Welcome to The Long View—where we peruse the news of the week and strip it to the essentials. Let’s work out what really matters.
This week: Meta’s latest results are very bad, Apple wants its cut of Facebook ads, and Lennart Poettering proposes a new Secure Boot for Linux.
1. Zuck’s Folly
First up this week: Meta’s growth is in reverse gear—and the stock is falling fast. It would seem Mark Zuckerberg’s irrational obsession with virtual reality is to blame.
Analysis: ‘Metaverse’ should have stayed in Snow Crash
Who remembers The Lawnmower Man? Second Life? Habbo? All sank without trace. Zuckerberg is just the latest misguided fool with too much money.
Ryan Mac: Meta’s Profit Slides by More Than 50%
“Cedes young users to rivals like TikTok”
Meta has plowed billions of dollars into, and restructured itself around, the … so-called metaverse. [It] has been nothing short of disastrous. [Meta’s] stock has plunged more than 60%.
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On Wednesday, Meta … indicated that the decline would not end anytime soon. It said it would be … shrinking some teams and … hiring only in its areas of highest priority. … Net income was $4.4 billion, down 52%. … The company’s shares fell more than 19%.
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Mr. Zuckerberg was defiant: … “A lot of people might disagree with this investment [but] I think this is going to be a very important thing and [is] going to be fundamentally important to the future.” … It’s unclear how Meta’s metaverse investment will pan out … as the company cedes young users to rivals like TikTok.
Is this the end for Facebook? Not really, thinks hdyoung:
Facebook will last for decades, but the explosive growth phase is clearly over. … Their stock valuation was based on the idea that a hundred billion people would be Facebook users by 2025, and Zuckerberg would be the only guy showing them ads and selling their user data—so that’s gonna have to come down by a cool order of magnitude.
Get off Fatesrider’s lawn:
Still on the “Metaverse” bull****? That’s going to fall flatter than a mile-wide sheet of graphene. … What if God created the heavens and the Earth and no one wanted to live there? That’s Facebook’s Metaverse issue now.
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To quote from an era of my past: “Burn, baby, burn!”
Sounding slightly sarcastic, 93 Escort Wagon drives the point home:
50% drop—that’s terrible. Is there a GoFundMe we can sign up for to help this poor company out?
2. Apple Pours Gas on Facebook Flames
Apple wants its 30% cut of Facebook in-app purchases. It’s coming for a slice of the revenue from “boosts”—a way of paying Facebook to show your posts to more people.
Analysis: A plague on both their houses
This Facebook feature is as obnoxious as it sounds. But aside from that fact, Apple’s latest cash grab is the exact opposite of what Tim’s crew promised less than 18 months ago.
But some are pointing to Apple as Meta’s next big problem. Here’s Alex Heath: Meta says Apple’s new rule undercuts its business
“An about-face from Apple”
Apple quietly updated its App Store rules to require that iOS developers use in-app purchases — and thereby give Apple 30% — on “sales of ‘boosts’ for posts.” … It’s the first time Apple has directly taxed advertising in iOS apps. Meta, of course, isn’t happy.
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This policy on paid boosts is … an about-face from Apple. Last May, during the Epic v. Apple antitrust trial, App Store boss Phil Schiller testified that the company had never taken a cut of iOS developer ad revenue. [But] Apple spokesperson Peter Ajemian downplayed … the new rule, saying that the App Store has long taken a cut of digital goods and services:
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“This has always been the case. … The App Store guidelines have been clear that the sale of digital goods and services within an app must use In-App Purchase. Boosting … is a digital service.”
ELI5? saveferris explains:
It is an ad. The only distinction is the boosted “ad” starts life as an organic post instead of a created ad. … The purchase happens in the Facebook “blue” app. … You post something via the Facebook “blue” app, get a notice that it’s been seen by a few people, so pay a bit to get it seen by more and all of that is done via that one app—so an “in app purchase.” … The economic value is created in that same app.
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Our firm is small and we avoid any possibility of Apple trying to grab 30%: … No app for us at all.
Are you offended? ehtegrev is:
This is deeply offensive to Apple product owners. Apple thinks they own and control all monetary access to you even though you paid $1000 for their products.
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As we’ve seen in Korea, payment processing is 4% … so the rest of the 26% is “**** you, pay me” money. … This should send alarm bells ringing for all iOS developers. Are you getting money from people who use iOS products? Apple wants 30% from you—the very developers that made iOS successful.
3. Linux Secure Boot Shenanigans
Big changes are proposed to systemd. Lennart Poettering’s goals are to provide a signed and measured execution path from firmware to userspace, with rollback protection and remote attestation, atop TPM 2.0.
Analysis: Good luck with that
There’s already enough loud grumbling about systemd and Poettering—for example, code bloat and uncomfortable ties to IBM and Microsoft. And now he’s proposing using a proprietary Microsoft file format (PE). This move will only amplify the critics. Is it time for someone like Google to offer an alternative init system?
Liam Proven: Lennart Poettering proposes tightening up Linux boot process
“Already a movement against systemd”
Poettering offers a mechanism for tightening up the security of the system startup process on Linux machines, using TPM 2.0 hardware. … On hardware with Secure Boot enabled, while the boot process up to and including the kernel is signed, the next step, loading the initrd, is not. That’s what he wants to fix. … Malware or an intruder could insert malicious code into the initrd, and it will be loaded every time your system boots, even if no other copy of that malicious code exists anywhere else on your hard disk.
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We predict panic and parsimony. … There’s already a movement against systemd, and we suspect that this will now widen to be anti-UKI … (Unified Kernel Image).
With a guarded welcome, here’s espi:
At this rate we are going to end up like macOS, the UKI is signed and trusted, the system is compartmentalized into read only volumes managed by ostree, signed and trusted of course. Everything encrypted, with automatic TPM decryption.
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It does … **** with the ability of the user to mess with their system, which I guess is fine on Apple, but that is non-negotiable on Linux. Add all security you want, but we must be able to disable it for any reason.
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Anything is better than the cluster**** with initramfs and GRUB we have now. A few times I have had systems break because a kernel update went mysteriously wrong. Configuring decryption with TPM is also annoying when it really should be just a checkbox.
But no_time has no time for it:
In what world is this a good thing? This is a one way street to an all seeing police state. I never had a problem with systemd from a technical perspective but looks like Poettering is drinking the TCB kool aid by the barrel.
The Moral of the Story:
Your time is limited—so don’t waste it living someone else’s life
—Steve Jobs
You have been reading The Long View by Richi Jennings. You can contact him at @RiCHi or [email protected].
Image: Dmitry Ganin (via Unsplash; leveled and cropped)
