#Google Pixel 7 price

[buymobilenz]

Buy Google Pixel 7- secure, simple and compact | BuyMobile NZ

Shop Google Pixel 7 from BuyMobile NZ online mobile retail store in New Zealand.

Google Pixel 7 is the latest addition to the Pixel series, this elegant-looking flagship phone is designed to amaze smartphone lovers. The back of the phone has a matte finish and is made from 100% recycled aluminium. The phone features a 6.3-inch AMOLED display that produces 1080 x 2400 pixels and 416ppi density. It features a 90 Hz refresh rate that feels extremely smooth. Everything looks amazing on the display even under bright light. You can enjoy movies, games, and much more anywhere you want. The phone comes with an improved Google assistant that enables you to perform tasks with ease.

The handset comes preloaded with Android 13, the phone offers amazing hardware and optimized software that offers smooth and seamless app processing. This features the combination of a Google Tensor G2 (5 nm) chipset with a really powerful Octa-core processor along with 8GB RAM that allows you to carry out multiple tasks with ease. With the inclusion of Mali-G710 MP7 GPU, the smartphone becomes nothing less than a gaming powerhouse. The camera installed on this phone is amazing. It is a premium-quality camera that allows you to capture lifelike images and record sharp, high-quality videos. Capture sharp and rich details even in low lighting conditions. Moreover, its 4355mAh large battery provides all-day use.

We provide Genuine Items, Free Insurance, a Full Warranty, Live Support and Safe Shopping. Please visit our website:- https://buymobile.co.nz/collections/new-phones/products/google-pixel-7-8gb-ram-128gb-5g-1

[tech-read]

Google Pixel 7 Launch Date, Specs, Features, and Price

Google Pixel 7 is the next iteration of Google’s smartphones. It will be the seventh smartphone in the Pixel series, and we expect it to bring some exciting new features and improvements to our favorite mobile device.

In this guide, I’ll take a look at everything we know so far about the Google Pixel 7 launch date, specifications, features, and Google Pixel 7 price, including what’s been rumored thanks to leaks from reliable sources like Evan Blass and Android Police.

So, without further ado, let’s dive into this article.

Google Pixel 7 Launch Date

The Google Pixel 7 Launch Date is set for October 6, 2022.

The Google Pixel 7 Specs are expected to include a 5G variant and a triple-camera setup on the back. The Google Pixel 7 Features will be powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 855 chipset, while the price of the upcoming flagship is expected to range between $700 and $800.

Google Pixel 7 Specs

With the Google Pixel 7 launch date first approaching, here are some of its features that will get you excited.

Listed below are some of the rumored Google Pixel 7 features:

The Google Pixel 7 comes with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 chipset and the Adreno 640 GPU. The phone has 6 GB of RAM, which is more than enough to run large apps. It comes with 128 GB of internal storage and support for expansion up to 512 GB via a microSD card slot (nano SIM).

The Google Pixel 7 sports a single rear camera with 50 MP resolution and 1/2″ sensor size, f/1.8 aperture, optical image stabilization (OIS), phase detection autofocus (PDAF), and dual-LED flash. It has an 8 MP front camera with an f/2.0 aperture for selfies. The camera fixed focus and face recognition technology for unlocking the device by looking into the lens when prompted by the screen when you turn on your display at night time or indoors, where lighting conditions are not ideal for face recognition software to work properly due to low light levels in such environments.

Google Pixel 7 Features

Google Pixel 7 launch date is expected to be in 2022, but there are no official details on the phone yet.

While it’s not clear what kind of processor or cameras will be included in the Google Pixel 7, we can make some assumptions based on what previous generations of smartphones have had.

The Google Pixel 7 could use a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 processor and feature a 3.5mm headphone jack. It may also have a triple camera system or quad-lens camera system depending on how much you want to spend on your phone.We will get to know more about its features during the Google Pixel 7 release.

Google Pixel 7 Price

Although the Google Pixel 7 launch date is first approaching, we don’t yet know the Google Pixel 7 price, but we do know that it will be cheaper than the iPhone and more expensive than the Pixel 6.

Many variables affect the price a company sets for a new phone, including storage capacity options or screen size and even whether it has any brand-new hardware. We can’t extrapolate from the Pixel 5a’s price to guess what the base model of Google’s new phone will cost since that model is expected to have better specs than its predecessor.

