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Customer support is super important when the product is immature. It keeps customers paying, and it produces a list of issues, clients can even help you prioritize them (at least if your clients are other businesses).

Yes, once that program has been working for 10 years, it's likely that any bugs are easily worked around, but while the software is in development, it's likely there are no work arounds and customer support can take a beating from the customer and try to make the customer feel better, this stretches out the timeline for fixing the issues.


There could be physical businesses who's sole responsibility is to accept applications for banks and verify identity. It probably make sense for TransUnion, and similar to get into this kind of a business - validation of id for submission of forms.

Obviously this would be more expensive for the consumer. I think if we can put a credit-freeze except for such applications in person, there would be people who go for it; I would.


Like a notary?


That is the only topic my kid, who recently went to high-school brought up so far. She said her teacher talks endlessly about it, how everything is bad. I think we need to take a step back and think as to what it really means, and to whom. If we're talking about global scale, then sure, it'll be bad, but if we're freaking out our kids, you know the kids in the first world, well how bad is it going to be? We need to stop freaking the kids out and telling them they are doomed.


There's a podcast, by the name: 'Serial', in season two they go into regular courtrooms with non-fancy cases - fights, etc.

In one episode after the defendant has been found not guilty, the judge presiding over the case berated them for not accepting a plea deal, and wasting the court time. This is after the person has been found not guilty.


Is this typical in a normal court/with a normal judge? Or is this scenario an outlier?


This is, so far as I can tell from following legal news, very very very common[0].

[0] Examples: https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1090313239995400192


I'll take a look at them, but given the sheer number of cases judges see across the country every day, and the fact that such Twitter user "Dumb(Stupid}Hat" would probably not post the ones that are doing their jobs ethically and professionally, I don't see how this implies this is very very very common.


> and the fact that such Twitter user "Dumb(Stupid}Hat"

"Popehat" is a well known attorney, Ken White[0]. If he felt something was indicative, I would certainly believe him.

With that said, I don't know that he's trying to say that it is indicative so much as highlight interesting war stories.

https://brownwhitelaw.com/kenneth-p-white/


The whole season is to see typical courts and judges. This is just the most shocking thing that happened which I could tell in a short time, but there was some racism coming from judges, there is complete indifference throughout, they also speak of difference between paid and public defense attorneys.

I think it's best to not get fixated on that one event, and listen (if you listed to podcasts) to the entire season, which is apparently season 3, not 2 as I thought.


The American Justice system is dehumanizing.

If you never have been involved as a 'criminal' in the USA court system it's a really huge culture shock and extremely dismaying to be treated as human refuse for the first time.

Most of the time we spend our time surrounded by people who care about us in one way or another. Your friends, your family, your partners, etc etc.

Even out in public the people you meet tend to have a reason to care about you. They are serving you or you are serving them for money.. so you have some reason to care. Even if you don't know them personally and they are a complete stranger there is almost always some reason, typically money, to be polite and take them into consideration. Even if it's phony it's still caring to a certain extent.. otherwise why put the effort into even being phony?

But when you are in jail or involved as a criminal... They have no such reason to give a crap about you. It's their day job. They get paid the same whether you are there or not.

In the court system you are treated with the same regard by court officials as a janitor would treat a full trash can. You are something that needs to be dealt with before lunch.

Sure if you are young or cute or innocent looking and it's your first time.. then maybe a Judge would be bemused with you and give you a break... But by and large you are just a impediment between now and when they need to visit the restroom or eat a sandwich.

You could be innocent, you could be guilty. It doesn't matter. Whether or not you are treated fair or not it's not relevant to them. You are just part of a process that needs to be processed. A button that needs to be pushed, some paper work that needs to be filled out. Some statistic that needs to be entered.

........

You going to court for some crime may be the most important day in your life. It could mean the difference between spending the next few years of your life in comfort with friends and family... or being stripped of all your rights, dignity, money, career, car, property, house.. and thrown in jail for 6 months or a year and then leaving with no prospects to basically be homeless after dealing with a divorce.

But for the other people in court? Chances are they won't even be able to recognize your face or remember you name in a day or two. You don't even be a memory. You are less relevant then the guy that sold them chicken nuggets for lunch.

If you are wealthy you could afford a lawyer who does have a reason to care and will give them reasons to care because he knows the court process and knows how to make it a big PITA to just brush you off... But that is not really relevant for most Americans.

