đź”— Articles: Friday 22.Mar.2024
UPI: FBI probing Alaska Airlines flight with blown-out door plug as ‘possible crime’
The 171 passengers aboard an Alaska Airlines flight in January that suffered a sudden mid-air decompression when a fuselage panel unexpectedly blew out may have been the victims of a crime, according to the FBI.
TidBITS: US Files Antitrust Lawsuit against Apple, Alleging iPhone Monopoly
The US Justice Department, 15 states, and the District of Columbia have filed a lawsuit against Apple, accusing it of violating antitrust laws to maintain an illegal iPhone monopoly. The lawsuit focuses on five areas: super apps, cloud streaming game services, messaging apps, smartwatches, and digital wallets, arguing that Apple explicitly took steps to prevent other companies from competing with Apple on the iPhone platform. Apple’s stance has long been that it restricts what third parties can do on the iPhone platform to protect users.
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The lawsuit claims that Apple’s iPhone market share by revenue in the US is 70% of the “performance smartphone market” and over 65% of the overall smartphone market.
Those statistics will come under scrutiny. Apple’s market share by revenue is higher than Android’s in large part because iPhones are more expensive. The market share of users is much more equal, with Statstista saying that the iPhone holds 54% of the market share compared to Android’s 45%. Even more telling is the iPhone’s global market share, which Statista puts at 20.1%. That makes Apple foremost in the global smartphone market by manufacturer (Samsung is second with 19.4%), but it is far behind in platform, given Android’s nearly 80% share. (Are there any other smartphone operating systems of any import?)
NYT: Kate Middleton Reveals Cancer Diagnosis: Live Updates on Princess of Wales
The princess described the news as a “huge shock” and asked for “time, space and privacy” in a prerecorded video broadcast on the BBC on Friday evening in Britain.
This is a significant event, but I don’t intend to “follow” this story.
NYT: What’s Next for the Coronavirus?
Scientists studying the virus’s continuing evolution, and the body’s immune responses, hope to head off a resurgence and to better understand long Covid.
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Many countries, including the United States, ramped up tracking efforts at the height of the pandemic. But they have since been cut back, leaving scientists to guess the scale of respiratory virus infections. Wastewater and hospitalizations can provide clues, but neither is a sensitive measure.
Globe: Capitals’ Wilson suspended six games for stick to the face of Leafs’ Gregor
The NHL’s department of player safety gave Wilson a suspension tied for the longest of any player this season after a disciplinary hearing with him on Zoom. The league offering that type of hearing instead of a phone call allowed senior vice-president of player safety George Parros to hand down a suspension of six or more games.
Wilson can appeal, first to commissioner Gary Bettman and then, if he and the NHL Players’ Association choose, to a neutral arbitrator. He had a 20-game suspension for a blindside hit to to the head in 2018 reduced to 14 games by an arbitrator on appeal after he had already served 16.
Is it enough?
Globe: Andrew Coyne: The productivity puzzle: How could we be doing so poorly? We did everything right!
So we are agreed that Canada is in a growth crisis. Attempts have been made to downplay it. If you calculate real per capita GDP using the Consumer Price Index as your deflator, for example, rather than the GDP price index, you get a marginally less depressing result. I stress marginally: Instead of fourth quarter per capita GDP being slightly lower than it was nine years earlier, it is slightly (1.1 per cent) higher. And yes, other measures of living standards, e.g. real wages and disposable incomes, have not stagnated to the same degree. But sooner or later these, like per capita GDP, tend to rise or fall in line with productivity
Which is really the issue. Labour productivity — output per hour worked — in Canada has not just been falling for the past year and a half, or moving sideways for nine years. Relative to other countries, it has been falling for the past 40 years: from close to 90 per cent of U.S. levels in the early 1980s, to nearer 70 per cent today. That, more than any short-term trend, is what really ought to worry us.
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But while we’ve got a lot of things right, we’ve also got a lot of things wrong. We might have liberalized much of our international trade, but important sectors of our economy — telecommunications, financial service, air travel — are organized as protected oligopolies, theoretically open to competition but effectively off-limits thanks to restrictions on foreign investment. Others — the post office, rail travel, liquor boards — remain government monopolies to this day, for no reason than because it would be too hard to break them up.
Globe: Letters
To the point
Re “So, what expenditures should Canada cut to meet its NATO obligations?” (Report on Business, March 21):
Nothing. Restore two points to the GST.
Craig Sims Kingston
Finally!
Lots of interesting letters on the “carbon tax” too.
Last Updated: 22.Mar.2024 23:35 EDT