Apple removes Fortnite from App Store after Epic attempts to bypass fees • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple removes Fortnite from App Store after Epic attempts to bypass fees

#511

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Aug 17, 2020, 4:50 AM UTC

damnyou wrote: post #482

jhatemyjob wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah okay this at least makes some sense. I don't know how effective something like this would be, wouldn't this just incentivize hiring people that fit your political agenda? For instance let's say you hire a bunch of Chinese/Indian immigrants on H-1B visas, they'll just vote in people that benefit China/India Also the 1997-2011 era Apple probably wouldn't have worked under a law like this

> I don't know how effective something like this would be, wouldn't this just incentivize hiring people that fit your political agenda? That's what all companies already do: the political agenda of every publicly held large company today is to please its shareholders, and only to please its shareholders. The proposal changes the political agendas of large companies so that they also have to please their workers and c…

[deleted]

Re: Apple removes Fortnite from App Store after Epic attempts to bypass fees

#512

Post by IkmoIkmo » Tue, Aug 18, 2020, 3:12 PM UTC

908B64B197 wrote: post #506

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder to what extent it's actually true though, to what extent are higher prices not simply driven by higher costs, rather than some kind of tacit collusion to drive excess profit? Population density in Canada is about 4 per square km, in the US about 36, and in the UK (pretty typical for western-europe) about 270. I know that much of Canada is mostly uninhabited and typical population density is a lot higher, sti…

What's interesting is to look at the population distribution and not simply density. [0] It's an extreme outlier in terms of habitable land vs land area. 5% of it's land is arable, as compared to close to 17% for the United-States. I wouldn't be surprised if 90% of the land was simply not inhabited. [0] https://geopoliticalfutures.com/population-density-of-canada...

Sure I already mentioned this caveat regarding that population density figures, but the caveat is nowhere sufficient to defeat the point.

Sources will state about 80% of Canada is uninhabited, and 47% of the US. In the UK it' 1-2%.

In other words, even assuming you apply the population density figures I mentioned in my previous post to only 20% of Canada or ±50% of the US, you'd still get a large discrepancy in 20 people per square km in Canada, vs 72 in the US, and still around 270 in the UK.

Hooking up the same coverage with 3-4 (US) or 13-14 (UK) times fewer people in that area should naturally drive much higher costs per person connected, which may explain prices.

And given profit margins of all the big telcos aren't exceptionally high for Canada despite much higher prices, that hypothesis seems quite plausible.

Re: Apple removes Fortnite from App Store after Epic attempts to bypass fees

#513

Post by 908B64B197 » Wed, Aug 19, 2020, 5:58 PM UTC

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #512

908B64B197 wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's interesting is to look at the population distribution and not simply density. [0] It's an extreme outlier in terms of habitable land vs land area. 5% of it's land is arable, as compared to close to 17% for the United-States. I wouldn't be surprised if 90% of the land was simply not inhabited. [0] https://geopoliticalfutures.com/population-density-of-canada...

Sure I already mentioned this caveat regarding that population density figures, but the caveat is nowhere sufficient to defeat the point. Sources will state about 80% of Canada is uninhabited, and 47% of the US. In the UK it' 1-2%. In other words, even assuming you apply the population density figures I mentioned in my previous post to only 20% of Canada or ±50% of the US, you'd still get a large discrepancy in 20 pe…

That's assuming everyone's getting coverage, which isn't really the case.

What I would really want to see is the density distribution of the parts of the country that actually have coverage. Eg how many square miles do I need to cover to serve 50% of the broadband users, 75%, 99%. That would give us a way better idea.

Lastly, I wouldn't discount the theory that the profit margins might be bad because the companies are inefficient. When there's no competitor or threat to the business it's easy to be inefficient and still end up with profits.