"This Commerce Commission report looks like being something of a landmark in New Zealand’s ability to monitor and regulate its monopoly/duopoly/cartel forms of market power. These concentrations of market power are pervasive in almost every sector of the New Zealand economy."

#GordonCampbell, 2025

https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2504/S00009/on-the-clash-between-auckland-airport-and-air-new-zealand.htm

(1/3)

I have seen these headlines at random intervals for years.

the underlying fact is true. some regulators are looking at something, and considering something.

but no serious action has ever been taken.

So let's stop sharing these "BIG ASS SHOCKER THING GONNA DROP SOON!!!" posts. They're stupid.

Science fiction novelist, journalist and technology activist Cory Doctorow @pluralistic speech at the 2025 Ursula Franklin Lecture. >

https://vimeo.com/1059798497

#enshitification #monopsonies #twiddling #LockedUsers #LockedSellers #GAFAM #lecture #AlgorithmicWageDiscrimination#speech #SurveillanceCapitalism #interoperability #competition #regulation #WorkersPower #BigData #sellers #users #TechnoFeudalism #employment #ratings #Uberisation #queries #JediBlue #profiling #enshitified #internet #abuse #DataBrokers #AntitrustLaw #TechLayoffs #RegulatoryCaptures #TechnologicalAbuse #privacy #value #GiantPileOfShit #TechnicalMechanism #rankings #unions #digitalisation #nursing #speech #lecture #video #coporatocracy #monopoly

One wonders if EMAS* ever audited their own use of Microsoft software and consequentially Microsoft's significant deleterious impact on society by monopoly, planned obsolescence, massive tax evasion, et cetera.

Moral of the story: use Linux, LibreOffice, etc.

* Eco-Management and Audit Scheme; "Evaluate, report, and improve the environmental performance of your organisation"

Kraftwerk is playing in Helsinki. LiveNation is organizing two presale days before the official sales; Today Mastercard owners got a chance to get tickets before anyone else. Tomorrow LiveNation members can buy their tickets and the day after tomorrow is the official day to get tickets. This is what the ticket situation looks like now at 2:30pm. How is this in any way ok?
#livenation #ticketmaster #finlandiatalo #kraftwerk #monopoly #greed

Reason 237 I fucking hate #brightspace: they lock all conversation about their product behind a soft paywall (e.g. I get stupid emails like this where I can't just see what Yi Yan.L.782 said). Every fucking interaction has to be on their platform, under their control. Much of the content is hidden from search engines.

Of course, once you get into their little walled garden you discover that searching for unfixed bugs or unmet feature requests is only possible on a one-term-at-a-time search basis. There's almost no way to see if related issues exist.

No surprise: when I dove into this last year and spent a couple of hours trying to answer some questions about basic, industry-standard functionality (spoiler: the answer to all of them was "No"), I figured out that they have hundreds or thousands of unresolved issues going back 20 years.

This company is worth a billion dollars.

Edit: I clicked the link. I did. The message was "We have also had this question. Does anyone else know..."

Holy fuck this is stupid.

France slaps Job’s Mob with €150m fine for privacy power play https://www.byteseu.com/883190/ #AppTrackingTransparency #Apple #France #monopoly

https://www.europesays.com/1960037/ France slaps Job’s Mob with €150m fine for privacy power play #AppTrackingTransparency #Apple #france #monopoly

I realized something today as I once again chewed over the rank moral cowardice of #Substack both profiting off Nazi content *and* not carrying pornography.

A huge part of the problem of the modern internet is that we have private #monopolies standing in for and being treated like public services.

Had to help a friend fix an #Microsoft #Office license issue.

Apparently the download was corrupt & hence MS thought it was a invalid copy. The only way to fix it was uninstall it, but Windows didn't recognize it as installed, even thought it was! Ended up downloading an offline copy, mounting it and installing with no internet connection & that worked.

Absolutely mindboggling how bad this all is. This is #monopoly #tech in action. Being forced to pay $$$ for shitty products that don't work.

Brettspiele sind toll, aber gelegentlich ist nach einer Partie #Monopoly doch mal die Stimmung schlecht. Dennoch ist es eines der beliebtesten Spiele weltweit. Ursprünglich stammt die Idee dazu von Elizabeth Magie, die damit eigentlich über die Gefahr von Monopolen aufklären wollte.

#monopoly #ludophile #boardgames #NoBillionaires #TaxTheRich #EatTheRich #GuillotinesWork

Monopoly wasn't invented by the Parker Brothers, nor the man they gave it credit for. In 1904, Monopoly was originally called The Landlord's Game, and was invented by a radical woman. Elizabeth Magie's original game had not one, but two sets of rules to choose from.

See Alt-Text

#Denmark: government plans to hand postal service to private #monopoly that uses precarious employees. #Union expects further price increases and service deterioration.

https://uniglobalunion.org/news/denmark-ends-letter-delivery-3f-uni-global-union/

Signaling Design https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2502.02328&r=&r=des
"… in the unique equilibrium in our setting, a profit-seeking monopolist school offers an uninformative #signaling technology, generating the same signal regardless of effort, and capture all the surplus in terms of fees. In this case, the separating equilibrium envisaged in #Spence (1973) vanishes, and no wasteful effort is exerted! Competition among schools affects both the total surplus produced and its distribution: competition in fees allows students to retain a higher share of the total surplus … competition to attract high types induces schools to offer more informative monitoring policies, incentivizing higher levels of wasteful effort.

… one equilibrium outcome stands out for its robustness: full separation, yielding the Riley outcome—low-type students exert no effort and high-type students exert the lowest effort that low-types are unwilling to emulate. Thus, compared to the #monopoly case, #competition shifts surplus from the school to high-type students and entails efficiency losses due to socially wasteful effort in equilibrium. The critical driver of this result is the high-type students’ willingness to pay to access a monitoring policy that enables them to better distinguish themselves from low-type students and thus obtain higher #wages."
#GameTheory

#Monopoly #BoardGame #BoardGames

A new #Monopoly: #Whitstable and Herne Bay Edition game is now available, celebrating local landmarks, including #Southeastern #trains, Whitstable's Squeeze Gut Alley, and the oyster festival. Over 30 local organisations and charities feature, including Wildwood Trust, Revival #Kent, and the Umbrella Centre. The game includes bespoke property spaces, cards, and Chance/Community Chest cards with fun local twists, like advancing to Herne Bay Pier or being penalised for a seagull stealing lunch. The launch took place this morning in Herne Bay, and the game coincides with Monopoly's 90th anniversary and #Easter 2025. Southeastern is proud to be part of the edition, reflecting the region’s #tourism, #heritage, and community spirit.
https://newsroom.southeasternrailway.co.uk/news/southeastern-trains-coming-to-a-monopoly-board-near-you

Maybe they'll throw in our browsing history as a bonus.

https://www.macrumors.com/2025/03/10/doj-google-chrome-sale/

Interesting look at the precursor to Monopoly, and specifically a British version of The Landlord’s game, published in Dumfriesshire in 1913. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGMAAqF-As4&feature=youtu.be #boardgames #games #Monopoly #Dumfriesshire