Hearing on Online Platforms and Market Power

Today, July 29, 2020, the CEOs of four technology companies will meet virtually with a House subcommittee about their market power. Some have asserted that these companies have monopolies or near-monopolies. Time Cook of Apple, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Sundar Pichai of Google, and Jeff Bezos of Amazon will be present. There was a push for Jack Dorsey of Twitter to attend from representative Jim Jordon of Ohio, but he is not expected to attend.

These companies are being investigated for their market dominance. For Apple, a key issue is that the only method of distribution to iOS devices is through the Apple App Store. While it is the case for a number of consumer devices that the device manufacturer is the only entity that can decide if an application will be available to the device (ex: Nintendo licensing games for the Switch, Sony for the Playstations, Microsoft for the Xbox) some entities have asserted that the arrangement is unfair. Most notably Spotify made a complaint about the revenue split terms for the Apple App Store and being disallowed from advertising other ways that a customer may purchase its service that do not involve Apple.

Amazon’s use of data that is has collected is in question. It’s combination of customer data, seller data, and its intelligence capabilities give it a significant advantage. Not only does Amazon sell items from third parties, it also produces its own products that compete with those providers. There is a question of it being fair.

For Facebook’s acquisition strategies are in question. And it also has a large advertising network that is being scrutinized.

Google, in addition to having the worlds most popular search engine, also has a wide advertising network. Google also gained the attention of regulators in the European Union because if its search engine giving preference to Google products for some types of searches.

Live-streaming of the hearing will be available on YouTube at the following starting at 12:00PM Eastern Time today, 29 July 2020.

Livestream/Replay

This isn’t the first hearing that the committee has had, but it will be the first one at which these CEOs have all been present. In previous hearings in which representatives from Facebook or Google have been present it hasn’t been unusual for questions to not focus on the investigation, but to also be on other topics of interest. In addition to questions on the competition practices, I expect there to be questioned on censorship, with the most recent well-known instance being the removal of a group that called themselves “American Frontline Doctors.” The group held a live stream on Monday that made claims of a cure for COVID-19, stating that masks offer no question, and made many other statements that contradict the advice of health organizations. The video was removed by Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube in addition to SquareSpace deciding to terminate their hosting agreement for the group’s site.

Previous hearings from the sub-committee are also available for viewing.

Free and Diverse Press (June 11, 2019)
H.R. 3942, Preventing the Sale of E-Cigarettes (June 11, 2019)
Competition in Labor Markets (29 October, 2019)
The perspective of the Antitrust Agencies (2019 November 13)
Competitors in the Digital Economy (Jan 17, 2020)
Online Platforms and Market Power (July 29, 2020)

Windows Terminal Preview

Windows_Terminal_Logo_256x256

I’ve started using the Windows Terminal preview and wish I had started sooner. Some of the functionality that is provides while simple is useful and gives a productivity boost. I’m bringing attention to the Windows Terminal because I find it so useful. The first question to answer is “What is it?”

From the name alone you might think that the Windows Terminal is yet another command line in the same ranks as the command prompt and PowerShell. This isn’t what it is. It is a new console host. The console host (c:\Windows\System32\conhost.exe) may be something to which there’s not a lot of awareness, but it is a behind-the-scenes component that host console programs. When you start the command prompt it runs within the console host.

The Windows Terminal is an alternative console host. It is a program for managing various console environments in a single window with tabs. Upon installation it is pre-configured for the Command Prompt, Powershell, and the Azure Cloud Shell. The availability of these items in a tabbed window alone is sufficient for me to find it useful. It isn’t limited to these programs though. The Windows Terminal is configurable to host other console programs through editing a JSON configuration file. There are some devices that I regularly connect to using SSH. I’ve extended my configuration to have entries for these specific devices. I had been previously using PUTTY for this but I find that with the Windows Terminal the process of opening a new tab into a device is easier. The other connections are available in two clicks; one on a down-arrow on the tab, and another on the terminal to be opened.

WindowsTerminalOpenShell

Figuring out how to add items to the Windows Terminal is easy even without looking at the documentation. The Settings menu item in the drop down opens the configuration file in which you can see the entries for the PowerShell, Command Propmt, and Azure Cloud Shell. If you wanted to add a new terminal you can copy one of the entries and makes changes. There are a lot of other settings that haven’t been defined here. The fuller range of possible settings are published in Microsoft’s Github account.

https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/blob/master/doc/cascadia/SettingsSchema.md

A feature I find especially useful is the ability to set the a background image to the terminal The background image could be an animated GIF (I won’t do that, it is too distracting). I have set the background images to something relevant to the terminal so that at a glance I can tell what terminal I’m looking at. For example, when I had a connection to one of my NVIDIA devices and a Raspberry Pi my windows look like the following.

terminals

I’ve made my images intentionally dark, but they can be within what ever color range is of your choosing. Color schemes for the text itself are also definable. Custom images for icons and terminal backgrounds must be placed in one of two locations.

URI Scheme	Location
ms-appdata:///Local/	%localappdata%\Packages\Microsoft.WindowsTerminal_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalState\
ms-appdata:///Roaming/	%localappdata%\Packages\Microsoft.WindowsTerminal_8wekyb3d8bbwe\RoamingState\

For the entry for one of my Raspberry Pi’s I’ve got the following configuration using the Roaming URI scheme to refer to a background image.

