Netflix stops charging customers who never watch - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52777365 <comment><USER3> Years ago, I heard of a dating site doing the opposite of this. They normally sent periodic digests and newsletters to their users to try to increase engagement, but if a user went a certain number of months without logging into their account, but still allowed monthly fees to be charged, they were labeled as a "sleeping giant" in the database. Once in this state, they would not be contacted by the site for any reason until they logged in again by their own initiative. The site had determined that, on average, contacting these users had a net-negative effect on retention — i.e., they would be reminded that they were paying for an unused service and cancel.

<comment><USER4> I'm getting charged by rhapsody.com every quarter for no apparent reason. I used their service like may be 8 years ago. They have a phone number in their merchant line which is invalid. When I filed request to void the charge to American Express, initially they declined! Then I filed appeal with angry comments and they finally voided it. It took over two months for the process. I just saw new Rhapsody charge again. The credit card companies literally have no control over who can charge us.

If anyone at stripe is reading this, I think this is golden opportunity for consumer focused payment service. One should be at least able to block a merchant from charging my card. I can do that for spammer email but can't do that for spam charge on my card - in 2020!

<comment><USER5> Companies that make it difficult to unsubscribe should be penalised, I live in Europe and got the New York Times on a 12 month trial for €4 a month. Trial just ended and it's now €8 a month, only way to cance is to ring them, have tried once so far and was on hold for 20 mins before I hung up. There should be a law that if you can sign up online you can cancel online.

<comment><USER6> Actually we have such a law in the EU. Not sure what it's called, but I'm sure it exists.

I believe the wording to be something like it has to be possible to cancel in a similar way you signed up.

<comment><USER7> If it exists, it is not followed.

In France, Le Monde (most famous daily newspaper) requires you to send a _paper_ mail (and not a regular mail, but a registered mail, which costs around 5-10€) to cancel your subscription. Even if you subscribed on the website, for a 100% online subscription.

It's really shady.

<comment><USER8> yeah, when i saw that i got so mad that I created a virtual credit card, changed the billing method, and then deleted the card. You can not imagine the big smile on my face when i received the email "we cannot charge you"....

Reaaaaaally big smile on my face

<comment><USER9> How can i create such a virtual card?

<comment><USER10> There a few options for virtual cards. Ive been using [https://privacy.com/](https://privacy.com/).

I've been using this not only for subscriptions, but also when I'm making an online purchase at a store that I think may not have the best security in place.

<comment><USER11> I only use virtual cards for online payments. I use Citi and they have an option to generate a card with specific amount and expiry.

<comment><USER12> Last I checked, Citi's virtual card feature inexplicably requires Flash. I was like "I thought that was dead?"

<comment><USER13> This was true for Bank of America, too, at least in December 2018.

<comment><USER14> They killed the feature altogether.

[https://www.bankofamerica.com/security-center/accounts- cards...](https://www.bankofamerica.com/security-center/accounts- cards/shopsafe/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> For those in the chat who react by saying "this should be law!"

Laws have unintended consequences.

Also I subscribe to a number of services I barely ever use, generally because I got in with an account very early on, and the price I'm paying is usually 1/5 or less of the current retail price. I do not want companies to proactively cancel my service.

"Thats Absurd!" You may say... well for about 10 years I kept my original AT&T unthrottled and unlimited plan goong on an iPhone, then iPad, until my credit card expired and the payment lapsed. Of course my account want instantly closed and my grandfathered plan unavailable.

Did I use more than 30 GB a month? No. Could i buy that plan again around 2017-2018? Nope. I was happy to secure that for $20/mo.

Do I want companies to have more red tape and penalties, such that they proactively shut down accounts from legacy plans? Absolutely not, get off my lawn.

<comment><USER16> Planet money had a story where a similar superficially good idea ended up with Etrade selling a man's Amazon stock and deactivating his account after he didn't log in for a certain period of time. He was able to reclaim about $8000 for stock that would be worth ~$100k today.

[https://www.npr.org/transcripts/799345159](https://www.npr.org/transcripts/799345159)

<comment><USER17> This is mildly infuriating because the whole point of long term investing is to buy a stock, and well, do nothing -- besides hold it for decades. The stock should continue being held whether a user logs in or not.

<comment><USER18> > The stock should continue being held whether a user logs in or not.

FWIW ETrade agrees with this. It wasn't their policy that closed the account, it was a law that was in theory to protect consumers... from themselves?

<comment><USER19> Shouldn't that have gone to the state's Auditor & Controller's Unclaimed Property dept? If you look at California's Unclaimed Prop., you'll see shares sitting in there. Heck, I have a few shares I need to claim.

<comment><USER18> Yes, but different states have different rules. Apparently in that guy's state, they won't take shares, only cash value of shares.

<comment><USER17> This could work for you, in the chance an investment didn't pan out and you're liquidated at the top. But for long periods of time, cash loses value to inflation. Seems off that states wouldn't accept shares. They're not as liquid as cash, but not far from it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Netflix impressed me recently with how easy they made it for me to cancel my subscription. It means I will have no hesitation to re-subscribe in future, should I feel the urge.

I just wonder how long it will last. It sometimes feels like all the big successful consumer companies become accountancy-driven scumbags sooner or later. Fingers crossed Netflix can buck the trend and stay a nice company to deal with.

<comment><USER21> I would think this might be triggered by a decline in revenue. When Netflix can't continue to grow organically into new markets and the share price starts to suffer, they might resort to less friendly tactics for increasing the revenue per customer.

<comment><USER22> It might also come from detecting recurring patterns and trying to facilitate them.

Before the simplified version, we already used to only register to Netflix during long vacations, binge watch whatever we wanted (typically Black Mirror and Sherlock) and cancel the rest of the year.

Now that it's way easier, there's less friction in reenabling the account when there's a series we want to watch and set the subscripting to cancel again at the end of the month.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I always wonder when a company does this if it is completely altruistic or if something else is going on behind the scenes.

