Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

India, Jio, and the Four Internets

stratechery.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 279 posts

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#61

Post by blocked_again »

signal11 wrote: post #22
varbhat wrote: post #5

Back in 2015, costs for internet were not cheap,here in India. There were many who couldn't afford (including me).In those days(2015), I used to be on 2KBps network(You read it right, kilobytes per second). It was Idea Cellular's ₹68 2G plan(USD 0.91) where it provided 1Gigabyte of data for month. 3G plans were costlier. There was no 4G until Nov/Dec of 2015 when Airtel introduced 4G(it was hyped,but it was also cost…

Jio’s offer is really good on paper, but it’s got to be one of the slowest 4G networks I’ve used when I tried it in February. Anyone know if this is because of a lack of competition (there’s effectively one other serious player left in the Indian telco market right now), or capacity constraints?

I think the speed is highly affected by the population density. I have seen speeds varying from ~40mbps to <1mbps. The less the density the higher the speed.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#62

Post by jfk13 »

stickfigure wrote: post #56
jfk13 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UX nightmares are not the fault of cookie laws, they're the fault of companies that don't want to respect users. If the companies behaved more ethically, there'd have been little impetus to even create such laws.

"The system is perfect; it's the humans that are flawed!"

The system isn't perfect. But it's better than pure anarchy.

Probably no (human-designed) system will be perfect. In the case of obnoxious GDPR consent popups, though, the main problem is companies (under the direction of humans, obviously) that are doing their utmost to subvert the clear and reasonable intent of the law, because they simply don't want to respect it (or their users). They're a cancer on the internet. I hope to see the day when enforcement is taken more seriously.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#63

Post by mola »

azinman2 wrote: post #59
mola wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who said unicorns are good? Money =\= value. It's just a proxy, which doesn't always work. You know how you can prevent regulation? Don't be excessive and greedy.

But where are the examples of the valued products in large use? Let's see.. Spotify ok, Mojang hmmmhmmm.... Rovio? Outside of Spotify, what do I use on a daily basis as an American that's a valued EU-based company?

A lot of infrastructure. A lot, industry is not tech. The world is not the US.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#64

Post by azinman2 »

catchmeifyoucan wrote: post #44

I enjoy Ben's articles, but this one has way too many opinions, and I'm not convinced his stance of Europe is fair. For the Privacy Shield matter - "The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) basically ruled that US law is too weak to protect EU citizens' data to the extent EU law demands." We know this - Mr. Zuckerberg asked for more regulation if anything. Regulation from Europe is protection for the consume…

> If anything, Europe is creating a more sustainable framework for private companies and government intervention. Cross the moat, and you don't have to worry about castles. Just build a good product. That's what I'm reading.

So it's just a market with restrictions for outside companies? I think the point of the article was the absence vision for Europe to generate its own compelling products and companies that spread throughout itself and the rest of the world.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#65

Post by babesh »

azinman2 wrote: post #59
mola wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who said unicorns are good? Money =\= value. It's just a proxy, which doesn't always work. You know how you can prevent regulation? Don't be excessive and greedy.

But where are the examples of the valued products in large use? Let's see.. Spotify ok, Mojang hmmmhmmm.... Rovio? Outside of Spotify, what do I use on a daily basis as an American that's a valued EU-based company?

Not going to take sides but Europe does have innovation. It’s just not necessarily commercial or they have been bought out. JetBrains, Minecraft, Python, Linux, HTTP/HTML, ARM, DeepMind.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#66

Post by adventured »

azinman2 wrote: post #59
mola wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who said unicorns are good? Money =\= value. It's just a proxy, which doesn't always work. You know how you can prevent regulation? Don't be excessive and greedy.

But where are the examples of the valued products in large use? Let's see.. Spotify ok, Mojang hmmmhmmm.... Rovio? Outside of Spotify, what do I use on a daily basis as an American that's a valued EU-based company?

> Outside of Spotify, what do I use on a daily basis as an American that's a valued EU-based company?

ARM Holdings (to be fair they did spend 99% of their life up to this point in the EU) and SAP are two reasonable examples derived from the EU that have products that are used by Americans regularly. ARM was co-founded by two American companies and is now owned by a Japanese company, so that's not exactly a shining independent example for the EU (past or present).

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#67

Post by ktrl »

ra7 wrote: post #54
ktrl wrote: post #48

Is it in the geopolitical interest of the West and India to use the same Internet platforms? Take a look at what reddit and YouTube users have to say about India. That kind of uncensored hatred and racism will push India right into the arms of Russia and China. It would be better for US-India relations if Indian Internet users also have local alternatives to choose from. Local alternatives where they don't have to he…

Geopolitics isn't determined by comments on Internet forums. It's determined by mutual interest between governments and how their administrative officials think. YouTube and Reddit comments don't mean anything given that a vast majority don't understand nuances of geopolitics.

>Geopolitics isn't determined by comments on Internet forums

Politics is increasingly being influenced by Internet movements and culture. Millions of Indians being repeatedly exposed to what reddit and YouTube has to say about them will change their opinion about the West for the worse. The Indians who browse reddit and YouTube are more likely to be young and politically savvy.

I'm not calling for censorship. One possible solution is that American Internet platforms create India-focused silos of their platforms. Indian Internet users (who wish to do so) should still be able to go out of their way to find out what Cletus from Texas has to say.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#68

Post by balladeer »

wadkar wrote: post #47
flak48 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon has teams with global and local impact, with the work somewhat on par with their US counterparts. Google generally has a bit of the shittier work in general (the permanent curse of India offices of US companies - local managers/directors having to beg and dig for work/charters). It's changing since Google Pay is run from India and other India specific teams are also coming to India. Google used to have the GSu…

Ah now it makes sense why there are so many Amazon recruiters pinging and connecting on LinkedIn :-) Thanks, I am happy to know Google Pay is run from India. Hope things change for the better for Google SWE/SREs in India - I am sure they're at par if not better than their Googleplex counterparts.

> I am sure they're at par if not better than their Googleplex counterparts

I have heard it's not.

PS. Amazon's work-life balance is is non-existent in most teams.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#69

Post by mrmuagi »

mola wrote: post #55
zpeti wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly gives you more faith in the old continent? The thousands of unicorns Europe has? No, there are hardly any. The UX nightmares cookie laws create? No. Lower bandwidth fees than in the US? That is actually because of regulatory capture in the US, plus the sheer size of the continent, nothing to do with free markets. So how exactly is Europe so great? The most unicorns came out of the UK who have just decide…

Who said unicorns are good? Money =\= value. It's just a proxy, which doesn't always work. You know how you can prevent regulation? Don't be excessive and greedy.

> Don't be excessive and greedy.

Easier said than done if you have a monopoly. Blah, Blah, competition, Something, Something.

Re: India, Jio, and the Four Internets

#70

Post by sachdevap »

mola wrote: post #57
sachdevap wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is someone else supposed to work on solving the local issues while you personally reap the rewards of working in the tech domain? Is your work pushing against the status quo of any of these fundamentals you talk about?

Does yours? Why are you so aggressive? Where does the need to call him out comes from?

I asked straightforward questions. I wasn't aggressive in what I said. I did call him out on his self-professed disappointment with the state of affairs which seems to be blaming the tech talent out of India for not working on solving fundamental issues. This sort of punting of responsibility for building India is common among Indian youth. The thought being - someone else is supposed to sacrifice their career and life to create a better India to solve my disappointment.

And no my work doesn't, but I'm not the one professing disappointment with Indian entrepreneurs.

Post reply on HN