an animated movie https://fsfe.org/news/2024/news-20240515-01.html
-
Cloudseeder https://github.com/ipv6rslimited/cloudseeder
-
How Much is a Planet Worth? https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/how-much-is-a-planet-worth
This day in history (permalink)
#15yrsago Gigantic study of UK CCTVs find that they should be used in parking lots, scrapped elsewhere https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/may/18/cctv-crime-police
#15yrsago Montreal cop cuffs, busts and fines student $450 for not holding escalator rail in subway https://web.archive.org/web/20090517012200/https://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090515.wescalator16/BNStory/National/home
#10yrsago How advocacy beat ACTA in Europe https://web.archive.org/web/20140522133328/http://jip.vmhost.psu.edu/ojs/index.php/jip/article/view/168
#5yrsago Elizabeth Warren proposes legislation to enshrine Roe v Wade in Federal law and guarantee reproductive health care in all insurance plans https://medium.com/@teamwarren/congressional-action-to-protect-choice-aaf94ed25fb5
#5yrsago Europe’s top trustbuster thinks it’ll be impossible to break up Facebook https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/eu-competition-commissioner-facebook-breakup-would-be-last-resort/#ftag=CAD590a51e
#1yrago The IRS will do your taxes for you (if that's what you prefer) https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/17/free-as-in-freefile/#tell-me-something-i-dont-know
Upcoming appearances (permalink)
- Authorship in an Age of Monopoly and Moral Panics (SF), May 17
https://www.authorsalliance.org/2024/03/15/authors-alliance-10th-anniversary-event-authorship-in-an-age-of-monopoly-and-moral-panics/ -
Media Ecology Association keynote (Amherst, NY), Jun 6-9
https://media-ecology.org/convention -
HOPE XV, Jul 14 (Queens, NY)
https://www.hope.net/talks.html -
American Association of Law Libraries keynote (Chicago), Jul 21
https://www.aallnet.org/conference/agenda/keynote-speaker/
Recent appearances (permalink)
- Suur Futuroloogiline Kongress
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hITj793htg&t=398s -
That Word Chat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miwEy_mACEY -
Come sfuggire al “Merdocene” e costruire un Internet migliore (Torino Biennale Tecnologia)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5NC2EZCYBg
Latest books (permalink)
- The Bezzle: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (the-bezzle.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3062/Available_Feb_20th%3A_The_Bezzle_HB.html#/).
-
"The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3007/Pre-Order_Signed_Copies%3A_The_Lost_Cause_HB.html#/)
-
"The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).
-
"Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com. Signed copies at Dark Delicacies (US): and Forbidden Planet (UK): https://forbiddenplanet.com/385004-red-team-blues-signed-edition-hardcover/.
-
"Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com
-
"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The Washington Post called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html
-
"How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59?sk=f6cd10e54e20a07d4c6d0f3ac011af6b) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)
-
"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html
-
"Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/.
Upcoming books (permalink)
- Picks and Shovels: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books, February 2025
-
Unauthorized Bread: a graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2025
Colophon (permalink)
Today's top sources:
Currently writing:
- A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING
-
Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS JAN 2025
-
Vigilant, Little Brother short story about remote invigilation. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM
-
Spill, a Little Brother short story about pipeline protests. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM
Latest podcast: Precaratize Bosses https://craphound.com/news/2024/04/28/precaratize-bosses/
This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.
How to get Pluralistic:
Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):
Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):
https://pluralistic.net/plura-list
Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):
Medium (no ads, paywalled):
Twitter (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising):
Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising):
https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic
"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla
Ludvig Cimbrelius returns with his third full-length album on ASIP under his illustrious ambient jungle/drum’n bass alias, Illuvia. Shifting focus from the stratospheric highs of 2021’s Iridescence Of Clouds, Ludvig now reflects on the meaning and spectrums of life on Earth.
According to my lifelong research, Earth appears to be a modulation of light. It is said that what the eyes receive are rays emitted by a star, whose flow of photons is invisible to the human eye until they are reflected and modulated by matter.
Matter — the patterned dance of charged particles appearing out of nothing. Simultaneously, it is observable that light converts into matter. And matter converts into light.
Logic tells me that they are one, appearing as two. And, as a consequence of their division and subsequent interaction, the spectrum of a world appears.
Being a manifestation of something as ethereal and ephemeral as light modulated by the dance of charged particles, the world feels surprisingly solid.
Less like a prism and more like a prison. That is what the surface tells us.
Those who seek freedom look deeper.
–Ludvig Cimbrelius (Illuvia)
Earth Prism will be available on A Strangely Isolated Place on transparent vinyl, gatefold 2LP + digital formats from June 20th 2024. Mastered by Hollis Nolan, Lacquer cut by Andreas LUPO Lubich, featuring artwork by Noah M / Keep Adding. Please join us on June 12th for a Bandcamp album listening session.
Full details and links to buy via the release page
* Please note a slightly new approach where we are working to extend our preorder times, to capture more accurate numbers to press, and give writers and distro a better chance to do their thing. So please pay attention to the extended shipping timings on this release!