Maybe notifying customers gets them to reactivate, maybe if they resubscribe later they can charge more, maybe it's better for financial reporting and projecting subscriber counts.

On the other hand it could just be a rare moment of a company doing right by the customer.

<comment><USER24> Amazon did this for me back in 2005 when they introduced Prime. I used the free trial for an order (to get it in two days), but then didn't order anything else and forgot to cancel.

They sent me an email that they weren't going to charge me because I hadn't used it, but I was free to sign up in the future if I decided I wanted it.

It was so refreshing, it made me a lifelong customer.

<comment><USER25> Amazon definitely doesn't do this now. Amazon sometimes offers me a free Prime trial and they make it fairly clear that if you don't cancel before the conclusion of the trial, they'll automatically subscribe you to Prime and charge you. I'll sometimes take the trial but I always mark my calendar to cancel before the renewal.

Personally, I consider this to be a dark pattern and it makes me reluctant to sign up for any trial or even subscription services in general. I'm glad that Amazon is upfront about it but would prefer that they didn't do this at all.

<comment> frosted-flakes I'm pretty sure they let you disable auto-renew immediately after signing up.

What's sketchy is that Amazon's Audible deletes all your unused book credits if you unsubscribe. If you don't know what to buy with those credits and you want to unsubscribe, you face the decision to keep buying credits, or lose the credits you already paid for.

Fortunately, there are a couple of workarounds. There's the option to pause your subscription for 3 months, or you can buy a book, cancel the subscription, then return the book to recapture the credit once you find a book you _actually_ want to read.

<comment><USER26> last i checked, they let me cancel prime effective immediately, not allowing me to continue my year that i purchased. There isn't an option to stop auto renewal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> A few years back I started to get a $12 charge from Lastpass on my Paypal account. I cancelled my account at Lastpass over 6 years ago so was puzzled why, especially since they don't offer any sort of $12 service.

It took a lot of emails and complaining before Lastpass told me that it was due to me being an Xmarks (bookmark sync service) customer in 2009! Apparently they owned Xmarks briefly. Why the charge started a few years ago they have no idea.

Despite repeated attempts to cancel the charge via Lastpass and Paypal it still happens every year. Apparently neither company can stop it - so every year I complain, get the charge refunded and have to swallow the exchange rate fees on my credit card. Maddening and leaves me with zero good will towards either of these companies.

<comment><USER28> Is there no way to block them on PayPal??

<comment><USER29> If it's a recurring payment then yes, it should be under PayPal's My Preapproved Payments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I don't understand how people leave subscription or renewal charges unchecked in their credit cards. I can understand keeping a subscription unused but still acknowledging and paying for it (for whatever personal reasons), but having a charge in your credit card without knowing what exactly it is or why, sounds a bit strange to me. Could be that I'm not rich enough and I'm still paying attention to every single €/$/£ being charged :-)

<comment><USER31> One of the reasons subscription model is cancer: they hope you'll forget it's on.

<comment><USER32> Virtual Cards with set expiry numbers will end this game

<comment><USER33> I'd prefer my bank to allow me to manually approve every payment, e.g. via smartphone application. It would be easy to understand, fast enough, with some options like "approve netflix forever". That would be ideal for me. And if I don't like this particular payment, just decline and move on.

Those agents who pull my money without my explicit consent every time are the reason I'm keeping my card with minimal amount of money (I don't use credit cards, only debt cards).

<comment><USER34> You're describing something called direct debit ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_debit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_debit)). In the US, you may know it as ACH, but the american version of direct debit is a far cry from EU direct debits.

When setting up a DD, you can give a european company your IBAN. They will be able to make withdrawal requests, directly to your bank account. Your bank will usually give you full control on what you can do with those. For example, my bank Bunq ([https://bunq.me/](https://bunq.me/)) allows me to accept once, or automatically accept any debit request up to whatever amount I choose per period from that same merchant.

Direct Debits are _free_. You bypass credit card fees (which in Europe are much lower than in the US in the first place but still percentage-based). They are also usually real-time (though slower than the credit card network, and depending on banks and fraud checks there can be latency of up to a couple of days).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> It would have been better if they don't collect the charges for a month if you haven't watched even a single thing on Netflix for that month.

<comment><USER36> That'd actually keep me subscribed longer I think. Right now I'll batch stuff up and binge it all in a month and then cancel for another how ever months it takes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> It's so funny to see this at the top of HN when right below it I saw this thread:

"Tell HN: Interviewed with Triplebyte? Your profile is about to become public"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23279837](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23279837)

White Pattern? vs. Dark Pattern

</comment><comment><USER38> If I pay for something, I want to own it. Revocable-access[1] subscription- based services are just a form of rent-seeking, and I'm deeply concerned about how this affects our society. As such, I'm not a direct customer[2] of Netflix and likely never will be.

That said, I think it's important to acknowledge when people you disagree with do good stuff--this is how we make sure that our disagreements are based on principles and logic rather than grudges.

Of the subscription services out there, it's my impression that Netflix is one of the best. They avoid a lot of dark patterns, and this latest action of not charging customers who don't watch is a very upstanding action, especially since it cuts into their profits in a really direct way.

There are still complaints I have about Netflix[3], but the real heart of the issue is that this _cannot_ last forever. There's simply too much counter- incentive for a company to walk away from a revenue stream like this. And with a subscription business model, there's nothing to keep them honest, because Netflix has all the control.

[1] This is a term I'm basically inventing on the spot, based on something I've been thinking about lately. Physical print newspapers were subscription based but they weren't revocable-access: you received the newspaper on subscription, but once you received it, you owned it. This differs fundamentally from web-based subscriptions. With web-based subscriptions, if you let your subscription lapse, the site revokes your access to content which you previously had access to.

[2] Most people around me have Netflix subscriptions, so I end up watching a lot of Netflix with people, despite not having an account myself.

[3] a) Patterns that manipulate dopamine response. b) Glossing over credits so content creators don't get credit. c) Monopolistic practiced with regard to tethering content creation and content distribution together.

