#Online Charging System Market

[differenttimemachinecrusade]

Online Charging System Market Size, Share, Scope, Analysis, Forecast, Growth and Industry Report 2032: Technological Advancements

The Online Charging System Market Size was valued at USD 7.72 Billion in 2023 and is expected to reach USD 20.08 Billion by 2032 and growing at a CAGR of 11.24% over the forecast period 2024-2032.

The Online Charging System (OCS) Market is witnessing rapid expansion as telecom operators shift toward real-time billing solutions. With the growing demand for digital services, OCS plays a critical role in enabling flexible and dynamic charging mechanisms. This technology is essential for telecom providers, ensuring seamless monetization of voice, data, and digital services.

The Online Charging System Market continues to evolve, driven by the rising adoption of 5G networks, cloud-based solutions, and increasing customer expectations. As telecom companies seek to enhance operational efficiency, OCS enables them to manage prepaid and postpaid billing in real time, offering greater transparency and customer satisfaction.

Get Sample Copy of This Report: https://www.snsinsider.com/sample-request/3823 

Market Keyplayers:

AGNITY Inc. (AGNITY Online Charging Systems, Intelligent Network Services)

Alepo (Alepo Online Charging Systems, Alepo Charging Platform)

Amdocs (Amdocs Online Charging Systems, Amdocs Charging System)

Nexign (Nexign Online Charging Systems, Nexign BSS/OSS Solutions)

Cerillion Technologies Limited (Cerillion Online Charging Systems, Cerillion Charging System)

Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. (Huawei Online Charging Systems, Huawei Cloud Solutions)

ZTE Corporation (ZTE Online Charging Systems, ZTE Telecom Solutions)

Comverse Inc. (Comverse Online Charging Systems, Comverse Billing Solutions)

Oracle Corporation (Oracle Online Charging Systems, Oracle Communications)

Ericsson AB (Ericsson Online Charging Systems, Ericsson Charging Solutions)

NetCracker Technology (NetCracker Online Charging Systems, NetCracker BSS/OSS Solutions)

Subex Limited (Subex Online Charging Systems, Subex Revenue Assurance Solutions)

Tech Mahindra Ltd. (Tech Mahindra Online Charging Systems, Tech Mahindra Telecom Solutions)

Cognizant Technology Solutions (Cognizant Online Charging Systems, Cognizant Telecom Solutions)

Infosys Ltd. (Infosys Online Charging Systems, Infosys Telecom Services)

Accenture plc (Accenture Online Charging Systems, Accenture Cloud Charging Solutions)

AireSpring Inc. (AireSpring Online Charging Systems, AireSpring Telecom Solutions)

Volaris Group (Volaris Online Charging Systems, Volaris Telecom Billing Solutions)

InnoPath Software Inc. (InnoPath Online Charging Systems, InnoPath Telecom Solutions)

Redknee Solutions Inc. (Redknee Online Charging Systems, Redknee Telecom Billing Solutions)

Market Trends

5G Integration and Real-Time Charging – The deployment of 5G is accelerating the adoption of OCS, enabling real-time billing for high-speed data and IoT applications.

Cloud-Based Charging Solutions – Telecom operators are shifting to cloud-based OCS for enhanced scalability, cost savings, and seamless integration with digital platforms.

AI and Automation in Billing – Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming OCS by improving fraud detection, optimizing pricing strategies, and enhancing customer experience.

Convergent Billing Systems – Operators are implementing convergent charging to unify billing for voice, data, and content services, creating a seamless experience for users.

Enquiry of This Report: https://www.snsinsider.com/enquiry/3823 

Market Segmentation:

By Component

Software

Services

By Deployment

Cloud

On-premise

By Organization Size

Large Enterprise

Small and Medium Size Enterprise

By Application

Prepaid

Post-paid

Market Analysis

Rising Demand for Digital Payments – The shift toward cashless transactions is boosting the adoption of OCS, allowing real-time billing and seamless payment integration.

Expansion of IoT and M2M Communication – OCS is becoming essential for managing the billing of interconnected devices and machine-to-machine (M2M) communication.

Regulatory Compliance and Security – With stringent telecom regulations, OCS helps operators comply with billing transparency and security requirements.

Growth of Telecom and OTT Services – The rise of over-the-top (OTT) platforms and bundled telecom services is driving the demand for flexible and real-time charging solutions.

Future Prospects

AI-Driven Predictive Analytics – Future OCS solutions will leverage AI to predict user behavior, optimize pricing models, and offer personalized billing plans.

Edge Computing for Faster Processing – The integration of OCS with edge computing will enable low-latency billing, improving efficiency in high-speed 5G networks.

Blockchain for Secure Transactions – Blockchain technology is expected to enhance the security and transparency of billing and revenue management in telecom networks.

Expansion into Emerging Markets – The growing telecom sector in developing regions presents new opportunities for OCS providers to scale their solutions.

Access Complete Report: https://www.snsinsider.com/reports/online-charging-system-market-3823 

Conclusion

The Online Charging System Market is set for remarkable growth, fueled by advancements in 5G, cloud computing, and AI-driven billing solutions. As telecom operators embrace real-time charging systems, they will enhance revenue management, improve customer satisfaction, and drive innovation in digital services. With continuous technological advancements, the future of OCS promises greater efficiency, security, and scalability in the telecom industry.

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Contact Us:

Jagney Dave - Vice President of Client Engagement

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[mostlysignssomeportents]

Kickstarting a book to end enshittification, because Amazon will not carry it

My next book is The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation: it’s a Big Tech disassembly manual that explains how to disenshittify the web and bring back the old good internet. The hardcover comes from Verso on Sept 5, but the audiobook comes from me — because Amazon refuses to sell my audio:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/the-internet-con-how-to-seize-the-means-of-computation

Amazon owns Audible, the monopoly audiobook platform that controls >90% of the audio market. They require mandatory DRM for every book sold, locking those books forever to Amazon’s monopoly platform. If you break up with Amazon, you have to throw away your entire audiobook library.

That’s a hell of a lot of leverage to hand to any company, let alone a rapacious monopoly that ran a program targeting small publishers called “Project Gazelle,” where execs were ordered to attack indie publishers “the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle”:

https://www.businessinsider.com/sadistic-amazon-treated-book-sellers-the-way-a-cheetah-would-pursue-a-sickly-gazelle-2013-10

[Image ID: Journalist and novelist Doctorow (Red Team Blues) details a plan for how to break up Big Tech in this impassioned and perceptive manifesto….Doctorow’s sense of urgency is contagious -Publishers Weekly]

I won’t sell my work with DRM, because DRM is key to the enshittification of the internet. Enshittification is why the old, good internet died and became “five giant websites filled with screenshots of the other four” (h/t Tom Eastman). When a tech company can lock in its users and suppliers, it can drain value from both sides, using DRM and other lock-in gimmicks to keep their business even as they grow ever more miserable on the platform.

Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

[Image ID: A brilliant barn burner of a book. Cory is one of the sharpest tech critics, and he shows with fierce clarity how our computational future could be otherwise -Kate Crawford, author of The Atlas of AI”]

The Internet Con isn’t just an analysis of where enshittification comes from: it’s a detailed, shovel-ready policy prescription for halting enshittification, throwing it into reverse and bringing back the old, good internet.

How do we do that? With interoperability: the ability to plug new technology into those crapulent, decaying platform. Interop lets you choose which parts of the service you want and block the parts you don’t (think of how an adblocker lets you take the take-it-or-leave “offer” from a website and reply with “How about nah?”):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah

But interop isn’t just about making platforms less terrible — it’s an explosive charge that demolishes walled gardens. With interop, you can leave a social media service, but keep talking to the people who stay. With interop, you can leave your mobile platform, but bring your apps and media with you to a rival’s service. With interop, you can break up with Amazon, and still keep your audiobooks.

So, if interop is so great, why isn’t it everywhere?

Well, it used to be. Interop is how Microsoft became the dominant operating system:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/adversarial-interoperability-reviving-elegant-weapon-more-civilized-age-slay

[Image ID: Nobody gets the internet-both the nuts and bolts that make it hum and the laws that shaped it into the mess it is-quite like Cory, and no one’s better qualified to deliver us a user manual for fixing it. That’s The Internet Con: a rousing, imaginative, and accessible treatise for correcting our curdled online world. If you care about the internet, get ready to dedicate yourself to making interoperability a reality. -Brian Merchant, author of Blood in the Machine]

It’s how Apple saved itself from Microsoft’s vicious campaign to destroy it:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/adversarial-interoperability-reviving-elegant-weapon-more-civilized-age-slay

Every tech giant used interop to grow, and then every tech giant promptly turned around and attacked interoperators. Every pirate wants to be an admiral. When Big Tech did it, that was progress; when you do it back to Big Tech, that’s piracy. The tech giants used their monopoly power to make interop without permission illegal, creating a kind of “felony contempt of business model” (h/t Jay Freeman).

The Internet Con describes how this came to pass, but, more importantly, it tells us how to fix it. It lays out how we can combine different kinds of interop requirements (like the EU’s Digital Markets Act and Massachusetts’s Right to Repair law) with protections for reverse-engineering and other guerrilla tactics to create a system that is strong without being brittle, hard to cheat on and easy to enforce.

