Shufflepants 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: DOJ Floats A Truly Stupid Idea To Salvage The Sprint, T-Mobile Merger

    Shufflepants ( profile ), 31 May, 2019 @ 07:59am

    Re:

    Probably in some so called "vertical" mergers where one company buys another that is above or below them in a supply chain. So, like if a steel forging company bought a mining company that mines iron ore. So long as afterwards they still have to compete with other steel producers, the merger may let them lower their own prices because now the steel forging part of the business doesn't have to pay a premium for the iron ore since the mining part no longer has to earn a profit on its own. Like, if it costs the mining company $100 to mine some ore, and it costs the forging company $100 to forge some ore if they already have the ore, and lets say companies want to make a 10% profit, then before the merger the forging company has to buy the ore for $110 (mining cost + $10 profit for the mining company) then spend another $100 to forge it, so their total costs are $210, then if they want a 10% profit themselves would sell for $231. But if they owned the mining company, their costs would only be $200 and could sell for $220 and be making a 10% profit. Now, of course, the company post merger doesn't have to settle for just a 10% margin. They could always merge, and continue to sell at $231 and be making a 15.5% profit now instead. But in theory, if there is plenty of competition in the market, they could make more total money by choosing to sell at some lower price than $231 (because they would still be making a profit on each sale) and in theory gain extra volume of sales now that more people might buy from them instead of a competitor because they are cheaper. There are similar efficiencies to be had in "horizontal" mergers where you're essentially buying a competitor because while many costs go up directly proportional to the number of store fronts and sales a business has, some costs go up at a rate less than directly proportional, the so called "economy of scale". This is how companies like Walmart and and Amazon can afford to sell many products for so cheap, because they sell so many things at such a large scale, they can afford to have a very small margin on each individual thing sold and out-compete smaller stores while still making massive total profits. But of course in both cases, these only lead to lower prices for consumers when the merging companies don't out-compete their competitors into oblivion. Because once there are no more competitors, there's no incentive for a big company to keep prices super low. But yes, there have been mergers that have led to lower prices for consumers, and mergers that have led to greater efficiency which in theory leads to greater wealth for the country. But it doesn't always happen, and capitalism is inherently exploitative in the first place for myriad reasons.

  • On the post: DOJ Floats A Truly Stupid Idea To Salvage The Sprint, T-Mobile Merger

    Shufflepants ( profile ), 31 May, 2019 @ 07:35am

    "T-mobile and Sprint would be forced to divest spectrum and other assets to create a fourth competitor to keep the market semi-healthy"

    Hey, I have an idea. We can call the new company U-Mobile. And to be effective competition we'll have to get them set up from the beginning. So, they should probably receive all of T-Mobile's microwave towers, because how you gonna run a new cell network without the cell towers? And of course U-Mobile's gonna need people to maintain those cell towers, so the cell tower workers from T-Mobile can go work for U-Mobile. Also, U-Mobile is gonna need a bunch of store fronts to sell phones and plans for their new network, so I guess they can just have T-Mobile's store fronts since there's gonna be a bunch of redundancy from the ones they'll be acquiring from Sprint. And then of course U-Mobile's gonna need a bunch of offices and corporate employees to keep the whole business running so T-Mobile can probably spare a bunch of those to give to U-Mobile.

    Yeah, so, T-Mobile can just give all those things to U-Mobile and then T-Mobile can "merge" with Sprint, and we get a brand "new" company to compete with them.

  • On the post: Why Is Congress Moving Forward With Its Plan To Encourage Copyright Trolling?

    Shufflepants ( profile ), 28 May, 2019 @ 10:41am

    Re: Call a spade a spade.

    The only difference between "soft" corruption and "actual" corruption is legal technicality and enforcement. They're both corruption.

  • On the post: GDPR Concerns Temporarily Result In The Removal Of Trash Cans From Ireland Post Office

    Shufflepants ( profile ), 14 May, 2019 @ 08:41am

    Re: Re:

    Except that that's the entirely the point of this article. It should be the case that that's on you if you put your data in the bin, but due to the vagueness of the GDPR, they were worried that they could be held liable anyway even if any sane person would put the onus on the person who threw their personal details in the trash, hence the decision to remove the bins.

  • On the post: EU Quietly Ramps Up Preparations To Re-introduce Blanket Data Retention After Top Court Threw It Out In 2014

    Shufflepants ( profile ), 10 May, 2019 @ 07:49am

    Re: 'Spying on your users is bad... now do LOTS more of it.'

    That's exactly what I was thinking: how does not directly contradict the GDPR?

  • On the post: Twenty-one States Inadvertently Tell The DC Circuit That The Plaintiffs Challenging FOSTA Have A Case

    Shufflepants ( profile ), 02 May, 2019 @ 10:25am

    Re:

    I think he's already there just from

    mostly unevolved humans mixing with the enlightened

  • On the post: Why Congress Needs The Office Of Technology Assessment More Than Ever

    Shufflepants ( profile ), 01 May, 2019 @ 11:07am

    It's probably just my cynicism...

    But in this day and age, with our luck, if we did have one, it would probably be lead by some one who proudly doesn't use email.