<comment><USER39> > Physical print newspapers were subscription based but they weren't > revocable-access: you received the newspaper on subscription, but once you > received it, you owned it. This differs fundamentally from web-based > subscriptions. With web-based subscriptions, if you let your subscription > lapse, the site revokes your access to content which you previously had > access to.

But with online subscriptions, you also gain access to historical content: if you sign up for a traditional newspaper, you don't immediately gain access to previously published papers, only those published subsequent to your subscription. Modern online subscriptions are more similar to traditional libraries, providing access to historical as well as future content. Presumably this is a major factor why Netflix and other services insist on calling their collections "libraries", despite being otherwise dissimilar. I think it's an interesting question though: would people pay for a Netflix subscription that provided irrevocable access, but only to current and future content? I would say probably not: a significant portion of the value proposition of Netflix is due to their historical content: "you can watch anything you want" (that we have), regardless of when it was published. Would you pay for this service?

<comment><USER38> Well, I only brought up physical print newspapers to explain what "revocable access" means, not to make any sort of argument. Arguments by analogy aren't valid logic anyway.

Non-revocable-access subscriptions are, in my opinion, just a convenience layer around the ownership model. The man function of these subscriptions is automating the buying of something you buy on a regular basis anyway. There's an element of vendor lock-in in some models, but not all.

There are plenty of examples of the ownership model gaining access to an extensive archive: it used to be that you could buy the Criterion Collection on DVD, for example. Presented this way, however, it becomes immediately obvious that people don't actually want to pay for the entire archive, at least not at the price the owners of the archive wanted to sell it at. You don't want the entire Netflix archive, you only want a few movies and shows from it. The primary problem here is that archive contents are massively overpriced: nobody wants to pay $8 for every DVD in the Criterion Collection. In an ownership model you have to let people pick and choose the parts of the archive they want and buy only those, or if you're selling the entire archive in one chunk, the price per-unit has to be low enough to justify making the buyer pay for vast swaths of content they don't actually want.

Steam does a good job with this: they generally price their older games at a price that people are actually willing to pay, and their bundles tend to be intelligently grouped so that if you're interested in one of the bundled games, you're probably interested in at least a few of the others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> It is not just "altruistic". The idea is clever: they loose <0.1% inactive users but will win new ones blocked now behind worry "what if I will not really use it". Their bet is that the second group could be larger than first, and by order of magnitude. And if not, then it is still not so expensive marketing. I wish 'use only if you really use' would become norm.

<comment><USER41> > I wish 'use only if you really use' would become norm.

I wouldn't look at them as an shining beacon. They only cancel if you haven't watched it for a year, and none of your money is refunded, so it's not that great of safety net.

<comment><USER42> It is still pretty great. A lot of people would happily exchange one year of fees for having to unsubscribe. Think of the application for the deceased or incapacitated. Running down every subscription a deceased parent could have had is a huge pain.

<comment><USER41> Why not just cancel their cc?

<comment><USER42> some things roll over to collections, which can also be difficult to unwind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Link to the Netflix blog post: [https://media.netflix.com/en/company- blog/helping-members-wh...](https://media.netflix.com/en/company-blog/helping- members-who-havent-been-watching-cancel)

</comment><comment><USER44> In the UK at least, Netflix is often used by fraudsters to check stolen credit card numbers. I bet Netflix were fed up with expense of dealing with all the fraudulent transactions. Or if not the expense, Netflix doesn't want the negative press that they're profiting from all these unsuspecting victims.

</comment><comment><USER45> Could this feasibly be law? what are the potential down sides? That is a company has to stop charging for a service if the service isn't used for a specified amount of time, 12 months or so etc. Like a gym couldn't just keep charging you if their records show you never turned up.

<comment><USER46> Why should the government interfere in market outcomes?

<comment><USER47> If that is not a rethorical question, here are my thoughts: Consumer protection laws/rules can actually help establishing a better marketplace.

Example: DSL Connectivity.

If there are only a few market participants and the allowed lenght for contracts is 24 months, it will be 24 months. This is bad for a number of reasons to me: \- First, a different (and hopefully better/cheaper/cleverer serivce needs to "endure" that only 1/24th of the customer base per month _could_ change. That is also the problem for customers who have issues with the Provider. \- Second, this gives incentives for what I call "dishonest" offers: Marketed as "half off", its only half of the first year (or only six months), then full price for the rest. Hacker News is full of people who are good at math, but this appeals mainly for people who are not. Or who don't have the choice when they are already short on money. \- Third: Part of the calculation is the rate of people who might not use the service to moving, death, etc. - and I don't want the company or me be part of that.

When it comes to other types of contracts (mobile operators, gym services, ...) the stabiltiy of income is still guranteed with shorter spans if you provide a great service. This is proven by markets where these types of protections exist.

And netflix shows that you can even go month by month. I believe thats also because people can buy dvds/blue rays, rent/buy online, go to cinemas, etc - so there are a lot of competing options, forcing you to excel in service. And thats vs. "free" bittorent, rogue streaming, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I just got an email saying that account was cancelled. For some reason I signed up for a second account, so I could get DVD service, received the DVD and never cancelled. Should probably return the disk... if I can find it.

</comment><comment><USER49> This is why Netflix is a honest company. 1\. Reasonable prices for subscription (when you watch). 2\. Does not "charge/steal" from customers.

In contrast, I an older article how this one phone company charged an elderly women in rent for a rotary phone.

> [https://www.computerworld.com/article/2483100/at-t- > charges-e...](https://www.computerworld.com/article/2483100/at-t-charges- > elderly-widow--14-000-in--rent--for-rotary-phone.html)

</comment><comment><USER50> Probably should be a law to do this automatically after four months or so.

<comment><USER51> A good way to rank the level of scumminess among SV companies: Signup with a credit card and don't validate your email address or ever sign into your account. You'd be amazed how many companies will happily start charging you.

<comment><USER52> How is that scummy? You bought something, and they're charging you for it.