What’s more, this book explains how to get these policies: what existing legislative, regulatory and judicial powers can be invoked to make them a reality. Because we are living through the Great Enshittification, and crises erupt every ten seconds, and when those crises occur, the “good ideas lying around” can move from the fringes to the center in an eyeblink:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/12/only-a-crisis/#lets-gooooo

[Image ID: Thoughtfully written and patiently presented, The Internet Con explains how the promise of a free and open internet was lost to predatory business practices and the rush to commodify every aspect of our lives. An essential read for anyone that wants to understand how we lost control of our digital spaces and infrastructure to Silicon Valley’s tech giants, and how we can start fighting to get it back. -Tim Maughan, author of INFINITE DETAIL]

After all, we’ve known Big Tech was rotten for years, but we had no idea what to do about it. Every time a Big Tech colossus did something ghastly to millions or billions of people, we tried to fix the tech company. There’s no fixing the tech companies. They need to burn. The way to make users safe from Big Tech predators isn’t to make those predators behave better — it’s to evacuate those users:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/18/urban-wildlife-interface/#combustible-walled-gardens

I’ve been campaigning for human rights in the digital world for more than 20 years; I’ve been EFF’s European Director, representing the public interest at the EU, the UN, Westminster, Ottawa and DC. This is the subject I’ve devoted my life to, and I live my principles. I won’t let my books be sold with DRM, which means that Audible won’t carry my audiobooks. My agent tells me that this decision has cost me enough money to pay off my mortgage and put my kid through college. That’s a price I’m willing to pay if it means that my books aren’t enshittification bait.

But not selling on Audible has another cost, one that’s more important to me: a lot of readers prefer audiobooks and 9 out of 10 of those readers start and end their searches on Audible. When they don’t find an author there, they assume no audiobook exists, period. It got so bad I put up an audiobook on Amazon — me, reading an essay, explaining how Audible rips off writers and readers. It’s called “Why None of My Audiobooks Are For Sale on Audible”:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/25/can-you-hear-me-now/#acx-ripoff

[Image ID: Doctorow has been thinking longer and smarter than anyone else I know about how we create and exchange value in a digital age. -Douglas Rushkoff, author of Present Shock]

To get my audiobooks into readers’ ears, I pre-sell them on Kickstarter. This has been wildly successful, both financially and as a means of getting other prominent authors to break up with Amazon and use crowdfunding to fill the gap. Writers like Brandon Sanderson are doing heroic work, smashing Amazon’s monopoly:

https://www.brandonsanderson.com/guest-editorial-cory-doctorow-is-a-bestselling-author-but-audible-wont-carry-his-audiobooks/

And to be frank, I love audiobooks, too. I swim every day as physio for a chronic pain condition, and I listen to 2–3 books/month on my underwater MP3 player, disappearing into an imaginary world as I scull back and forth in my public pool. I’m able to get those audiobooks on my MP3 player thanks to Libro.fm, a DRM-free store that supports indie booksellers all over the world:

https://blog.libro.fm/a-qa-with-mark-pearson-libro-fm-ceo-and-co-founder/

Producing my own audiobooks has been a dream. Working with Skyboat Media, I’ve gotten narrators like @wilwheaton​, Amber Benson, @neil-gaiman​ and Stefan Rudnicki for my work:

https://craphound.com/shop/

[Image ID: “This book is the instruction manual Big Tech doesn’t want you to read. It deconstructs their crummy products, undemocratic business models, rigged legal regimes, and lies. Crack this book and help build something better. -Astra Taylor, author of Democracy May Not Exist, but We’ll Miss It When Its Gone”]

But for this title, I decided that I would read it myself. After all, I’ve been podcasting since 2006, reading my own work aloud every week or so, even as I traveled the world and gave thousands of speeches about the subject of this book. I was excited (and a little trepedatious) at the prospect, but how could I pass up a chance to work with director Gabrielle de Cuir, who has directed everyone from Anne Hathaway to LeVar Burton to Eric Idle?

Reader, I fucking nailed it. I went back to those daily recordings fully prepared to hate them, but they were good — even great (especially after my engineer John Taylor Williams mastered them). Listen for yourself!

https://archive.org/details/cory_doctorow_internet_con_chapter_01

I hope you’ll consider backing this Kickstarter. If you’ve ever read my free, open access, CC-licensed blog posts and novels, or listened to my podcasts, or come to one of my talks and wished there was a way to say thank you, this is it. These crowdfunders make my DRM-free publishing program viable, even as audiobooks grow more central to a writer’s income and even as a single company takes over nearly the entire audiobook market.

Backers can choose from the DRM-free audiobook, DRM-free ebook (EPUB and MOBI) and a hardcover — including a signed, personalized option, fulfilled through the great LA indie bookstore Book Soup:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/the-internet-con-how-to-seize-the-means-of-computation

What’s more, these ebooks and audiobooks are unlike any you’ll get anywhere else because they are sold without any terms of service or license agreements. As has been the case since time immemorial, when you buy these books, they’re yours, and you are allowed to do anything with them that copyright law permits — give them away, lend them to friends, or simply read them with any technology you choose.

As with my previous Kickstarters, backers can get their audiobooks delivered with an app (from libro.fm) or as a folder of MP3s. That helps people who struggle with “sideloading,” a process that Apple and Google have made progressively harder, even as they force audiobook and ebook sellers to hand over a 30% app tax on every dollar they make:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/red-team-blues-another-audiobook-that-amazon-wont-sell/posts/3788112

Enshittification is rotting every layer of the tech stack: mobile, payments, hosting, social, delivery, playback. Every tech company is pulling the rug out from under us, using the chokepoints they built between audiences and speakers, artists and fans, to pick all of our pockets.

The Internet Con isn’t just a lament for the internet we lost — it’s a plan to get it back. I hope you’ll get a copy and share it with the people you love, even as the tech platforms choke off your communities to pad their quarterly numbers.

Next weekend (Aug 4-6), I'll be in Austin for Armadillocon, a science fiction convention, where I'm the Guest of Honor:

https://armadillocon.org/d45/

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/31/seize-the-means-of-computation/#the-internet-con

[Image ID: My forthcoming book 'The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation' in various editions: Verso hardcover, audiobook displayed on a phone, and ebook displayed on an e-ink reader.]

[najia-cooks]

[ID: A decorative orange ceramic plate with a pyramid of green herbs and sesame seeds, topped with deep red sumac and more sesame seeds. End ID]

زعتر فلسطيني / Za'tar falastinia (Palestinian spice blend)

Za'tar (زَعْتَر; also transliterated "za'atar," "zaatar" and "zatar") is the name of a family of culinary herbs; it is also the name of a group of spice blends made by mixing these herbs with varying amounts of olive oil, sumac, salt, roasted sesame seeds, and other spices. Palestinian versions of za'tar often include caraway, aniseed, and roasted wheat alongside generous portions of sumac and sesame seeds. The resulting blend is bold, zesty, and aromatic, with a hint of floral sourness from the sumac, and notes of licorice and anise.

Za'tar is considered by Palestinians to have particular national, political, and personal importance, and exists as a symbol of both Israeli oppression and Palestinian home-making and resistance. Its major components, olive oil and wild thyme, are targeted by the settler state in large part due to their importance to ecology, identity, and trade in Palestine—settlers burn and raze Palestinian farmers' olive trees by the thousands each year. A 1977 Israeli law forbade the harvesting of wild herbs within its claimed borders, with violators of the law risking fines and confiscation, injury, and even death from shootings or land mines; in 2006, za'tar was further restricted, such that even its possession in the West Bank was met with confiscation and fines.

Despite the blanket ban on harvesting wild herbs (none of which are endangered), Arabs are the only ones to be charged and fined for the crime. Samir Naamnih calls the ban an attempt to "starve us out," given that foraging is a major source of food for many Palestinians, and that picking and selling herbs is often the sole form of income for impoverished families. Meanwhile, Israeli farmers have domesticated and farmed za'tar on expropriated Palestinian land, selling it (both the herb and the spice mixture) back to Palestinians, and later marketing it abroad as an "Israeli" blend; they thus profit from the ban on wild harvesting of the herb. This farming model, as well as the double standard regarding harvesting, refer back to an idea that Arabs are a primitive people unfit to own the land, because they did not cultivate or develop it as the settlers did (i.e., did not attempt to recreate a European landscape or European models of agriculture); colonizing and settling the land are cast as justified, and even righteous.

The importance of the ban on foraging goes beyond the economic. Raya Ziada, founder of an acroecology nonprofit based in Ramallah, noted in 2019 that "taking away access to [wild herbs] doesn't just debilitate our economy and compromise what we eat. It's symbolic." Za'tar serves variously as a symbol of Palestinians' connection to the land and to nature; of Israeli colonial dispossession and theft; of the Palestinian home ("It’s a sign of a Palestinian home that has za’tar in it"); and of resistance to the colonial regime, as many Palestinians have continued to forage herbs such as za'tar and akkoub in the decades since the 1977 ban. Resistance to oppression will continue as long as there is oppression.

Palestine Action has called for bail fund donations to aid in their storming, occupying, shutting down, and dismantling of factories and offices owned by Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems. Also contact your representatives in the USA, UK, and Canada.

