#Apple Federal

[nikkilover-miraclenikki]

【 Miracle Nikki CN 】 Recharge

【 Miracle Nikki CN 】 Recharge

Suit Display ::

She raised her wine glass and wished every sincere love a beginning and an end.

The red wine flowing in the cup, Contains magic potions extracted from flowers.

Red Suit :: Rose-hearted (瑰心欲焰)

Fashion is never a castle in the air, It is an ocean formed by the gathering of billions of water droplets,

It is the bond of friendship between people on the road of pursuing beauty.

Green Suit :: Trendy Movies (潮流映画)

Collection :: ​Apple Federal

Type :: Recharge

Red Suit :: 1,460 Star Obsidians

Green Suit :: 310 Star Obsidians

Date :: 04—10/09/2023

[returnedsuits]

Miss Lobster 🦞

Total Cost

Gold: 221,026

Star Coins: 40

Rose Coins: 60 (dye alt.)

Stamina: at least 462

Dyes: 3 purple, 2 orange

Materials: 50

Craft Fees: 28,000 gold

Total Cost (MH pulls only)

Gold: 217,026 (saves 4,000)

Stamina: 264 (saves at least 198)

❗ Edits

Rose Coins were corrected.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Apple to EU: “Go fuck yourself”

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/06/spoil-the-bunch/#dma

There's a strain of anti-anti-monopolist that insists that they're not pro-monopoly – they're just realists who understand that global gigacorporations are too big to fail, too big to jail, and that governments can't hope to rein them in. Trying to regulate a tech giant, they say, is like trying to regulate the weather.

This ploy is cousins with Jay Rosen's idea of "savvying," defined as: "dismissing valid questions with the insider's, 'and this surprises you?'"

https://twitter.com/jayrosen_nyu/status/344825874362810369?lang=en

In both cases, an apologist for corruption masquerades as a pragmatist who understands the ways of the world, unlike you, a pathetic dreamer who foolishly hopes for a better world. In both cases, the apologist provides cover for corruption, painting it as an inevitability, not a choice. "Don't hate the player. Hate the game."

The reason this foolish nonsense flies is that we are living in an age of rampant corruption and utter impunity. Companies really do get away with both literal and figurative murder. Governments really do ignore horrible crimes by the rich and powerful, and fumble what rare, few enforcement efforts they assay.

Take the GDPR, Europe's landmark privacy law. The GDPR establishes strict limitations of data-collection and processing, and provides for brutal penalties for companies that violate its rules. The immediate impact of the GDPR was a mass-extinction event for Europe's data-brokerages and surveillance advertising companies, all of which were in obvious violation of the GDPR's rules.

But there was a curious pattern to GDPR enforcement: while smaller, EU-based companies were swiftly shuttered by its provisions, the US-based giants that conduct the most brazen, wide-ranging, illegal surveillance escaped unscathed for years and years, continuing to spy on Europeans.

One (erroneous) way to look at this is as a "compliance moat" story. In that story, GDPR requires a bunch of expensive systems that only gigantic companies like Facebook and Google can afford. These compliance costs are a "capital moat" – a way to exclude smaller companies from functioning in the market. Thus, the GDPR acted as an anticompetitive wrecking ball, clearing the field for the largest companies, who get to operate without having to contend with smaller companies nipping at their heels:

https://www.techdirt.com/2019/06/27/another-report-shows-gdpr-benefited-google-facebook-hurt-everyone-else/

This is wrong.

Oh, compliance moats are definitely real – think of the calls for AI companies to license their training data. AI companies can easily do this – they'll just buy training data from giant media companies – the very same companies that hope to use models to replace creative workers with algorithms. Create a new copyright over training data won't eliminate AI – it'll just confine AI to the largest, best capitalized companies, who will gladly provide tools to corporations hoping to fire their workforces:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/09/ai-monkeys-paw/#bullied-schoolkids

But just because some regulations can be compliance moats, that doesn't mean that all regulations are compliance moats. And just because some regulations are vigorously applied to small companies while leaving larger firms unscathed, it doesn't follow that the regulation in question is a compliance moat.

A harder look at what happened with the GDPR reveals a completely different dynamic at work. The reason the GDPR vaporized small surveillance companies and left the big companies untouched had nothing to do with compliance costs. The Big Tech companies don't comply with the GDPR – they just get away with violating the GDPR.

How do they get away with it? They fly Irish flags of convenience. Decades ago, Ireland started dabbling with offering tax-havens to the wealthy and mobile – they invented the duty-free store:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty-free_shop#1947%E2%80%931990:_duty_free_establishment

Capturing pennies from the wealthy by helping them avoid fortunes they owed in taxes elsewhere was terribly seductive. In the years that followed, Ireland began aggressively courting the wealthy on an industrial scale, offering corporations the chance to duck their obligations to their host countries by flying an Irish flag of convenience.