<comment><USER53> How can you cancel (without cc chargebacks) if you typed in the wrong email address?

<comment><USER54> Email and ask.

I routinely cancel subscriptions for S3stat customers who have forgotten which old employee first signed up for the service, or just don't want to bother logging back in to do so. A name, or even company name is plenty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Imagine if gyms did this with memberships. They'd lose a fortune.

<comment><USER56> Because it's against their business model. They want you to subscribe and not come.

<comment><USER57> Because not alienating customers is bad for business apparently

No wonder "no contract" chains are growing in some countries.

Less BS for the consumer, even if they have to "pay more" (i.e. the actual cost of the service).

(But yeah in the case where you actually want to pay for a gym membership and not go, those seem optimized for it)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> > Netflix says it will now start to cancel accounts that have watched nothing > in more than a year, but have still been paying subscription fees.

> Netflix said less than half a percent of its user-base falls into that > category.

> Almost 16 million people created accounts in the first three months of the > year, nearly double the new sign-ups it saw in the final months of 2019.

<comment><USER43> With 182.8 million subscribers in the first quarter of 2020, that means that less than 914,000 accounts have watched nothing in the past year.

<comment><USER58> Not sure I believe that. Even if it's true, it means they include everyone who watched a _single_ thing.

I feel like they are doing the minimum change necessary to try to reduce legal problems. They have actually probably had a lot of people try to sue them for charging them for a service they have not used for months and months, when they forget about it and then notice the charges.

<comment><USER59> Probably also reducing chargebacks to get a lower fee from CC companies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> It's also a good security practice - their payment, account and other personal data can be offloaded to cold storage. Both harder to damage and harder to take over.

</comment><comment><USER61> Credit cards only last a few years before theyre expired and replaced. I'd think only very few accounts are unwatched, after 24 months I'd think more than half of CCs would have expired anyway.

<comment><USER62> Card networks offer services to receive updated credit card numbers for mutual customers now and have for a bunch of years.

If your credit card expires, many subscription providers will get the updated details automatically.

Here's an article with some details on the topic: [https://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/card-updater- se...](https://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/card-updater-services- auto-pay-1585.php)

<comment><USER63> Thanks for the link. I've also had the utterly bizarre experience of a service charging my old card number for MONTHS after it expires, have the charges go through, THEN tell me my card is expired 3-6months later and force me to update.

Probably a related thing where they want to keep receiving revenue from me without interruption to my service, but ultimately need to confirm it's not fraud?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> It's a really weird problem to have, I've had it in one of my products. Someone signed up and I was super happy to have a paying subscription. The first month or so I could see they hadn't yet made use of the service. No worries, maybe they just hadn't got around to it. Couple more months, still no use, what to do? Could it be fraud, but how does that work? No one gets anything from me, and I get all the money?

Do I cancel their subscription? Is that the right thing to do from a customer service perspective? I have no idea. Sending an email that says "Hey, um, did you do this accidentally?" is a bit unprofessional. I tried contacting them to no avail, to see if they needed help setting up to keep it professional but still remind them they have this recurring subscription they might not want. Eventually I ended their subscription and left a professional sounding "We noticed you're not using our service, so we have paused your subscription." email and ended it.

I still sometimes wonder if it wasn't a friend or friendly stranger who wanted to support me, and if it was I must sincerely thank them.

</comment><comment><USER65> Slack does this too, every month. (Maybe it's more common in enterprise offerings?)

<comment><USER66> Yeah I appreciated it a lot. They also prorate by active users, so if you're paying for 50 users and only 20 were active, you get a 60% discount. Super solid as a way of doing business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Good on them.

I spent ~five years with a Netflix subscription that I never watched. I'd joke that I ought to get a Christmas card from them, because I was one of their very best customers.

Even now, I'll flip back and forth between paying and not paying, because I only use the service occasionally. I suspect it's less hassle for them to keep people like me on the books than have us fade in and out.

</comment><comment><USER68> Can we talk about Apple subscriptions please... I understand the desire to make money by Apple but these trials that no one uses and then being charge a hundred quid for a year's subscription... even if Apple makes a lot of money operating the racket it's deeply wrong.

Well done to Netflix on this I really cannot see an upside apart from the awesome brand loyalty they increased by doing this!

</comment><comment><USER69> Ha! I have to go cancel my Webfaction account.

They're a decent service but they were acquired by GoDaddy (who I think are douchebags) so I stopped using the service. But I have been forgetting to actually cancel it for _years_ now.

For a while they were changing me ~$10/month. Nice for them and not painful enough for my lazy ass to jump though whatever hoops they may have set in place to cancel.

Then one day I let the balance on the debit card they have on file for me fall to zero, so their auto-debits were failing. Eventually they sent me an email saying that they would stop charging it, but... They will (and do!) try again from time to time. Just to see if it will work.

Rather than just cancelling the service (that I haven't touched in at least 4-5 years) they leave my account in a zombie state and periodically attempt to harvest it again.

(EXPLETIVE DELETED) cheeky bastards, eh?

</comment><comment><USER43> It would be nice if other subscription based products did this also.

</comment><comment><USER70> For those reading at Netflix, thank you!

I worked for a game company and we had a small number of folks who bought lots of games and never activated them. I lobbied management that it was unethical to keep these peoples' money, it was unethical, I was laughed at.

Now that that is out of the way, can we talk about parental controls?

</comment><comment><USER71> They know how to treat their customers. Meanwhile, cancelling a Wall Street Journal subscription online is simply impossible, they have you call their hotline. Unless you're in California, in which case you can cancel online. It's ridiculous and frankly should be illegal.

<comment><USER72> Couldn't agree more, tried to cancel my membership a week ago and just didn't because the process was so long

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> This is a good move, but still fairly lax (I'd personally like a reminder after as little as 2 months). This difference in preference by users and the top comment with an example of the reversed strategy used by a shady dating site, surface the point that pushing this responsibility to the providers doesn't scale.

