>Does a new payment method on mobile mean purchases there are less safe?
>No. Thousands of apps on the App Store approved by Apple accept direct payments, including commonly used apps like Amazon, Grubhub, Nike SNKRS, Best Buy, DoorDash, Fandango, McDonalds, Uber, Lyft, and StubHub. We think all developers should be free to support direct payments in all apps. [0]
All of these services provide something physical. You can't buy Kindle Books, for example, on Amazon's app on iOS. This a bit disingenuous.
>We think all developers should be free to support direct payments in all apps.
Does this mean Epic will start allowing users of the Epic Games Store on PC to directly pay game developers and bypass the EGS cut?
> Does this mean Epic will start allowing users of the Epic Games Store on PC to directly pay game developers and bypass the EGS cut?
If you follow Tim Sweeney and Epic's history surrounding "app store cuts", you'd know that they've always stood on the side of developers. The EGS stands among the lowest app store cuts of any marketplace, at 12%, and Tim has become visibly angry during public appearances concerning Apple, Google, etc and their 30% cut.
Additionally, we're talking about a platform that disallows any alternative installation and distribution mechanisms. The PC ecosystem is vibrant, unlike the forced one-app-store on iOS and the defacto-one-app-store on Android. If a developer wants to control their cut on Windows, they can sell via their own site, or itch.io (which allows developers to select what percentage itch.io receives), or Steam and their 30% cut, or wherever they'd like.
What business practice is that? Providing hosting, distribution, payment processing, and marketing to an audience of millions of customers, then asking for some amount of revenue in return?
The core issues at play with Apple have always been: (1) there's no competition, and (2) 30% is too high. The EGS makes strides in fixing both of these issues: Game developers are not forced to release on EGS, as there are a dozen competitors on Windows, and the revenue share is now 12%. Epic does sign exclusivity deals with third-parties, which often have multi-million dollar values to them (they paid ~$10M to Remedy for one-year exclusive rights to Control); again, while we can argue about the negative impact this has on consumers, its very positive for developers.
“ The EGS stands among the lowest app store cuts of any marketplace, at 12%, and Tim has become visibly angry during public appearances concerning Apple, Google, etc and their 30% cut.”
Lmfao at claiming that much moral superiority over a 2xish difference. I’m sure hes become visibly angry, John Legere was a character too, it’s a show.
It's maybe my perception, but I don't know if 'is this cheaper form of payment directly to you less safe?' is a question many users would be having. To me anyway, it seems like an excuse to namedrop a bunch of services where direct payment is offered (again, primarily for physical goods) so users can have a list of these in their mind provided Apple cracks down on this.
That's totally possible. At the same time Apple has been pushing "We have to protect our customers, that is why everything must go through the App Store" as a reason for their policies for years.
That argument definitely implies that non-App Store methods are unsafe.
Physical goods need to be shipped somewhere that a thief can receive them. Digital goods don’t. That makes it much easier and safer to make fraudulent purchases for digital goods.
> Does this mean Epic will start allowing users of the Epic Games Store on PC to directly pay game developers and bypass the EGS cut?
AFAIK they've already been allowing use of other payment processors for in-app purchases since last year, and are not taking any cut from those sales. They did actually put their money where their mouth is, on this one.
> Does this mean Epic will start allowing users of the Epic Games Store on PC to directly pay game developers and bypass the EGS cut?
Are you asking whether Epic will start "allowing" people to buy PC games via direct purchase or steam or twitch or GOG the way they've been doing for decades?
No, I'm asking if they will allow people to buy digital PC titles on EGS via direct purchase to the developer and bypass the percentage EGS takes. People are bringing up digital currency or IAP, but if Epic is arguing for 'direct payments in all apps', why would this be limited solely to digital currency and not the digital item itself?
> No, I'm asking if they will allow people to buy digital PC titles on EGS via direct purchase to the developer and bypass the percentage EGS takes.
And why would Epic do that? Apple doesn't allow you to buy apps on the app store without the cut. Epic is not advocating that. Nobody is advocating that. Rather, Epic is allowing in-app purchases in their app without giving apple a cut.
The question would be, when you sell a game on EGS, can you allow in app purchases outside of EGS?
Does somebody know the answer to this?
>People can already buy PC titles anywhere they like. EGS, direct purchase, steam, GOG, twitch, whatever. There's nothing to allow.
This is unrelated to them supporting their 'direct pay to developers' stance on their own storefront. And no, people can't 'buy PC titles anywhere they like' as every game is not multiplatform / storefront.
Because then Apple would have to implement alternative payment methods into the App Store, which seems unreasonable. They're arguing that inside the app it's the developer's responsibility to handle payments however they see fit.
I don't follow this. Why would they have to implement alternative payment methods in the stpre? An app can create their own payment method within the app itself.
Yeah I don't get their point, developers can already go and release the game on their own website or through whatever channels they want without issue. If they sign an exclusivity deal with Epic that is their own choice, they were not forced to make that choice like on the Apple platform. EGS also charges a lot less than their competitors do anyway.
>The vulnerable application is the interactive chat application that allows to send messages to other passengers.
A bit of a side note here, but does anyone actually use this? I remember seeing it on an ANA flight and thought it was a funny feature. I suppose the intent is to message someone you know if you happen to be seated far away, but the thought of sending random unsolicited messages to any seat (assuming there isn't something to prevent this, e.g. message receiving is off by default unless you allow specific seat numbers) is a bit fun / odd. 'Seat 24B here, anyone else can't sleep?'
