josai (u/josai) - Readit News

josai commented on Apple Stole My Music blog.vellumatlanta.com/20... · Posted by u/panic

dbalan · 10 years ago

Maybe in the US - but its not outside. I've been trying to play this streaming game for now

1. Spotify - doesn't allow you to buy premium (which is availble worldwide) if you have a non-US credit card.

2. Apple Music - is available, but I use a linux laptop.

3. Rdio - shutdown.

The vast majority of preference of the the people how they enjoy their music makes put "friendliest DRM" in the leagues of Unicorns.

josai · 10 years ago

> Spotify - doesn't allow you to buy premium [..] if you have a non-US credit card

Huh? I assuredly have spotify premium on an Australian credit card, and I know people with it in other countries too. Spotify isn't even a US company.

josai commented on Show HN: Kikked – check if any of your NPM repos is trademarked github.com/parro-it/canib... · Posted by u/parro-it

kedean · 10 years ago

That rule usually only applies if the word doesn't have other valid uses. For example, 'cracker' is a racial slur for white people, but it also means an edible snack, so it's in the clear. To my knowledge, the word 'kike' does not have a non-offensive meaning, at least in the english speaking world.

josai · 10 years ago

But no-one said "kike". You guys regexed it out of a larger word, a totally reasonable word. My point is that no-one but you would even have that word in their regex, so it's wrong to get all upset about it.

josai commented on Show HN: Kikked – check if any of your NPM repos is trademarked github.com/parro-it/canib... · Posted by u/parro-it

josai · 10 years ago

Without wishing to otherwise get involved at all, I'd like to say that as an Australian native english speaker, I have never heard of the word "kike" or that it is apparently a slur against jews. Why would anyone else in the world know that?

I have nothing against jews, but it pisses me off that some local slang is elevated into a global "character sequence you can't use", so long as that slang originates in NYC. Imagine if every other city had that privilege; we wouldn't be able to name anything.

josai commented on The New China Syndrome: American business meets its new master harpers.org/archive/2015/... · Posted by u/pron

adventured · 10 years ago

China is no more the new master today, than Japan was in 1992. The exact same things were claimed about Japan back then. Comically, the timing was exactly wrong, just as it is now: this is the end of China's boom, not the beginning.

josai · 10 years ago

Aren't you forgetting the small detail that China is literally ten times the size of Japan?

Even if your claim is true, and you don't present any evidence to that effect, the order of magnitude size difference makes it rather a different ball game.

josai commented on How to Pick a Front End Web Framework fse.guru/how-to-pick-a-fr... · Posted by u/g4k

onewaystreet · 10 years ago

Or skip all that and go use React and Webpack.

josai · 10 years ago

React is a library, not a framework. What's your router? What's your model? What's your buildchain, how do you deploy, how do you do ajax requests, etc etc etc?

Facetious comments like this help nobody. There's not a site in the world "just" using react + webpack. And I say this as someone who works with a react and webpack site.. oh and backbone, and gulp, and rsvp, and requirejs, and another 70 lines in package.json.

josai commented on Europe’s Distorted View of US High Tech mondaynote.com/2015/09/07... · Posted by u/chmars

tragic · 10 years ago

> Apple invented the smartphone

No they didn't.

> (and the tablet)

No they didn't.

> Facebook coined the concept of social network.

No they didn't.

In fairness, the iPad was the first tablet to matter all that much, if not the first tablet as such. But seriously now. Blackberry? Myspace? These were enormous and important businesses (BlackBerry still is). Hell, you could date social networking back to usenet if you wanted. It would be nice if people writing "mythbuster" articles did some elementary fact checking.

josai · 10 years ago

> > Apple invented the smartphone (and the tablet)

> No they didn't

While you're technically correct, the iPhone was such a leap over any previous effort that it basically redefined the meaning of the word. If you showed an iPhone 1 to someone today, they'd at least recognise it as an (old) smartphone. A blackberry from the same era? I very much doubt it, and frankly I'd agree. The word now means "iphone 1 or better".

You're right about myspace though (and friendster before them)

josai commented on America’s once magical, now mundane love affair with cars washingtonpost.com/sf/sty... · Posted by u/DLay

josai · 10 years ago

The article touched on smartphones, but I think missed a point - a huge part of the recent "acceptability" of public transport is that people have got something to do during their trip. In fact I kind of get the feeling people almost welcome bus/train trips now as a chance to get in some uninterrupted "phone time"! Previously, unless you brought a book, riding public transport meant a long look out the window. I think that's huge.

josai commented on Fixing Twitter dcurt.is/twitter... · Posted by u/rkudeshi

josai · 10 years ago

Interesting that no-one has mentioned weibo, the chinese "copy" of twitter (hint: it's not actually a copy). I think weibo is a fantastic product that's ahead of twitter in many respects.

Just off the top of my head, weibo has:

- the "event" grouping that dcurtis mentions and a better topic grouping system ("micro topics")

- rich multimedia as a first class citizen (photo galleries especially are very popular)

- payments built-in - you can donate to or pay anyone on the platform. This is especially used in time of disaster. Weibo escrows the money for a bit to make sure the recipient is legitimate, btw

- properly threaded conversations, easy to follow

- a much more fleshed-out verified account system and the dev integration to connect companies to the system

I'm aware that what works in china may not work for twitter, but looking at what they're doing seems like a pretty good starting point.

josai commented on China factory activity shrinks to six and a half year low as orders tumble reuters.com/article/2015/... · Posted by u/tokenadult

rm_-rf_slash · 10 years ago

This is a good point. As I stated, Chinese do enjoy Chinese products. And it certainly could have a halo effect with global consumers.

However, the question becomes which kind of product. I'm reminded of a popular "China's Got Talent"-style of show that included audience participation and voting, which the government shut down because it made them uncomfortable with the idea of regular people getting used to democracy. That's the kind of thing that chills cultural development, especially when an entrepreneur has to consider the possibility that huge sums of time and money spent on their passion could be flushed down the toilet because the communist party disapproves.

This would not be as much an issue for engineering products, and few I think dispute China's capability to innovate. I just don't believe global consumers will choose China over USA, Europe, Japan, South Korea, and so on.

josai · 10 years ago

> I just don't believe global consumers will choose China over USA, Europe, Japan, South Korea

That seems pretty short-sighted. Maybe you're quite young, but 15 years ago korean cars had a shocking reputation, and japanese 20 years before that. 10 years ago I wouldn't have even considered a crappy cheap korean television, now LG and samsung are tier-1 brands. And subjectively the label "made in china" doesn't have the negative ring it seemed to just a few years ago.

Consumer sentiment can change pretty fast.

josai commented on Spotify's new privacy policy angers users bbc.co.uk/news/technology... · Posted by u/martin-adams

TIM2014 · 10 years ago

Ditto for me. I love Apple Music. I canceled my Spotify subscription prior to this news after using Apple Music and finding it more then satisfied my needs.

josai · 10 years ago

Quite interesting to see how different experiences people can have with Apple Music. Mine is that it's a disaster - even with the latest updates I have "synced" songs which simply won't play, synced songs which have been somehow misidentified and the track that plays is wrong, random songs greyed out in albums, band pages listing the wrong songs - I could go on and on. It's literally unusable.

I'd love to be able to use one service that "solves" music for me but Apple Music isn't even close and I'm astounded at how botched the release has been.

So yeah. Your mileage may vary... quite wildly, apparently!