What we need is good UX for users to manage their various recurring payments, and cancel them by easily blocking payments to specific companies. That's one thing Paypal for instance does right with its "automated payments" dashboard.

The current system of customers having to trust companies by default doesn't work in a market where antisocial behaviour is not more heavily punished.

</comment><comment><USER74> If I have to give out my card details anywhere especially for a subscription based service I look beforehand on how I can cancel it. Companies have no shame in leaving you forget a subscription going on forever. That should be punishable by law.

Also my main bank is now Monzo (based in the UK) and there I get a notification on my phone for every transaction I make. I also see a list of all the committed spending for a month which includes all subscription based services I have (some of them I had to mark myself as such because Monzo can't distinguish if they are recurring or not). To be honest I think every mobile bank application should offer this out of the box. It's 2020...

</comment><comment><USER75> If you send the message that " _don't worry, if you don't use your account, you won't be charged_ ", it has the effect of making people think of Netflix as an account they can just keep forever.

My guess is that they put together data internally that showed e.g. 3% of users become dormant for longer than a quarter, while 5% of people cancel their accounts after a quarter or two of low or no usage, due to the feeling of not getting enough value out of it.

Imagine being able to reduce those cancellations at little or no cost to the bottom line, and turning it into positive PR.

</comment><comment> kalium-xyz Perhaps to eliminate old accounts that have the discounted subscriptions?

<comment><USER76> This is where my mind went too. I don't think Netflix has generally grandfathered-in pricing, my bill has always gone up when their advertised price does. If there are some folks who are getting a year or so of promo pricing, I don't see how cancelling their accounts is advantageous.

<comment> kalium-xyz My family is sharing an account with grandfathered pricing. Edit: seems like they ungranfathered everyone recently

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> LPT: each year order a new card.

Been doing this for many years. If something that unexpectedly gets charged, I know right away or I just goes away. This way I have to some degree regained control.

<comment><USER78> I wanted to do this as well, but it honestly takes so much time to change payment details on a lot of services. All my utilities for example are on auto payment through my credit card, I need to go to a physical store to change that. It's one of the reasons I haven't cancelled one of my credit cards, even though I haven't used it in years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> I have a DVD and a streaming subscription. I use the DVD fairly often, but the streaming rarely. There's very little I want to watch available on streaming. I really should cancel.

</comment><comment><USER80> Misleading title. Here I thought I could be charged by the hour. That would actually make me get netflix, finally.

But I don't think it's worth 5 euro or 11 euro a month because I only enjoy a very small portion of media.

So far it's easier to pirate.

And I'm far too used to the situation where a friend wants to put something on from netflix and it's not available. What's the point of paying 11 euro a month when you're restricted to such a small library?

<comment><USER81> How do you deal with the fact that pirating is not sustainable? Expecially right now when cinemas aren't even open, how can films be made if nobody's paying?

<comment><USER82> You somehow think that not pirating would translate into paid movie/TV show watching? IIRC, pirating actually means more folks watch the shows - <USER2> translates into folks talking about the shows (Free advertising). Besides, lots of folks subscribe to one streaming service (like Netflix) and pirate the things that aren't available.

If Netflix (and the producers of shows and films) want folks to watch, they need to improve. One could start by removing geographic restrictions and merely cull their library for legal reasons (X topic is restricted in X country: Y topic is only available after 8pm).

Also, Netflix doesn't rely on cinemas for its films. The other production companies can follow suit if they decide they want to. The companies can find ways to finance things and reduce piracy, but so far... nope. They are still dragging their feet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #188: "A fool and his money are the best customer". Kudos to Netflix for doing this, but I can entirely understand that they are the exception rather than the rule here. After all, if people don't care about a sum of money they pay monthly without getting anything for it, the only reasonable explanation is that they earn more than enough, so they can probably afford to continue paying it...

</comment><comment><USER84> Wouldn't a better model be to not charge the user for that month if they haven't watched anything? So you would only pay for months where you actually watched things on Netflix, and you wouldn't find that your account was suddenly deleted.

Also, maybe the title should be "Netflix will delete the accounts of customers who never watch", because that describes what Netflix will be doing more accurately.

<comment><USER85> They will be keeping the account data, so you don't need to start from scratch if you sign up again. It's more of an account freeze/deactivation than a deletion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> Those are most likely accounts made for the free 30-day trial They're _very_ common and they're given away to on social media sites etc.

</comment><comment><USER87> I cancelled my Netflix account after almost never watching it and now they keep sending me emails to reactivate my subscription for the low low price of 7.99 euro a month. For some reason they think that I want to come back to Netflix to watch shows at standard definition since for 7.99 you can't even get 720p, even though when I was subscribed, I had the 4K plan.

<comment><USER88> That's just to reel you in. You might think that they discounted their UHD offering for you. So you check and Netflix got their email engagement click.

<comment><USER87> > _You might think that they discounted their UHD offering for you._

Yeah, that's what I assumed when I opened the email. Rather scummy in my opinion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> I remember during the last recession (2008) everyone I knew was going through their credit card statements and removing subscriptions/unneeded charges from their bills. It makes me think that Netflix has the foresight to see this next recession as quite bad and create some good press and become the good guy. Who wants to cancel the good guy??

</comment><comment><USER90> I'm so eager to know how will people start to think of some bundled call phone plans such as a T-Mobile's family plan that I used for a couple of years. The Netflix subscription is offered "for free" with a "1? dollar value" but of course there is no refund if I don't watch it. Oh wait that's how mobile plan always worked.

</comment><comment><USER91> I subscribed to the NYT crossword app at some point in the past as I used to enjoy doing the puzzle on my commute, but I don't know how to unsubscribe now that I'm working remote.

I'm from the UK and pay the sub via Paypal, it's only £4 a month. I'm half tempted to just cancel the payment on Paypal and hope they don't sue me? Can they?

<comment><USER92> My understanding was that the correct way to cancel subscriptions payed with PayPal is via the PayPal website.