Ingredients:

Za'tar (Origanum syriacum), 250g once dried (about 4 cups packed)

250g (1 2/3 cup) sesame seeds

170g (3/4 cup) Levantine sumac berries, or ground sumac (Rhus coriaria)

100g (1/2 cup) wheat berries (optional)

2 Tbsp olive oil

1 Tbsp aniseed (optional)

1/2 Tbsp caraway seeds (optional)

Levantine wild thyme (also known as Bible hyssop, Syrian oregano, and Lebanese oregano) may be purchased dried online. You may also be able to find some dried at a halal grocery store, where it will be labelled "زعتر" (za'tar) and "thym," "thyme," or "oregano." Check to make sure that what you're buying is just the herb and not the prepared mixture, which is also called "زعتر." Also ensure that what you're buying is not a product of Israel.

If you don't have access to Levantine thyme, Greek or Turkish oregano are good substitutes.

Wheat berries are the wheat kernel that is ground to produce flour. They may be available sold as "wheat berries" at a speciality health foods store. They may be omitted, or replaced with pre-ground whole wheat flour.

Instructions:

1. Harvest wild thyme and remove the stems from the leaves. Wash the leaves in a large bowl of water and pat dry; leave in a single layer in the sun for four days or so, until brittle. Skip this step if using pre-dried herbs.

2. Crumble leaves by rubbing them between the palms of your hands until they are very fine. Pass through a sieve or flour sifter into a large bowl, re-crumbling any leaves that are too coarse to get through.

Crumbling between the hands is an older method. You may also use a blender or food processor to grind the leaves.

3. Mix the sifted thyme with a drizzle of olive oil and work it between your hands until incorporated.

4. Briefly toast sumac berries, caraway seeds, and aniseed in a dry skillet over medium heat, then grind them to a fine powder in a mortar and pestle or a spice mill.

5. Toast sesame seeds in a dry skillet over medium heat, stirring constantly, until deeply golden brown.

6. (Optional) In a dry skillet on medium-low, toast wheat berries, stirring constantly, until they are deeply golden brown. Grind to a fine powder in a spice mill. If using ground flour, toast on low, stirring constantly, until browned.

Some people in the Levant bring their wheat to a local mill to be ground after toasting, as it produces a finer and more consistent texture.

7. Mix all ingredients together and work between your hands to incorporate.

Store za'tar in an airtight jar at room temperature. Mix with olive oil and use as a dipping sauce with bread.

[nyaagolor]

Thinking abt Ace Attorney Social media HCs

Phoenix: Technologically illiterate, doesn’t really know what social media is or how to use it and refuses to learn because the longer he keeps up the bit the funnier it gets

Edgeworth: Doesn’t particularly care for social media, but found out about tumblr through Maya and now has an anonymous Steel Samurai account. His tagging system is meticulous and he has all notifications turned off. He treats it like he does office work. He and Maya are mutuals. Doesn’t have a personal account to speak of

Maya: Runs a semi-popular canon url pink princess and steel samurai fan tumblr. Also has a personal Instagram that’s mostly her eating burgers

Pearl: Didn’t have social media for a long time because of Morgan, but Maya introduced her and she has a very inactive private Instagram. She’s also in charge of the Kurain Village socials, which are very neat and professional

Mia: Was technologically illiterate and died before the social media boom was completely inescapable so nada

Diego: Socials weren’t as big before he fell into a coma and afterwards he doesn’t care too much about his image so he has nothing. HOWEVER, Maya started a twitter called “dead philosopher wisdom” that’s just random Diegoisms. He’s doing NUMBERS on there but is unaware of it because he doesn’t use twitter

Franziska: Knows how social media works because she needs it for her job but doesn’t use it very often. Her account has like 2 posts on it and she mostly uses it to keep track of targets and online paper trails

Kay: Runs an instagram account called “Edgeworth where he shouldn’t be” that’s nothing but silly and embarrassing candids of Edgeworth. Oldbag won’t stop messaging her asking who she is and how she’s getting these pictures

Apollo: Has a twitter with two followers that he uses to retweet and comment on legal academia news. He’s super active on all the law forums and legal advice columns and unfortunately has definitely posted on r/AskALawyer on mutliple occasions. His real claim to fame, though, is the anonymous Instagram he runs for his cat Mikeko. It’s called “The Pawsecutor’s Office” and he dresses up Mikeko like all the prosecutors (Miles Edgepurrth, Clawvier Gavin, Franziska Von Catma, etc) for photoshoots and silly skits. It’s wildly popular and Apollo would die if he were revealed to be behind it

Klavier: Super popular across all platforms and loves being silly online. If Edgeworth saw all the thirst traps he was posting he would prolly have a heart attack

Kristoph: Has a very minimal personal account for professional reasons but his REAL online footprint is the dozens of alternate accounts he uses to cyberstalk people and send his brother hate mail

Athena: Perfectly normal social media user. Has personal accounts that she posts to occasionally with cute photos of what she’s doing. The only person using it correctly

Trucy: Insanely popular on socials for her magic act. Knows how to market herself online better than anyone. She has a smaller personal account where she occasionally posts silly things about the WAA

Blackquill: Ran an edgy anime Tumblr for years before his incarceration and was posting on AO3 a lot. He comes back after his release explaining the break between chapters of his latest fanfiction was due to him being put on death row for seven years and continues posting normally with no mention of his prison sentence ever again. When he finally posts another AMV it’s a joyous day indeed

[robertreich]

How Amazon Is Ripping You Off

Shopping on Amazon? Stop! Watch this first.

Amazon is the world’s biggest online retailer. This one single juggernaut of a company is responsible for nearly 40% of all online sales in America. In an FTC lawsuit, they’re accused of using their mammoth size, and consumers’ dependence on them, to artificially jack up prices as high as possible, while prohibiting sellers on Amazon from charging lower prices anywhere else.

They’re accused of using a secret algorithm, codenamed "Project Nessie," to charge customers an estimated extra $1 billion dollars,

If this isn’t an abuse of power that hurts consumers, what is? So much for all of those “prime” deals you thought you were getting.

Project Nessie isn’t the only trick Amazon has been accused of using to exert its hulking dominance over the online retail industry — leading to higher prices for you.

Much of the FTC’s antitrust lawsuit centers around the treatment of independent merchants who sell items on Amazon’s online superstore — accounting for 60 percent of Amazon's sales.

Amazon allegedly uses strongarm tactics that force these sellers to keep their prices higher than they need to be. Like barring them from selling products for significantly less at other stores — or else risk being hidden in Amazon’s search results or having their sales stopped entirely.

And Amazon is accused of engaging in pay-to-play schemes and charging merchants excessive fees that end up costing you even more.

Independent sellers are effectively forced to pay Amazon to advertise their products prominently in search results. If they don’t fork over cash, then their products get buried underneath products of companies who do. This hurts sellers but also harms shoppers who have to parse through less relevant products that may be more expensive or lower quality.

And to be eligible for the coveted “Prime” badge on their items — which is considered crucial for competing on the platform — independent sellers are pushed into paying Amazon for additional services like warehousing and shipping, even if they could get those services cheaper elsewhere. If sellers forgo trying to qualify for Prime, their goods apparently become harder for customers to find.

When all of these extra fees are added up, Amazon takes around a 50 percent cut of each sale made by a third party. It’s projected that Amazon will earn around $125 billion from collecting fees in the U.S. in 2023, most of which get passed on to you.

By charging all of these extra fees and stifling independent companies from selling their products for less elsewhere, Amazon is using its dominance to essentially set prices for all consumers across the internet.

And when you combine Amazon’s control of ecommerce with all of the other industries it has entered by gobbling up companies — such as Whole Foods, One Medical, and MGM — you’re left with a behemoth that simply has too much power.

This is all part of a much larger problem of growing corporate dominance in America. In over 75% of U.S. industries, fewer companies now control more of their markets than they did twenty years ago.

The lack of competition and consumer choice has resulted in all of us paying more for goods because corporations like Amazon can raise their prices with impunity. By one estimate, corporate concentration has cost the typical American household $5,000 a year more than they would have spent if markets were truly competitive.

This power isn’t just being used to siphon more money from you. A giant corporation has the power to bust unions, keep workers’ wages low, and funnel money into our political system.

It’s a vicious cycle, making giant corporations more and more powerful.

But under the Biden administration, the government is making a strong effort to revive antitrust law and use its power to reign in big corporations that have grown too powerful.

We must stop the monopolization of America. This FTC lawsuit against Amazon is a great start.

[eaglesnick]

“Even today we don’t pay serious attention to the issue of poverty, because the powerful remain relatively untouched by it. Most people distance themselves from the issue by saying that if the poor worked harder, they wouldn’t be poor.”

— Muhammad Yunus

Never was the expression “same old, same old" more appropriate than when it comes to government statements and attitude towards welfare payments.

Below is a series of statements by various Conservative Chancellors since 2010.

