There is so much promise here. Unfortunately, the author is horribly undermined by her own ignorance, and also, somewhat ironically, by trying to attribute larger aspects of internet culture to a specific group of racists, misogynists, and Trump supporters.
He makes no mention of how much money he saved by buying last year's model. I am seriously on the edge of buying a 2016 15" MBP, but with many reservations. I would definitely consider buying a 2015 model, but I'm having a really hard time seeing the value in it.
I can get a reasonably well configured 2016 15" MBP for $3100, and a reasonably "well" configured 2015 15" MBP for $2500. I just don't see shedding $600 as being valuable for what I lose. I'm stilling paying an Apple premium, and if I'm spending that much money on a MBP I want the current model.
Contractors milking their customers is an inefficiency introduced by privatization, because without privatization it doesn't happen... How state employees behave or the competency of the buyer is irrelevant.
Saying that the inefficiencies due to privatization are "approaching zero" is a bit disingenuous.
> The contractors knew it and would milk it as long as they could
That would be one of those inefficiencies introduced by part-privatization... So it's hard to believe it's approaching zero. Not to mention that you have no real basis for making that statement from personal experience alone...
It's interesting that you note the amount of waste in terms of money that you experienced (which is extremely anecdotal, obviously) and yet the publicly run healthcare systems are often substantially cheaper than the private ones in terms of overall cost.
You're pitching it to potential customers entirely the wrong way.
Most consumers of web content (>99%) don't care about this in any way. I mean, to be perfectly honest, I'm only mildly interested in exploring alternatives to the ad-supported web. I almost never see ads anyway.
You should be selling this as something that will give access to paywall content. That's it. Because that's the only possible thing that there is even a sliver of a market for. Recruit content providers (the bigger, the better), figure out how much they are currently making off paywall revenue, possibly sell at a loss to build a user base (and demonstrate traction to more content providers and possible investors).
Once you have a user base and demonstrated traction, allow future content providers (of any size and viewership) to join your "platform" and earn payouts based on viewership. Obviously, still target large, valuable content providers directly.
As the number of content providers grows, your value proposition grows.
As it is, you're charging $10/month for a service that offers less value than what most people get for free through AdBlock.
The real economics experiment is if people will pay more money for less value. The utility of "fixing the web" doesn't even come close to spanning the value deficit.
Yes, but the amount of difference you make at a company isn't directly proportional to the career value of making that difference. If you make a difference at a company with over 50% growth, that's almost always going to be more valuable to a career than making an equal difference at a company that's going to go bankrupt in a couple years. Similarly, making a small difference at a high growth company will arguably have more value than making a larger difference at a low growth, stagnant, or failing company - assuming your difference doesn't reverse that trend (which it likely wouldn't, regardless of magnitude).
I think it would also be hard to say that France lost the Second World War. The French government signed an armistice, but France was also part of the victorious Allies (with French units being involved in both the liberation of France and the invasion of Germany).
Oh, absolutely. This is freebie PR for everyone involved.
What I meant to imply is that the PR is only valuable because it is a musician with the brand value (and public presence) of Taylor Swift.
And, what I mean by that is that if smaller brand musicians complained (as I think would have been inevitable) nothing would change until a larger brand also complained (which would also have been inevitable).
So, without making a judgement call on this actual decision.
It amazes me that no one saw this type of reaction from artists (and the generally pro-artist consumer base) coming when the overall business plan was created. And that the concession was made so quickly...
The looming dark cloud of stable vs. nightly only looks like a dark cloud to those outside the Rust community.
The article that made its way up Hacker News awhile ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13251729) got pretty much no traction whatsoever in the Rust community.