I recall one service pointed me to PayPal to cancel a subscription, and that's how I've managed them since.

Edit: spelling

<comment><USER91> Ah, ok thanks.

Well, I've just cancelled it. No turning back now!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER93> Reading this I kept thinking "What? What? Why would you do this?!"

Less than half a percent isn't that much relatively, but those are still many millions.

It'd be hard to convince me that they did it because they're nice, they have share holders who are not interested in that stuff.

So what could have pressured them to do this? Regulation?

<comment><USER94> > It'd be hard to convince me that they did it because they're nice, they have > share holders who are not interested in that stuff.

100%. It might have something to do with wanting more clear/precise analytics numbers. Non-active members might weigh down certain metrics in some way, so removing these members likely allows for 'fuller' analytics/measurements, which is important to their core business. Netflix is now also a very active producer of content itself, instead of it's previous business model of licensing/'renting out' others' content, so clearer and probably higher engagement metrics (once non-active memberships are removed) helps one of it's core competences.

It's purely a business move. Their blog post is PR.

</comment></comment><comment> destory-everyth This reminded me to cancel my cable subscription, I only had it for the EPL and F1 and they did not make any concessions for the fact they are not playing live sports. I also put my mobile plan to cheapest possible because where I am (Singapore) I can't really leave my place for past 2 months

</comment><comment><USER95> I think this would be a good thing to try -- hopefully it will remove one barrier to subscription the fear that you'll be paying every month whether you use it or not.

</comment><comment><USER96> If you don't follow you finances and continue to pay Netflix for a year of service without use, I personally don't think they have any obligation to cancel your account. As somebody who has run SaaS services and seen countless baseless e-mails (even worse chargebacks) come in from users who "forgot" to cancel service and then were irate about it, this doesn't help the customer "entitlement" problem I see. Let me explain what I mean in terms of customer "entitlement". A few of my friends will go out of their way to call and complain to companies for mistakes they themselve make, demanding refunds, discounts, reward points, and often they get compensation. As a business owner, this sort of behavior really infuriates me. These types of users are taking advantage of situations because of their own failing, and thus are now blaming the companies expecting something in return.

<comment><USER97> Maybe this is why it makes financially sense to automatically cancel forgotten accounts at some point.

You would avoid some of the support costs, some chargeback costs and cost with negative publicity (people complaining about "fraudulent" charges on social media).

On large enough scale you can likely do some calculations and eventually A/B testing to figure out what does this mean financially.

</comment></comment><comment><USER98> That is shocking. In my experience, well over 20% of all revenues of an online subscription service can come from stale users who keeping paying but never login anymore. They're gold to the bottom line.

<comment><USER43> For Netflix though, it applies to less than half a percent of their subscribers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER99> A reasonable strategy would be to stop charging customers who haven't watched in a while, but leave them enrolled as subscribers. If they start watching again, start charging again.

<comment><USER100> Netflix keeps all your preferences and history, so the account can be reactivated without losing anything.

<comment><USER101> I wonder if it is different if you were never a paying user? I did the free trial in February 2019 and then cancelled. If I try to login now, it starts going through the whole set up a free trial for a new user process, with no indication that it recognizes my account.

In fact, if I try to login with the email address I used for the trial and any random thing for the password, it goes to the new user trial setup.

If I hit thee "need help" link on the sign in screen and try to initiate a password reset, it tells me there is no account for my email address.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER102> Given there is no cancellation nor sign up fee for Netflix I just cancel it every time that I sign up, so I buy a month of access instead of keeping a live subscription

</comment><comment><USER103> Typically companies want to keep these dormant accounts because it's literally free money. It's nice to know that Netflix isn't a parasite.

</comment><comment><USER104> You can always ask your credit card provider to send you a replacement card or the charges move to the replacement card

</comment><comment><USER105> I wish 24 hour fitness would do the same. They keep charging me even though I called them multiple times to cancel.

</comment><comment><USER106> That's great, but why would they do this? I don't understand. Is it just a seemingly costly PR-capmaign?

</comment><comment><USER107> This is absolutely ridiculous. As a profitable company the duty of the company is to make money for the share holders and board members. The customer is a dumb expendable resource to be exploited. Netflix stock price is down because of this. Not only should Netflix not do this, it should charge pregnant women extra because they are watching with an extra person /s

</comment><comment><USER108> Is this for accounting purposes? They can't recognize the revenue without it being used?

</comment><comment><USER109> Already getting netflix phising mails regarding it hehe

</comment><comment><USER110> What happens with your subscriptions when you die?

<comment><USER111> A few scummy companies put _huuuge_ termination fees in the case of a customer's death. In one case it was equivalent to 100 years service for a phone setup my grandfather had!

In most cases I bet they get paid - usually whoever is overseeing a loved ones estate really doesn't want to be going to court etc.

<comment><USER112> So if his setup was $10/mo, the termination fee was $12,000?

<comment><USER111> It was a $3 per month business VoIP phone number redirecting service, and the termination fee was $3000 if you didn't use the correct termination procedure, which involved knowing a password in a web form only my grandfather knew, or passing a 'my password is my voice' phone login. They also allowed termination by a letter to their HQ, with a $3k fee. I think the fee was more of a "we can only offer low prices if everything is automated, so we charge a stupidly high fee for anything we can't automate".

I don't want to name the company, because the dispute is still ongoing.

<comment><USER113> On the other hand, if you lose the dispute, you should absolutely post about it here and let everyone know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER114> Refreshingly reasonable stance

</comment><comment><USER115> Imagine if gyms did this.

<comment><USER43> The difference between Netflix doing this and gyms doing this is gyms rely heavily on people who join and don't go (even specifically targeting that audience), while for Netflix it is less than half a percent of their users.