“Work or lose your benefits: Iain Duncan Smith heralds biggest shake-up of welfare state since the war." (Mail Online 28/05/10)

“Hammond calls for fresh welfare cuts to protect military spending." (The Herald: 03/03/13)

“The benefit system is broken. I  think people in this country understand that the welfare system needs to change."  (George Osborne 02/04/2013

“DWP’s own statics show that nearly 90 people died every month between December 2011 and February 2014 after their ESA benefit stopped because a work capability assessment found them able to work." (Independent: 23/11/16)

“Sajid Javid insists Universal Credit cut will go ahead amid warnings of ‘catastrophic’ consequences" (Canary:12/09/21)

“Jeremy Hunt has been accused of "demonising" disabled people after announcing sweeping welfare changes that will strip them of benefits if they don't look for a job.”  (Sky News: 22/11/23)

“Tories pledge to cut rising welfare bills." (Rishi Sunak LBC News: 08/06/24)

Every Tory Chancellor has cut welfare payments. It is what we expect from uncaring Conservative governments whose priorities are always  cutting government spending.

No Tory government seems to be concerned about the causes of a rising welfare bill – junk food leading to ill health, decades of low wages, a rigged housing market leading to unaffordable rents and a lack of social housing, starving the NHS of sufficient funding, a total lack of planning regarding social care of the elderly. I could go on.

The one connecting theme is those on welfare are seen as unworthy of even the little help they are given. Time and time again, it is the poorest and least healthy in our society who are told they must make sacrifices to save the country money because it is their fault they are poor or sick.

Strangely it is never the rich and wealthy who are asked to contribute more. They can go on enjoying paying a lower tax rate for their unearned income than the ordinary men and women who have to work for a living; and while the British government provides £23billion to corporations and big business over the next three years, the poorest in our society  must take a cut in their benefits. In short, the poor and the sick are subsidizing big business.

This is what we expect from the Tories and comes as no surprise. What is disheartening is that this is now the policy of the Starmer Labour government.

“Keir Starmer defends planned welfare cuts …Prime minister wants to reform disability benefit payments to help fund greater spending on defence." (Financial Time: 10/03/25)

Really?  The poor and the sick are to pay for the defence of the rich and wealthy? It's a novel idea but how about the rich and the wealthy paying some of the necessary increase in defence spending? Perhaps an end to their tax breaks? Perhaps an end to their tax avoidance schemes? Perhaps a tax on their wealth? Maybe British business could be charged a defence levy?

But no, that just isn’t going to happen. Starmer is a Blairite and Blaire is a supporter of the old neo-liberal economic order. The disillusionment with neo-liberal free market economics and its failure to boost the living standards of ordinary Americans has led to the rise of the populist hard-right Donald Trump. The same thing is going to happen here and Starmer and the Conservative party will only have themselves to blame.

[covid-safer-hotties]

also preserved on our archive

By Jessica Rendall

In addition to Pfizer and Moderna's new formulas, Novavax's protein-based shot is an option for COVID vaccination this season.

We're on the cusp of the fall season, which means respiratory viruses like flu, RSV and COVID are expected to keep spreading as weather cools and more people gather indoors.

Luckily, we've got vaccines in stock to help prevent respiratory viruses from turning into severe illnesses {NADI'S NOTE: Vaccination only minimizes the risk of long covid by a maximum of 30% in some people. The best protection still remains distancing when you can and masking when you cannot}. In addition to flu vaccines for the general public and RSV vaccines for older adults and pregnant people, new COVID vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Novavax are available this season to reduce the risk of hospitalization.

This means adults have a choice in which COVID vaccine they receive: an mRNA vaccine by Moderna or Pfizer, or Novavax, a protein-based vaccine that targets the virus in a more "traditional" way. All three have been authorized by the US Food and Drug Administration. While Moderna and Pfizer have been widely used over the last few years, the Novavax vaccine is building up a bit of a following.

Novavax, a protein-based vaccine, is an option for those who don't want or can't take an mRNA vaccine. Novavax may also be appealing to those wanting to experiment with the "mix-and-match" approach to COVID boosters as a way to potentially strengthen the immune response.

"Even though mRNA vaccines dominate the market for COVID vaccines, it remains important to have multiple different types of technologies against various pathogens because each may have specific use cases," Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease expert and senior scholar with Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said in an email.

Here's everything we know about Novavax this year. Also, read more about the at-home flu vaccine that will be available next year and how you can order more free COVID tests online.

How is Novavax different from Pfizer and Moderna? Novavax is a protein-based vaccine, which people have associated with a "traditional" approach to vaccination. This is compared with mRNA technology, which does not use dead or weakened virus as an ingredient in the vaccine but instead uses genetic code to instruct the recipient's immune system to respond.

However, Adalja said that calling Novavax traditional may be a "misnomer" because it brings its own innovation to the table. Novavax uses an insect virus that has been genetically engineered to express spike proteins, Adalja explained, which are then incorporated into the vaccine.

"The vaccine itself is coupled with an immune system booster, called an adjuvant, which increases its immunity," he said, referencing a component existing vaccines have also incorporated.

This year, there are also slight differences between Novavax and Pfizer and Moderna's updated vaccines. Both mRNA vaccines have been tweaked to target the KP.2 strain of COVID-19, which is a slightly more recent version of the virus than what Novavax targets, which is KP.2's "parent" JN.1. While the FDA ultimately decided KP.2 was preferred in vaccines, all of them are expected to help protect against severe disease and death.

However, no COVID vaccines this season will be covered free of charge by the US government. While most people's insurance is expected to continue footing the bill, adults without private or public health insurance will be responsible for payment. The Bridge Access Program was expected to provide COVID vaccines for free to people without health insurance through this year, though it ended early in August due to lack of funding.

According to GoodRx, which has a coupon available for Novavax, the retail price of the protein-based vaccine is about $191.

Who should get Novavax? Does Novavax have different side effects? Novavax was authorized by the FDA for use in adults and children 12 and older, so younger kids can't get this vaccine. But for most adults, which COVID vaccine you should choose depends on your preference and what your neighborhood pharmacy has in stock.

People may opt for Novavax for different reasons, though. For people who do not want to take an mRNA vaccine, having a protein-based vaccine like Novavax available means they can still be vaccinated for the fall and winter season.

Other people may be interested in Novavax for its use in the "mix-and-match" approach to boosting, which in the past has been associated with a strong immune response.

There is some early research that suggests Novavax may have fewer short-term side effects, such as muscle fatigue and nausea, but "we can't say this for sure," Joshua Murdock, a pharmacist and pharmacy editor of GoodRx, said in an email.

"This isn't proven, and side effects do vary by person," Murdock said. He added the CDC doesn't recommend one vaccine over the other, even in people who are immunocompromised.

In general, mRNA vaccines have been found to be fairly "reactogenic" compared to other vaccines, Adalja said, noting that it also depends on the individual. But if someone had a bad experience with the mRNA vaccine, Adalja said, they "may fare better with the Novavax vaccine."

Some flu-like side effects can be expected post-vaccine, no matter which one you choose. This includes symptoms like headache, tiredness, a sore arm and even chills. Not experiencing symptoms doesn't mean your immune system isn't kicking in, but experiencing some side effects may signal that your immune system is responding to the jolt, so to speak.

In rare cases, myocarditis or heart inflammation problems have been associated with COVID vaccination, particularly in younger men and adolescents within the two weeks following vaccination. Research so far shows that Novavax, like mRNA vaccines, may also carry this rare side effect though.

Following high levels of COVID this summer in the US, more information will be needed to see how all vaccines and their freshly targeted formulas fare against the virus that's expected to continue to spread this fall and winter.

"There's no strong evidence that one vaccine is preferable to another in specific individuals, but that will be an important avenue to study for more precision-guided vaccine recommendations," Adalja said.

How to find a Novavax vaccine Novavax announced on Sept. 13 that doses of its vaccine will be available at the following pharmacies:

CVS Rite Aid Walgreens Costco Publix Sam's Club Kroger Meijer Other independent pharmacies or grocers Novavax also has a vaccine finder on its website. To use it, type in your ZIP code in the small search box, and pharmacies nearby with the vaccine in stock will be displayed.

[maxdealways]

Maxdealways.com reviews deposit process 

Deposit Process at Maxdealways.com: Fast and Transparent

For the broker "maxdealways.com review", the deposit process is efficient and user-friendly. The deposit time is typically from a few seconds up to 10 minutes, meaning that your funds should be available to trade almost immediately. The good news is that there are no deposit fees, as the platform charges 0% commission on deposits. This is a strong positive point, as it shows that the broker doesn’t add any hidden costs for transferring funds into your account.

But wait—how does this compare to other brokers? In this industry, where costs can add up quickly, having no deposit fees is definitely a plus. It enhances the overall experience and trustworthiness, making it easier for traders to move their money in and out of the system without worrying about extra charges. For those who value speed and cost-effectiveness, this setup is very appealing.

Thus, we can say that this broker is quite reliable in terms of deposit handling, offering a quick and seamless process with no hidden costs. It’s a clear sign of transparency and good service—something we can trust.

Max Deal Ways: A Broker with a Strong Foundation

Let’s start with the establishment date and the domain purchase. The domain for Maxdealways.com reviews was registered in 2021, which is crucial for proving its credibility. It’s always a good sign when the domain purchase date aligns closely with the brand's creation. In fact, the domain was bought just before the brand’s launch, suggesting a well-planned and strategic approach to the broker's operations.

