Very true when each user is accessing its own encrypted data directly. But from what I read here in the comments, Apple is managing encryption on their own HW, which almost surely means that data is read and wrote from Apple’s machines.
Such aggregation of read and write calls across users makes access traffic patterns analyses risk fairly minimal...
As a French entrepreneur, I was advised several times to move my HQ to the Netherlands because of the extremely low taxes on intellectual property.
The HQ can invoice european subsidies/entities for the usage of the brand as well as the IP of internal software or patents. You calibrate this so that European subsidies makes little to no profit, so you don’t pay any local tax. Then, what amounts essentially to the profit of all your European subsidies is brought back to your NL headquarters under “revenue from intellectual property” on which you pay ~ no tax (I’ve been told around 5%).
I’m not an expert in taxes and I have not looked into this in details so this may all be wrong, but it’s advice we got from top 10 EU lawyer firms.
It was presented to us as a tax “optimisation” scheme.
They meant energy storage capacity instead of density. The energy density is only 16% higher.
The new cells are 46mmx80mm vs 21x700 for the previous model.
I run a bike and scooter sharing company in Europe. We see that plans like this are in the making in most big european cities. Regulation on air quality is a huge driver, as officials may be personally held responsible if nothing is done.
The example you mention in Barcelona is called the SuperBlock. The first one was Poblenou. Although it's true it was first met with fierce opposition, it is now a massive success, and local communities are not against it at all:
When the first superblock was introduced in 2017 in Poblenou, in the north of the city, it was met with opposition by car owners and also those who claimed it would be ruinous to local business.
However, opposition has faded as residents have begun to enjoy the benefits of a traffic-free neighbourhood. There are also 30% more local businesses than previously and the area has seen a significant increase in the numbers of people making journeys on foot or cycling.
* Cellular is replaced by global satellite coverage. Every single person has a smartphone with 24/7 unlimited high speed internet, with 100% geographical coverage globally.
* Satellite Internet censorship is managed by international bodies, and authoritarian countries can’t control it as tightly as today.
* Internet global culture continues to grow (through memes, social networks, games, blogs, news sites, etc..) and an internet language starts to emerge
* Wealth distribution across rich and poor continue to worsen, and we are basically back to seignorialism
* 30+ countries and startups have rovers / unmanned stations on the moon (or concrete plans to get there short term) and the Outer Space Treaty is being actively challenged as the main obstacle to sustainable investment in space conquest
* Environmentalism has grown massively and 90%+ of people globally cite environment in their top 3 concerns
* Yet we don’t know what to do to protect the environment, politicians are pushing for random stuff (like plastic straw interdiction). The lack of strong fact based recommendations means environmental protection is organised more like a religion, and environmental issues are very hard to reason about
* Well being for all and inclusion issues are not solved. Major institutions, universities, companies, open-source projects are paralised by those issues, up to the point where some of those institutions disappear
* Student debt bubble explodes. As with the subprimes, no banker go to prison, and the only consequence is merger between big players in the Banking / Asset Management industries. Finance is becoming more and more an oligopoly.
* Cars are totally banned from most city centers in Europe and Asia. e-cargo bikes are the main mode of transport globally.
* Parcel delivery are heavily taxed by environmental laws. Amazon goes bankrupt. Alibaba buys AWS, which now stands for Alibaba Web Services.
* Planes are heavily taxed, and it becomes hard to travel across the world
* Labour laws and classic employment contract are now seen as a way for the ultra rich to enslave people. People are now fighting for the freedom to work as freelancers.
* Apple watch and other wearable are still useless. Air-pods are still not a platform. The exception is smart glasses that start to appear in the second half of the decade
* Security on the internet is a major issue. 2FA is required by law, and companies must certify their backend by 3rd parties according to ISO certification (as it’s the case for most physical goods)
* Inequalities between developed and developing countries continue to decrease fast. This, + environmental laws on imported pollution, means it’s now better to manufacture locally. Factories are back in the US and in Europe.
* Crypto currencies are not a thing.
* Bitcoin still exists and is worth $100k+ but is still extremely volatile and is not used in real life.
* Cash is not accepted in most shop anymore
* Banking is global. Illegal activities, fraud and tax evasion becomes more and more difficult as all transactions are tracked and reconciled. In particular, credit card fraud on the internet is almost no longer a thing.
* Intelligence agencies have won the first war of privacy (i.e. they have backdoors in ISP, WhatsApp, FB, etc.). From now on, this war starts again every 5 years with new services trying to resist. Some try to operate from space.
* Ederly care is an unsolved problem globally. Scandal about mistreated ederly people appear every other week.
* Political debate in Europe is no longer about right or left wing, it’s National vs European, with the first European parties winning significant national elections by 2025
* Still no nuclear fusion
* Still no shortage of petrol
* A new scripting language appears, focusing on making network API calls easy and building GUIs. In particular, everything function call is by default asynchronous, so nothing special has to be done to call external APIs vs local code, and the standard lib will include a very powerful UI framework. Kids will use it as a toy (as with the early days of web), then it will replace spreadsheets, then ultimately it will replace HTML/CSS/JS first through WASM then through native implementation in browsers.
What does that mean in terms of responsibility to take bad content content down? Seems like this would allow them to argue fake news is not their problem anymore.
They are just a nice interface to visualise stuff that is stored in a decentralised way, outside of their direct control.
Also I guess it means you can cut this AWS bill by like a lot.
And it feels like it gives a very clear path to direct monetisation.