If anyone is interesting in learning more about the economics and psychology of gym memberships, I highly recommend Episode 590: The Planet Money Workout of the NPR podcast Planet Money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER94> Wow I love atruistic corps. So lovely to see this. [read with a sarcastic Ricky Gervais voice] [1]

[1] [https://youtu.be/korFaq7ZxVw?t=1020](https://youtu.be/korFaq7ZxVw?t=1020)

</comment><comment><USER116> Be careful, exactly 10 years after I cancelled my Netflix, Netflix started to charge my card again. I contacted Netflix, but they cannot did anything about it. I ended up having my card issuer to issue a new account number to me.

<comment><USER117> The most likely explanation is that your credit card details were compromised and someone was using them for "free Netflix".</comment></comment>


Cjdns v20 Release - <AUTHOR> https://cryptpad.fr/pad/#/1/view/XnDofWIIasrwcpgQUcFWKg/Vh1pZR0tVZgUT2I9Lec4coqTdn0mwRuA+lWH5klSSfw/ <comment><USER3> Most of the mesh networking / routing protocol community has always viewed CJDNS with great puzzlement. What is it? You're not going to find out from the community around it, who invariably respond to technical questions with lots of handwaving about how nothing else is "decentralized enough". You're not really going to get a very clear picture from the whitepaper on Github, which has a huge amount of detail on a cute encoding scheme and some handrolled crypto, but no real overview of any of the theory of the system.

It's basically a network of VPN tunnels. They call the network "hyperboria" and, as an overlay network, it runs on top of the internet. It doesn't provide anything that https doesn't already provide, but the community insists that it is a "mesh network" that will replace the internet. The basis for this claim is the fact that one could conceivably run one of the tunnels over an ethernet link. But today, as far as I can tell, it's a bunch of dudes with regular ISP connections looking at websites over a VPN. A very different thing than the community mesh networks actually providing internet access in places like Athens, Catalonia, and Berlin.

The one interesting thing about CJDNS was the DHT routing technique that they just got rid of. It could drastically cut down on the amount of memory used for routing information by each node. In theory, you could route to any destination in the world on a completely flat network. This is in contrast to the system today, where routers know about every IP reachable on their subnet and rely on other routers to deal with traffic bound for other subnets. Some previous work[1][2] (unfortunately not cited by CJDNS in their paper), can give you a much clearer and theoretically solid idea of how this works.

I believe that if somebody is ever able to make DHT routing performant, it will be a huge breakthrough. I guess CJDNS will not be that project. AFAIK the DHT routing protocol that CJDNS just replaced was not able to find optimal routes. Your packets would get to their destination somehow, but it's very unlikely that they would get there on the shortest path. Sounds like CJDNS has given up on trying to improve it, and is now purely a hobbyist VPN network with centralized control.

I highly recommend you read the papers below, DHT routing is actually very interesting. Hopefully a newer, more theoretically rigorous project to achieve this will emerge now that CJDNS has dropped the concept.

[1] [http://os.itec.kit.edu/downloads/publ_2006_fuhrmann- ua_pushi...](http://os.itec.kit.edu/downloads/publ_2006_fuhrmann-ua_pushing- chord.pdf) [2] [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp- content/uploads/...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp- content/uploads/2016/02/virtualring.pdf)

<comment><USER4> > AFAIK the DHT routing protocol that CJDNS just replaced was not able to find > optimal routes. Your packets would get to their destination somehow, but > it's very unlikely that they would get there on the shortest path. Sounds > like CJDNS has given up on trying to improve it, and is now purely a > hobbyist VPN network with centralized control.

It's not really just about optimal routes. A pretty major problem with the DHT is that it is very chatty, and even edge nodes that might like to be "left alone" are often included in the conversation. This isn't ideal for any kind of low-power or mobile device. Plus DHT convergence is incredibly slow - <USER2> great for mobile devices or jumping between networks either. It actually turns out that sometimes a bit of centralisation drastically improves efficiency.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This still feels like wandering in the wilderness compared to stuff like batman-adv or tinc, both of which are very precise and succinct about network and protocol design.

Has the cryptography been audited yet? I seem to remember that that was something big coming up Real Soon Now.

</comment><comment> mike-cardwell Is there a Debian apt repo for cjdns yet? I used cjdns for a while, but it was annoying having a separate procedure for updating it when everything else on my system just required an apt-get dist-upgrade, so I stopped using it.

</comment><comment><USER6> It is always amusing when various "debcentralise the X" efforts learn the same hard lessons over and over, namely that when compared to centralised equivalents, decentralisation is more complicated, more difficult to debug and verify correctness, and always more expensive.

<comment><USER7> So what's your answer? Hand over all control to the Microsofts, Apples, and Googles of the world? Become a cog in their machine, just because freeing ourselves from their machine is hard? No thanks.

People probably laughed at the efforts of those trying to overthrow monarchs and dictators, and instate democracy. And that was hard too, but it doesn't mean it wasn't worthwhile.

<comment><USER8> Decentralization is futile*

* Except in all the places where it's succeeded and vastly improved the world.

<comment><USER6> Can you name an example where complete decentralisation succeeded? In most cases, fully decntralized systems were developed for a small, closed network of agents and then when they failed to scale well the architects were forced to introduce mid-tier centralisation points to assist coordination and make the system more efficient.

<comment><USER7> Decentralisation isn't a binary succeed/fail, it's a direction to head towards. Increasing decentralisation incrementally is nearly always a win.

The web, git, bitcoin, email. They are all incremental improvements on more- centralised predecessors.

<comment><USER6> It is a continuum, but it is also the case that the most efficient sweet spot for reliability and cost effectiveness changes on this continuum as your scale up.

The web is very decentralized when it started, but it was impossible to find anything, so you would pass along lists of interesting URLs via email lists, usenet postings, etc. Eventually we get catalogues like Yahoo and later search engines like Altavista and Google. The later were a huge step towards centralization of the web and we have not really gotten around this problem.