There are other countries who've tried this gambit – the "treasure islands" of the Caribbean, the English channel, and elsewhere – but Ireland is part of the EU. In the global competition to help the rich to get richer, Ireland had a killer advantage: access to the EU, the common market, and 500m affluent potential customers. The Caymans can hide your money for you, and there's a few super-luxe stores and art-galleries in George Town where you can spend it, but it's no Champs Elysees or Ku-Damm.

But when you're competing with other countries for the pennies of trillion-dollar tax-dodgers, any wins can be turned into a loss in an instant. After all, any corporation that is footloose enough to establish a Potemkin Headquarters in Dublin and fly the trídhathach can easily up sticks and open another Big Store HQ in some other haven that offers it a sweeter deal.

This has created a global race to the bottom among tax-havens to also serve as regulatory havens – and there's a made-in-the-EU version that sees Ireland, Malta, Cyprus and sometimes the Netherlands competing to see who can offer the most impunity for the worst crimes to the most awful corporations in the world.

And that's why Google and Facebook haven't been extinguished by the GDPR while their rivals were. It's not compliance moats – it's impunity. Once a corporation attains a certain scale, it has the excess capital to spend on phony relocations that let it hop from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, chasing the loosest slots on the strip. Ireland is a made town, where the cops are all on the take, and two thirds of the data commissioner's rulings are eventually overturned by the federal court:

https://www.iccl.ie/digital-data/iccl-2023-gdpr-report/

This is a problem among many federations, not just the EU. The US has its onshore-offshore tax- and regulation-havens (Delaware, South Dakota, Texas, etc), and so does Canada (Alberta), and some Swiss cantons are, frankly, batshit:

https://lenews.ch/2017/11/25/swiss-fact-some-swiss-women-had-to-wait-until-1991-to-vote/

None of this is to condemn federations outright. Federations are (potentially) good! But federalism has a vulnerability: the autonomy of the federated states means that they can be played against each other by national or transnational entities, like corporations. This doesn't mean that it's impossible to regulate powerful entities within a federation – but it means that federal regulation needs to account for the risk of jurisdiction-shopping.

Enter the Digital Markets Act, a new Big Tech specific law that, among other things, bans monopoly app stores and payment processing, through which companies like Apple and Google have levied a 30% tax on the entire app market, while arrogating to themselves the right to decide which software their customers may run on their own devices:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/07/curatorial-vig/#app-tax

Apple has responded to this regulation with a gesture of contempt so naked and broad that it beggars belief. As Proton describes, Apple's DMA plan is the very definition of malicious compliance:

https://proton.me/blog/apple-dma-compliance-plan-trap

Recall that the DMA is intended to curtail monopoly software distribution through app stores and mobile platforms' insistence on using their payment processors, whose fees are sky-high. The law is intended to extinguish developer agreements that ban software creators from informing customers that they can get a better deal by initiating payments elsewhere, or by getting a service through the web instead of via an app.

In response, Apple, has instituted a junk fee it calls the "Core Technology Fee": EUR0.50/install for every installation over 1m. As Proton writes, as apps grow more popular, using third-party payment systems will grow less attractive. Apple has offered discounts on its eye-watering payment processing fees to a mere 20% for the first payment and 13% for renewals. Compare this with the normal – and far, far too high – payment processing fees the rest of the industry charges, which run 2-5%. On top of all this, Apple has lied about these new discounted rates, hiding a 3% "processing" fee in its headline figures.

As Proton explains, paying 17% fees and EUR0.50 for each subscriber's renewal makes most software businesses into money-losers. The only way to keep them afloat is to use Apple's old, default payment system. That choice is made more attractive by Apple's inclusion of a "scare screen" that warns you that demons will rend your soul for all eternity if you try to use an alternative payment scheme.

Apple defends this scare screen by saying that it will protect users from the intrinsic unreliability of third-party processors, but as Proton points out, there are plenty of giant corporations who get to use their own payment processors with their iOS apps, because Apple decided they were too big to fuck with. Somehow, Apple can let its customers spend money Uber, McDonald's, Airbnb, Doordash and Amazon without terrorizing them about existential security risks – but not mom-and-pop software vendors or publishers who don't want to hand 30% of their income over to a three-trillion-dollar company.

