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dbenn8 commented on Apple's requirements are about to hit creators and fans on Patreon   news.patreon.com/articles... · Posted by u/miiiiiike
danShumway · a year ago
Another point that Patreon isn't really emphasizing here that seems relevant to any conversations about "fairness" is that Apple's fees on Patreon subscriptions in-app are now higher than Patreon's fees.

It's important to recognize any time that we're talking about the market that services charge what they can, not what is fair. The market does not have a concept of fairness, only competition. This is why there is no such thing as a benevolent monopoly that charges fair prices - because fairness does not exist in the market, only competition.

BUT... since fairness gets so often brought into conversations about Apple's fees, often with the implicit suggestion that Apple "deserves" to be compensated for all of the work they're putting into hosting and curating apps and for (in heavy quotes) "creating" a market that they supposedly also don't have duopoly control over: does anybody want to argue that Apple hosting the Patreon app on iOS provides more value to Patreon subscribers and creators than the existence of Patreon itself does?

Like, if we're going to talk about what's egregious and what's not egregious, charging higher fees per-transaction than the platforms you are hosting seems like it might be a good indicator that things have gotten out of control.

dbenn8 · a year ago
As a small b2c low cost subscription app provider I was initially taken back by the fees of the app/play stores.

However, after looking at the competitive international payment processing and tax management solutions available, the fees started to make a lot more sense. Just the fact that there's no transaction fee on top of the percentage they take makes charging a low monthly fee much more competitive. Once you add in not having to think at all about how much tax to charge in each local, how to report on it, etc, the cost side became much more reasonable.

And the reduced friction and trust concerns for users when they know it's apple managing their financial data instead of a small business is pretty significant as well as others have pointed out.

Would I like to be charged less for all these benefits? OF COURSE. Is the service they provide to smaller businesses with under $1mil in annual revenue a decent ROI? I think it probably is.

dbenn8 commented on Cal.com: Open Scheduling Infrastructure   cal.com/... · Posted by u/nateb2022
ipaddr · 3 years ago
Fiction: Software developers develop whatever they want

Fact: Project owners decide features and project managers assign them to developers.

dbenn8 · 3 years ago
Grey area: Product managers/owners prioritize the backlog. Engineering has final say on what stories/issues they pull from that backlog based on their deeper knowledge of technical dependencies and similar phenomena.
dbenn8 commented on ReMarkable 2.0 – A digital notebook that feels like paper   remarkable.com/#What_Is_N... · Posted by u/punnerud
semi-extrinsic · 5 years ago
I'm slightly astonished (have been for a while) at the fact that no-one (as far as I know) have developed a Guitar Hero style e-ink sheet-music reader. Imagine how much easier you'd make life for kids learning how to play music! Software and hardware wise, it's got to be well within the realm of feasibility.
dbenn8 · 5 years ago
The Kala Ukulele app is a chords only version of this. It also includes videos showing how to play each section, and it plays accompaniment into your headphones as you play along.

I found it super helpful, and I believe it's based on technology originally developed for teaching guitar.

Not sure if it's open for programming your own songs in or not, and much of the library is behind a paywall.

dbenn8 commented on Robert Scoble and Me   medium.com/@quinnnorton/r... · Posted by u/strangeloops85
dEnigma · 8 years ago
I'm still not quite convinced about this. Sure, you might lose all inhibition and just do whatever you want. But that would mean that a drunken rapist wants to rape, even while sober, but usually has the power to control himself. A good person, in my book, has no urge to rape at all, no matter the level of self-control he can muster up at any given moment. Does alcohol really change someone's personality on such a level as to make someone suddenly want to rape?
dbenn8 · 8 years ago
The fundamental concept of good vs bad people is based on a presumption of a person under the fixed (as opposed to growth) mindset. The human brain is plastic, and it's urges are constantly retrained by experiences. Plasticity means that good and bad people do not exist. Only good and bad actions (and habits) do.

Regarding the urge to rape, it seems more useful to examine the underlying foundational desires. The primary desire that ends in rape is usually one for power or control. Often in a person who feels that they lack these things elsewhere in their life, to such a degree that they make the terrible decision of extracting this feeling from another person via a heinous act.

The secondary driver is sexual / procreation. Often, we have the desire to have sexual contact with an individual who doesn't currently have reciprocal feelings. Our pure biological drive is to procreate with every attractive mate (just look at other primates.) Our social contract enforces a set of parameters that prevent the strong from forcing themselves upon the weaker at will.

Within this framing, we can look at this from a more nuanced perspective. Every person will at various times in their life desire both control (even if just as a proxy for security) as well as sexual contact.

I think this gives some weight to the inhibition argument. If all people have these desires within them, those who are more powerful than others have a responsibility to keep those desires in check to the degree that the social contract dictates, or risk being punished by the society.

If alcohol or other substances dampen their inhibition to a degree that the desires above outweigh the threat of consequences from the society, then they do present a danger to other participants. I don't think it's about good vs bad people, but the decisions people make and the (dis)incentives enforced by the social contract. There is a subtler case where the inhibited presence may allow a perpetrator to more easily convince themself that a nonconsenting encounter is consenting, because human communication is imperfect, and even more so when we impair our faculties.

(I am not in any way condoning this as an excuse, but this argument seems to be made in the defense of most rapists who are high enough up the social ladder to be entitled enough to make it seem remotely plausible, and is particularly damaging to the survivor as it tries to paint them as complicit, at fault, or even fully in the wrong.)

As an aside, it seems that women in the society are finally having a moment in which to gain additional power as a group and hopefully create greater consequences for rape within the social contract. They have been treated as second class citizens in this for most of recorded humanity. It's an encouraging development for sure.

dbenn8 commented on Hackers Are Hijacking Phone Numbers and Breaking into Email, Bank Accounts   forbes.com/sites/laurashi... · Posted by u/CarolineW
drewmol · 8 years ago
Interesting. When two crimes both take similar effort to commit, and similar effort to investigate, I'm not sure if the higher dollar amount should be defacto prioritized.

I am going away from SMS based 2FA where I can. For services where it is used, anyone have opinions on using 2FA via a SMS to VOIP number with a provider who has better account security/authentication tools than most telcos (e.g. google, etc)?

dbenn8 · 8 years ago
I was using google voice for this for a while but if you are worried that someone may have access to your computer / email, then they may effectively access to your google voice as well. voice.google.com

u/dbenn8

KarmaCake day6August 3, 2016View Original