>Also important to remember is that GPS is not the same as location services. Even if GPS and cellular data are unavailable, a mobile device calculates location using Wi-Fi and/or BT. Apps and websites can also use other sensor data (that does not require user permission) and web browser information to obtain or infer location information.
Wondering what kind of sensory data they meant here, I had a look at the citation[0]. If anyone else is curious:
>We describe PinMe, a novel user-location mechanism that exploits non-sensory/sensory data stored on the smartphone, e.g., the environment’s air pressure and device’s timezone, along with publicly-available auxiliary information, e.g., elevation maps, to estimate the user’s location when all location services, e.g., GPS, are turned off. Unlike previously- proposed attacks, PinMe neither requires any prior knowledge about the user nor a training dataset on specific routes. We demonstrate that PinMe can accurately estimate the user’s location during four activities (walking, traveling on a train, driving, and traveling on a plane).
Microphones too. Signage and TVs etc can emit ultrasonic beacons your devices can hear, with applications like tracking your viewing habits and your location.
Ditto the proximity sensor: it's just a photocell and a simple room light could comprise a beacon. Flashing over, say 30hz would be invisible to us.
We demonstrate that PinMe can accurately estimate the user’s location during four activities (walking, traveling on a train, driving, and traveling on a plane).
Wonder if they can track someone who is "lost in remote area without hope of being rescued."
Even traveling on a plane has a transponder to piggy back on IIRC. Remote area implies a spotty network at best. The best that could be done is noting when and where contact with a network of some sort is lost or regained.
Thats the purpose of an IMU[0]. But even the best IMU have a limited amount of precision, and, has time goes by, these imprecision can accumulate to a very big margin of error in your location.
With the cheap IMU in phones, you very quickly reach the 100+ meter margin. That is why you usually combine it with other sources of localization to keep the margin down. If no other sources are available, the localization provided by the IMU become next to useless.
> mac presentation: Prepare MAC for presentation: minimize all apps, close browsers, send files from desktop and downloads to trash and set not disturb mode
This sounds like a terrible idea, just because of the chances of accidental trash emptying. Why not just a folder in a Documents or something?
I don't think there is more danger to the existence of this command than to the existence of `rm -rf /` which I guess is more likely to be entered accidentally (though still very unlikely).
People who can use the command line are usually more aware of what they are doing than the typical end user.
Might be my librarian career bias but I'm always surprised at how few people know about query operators. Ironically as Google search seems to be ignoring vital parts of people's queries, they are becoming more needed now, whereas years ago I would have assumed a constantly improving Google search would get better at determining what I was looking for.
The operators don't work as well as they used to, and even when using them lots of results are still left out or are not an exact match. The combination of the SEO arms race and Google's algorithms to filter "bad" information make it nearly impossible to find some things. Sometimes you are looking for that "bad" piece of info as a counter example rather than a source of truth, and don't need google's patronizing filtering, so would prefer exact string matches. But apparently they know better than you.
Google is quickly becoming nothing more than a souped-up Yellowpages for online business.
I’d love to see an “anti-seo search engine” that eschews all results that are oriented around selling a product, but I don’t think it’s feasible to bring back the joy of finding a new online community/forum every day.
You don't even wanna know how many times specialized searches have saved my ass, after multiple years on uni, and working as a writer, journalist, programmer, en even a musician! You can safely say that my entire life revolves around being good at doing various forms of searches.
No doubt. Enjoying & (feeling like compared to others I was) excelling at finding information was what made me get interested in information science in the first place, but I often felt advances in ML and NLP would allow for anyone to find exactly what they wanted (which would be great) even considering the increasing amount of information to have to search through. Google’s ‘I’m going to ignore half the words in your search query’ seem to be moving away from that for whatever reason.
That idea is present in the Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge. Basically search engines and the use of discussion forums to find information becomes a subject in schools etc. Though this is not the main point of the novel at all.
Antergos has been discontinued afaik. Might as well recommend Manjaro in addition to Arch instead.
Surprised at no mention of Pop!_OS. Many people I know have recently switched to it from Windows, apparently because it is recommended for those wanting good Steam support.
Can you give a use case for this, or how one could have anticipated the Ideanomics surge you mention? Searching something like 'electric vehicle' will show many recent patents by Tesla, Apple, Honda, et al. Is the idea that you would search for such a term and try to find some outlier company, assume their recent patents would reflect an entry into the market, and buy accordingly?
Exactly. It could also be used as a tool to screen for companies that will benefit from growth in certain markets. For example, searching for 'electric vehicle' will show several companies that have developed components which can be used in electric vehicles.
>No. Thousands of apps on the App Store approved by Apple accept direct payments, including commonly used apps like Amazon, Grubhub, Nike SNKRS, Best Buy, DoorDash, Fandango, McDonalds, Uber, Lyft, and StubHub. We think all developers should be free to support direct payments in all apps. [0]
All of these services provide something physical. You can't buy Kindle Books, for example, on Amazon's app on iOS. This a bit disingenuous.
>We think all developers should be free to support direct payments in all apps.
Does this mean Epic will start allowing users of the Epic Games Store on PC to directly pay game developers and bypass the EGS cut?
[0] https://www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/fortnite-mega-drop-faq