Lucadg

I meant sarcastic not satirical sorry :)

That reasoning seems to justify pretty much any business model even if it hurts more people than it helps with a salary.

I can't understand if this is meant to be satirical or not

OYO too, they raised 1.7 B.

Good point. Democracy works as its best when the masses are educated, otherwise it looks more like a dictatorship acting randomly.

I don't know about India as I haven't been there in years but that certainly rings true to me as I reached the same conclusion while staying in many other countries around the world.

They are experimenting with fees paid totally by Hosts now, as in Booking.com.

At the end it's always the guest who puts the money on the table but it may be less painful as you don't see it.

Ultimately the problem is that the fees are too high considerig the service provided by the platforms.

I can confirm that. We had to settle for a European fintech after trying many banks.

It feels like the banking system has its own rules and the Estonian government can't do much about it.

Yes. This happens a lot.

Often it's because the Hotels don't have an proper direct booking procedure in place and getting a direct booking is a hassle for them.

In many countries though they are not even allowed by Booking to give a cheaper price which shows the power they have.

It seems to have a central point of failure.

Not really uncensorable after all.

And not even open sourced.

If the government takes over the admins many people will be in trouble.

I actually think it's important to share that there are other ways.

We tend to follow patterns and being reminded that there is value in alternatives is precious.

I'm sure many founders think the vc funded startup is the only way to create a cool company as their parents thought that a steady office job was the only way to live a comfortable life.

As it turns out the juicy parts of life are where it's less crowded.

Could you elaborate?

- Facebook: you are going to lose the ability to set monetary policy anyway. That ship has sailed.

> Their PR attempts are absolutely pathetic but sadly seem to work on the masses.

I guess you just described marketing. It's frustrating but if you want to sell to non-niche markets, you need to lower the standards to make it work.

Legal ICOs are STOs and not surprisingly they have a hard time getting off the ground.

I don't like Libra but I wouldn't dismiss it just yet.

- Governments: We'll ban Libra.

- Facebook: Let us do Libra and we'll give you access to the financial transactions which otherwise would go dark with Bitcoin or Wechat.

Reviews have changed now and you can leave an overall rating (at least somewhere, they may be A/B testing). The reaction from Hosts has been negative. They should read your comment as they fail to understand the logic behind the change.

I don't have stats to back me up but many are arriving too from Western countries in search for a lower tax, lower salaries (except tech) great quality workforce, friendly business environment and so on. Cheap flight completely changed the perception of how far Bulgaria is from the rest of Europe.

It depends on the country but I agree. Being programmable money I expect better solutions to come in the future. This is a recent and interesting one https://blog.trezor.io/shamir-backup-the-revolution-of-priva...

You can put your seed words in a bank safety deposit box.

You'd keep in yourself a small amount of Bitcoin. You'd keep at home a bigger amount. You'd keep in a safe place the rest. Exactly as with cash.

I met him twice this year (I'm a patron and that gives access to his Happy Hours).

His views are pretty extreme but I suspect they will become more mainstream as the time goes by. Not that he will change his mind, but most of us will realize many of the things he says were right.

Yes, I think about this often and it appears to be a bug in the democracy system but any attempt to tie voting rights to knowledge seems to create even more bugs.

It always shows average prices to me when I insert people and dates, so it probably behaves differently according to users/markets or it does a/b testing.

I agree and this seems to be the main problem: we are losing privacy today but we will suffer most of the consequences tomorrow. So most of us are not aware of the real cost we're paying and unable to make an informed decision.

It could work. Airbnb does that and still kind of manages to control prices by favouring listings which conform to Pricing Tips in the search results.

OYO is baffling. They entered the vacation rental (Airbnb) market out of the blue in a massive way via acquisitions and partnerships and it's not clear how they plan to execute.

I'm looking at them and I'm completely at loss.

It certainly feels like the decisions are driven by finance and not value creation. Still, I'm trying to keep an open mind.

I can only assume that hiding the kidnapping of a prominent person for months is really hard. Also in a time of high distress most people probably preferred to seek help from the state rather than making the situation even more complex and stressful.

In the 80s there was a wave of kidnappings in Italy. A new law made it so that relatives bank accounts were frozen immediately and they where forbidden to pay. I don't remember the details but it was a wildly successful move.

They banned cryptography in Australia recently so we can't safely assume weird characters are safe neither.

Can the Hk government ban these? Honest question.