Yeah agreed. It’s something my wife and I have discussed a lot in the past few years esp. coming from families who actually worked with proper goods/materials. Working in/with software just doesn’t feel the same and like you, we have reached to similar conclusions and maybe, just maybe, if the stars align, in not so distant future, we kickstart the old family enterprise to build low volume, high quality products with guaranteed lifetime warranty (~20-30 years).
Couldn't agree more as a Torontonian. It didn't help that they conducted most of the discussions in bad faith with the whole "trust us with your data" approach when these were geniune concerns due to the amount of oversight and control they were provided.
I agree that this was a train wreck in slow motion. What is sad is I didn't see any significant open engagement with GTA's existing tech scene (did hear a lot of talk of it though). Maybe the VCs club had access but as a technologist, I certainly didn't. If this was happening in SF, there would be grass roots meetups all over the place, and a more serious focus on action rather than planning.
They did a series of town halls, funded a bunch of urban / tech meetups. Pretty proactive for a period. The townhalls were very... SF style, it didn't mesh with the local culture well. But I don't think they did a lot of work either, there's a pretty lackluster showroom and they put out some very middling concept sketches - not proper renders like you see in most smart city projects. Didn't seem like they were taking things seriously. A lot of words. Maybe too many. At least not enough right ones.
>There are still so many things that are ridiculously expensive in Canada for no rational (long term) benefit to either party assuming it was a real market.
I cannot find the link but no surprises when there was a report (from one of the EU organizations) that we pay the highest cell phone fees.
The high cellphone + ISP fees in Canada are a result of the monopoly the ~2-3 telecom companies were given by government a few decades back to "accelerate" broadband and mobile infrastructure development.
The only positive tradeoff we've gotten out of decades of paying 25-50% more per month than most countries is that our networks have been cutting edge. We got 3g, 4g, etc before almost everyone. But I don't attribute this to the gov, their investment was long ago, but rather the competence of executives being smart enough to maintain their monopoly without falling into the trap of falling behind as many monopolies do before being trumped by economic progress/tech (ie, see the taxi monopoly lack of tech investment before Uber/Lyft), and via the massive margins they get out of their monopoly pricing providing plenty of capital investment to prevent any sort of competition.
I doubt there are many countries with more than two or three competing networks. There may be a few more resellers, or even several dozens. But it’s just uneconomical to build the hardware five times over.
So how does that explain the high cost of our networks vs other countries? I'm not convinced a regulated oligopoly is the only positive option.
If anything it's only positive for:
a) the private friends of government who profited when the business was kept 100% Canadian
b) the intelligence agencies who were given plenty of access.
Most of the ownership capital went to a small group of millionaires and billionaires. Meanwhile the jobs/network/other taxable services would still exist in Canada regardless of the nationality of the original investors.
Plus the wireless networks continue to be very closely controlled in these companies favour. They only recently allowed a single competitor into the marketplace in Canada, Freedom Mobile, and they have the best pricing with tons of data. The main monopolies still have nothing comparable price-wise - their only edge remains their network investment which will diminish over time absent more gov intervention.
But even getting Freedom Mobile, which had plenty of foreign investors, to be a thing was a huge controversial, challenging, multi-year deal, which was extremely risky for its investors because the Canadian regulatory agencies were very close to nipping the deal under extreme political pressure from the entrenched companies.
I don’t know.. Maybe Canada requires these networks to serve even the rural parts of the country? That would seem to be expensive. Or they charged extremely high license fees. Those work like a tax, making the specific service more expensive, but allowing for government services or lowering your other taxes.
In any case, it seems like you are maybe focusing too much on conspiratorial explanations like corruption and sourveillance. I know it’s easy and somewhat satisfying to immediately assume bad faith, but if you always assume the worst, that is what you will end up with. Because if honest politicians trying to balance the complex and competing interests of a modern society somewhat fairly, and then get spit in the face whenever they meet someone in the streets, soon you will have driven out the honest ones, or their will to remain honest. Because why bother, when the reaction is completely disconnected from your accruing, anyway?
If they don't do their utmost to remain on top for their customers, they lose... and they have to be careful because competitors are constantly trying to get in. Sure, WIND (now Freedom under Shaw) and the like happened in the past ... but I'm in Sasktel region and it's very hard to compete with Sasktel. (better infrastructure and much lower pricing than any of the others ... but basically Saskatchewan only, although roaming seems to work anywhere well thanks to treaties between the companies)
I mean sure they can sit on the licenses they have and just keep pressure on (cough Telus) but ... they'll lose any moment new tech moves in, or competitors with the right backing.
I'm pretty sure that having "just" 3 networks don't explain the costs by themselves. My country has 3 networks and we have one of the lowest prices in EU.
What probably does make it expensive is big territory with little population density.
That's what it's become for me and my circle. Got my parents the older iPhones (6S) late last year and got the same for myself this month. I miss being able to access the local storage (one small hack I found was using the Firefox app local folder to store my files)
Of course you are and that's fair. Would it also not be fair to have these privacy settings available with any of the deceptive tactics mentioned in the report?
Android users are pushed through a variety of techniques:
Deceptive click flow
Hidden default settings
Misleading and unbalanced information
Repeated nudging
Bundling of services and lack of granular choices*
Deceptive click flow is the click-flow when setting up an Android device pushes users into enabling “Location History” without being aware of it.*
Hidden Default settings is [when] setting up a Google account, the Web & App activity settings are hidden behind extra clicks and enabled by default.
