If you get behind in the payments, does Microsoft turn your computer off?
Microsoft pushes ahead with controversial ‘buy now, pay later’ feature for Edge
171–180 of 307 posts
Re: Microsoft pushes ahead with controversial ‘buy now, pay later’ feature for Edge
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
Back to gopher. Use native compiled apps and APIs for everything else. I’m serious. Probably shave a few gigawatts off the grid killing off electron apps.
The advantage of browsers is that they are becoming the de-facto "universal operating systems". That's why users like them, and that's why devs like them, despite all their defects. I kinda believe in that direction too. It's just the path that is a massive mess. Would I delete and rewrite? Yeah, but browsers and traditional OSes both, to become a single thing. ..and then regret it afterwards :D
Theyre multi-platform portals to the capitalist endpoints of work, and shopping, and paid leisure, but abstractions to hardware they are not. Merely abstractions to differing operating systems.
Re: Microsoft pushes ahead with controversial ‘buy now, pay later’ feature for Edge
#173Meanwhile in the UK this week ... "The government agreed to regulate BNPL lenders after an independent review chaired by City expert Christopher Woolard, published in February, warned that the sector represented a “significant potential consumer harm”." https://www.theguardian.com/money/2021/nov/23/stella-creasy-...
They should be regulated but in most cases they're just fine. The vendor gets paid straight away, minus a fee, and the customer gets to pay for their item interest free later. The issue is if they miss their payment, presumably. The benefit to the vendor is that it increases sales / conversion rate & hence worth paying for.
> consumer harm
If there was a flat limit on the total you could end up paying, maybe… but there isn’t.
Giving cheap loans to people who can’t pay them isn’t “just fine”, it’s predatory behaviour.
…but anyway, regardless of either of our opinions, it increasingly looks like it’s going to be legally regulated, so, the point is it’s a risky play for Microsoft.
Re: Microsoft pushes ahead with controversial ‘buy now, pay later’ feature for Edge
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maintaining browsers has become a significant undertaking, so complex that only well-funded corporate interests can afford to keep one patched and up-to-date with the latest web standards. It surpassed operating system complexity. It surpassed pretty much everything else too. So we can forget about it ever being truly "free" (and free from ads) unless we simplify the web somehow. I also don't think we're going to go…
I’m currently beta testing two paid browsers and I’m about to be trying a third. We are seeing a bit of a golden age for software right now where it seems a certain subset of the population has become not only comfortable paying for it, but also paying realistic (read not subsidized) pricing for it. I’m not saying this will ever be mainstream per se, but I am suggesting that enough people may be interested to make th…
How many of those browsers are Chromium based? Because if they are that’s still not actually an answer, they’re piggybacking off Google’s work.
Re: Microsoft pushes ahead with controversial ‘buy now, pay later’ feature for Edge
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
Now web browsers are gonna become credit cards attached to your browsing history... Great job guys! :| Ugh, who ever would have thought 2021 would have come to this.
This is M$ we're talking about. Are you really surprised?
This is capitalism we’re talking about.
Re: Microsoft pushes ahead with controversial ‘buy now, pay later’ feature for Edge
#176MS is probably one of the best positioned to give very accurate digital credit score, given just about everything goes thru their OS and browser. There’s tons of such companies now - basically just scraping your Uber, Postmates, etc accounts and selling that to banks so people without credit history can have a start.
> MS is probably one of the best positioned to give very accurate digital credit score, given just about everything goes thru their OS and browser. I don't think so, lots of people do everything on their phones.
Don't forget their access to everyone's work history through linkedin.
Corporations are competing to become the Church of England.
Re: Microsoft pushes ahead with controversial ‘buy now, pay later’ feature for Edge
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
Now web browsers are gonna become credit cards attached to your browsing history... Great job guys! :| Ugh, who ever would have thought 2021 would have come to this.
>> Now web browsers are gonna become credit cards attached to your browsing history... Great job guys! :| The dark humor is that some of the developers responsible for today's horrible web experience are here on HN...
...and well understood the horrors of a Cyberpunk like dystopia in time.
Re: Microsoft pushes ahead with controversial ‘buy now, pay later’ feature for Edge
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
They should be regulated but in most cases they're just fine. The vendor gets paid straight away, minus a fee, and the customer gets to pay for their item interest free later. The issue is if they miss their payment, presumably. The benefit to the vendor is that it increases sales / conversion rate & hence worth paying for.
> consumer harm If there was a flat limit on the total you could end up paying, maybe… but there isn’t. Giving cheap loans to people who can’t pay them isn’t “just fine”, it’s predatory behaviour. …but anyway, regardless of either of our opinions, it increasingly looks like it’s going to be legally regulated, so, the point is it’s a risky play for Microsoft.
Not really. Anyone who follows the BNPL space knows that it will end up regulated. The UK government has been very clear about this for the last year and are actively consulting on it.
Re: Microsoft pushes ahead with controversial ‘buy now, pay later’ feature for Edge
#179I cannot stand how everything with internet access is just becoming a vehicle to shove ads down everyone’s throat. This web browser wants to sell me credit deals. My expensive TV has banner ads in the menus (well, it did until I blocked about two dozen domains). An increasing amount of apps are sending “offers” I never requested via push notifications on my phone. My belongings are not a fucking corporate billboard.
> My expensive TV has banner ads in the menus (well, it did until I blocked about two dozen domains)
Just wait until Google has pushed everyone into encrypted DNS like they did with HTTP ...
Re: Microsoft pushes ahead with controversial ‘buy now, pay later’ feature for Edge
#180> It allows any purchase between $35 and $1,000 made through Microsoft Edge to be split into four payments over a six-week period. > While the service is being promoted as ‘interest-free’, some were quick to point out that all transactions are subject to a “$4 flat fee”. $4 in fees on $1000 over 6 weeks is an effective APR of around 4% - pretty good. $4 in fees on $35 over 6 weeks is an outrageous APR of around 123%.…
What sort of person is buying something for $35 over 6 week instalments? What sort of stuff are they buying? It's a cash grab on the poor until they get regulated.