I'm regularly a bit surprised at how many people don't even consider purchasing a la carte content or Blu Rays. For films it's often a pretty reasonable option for occasional viewing.
I loved my AstroCam as a kid. I think dad and I tried six launches. When a photo finally came out it was the best day. Thank you for sharing, a great reminder of how far we’ve come. Also of how short attention span has eroded patience during many of today’s prescribed “STEM” activities.
This happened to me in college. They never refunded my $7k balance. It was devastating to me at the time. The experience has played no small role in me becoming a cryptocurrency believer and advocate for the unbanked.
Easier: I can earn or spend real money 24/7 without anyone’s permission, at any age, in any location.
Faster: Payments settle lightning fast compared to ACH/Wires, permanently and internationally.
Better: I don’t need anyone’s approval to be “banked” and I don’t have to operate in fear of clawbacks. Programs are the ultimate unbanked, and that’s the “agentic economy” that is emerging.
No third party: Almost certainly as a user there are still third parties involved, this isn't (AFAICS and based on other discussions) a user facing chain (edit: correction, they do say the chain is public, but here I really mean user facing value: you aren't minting stablecoins, you have to get them from somewhere). At "envisioned" transaction rates you would in practice not be syncing the chain and interacting with it yourself in any meaningful way.
Settlement: chain settlement is different from financial settlement. Between clearing ends there will still need to be sufficient demonstration of KYC, exchange of some form of actual holdings and so on. Typically the attraction of /to stablecoins is that they're used to perform transactions ahead of movement of actualizable value in target currencies. A possible alternative model is that all invested parties sink actual value into a global sink fund backing the stablecoin that is sufficiently protected to ensure that it does not devalue. In practice organizations almost certainly aren't going to part with wealth on those volumes and will operate secondary private exchange markets and settlement in bulk to escape concerns of short term loss, leverage, inflation and many other dynamics.
Perhaps the author would consider open sourcing if they received financial compensation for their work to date? Crowdfunding or retroactive grants can liberate code.
Context: a big chunk of my 2024 income was from grant money to build open source software that I may have tried to monetize otherwise. It’s possible.
Sometimes you have applications that should not be able to access an entire database. There are other various scaling reasons, and PG extensions that can be helpful. But I agree that for small to medium sized projects, SQLite is highly underrated.
Uber always had cash options in SEA and still does in countries it continues to operate in, like India .
Each country has and always has a lot autonomy on features and services offered . Just their booking methods in different airports can have lot of variation , OTP workflows in geos with high no show rates , transportation options like motorcycles or Tuk tuk or public transit integration all are unique to many locations
Consolidation and exits happened for variety of reasons i strongly doubt it was ever because of product features or lack thereof
Cash is not only accepted but in specific Indian cities expected , I.e. the driver will call you and if you don’t offer cash they will cancel the booking or won’t show up at all .
Can you elaborate? In the U.S. you place an order and are quoted a price which you pay (typically with a credit card) before your order is sent for delivery. Receiving a call from the delivery driver about paying in cash would feel like an extra fee. In the situation you describe is no payment made in advance?
The commenter was talking about cabs and autorickshaws, not food delivery drivers.
Uber and others pay out on a weekly basis. Cabbies would rather have the cash now. And by cash, they mean a direct payment outside the app. Typically this would mean a direct transfer via UPI.
As you hypothesize it is about extra fees and renegotiating the price. Common tactics include asking more than the price shown on the app, or refusing to give change back,or pretending not to have any etc.
Many on-demand viewing experiences still play ads through atrocious “cable box apps.”
Entrenched cable bureaucracy disrupted by app culture. For the better.
Netflix also will some day be disrupted, as the wheel turns.
reply