Yeah already saw that.
What I found most disappointing was the response of customer support, which rather than trying to understand customers' problems and responding assiduously, flatly give out a non solution (use cards that work) and provide zero alternatives or an extension till they resolve this issue.
After reading multiple raving reviews here and elsewhere, I decided to use Backblaze for remote backups.
This Feb, my payment (auto debit via CC) failed, and upon logging in could not figure out any other way to pay.
I soon received an interesting email from them ( https://i.imgur.com/p19SaFX.png ) which said they do not support Reserve Bank of India (RBI) 's e-mandate policy and advised me to use a card which does not include e-mandate. European customers have a similar issue due to 3D Secure.
I as an Indian citizen only have RBI authorized credit cards, which have been on e-mandate since late 2021. I have faced a similar issue with card auto debit on other websites as well due to this policy, however they all support alternate payment methods.
Backblaze does not, and has provided no alternative since this cropped up 2 months ago. Customer support has no solution as well. I just received an email that failing further payment, my account will go poof next month.
How a company running a critical service such as backups can screw up so badly regarding a fundamental business requirement such as billing is beyond me. They will simply cease operating for almost all European / Indian customers in a little over a month's time.
Even if they manage to dig themselves this, not sure one can trust them enough to continue being a "going concern".
This reminds me of this quote from one of my all time favorite books, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency :
<quote>
The Electric Monk was a labor-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder. Dishwashers washed tedious dishes for you, thus saving you the bother of washing them yourself, video recorders watched tedious television for you, thus saving you the bother of looking at it yourself; Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe.
</quote>
Completely agree, did it in a few countries and truly enjoyed the freedom of stopping anywhere I wanted, wherever I encountered beautiful surroundings, and staying as long as I wanted, not to forget enjoying the place on my own rather than among a busload of fellow travelers.
Must say though that the Swiss certainly make this much easier to do with their excellent public transport and the Swiss Pass, which is your single ticket to go almost anywhere in the country including trains, buses, subway, boats and even cable cars! In the few cases its not included, you get a discounted rate. However parts of the country are so lovely that hiking through them is the only way to truly appreciate their beauty!
In India, you can book an appointment for MRI scans at private clinics the very same day or at worst within 1-2 days. Costs about USD 100 or lesser.
There is also this startup - https://qure.ai (Not my employer, I know someone who works there) which has already automated the report generation part for several classes of X Ray / CT / Ultrasound scans. This takes away the requirement of having a trained Radiologist to go through the scan and then create a report, which certainly helps in scaling the availability of such scans - you just need the machine and trained staff to operate it, and are not dependent upon having a doctor with a postgrad in radiology to write the reports.
In India, apps like Google Pay (which runs on UPI platform) require you to first unlock the app using your screen lock method and then also require entry of a pin to confirm any kind of money transfer.
This is a false assertion.
I have gone through sample birth certificates of multiple states in India, I did not find any of them mentioning caste.
Caste certificate is a separate document, issued only upon application, which can then be used as proof for applying for reservation benefits.
Completely agree with what you say.
To get through the inertia during the pandemic, I finally got started with reading Upanishads and ended up reading 6. A lot of content may not make sense, but there were such absolute profound gems of wisdom that I was astonished how someone sitting in a forest thousands of years ago could go into the depths of thought in order to produce such deep insights.
A few years down the line I hope to enter into a guru-shishya (teacher-disciple) regimen to understand more of it, the way it is supposed to be learnt.
For those interested, Aitareya Upanishad by Swami Chinmayanand would be a pretty good book to get started with, it has commentary which most of us should easily understand.
There may be some truth in the "too woke for normie crowd" allegation.