Right now, the expectation is that we’ll see similar pricing for these phones as last year’s Pixel 6 ($599) and Pixel 6 Pro ($899). We will have to wait until the Google Pixel 7 launch date to get a better idea of the pricing of the devices.

While the Pixel 5 was a bit more expensive than last year’s model at $699, I don’t expect this trend to continue downward every year. However, I think that overall, consumers will find these products less costly than those of competitors like Samsung and Apple.

Be excited about this event.

If you’re a fan of Google, the company’s annual launch event is something worth getting excited about. It’s also an excellent time to get involved, and this year, there are more reasons than ever to be interested in what Google has planned for the Google Pixel 7 release.

In case you haven’t heard, Google announced that the Google Pixel 7 launch date is expected to be on October 6, 2022. The device will come with some exciting new features like:

New cameras (front-facing and back) that capture even more detail than ever before;

A faster processor with more storage space for apps and photos;

Wireless charging capabilities, so users don’t need cables anymore!

Conclusion

So, are you excited about the Google Pixel 7? The Google Pixel 7 launch date is almost here!

I am sure you are! But before you start saving up money for your new phone, you should know that there are still several days until the Google Pixel 7 launch date. In the meantime, plenty of other devices on the market right now can help you get excited about the Google Pixel 7 in advance.

[techfeeddata]

This week's review: Google Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro, Redmi Pad, Logitech G502X Plus and more

This week’s review: Google Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro, Redmi Pad, Logitech G502X Plus and more

Last week we reviewed a wide range of products such as Samsung Galaxy Watch 5, Apple AirPods 2, Xiaomi X50 TV and more. Here we take a look at all the products we’ve reviewed this week, like the Google Pixel 7 Pro, the Logitech G502X Plus, and more. Logitech G502X Plus If you are a gamer, you must be aware of how good Logitech mice are. The Logitech G502X Plus is a high-end premium gaming mouse…

[breaking-news-portal]

Samsung Galaxy S22, OnePlus 10 Pro, More: 7 Phones That Can Challenge Google Pixel 7

Samsung Galaxy S22, OnePlus 10 Pro, More: 7 Phones That Can Challenge Google Pixel 7

Samsung Galaxy S22, OnePlus 10 Pro, More:  Google has unveiled the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro, and this time, both phones will be officially available in India as well — the first time this has happened since the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL in 2018. At Rs 59,999, the Pixel 7 is being seen by many experts as competitively priced and is likely to be the more attractive option for many, while the relatively…

[storynstory]

Google Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro Review

Following last year’s complete redesign of the Google Pixel 6, this year’s Google Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro are all about refinement. ......Read More

[jecika-jemes]

Hi! There!👋 If you sign up now. Then you can Get Pixel Watch Vouchers. This is for a limited time offer. Just Sign up to Email Submit and Get Pixel Watch Vouchers👈 ✅Here is all details :- Click Here 🔰Condition :- This offer for The United States only. 💬 Note: after complete it please wait 24 Hours for conformation massage. Thanks

[techminotaur]

Google Pixel 7 & Pixel 7 Pro #google #pixel #googlepixel7pro

[gadgetwardusa]

Google Pixel 7 Pro

Discover the Google Pixel 7 Pro in Obsidian, featuring a stunning 6.7-inch AMOLED display with a 1440 x 3120 resolution and a smooth 120Hz refresh rate. This powerhouse smartphone is equipped with 12GB of RAM and 512GB of internal storage, powered by the Google Tensor G2 chipset. Capture breathtaking photos with its advanced triple camera system, including a 50MP main camera, and enjoy seamless connectivity with 5G support. With a robust 5000mAh battery and premium build quality, the Pixel 7 Pro is designed for performance and style. Experience free shipping on all orders at GadgetWard USA!

[anakeb]

Pixel 8: A Game-Changer in the World of Smartphones

v

[nixgle]

Google Pixel 7 Pro has an official release date of October 2022 It has one variant with 12 GB in RAM and three variants with 128/256/512GB in ROM. The Pixel 7 Pro is available in Obsidian, Snow, and Hazel in their different colors. See the full Specifications of Pixel 7 Pro...

