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Ask HN: Should we own the free stuff we pay for?

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Re: Ask HN: Should we own the free stuff we pay for?

#211

Post by stickfigure »

londons_explore wrote: post #75
randunel wrote: post #45

Phone number porting is a thing due to regulation. I'm looking forward to having email address porting legislation, one day. For full porting, there's a long road ahead, starting with regulating domain names, which email addresses depend on. However, as long as the domain name _de facto_ remains in the possession of the original provider, this is technically possible, already. Email address porting might even be poss…

I would imagine it takes the form of a government "porting server", where anyone can query an email address and receive back a different target email address. All people sending email will be required by law to first consult the porting server to determine where to send email. It could be as simple as an http endpoint. Total development costs and running costs could be pretty low - low enough that the government can…

This is literally how DNS works. Get your own domain and you can forward mail anywhere in the world.

Re: Ask HN: Should we own the free stuff we pay for?

#212

Post by bena »

Maybe don't send spam?

Here's what you should do when you spam: Ignore it. A reply only lets the spammer know there's a live account at the other end.

Next time, do a whois on the domain the email came from, see if there's an abuse contact and forward them the email, letting them know there's malicious actors on their system.

Re: Ask HN: Should we own the free stuff we pay for?

#213

Post by jpambrun »

I am also worried by this. I have paid one subscription, nest aware/protect/camera/doorbell, youtube premium, pixel phones, assistants, have taken advantage of their photo backup that came with phones.. The prejudice of them closing my account would be in the 3,000$+ range just in now useless hardware. That is not counting the logistical nightmare. I firmly believe we need governmental protection.

Re: Ask HN: Should we own the free stuff we pay for?

#214

Post by lukeschlather »

profmonocle wrote: post #107
EnKopVand wrote: post #77

Google is simply not a very reliable business partner for tech. I have a decade worth of experience in the Danish public sector, where I’ve had plenty of great experiences with both Amazon and Microsoft. I know that a lot of people would prefer things to be open source, but part of what you pay for in an Enterprise Organisation is availability of support. When AWS first entered the European market, most of what they…

> Google mean while has the same business-to-business support that it does for private customers like the author here. For some services it’s because Google doesn’t care, but they do care about Education and they still can’t figure out how to readjust to be a valuable business partner even when they actually want to sell you something. My experience with Google's business support is that instead of talking to a brick…

That's generally my experience with Microsoft support. Microsoft support won't even acknowledge that there's a bug most of the time. (I've heard tell they have some really bad KPIs for their tier-1 support people.) Google support usually figures out my issues within a week. Of course I use GCP more heavily than Azure so part of this is probably me writing significantly better bug reports. (On the other hand, while there are aspects of GCP I dislike none of Azure's stuff makes any sense to me. It seems like Azure managed to build something in a few years that has more accumulated incompatible interfaces hidden behind nested dialogs than all of the MS Windows OS.)

Re: Ask HN: Should we own the free stuff we pay for?

#215

Post by iamjkt »

inanutshellus wrote: post #65
p0d wrote: post #44

A lot of us have also been caught out by Google announcing they are forcing free G-Suite Legacy users to upgrade. Here is where I am heading (having given the matter much thought and some testing, trial and error) Free Gmail/Cal account as I enjoy the software My own custom domains with any registrar Paid Fastmail account storing all my emails to all my domains/aliases at Fastmail All Fastmail messages forwarded to G…

Also caught in the Legacy drama. :-( still haven't decided what to do about it. blurg.

I moved to Zoho for business and have 2 accounts there for £10 each/year.

The configuration of the service is much easier than Google makes it. Filtering took some getting used to, but I have it working much better than I ever could on Google, so happy bunny there. And the Android client is OK too.

The only meh part (for me) is the web interface for email/calendar isn't as streamlined as Google, but being out of that eco-system more than makes up for it.

Re: Ask HN: Should we own the free stuff we pay for?

#216

Post by vertis »

Another day, another story about losing access to Google. At what point do we legislate that there has to be a path back for what has essentially become a utility that we can't live without.

I know a lot of the comments here are "Never again, I only use email". I fall into that camp personally, but it's hard to expect that kind of discipline from others.

Re: Ask HN: Should we own the free stuff we pay for?

#217

Post by rglullis »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #185
rglullis wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't you just go around selling your data to the highest bidders and use the money to pay for the myriad of already-existing hosting providers? I'll tell you why: because you are not worth that much to advertisers. If you are so cheap to the point of asking to get your data harvested, chances are you never going to be a high-value customer.

> If you are so cheap to the point of asking to get your data harvested, chances are you never going to be a high-value customer. But if you are so dumb as to not know your data us harvested, you are a great gullible idiot, er, I mean customer. I don't think logic holds any water. There is no rational 'free market' reason you can't sell your data, it's just logistically too difficult to deal with millions of individu…

1) I did not say anything about not having data harvested.

2) Even if the data is being harvested, doesn't mean that there is any morality in trying to get a share of the profits. That doesn't make you smart, it makes you a cheap accomplice.

3) "free market" would apply only if all exchanged data were offered by those that own the data, and if they could determine how and when the data could be used. GDPR has shown already that some sites would rather not serve their sites to European citizens than comply with data regulations. You can bet that the intersection of high-value prospects who would be interested in selling their data for some meager dollars/year is very, very small.

Re: Ask HN: Should we own the free stuff we pay for?

#218

Post by mhh__ »

ballenf wrote: post #79
mhh__ wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no way for them to take your car away... Yet. Maybe one day your Tesla will simply drive off if you don't pay the bills, or worse work for the SEC

Tesla's (and increasingly all cars) are software with attached motors and they don't need to seize them physically to take them. Or disable supercharging, etc. Just like your fridge may not dispense water if you buy the wrong filter. Or your random IOT enabled device will refuse to work if you don't let it phone home with surveillance data.

It'll probably need new legislation to protect consumers.

Although I was joking about the SEC thing, what happens if Elon get's a grudge? Some would say it's your fault for buying the car, but some guarantees for consumers are useful.

Re: Ask HN: Should we own the free stuff we pay for?

#219

Post by andyjohnson0 »

TameAntelope wrote: post #202
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #18

Apologies for going meta here: Could I urge that posters follow the site convention of prefixing the title with with Ask HN, Tell HN, etc. for posts that don't link to an external source? There are currently two such posts in the top 30. HN is primarily for discussing external articles, and I'd suggest that this post should have been submitted as such.

Hm, I’m not sure where you got the idea that HN was primarily about discussing articles, because that is in no way true.

Operative word is external not discussing.

Re: Ask HN: Should we own the free stuff we pay for?

#220

Post by TameAntelope »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #219
TameAntelope wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm, I’m not sure where you got the idea that HN was primarily about discussing articles, because that is in no way true.

Operative word is external not discussing .

Neither is true, though!

I know we’re getting super meta, but let dang police the site. Neither of us should be dealing with comments or submissions that “don’t fit HN”.

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