nocoder

What is the main reason that make these devices so expensive? Is it low demand? complex technology? or something to do with patents?

Not sure why you are being downvoted, maybe IT cell is here too. But it is true, Golwalkar took inspiration from Nazi ideology of racial purity.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashtriya_Swayamsevak_Sangh

Reminds me of Tilly from Paper Menagerie!!

They are beautiful outside me. When they were inside me they were very painful. The feeling of passing them via urine is crazy pain worse then getting kicked in the nuts.

This is pretty interesting. I am from India & you can observe something similar in India with a lot of people not all. We are not the most anal about being on time & most meetings never start on time. Parties or group dinners will never ever start on time. There is this thing called "Indian Stretchable Time", a funny variation on IST. I always wonder how much of this has to do with our cultural concept of time. As per Indian mythology, time is not linear but circular, there is a cycle of birth & death till you attain moksh (salvation). The other thing I notice vs. west is that people in Indian offices chat with coworkers a lot more.

I have worked with e-commerce related companies so I can offer some perspective here.

The battle in india is far from settled, it is important to look category wise. Moreover in context e-commerce one should not ignore alibaba backed paytm which seems to be working on a super app strategy and big basket which is into grocery.

Website visits- Amazon seems to be ahead. From Jeff's shareholder letter - "Amazon.in is the fastest growing marketplace in India, and the most visited site on both desktop and mobile, according to comScore and SimilarWeb. The Amazon.in mobile shopping app was also the most downloaded shopping app in India in 2017, according to App Annie. " This does not include numbers for Flipkart owned myntra I think adding that might take Flipkart ahead since myntra is the biggest in fashion. Moreover play store might not give a complete picture since many devices come pre-installed with apps in India, my phone had Amazon app pre-installed which will not count towards play store download.

Mobiles - This currently the biggest category in e-commerce. Accounting for 60-70% of sales. Here they are neck to neck but it is hard to make out clearly since e-commerce is heavily driven by exclusives and brands like Lenovo and Xiaomi are playing them against each other.

Fashion - Myntra owned by Flipkart is ahead here. Amazon is catching up but is challenging to match a vertical player in user experience.

Electronics - I don't think there is a clear leader here. Due to logistical challenges for major brands it is still convenient to buy offline apart from some sales period when discounts can be really high in e-commerce. Of late though lot of offline stores are ready to match the ecom players, I saw this while buying TV plus they had faster delivery and installation. This might play out like mobiles with lot of Chinese brands who don't have offline networks competing on pricing and using e-commerce for distribution.

Grocery - Amazon has a lead over Flipkart. It has multiple plays like Amazon now, Pantry etc. Flipkart is piloting a model similar to now in bangalore. The competition comes here from alibaba backed big basket which also has perishables and in my personal experience provides better service vs Amazon. Walmart might give a boost to flipkart here with its expertise in grocery. However unit economics are worst in this category. High weight low average selling price means shipping cost eat up a lot of revenue.

Video - Amazon has more users than Netflix. The challengers here are Jio with it huge base, cheap data and good library and hotstar with its biggest strength being Indian TV shows and live cricket and football. This is extremely nascent in India so every network has their own app but these two + Netflix seem the most likely to be around for long. Netflixs pricing in India is pretty high so will be mostly used by the affluent sections and not mass.

This deal was unusually public. I think Amazon was never seriously into it. The valuation is insane plus Amazon would have run into some antitrust issue plus this being an election year in India, government might act tough against such acquisition. The good thing with Walmart is that there might be more sanity in the market since it is a listed company and can't just burn VC money.

Blaming strava is absurd. I am a strava user and privacy setting on all my runs by default is that routes are hidden. I have to manually go and edit the run to make it visible to public. As long as strava used the data available publicly I don't see as their fault. It is ridiculous to blame them. I find the privacy setting on strava clearer than any other social network but if military personnel for the sake of vanity end up posting their run publicly then there is anything strava can do. Even without the routes data released by strava, I can simply hover over iraq or Syria and see the running or cycling routes. This feature actually has been of great use to me while traveling.

I don't think Google search will be beaten. I think the whole current concept of search by going to specific URL/app, seeing a list of search result will become obsolete. We are already seeing that with voice based UI where you want an answer not a list of pages. The second part will be that lot of stuff that you care about will be known by google/Alexa and will be readily available so no need of searching. This also is already happening with google launcher on android where things like news and score about my favourite teams, travel times to airport or workplaces being shown nearing the time of travel along with routes so I don't have to search for any of these. This can be further integrated with a cab being available just when you need to leave. All of these earlier would have involved some kind of searches.

iMho this will be the natural progression. So if you are creating a better google search please stop you will be out of business before you start. This is no longer about standalone search but a larger ecosystem around the information needs.