This brings up an important point—does the timing of domain registration matter? Absolutely. When a broker registers a domain before launching its services, it shows serious intent and professionalism. It indicates that they are committed to a legitimate online presence and are not just testing the waters.

We can conclude that the domain registration timing makes this broker seem much more trustworthy. The fact that the domain and brand were created at almost the same time signals a stable, organized business model. This is an essential factor for anyone looking for a reliable broker.

Trading Hours for Maxdealways.com reviews

Maxdealways.com review operates with a clear and defined trading schedule, which is an essential feature for traders who need to plan their activities carefully. The trading times are based on the winter session and differ by region. For example, the trading hours in Australia are from 8 PM to 5 AM, and in Tokyo, they range from 7 PM to 4 AM.

Now, why is this important? Trading hours are crucial because they define when the markets are most active. For traders in these regions, knowing that the broker's platform operates during key market hours gives them an edge in making informed decisions. The timing is especially beneficial for those trading in major markets like Australia and Japan, where economic events can impact trading behavior.

Thus, having clearly defined trading hours that cover the crucial time zones is an advantage for Maxdealways.com reviews. It shows that they cater to global traders and provide opportunities during peak trading periods, making the platform reliable and user-friendly.

Reviews and Reputation for Maxdealways.com

When we look at the reputation of Maxdealways.com review, it's clear that the broker is well-regarded by its users. The broker has an impressive score of 4.4 on Trustpilot, which is based on nearly 3,000 reviews. This score is particularly important because it demonstrates that a large number of users have had positive experiences with the platform.

But what does this score really tell us? A high rating on Trustpilot is a clear indication that the broker is trusted by a significant portion of its users. In an industry where trust and reliability are everything, this is a powerful factor. Additionally, a high number of reviews means that the rating isn't just from a few select users, but from a broad base of customers who have had varied experiences. This is especially important because it adds weight to the credibility of the reviews.

Final Thoughts on Maxdealways.com review

After reviewing the key aspects of Maxdealways.com reviews, it’s clear that this broker offers a solid and trustworthy platform for traders. From its strategic domain registration, which aligns perfectly with the brand's establishment, to its impressive 4.4 Trustpilot score, Maxdealways.com review shows a strong commitment to transparency and reliability. The lack of deposit fees and quick transaction times only enhance its appeal, offering traders an efficient and cost-effective trading environment.

Moreover, its defined trading hours cater to global markets, particularly the crucial time zones of Australia and Tokyo, which is a major advantage for international traders. When combined with a strong reputation and user trust, it's easy to see why Maxdealways.com reviews is a broker that deserves attention.

Overall, if you're looking for a broker that checks all the boxes—trustworthiness, transparency, and a user-friendly experience—Maxdealways.com review seems like a solid choice to consider.

[treasuremoon25]

The Curious Case of 'Ninjaboys: Quest for the Cosmic Front'

Note: I’m not an industry insider. Some of the information is purely speculative and may not be fully accurate to what goes on behind closed doors, since specific licensing and distribution information isn't made public.

On February 11, 2016, a collaboration spin-off series between Nintama Rantaro and Cosmic Front NEXT, entitled Nintama Rantaro no Uchuu Daibouken with Cosmic Front NEXT (忍たま乱太郎の宇宙大冒険 with コズミックフロント☆NEXT, "Nintama Rantaro's Great Space Adventure with Cosmic Front NEXT"), premiered on NHK General TV in Japan with the episode, “Taiyoukei no Otomodachi no Dan” (太陽系のお友だちの段, “The ‘Friends in the Solar System’ Stage”). New episodes air sporadically with the latest one, "Hayabusa 2 Shouwakusei de Mission! No Dan" (はやぶさ2 小惑星でミッション！の段, "The 'Hayabusa 2 Asteroid Mission!' Stage), on NHK Educational TV on March 18, 2020. The series consists of self-contained episodes centered around the main characters of Nintama (Rantaro, Kirimaru, and Shinbei) learning about space through strange and colorful characters, such as the Moon Rabbit. 

Nintama Rantaro is a kids and family ninja comedy anime that has aired on NHK since April 1993. Based on the Rakudai Ninja Rantaro manga by Soubei Amako, it's about an ensemble cast of ninjas at the Ninjutsu Academy. Rantaro, the bespectacled protagonist and audience surrogate, is a 10-year-old boy who attends the school to become an elite ninja like his parents. He is mainly joined by money-hungry Kirimaru and gluttonous Shinbei in misadventures around the school and occasional outside missions. 

Cosmic Front NEXT is a scientific series dealing with the topics of space, astronomy, debunking myths, and answering questions related to the galaxy. Running on NHK from 2015 to 2020, it's a revamp of Cosmic Front ~Hakken! Kyoui no Daiuchuu! (コズミック　フロント～発見！驚異の大宇宙, "Cosmic Front ~Discover the Amazing Universe!") which ran from 2011 to 2014.

On July 17, 2017, Anime News Network reported that William Winckler Productions had recorded 2 English-dubbed pilot episodes of the spin-off, under the new title, Ninjaboys: Quest for the Cosmic Front. “Ninjaboys” comes from the regular series’ official English title, Ninjaboy Rantaro. WOWMAX Next was in charge of marketing and distributing the pilots to potential distribution platforms for release. The English dub cast consists of Elyse Bertani as Rantaro, Kelsey Kummerl as Shinbei, Kory Getman as Kirimaru, Frank Garish as Yamada, and Paul Stanko as Doi and the Moon Rabbit. 

On July 29 that same year, Old Clapperboard Productions uploaded a behind-the-scenes video on YouTube, offering a glimpse into William Winckler’s role in the ADR dubbing process. The video showcases his guidance of the voice actors’ performances, along with a brief look at the dub script. Viewers are treated to hearing the English voices of the characters– a rare opportunity, considering that Nintama has yet to receive an official release in the Anglosphere. As of 2025, this video remains the only available footage of the dub online. 

Was Quest for the Cosmic Front ever licensed? Yes…but not in the way you might expect. While most anime is licensed by major media companies like Crunchyroll, Netflix, Viz Media, and Discotek Media, it remains unclear if the pilots were ever solicited to these outlets. Based on the international publicity surrounding film festivals and science-focused distribution (e.g. planetariums), it’s highly likely that NHK and WOWMAX Next prioritized Quest for the Cosmic Front as an educational series rather than a commercial one. It was likely intended for a very specific market–festivals, schools, museums, and planetariums–where educational content takes precedence over entertainment. This aligns with how it’s marketed in Japan and NHK’s broader mission to promote educational programming and cultural preservation. 

K2 Studios acquired non-exclusive territory/rights restrictions to Quest for the Cosmic Front, meaning they could distribute the series under specific conditions but were not the sole distributor and were limited to certain regions or platforms. The studio specializes in producing and distributing science-focused content to specialty venues worldwide (e.g. fulldome), which could explain why they pursued the series. While there’s no confirmation online, it’s possible that the dubbed episodes were released in regions with large Japanese populations, such as Southern California and Hawaii. These areas have historically received niche Japanese content that doesn’t see a wide release elsewhere, or at least not for a long time (e.g. KIKU TV’s subtitled broadcasts of Crayon Shin-chan and the 1985 GeGeGe no Kitaro series). It appears the studio no longer holds the rights, as the series is no longer listed in their updated catalog.

It’s unfortunate that the English dub of Quest for the Cosmic Front has not received a wide release. If it had been released on platforms like NHK World or Netflix, it could have marked Nintama’s official English debut in the West. However, considering that these were just pilots–many of which never go beyond that stage–it's clear that they were likely intended for educational distribution rather than a large-scale rollout of the Nintama series. All we can do at this point is hope that NHK will consider expanding the series to Western markets in the future, whether with select episodes from the regular TV series or another entry. Who knows, they may already be planning it.

[cowbot-lumberjane]

The Switch 2 is going to suck because nintendo sucks. Its an upgrade in hardware that theyre going to use to split their already unified and extremely expensive market with because not everyone will be able to afford or even want a switch 2 over the one they already have. A Switch 2 lite is inevitable, so is a switch 2 OLED if it doesnt already have an OLED screen, but an asking price of 400-450 is fucking STEEP for something thats going to replace the thing they made their entire brand. They killed off any chance of another DS family system, and now its just gonna be switches forever. The switch 2 is gonna suck because its just the switch again, but now you have to pay almost 500$ to play anything new. Its going to have the same eshop full of dogshit AI generated hentai games, the same 3rd party support that has to downgrade games to put them on there (of which 10% will be done competently), and its gonna have the same overpriced online model with features gradually stripped away and paywalled behind the more expensive premium tier.

What WILL be new is an all new switch tax! Nintendo for sure is most likely to follow suit with the "new industry standard" of charging 70$ for games, prices which will never go down. And on top of that 3rd party devs and publishers are STILL going to charge 5-10$ more per game for switch versions. This console is fucking nothing. It wishes it had half the staying power the wii and the 3DS had. It does nothing new except expenses. Nintendo has finally joined the console race against themselves and have chosen to just go the way of every other "triple A" console manufacturer and do the same thing with some new guff inside.

