Post in here to mark yourself safe from the Cloudflare meltdown

[SleepingTitan]

25 minutes ago, ChesterCopperpot1 said:

Not trying to get political, but I mean we basically just had paramount cave to Trump in his lawsuit against CBS and 60 minutes to appear the administration so they would let their merger with sundance go through. Anti-trust laws may exist, but politicians are bought to look the other way. 

New mergers aside, we still have very little diversity in so many industries. The entire food industry is owned by a few. Disney and Google got in a pissing contest and they blacked out a free broadcast. We are in a world of shit with AI coming, and a few tech companies are ruling the world. It's 1880 all over again. 

[SleepingTitan]

11 minutes ago, OzTitan said:

There is nothing stopping a competitor to Cloudflare (like there are) from gaining more market share. It's just a defacto standard, but not because they have a special position on the Internet or anything.

 

No law expert, but my understanding is, just being in the same position in the market as others but having a superior or perceived superior product all the way to a dominant market share, is not anti-trust.

I am by no means an expert either, but your statement is a little misleading. They've done plenty of acquisitions. Just looking at Wiki acq:

 

StopTheHacker (February 2014),[15] CryptoSeal (June 2014),[16] Eager Platform Co. (December 2016),[17] Neumob (November 2017),[18] S2 Systems (January 2020),[19] Linc (December 2020),[20] Zaraz (December 2021),[21] Vectrix (February 2022),[22] Area 1 Security (February 2022),[23] Nefeli Networks (March 2024), BastionZero (May 2024),[24] and Kivera (October 2024).[25]

[ChesterCopperpot1]

4 minutes ago, SleepingTitan said:

New mergers aside, we still have very little diversity in so many industries. The entire food industry is owned by a few. Disney and Google got in a pissing contest and they blacked out a free broadcast. We are in a world of shit with AI coming, and a few tech companies are ruling the world. It's 1880 all over again. 

It's Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, etc. all over again. 

[OzTitan]

2 minutes ago, SleepingTitan said:

I am by no means an expert either, but your statement is a little misleading. They've done plenty of acquisitions. Just looking at Wiki acq:

 

StopTheHacker (February 2014),[15] CryptoSeal (June 2014),[16] Eager Platform Co. (December 2016),[17] Neumob (November 2017),[18] S2 Systems (January 2020),[19] Linc (December 2020),[20] Zaraz (December 2021),[21] Vectrix (February 2022),[22] Area 1 Security (February 2022),[23] Nefeli Networks (March 2024), BastionZero (May 2024),[24] and Kivera (October 2024).[25]

These seem pretty inconsequential though from a anti-competition sense. I imagine almost all similar companies and competitors have done similar minor acquisitions too. Maybe I'm missing it but these sound mostly like startups and they were buying tech/talent more than market position, but I could be wrong.

[nine]

11 minutes ago, ChesterCopperpot1 said:

It's Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, etc. all over again. 

A couple months ago I listened to a podcast interview with an author who has released  a book about the actual lives and lifestyles of the world’s billionaires….a lot of friggin’ crazy stuff .  

One of notable points he mentioned  is that in the modern age, the wealth gap between the ultra-elite and the working class is far greater  than it was during the robber-baron era of the late 1800s-early 1900s.   

[SleepingTitan]

32 minutes ago, nine said:

A couple months ago I listened to a podcast interview with an author who has released  a book about the actual lives and lifestyles of the world’s billionaires….a lot of friggin’ crazy stuff .  

One of notable points he mentioned  is that in the modern age, the wealth gap between the ultra-elite and the working class is far greater  than it was during the robber-baron era of the late 1800s-early 1900s.   

We are still better off today as a middle-class American than the richest person in the world in 1880. I fear that the new "railroads" won't benefit humanity at all in the long-term. AI is being built by corporations whose sole purpose is accumulation of resources. Eventually they'll be so efficient that human input is counter-productive. We could only be saved by something, someone, or some God that's already survived such a Tower of Babel moment. 

 

This race to AGI is the most hilarious shit when you step back. I think of War of the Worlds, Terminator...but then get to like Dr. Strangelove. Humans are morons. Monkeys with guns. 

[Starkiller]

3 hours ago, SleepingTitan said:

We have anti-trust laws for a reason. They need to start using them

Republicans don’t do that

[Starkiller]

2 hours ago, OilerTitanHybrid said:

I'm now fully protected against the next Cloudflare and Crowdstrike outages!  Praise Gebus!

