Wrong analogy. You’re describing theft. It’s More like, my neighbor planted an apple tree in their yard and told me, “this is your tree. You can pick any fruits off of it, anytime you’d like.” I told the jam making shop down the street that they can come get apples on this tree anytime if they give me some of the apple jam they end up making. My neighbor didn’t explicit permit me to do this, but also didn’t forbid me. I think? So now the jam making shop owner goes and grab my apple on my neighbor’s tree.
Maybe the solution is just to have the jam maker give the neighbor a can?
Except that it isn’t you inviting the jam maker, it’s the jam maker saying “I have a direct integration with the guy who manages your apple tree” , when they actually mean “I’ll dress up like you and pick the apples when nobody’s looking”
Yes. But it’s also useless if they go out of business period. I know, I know, opensource it in the event of bankruptcy and continue receiving security updates and what not. But when as that ever actually panned out?
Tbh, I don’t know why subscriptions get such a bad rap on HN. recurring revenue (ie subscription) is actually one of the best tool we have for ensuring the products/services we depend on don’t go under.
No, the whole premise with “personal server” is and should be that company going out of busines would have no efect on server and data on it. It should continue working exactly like it did when you bought it. This means that mandatory subscription is a dealbreaker. Optional subscription on the other hand would be just like additional service for which you could pay if you incapable of doing something yourself or through third party.
I understand the premise fine. I’m just saying it’s an unrealistic expectation.
For example, “should continue working exactly like it did” sounds nice, but what happens when the company is out of business and your server’s kernel needs a kernel patch due to a security issue? Sure the server still works, but you probably shouldn’t be using it if you in fact want something that’s private/secure.
> Tbh, I don’t know why subscriptions get such a bad rap on HN
Because a lot of the times things don't need a subscription, but it's just a way for the company to squeeze more money out of you.
Some things you can't buy of course, like a streaming service, and I do pay for them. However, I will never 'rent' an online movie which I can only watch once or some such bullshit where the limitation is 0% technical and 100% someone wanting more money out of me.
Why not? I do it all the time for a simple economic reason: renting is $2.99 and buying is $14.99.
If I haven’t seen the movie yet and I don’t feel super strongly about it, I don’t feel like paying the full price. Of course if I end up loving the movie and want to buy it, I’ll end up having spent an extra $2.99 to rent something I now plan to own. But I can’t remember ever doing that. I rent. I watch. I move on.
Also I wouldn’t buy a movie that I can’t store in a physical format.
1. "Buying" is usually 15$ in my experience, not 3$.
2. Like said, the limitation is not technical, it's purely milking users.
3. I like to own stuff and sometimes play older games and watch older movies. Renting is just a non-starter for that, unless you want to overpay out the nose.
hehe. In india, a couple months ago they did an experiment of launching a big ticket movie online for the first time. Here is how they put it, after you pay
.
open this page https://www.zee5.com/zee-plex-movies-on-rent
and click on how it works. then "How to buy and watch ZEEPLEX movies?".
they say "buy and watch" but then say "pay per view service", then there are stupid watch time requirements and all that.
piracy is 1 click, just press play. then these idiots go and equate piracy as a heinous crime
I’ve been pondering for a while why Google never tried to acquire PayPal, and/or perhaps most importantly Venmo (which is part of it). With Android & Chrome being the platforms that they are, the ultra tight integration of payment of PayPal/Venmo should be interesting to unlock more payment growth. Yes Google has the technical ability to build competitors to those, but the market of consumers/SMB’s don’t appear to understand the Google payment offering. Whereas with PayPal/Venmo as the frontend brand, it’d be hard to argue that the market would be confused given the already existing uses and brand appeal. Of course this sort of merger may raise all sorts of antitrust flags so maybe it’s just a thought experiment and nothing else for now.
Googl Pay is pretty popular here in the UK. The value proposition is simple: it's like a debit card, but it uses your phone, and thus can be more convenient in certain circumstances.
From my european perspective, where sending money between bank accounts is free and easy using their first party apps, the last thing I'd want involved is paypal who have a reputation for stealing people's money and generally being difficult to deal with.
I’ve personally stopped reading NYT specifically because of this editorializing vs just reporting issue. It’s really frustrating to see in individual articles; in the greater scheme of things, it’s sad to observe. NYT has always had blunders (eg 2003 war in Iraq), but this is something else altogether.
Commiting a felony seems to be a life sentence in the United States even after you have served your time. The algorithm can easily just disqualify them with no nuance.
The description on this was even funny "When you rent a place for 1 or 2 years". Just wait till it caretakes rent collecting, rent raising, and eviction services.
If the algo disqualifies them with no nuance, great, that means there’s probably a market for those who do want to take the time to understand the actual risk profile of a tenant. Also, society as a whole does not owe a clean slate to anyone who has committed a felony. Perhaps we can codify it into law but that is not the case right now and the market has decided that we do care.
I think it’s a somewhat false dichotomy that splitting up US big tech makes China big tech win. The reason being that splitting up US big tech allow for more competitive US mid tech to arise that can outcompete China big tech in areas where it matters. I suppose you also want to prevent China Big Tech to throw its money around at Mid Tech the way US big tech did in the last 10-15 years.
Why wouldn't an international tech co just be able to acquire domestic companies and/or launch products at a significant loss to gain market share in the US?
For example, break up Amazon and you now create an opening for Alibaba to expand into the US. Spending billions in order to get customers to shift to Alibaba instead of Amazon.
This is probably overblown if only because practice has borne out that the Asian platform model has ported very poorly to the US.
Americans don't seem to be interested in using massive platform apps that contain the kitchen sink; WeChat is available but not popular, same for LINE, and Messenger never successfully became that.
Right now the most successful overseas strategy for a software company has been Tencent's games strategy (as opposed to their WeChat one), and in that respect they're mostly just a holding company.
Dude. It’s a failed kitchen sink. We Chat was both my bank and my Amazon. I kept money on it and was the best way to go to the store. Heck—I even used WeChat as my Uber (Didi) because I didn’t have a Chinese card and the in-app WeChat app balance could pay for my ride.
ByteDance hasn't made substantial acquisitions since the launch of TikTok and it's not clear how they would leverage their current product's popularity into other domains.
>Why wouldn't an international tech co just be able to acquire domestic companies and/or launch products at a significant loss to gain market share in the US?
Because international companies wouldn't be exempt from US regulation if they operate in the US.
Me think you grossly under-estimate the complexity of creating a facility that processes basic inputs, a few chemicals, and lots of optics/lights to make state of the art nanometer scale 3D features at enormous volume and very low defect rates.
World cup in korea was in 2002... between then and now, many generations (sizes) of semicondctors have been 'invented' (..the method to produce them) and replaced with smaller ones.
There is a table on the right, and there are rougly 2-3 years between 'generations' - so 2-3 years between starting a new production line of top-of-the-line flagship (eg.) cpus, to making a new production line for even newer, "smaller" (transitors) cpus, and the old line making other, cheaper ones.
I'm not saying that Johnny Sixpack can do it in his garage, but companies like Intel, AMD, samsung, etc. surely could do it in that timeframe, because they're already doing it now.
I think the problem may be best addressed by spinning up ASML alternatives and other critical singular fail points/capabilities. Some things like this do rise to a national/global security threat.
