mcrae

> because Telegram is decades ahead in terms of UX/speed than any other messenger

I'm curious in what ways you feel Telegram so far ('decades') ahead of others? Honestly in my experience Telegram / WhatsApp / Messenger / Line / Kakao / WeChat (outside China) are all at feature parity

Because its unambiguous -- DD-MM-YYYY could be confused for MM-DD-YYYY

Don’t think so. I’ve used Korean, French, and Canadian cards with no issues in the US at gas stations.

Meanwhile, good luck getting gas or paying tolls in France without a French or other EU card.

French companies are also terrible at accepting non-French SEPA zone accounts. By law, they should accept all IBANs but their websites bork when it’s not French. Infuriating.

Isn’t price discrimination embedded in nearly every transaction we engage in, though?

What is the difference between price discrimination between classes of individuals (to your point, business vs leisure travellers), and individuals themselves?

Nearly every pricing guide on this site recommends offering an ‘invoiced’ pricing plan for enterprises for substantially more than the same service on credit card billing. Price discrimination at its finest and, I would argue, a good thing for suppliers to extra more of the benefit they are providing to consumers.

If the price of the Uber ride is higher than you value that ride... just don’t buy it. Otherwise enjoy the value you have extracted from Uber

Uh really? Check any list of the world's tax havens, and you will see the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, the Isle of Man, and Bermuda. The City of London has been a conduit through which wealth has been pilfered to these territories for a long time. They may shout from the rooftops about others' improprieties, but I seriously doubt their commitment to meaningfully overhaul their own house.

I reckon authorities have much lower-hanging fruit to exploit in order to detain you. This method seems to require too much trouble and too much competence to be useful for them.

I mean if they increased their prices by 10%, their sales quantity would certainly decrease. So to make that 10% revenue increase would take potentially a significantly greater price increase, substantially changing their value proposition.

Granted most studies show that demand for ridesharing is inelastic at current prices, it says nothing about switching to Lyft etc...

My girlfriend was speaking to her father (mid-60s?) who was complaining about what a pain in the ass it was to get his new iPhone configured. He had called Apple support who would come the next day, but now he had to go to Wal-Mart to pickup the giftcards to pay for the service.

Wait. What?

So I guess he had Googled for iPhone support and got some bogus phone number. Aside from the potential monetary loss, the scary part was that had they come to the house, he likely would have let them in.

The world and the way in which we do business changes quickly, and red-flags for some aren't red-flags for others. But I'm really curious what search term lead to the fraudulent phone number in the first place -- how are these platforms so gameable?

I wonder if this is a fake job posting to satisfy a Labor Certification [0] for a US Visa application.

For some types of Visas, the company has to prove that there are no qualified US workers to take the position. One way of proving this is to post a job posting and provide evidence that there are no qualified workers that have applied.

There is of course a perverse incentive to make the job posting extraordinarily specific such that only the intended Visa recipient could be considered qualified.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_certification

Even in India, Rs is used to denote rupees most often. If the rupee symbol weren't on the notes themselves, I wouldn't recognise it.

I'm not sure what you would've liked to have happen here?

Canada has a valid extradition treaty with the US. It was a lawful arrest of a person who violated American law.

Should Canada not follow it's own international agreements so that it can meet your standard of "standing up the the US"? Don't be ridiculous.

Yeah, and it is like the best delivery service ever. In urban areas in Asia, it is always less than 20 minutes. Occasionally it arrives in less than 10 minutes. Which is as close to instant as is possible. Mind blasting.

I don't even like the food but find myself ordering as it is just too convenient.

> I guess but that's not their business.

I mean my point is that it is a total show stopper for their business if they cannot have US apps on their store! Good luck selling a £800 Android phone in the UK with no Instagram! Or a $200 one in India with no WhatsApp.

Don't think it is that simple for a couple of reasons:

1) Without GMS, developers will need to fork their apps and reimplement everything they use Play services for today. That's non-trvial and I suspect a substantial number of developers would not be willing to do this.

2) Even if Huawei developed their own app store, IAP framework, etc, as I understand it the order in the US prevents Huawei from entering into any new business with US companies without a license. So, does that mean that FB, Twitter, et all would be prohibited from listing their apps? I believe so.

Mostly for business. Maybe some people are comfortable to Whatsapp you, but it's inappropriate for a lot of situations.

