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Dear startups: I hate subscription services (2021)

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Re: Dear startups: I hate subscription services (2021)

#341

Post by hi_im_miles »

mschuster91 wrote: post #214
manigandham wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulation is the worst solution to any of this. Let the free market figure it out and you'll find enough competition if there really is enough demand.

The "free market" will always, always end up with large fish eating up the small fish and extracting rents once the competition is eliminated and the startup costs too high for startups to enter the market.

> The "free market" will always, always end up with large fish eating up the small fish

I still think this has much more to do with market interventions enabling 'artificially' large economies of scale. Infrastructure, police, subsidies/grants, IP protections--all played and continue to play a massive role in shaping markets today.

Re: Dear startups: I hate subscription services (2021)

#342

Post by fuzzfactor »

Mister_Snuggles wrote: post #228
ekianjo wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I pay for the thing it allows me to do Why can't software ever be "finished" or "sufficient" to meet your needs? I don't see the point of having software is updated day after day, month after month, if I am not interested in the new features they bring.

Operating systems are starting to make that impossible. I used to use an old version of Quicken for Mac (this was back in the MacOS 10.2 days). It was "finished" in that it did absolutely everything I needed and there were no bugs that affected me. As time marched on, Apple switched from PowerPC to Intel which was fine because they had technology (Rosetta) which allowed me to run PowerPC applications. Then they dropp…

>Operating systems are starting to make that impossible.

Microsoft operating systems have always strived to make that impossible.

Apple has to compete somehow.

When you push unfinished, not-fully-tested code out the door, even if you can confidently patch it later, it's just never been the most professional thing to do.

Especially for something that could be mission-critical like an OS.

Getting it into people's hands sooner is no excuse.

This kind of thing really lowers the bar when it comes to the rest of the development ecosystem constantly engaged in making temporary solutions to permanent problems.

This ripples out and overflows far enough to effectively be a major anti-recycling effort for megatonnes of hardware itself.

Re: Dear startups: I hate subscription services (2021)

#343

Post by shukantpal »

closewith wrote: post #338
fiprofessor wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should auto-manufacturers be liable for emissions produced by cars that have had their catalytic converters stolen? Should medicine manufacturers be liable if someone circumvents their tamper-proof seals and laces them with a poison? Should berry growers be liable if someone inserts needles into foods that are sold at supermarkets? All of these are crimes that are either widespread or famous from media scares that ha…

> Should auto-manufacturers be liable for emissions produced by cars that have had their catalytic converters stolen? This is an interesting hypothetical, but I don't see the relevance. > Should medicine manufacturers be liable if someone circumvents their tamper-proof seals and laces them with a poison? Yes, and they are. > Should berry growers be liable if someone inserts needles into foods that are sold at superma…

>> Should auto-manufacturers be liable for emissions produced by cars that have had their catalytic converters stolen?

> This is an interesting hypothetical, but I don't see the relevance

That's your willing ignorance, and on the 2nd point too.

Re: Dear startups: I hate subscription services (2021)

#344

Post by nickjj »

TrueSlacker0 wrote: post #326
nickjj wrote: post #233

For technical learning material do you prefer a SAAS model where you pay $10-20 / month for all-in access to short isolated videos in a related subject (potentially ~4 new videos a month) or dropping $50-150 one time for a course that could be anywhere from 3-15 hours long? It's kind of comparing apples to oranges but as someone who has made courses for a while I've always thought about the idea of doing weekly scree…

Why not offer both? Paying $10/m for as long as you like and get all new and old courses. A basic streaming subscription essentially. But for $100 get lifetime access to only that one purchased course? Then if the consumer wants more they have the option to spend another $100 for a different course or add the $10/m subscription for other/new content. I personally would benefit from this immensely in course style lear…

Thanks, that's a good idea -- especially for standalone courses that are kind of pre-made and done.

I guess it's a bit tricky to balance with "screencasts vs courses" which I suppose is a different conversation than a SAAS model or not, although these 2 are pretty tightly coupled. For example, you could have 100 isolated 5-15min screencast videos released once a week about let's say Flask or Rails or whatever topic you're interested in or a 5-10 hour course that covers a cohesive project from beginning to end using a specific tech.

The appeal of screencasts to me is you can make a video about anything around that topic, it's completely standalone where as a course is more like you pick the material, record it and that's it but then 8 months later something changes and you'd like to refactor something which could mean re-doing half the course because now you want to use esbuild instead of Webpack for your assets.

Full courses tend to be better at taking someone who is a beginner and guiding them to a finished solution and screencasts are good for anyone who wants to solve a very specific problem like "how do I do pagination with Flask". In theory you could have screencasts grouped together as a learning path to solve bigger problems tho so you can technically maybe get the best of both worlds with screencasts which is something I've always wondered about as someone who has made a couple of one time standalone courses.