Apple has also reserved the right to cancel any alternative app store and nuke it from Apple customers' devices without warning, reason or liability. Those app stores also have to post a one-million euro line of credit in order to be considered for iOS. Given these terms, it's obvious that no one is going to offer a third-party app store for iOS and if they did, no one would list their apps in it.

The fuckery goes on and on. If an app developer opts into third-party payments, they can't use Apple's payment processing too – so any users who are scared off by the scare screen have no way to pay the app's creators. And once an app creator opts into third party payments, they can never go back – the decision is permanent.

Apple also reserves the right to change all of these policies later, for the worse ("I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it further" -D. Vader). They have warned developers that they might change the API for reporting external sales and revoke developers' right to use alternative app stores at its discretion, with no penalties if that screws the developer.

Apple's contempt extends beyond app marketplaces. The DMA also obliges Apple to open its platform to third party browsers and browser engines. Every browser on iOS is actually just Safari wrapped in a cosmetic skin, because Apple bans third-party browser-engines:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/13/kitbashed/#app-store-tax

But, as Mozilla puts it, Apple's plan for this is "as painful as possible":

https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/26/24052067/mozilla-apple-ios-browser-rules-firefox

For one thing, Apple will only allow European customers to run alternative browser engines. That means that Firefox will have to "build and maintain two separate browser implementations — a burden Apple themselves will not have to bear."

(One wonders how Apple will treat Americans living in the EU, whose Apple accounts still have US billing addresses – these people will still be entitled to the browser choice that Apple is grudgingly extending to Europeans.)

All of this sends a strong signal that Apple is planning to run the same playbook with the DMA that Google and Facebook used on the GDPR: ignore the law, use lawyerly bullshit to chaff regulators, and hope that European federalism has sufficiently deep cracks that it can hide in them when the enforcers come to call.

But Apple is about to get a nasty shock. For one thing, the DMA allows wronged parties to start their search for justice in the European federal court system – bypassing the Irish regulators and courts. For another, there is a global movement to check corporate power, and because the tech companies do the same kinds of fuckery in every territory, regulators are able to collaborate across borders to take them down.

Take Apple's app store monopoly. The best reference on this is the report published by the UK Competition and Markets Authority's Digital Markets Unit:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/63f61bc0d3bf7f62e8c34a02/Mobile_Ecosystems_Final_Report_amended_2.pdf

The devastating case that the DMU report was key to crafting the DMA – but it also inspired a US law aimed at forcing app markets open:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/2710

And a Japanese enforcement action:

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/Japan-to-crack-down-on-Apple-and-Google-app-store-monopolies

And action in South Korea:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/skorea-considers-505-mln-fine-against-google-apple-over-app-market-practices-2023-10-06/

These enforcers gather for annual meetings – I spoke at one in London, convened by the Competition and Markets Authority – where they compare notes, form coalitions, and plan strategy:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cma-data-technology-and-analytics-conference-2022-registration-308678625077

This is where the savvying breaks down. Yes, Apple is big enough to run circles around Japan, or South Korea, or the UK. But when those countries join forces with the EU, the USA and other countries that are fed up to the eyeballs with Apple's bullshit, the company is in serious danger.

It's true that Apple has convinced a bunch of its customers that buying a phone from a multi-trillion-dollar corporation makes you a member of an oppressed religious minority:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/12/youre-holding-it-wrong/#if-dishwashers-were-iphones

Some of those self-avowed members of the "Cult of Mac" are willing to take the company's pronouncements at face value and will dutifully repeat Apple's claims to be "protecting" its customers. But even that credulity has its breaking point – Apple can only poison the well so many times before people stop drinking from it. Remember when the company announced a miraculous reversal to its war on right to repair, later revealed to be a bald-faced lie?

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/22/vin-locking/#thought-differently

Or when Apple claimed to be protecting phone users' privacy, which was also a lie?

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

The savvy will see Apple lying (again) and say, "this surprises you?" No, it doesn't surprise me, but it pisses me off – and I'm not the only one, and Apple's insulting lies are getting less effective by the day.

Image: Alex Popovkin, Bahia, Brazil from Brazil (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Annelid_worm,_Atlantic_forest,_northern_littoral_of_Bahia,_Brazil_%2816107326533%29.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

--

Hubertl (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2015-03-04_Elstar_%28apple%29_starting_putrefying_IMG_9761_bis_9772.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[aloesnake]

cider x elena yuri king? cider x elena yuri tonight? cider x elena breakroom lunch date?