Also, in a lot of places you need a local number to get things done. Like when making reservations at restaurants or you leave your number in the POS to have them text when a table is ready, etc.

As it is, I have a dual SIM Android phone as well as an iPhone and have 3 postpaid plans in different places. Massive pain.

I’m totally with you.

The dream would be to have a single SIM which roams globally and to which you could attach multiple numbers from various countries.

Closest I’ve found is https://www.truphone.com/ but they seem not to offer individual plans.

Fairly common in Korean cooking from my experience? Usually some stew with tofu and pork and whatnot. Rarely is it eaten on its own except for banchan/side dishes.

Why is it nuts?

Last year Amazon did $10B in ad sales. That was double the year before. Google did about $130B for the same time period. Doesn't seem nuts to me that Amazon can grow their share of the pie quickly. They are #3 globally now.

For context, AWS did about $25B and everyone raves about how high the margins are there -- I bet the ad margins are better!

https://adage.com/article/digital/amazon-makes-quick-work-ad...

In the article, it mentions several times that Apple has rejected apps for linking to the web page to upgrade, or for even mentioning it is possible to upgrade (when IAP is not enabled).

Sure, but if another company with a $1T mkt cap is abusing it's market position to the detriment of a $30B company, wouldn't you want to hear about it?

After all, if they treat Spotify this way, how do you think they'll treat your app in the future if it happens to compete with them in someway?

Not sure I agree re: the seat being semi-private. Surely it must be expected that there is surveillance in general on airplanes? As there is in any other public transportation (train, subway, taxi, etc..)

I guess the whole controversy seems very knee-jerk and out of touch with the existing level of monitoring already on board the plane and in the airport.

What's the big deal, though? Its not like these devices are in your home -- they are in a public space that is well known to be heavily surveiled.

So I guess, even in the worst case scenario where these cameras were recording you, what is so different from the other 500x camera FOVs you step into during your journey? What am I missing?

That's an odd selection of cities you propose.. there's not even daily flights between some of those city pairs, let alone an a380

Just looking at Q4 results [0], looks like operating margins for the businesses are:

US Retail: 5% [$2,251 / $44,124] Intl Retail: -3% [-$642 / $20,849] AWS: 29% [$2,177 / $7,430]

Really striking diff between Retail and AWS biz.

Walmart, for what its worth, had operating income of $20B on $500B in revenue, so about 5% there too.

[0] https://ir.aboutamazon.com/static-files/a5035fcd-5646-45df-b...

I rented a place with AirBnB in NY once. I knocked on the door and the guy answered with a lit joint in his hand. Another was passed out on the couch. Gross, unclean bathroom.

But whatever shit happens. It was cheap so maybe buywer beware.

What was surprising was the flacid and uncaring support from AirBnB. They insisted on charging for time stayed (the evening of check-in) and refused to refund their fees and the cleaning fees. Why? Made no sense to me given Amazon's eagerness to make refunds for goods with actual COGS.

Haven't done it again since and I travel > 100 days a year.

I've thought about the idea of creating a 'global MVNO'. Like a plan with multiple foreign numbers being bound to one SIM, and being able to roam seamlessly and pay a fixed rate + reasonable usage fees.

For example, someone in finance could have a UK and US number on a single SIM, and easily move back and forth. Or the same for KR and JP or US and MX.

Not sure if there is a large enough market for that.

Despite everything else said, I’ve gotta say that there’s no better feeling than touching down in a new place, turning on your phone, and having it just work.

No stupid voip apps. No managing prepaid balances. No switching sims. Just direct dial and go.

Fi service is incredible for the mobile roaming alone and I’m not quite sure why nobody else can do it. I love it so much and it’s my favorite product. It makes a measurable positive impact in my life.

TMO only gives 2G internationally which, while it doesn’t sound terrible, it ends up being unusable in practice. Your experience may vary though I guess.

Labour might be priced in CNY, but most of the expensive bits in the BOM are from non-Chinese firms like Qualcomm, Samsung, and others and would be in USD denominated contracts most likely.

I think the issue in question is that these were areas that were originally not under the flight paths, but the flight paths were recently changed to put their homes under them.

So, perhaps they deserve some sympathy for the reduction in their quality of life and in the value of their homes?