38,253 karma · joined June 2, 2011
Customer "inertia" or "lock-in" might be better terms to describe what the company is looking for in an acquisition.
Their ideal customer may well be someone who's forgotten they have a subscription on credit card auto-pay.
The execs at Bending Spoon buy these SaaS services on the cheap, cut costs, jack up prices, and milk remaining users for as much cash as possible for as long as possible.
Rinse and repeat. The goal is to generate the highest possible rate of return on invested capital in a law-abiding manner.
Yeah, it sure feels true.
There's even a book about it, you know, to help people cope with it:
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691276786/on...
Apple and Google have spent untold amounts of money developing iOS and Android. CarPlay and Android Auto are really nice.
Tesla has spent gobs of money on its touchscreen software too. It's the only native car touchscreen UI I've tried that feels smooth, snappy, responsive, simple.
I've tried the native touchscreen UI of quite a few US and European carmakers. All of them fall short. They feel janky, clunky, obtuse.
Physical buttons are much, MUCH cheaper than high-quality touchscreen software.
General audiences reading only the title, or coverage of it in the media, will immediately understand it, without having to read or think too much about it.
The author looks credible:
https://philipmaymin.com/about-philip
Thank you for sharing this on HN.
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To the mods: The title needs to be edited to replace the equal sign with not-equal.
Please don't attack a straw-man. I've never met anyone who believes extreme inequality is a good thing on its own.
However, I have met plenty of people who believe capitalism, combined with a safety net and democratic institutions, may not be great, but is definitely better than all other alternatives that have been tried in the past. No other system has produced significantly better societal outcomes.
Me too. That's one of my questions. The other questions I have are about the shocking misuse of funds.
Whether the form was debt issuance or unpaid accounts payable, the rest actually was borrowed.
It's kind of an "impressive accomplishment" in my view.
Venezuela's economy has been a disaster for many years.[b] Surely I'm not the only one wondering:
Where did all that borrowed money go? If any of it had been spent to buy goods and services inside Venezuela, it would have led to at least some business formation and activity. Instead, there's only been business destruction and constant crisis. It's kind of incredible that the country has nothing to show for all the money it borrowed.
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[a] https://www.ft.com/content/b7f25ca2-827c-40f9-ab1a-57067d8ec... (paywalled)
People like the OP, Justin Poehnelt, who build cool things out of self-motivation that others find interesting and want to use, are now at the mercy of those inside Google who care more about the company's internal bureaucracy and their own role and importance within it. To them, the fact that the OP's project was an instant github hit meant nothing.
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EDIT: Others here are saying that Justin released his code with Google's branding without asking for approval. If that's true, it wasn't right of him, and his firing was justifiable. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48650310 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48650192
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Now, the hoax has taken a life of its own on the Web, with waves of naive people believing its silly made-up claims about scientists working in certain fields mysteriously disappearing.
The hoax has even made the HN front page.
Sigh.
Fantastic work, instantly valuable, immediately usable.
A big THANK YOU to the authors:
Jack Zhang, Noah Amsel, Berlin Chen, and Tri Dao
Here we have the opposite: In the land of the one-eyed, the blind are leading.
The blind in this case are all those executives and managers who don't understand much about AI's current potential and limitations, and so far have treated it like a magic button that will solve everything. The one-eyed are rank-and-file employees who maybe sort of know a little more about AI.
When I do take Uber and Lyft rides, I ask the drivers how much they're getting paid, and the amounts they tell me are often 30% to 60% less than what I paid, which is a bit shocking to me.
At some point, Uber and Lyft stopped being service providers that charged riders a fee for value provided. They have become market makers that squeeze as much trading profit as possible by arbitraging the prices riders are willing to pay and the rates drivers are willing to accept. I imagine they are capturing most of the value in each ride today. It's perfectly legal, but let's call what it is.
I'm not surprised about the ride-share driver union.
User: "What's the best way to fix this problem I have?"
Chatbot: "I recommend buying this shiny thing here." (Next to it, there's a near-invisible light-gray "ad" notice.)
Let's hope I'm wrong.