[kaisoonomu]

two likes and i draw them

[roguetelepaths]

...so guess who's rewatching star trek discovery

[ramblings-of-a-coward]

Me: I don't like or respect any Federation workers

Apple juice worker and goggles worker: Exchange snacks with Phil and give a ducky balloon

Me: okay I respect two Federation workers

[deliciousobservationbird]

don't mind me just putting some images together on the same post to save space ^_^

[paradife-loft]

so this "ethics & legal requirements for research involving human subjects" course I'm doing for class rn hasn't figured out that you don't hyphenate "cisgender," and yet has still somehow heard of "trans broken arm syndrome" and wants to inform us about it being a source of distrust in medical professionals among some trans people. what's happening here....

[nikkilover-miraclenikki]

【 Miracle Nikki CN 】 Recharge • 26th Story Suits

【 Miracle Nikki CN 】 Recharge • 26th Story Suits

Suit Display ::

Frost sweeps across the battlefield, all creatures are silent here,

The wind howls through the bone dragon's body,

It seems that its thick voice has been transmitted to the hearts of humans and dragons.

P.1 :: Frostbone Dragon (霜骨龙吟)

The screen gradually dimmed, and the audience applauded thunderously.

Viola stood up and bowed, she walked onto the stage and held her own trophy,

This is the glory she clings to.

P.2 :: Night of the Century (世纪之夜)

The years are drifting away in the heavy snow,

There are also footprints of life in the white world.

In the cold wind, there are faint singing voices. Is that the voice of the snow rabbits?

P.3 :: Chengdong Snow Rabbit (澄冬雪兔)

The smoke-like dreams of youth,

Now it's clear and clear,

The lively girl's voice and smile can be seen before her eyes.

P.4 :: Story Dream (芳庭故梦)

The stereo aperture follows the rhythm of the music,

Flowing with dazzling and vivid colors,

Qing Ke's concert described a summer full of excitement for everyone.

P.5 :: Lime for Summer (青柠奏夏)

Collection ::

P.1 :: Pigeon Kingdom

P.2 :: Apple Federal

P.3-4 :: Cloud Empire

P.5 :: ​Lilith Kingdom

Type :: Recharge

P.1 :: 7,600 Star Obsidians

P.2 :: 5,200 Star Obsidians

P.3 :: 2,960 Star Obsidians

P.4 :: 1,410 Star Obsidians

P.5 :: 300 Star Obsidians

Date :: 21/07—10/08/2023

.

[moonscape]

explorers of the spirit getting popular is kind of annoying me because there's just gonna be tons of people who never got over their petty childhood hatred of chatot feeling validated over blaming him for the guild rules when he's not the one who came up with those rules in the first place

[filazuli]

There was context to this, but I think it's funnier without it.

[shiningdesignersreflections]

Ai: Pixel Adventure

Designer’s Reflection: Pixel Adventure

Obtained: Sea of Fantasy Gleam

Rarity: SSR

Attribute: Blue/Cool

Awakened Suit: Virtual Adventure

Story - transcripts from Designer’s Reflection

Chapter 1 - New Career

Chapter 2 - Rising Star

Chapter 3 - Opportunity

Chapter 4 - New Journey

Story - summarized

Whenever Charmonroe isn’t home, Ai loves to play games. She’s so used to being on her own. At least as an artificial intelligence program, she doesn’t need much to entertain herself.

Still, she is excited about the newest game. It’s an online game with multiple players. Except she plays by herself. Charmonroe notices this and asks Ai why she is by herself. Ai thought the point of games was to win, and it’s too unpredictable with many people. The college student encourages Ai to branch out.

So, Ai starts off by inviting the friends she already has to play in her small group: SummerSue, WinterWill, and Peppermint. She likes the challenge of having “other variables” when others play with her. She shares some of the play highlights with Charmonroe - as well as some quirky or funny moments.

Charmonroe is worried that Ai is sticking too close to what is familiar, so she encourages her to try playing with strangers. Ai likes it, and she’s more than willing to give pointers to other gamers. But a few of the gamers start spreading rumors about her, even going so far as to report her for cheating and bugs.

Ai insists that she wants to go to the company’s live-stream to officially meet everyone and to clear up any confusion. The night of the stream, Ai feels anxious. She’s never felt a mix of emotions at the same time. Thankfully, Charmonroe is there to help her through the live-stream.

Once the stream starts, Ai joins right away, snuggled into her own bedroom in cyberspace. She becomes popular right away. Ai likes these new feelings and moments. Later on, she tells Charmonroe that she wants to be out of her bubble and join the larger world.

Connections

-In the Reflection for Shy Confession, Ai describes being created (her version of being born). Charmonroe is her programmer, but rather than a mother-figure she acts like a big sister to Ai.

-You’ve already met Ai’s best friends: Peppermint, Susan (SummerSue), and William (WinterWill).