[buymobilenz]

Get the best out of Google Pixel 7 Pro | BuyMobile NZ

Upgrade to the latest Google Pixel 7 Pro with 12GB RAM 128GB 5G and get amazing deals online in New Zealand. Enjoy easy payment options and quick delivery. Experience next-level technology! We provide Genuine Items, Free Insurance, a Full Warranty and Live Support. Please visit our website:- https://buymobile.co.nz/collections/google-pixel/products/google-pixel-7-pro-12gb-ram-128gb-5g-1

[disfordevineaux]

What's kind of phone I think each Carmen Sandiego character has:

Carmen: That limited edition red iPhone that came out a few years ago. Because it is red, along with a red case with a red pop socket on the back that keeps.falling.off. It's also mysteriously in perfect condition?

Player: A Google Pixel because he doesn't want to conform to the status quo of phone brands and claims he made it 'hack proof'. He sticks by it and claims it's better than any iPhone or Samsung on the market, but it's really not. And he knows that, we all know that. And no phone case because he literally can't find one for it because no one has a Google Pixel. So why make phone cases for a phone no one has?

Shadowsan: They got him an iPhone 12 Pro, big enough for him to use and see the screen because he has to view it from a distance as, and I quote 'The phone lights make his eyes blurry.' It also had one of those wallet cases mums have on their phones. He left it behind when he went on his sabbatical and got a Nokia brick and an international sim plan just for calls.

Zack: The most disgusting, feral, warped, sticky, crusty and shattered iPhone 6 in white you have ever witnessed in history yet it works completely fine despite the glass you find lodged in your finger when you use it and the centre button that is just an empty hole to the motherboard. REFUSES to get a new one because he doesn't want to lose the headphone jack and claims that apple removing it in the first place was cash grab and he will have no part in it. And honestly dam right zack I am with you there my man stay strong King xx

Ivy: She has a custom made franken-phone that is made up of various parts from all brands across the board. Alot of the parts donated from Devineaux's pile of fallen soldiers that met their doom between the 18-24 months he was actively chasing Carmen/VILE before VILE fell. Literally a beast and has a military grade case that she also crafted which she had tested. It is literally military grade, she has a certificate and everything.

Julia: Currently, a Lavender Samsung Ultra 23 256gb storage. She got it mostly for the cool pen it comes with, and because it's lavender. She updates her phone model every 2 years and sells the latter for almost the same price she bought it for because she keeps it in pristine condition. She's only ever cracked a phone once and it shook Julia to her core. It looked horrific in her opinion, the hair line crack so bad it made her gag when she brushed her finger over it. So now she always has a nice, strong silicone pastel purple case and screen protector over her phone which she cleans regularly.

Chase: He went through 6-7 phones during the 18-24 months while chasing Carmen/VILE before VILE fell. Before then and now after, he had whatever the latest phone was the year he got it regardless of the brand, about every 2-4 years or until it kicked the bucket. During that 18-24 months, he'd walk into a phone store, ask for the latest thing, and be on his way. Most of them died in his care before he even had the chance to take the back plastic off. Now, he's in far fewer situations that indanger his life or phone. Or if he is, takes the moment to hand his phone and wallet to whoever is nearby for safe keeping because he really likes the new one Julia picked out for him (which is just the same model as hers but black). Julia also being the one who made him get a case. He had no idea that phones came with their own clothing options.

Chief: Only uses holograms. But has a landline??????????????

Zari: She once owned a black Samsung A20 with a yellowing clear case back in 2015 before she was declared missing at sea? That's all the information I can get on it my sources tried their best sorry.

Brunt: Doesn't need it because she can project her voice across vast distances. Get her a rolled TV guide and she can blast your message from one side of America to the other 🇺🇸 yeehaw and also because she's scared those 5g mega hd3g Max phone microwave rays will melt her brain if she gets one of those flat things and slaps it to her face like an genz zombie.

Bellum: Has 17 Ipads all with different cases on them.

Cleo: She has other people do that phone thing for her so she isn't sure what kind of phone she has and I don't know either.

Maelstrom: A telepathic link chip he had installed into his brain to connect to cell towers. It doesn't really work... Or do anything... But it's in there so.... Yeah?

Dash: A Samsung flip BECAUSE ITS JUST AS PRETENTIOUS AS HE IS and so he can snap it shut to prove a point. He's been through like 10 of them because he snaps them closed too slay-ily damaging it. No case because I have no idea how you'd even get a case for it?? Like it folds? I don't know.

Paper Star: Lives off grid.

Sheena: A white iPhone 11 with a gold trim case that has a huge crack down the front. The back glass is completely shattered, but it doesn't stop her from endlessly scrolling through those insta reels about reviewing different tanning lotion brands.