Trash.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Microsoft pinky swears that THIS TIME they’ll make security a priority

One June 20, I'm live onstage in LOS ANGELES for a recording of the GO FACT YOURSELF podcast. On June 21, I'm doing an ONLINE READING for the LOCUS AWARDS at 16hPT. On June 22, I'll be in OAKLAND, CA for a panel and a keynote at the LOCUS AWARDS.

As the old saying goes, "When someone tells you who they are and you get fooled again, shame on you." That goes double for Microsoft, especially when it comes to security promises.

Microsoft is, was, always has been, and always will be a rotten company. At every turn, throughout their history, they have learned the wrong lessons, over and over again.

That starts from the very earliest days, when the company was still called "Micro-Soft." Young Bill Gates was given a sweetheart deal to supply the operating system for IBM's PC, thanks to his mother's connection. The nepo-baby enlisted his pal, Paul Allen (whom he'd later rip off for billions) and together, they bought someone else's OS (and took credit for creating it – AKA, the "Musk gambit").

Microsoft then proceeded to make a fortune by monopolizing the OS market through illegal, collusive arrangements with the PC clone industry – an industry that only existed because they could source third-party PC ROMs from Phoenix:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/08/ibm-pc-compatible-how-adversarial-interoperability-saved-pcs-monopolization

Bill Gates didn't become one of the richest people on earth simply by emerging from a lucky orifice; he also owed his success to vigorous antitrust enforcement. The IBM PC was the company's first major initiative after it was targeted by the DOJ for a 12-year antitrust enforcement action. IBM tapped its vast monopoly profits to fight the DOJ, spending more on outside counsel to fight the DOJ antitrust division than the DOJ spent on all its antitrust lawyers, every year, for 12 years.

IBM's delaying tactic paid off. When Reagan took the White House, he let IBM off the hook. But the company was still seriously scarred by its ordeal, and when the PC project kicked off, the company kept the OS separate from the hardware (one of the DOJ's major issues with IBM's previous behavior was its vertical monopoly on hardware and software). IBM didn't hire Gates and Allen to provide it with DOS because it was incapable of writing a PC operating system: they did it to keep the DOJ from kicking down their door again.

The post-antitrust, gunshy IBM kept delivering dividends for Microsoft. When IBM turned a blind eye to the cloned PC-ROM and allowed companies like Compaq, Dell and Gateway to compete directly with Big Blue, this produced a whole cohort of customers for Microsoft – customers Microsoft could play off on each other, ensuring that every PC sold generated income for Microsoft, creating a wide moat around the OS business that kept other OS vendors out of the market. Why invest in making an OS when every hardware company already had an exclusive arrangement with Microsoft?

The IBM PC story teaches us two things: stronger antitrust enforcement spurs innovation and opens markets for scrappy startups to grow to big, important firms; as do weaker IP protections.

Microsoft learned the opposite: monopolies are wildly profitable; expansive IP protects monopolies; you can violate antitrust laws so long as you have enough monopoly profits rolling in to outspend the government until a Republican bootlicker takes the White House (Microsoft's antitrust ordeal ended after GW Bush stole the 2000 election and dropped the charges against them). Microsoft embodies the idea that you either die a rebel hero or live long enough to become the evil emperor you dethroned.

From the first, Microsoft has pursued three goals:

Get too big to fail;

Get too big to jail;

Get too big to care.

It has succeeded on all three counts. Much of Microsoft's enduring power comes from succeeded IBM as the company that mediocre IT managers can safely buy from without being blamed for the poor quality of Microsoft's products: "Nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft" is 2024's answer to "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM."

Microsoft's secret sauce is impunity. The PC companies that bundle Windows with their hardware are held blameless for the glaring defects in Windows. The IT managers who buy company-wide Windows licenses are likewise insulated from the rage of the workers who have to use Windows and other Microsoft products.

Microsoft doesn't have to care if you hate it because, for the most part, it's not selling to you. It's selling to a few decision-makers who can be wined and dined and flattered. And since we all have to use its products, developers have to target its platform if they want to sell us their software.

This rarified position has afforded Microsoft enormous freedom to roll out harebrained "features" that made things briefly attractive for some group of developers it was hoping to tempt into its sticky-trap. Remember when it put a Turing-complete scripting environment into Microsoft Office and unleashed a plague of macro viruses that wiped out years worth of work for entire businesses?

https://web.archive.org/web/20060325224147/http://www3.ca.com/securityadvisor/newsinfo/collateral.aspx?cid=33338

It wasn't just Office; Microsoft's operating systems have harbored festering swamps of godawful defects that were weaponized by trolls, script kiddies, and nation-states:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EternalBlue

Microsoft blamed everyone except themselves for these defects, claiming that their poor code quality was no worse than others, insisting that the bulging arsenal of Windows-specific malware was the result of being the juiciest target and thus the subject of the most malicious attention.

Even if you take them at their word here, that's still no excuse. Microsoft didn't slip and accidentally become an operating system monopolist. They relentlessly, deliberately, illegally pursued the goal of extinguishing every OS except their own. It's completely foreseeable that this dominance would make their products the subject of continuous attacks.

There's an implicit bargain that every monopolist makes: allow me to dominate my market and I will be a benevolent dictator who spends his windfall profits on maintaining product quality and security. Indeed, if we permit "wasteful competition" to erode the margins of operating system vendors, who will have a surplus sufficient to meet the security investment demands of the digital world?

But monopolists always violate this bargain. When faced with the decision to either invest in quality and security, or hand billions of dollars to their shareholders, they'll always take the latter. Why wouldn't they? Once they have a monopoly, they don't have to worry about losing customers to a competitor, so why invest in customer satisfaction? That's how Google can piss away $80b on a stock buyback and fire 12,000 technical employees at the same time as its flagship search product (with a 90% market-share) is turning into an unusable pile of shit:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

Microsoft reneged on this bargain from day one, and they never stopped. When the company moved Office to the cloud, it added an "analytics" suite that lets bosses spy on and stack-rank their employees ("Sorry, fella, Office365 says you're the slowest typist in the company, so you're fired"). Microsoft will also sell you internal data on the Office365 usage of your industry competitors (they'll sell your data to your competitors, too, natch). But most of all, Microsoft harvest, analyzes and sells this data for its own purposes:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/25/the-peoples-amazon/#clippys-revenge

Leave aside how creepy, gross and exploitative this is – it's also incredibly reckless. Microsoft is creating a two-way conduit into the majority of the world's businesses that insider threats, security services and hackers can exploit to spy on and wreck Microsoft's customers' business. You don't get more "too big to care" than this.

Or at least, not until now. Microsoft recently announced a product called "Recall" that would record every keystroke, click and screen element, nominally in the name of helping you figure out what you've done and either do it again, or go back and fix it. The problem here is that anyone who gains access to your system – your boss, a spy, a cop, a Microsoft insider, a stalker, an abusive partner or a hacker – now has access to everything, on a platter. Naturally, this system – which Microsoft billed as ultra-secure – was wildly insecure and after a series of blockbuster exploits, the company was forced to hit pause on the rollout:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/06/microsoft-delays-data-scraping-recall-feature-again-commits-to-public-beta-test/

For years, Microsoft waged a war on the single most important security practice in software development: transparency. This is the company that branded the GPL Free Software license a "virus" and called open source "a cancer." The company argued that allowing public scrutiny of code would be a disaster because bad guys would spot and weaponize defects.

This is "security through obscurity" and it's an idea that was discredited nearly 500 years ago with the advent of the scientific method. The crux of that method: we are so good at bullshiting ourselves into thinking that our experiment was successful that the only way to make sure we know anything is to tell our enemies what we think we've proved so they can try to tear us down.

Or, as Bruce Schneier puts it: "Anyone can design a security system that you yourself can't think of a way of breaking. That doesn't mean it works, it just means that it works against people stupider than you."

And yet, Microsoft – whose made more widely and consequentially exploited software than anyone else in the history of the human race – claimed that free and open code was insecure, and spent millions on deceptive PR campaigns intended to discredit the scientific method in favor of a kind of software alchemy, in which every coder toils in secret, assuring themselves that drinking mercury is the secret to eternal life.

Access to source code isn't sufficient to make software secure – nothing about access to code guarantees that anyone will review that code and repair its defects. Indeed, there've been some high profile examples of "supply chain attacks" in the free/open source software world:

https://www.securityweek.com/supply-chain-attack-major-linux-distributions-impacted-by-xz-utils-backdoor/

But there's no good argument that this code would have been more secure if it had been harder for the good guys to spot its bugs. When it comes to secure code, transparency is an essential, but it's not a sufficency.