-The players comment on Ai’s avatar: a girl in a school uniform. In the Reflection for Shy Confession, you learn that a school uniform was Ai’s first design, as well as her favorite.

Fun Facts

-Ai’s name comes from the initials for “artificial intelligence,” but it’s pronounced like the English word “eye.”

-Ai is also a Chinese (and borrowed in Japanese) word meaning “love.”

[shiningtalons]

My favourites of the simulation endings I got from the Glow Event.

[standardquip]

Esoterra

Video:Bakemonogatari, Kizumonogatari, Wolf's Rain, Haibanei Renmei (Charcoal Feathers Federation), Vision of Escaflowne, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Steins;Gate, Castlevania, Made In Abyss, Princess Mononoke, Grave of the Fireflies, Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie Part 3: Rebellion, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie Part 1: Beginnings, Patema Inverted, Demon Slayer, Big Fish & Begonia, Origin: Spirits of the Past, KARAS, Children of the Sea, Btooom!, Dorohedoro, Psycho Pass, Shinmai Maou no Testament, Flip Flappers, Dragon Dentist, Girl That Leapt Through Time, Golden Kamuy, Jyu Oh Sei Planet of Beast King, Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie Part 2: Eternal, Nisemonogatari, Mushi-Shi, Princess Kaguya, The Perfect Insider, Your Name, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure Audio:Aurora – Apple Tree Premiere Date:2020 Status:Downloadable, Streamable Genre(s):Other, Artistic Cons/Awards: Anime Weekend Atlanta 2020 PRO contest finalist for Artistic and Best Video A-M-V.Org 2021 VCAs: won Best artistic Agamacon 2021: won Best Artistic Endeavor Outside Links:.org, AMVnews

I got weirdly defensive about my editing abilities in 2019 so decided to make something specifically to show that I could, in fact, make a really good edit. /shrug

Started: october 2019 during AWA PRO 2019 Finished: 12 August 2020 Spent countless hours on it during that time. Started keeping actual track of hours in Jan 2020. So total project time below is heavily UNDERstated.

Time spent: 94hr 3min 10s total. (again- understated. I normally just round up to 100 lol) 72hrs 38min 10sec for Premiere CS6. 18hr 42min for after effects CS6. 2hr 43min VLC (looping betas lmao).

Finalist in AWA PRO 2020: Best artistic, best video. No Awards won.

Many thanks to all my beta testers, for the editors on discord who actually tried to explain what flow was in esoteric ways so I could maybe understand it, and their help with footage procurement (searching for certain scene compositions in anime I didn’t know). Special shoutouts to TheLazyDaze for continuous hype and feedback, SeasonsAMV who showed me The Perfect Insider, which finished a big blank spot I was struggling with, and Niotex and Dr. Derpface who convinced me to just make my own butterflies in After Effects (Previously I had tried to mask them out of a Demon Slayer scene. It was awful).

Breakdown of the baby scene: (released 26 dec 2020)

My PC nearly died while I tried to make this, and it didn’t even render correctly in the end. I’m sorry for the glitchiness, but due to the difficulty this is likely the only thing like this I will do for Esoterra. [The gold mandala & meat pieces scenes show up later than they should, making accurate comparison pretty difficult. The other overlays seem mostly in sync. I apologize.] This is all the overlays involved for just the one part of the baby scene. The baby scene is not even the most complicated scene in the full AMV, but it is the one that is most obviously different and the one that seems to get most the positive remarks. Hope this is interesting to someone.

Breakdown of the whole thing: (released 6 Jan 2021)

Finally a breakdown that I’m semi-okay with. It’s not as detailed as I wanted, but I think it gets enough of the message across. It’s still a bit buggy in some areas (2 different video files stitched together to get all the video tracks on screen) but it’s in sync. This timeline is actually pretty organized. Any video that’s on it is actively being used in conjunction with an opacity/layer blending mode, masks, or keying. (But 80% of the time it’s a blending mode). Any nested sequences that seem to have the same clips repeated continually are due to the same reasons. On this timeline, Green is nested, Pink is an AE project. I didn’t do pop-ups for every nested sequence or AE project because most of them weren’t anything complicated. The others were either complicated or I just wanted to show off for whatever reason. Especially the butterfly segment. I hand-made and animated the butterfly swarm. All frames are shown on the tracks for informational purposes; I don’t edit like that. Anyway, this was submitted and made finals in AWA PRO 2020, but didn’t win anything (My other video, “Dysphoria,” did win best tech in the same contest though). Esoterra was the most complicated and tech-heavy video I’ve made. Also clocking in at the longest time I’ve ever spent on a project, nearly 100 hours. Feel free to ask any questions!