Crackle: An oily iPhone with the most humongous case you've ever seen. You could drop it and it would bounce around like a ping pong ball. The grease that covers the lens gives his selfies an air brushed vibe to them that he just loves.

Mimebomb: An invisible 1970s orange rotary phone.

Neal: That mystic purple conch shell with the pull string from that one spongebob episode that answered questions or something. You know what I'm talking about don't make me pull up a picture.

Topo and Chev: They share one phone so covered in stickers you can't even tell what kind it is but its probably an iPhone. It's filled with couples selfies and can only work when permanently charging so it's always connected to a power bank that is also covered in stickers. Ugh.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How Amazon transformed the EU into a planned economy

Amazon is a perfect parable of enshittification, the process by which platforms first offer subsidies to end users until they’re locked in, then make life good for business customers at users’ expense, until they’re locked in, then claw back all the value they can for themselves, leaving just enough behind to keep the lock-in going.

In a new report for SOMO, Margarida Silva describes how the end-stage enshittification of Amazon is playing out in the EU, with Amazon repeating its US playbook of gouging the small businesses who have no choice but to use the platform in order to reach its locked-in customers, making European customers and European sellers poorer:

https://www.somo.nl/amazons-european-chokehold/

The mechanism for this isn’t a mystery. Amazon boasts about it! They call it their flywheel: first, customers are lured into the platform with low prices, especially through Prime, which requires pre-payment for a year’s shipping, which virtually guarantees that customers will start their shopping on Amazon. Because customers now start their buying on Amazon, sellers have to be there. The increased range of goods for sale on Amazon lures in more buyers, who lure in more sellers, with both sides holding each other hostage:

https://vimeo.com/739486256/00a0a7379a

This flywheel creates a vicious cycle, starving local retail so that customers can’t get what they need from brick-and-mortar shops, which funnels sellers into offering their goods for sale on Amazon. The less choice customers and sellers have about where they shop, the more Amazon can abuse both to pad its own bottom line.

There are 800,000 EU-based sellers on Amazon, and they have seen the junk-fees that Amazon charges them skyrocket, to the point where they have to raise prices or lose money on each sale. Amazon uses both tacit and explicit “Most Favored Nation” deals to hide these price-hikes. Under an MFN deal, sellers must not allow their goods to be sold at a lower price than Amazon’s — so when they raise prices to cover Amazon’s increasing fees, they raise them everywhere:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/

It’s not hard to understand why Amazon would raise its fees: the company has an effective e-commerce monopoly. Like Ozymandias, they have run out of worlds to conquer, and so their growth has to come from squeezing suppliers and/or raising prices, not from bringing in new customers. This is likewise true of mobile companies like Apple and Google, who have run out of people who are so excited about incremental mobile hardware gains that they’ll buy a new phone every year, which means that growth has to come from squeezing app vendors:

https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2023/06/09/Pixel-4-to-7

This is likewise true of the streaming companies, which is why Netflix is cracking down on “password sharing”:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/02/nonbinary-families/#red-envelopes

It’s true of the movie studios, which is why they want to zero out their wage bills by replacing writers with automatic plausible sentence generators that will write stupid movies that they think we’ll still pay to see because there won’t be anything else:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/06/people-are-not-disposable/#union-strong

It’s certainly true of Uber, which is why they’ve double the cost of a taxi ride and halved the wages they pay drivers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

Monopolies “grow” by making their customers and suppliers worse off. But they have to be careful about this: if it’s obvious that you’re using your market power to screw buyers, you can get in trouble with competition regulators. That’s because the only part of antitrust law that the neoliberal project left intact is “consumer welfare” — the idea that monopolies should only face enforcement when they raise prices and/or lower quality:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/10/play-fair/#bedoya

This focus on price-hikes has given monopolists a free hand to squeeze suppliers and workers, because a monopolist — from Walmart to Amazon — can claim that squeezing your workers and suppliers is necessary to enhancing consumer welfare. The less you pay to produce a product, the cheaper you can price it.

When a company has a lot of seller power, we call it a monopolist. When it has a lot of buying power, we call it a monopsonist. No one ever made a bestselling, family-destroying board game called “Monopsony” so most people haven’t heard of the concept. But monopsony is every bit as dangerous as monopoly, and monopsonists find it far easier to acquire market power than monopolists. Few suppliers can afford to have even 10% of their sales disappear overnight, so a buyer who accounts for 10% of your sales can demand deep discounts and other favorable terms.