The architects of that campaign are genuinely awful people, and yet they're revered as heroes by Microsoft's current leadership. There's Steve "Linux Is Cancer" Ballmer, star of Propublica's IRS Files, where he is shown to be the king of "tax loss harvesting":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/24/tax-loss-harvesting/#mego

And also the most prominent example of the disgusting tax cheats practiced by rich sports-team owners:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/08/tuyul-apps/#economic-substance-doctrine

Microsoft may give lip service to open source these days (mostly through buying, stripmining and enclosing Github) but Ballmer's legacy lives on within the company, through its wildly illegal tax-evasion tactics:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/13/pour-encoragez-les-autres/#micros-tilde-one

But Ballmer is an angel compared to his boss, Bill Gates, last seen some paragraphs above, stealing the credit for MS DOS from Tim Paterson and billions of dollars from his co-founder Paul Allen. Gates is an odious creep who made billions through corrupt tech industry practices, then used them to wield influence over the world's politics and policy. The Gates Foundation (and Gates personally) invented vaccine apartheid, helped kill access to AIDS vaccines in Sub-Saharan Africa, then repeated the trick to keep covid vaccines out of reach of the Global South:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/13/public-interest-pharma/#gates-foundation

The Gates Foundation wants us to think of it as malaria-fighting heroes, but they're also the leaders of the war against public education, and have been key to the replacement of public schools with charter schools, where the poorest kids in America serve as experimental subjects for the failed pet theories of billionaire dilettantes:

https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/millionaire-driven-education-reform-has-failed-heres-what-works

(On a personal level, Gates is also a serial sexual abuser who harassed multiple subordinates into having sexual affairs with him:)

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/13/technology/microsoft-sexual-harassment-policy-review.html

The management culture of Microsoft started rotten and never improved. It's a company with corruption and monopoly in its blood, a firm that would always rather build market power to insulate itself from the consequences of making defective products than actually make good products. This is true of every division, from cloud computing:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/28/other-peoples-computers/#clouded-over

To gaming:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/27/convicted-monopolist/#microsquish

No one should ever trust Microsoft to do anything that benefits anyone except Microsoft. One of the low points in the otherwise wonderful surge of tech worker labor organizing was when the Communications Workers of America endorsed Microsoft's acquisition of Activision because Microsoft promised not to union-bust Activision employees. They lied:

https://80.lv/articles/qa-workers-contracted-by-microsoft-say-they-were-fired-for-trying-to-unionize/

Repeatedly:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/activision-fired-staff-using-strong-language-about-remote-work-policy-union-2023-03-01/

Why wouldn't they lie? They've never faced any consequences for lying in the past. Remember: the secret to Microsoft's billions is impunity.

Which brings me to Solarwinds. Solarwinds is an enterprise management tool that allows IT managers to see, patch and control the computers they oversee. Foreign spies hacked Solarwinds and accessed a variety of US federal agencies, including National Nuclear Security Administration (who oversee nuclear weapons stockpiles), the NIH, and the Treasury Department.

When the Solarwinds story broke, Microsoft strenuously denied that the Solarwinds hack relied on exploiting defects in Microsoft software. They said this to everyone: the press, the Pentagon, and Congress.

This was a lie. As Renee Dudley and Doris Burke reported for Propublica, the Solarwinds attack relied on defects in the SAML authentication system that Microsoft's own senior security staff had identified and repeatedly warned management about. Microsoft's leadership ignored these warnings, buried the research, prohibited anyone from warning Microsoft customers, and sidelined Andrew Harris, the researcher who discovered the defect:

https://www.propublica.org/article/microsoft-solarwinds-golden-saml-data-breach-russian-hackers

The single most consequential cyberattack on the US government was only possible because Microsoft decided not to fix a profound and dangerous bug in its code, and declined to warn anyone who relied on this defective software.

Yesterday, Microsoft president Brad Smith testified about this to Congress, and promised that the company would henceforth prioritize security over gimmicks like AI:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/06/microsoft-in-damage-control-mode-says-it-will-prioritize-security-over-ai/

Despite all the reasons to mistrust this promise, the company is hoping Congress will believe it. More importantly, it's hoping that the Pentagon will believe it, because the Pentagon is about to award billions in free no-bid military contract profits to Microsoft:

https://www.axios.com/2024/05/17/pentagon-weighs-microsoft-licensing-upgrades

You know what? I bet they'll sell this lie. It won't be the first time they've convinced Serious People in charge of billions of dollars and/or lives to ignore that all-important maxim, "When someone tells you who they are and you get fooled again, shame on you."

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/14/patch-tuesday/#fool-me-twice-we-dont-get-fooled-again

[thesims3help]

Masterlist - Gameplay enhancing mods pt 2. [100+ Sims 3 mods!]

Part 1 || This is everything that didn't fit in part 1.

Celebrity:

Testers Wanted: Harder Celebrity Difficulty & More (Late Night)

Food/Cooking/Eating/Drinking:

Cooking and Ingredients Overhaul + More Nectar Ingredients

Let them eat cake! - Non-Birthday Birthday Cakes

Toddler Food Bowl

Quicker Cooking & Eating OverRide

Breakfast At Twinsimming's (Update 7/8/23) - No Cooking Overhaul Version

Baby Food Default Replacement

Pasteurize Milk Mod (Update 7/18/23) - Tunable Hunger Motive Delta

Buy Takeout And Order Food At Restaurants

Nectar Combinatorics

No More Acrobatics! - bartending animations tweaks

Better Bartending!

Eat & Put Away Your Leftovers

Coffee Ingredients Made Choosable

Gain Cooking Skill Faster At Work!

Winter Holiday Cookies

Quicker Cooking & Eating OverRide

Pets:

Pets Don't Eat Plants

Bathe Animals Correctly

[Pets] Improved Beloved Pet, and other Animal-Related Traits - 1.63 - 1.67 by Nona Mena (simlogical.com)

[Pets] Improved Relationship Gain with Pets by Nona Mena (simlogical.com)

New Pet Genetics - No More Skinny Clones

Minor Pets Won't Run Away

Dogs collecting shinies fills Destruction motive

Cats stalking for crawlies fills Scratch motive

University:

Lost & Found: Honors Scholarship (Plus Other Aptitude Test Tweaks)

Write Scholarships for Money

New Scholarships (Update 10/26/23) - Talent Scholarships & No Store Version

Attend University Online (Update 10/26/23) - Wish Fix

University Life Visual Fixes (Send Insulting Text, Texting Idle, Heat of the Moment Kiss)

Studying Tweaks

Jobs/skills:

Check For Work In Rabbitholes

Observatory Assistant -- Part-Time Astronomy Job

Flower Arranging - Interaction and Skill

Knitting for TS3 - Interaction and Skill

Writing, Painting, Gardening, Tinkering More Fun

Study Skills Online V37

Yoga Mod (Update 3/1/23) - New Features!

Scribbling Pad + Buzzler's Scribbling Pad - Fixed

TS2 > TS3 Functional Sewing table [BETA V2.0.0]

Programming Skill

Investment Mod (Update 9/3/23) - MultiTab Compatible

Lost&Found: Stock Market

Sim State - The Sims 3 Open For Business Mini Expansion v1.4

Layoff Mod

Ultimate Careers (Version 4.3)

Objects:

Functional Washboard - Sims 4 Conversion

Harvestable Tree Default Replacement

Same Energy Gain For Every Bed

Super Hampers -- Automatic Laundry Pick Up (Plus Bigger Hampers) by Nona Mena (simlogical.com)

Spring Harvest And CookBook

Harvestable Flowers

Better Hoverboards

Canning Station Overhaul

Build/Buy:

One More Slot Please! (with vertical shifting)

[TS3] Catalog Search Mod | Patreon

Add Any Lot Size

TS3 HD Textures Series - Terrain Pack [UPDATE: Fixed road tiling]

No more ugly snowprints

Builder Stuff

Reworked & Improved EA Lights

More Light Coming Through Windows

Other:

Write Thank You Notes Fix

Futuristic Transportation Charge

Advice Social Interactions

Have Sim Arrested Mod

No (or fewer) automatic memories (with custom tool to make your own mod) Edited 01/16/2014

nraas - OnceRead

nraas - Woohooer

Retuned Attraction System

More Traits for All Ages

Lot Population Mod

No Social Groups

Random Sim Fixes 2.0

SetHour Cheat

Let Me Take a Selfie (Update 9/3/23) - Pets Fix

Sunscreen

Burglars Steal Simoleons Too

Tooth Fairy Mod

Dirty Laundry Mod (Update 8/8/23) - Maid & Butler Tweaks

Acne Mod (Update 7/22/23) - Version 2.2

Enhanced Hospitals(Updated 30/1/23)

More Senarios Upon Moving

The Journal Mod

[Public Beta] The Randomizer Mod - REWORKED!

Moar Interactions

DouglasVeiga's Dancer Service

Aging Manager

No Car Relationships

Lightning Enhanced Mod (Lightning in the Sky and Strikes)

Realistically Slower Cars, Taxis, and Bikes

Take Sims To Court - Sue Sims, Become a Lawyer, Have Court Weddings and More!

Social Clubs Mod (+ banking) - Grow Memberships, Push Activities, Make Bank Accounts and More!

Deep Conversations

Sleep on the couch, new interaction

o violet on Tumblr - Pure CAS lighting mod

Reduce/Remove Lag caused by Houseboats

[mariacallous]

As Donald Trump’s administration continues its relentless reorganization of the United States federal government, documents obtained by WIRED showed this week that the Department of Defense is looking at cutting as much as three-quarters of its workforce that’s specifically focused on stopping proliferation of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, the US Army is using its “CamoGPT” AI tool to “review” diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility policies per Trump administration orders. The military originally developed the AI service to improve productivity and operational readiness.

US civil liberties organizations are pushing the director of national intelligence. Tulsi Gabbard, to declassify details about Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act—a central overseas wiretap authority that is notorious for also capturing a large number of calls, texts, and emails made or sent by Americans. And the US Justice Department on Wednesday charged 10 alleged hackers and two Chinese government officials over digital crimes spanning more than a decade as part of China’s extensive hack-for-hire ecosystem.

