This vending machine seems jammed indeed on iphone. The select boxes are empty. All three cards show ”whats” as the word.
shrug oh well
A vending machine, on the internet
51–60 of 92 posts
Re: A vending machine, on the internet
#52> The machine was jammed. It wasn’t a big deal. I shrugged and moved on to buy my groceries. I resonate with the sentiment, but this is very far from my experience selling cheap software products. I had multiple people reach out to me because a software upgrade they paid $2 for 8 years ago stopped working. And they were, like, pissed about it.
Probably because while they paid $2 for it, it was worth far more than $2 to them.
Re: A vending machine, on the internet
#53This vending machine seems jammed indeed on iphone. The select boxes are empty. All three cards show ”whats” as the word.
It's because the browser tries to fetch `/words.json` but that isn't JSON, it's the homepage.
Re: A vending machine, on the internet
#54[deleted]
Re: A vending machine, on the internet
#55Your machine has jammed, doesn't work in Firefox (macos). The words dropdown doesn't populate, nor does the style dropdown. I see a JSON.parse uncaught SyntaxError.
Re: A vending machine, on the internet
#56Rock on man. The contrarian attitude reminds me of the “I Sell Onions on the Internet” guy https://www.deepsouthventures.com/i-sell-onions-on-the-inter...
ha, onionman here : ) I also wrote an essay similar to this vending machine analogy... simple minds think alike I guess https://www.deepsouthventures.com/building-things-that-do-ju...
I love your website, and thank you for your writeups. I was sad to see that many of the domains in your "getting started" page are not up and running. www.kobebeef.com being dead hit me hard :'( I feel oddly inspired, and my wife will probably be sending you hate mail in the near future :p
Re: A vending machine, on the internet
#57> The machine was jammed. It wasn’t a big deal. I shrugged and moved on to buy my groceries. I resonate with the sentiment, but this is very far from my experience selling cheap software products. I had multiple people reach out to me because a software upgrade they paid $2 for 8 years ago stopped working. And they were, like, pissed about it.
This is my parents and my in-laws. They will gladly tip a bartender $5 for pouring a beer but God forbid you suggest they spend $2 on a productivity app on the app store.
Re: A vending machine, on the internet
#58The article is not about vending machines even if it seems so. It's about low friction (you don't have to sign up, sign it and the process of buying is very simple) and selling cheap stuff so the customer is tempted to buy without having safeguards (an account, customer support).
The title gave me PTSD flashback to the snack machine at my library, which requires you to scan a QR code, interact with a React app, and do internet banking to access the snacks.
Re: A vending machine, on the internet
#59I thought this was gonna be a story about that collegiate Coke machine from the 90s people could telnet into to see which rows were filled with what, the temperature, etc.
Big Drink got me through many long nights. I miss it. http://www.faqs.org/faqs/csh-coke-machine-info/ https://github.blog/news-insights/the-internet-coke-machine-... Looks like it got the Rust treatment a few years ago: https://github.com/ComputerScienceHouse/bubbler
/dev/drink
Re: A vending machine, on the internet
#60The problem is with our payments infrastructure there isn't a practical way to make a "machine" on the internet that accepts two quarters. OP's machine charges $5. The Stripe minimum charge is $0.50, and their fees on that charge would be almost $0.21.
My understanding is that you can do it on layer 2 networks like Lightning, though it suffers from the same limitations shared by all decentralized systems (e.g., depends on gaining widespread adoption and weakness from internetwork blockades).
Not to mention, even intelligent adults in Silicon Valley don't own cryptocurrency. Quite the opposite of a vending machine; Analogous to a vending machine in the US that only accepts Turkish Lira.