Earlier this year, much before the bad news went global for Netflix, Reed Hastings said this about experience in India during an earnings call:
"The great news is in every single other major market, we've got the flywheel spinning. The thing that frustrates us is why we haven't been as successful in India. But we're definitely leaning in there,"
The general opinion in India is that unlike Prime Video India and Disney Hotstar (Disney Plus' Indian avatar) which created a lot of good local content which served the interest of masses and hence achieved success, a lot of Netflix' local content mostly served the tastes of a sub-segment of the well earning, well traveled elite crowd (read "woke") from the bigger cities like Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. Apparently this was because the local producers came from the same group and were not tuned to the tastes of the country at large (or even the affluent segment at large). Many of them have since been fired and Netflix India has also gone ahead and reduced monthly subscription for the standard plan to only INR 199 and a new mobile only plan for only INR 149 (~ USD 2). Has not made much of a difference in the past few months though.
My mum had started using a desktop at work (Windows) for the first time in the mid 2000s (she was ~50 at the time) which was used for basic work like creating / editing documents / spreadsheets and emails/browsing. She used to find it challenging to use and usually got her work done by subordinates.
Around 2008 I got myself a new personal laptop and gave her my old one (2003 compaq, setup with Ubuntu) and taught her basic usage during a short trip to home. She picked it up quite well and managed to do all her work on her own, and even used it for general browsing. She continued to use it till around 2015 when she retired and decided to live with us. It functioned just fine even then without slowing down like a typical windows machine, even though the battery had basically become useless and it needed to be plugged on to be used.
Recently we emptied our old home (set to be sold) and she got that laptop back. It still functions the same way, though she has no use for it now as she's used to smartphones/tablets so its set to be donated.
Haven't really watched any Korean TV series yet except of course Squid Games, but I've been hooked to their movies since I first saw My Sassy Girl ( https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0293715/ ) nearly 2 decades ago. Having not been exposed to any Asian cinema except the typical Jackie Chan / Bruce Lee Kung Fu movies, this was quite a revelation as it really appealed to typical Indian sensibilities. Remember re-watching it with family members who were one generation older and they loved it too.
Since then I have been exposed to far more quality Asian cinema especially from Japan but haven't experienced the kind of connect one gets from a Korean film, be it a crime thriller, romance or typical drama. Not sure whether those brought up in the West have the same level of connect though.
On a further note, its great to get exposed to such variety of International entertainment via Netflix et al, who have really leveled the playing field when it comes to distribution.
Again, generalization.
What you're talking about mostly refers to small time sites with maybe not more than few dozen orders a day.
Typical ecommerce businesses (usually the kind with at least 100s or 1000s of orders a day) write their own code rather than using WP plugins.
As far as PCI DSS goes, there are multiple levels. Even at the tier 2 Indian ecom company I used to work at, we did not store any card info, it was just submitted in an iframe rendered by the payment gateway. And even then we were subjected to annual/semi-annual security audits (this was in addition to quarterly external security audits we ordered ourselves apart from typical OWASP top 10 checks performed by QAs in weekly sprints).
Looking by the number of replies to this it possibly could be a viable side project with a few added premium features like notifications for downtime, data breach reports, etc etc...
In India, this is being dealt with in a different way. Amazon India and Flipkart (controlled by Walmart) are treated as a "marketplace", ie providing a platform for other sellers.
There are strict rules to limit domination of a few sellers on the platform (limits on percentage of sales by each seller). Neither of the two companies are particularly happy about it so probably it works to some extent.
I found these critiques soon after reading the book. However, there are many other researches cited in the book and I would take them on face value for the not very scientific but somewhat valid (for me) reason of personal experience.
I got into the habit of all night slogs right since high school and it persisted till recently due to the pressure of sticking to deadlines. So I could relate well to several experiments cited in the book.
Considering we do not know nearly as much as we ought to know yet, I would rather err on the side of caution and give far more importance to sleep than I have previously.
Its not just short breaks. Effect of a good night's sleep are almost magical in this respect.
Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker is filled with examples on how sleep plays an outsized role in our lives.
One relevant example from the book that comes to mind is an experiment where they instructed some college students to type out a particular sequence of characters on a keyboard and then measured their performance across two days. The group which had a good night's sleep had dramatic improvement in their typing coordination overnight.
Apparently the author got an insight to pursue deeper into cognitive effects of sleep after a chance encounter with a pianist after a speech he gave on benefits of sleep, where the pianist told him how he struggled with new compositions on evenings and then magically gets them right after a good night's sleep.