Ongoing analysis from a consortium of researchers led by Human Security found that at least a million low-price Android devices, like TV streaming boxes and tablets, have been compromised as part of a scamming and ad fraud campaign known as Badbox 2.0. The activity, which the researchers say comes out of China, is an evolution of a previous effort to backdoor similar devices.

And there's more. Each week, we round up the security and privacy news we didn’t cover in depth ourselves. Click the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.

Cybercriminals Allegedly Used a Backdoor to Steal Taylor Swift Tickets

Two people who allegedly worked as part of a group to access nearly 1,000 tickets to concerts and other events—many for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour—before selling them on for more than $600,000 profit were arrested and charged with the potential crimes in Queens this week. Tyrone Rose, 20, and Shamara P. Simmons, 31, of Jamaica, Queens, were arrested and arraigned in connection to the theft and sales, according to Queens district attorney Melinda Katz.

Between June 2022 and July 2023, it is alleged that 350 orders—totaling 993 tickets—on ticketing platform StubHub were accessed at a third-party contractor called Sutherland. “The Sutherland employees, defendant Tyrone Rose and an unapprehended accomplice, allegedly used their access to StubHub’s computer system to find a backdoor into a secure area of the network where already sold tickets were given a URL and queued to be emailed to the purchaser to download,” the district attorney’s office wrote in a statement.

They then emailed URLs to another accomplice who has since died, the office says, before posting the tickets to StubHub for resale. While the investigations are ongoing, the District Attorney’s office claimed the proceeds of the cybercrime totaled around $635,000 and also involved tickets for Ed Sheeran concerts, NBA games, and the US Open Tennis Championships.

Payment Provider Linked to ‘Largest Illicit Online Marketplace’ Loses Banking License

Every year, criminals make billions from the operations of highly organized scam compounds in Southeast Asia. As these operations have grown in sophistication, so has the wider ecosystem that supplies them with the technology and services needed to run the scams. And experts say there’s no bigger marketplace than Huione Guarantee—a Cambodian gray market selling scam services that researchers claim has facilitated more than $24 billion in transactions.

This week, according to a report by Radio Free Asia, the banking arm of Huione Guarantee’s parent company, Huione Group, had its financial license suspended by officials in Cambodia. According to the report, the Huione Pay service had its license withdrawn for failing to comply with “existing regulations.” The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and crypto tracing firm Elliptic previously had linked money moving through Huione Pay to cyberscamming. “They are willing facilitators of pig butchering and other fraud, so any regulatory action against them should be welcomed,” Elliptic founder Tom Robinson claimed to Radio Free Asia.

Russian Cryptocurrency Exchange Garantex Taken Down in Law Enforcement Action

The US Department of Justice announced an operation this week with Germany and Finland to disrupt the digital infrastructure behind notorious Russian cryptocurrency exchange Garantex. For years, the platform has allegedly been used for money laundering and other criminal transactions, including sanctions evasion. The DOJ claimed in its announcement that “transnational criminal organizations—including terrorist organizations” have utilized the exchange. Law enforcement said that the platform has processed at least $96 billion in cryptocurrency transactions since April 2019. US authorities said they froze over $26 million in funds used to facilitate money laundering as part of the Garantex takedown.

Scammers Are Impersonating Notorious Ransomware Attackers to Extort Targets

The FBI warned this week that scammers pretending to be attackers from the BianLian ransomware gang are demanding ransoms from corporate executives in the US. The demands include claims that the group has breached a company’s network and threaten to publish sensitive information unless a target pays up. Such criminal digital extortion is common enough that scammers apparently feel that they can plausibly make the claims and intimidate targets without even attacking them. The FBI says that the scammers’ ransom demands say that they come from BianLian and range from $250,000 to $500,000 payable via a QR code that links to a Bitcoin wallet. The real BianLian group has links to Russia and has targeted US critical infrastructure since June 2022, according to a November alert from the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

[wphostzone]

What is Web Hosting? Discover Types, Key Factors, & 2024’s 12 Best Web Hosting Platforms.

Web hosting—the physical presence of your website on the internet—is essential for your online business. Without dependable web hosting, you jeopardize your capacity to run your business and meet your consumers’ expectations.

Understanding web hosting and how it works can be difficult, particularly for people who are unfamiliar with the notion. This article will clearly describe web hosting, explain the many types of web hosting plans available, and outline the essential factors to consider when selecting a hosting company.

What is web hosting?

Web hosting uses internet-facing hardware and software to provide web services to end users. It is where your website and services are stored, processed, and delivered.

At its most fundamental, web hosting consists of secure internet interfaces and communications, computer server hardware and storage, web server software, and content (text, pictures, audio/video).

However, most web hosting solutions also include database servers, content management systems, e-commerce tools, security and authentication, and other applications required for websites to function and remain secure.

The web hosting sector is critical and is expected to increase by more than 20% year between 2024 and 2028.

How much does web hosting cost?

Hosting charges vary, typically based on capabilities. You may pay $10 per month for a simple billboard-style website to market your business online, or much more if you run a successful e-commerce store with thousands of clients.

To successfully select web hosting that works for you, you simply need to understand your goals and how to translate them into hosting requirements.

Types of Web Hosting

Shared hosting.

Dedicated Hosting

VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting

Cloud hosting

Continue Reading The Blog Post Click Here...

[cindylouwho-2]

RECENT SEO & MARKETING NEWS FOR ECOMMERCE, AUGUST 2024

Hello, and welcome to my very last Marketing News update here on Tumblr.

After today, these reports will now be found at least twice a week on my Patreon, available to all paid members. See more about this change here on my website blog: https://www.cindylouwho2.com/blog/2024/8/12/a-new-way-to-get-ecommerce-news-and-help-welcome-to-my-patreon-page

Don't worry! I will still be posting some short pieces here on Tumblr (as well as some free pieces on my Patreon, plus longer posts on my website blog). However, the news updates and some other posts will be moving to Patreon permanently.

Please follow me there! https://www.patreon.com/CindyLouWho2

TOP NEWS & ARTICLES 

A US court ruled that Google is a monopoly, and has broken antitrust laws. This decision will be appealed, but in the meantime, could affect similar cases against large tech giants. 

Did you violate a Facebook policy? Meta is now offering a “training course” in lieu of having the page’s reach limited for Professional Mode users. 

Google Ads shown in Canada will have a 2.5% surcharge applied as of October 1, due to new Canadian tax laws.

SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES 

Search Engine Roundtable’s Google report for July is out; we’re still waiting for the next core update. 

SOCIAL MEDIA - All Aspects, By Site

Facebook (includes relevant general news from Meta)

Meta’s latest legal development: a $1.4 billion settlement with Texas over facial recognition and privacy.  

Instagram

Instagram is highlighting “Views” in its metrics in an attempt to get creators to focus on reach instead of follower numbers. 

Pinterest

Pinterest is testing outside ads on the site. The ad auction system would include revenue sharing. 

Reddit

Reddit confirmed that anyone who wants to use Reddit posts for AI training and other data collection will need to pay for them, just as Google and OpenAI did. 

Second quarter 2024 was great for Reddit, with revenue growth of 54%. Like almost every other platform, they are planning on using AI in their search results, perhaps to summarize content. 

Threads

Threads now claims over 200 million active users.

TikTok

TikTok is now adding group chats, which can include up to 32 people.

TikTok is being sued by the US Federal Trade Commission, for allowing children under 13 to sign up and have their data harvested. 

Twitter

Twitter seems to be working on the payments option Musk promised last year. Tweets by users in the EU will at least temporarily be pulled from the AI-training for “Grok”, in line with EU law.

CONTENT MARKETING (includes blogging, emails, and strategies) 

Email software Mad Mimi is shutting down as of August 30. Owner GoDaddy is hoping to move users to its GoDaddy Digital Marketing setup. 

Content ideas for September include National Dog Week. 

You can now post on Substack without having an actual newsletter, as the platform tries to become more like a social media site. 

As of November, Patreon memberships started in the iOS app will be subject to a 30% surcharge from Apple. Patreon is giving creators the ability to add that charge to the member's bill, or pay it themselves.

ONLINE ADVERTISING (EXCEPT INDIVIDUAL SOCIAL MEDIA AND ECOMMERCE SITES) 

Google worked with Meta to break the search engine’s rules on advertising to children through a loophole that showed ads for Instagram to YouTube viewers in the 13-17 year old demographic. Google says they have stopped the campaign, and that “We prohibit ads being personalized to people under-18, period”.

Google’s Performance Max ads now have new tools, including some with AI. 

Microsoft’s search and news advertising revenue was up 19% in the second quarter, a very good result for them. 

One of the interesting tidbits from the recent Google antitrust decision is that Amazon sells more advertising than either Google or Meta’s slice of retail ads. 

BUSINESS & CONSUMER TRENDS, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE 

More than half of Gen Z claim to have bought items while spending time on social media in the past half year, higher than other generations. 

Shopify’s president claimed that Christmas shopping started in July on their millions of sites, with holiday decor and ornament sales doubling, and advent calendar sales going up a whopping 4,463%.