Re: Dear startups: I hate subscription services (2021)

#345

Post by blep_ »

projektfu wrote: post #173
nathan_compton wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is going to use an unpatched bug in your chair to rob your house.

No, but if my dehumidifier model causes fires it will be recalled and I'll get my money back to buy a new one. Although, I think some companies use recalls in a dark pattern, specifically baby product companies.

I'm curious now, can you expand on dark recall patterns?

Re: Dear startups: I hate subscription services (2021)

#346

Post by closewith »

shukantpal wrote: post #343
closewith wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Should auto-manufacturers be liable for emissions produced by cars that have had their catalytic converters stolen? This is an interesting hypothetical, but I don't see the relevance. > Should medicine manufacturers be liable if someone circumvents their tamper-proof seals and laces them with a poison? Yes, and they are. > Should berry growers be liable if someone inserts needles into foods that are sold at superma…

>> Should auto-manufacturers be liable for emissions produced by cars that have had their catalytic converters stolen? > This is an interesting hypothetical, but I don't see the relevance That's your willing ignorance, and on the 2nd point too.

With respect, I don't see the relevance because the additional emissions caused by removing a catalytic converter are an extremely minor harm to the occupant and others. If, for example, driving a car with a catalytic converter removed caused the vehicle to explode killing the occupants (or any other significant harm), then the manufacturer and retailer would absolutely be held responsible. Physical products are required to fail safely in foreseeable circumstances.

If by my second point, you're referring to circumventing the tamper-proof seal on medications, then maybe you'd like to expand? Manufacturers, retailers, and medical staff are (jointly) responsible for medications for their entire life cycle. A retailer who sells a poisoned medication is absolutely liable, as is the manufacturer who produced a fallible tamper-proof seal (which is worse than no seal at all).

Feel free to elaborate on why you think I'm wilfully ignorant.

Re: Dear startups: I hate subscription services (2021)

#347

Post by calvinmorrison »

ekianjo wrote: post #294
julianlam wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Security vulnerabilities are regularly found in many softwares (both online and offline), so that's one reason to upgrade.

> so that's one reason to upgrade. That seems like "hey, we develop our software the worst way so that it's always full of bugs, but if you want less bugs, buy our subscription". Complete conflict of interest vs making quality and well-tested software in the first place.

Well except most useful software (not all) interacts with other systems. I loved my old mail client until it stopped working with the latest encryption schemes. A nicer way around this is like what plan9 has, where programs don't worry about handling secure connections etc, so you don't need to patch every program.

some people still use a 90's version of wordperfect, and that's fine, but if you have software that depends on other software - example Qt3 was dropped everywhere, even though there's plenty of useful Qt3 software around, it needs to be upgraded.

So even if your system wasn't buggy, it may be incompatible or the dependencies no longer are updated (like with Qt3, which had networking and other helper functions), you wouldn't want to keep using it.

Re: Dear startups: I hate subscription services (2021)

#348

Post by blep_ »

neximo64 wrote: post #93
xg15 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about good old "pay for it once, then own it"?

If there's no support and no updates. Can't work with web apps unless there's a version restriction/time limit.

Then stop making things web apps that don't need to be web apps. Wrap it in Electron, if you really must use that particular set of technologies.

Re: Dear startups: I hate subscription services (2021)

#349

Post by ilrwbwrkhv »

shafyy wrote: post #238
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #180

Part of the problem is that most of these startups simply have too much overhead to offer their product for free or cheap. Like I never understood why most of these basic tools morph into 100+ people companies. A tool like Evernote can be built and maintained by under 20 people. Even at inflated salaries, your yearly burn would be under $10M. This is part of a broader trend of startup overhiring. Like Better.com had…

> Like I never understood why most of these basic tools morph into 100+ people companies. Simple answer: They've signed a deal with the devil (VC funding) and now need to grow to make a > 1 billion dollar exit.

Vercel is going down this path now.

Re: Dear startups: I hate subscription services (2021)

#350

Post by closewith »

ghaff wrote: post #220
projektfu wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but if my dehumidifier model causes fires it will be recalled and I'll get my money back to buy a new one. Although, I think some companies use recalls in a dark pattern, specifically baby product companies.

So you're talking about an unusually serious flaw and almost certainly for some bounded period of time--and assuming the purchasers even learns of the recall. Automobiles aside, I don't think in my 60+ years I have ever been aware of a recall on a product I purchased.

With respect, are you based in the US?

The EU's Safety Gate programme documents safety recalls all the time, and it's common to get an email (for bigger purchases) or see recall notices at the entrance or checkouts at retailers. Retailers of safety-critical products (medical equipment, lifejackets, climbing gear, etc) will often insist on a phone number or email address in case of recall.

https://ec.europa.eu/safety-gate-alerts/

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