Third one is users not given sufficient information when presented with choices, and are misled about what data is collected and how it is used.
Repeated nudging is users being repeatedly asked to turn on “Location History” when using different Google services even if they decided against this feature when setting up their phone.
And finally, bundling services when for example if the user wants features such as Google Assistant and photos sorted by location, Google turns on invasive location tracking.
I would believe most of us HN crowd are fully aware of the pros and cons of such tracking and make our choices accordingly (using these tools/software/devices). However, for the majority (yes, they may not appear to be interested in privacy as yesterday's FB quarterly report shows), are they aware of how much data is being collected, how it could be misused, etc.? We, as a society, should do our part in pushing back against such indiscriminate tracking. No specific call to action. For my older parents, I have switched them to iPhone 6S and have gradually gotten older family relatives to do the same as well.
I would've liked it if they included photos and videos of these "deceptive" interactions. Instead they have this flashy video which basically is just showcasing the Timeline feature, and pretending it's some secret malicious data collection plan.
Do you doubt that the deceptive interactions they describe exist as described?
Most people do not realise how much data Google et al. collect about them, and are genuinely shocked when it is shown to them (even though, yes, it's an existing feature well known to you and most HN readers).
The video demonstrates both a) how much Google collects (which comes as a surprise to most people), and b) that most people are not aware of it (which apparently comes as a surprise to you).
> pretending it's some secret malicious data collection plan
Of course, there's the maxim that one should never ascribe to malice what can plausibly be blamed on incompetence. But sorry, if you find these repeated dark patterns throughout again and again, in apps that have been carefully designed and optimised by huge teams of people, then it is justified to speak of bad intentions.
I kinda doubt actually. Personal anecdote : I disabled location history about a year ago, and it almost never asked me to enable it afterwards, obviously they dialed it down quite a bit lately. Other claims are also hand wavy. They should include tiimestamped videos with build ids otherwise, it is horse manure.
> Do you doubt that the deceptive interactions they describe exist as described
Not so much that I doubt it, but just a piece of text is pretty subjective. I would like to see and decide for myself if it's deceptive. Not have someone's biased opinion.
> Most people do not realise how much data Google et al. collect about them
Most people also just blindly skip through the setup. There's only so much Google can do to force feed help onto users.
I actually have location sharing on with a significant other, and Google emails me about it every other week to make sure I realize my location is being shared.
> Most people do not realise how much data Google et al. collect about them, and are genuinely shocked when it is shown to them (even though, yes, it's an existing feature well known to you and most HN readers).
I was surprised (even though I should not be) when I saw how conveniently all my Amazon purchases and travel plans (flight reservations, check-in, rentals etc.) were neatly organized when I went to remove all my personal information. I understand the convenience (with Amazon - being able to track the delivery, flights - automatic calendar scheduling etc.) but oh boy does Google like to gather all the data forever.
I particularly dislike seeing buttons like "Make Google Better" that if pressed will turn on search history.
That pushed me to Firefox and "temporary container tabs" add-on. Now I _can't_ be logged in while using search, so I can't accidentally press some deceptive button that will turn on additional collection. When the tab's gone, so are all the cookies. But mail.google.com and the login domains load in a persistent tab so I can still use those.
A search link fixer add-on prevents capture of what I clicked from that search menu, and the resulting page opens in a new temporary tab separate from the one I searched Google on originally. It's a second layer of separation so that I don't have to depend _just_ on ublock/umatrix to prevent what's sent back from resulting tab from correlating.
Still not perfect, but it makes me feel more comfortable. I still don't feel comfortable enough with results from DuckDuckGo to use it by default, but it has been getting a lot closer.
Great suggestions here so far and a common thread I noticed is leveraging platforms such as Slack/Gmail/Trello/Shopify etc. - essentially an B2B platforms. My friend and I currently run cardsync.xyz on Trello which allows Trello users to sync their cards and it generates under $1000/month. We spend about 2-10 hours a week on it.
You will be at the mercy of these platforms when (not if) they decide to change their rules but until then, it can be a good source of side income.
Did you mean to say "just under $1000/month"? It seems kind of strange to claim that you make under an amount, because technically $0/month is under $1000, and "actively losing money" also counts. Just curious.
Thanks. We had a free trial version for about three months and then started paid plans based on customer demographics around last summer. So it's been less than a year. Note that I'm based out of Toronto and my friend in South America.
As the article mentions, there are many players in this area and time will tell how Kickstarter leverages their brand to succeed, especially as it is an invitation list only (for now).
Some interesting thoughts from Perry Chen (Kickstarter Co-founder and Chairman):
“If you look at a lot of companies, it’s COO, CMO, blah, blah, blah,” Chen said. “But look at a museum. You might have a CEO or director, but then you might have a curator. There is a very specific articulation of roles and lanes, and I think that’s really necessary for Kickstarter, trying to be a different kind of company over a long period of time. If you have operators coming with the classic business playbook, I don’t think we’ll be able to sustain our focus on our mission.”
As for comments regarding the name, you get an idea of why they might have leaned towards drip. On one of the artist's page [1], you see there are different tiers for supporting his project:
Sure, but they're still terrible (and IMHO somewhat off-putting) tier names. Nothing about the drip branding is making me consider using it, given that I already back a number of people on Patreon. (Of course, there's more to a product than branding, so we will see -- EDIT: as somebody else mentioned, Kickstarter being a PBC does make me more inclined to support this, despite its bad branding)
