gms

(Polytomic co-founder here)

We automatically do the right thing depending on the situation. The type engine is highly-precise when we generate our own schema. For example, JSON objects and arrays get converted to native struct and array types in data warehouses (e.g. Databricks, BigQuery) rather than strings.

But we're forgiving in other situations where we don't control schemas. For example, we'll automatically convert a source string type to a date when mapping to a Salesforce or Zendesk (or other cloud app) date field.

(Polytomic co-founder)

Thanks for the kind words! Pleasure serving you.

Thank you! We're happy to serve.

Hello! Polytomic co-founder here.

1. All integrations are built on request (see instruction at top of this page to submit one: https://www.polytomic.com/integrations). We're able to turn them around very quickly (our record is two hours from request submission time).

2. Yes, though you can bring your own compute too. We have a self-hosted distribution that you can deploy to your own VPC using Docker and our Terraform module (see details here https://docs.polytomic.com/docs/on-premise-setup). Customers that are public/large enterprises often go for this.

If you want to chat over email shoot me a message at ghalib@polytomic.com.

No. Unfortunately wielding them is always an act of either ignorance or malice.

iMessage and FaceTime Audio are also free.

I don’t as I don’t know the numbers, but note also the US is a rich country.

Nobody uses iMessage outside the US, by choice, even in iPhone-dominated markets. So clearly it's possible to avoid it. US iPhone users have the same choice.

2.6 billion WhatsApp users exist. All switched from native SMS to a third-party app (WhatsApp). Clearly this expectation is fine.

I do this every day using WhatsApp.

I've been in data and analytics for over a decade and co-founded a consolidated-ETL company (https://www.polytomic.com).

Nice to see Tristan realising this (people should be commended for changing their minds). There were three problems with this term:

1. It mostly resonated with VCs and industry observers whose jobs are to peddle in buzzwords, rather than users who simply want their problems solved.

2. It was (and is) ill-defined. Ask a group of people in the industry to define it and you're guaranteed to get different answers.

3. It committed the cardinal sin of using the adjective 'modern' in a noun. At some point, everything today stops being modern. Couple this with (2) and your term is now even more meaningless.

At a mundane level there's no drama here: just another example in the long list of noise contributors to the free-money party that was going on during the Covid years (as the essay acknowledges).

Do you know why this didn't apply regarding JetBlue trying to acquire Spirit?

They do affect me - non-technical members of my family are on iPhones and I’m glad they can’t install malware by accident.

More generally, I don’t believe I nor anyone else should mandate anything about a private software company’s product roadmap (least of all spiteful bureaucrats obsessed with targeting American technology companies).

The precedent this sets is absurd. The market already provides a solution outside of arbitrary coercion: we all have the freedom to purchase other products.

Sure, but that's not the case with Apple. There are a number of smartphone manufacturers (even 'Android' isn't one category - there are many variants) and there aren't many laws preventing new entries into the market that can be sustained by potentially happy customers.

It's not like governments (which also have a monopoly on legal violence, something no corporation has) or political parties at all.

You can switch vendors any time (e.g. to Samsung, LG, Google, or any other Android/Microsoft variants). That's not the same as governments - that feedback loop is way longer. Especially with something as sprawling as the European Commission.

Given the size of Facebook's userbase and its revenue growth over many years, most people don't care about the tracking that goes on there.

That's clearly not the world most consumers want, otherwise they would have directed their money towards Android in the early days. They didn't.

For the minority who do want this world, again, there is a laundry list of Android variants they can buy.

Coercion implies the threat of violence due to non-compliance. There is no coercion here. Apple, Google, etc aren't governments.

Consumers are indeed able to decide for themselves: they can buy any number of Android phones from many manufacturers for a different experience.

For the ingesting bit, we (Polytomic) have an API you can use: https://www.polytomic.com/connect.

What’s the problem here? Seems like you found fine alternatives.

Understood - thanks!

Ah, I get it now. Thank you!

Is anyone successfully running LSH in production? The technique seemed promising ten years ago but I'm not sure if reality matched that...

We (www.polytomic.com) have an on-premise offering in parallel with our hosted version.

It's worked out fine for us (of course there are tradeoffs but for us they're manageable). Definitely requires an investment by people who know what they're doing as the article alludes to.

It’s not easy to start successful ventures. Most new ventures fail. Even the best VCs only have a 30% success rate.

Yes, completely unregulated would lead to that. We need laws to protect against coercion and adjudicate in the case of disagreements between parties. Warring tribes where physical force wins is not a good place to be.

You have it backwards. Regulation has gone up a lot over the last two decades which is why you're seeing what you're seeing.

Historically in America or current day in developing countries, the rate of growth in living standards negatively correlates with the amount of regulation.

I would like to see a list of costs of these regulations. Lina Khan never mentions it. Again there may be a fundamental lack of rigour that causes her to lose her cases so absolutely.

Yes, you point to another fundamental problem: central planning has a consistent record at making most of the populace poorer. It’s precisely because you don’t know the counterfactual that you should leave decisions to those with knowledge and skin in the game (ie market participants).

If Silicon Valley’s best VCs have a 30% success rate at picking winners, I don’t see how bureaucrats in Washington (whose salaries, modulo election season, aren’t even subject to consumer preferences given that they’re extracted by force from our taxes) feel so confident.

Finally, of course there is a fundamental axiom that is the root of the disagreement. I view government bureaucrats as our servants given we pay their salaries. I would rather consume services with private service providers as I please and involve the government to arbitrate disputes that come up.

PS The UK government did a nice job opening their cable market.

Then a new entrant will surface in the market, as happens in all such situations when there’s a free market.

I’ve never seen alternative firms not exist unless, like I said earlier, government regulations exist to make it harder for new market entrants to pop up (see eg investment banking firms or local cable companies in some regions). In a free society there are always a set of people eager to take advantage of existing vendor weakness.

I commend your exceeding politeness but it seems like this position is based on feelings of consumer harm and missionary zeal rather than rigour (including a lack of true acknowledgement of second order effects of this regulation - all regulation has costs). Yet here I am as a consumer speaking for myself otherwise.

Maybe this why Lina keeps losing her cases.

WhatsApp can’t figure how to make money -> Facebook buys them and can afford to keep them free -> consumers continue using them instead of losing access to a wealth-generating service (the third world is full of small businesses that run on WhatsApp and Instagram).

Still not clear to me why preventing this from happening is good.

How do you define ‘power’? Absent government regulation that can result in pathologies, a corporation only exists if customers are happy with its services. If Amazon makes me unhappy I’ll just take my money to alternatives.

No corporation forces me to do anything. They offer services and I’m free to buy or not from whomever.