  • On the post: Federal Agent: Using A Taped Box To Send Stuff Overnight Via FedEx Is Suspicious Behavior

    Shufflepants ( profile ), 24 Apr, 2019 @ 01:05pm

    Re: Re: Re:

    Don't forget to include a few stacks of paper the size of dollar bills and a glitter bomb that goes off when they open it.

  • On the post: Reverse Warrant For Cell Site Location Info Results In Wrong Man Being Jailed

    Shufflepants ( profile ), 23 Apr, 2019 @ 07:48am

    Re: Re: Hard

    It is, at least a tiny bit. There's no real reason to keep that kind of data for up to 10 years. And even if they wanted to keep that data for those time frames in order to use in training AI systems on, it could be anonymized after a certain point. It could also be made so that the retention of this data by google was not a condition of using any feature or service and the retention made explicitly and separately opt-in. But personally, I'm just glad that police are actually having to get warrants for this data. It would be MUCH more Google's fault if they were just handing everything over to the cops voluntarily without warrants like how some hotels have been doing.

  • On the post: Judge Tells Research Center To Give Back Facial Recognition Documents The NYPD Forgot To Redact

    Shufflepants ( profile ), 22 Apr, 2019 @ 07:33am

    Please return my spider drawing

    This attempt at clawing back documents after they've already been released reminds me of this exchange between David Thorne and some one who was trying to collect money from him. But where David Thorne asked for the return of his spider drawing in jest and to waste some one's time, it seems this court has no sense of the absurdity of what they are asking.
    http://www.27bslash6.com/overdue.html

  • On the post: Peachtree City Wants To Use Taxpayer Money To Sue Critics Of City Government

    Shufflepants ( profile ), 18 Apr, 2019 @ 02:58pm

    Re:

    So, what you're telling me is it's the living embodiment of Eagleton, Indiana from Parks and Rec.

  • On the post: That Was Quick: Thomas Goolnik Already Gets Google To Forget Our Latest Story About Thomas Goolnik Getting Google To Forget Stories About Thomas Goolnik

    Shufflepants ( profile ), 18 Apr, 2019 @ 07:12am

    Re: Re:

    How about "They just goolniked another article about them."?

  • On the post: Google Pays $3.8 Million To Clean Up Its Fiber Mess In Louisville

    Shufflepants ( profile ), 17 Apr, 2019 @ 02:13pm

    Re:

    I'm really afraid that my current Google Fiber connection will get sold to the likes of Comcast or just shut off at some point.

  • On the post: No, YouTube Cannot Reasonably Moderate All Content On Its Platform

    Shufflepants ( profile ), 17 Apr, 2019 @ 08:19am

    Re:

    So this is a comment about an article about a tweet. A comment about a story about a tweet about a guy hating a different social network. A comment about a story about a nobody that nobody knows or cares about, and opinions that they have that don't matter. Thanks?

  • On the post: Take-Two Dismisses Its Lawsuit Against Pinkerton Agency As The Latter Runs From Its Own Cease And Desist

    Shufflepants ( profile ), 17 Apr, 2019 @ 07:27am

    Perhaps the most surprising aspect of all of this is that it took four months to get here.

    No, the most surprising thing is that Pinkerton is still a thing.

  • On the post: Wherein The Copia Institute Updates The Copyright Office On The First Amendment Problems With The DMCA

    Shufflepants ( profile ), 16 Apr, 2019 @ 12:34pm

    Re: Re:

    Counterpoint, no it doesn't.

  • On the post: Julian Assange Arrested On Behalf Of The US, For Trying To Help Manning Crack CIA Password

    Shufflepants ( profile ), 11 Apr, 2019 @ 01:10pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Special

    it's really not a hard term to grasp, if you don't keep trying to think about it as if normal analogies and words just go out the window as soon as it's on a computer.

  • On the post: Julian Assange Arrested On Behalf Of The US, For Trying To Help Manning Crack CIA Password

    Shufflepants ( profile ), 11 Apr, 2019 @ 01:08pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Special

    "at no point did I say it had to be written for that express purpose." Exactly, *I AM" saying it must be written for that express purpose to be considered special.

  • On the post: Julian Assange Arrested On Behalf Of The US, For Trying To Help Manning Crack CIA Password

    Shufflepants ( profile ), 11 Apr, 2019 @ 10:41am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Special

    But it wasn't specially written for the sole purpose of gaining unprotected access to a system. That's why the term "special" here is nonsense. It's the same kind of non-sense like when they arrest some one on a drug related offense and tack on a charge for "drug paraphernalia" because they had a box of empty plastic bags. Are cars a special device used for robbery getaways? Are pens a special device used for forgery? They might as well have said that they used a set of special hacking devices known as a keyboard and mouse, along with the special hacking hardware: a computer monitor and it's super special hacking data transfer conduit called an "hdmi cable".

  • On the post: Julian Assange Arrested On Behalf Of The US, For Trying To Help Manning Crack CIA Password

    Shufflepants ( profile ), 11 Apr, 2019 @ 08:20am

    Re: Re: Hack The Planet

    Assange would be the one to use the left side of the keyboard.

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