Amazon is a monopolist, but it’s also a very powerful and ruthless monopsonist. For example, its audiobook division, Audible, has a 90+% market-share, and it used that market-power to steal at least $100m from audiobook creators, in a scandal dubbed Audiblegate:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/07/audible-exclusive/#audiblegate

For Europe’s 800k sellers who rely on Amazon to reach their customers, the monoposony conditions are blatant and shameless. Take listing fees: Amazon’s “flywheel” pitch claims that as the company grows, it achieves “economies of scale” that can lower its cost basis. But Amazon’s listing fees haven’t changed, even as the company experienced explosive growth in the EU (remember, sellers whose Amazon fees exceed their margins have to pass those fees onto buyers, and also raise their prices everywhere else to satisfy the Most Favored Nation requirement).

Amazon books the revenues from these fees — and other junk-fees it extracts from sellers — in Luxembourg, an EU member nation that provides a tax haven to multinational businesses that want to maintain the fiction that they operate their businesses out of the tiny kingdom. There is sharp competition in the EU to offer the most servile, corrupt environment for multinationals, and Luxembourg is a leader, along with Cyprus, Malta and, of course, Ireland:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/15/finnegans-snooze/#dirty-old-town

But at least listing fees haven’t gone up, unlike other fees, which have climbed sharply. Amazon falsely claimed that its additional revenues from fees were the result of growth by independent sellers, which Amazon pegged at 65%. Later, the company admitted that the true growth figure was 22%. Meanwhile, fees are up 85%.

The true growth figure might be lower still. Amazon refuses to show the math behind its growth figures, or even say which sellers and sales are included in the figure.

The SOMO report cites research by Juozas Kaziukėnas of the e-commerce research firm Marketplace Pulse, who finds that sellers are now giving 50% of their gross revenues to Amazon, an increase of 10% over the past five years across the whole EU. However, different EU (and ex-EU) countries have experienced much steeper increases in fees — in the UK, fees have nearly doubled (up 98%), and in France, fees more than doubled (up 115%).

Many of these increases come from the Fulfilment By Amazon (FBA) program, which is promoted as an optional service, but which is really obligatory — careful research shows that sellers who warehouse, pack and ship their own goods get banished to the depths of search results, even if they have ratings, costs and times that are competitive with FBA. This is especially true of the “buy box” that lands at the top of most searches. The company refuses to disclose how buy box positioning is determined, but 90% of products in the buy box pay for FBA.

Amazon has used excuseflation to hike its FBA prices, blaming higher energy prices for price hikes that predated the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and blaming covid for price hikes that predated the pandemic.

Italy’s competition authority did yeoman service in uncovering the sleaze of FBA, publishing an investigation that showed that Prime and buy box made the notionally “optional” FBA into a must-have for merchants, meaning that Amazon could jack up FBA prices without losing business.

Another notable source of gouging came in response to the UK and France adopting digital services taxes, which were meant to make up for the tax-base erosion enabled by Luxembourg’s flouting of EU tax law. Amazon passed these taxes straight through to its merchants, without seeing a comparable decrease in the number of sellers using its platforms — an unmistakable sign of market power. If you can raise prices without losing customers, then, by definition, your customers have nowhere else to go.

I’ve previously written about how Amazon’s $31b/year “advertising” market isn’t really advertising — rather, it’s a payola scheme that auctions off the top of a search-listing to the merchant with the most to spend:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola

This is how you get a simple search like “cat beds” returning results whose first screen is 100% ads, and whose next five screens are 50% ads, many of them for dog products:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2022/amazon-shopping-ads/

Auctioning off search results means that every time you search for something you want, you have to wade through screen after screen of listings for products whose vendors spent more on advertising, leaving less to spend on making quality goods.

This is as true in the EU as it is in the USA. The SOMO report shows that European merchants are required to spend ever-larger sums to show up in results for the exact products they sell, leaving them with a choice between making less money, raising prices, or skimping on quality.

But even the “winners” of Amazon’s gladiatorial combat among vendors can still lose. Amazon uses an automated product removal process that can delete some or all of a merchant’s products, without warning or explanation, and no one at Amazon will explain what a merchant did wrong. That remains true even if a vendor pays for Amazon’s “marketplace consultant” service — ask these paid Virgils why you’ve been cast into Amazon’s pit, and they’ll shrug their shoulders (and bill you for it).