To me, one of the indications that Indian IT is out of ideas & unlikely to move up the value chain was a string of stock buybacks this year by all major players. I believe a company invests in stock buyback when it feels that it does not have any other better uses of the money. Basically, they dont have/ can't find avenues to invest money where the shareholder growth will be much better than buyback.

This is going to be tough. The competition in payment ecosystem is pretty hot in India. You have Alibaba funded paytm with about 250 million users. They provide digital wallet services which can be used for buying anything from flights tickets to electronics online or paying for Uber. Apart from that they are also present offline, you can but grocery or even tea with that. Additionally they also have payments bank licence so you can have your bank account there itself. Then there is Jio money funded by India s richest man which also operates in telecom and has roughly 100 million users, they also have a payments bank licence. Finally there is Amazon pay, which is moving slowly but has recently tied up with lot of websites for movies or online food delivery. So the competition is likely to be fierce.

I work at a tech company and one of the things I have recently noticed is how ML and AI terms are being increasingly used by the business people. The guys who have no technical understanding, these are accountants or marketing guys saying we should ask tech team to design ML to solve these problems. Its as if ML is a thing to through at every kind of imaginable problem and it will be magically solved. I believe a lot of this has to do with PR around this by big tech companies. Take for example, the recent alpha zero vs stock fish PR, it has been spun around by Google in a way as if it was some magic. You hear a lot about how it took just 4 hours and I find it hard to explain to people that 4 hour time is meaningless. It is about how many games it could play in that time. Moreover the match happened between two systems on a different hardware and that is a big difference and also the fact that it used a arbitrary type of time control of, 1 min/move. Again this can make big difference but it is a big struggle to get past this PR fluff. To be clear, I am not denying the advances made by deep mind, I just want people to understand that it has come on back of probably the the world best team of scientists alongside state of the art Google designed hardware and incredible monetary resources of Google.

I assume you are talking about the highest tile value, I think in 4x4 game the highest possible tile value should be 2^16 or 2^(16+1)

I got this from here - https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/48/what-is-the-...

Yeah... There are too many desperate and unemployed people for unionization to make an impact. You can just get rid of the union employees. Given the poor educational investments lot of people are simply not equipped to exploit the opportunities in booming economy. This basically results in larger inequality since for high paying jobs there is lot of competition due to talent crunch driving wages up. At the same time for menial jobs there is too much labor leading to downward pressure on wages. Combine the two and you have ballooning inequality. My fear is that India might end up there.

In India, this gets worse. Lot of delivery guys use 2 wheelers and can often been seen carrying a huge bag full of packages on their bikes. Moreover many buildings don't have lifts so they end up carrying this load up 2 or 3 storeys. This is extremely back breaking work and add to that the pressure to deliver packages on time and navigating crazy Indian traffic on two wheelers with such heavy loads. On the other hand I am not sure what can be done.... People are just concerned about their convenience with no regards for rights of the delivery people. And given the level of unemployment it is unlikely that there will be protests from the drivers. While Indian e-commerce booms it will be on the backs of these guys.

This is likely to be a piece of cake for alpha zero given the number of states are lot less than Go.

This is not right. If ends justify means then we are in for a world full of strife and tribalism. This will make it difficult for people to trust anything. This is how we have ended up in this highly charged outrage porn filled world where everything and anything real or fake is being used to influence and recruit people towards one ideology or the other. This in the long term does more harm than good even for the people who think they are on winning side. It is more than ever important to be genuine and real and not do or say anything just so that we can win an argument, however right we might think we are.

They probably can but that will be next level escalation. Amazon is one of the biggest spenders on Google ads and Google drives a lot of traffic to Amazon, so this will materially hurt both companies. I don't see that happening very soon.

I have seen these in bangalore, in fact there is one very close to my office. One of the things that concerns me with such projects is that how they effect other eateries in the area. The one near my office that opened recently is on a street with about 5 other eateries. Having a eatery which is subsidized by government distorts this local market and adversely affects the other businesses in the area since they also cater to similar demographic with largely similar products. So while on its own this might be a good initiative, the economic impact of such initiatives might be more harmful to the local area economy. It s like creating more homeless so you can built shelter homes. A better way to do the same thing might be just to issue food vouchers which the people can use to by the food of their choice from any of the other eateries. It provides affordable food to those who cannot afford and also supports the smaller businesses.

SO I have no clue about Kierkegaard, in India very few people know about him. Having seen the discussion here, I am fascinated to learn more about him and his ideas. What will be a good place for me to start? Any books or articles that are recommended?

I would like to use lineage OS but if I root my phone my work email will stop working. It is configured via Boxer app, is there a work around?

This is fascinating stuff, thanks for sharing. It's amazing that I can totally relate to an almost 4000 year old stuff, it's kind of cute.

I was thinking the same thing. At first instance it reminded me of "Be right back" episode

>Digital banking became a way of life atleast in the urban India.

