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Comment by isostatic | Hacker News Reader

Jan Koum Is entertaining. He was a frequent flyer and wanted to build an app that could tell people what time zone the person they are talking to was in, that they were on a flight, etc

He posted on flyertalk about it and got a "meh, you have to install something? Why bother?" response

5 years later, as a frequent flyer he was into collecting miles and using them on tickets, and he had managed to get business class flights to mobile world congress in Barcelona, but while the deal was going through to sell whatsapp to Facebook there were a couple of delays. Nothing major.

He thought to himself "these are non changeable tickets, they'd better get a move on", then reflected how absurd a position he was in.

1: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/travel-technology/952359-tho...

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I think you're reading a lot into the single response he got.

For anyone who doesn't want to click through, the reply said:

"It appears that this requires the other party to also have the app installed, right?"

There's nothing that could be even remotely translated to "why bother" or "meh" in the response. It's a simple question.

It was more the lack of reaponses that made me think it was a meh. Also I hadn't read the thread for a year or two and was going if memory when I wrote the post, did a search later.

Hahaha, I love some of the replies when he revisted the thread 4 years later:

" Isn't this one of the apps that take all your contacts from your device and upload them to a remote server? Since I have many non-contact entries in my address book (e.g. a contact card with DOB's, passport numbers, etc.), I'm reluctant to use such an app since it would indiscriminately take all this personal information and store it on a remote server.

I stick with Skype b/c basically, by logging in with a distinct login/password (as opposed to a MS ID linked to my other MS programs and accounts) and saving only limited information in Skype's address book, I'm limited the amount of data Skype would have and could take and save."

Odd to think some people used to believe Skype was more secure than WhatsApp, though to be fair, WhatsApp used to send (and store I believe) messages in plaintext.

It's really funny when you look now at what are the default app permissions in a standard consumer configuration of Windows 10 Home. And what Microsoft by default allows Skype to use. It's basically fully enmeshed with peoples' contact lists, and for business users, whatever other features of Office365 they keep squeezing skype into.

I overheard a billionaire say he got worried when the market for his primary stockholding dipped by 20%. “I lost $200M. I actually started worrying I might go broke. Then I realized I still had $1.2B...”

I suspect people who transition from working class (and I mean it in a sense that you have to work to earn an income to keep a roof over your head, be that $30k/yr or $300k/yr) to capital class (meaning their assets fund their dynasty without sweat, in good times and bad, $100m+ type people) struggle to realise what it actually means to not have to worry about money, and that money is just a way of keeping score.

Likewise a lot of the wealthy people have no real concept of the fact if you don't work, you don't eat. Maybe you've got savings that tide you over for a year or two, or even a 401k that keeps you going for the rest of your life, but that's not really the same thing.

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