“I’m inoculated”

[Starkiller]

8 hours ago, SleepingTitan said:

New mergers aside, we still have very little diversity in so many industries. The entire food industry is owned by a few. Disney and Google got in a pissing contest and they blacked out a free broadcast. We are in a world of shit with AI coming, and a few tech companies are ruling the world. It's 1880 all over again. 

Basically every single industry has seen competition disappear in last 50 years, from food to fighter jets to firetrucks.

Edited November 19, 2025 by Starkiller

[pat]

During the Reagan administration anti trust regulation pivoted to “consumer harm” instead of, you know, anti trust.

 

That’s what lets Amazon etc get away with so much. 

[SleepingTitan]

8 hours ago, Starkiller said:

Basically every single industry has seen competition disappear in last 50 years, from food to fighter jets to firetrucks.

One of the worst aspects of capitalism is that when companies don't fail, they begin to lose the differentiation and innovation that made them great. As they mature, they can't really grow anymore. R&D gets sacked. So, to continue growing revenue, they swallow other companies and consolidate industries. I work for one of those companies. Absolutely shit at everything, but they continue to acquire. 

 

What's crazy about big tech is that they're not only continuing to grow and maintain agility and R&D, but they're also swallowing companies. It's like when Standard Oil discovered gas as a byproduct and convinced Ford to produce only gas engines x 1000. 

[Starkiller]

14 minutes ago, SleepingTitan said:

One of the worst aspects of capitalism is that when companies don't fail, they begin to lose the differentiation and innovation that made them great. As they mature, they can't really grow anymore. R&D gets sacked. So, to continue growing revenue, they swallow other companies and consolidate industries. I work for one of those companies. Absolutely shit at everything, but they continue to acquire. 

 

What's crazy about big tech is that they're not only continuing to grow and maintain agility and R&D, but they're also swallowing companies. It's like when Standard Oil discovered gas as a byproduct and convinced Ford to produce only gas engines x 1000. 

Capitalism relies on competition, as well as some degree of government regulation. The real problem is that we don’t really follow the same system of capitalism we once did.
 

Today it’s something very different. Between corporate mergers, private equity, prioritizing profit over product, etc we really lost what we had and we ended up with record (and unsustainable) wealth inequality.

[ChesterCopperpot1]

15 hours ago, SleepingTitan said:

We are still better off today as a middle-class American than the richest person in the world in 1880. I fear that the new "railroads" won't benefit humanity at all in the long-term. AI is being built by corporations whose sole purpose is accumulation of resources. Eventually they'll be so efficient that human input is counter-productive. We could only be saved by something, someone, or some God that's already survived such a Tower of Babel moment. 

 

This race to AGI is the most hilarious shit when you step back. I think of War of the Worlds, Terminator...but then get to like Dr. Strangelove. Humans are morons. Monkeys with guns. 

People think I’m crazy when I say AI will be the cause of the downfall of society. 

[SleepingTitan]

13 hours ago, Starkiller said:

Capitalism relies on competition, as well as some degree of government regulation. The real problem is that we don’t really follow the same system of capitalism we once did.
 

Today it’s something very different. Between corporate mergers, private equity, prioritizing profit over product, etc we really lost what we had and we ended up with record (and unsustainable) wealth inequality.

On the legal side, we also have a race to the bottom going on with the internal affairs doctrine. Businesses are governed by the laws of the state of which they're incorporated. Delaware was once the c-corp mecca because their laws were so friendly to corps. Now TX is trying to attract those corps, so they're rearranging their corp law to advantage the companies. An example would be when Musk got sued for the enormous bonus of $56B. He appealed (oral arguments were in Oct). I expect him to win that appeal. But in the mean-time after losing the initial case, he just reincorporated under TX law, essentially moving the place of incorp to TX from DE. Now his new bonus is like $1T LOL

 

This and other moves by other companies is forcing DE to change their laws and tax fee structure to be more friendly than the new "corp friendly" states. 

Edited November 19, 2025 by SleepingTitan

[SleepingTitan]

8 hours ago, ChesterCopperpot1 said:

People think I’m crazy when I say AI will be the cause of the downfall of society. 

Everyday, at least once, I have to hide that knowledge from myself. People aren't paying attention, and the people that are Gen Z/Millenials have already had so much bad shit happen globally that we've grown accustomed to the doomsday noise and the global shitshow that it's like oh well Dad's hitting Mom again better crank up the music so I can't hear them.

 

But it's real. And until regular people start understanding it, we're fucked. Hell we might be fucked either way because we're forced to create this nuke because China is doing the same thing. Only real solution I see is if they bring in DARPA and give them access to the code. For that to happen, a lot of 60-80 year old men gotta come to grips with reality and stop throwing food at each other in the assisted living known as Congress.