No it didnt [1]

>The total tax base is increased.

Questionable [2]

[1] http://www.livemint.com/Industry/S0AwBRAYuGbJw0SoXOaUaO/One-...

[2] https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/did-demonetisation-increase-...

https://thewire.in/168434/fact-check-claims-increase-income-...

http://www.livemint.com/Politics/C4Q8mpskSbfEzmG8ZWBY9H/Can-...

This is one of the largest transfer of money from individuals & small businesses to corporate sector. Since notes were denotified, people had no choice but to move to businesses which could support digital payments. This led to huge loss of business for smaller players who were dealing in cash and a drop in economic activity. And the small businesses are the ones which employ highest number of people, so the subsequent job loss. Additional domino effects is loss of man hours spent in exchanging the notes and the general anxiety it caused amongst people. Moreover data shows [1], the whole exercise only caused a temporary change in behaviour & cash in back in vogue, so essentially a pointless & damaging exercise.

[1] - http://www.livemint.com/Industry/S0AwBRAYuGbJw0SoXOaUaO/One-...

Another poor quality article with little research. It started with big tech companies are bad and followed that with some reasons. Lot of start-up don't succeed because they are not innovative and lack vision. The ones that did add value are doing well likes of uber, Netflix, airbnb, slack. In fact, if the author expands his world view a bit more and looks across the globe than he will find many more such examples. Even within the big five there is significant amount of competition and currently it is good for customers. This article is just crying wolf without offering any substantial reasons. Big companies buying of smaller competitors isn't some cunning move neither it is something new. This happened all the time even earlier. In fact the rise of cloud services has reduced the entry barrier for tech companies significantly by reducing upfront capital costs. Imagine if before starting a factory you first had to build a coal powered electric plant, not many would venture i guess. The argument about snapchat paying google for cloud services is just absurd. It would be costlier for snap to build this on their own.

In that case you just nuke the shit out of everybody or create army if autonomous suicide bomber with nukes, biological and chemical weapons of all kinds. Once all humans are extinct the harmony on earth will be restored and everyone will leave happily ever after.

I know about medallion but its also run by quants and afaik largely algorithmic. My argument is against the more traditional fund houses and stock pickers.

Were they ever making any meaningful difference? How many of them have beaten the returns given by an index fund over last 20 years? Also, I hate the sensationalism of such articles, more sensationalism usually means less sense.

This is going to be a rant, so apologies.

This is a pretty crappy read. Lacks real data and also unwillingness to look outside of the tech bubble, seriously what serious AI work is apple or Netflix doing? Its as if the author started with the conclusion and wrote up whole thing to justify it. For large parts most of the tech people at Google/FB are involved in getting more people click and buys ads. And Amazon are involved in getting people to buy more stuff and reduce the costs of handling and shipping them. So, if the logical conclusion that many visionaries in these thread are saying is true that 90% will be useless then these companies will have nobody to serve and will collapse before we reach that point anyways. Secondly, let's believe this is true then if an economic system which does not benefit majority deserves to be overthrown by any means even violent and rise of trump is a step in right direction. Third, if the tech companies are so smart then how were they caught with their pants down when a foreign power used their own infrastructure and technology to help elect a leader that they ostensibly opposed. Finally, the fundamental reason for the current stock boom is simply liquidity and lack of asset classes outside of stocks which give meaningful growth. This is not just limited to fang or usa but seen in many stock markets. I actively invest and trade in India where the markets are hitting new highs and the only reason right now for this is that in most places it is very hard to get a good return plus there is excess institutional & industrial capital since they are not optimistic of the growth and thus not investing in augmenting capacities or production. So investing in stock market seems the only alternative. One of the reasons for this liquidity is central banks around the world have been pumping money. This will end when the excess liquidity is pulled out from the global financial system.

For how long will Americans blame FB for the rise of Trump? One he is democratically elected and two Americans have voted for him. Now dont argue about vote share, it does not matter as far as the way American electoral system works, its like talking about possession share in soccer when the winner is decided based on goals scored. The whole thing about Russia, the fact is the ground conditions & discontent amongst large population of Americans existed, it may have been fanned by Russia but it could have been simply done by any political party using ads, there is nothing ground breaking about it except the use of Russian money perhaps, most of it is marketing. Instead of acknowledging & working towards a more united society, (the U in USA), most media is just fanning further divisions by trying to sensationalize & scandalize every single thing. If so many of your fellow countrymen feel disenchanted enough to vote for a reality tv star, then the society needs deeper introspection. Coming to interference in election, America has done this & destroyed many countries, there is nothing scandalous if it is happening to USA. This is just another tactic employed by countries to get some benefits for themselves. IT might be morally incorrect, but just because it has probably happened to US does not make it something to scream about especially when US has done this probably the most.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_electoral_intervention