I see this question asked a lot on almost all tech-centric places on the 'net. I think it's a decent example of the "thought bubble" that happens in tech circles both online and off. Where is it that these people asking the question actually _go_ - in real life - that they don't see many people talking via voice on their phones? I ask because almost everywhere I go or practically have ever gone since cell phones became ubiquitous, up to and including this very morning, I come across multiple instances of people talking on their phones.
Definitely. Text is good for “lazy” communication — so is email. By lazy, I mean, I sent you a text and you can respond whenever you like. But if the communication is real time - i.e. the sender expects a quick response and vice versa, voice call is usually better. In fact, unless I know the person very well, I usually send a text asking if it is a good time to talk.
They are VOIP calls. And many are outside the US. And it's not just the robocalls- but I can't tell you how many calls I get a week about extending the maintenance plan on my car.
And frankly, someone is buying this shit. Else they wouldn't call. I mean if 1 sale is made for every 5,000 calls they've made their money. Same with scammers. Who the hell is going to fall for a robocall from the IRS? A call that's barely in English, and comes from a local number? Obviously, somebody does.
There was also a push in the 90s to make a kind of "postage stamp" where the cost of sending an email was CPU, which would have had the same effect of prohibiting spam by making email too expensive to spam with. ISTR the guy who came up with that idea (or one of the guys) has had an interesting series of projects since. Can't remember much beyond that, though.
Too bad that didn't work out for snail mail. The post office got addicted to the income, gives them super sweet deals, so users are maximally annoyed while the post office grabs maximum profit.
It's just ridiculous that every shared mailbox (like an apartment) has a giant recycle bin next to it full of mailers.
I feel like more of that blame lies with the government as a whole than the post office in particular. They have to get innovative when they don't take Federal dollars, get dollars taken from them, have to fund retirement of their employees out further than other agencies, and can't close offices. It surprises me that it stays afloat despite active hindrance from the government at large.
This solution seems to be addressing a problem completely different from what the author is discussing. How would using a cryptocurrency solution reduce monthly fees for subscriptions? How would it help reduce the aversion to paying for previously free content? How would it help with bundling?
Can someone, anyone try to explain why Magic Leap keeps getting money thrown at them? Series D and not even a whisper of a product. What is going on in the tech industry?
There have been several articles over the past months about an upcoming launch and descriptions of the product. It's just that people here only like to discuss the funding articles because it's easier to cast doubt.
It seems reasonable to doubt that a company who have never publicly demo'd their product and who are facing an increasingly crowded marketplace with big name competitors (e.g. Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Apple, Valve) and who have been in stealth mode for several years, actually have a chance of justifying their valuation...
There currently is no AR consumer device. If they launch within the next 6 months, as rumored, they are in a very good position. That being said, I didn't say there isn't reason to be skeptical. Just that most people are oblivious to the leaks because it's easier to talk smack about them getting funding without a public product yet.
If they could launch a consumer price level AR device in the next 6 months I would agree with you.
However last I heard on the product front the price point that was being floated was $3000 which is way out of the consumer ballpark and into the business ballpark where hololens is already gaining traction.
The thing that surprises me about Magic leap is investors exuberance. Even if they totally nail the 1st gen. product they've still got a mountain to climb in terms of beating out well funded competition who are ahead of them in terms of shipping product.
Hopefully 2018 will see them finally ship, so people can move off speculation into evaluating what they've got...
Agreed. Many people underestimate the aversion of a large swath of the population to driving. Driving basically monopolizes your time and focus and exposes you to accidents. I don’t know if I know anyone who would rather drive if they could get to their destination in the same relative time, unless they’d need a car on the other end.
Oh goodness. Monopolizing your time is part of the value of driving, for me - it gives me something to do while I'm waiting to arrive at my destination!
Who doesn't need a car in LA though? LA has terribad public transit, if you are planning on renting a car on the far end you can probably afford to fly too.
You don't, but have little choice when it's foisted on you.
If you're a knowledge/tech company, would you let me put a device in your worker's workspace that emitted an annoying noise randomly ever 5-15 minutes, interrupting them and causing them to spend time regaining their focus on that ask they were working on? Probably not, but orgs are handing money over hand over fist to Slack for the privilege of enabling this.
Because it's the standard for communication at your company. I don't mind Slack, but I have co-workers who hate it, but don't really have a choice but to use it at least occasionally.
I actually really like slack for casual conversation, for non-blocking work comms, and for general info, I only dislike when folks expect urgent responses via slack. So I've adjusted my slack config to make it work wonderfully for the use case I prefer, and to work around the use case I don't.
Serious question. I think I do about 99% of my communication via text or other messaging