{

    "guid": "{89CF3D23-06EA-4B1E-B42D-FC61239443ED}",
    "closeOnExit": true,
    "backgroundImage": "ms-appdata:///roaming/pi.png",
    "backgroundImageOpacity": 0.75,
    "backgroundImageStrechMode": "fill",
    "name": "SSH Raspberry Pi 3 (Sense Hat)",
    "commandline": "ssh 192.168.1.192 -l pi",
    "hidden": false
}

As with many keyboard driven interfaces there are hotkeys that you can press to perform actions. Some hotkeys are predefined, but you can define your own or change the predefined commands through the same JSON file in which the terminal entries exists.

In many programs pressing shift+enter will change a program to full screen model. I wanted to have the same behaviour in Windows Terminal and made an entry in the keybindings section for this.

{"command": "togleFullScreen", "keys": "shift+enter"}

The Windows Terminal also supports the full range of Unicode characters. To take advantage of this the shell that you are using also needs to have support for it to. Many already do but had no way of properly displaying the characters.

unicode

The Windows Terminal is available in the Microsoft Store for free or from Github.

Windows Powershell Cookbook

Going Text:Mastering the Power of the Command Line

Sending Text Message from .NET

SMS

I met with some others in Singapore for a project deployment, and one of the other people there wanted a snippet of information sent to him. He wanted it sent to his phone. He asked what the most popular messaging application is in the USA. While Facebook Messenger is the most popular the messaging landscape in the USA is fractured. One’s preferred messenger is going to depend on their preferences and social circle (Telegram is my favourite). Because of this SMS remains the most reliable way of sending short messages to someone. When I am traveling around the USA or in some environments (the subway, inside certain buildings) I use SMS because data service becomes incredibly spotty.

I am making an ASP.NET application for which I want to be able to send notifications to a phone with no application installation necessary. I will be using SMS as my message transport of choice. How does an application do this? There are a few solutions. One is to subscribe to an SMS Gateway Service and use their API. I found several companies that provide these services. But many of them do not have price information openly available; speaking to a sales agent is necessary to get the price. A few that I encountered did share their prices. I share what I found here. Note that prices are subject to change and the older this post is the more likely the pricing information is stale.

SMS Gateway Services

Vonage

Vonage offers SMS services starting at 0.0068 USD per message sent and and 0.0062 per message received. They also rent out virtual phone numbers at 0.98 USD per month. Verizon and US Cellular charge an additional fee for sending messages via long codes (0.0025 USD for Vzw and 0.0050 USD for US Cellular). If you would like to try it out a trial level subscription is available for free. Vonage provides SDKs for several languages. They also have full code samples for each one of these languages.

Ruby
PHP
Python
.Net
NodeJS
Java
CLI

ClickSend

ClickSend offers a REST API for accessing their services. Like Vonage they also offer SDKs for several environments and code samples on how to perform various actions. You will find code samples and/or SDKs for

cURL
PHP
C#
Java
Node.JS
Ruby
Python
Perl
Go
Objective-C
Swift

Pricing is structured much differently. There are pricing tiers dependent on how many messages are sent. The pricing tiers look like the following.

0.0214 USD/message up to 2,000 messages
0.0153 USD/message for more than 2,000 messages
0.0104 USD/message for 10k messages or more
0.0076 USD/message for 100k messages or more
Unspecified pricing for more than 200k messages

A dedicated number is purchasable for 3.06 USD/month. Short codes cost 886.82 USD/month.

D7 Networks

D7 Networks pricing is 0.005 USD/month for sending SMS for one-way communication. For 2-way communication the fee is 2.00 USD/month + 0.012 USD/message for outbound messages and 0.00 USD for incoming messages. While there is no SDK there is a REST API (which is easy enough to consume from most development environments).

E-mail

Provided someone can identify their service provider e-mail is an option. An advantage of using Email to send an SMS is that it is free. A downside is that when registering with your service the recipient must know the service provider. While I do not think that is a general problem there may be cases where someone does not know; such as when their phone is part of a family plan and someone else handles the service. Another possible issue is a person properly registers but later changes their service provider and does not update it within your service.

Why does a user need to know their service provider for this to work? The USA carriers have domains that that are used for sending e-SMS messages via e-mail. Appending this domain to the end of someone’s phone number results in the e-mail address that is routed to their phones.

AT&T – @mms.att.net
Boost Mobile – @myboostmobile.com
Cricket Wireless – @mms.cricketwireless.net
Google Project Fi – @msg.fi.google.com
Republic Wireless – @text.republicwireless.com
Sprint – @messaging.sprintpcs.com
Straight Talk – @mypicmessages.com
T-Mobile – @tmobile.net
Ting – @message.ting.com
Tracfone – @mmst5.tracfone.com
US Cellular – @mms.usc.net
Verizon – @vzwpix.com
Virgin Mobile – @vmpix.com

Sending messages in .Net is just a matter of using the SmtpClient class. The exact configuration that you need will be dependent on your mail service. For my mail service I have pre-configured the credentials in the computer’s credential store so that the information does not need to be stored in my application’s configuration.

SmtpClient mailClient = new SmtpClient("myMailServer.com")
{
     Credentials = CredentialCache.DefaultNetworkCredentials
};
var message = new MailMessage(
   "FromAddress@myserver.com", 
   "phoneMailAddress@carrierDomain.com", 
   "", //blank subject
   "test body"
);
mailClient.Send(message);

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