The D-U-N-S requirement is the real killer here. It's a business identifier that costs money and requires a registered business entity. Even with the promised 'student/hobbyist' path, this fundamentally changes Android from a platform where anyone can distribute software to one where Google decides who's allowed to code. They're further normalizing the idea that installing software requires permission.
Readit Newsdabedee commented on Google will allow only apps from verified developers to be installed on Android 9to5google.com/2025/08/25... · Posted by u/kotaKat
dabedee commented on Claude Code is all you need dwyer.co.za/static/claude... · Posted by u/sixhobbits
This article feels like it was written as a dialectical exercise between an AI and a human. It would probably benefit from some more heavy human editing to make it more succinct and to give the overall article a structure. As it is, it's very difficult to follow along.
dabedee commented on AWS European Sovereign Cloud to be operated by EU citizens aboutamazon.eu/news/aws/a... · Posted by u/pulisse
> That's not how sovereignty works.
Actually, it is. It will operate as a subsidiary company based in Europe. That means it's 100% subject to European law, not American law. And being staffed by Europeans means they are immune to any US legal threats. I.e. the US can't compel a European employee to reveal data under a subpoena the way it could compel American citizens.
Amazon remains the owner and controls the technology, yes. But as long as things are encrypted correctly and the hardware is in Europe, the data is secure from the US government. Sure Amazon or any cloud provider could build a back door, but that will eventually be discovered whether by hacker or whistleblower and their reputation will be forever ruined and they'll lose all corporate and government business forever. It's not in Amazon's corporate self-interest to allow a back door like that.
Being "100% subject to European law" doesn't override the parent company's obligations under US law. At best, it creates a legal conflict where AWS must violate either US or EU law. Which one will the US parent company prioritize if/when faced with enforcement actions?
The only way this would work is if the European operation were truly independent & separately owned, no corporate control from the US. But I don't think that's what AWS is proposing.
dabedee commented on AWS European Sovereign Cloud to be operated by EU citizens aboutamazon.eu/news/aws/a... · Posted by u/pulisse
AWS claims their cloud is "sovereign" and "independent" while remaining owned by a US corp subject to US law (including the CLOUD Act). That's not how sovereignty works.
EU citizen operators don't change the fact that the underlying technology, patents, and corporate control remain American.
Zero details on pricing, available services, or how they'll handle conflicts between US law and their "sovereignty" promises. For something launching next year, that's concerning.
dabedee commented on Lina Khan points to Figma IPO as vindication of M&A scrutiny techcrunch.com/2025/08/02... · Posted by u/bingden
Suppose that you have an opportunity to play a game. The game is you roll a fair normal six sided die. If it comes up a 6, you get $60B. If it comes up a 5 or 4 you get $30B. If it comes up 3 or less, you get $0.
This is clearly a valuable game! It is worth in expectation $20B. But it also has a 50% chance of being worthless to you.
Someone offers to buy it from you for $20B. You agree, giving up some upside for some downside protection.
But then someone else says that's not allowed. So you play the game and you roll a six and get $60B.
Does that prove the person who made you play it rather than sell it was "right," ex ante?
You raise a valid point about ex ante uncertainty. We can't know future outcomes with certainty, and yes, Figma theoretically could have failed.
But antitrust analysis isn't about predicting exact valuations. It's about market structure and competitive dynamics. The FTC had observable facts: Adobe's dominant market share, Figma's rapid growth trajectory, and a purchase price of 50x revenue (extraordinary even for software).
These factors suggested Adobe saw Figma as a competitive threat worth eliminating, not just a financial investment. That's the key distinction from your dice game; this wasn't pure randomness but observable market dynamics.
You're right that we can't prove the counterfactual. But antitrust law doesn't require certainty, just reasonable probability of competitive harm. The extreme premium Adobe offered was itself evidence they valued removing competition more than acquiring assets.
The outcome validates the analysis, but even if Figma had struggled, preserving the possibility of competition has value beyond any single company's success.
dabedee commented on Lina Khan points to Figma IPO as vindication of M&A scrutiny techcrunch.com/2025/08/02... · Posted by u/bingden
It absolutely proves that she was right. If you care about market cap? She was right. If you care about employee comp? She was right. If you care about consumer choice, she was right. Number of listings, new potential acquirers for your startup, more diverse office geography, right right right right.
The idea that there's a significant lobby on fucking Hacker News unhappy that a startup IPO'd for a zillion bucks and made everyone rich is twilight zone shit. It makes no sense according to the stated values in the fucking masthead.
I think you're hitting the real divide here. Some people are so ideologically opposed to any regulatory intervention that they can't admit when it works, even when the evidence is staring them in the face. Also notable [0]: "[...] in any given year, we see up to 3,000 merger filings that get reported to us. Around 2% of those actually get a second look by the government, so you have 98% of all deals that, for the most part, are going through. Around 2% of those actually get a second look by the government, so you have 98% of all deals that, for the most part, are going through." The FTC wasn't blocking everything, just the deals that would entrench monopolies.
[0] https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/15/ftc-chair-lina-khan-on-sta...
dabedee commented on Lina Khan points to Figma IPO as vindication of M&A scrutiny techcrunch.com/2025/08/02... · Posted by u/bingden
I think the Figma IPO proves Khan was right. $60B market cap today vs the $20B Adobe offered in 2023.
There was some criticism about regulatory overreach when the deal got blocked. Now Figma employees are rich, the design tools market stays competitive, and we have another major independent tech company instead of just another Adobe product line.
This is exactly why we need regulators willing to tell Big Tech "no" sometimes. Competition creates more value than consolidation.
Instead of arguing about tab management and rendering performance, we should be asking what does a healthy browser ecosystem look like in five years? Do we want 95% of users on browsers controlled by advertising companies (Google), hardware manufacturers optimizing for their own services (Apple), or cloud providers with obvious conflicts of interest (Microsoft)?
Firefox's technical quirks are fixable. The uncomfortable reality is that true browser independence might require something Mozilla has consistently failed to achieve: sustainable revenue that doesn't depend on surveillance capitalism. Until that happens, we're choosing between degrees of corporate control, not between freedom and captivity.
This isn't really about cost savings, it's about control. Self-hosting makes sense when you need data privacy, custom fine-tuning, specialized models, or predictable costs at scale. For most use cases requiring GPT-4o-mini quality, you'll pay more for self-hosting until you reach significant volume.
There is a pretty graphic/emotionally-charged image in the article (I understand it's part of nature), for those who might not have the strength to see something like that today.