And even if you can navigate the junk fees, the Kafka-as-a-service removals, the war of all sellers against all sellers for search primacy…you still lose. Merchants told SOMO that a product that survives Amazon’s gauntlet is likely to be cloned by Amazon and sold as an Amazon Basic or other house-brand product. Amazon doesn’t charge itself 50% junk fees, so it can always underprice the vendors it knocks off, and give its own products permanent top-of-search placement.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos once testified under oath before Congress that this doesn’t happen — and then refused to return to Congress when multiple vendors showed evidence that he’d lied:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/10/18/amazon-congress-letter-third-party-data/

He definitely lied:

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/amazon-india-rigging/

Amazon has faced investigations and enforcement in the EU over this, and settled a claim with a promise to “not use non-public seller data to compete with sellers,” but given the company’s record of broken promises on this score and the difficulty of catching them cheating, it’s pretty naive to think they’ll stick to this.

The report quotes Thomas Höppner, a lawyer who has represented small businesses that Amazon screwed over. Höppner says the problem is that the EU evaluates Amazon’s bad deeds on a “case-by-case” basis, missing the big picture: “By the time one identified problem was seemingly solved, Amazon had long made amendments elsewhere with the same effect. We require a more holistic approach that considers the entire Amazon ecosystem and the various interdependencies within.”

But the EU’s enforcement approach is about to change significantly. The EU just passed the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which imposes a bunch of obligations on Amazon:

allowing sellers to offer their products on other marketplaces at different prices (Article 5.3),

not obliging business users to pay for one of its services in order to use its platform (Article 5.8),

limiting the way Amazon uses non-public seller data to compete with them (Article 6.2)

preventing Amazon from giving top billing in search results to its own products or sellers that have acquired extra Amazon services (Article 6.5)

The report concludes with a suite of recommendations for improving EU enforcement. First, they argue for a return to traditional competition law, abandoning the “consumer welfare standard” that is so friendly to monopsonies and their abuses of suppliers and workers.

They call for a probe into Amazon’s Most Favored Nation deals (“fair pricing policy”), the practice of sponsoring search results, and spiraling fees. They want the EU to adequately fund DMA enforcement, with “measures to prevent regulatory capture.” And they want Amazon to publish clear explanations for how search results, buy box placement, and other practices hidden behind a veil of secrecy.

Amazon will doubtless claim that disclosing how those systems work will make it easier for spammers and scammers to game their way to the top of search results. We should be skeptical of this claim — content moderation is the last domain where anyone takes the bankrupt idea of security through obscurity seriously:

https://doctorow.medium.com/como-is-infosec-307f87004563

Finally, the report calls for breaking up Amazon, forcing it to choose between being a platform seller or a platform user, calling this the only way to “prevent the conflicts of interest between its role as a platform intermediary, seller, and service provider.”

The technical term for this measure is “structural separation” — a rule that bans platform companies from competing with their business customers. This is the principle at work in the US bipartisan AMERICA Act, which would force Google and Meta to spin off the parts of their ad-tech business that put them in a conflict of interest. Right now, Googbook represents both publishers and advertisers, while operating the marketplace where ad sales take place, and they take 51% out of every ad dollar:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-shatter-ad-tech

Structural separation hasn’t really been applied in the US for a generation, but it’s gained currency in recent years, for the obvious reason that the referee can’t also own one of the teams. I was in Germany last week speaking to regulators and politicians, and they espoused skepticism that the EU would embrace structural separation anytime soon.

But they were wrong! Today, the European Commission announced plans to force Google and Meta to sell off their conflict-of-interest ad-tech lines of business, mirroring the provisions of the US AMERICA Act:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/06/google-may-soon-be-ordered-to-break-up-its-lucrative-ad-business-eu-warns/

Structural separation really is the policy we should be demanding. It’s amazing that lawyers who would never argue a case in front of a judge who was married to the plaintiff will turn around and defend the idea that Amazon can fairly operate a marketplace where they compete with other sellers.

With Amazon dominating online sales, and with in-person retail cratering, Amazon’s decisions have the power to determine the outcome of whole swathes of Europe’s economy. This is the “planned economy” that the EU claims it detests and seeks to prevent — but it’s an economy planned by distant autocrats in a Seattle boardroom, for the purpose of extracting the surpluses needed to launch an endless procession of penis-rockets.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/14/flywheel-shyster-and-flywheel/#unfulfilled-by-amazon

[Image ID: A desert ruin. In the foreground is a huge Amazon box, with an EU flag in place of its shipping label. Atop the box are the feet and partial legs of an Oxymandias figure.]