And on the Federal level they typically try to freeze your accounts so you can't afford a proper defense anyways. Makes their jobs easier.


> And on the Federal level they typically try to freeze your accounts so you can't afford a proper defense anyways. Makes their jobs easier.

Wait wait wait what? Surely this can't be true? What's the justification for this?


> Wait wait wait what? Surely this can't be true? What's the justification for this?

The stated reason isn't to deprive you of money to fund your defense, it's something like an allegation that the money is the proceeds of a crime or whatever other pretext. Which you might have been able to disprove if you had the money to hire a lawyer. But now you don't, which is really why they do it, and then you can't adequately defend yourself against whatever other charges they levy on top of that either.

They also commonly try to keep the money -- even if you're not found guilty of anything:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United...


> In the court system you are treated with the same regard by court officials as a janitor would treat a full trash can.

Is this really what you see while fulfilling your jury duty? I dare say it's not the common impression people come away from the courtroom with.


He is explicitly talking about the experience of the defendant.


I assume OP is talking about cases where there isn't a jury as well.


The majority of cases in the US never get a jury trial.


season three


Got a more specific reference? I'd like to hear that.



I meant more specific within the series, like a timestamp.


https://serialpodcast.org/season-three/2/youve-got-some-gaul...

Probably about halfway through the episode, maybe a little further.


Thanks.


Some people have fixed expenses, besides cost of living and other normal expenses which depend on your location.


Isn't a planet just a big spaceship with things built in? You can dig inside it for things, you don't need to capture asteroids, planets can travel through space and have a protective shield - the atmosphere, and Earth is already traveling at huge speeds, which are at very least on the level with the fastest spaceships we can currently make. Sure guiding a planet maybe harder than a spaceship made specifically for that purpose, but all the benefits of having resources right underneath, and planets are a proven space ships, with billions of years of testing, no man-made spaceship can match that for billions of years.


> planets can travel through space and have a protective shield - the atmosphere

Most worlds in our system don't have a significant atmosphere, most of those that do have too much of it. Like gravity, atmosphere also poses a problem for getting back to space.

> no man-made spaceship can match that for billions of years.

Not unmaintained, no, but if it was unmaintained that probably means everyone who lives there is dead anyway.


It's the difference of getting the gold medal vs being in the Olympics basically. Both are great, gold is significantly greater though.

For all the complaints that google and facebook and others get for collecting all the info on you, the nice part is when you use them, they show you exactly what you want. A company that doesn't collect your search/view preferences just can't do that.


I want to search for something in one place, and find it, no matter if it's in any of my gmail accounts, yahoo email, trello, git, google docs, my home pc or work pc anywhere. Basically, search though all my personal accounts.


Part of this functionality was a YC startup a while ago: https://techcrunch.com/2011/02/14/greplin-grabs-4-million-fr...


Does there exist a post mortem?


They got acquired by apple (greplin renamed themselves cue) for a reported $40-50MM.


I was more thinking about why the product failed, assuming it did.


Can you provide a specific use case? This is one of those products that seems like a true gap, but I have trouble thinking of many real use cases.


Sorry for late response. I usually take down notes, but don't always remember where I put them. They are usually organized into what makes sense, but if I later remember and want to go back to that topic, I may not remember where it was written down.

For example I may have an idea to do something, and that would be in google docs, but then I might have some tasks and put them into trello. By searching for the idea's name, I should be able to see both the original write up and the tasks in trello, and potentially any messages I wrote to other people about it.


Add "securely" to the features for this one. Because if it's going to log on to all your accounts, it has to have names and passwords for all your accounts. If it can be compromised, the attacker gets all your stuff.


Probably can't be cloud based then. I would never trust one single entity online with that much information about myself.

>inb4 Equifax

I have no control over what they do. Sad, but these are the times we live in. However, users should have control for the above idea.


Password reset functionality effectively gives this universal access to your email provider.


Not for services that enable 2fa.


I am actually in the early stages of building this at visifile.com

Doesn't work over the cloud so it's secure too


Just to add to your '2)', some of those drugs maybe illegal in US, but legal in other countries, so you could probably now get cheaper medicine which isn't FDA approved.


don't most sites claim they own data? Like could you legally scrape reddit and make your own site?


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