Image: Rama (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gladiator_with_sword-Louis_Ernest_Meissonnier-MG_1216-IMG_1223-white.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/fr/deed.en

[twentyfourfirst-sims]

Advent Calendar 2023 — Day 7 — Brickie

An advent calendar in February? Why not! 🎄 From 6 February to 17 February, I'll be releasing a new gift set for your Sims 2 game every day! 🤍

Welcome to Day 7! Today's gift is Brickie, a set containing all 21 brick walls from The Sims 4 Base Game, converted for The Sims 2!

Be sure to visit tomorrow for your next gift! ˖˟ ⸜₍⁽ˊ꒳ˋ⁾₎⸝ ˟˖

Included in this set are:

BASE GAME — Better Days Brick Facade — Better Days Brick Facade with Corner Accent* — Better Days Brick Facade with White Trim* — Blocked Out — Brick & Plaster — Firehouse Brick — Industrial Interest — IndustryMatters Brick Facade — IndustryMatters Brick Facade with Corner Accent*  — IndustryMatters Brick Facade with White Trim* — Ornate Brick — Pretty in Plaster — Steve & Graham's Habitat Bricks — The Brickery — The Brickery with Corner Accent* — The Brickery with Stone Corner Accent* — The Brickery with Wood Trim* — The Brickery Elite — The Brickery Elite - Caution — The Brickery Elite with Corner Accent* — The Brickery Elite with Wood Trim*

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DETAILS — Descriptions: walls in TS4 don't come with descriptions, so I wrote one for all of the bricks in this set ^^ — Mirrored: walls marked with an asterisk (*) have mirrored counterparts. For example, if the wall came with a trim on the right side, I've included a left side version, so you have more wall functionality all around! — All walls can be found in the build catalogue under Build > Walls > Brick. They share the same prices as their original EA counterparts. — All walls have a high-resolution texture (512 x 1024 pixels) and come in all of their original swatches. — Everything has been compressed; the swatch is included in the .zip. — Merged files are included.

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LINKS — 📝 Terms of Use — 🦋 Bug Reports (Google Form) — 🎁 Commissions — ☕ Patreon — 📁 Download on Patreon (Free)  

[clatterbane]

https://www.elgiganten.se/product/outlet/google-pixel-7-smartphone-8256gb-obsidian/541185

Assuming I'm not totally down with the migraine tomorrow, guess what I am planning on heading to Lund to pick up tomorrow! Because the USB port on this phone from late 2020 has decided to start going fucky and giving me charging problems.

There's enough price difference that I decided to go for the Pixel 7 rather than 8. I knew electronics of all kinds tended to be more expensive here, but even the 7 is running higher now than it did in the US when it came out as their new flagship model back in 2022. 😬 There is luckily what is probably a former display device supposedly like new for the equivalent of $100+ less than usual available in a brick-and-mortar Elgiganten location in Lund. So yeah, I guess we're off to Lund in the Stealth Volvo tomorrow afternoon!

It is apparently pretty standard to buy your phones outright and go for a SIM-only plan here. Already got the working SIM, now just need another phone that will charge properly again. Was hoping to put off new phones until after the EU requirements including user-accessible/replaceable batteries had gone into full effect. But yeah, maybe not!

I'm not too happy with some of the directions Samsung has been running off in, or I would probably just go with one of the more recent Galaxies. So yeah, I decided to try a Pixel this time instead. It's also more readily rootable/flashable, which is part of the draw.

I am actually strongly considering trying GrapheneOS on this new phone and largely Degoogle it:

(He has apparently since had some problems with their lead developer, and stopped using it himself. But, not because it stopped being a good more secure and private offshoot of Android.)

Avoid a bunch of bloatware I don't want or need, too.

You can still run Google Play Services and Google Services Framework sandboxed, and I did double check that other folks have been able to run some important apps that I need to use (mainly BankID which is used for basically everything including logging in to medical services here, and various banking and official type crap). Yep, evidently so without any real problem. Shouldn't have trouble doing anything that I have been doing on the existing Android devices.

That will require stealing a computer from Mr. C, since my laptop is still out of commission. 🫤 But, that shouldn't be an issue.

It also shouldn't be a problem to flash stock Android right back on there, if the Graphene plan doesn't work out for whatever reason.