Email was initially very decentralized (I am talking things like UUCP, Bitnet mail, Fido, etc.) but message routing was a major pain as anyone who remembers UUCP bangpaths can tell you. SMTP is a bit of a sidestep on this path, making addressing easier by moving somewhat in a decentralized direction with direct TCP delivery (and then a half-step back with MX records and centralization of campus-wide email systems.) While email was decentralized it was also open to parasites and we fought the good fight for a while but are now at a point where more than half of all email in the US runs through three organizations because they have the resources and expertise to deliver a good product and control spam -- not exactly decentralized anymore is it?

Git? Yeah, for your small repo. Now try to make that repo open to the rest of the internet and participate in the global source web. Oh yeah, up to github or bitbucket you go. Once again we centralize to scale up and to solve the discoverability problem. Outside of a local context git is almost completely centralized.

Bitcoin? I would point out how only a few mining consortiums control the bulk of the hashing output, but we are now reaching fish in a barrel stage.

If you examine all of these 'improvements' I think you will see that they became more centralized as they scaled up to solve problems with efficiency, discoverability, complexity, and controlling parasites and increasing the cost for attackers. As I stated initially, decentralization for its own sake is almost always a sure sign of an amateur who does not understand the math of network relationships or who has no experience in the field and is just itching to make a dash through the minefield without noticing all of the dead bodies ahead of them or bothering to learn from these lessons.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


As If I Didn't Spent Enough Time on College - <AUTHOR> https://qnkxsovc.github.io/2018/01/30/As-If-I-Didn%27t-Spend-Enough-Time-on-College.html <comment><AUTHOR> I'm a senior in high school, and after applying to college I did some analysis on my essays to identify which prompts are really important, and what colleges want to hear. This post describes the methods and results of the investigation - I would love to hear suggestions on other ways to analyze the data, or other conclusions that could be made.

</comment><comment><USER2> > As If I Didn't Spent Enough Time on College

Given the grammar, no, you haven't spent enough time on college.

<comment><AUTHOR> Got me</comment></comment>


Verifying the safety of infant formula using the blockchain - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/business-42152892 <comment><USER2> I keep on hearing about how blockchain is the future of everything but am yet to hear even a single use case which could not have been implemented in a traditional DB. I suppose blockchain has some advantages in its zero-trust distributed nature but that's just implementation.

In this case, the previous problem wasn't technological, it was a bad actor subverting the system - and they would be able to subvert this system in the exact same way. What, is the blockchain going to reach up out of the ether and hold the guy back from pouring melamine into the mixing vat, then saying he didn't?

I don't know how journalists fall for this nonsense. You don't even need to be technically literate to see the problem. I didn't even have to read the article to know what the fatal flaw was going to be. And this is the BBC! It's infuriating.

<comment><USER3> Now I'm not arguing against you that this seems a bit weird and not gonna solve the problem in itself, but humor me here.

As I understand it from the article, the blockchain is suppose to prevent people from wanting to tamper with the product, since every logistical-step from production to delivery is stamped and you can easily trace where the product is coming from.

So once you discover that a product has been tampered with, you'll follow the log and investigate everyone along the way, in the end you'll find who is messing with it.

Not exactly sure why they would need a blockchain for this, but I guess it's because no one in the chain trust each other.

But, all of what I wrote might be wrong, I might misunderstand how it works or why it would work.

<comment><USER4> The audit log already exists, or else how would China have found and prosecuted those executives?

The problem at hand is ensuring that the information that makes it on the chain is correct, or at least that other members of the chain have a way of noticing and repudiating that contribution. Cryptocurrency blockchains accomplish this via proof of work and forking, which is why everyone is so interested in the technology. But the only reason they work is that the proof of work mechanism is literally what keeps the network running, and if the network isn't running, all of the sunk costs miners have made are effectively worthless, so even though the miners don't have a reason to trust each other, all of their economic incentives are aligned. The only reason to fork is if you think some people have defeated the proof of work mechanism, or if they are pushing a different version of the blockchain software, which wouldn't be allowed in any real-world application anyway.

Proof of work uses inherently useless calculations to determine that one isn't flooding the network with transactions, because every transaction with a correct key is just assumed to be correct. What real-world application does that map to? Certainly none of the ones in the article, which is why these companies don't use proof of work, they use permissioned blockchains. But a permissioned blockchain is effectively like a standard write-only database with an audit log that each individual in the production line has a password to, which is trivial to accomplish with existing tech. The only way other actors can verify if their peers' inputs to the system are correct is if they verify the physical results, and now we're right back where we started, where you can't trust the system more than you trust any one individual, but now with a db that's at least an order of magnitude slower than any competitive option.

<comment><AUTHOR> You make a good point, but smart contracts are not just "write-only databases" as they have built-in logic that can bypass some of the need for "verifying peers' inputs" style consensus. For example, attaching a photo of authentic product and being able to check that it on the receiving end could serve as proof that the consumer gets the real deal.

<comment><USER4> Representing a physical product as a unique cryptographic hash that the consumer can independently verify is generally a lot harder than attaching a photo. From a comment below: > Leanne Kemp, an Australian who in 2015 founded a company called Everledger, has now encrypted the distinguishing features of 1.8 million diamonds and their provenance on a blockchain. > More than 40 features are logged to create a fingerprint for each diamond, logging it from mine to ring.

For this to provide proof of authenticity, I need to be able to visit a jeweler not employed by Everledger, and have them be able to use a rubric to classify my diamond along these 40 features in a way that uniquely describes it in a way no other diamond could be described. I then need to be able to visit a second and a third jeweler and obtain the exact same classification along these 40 features.

When visiting Everledger's site, I can't get any information on the classification process beyond that sentence. The supposed core of the product doesn't even have a white paper.

Diamonds are comparatively easy to classify, as they are supposedly unique in many ways, and don't physically degrade over time. When it comes to tins of milk, I can't think of a secure proof of authenticity process that doesn't involve the consumer verifying the composition of the product with a gas chromatography machine.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I should have attached a disclaimer that I do not claim that a photograph would be enough to verify the safety of infant formula. Fair points.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In 2009, China had a very serious problem dealing with tainted milk, leading to infants dying and getting sick. People had sold more than 900 tonnes of tainted milk. It eventually executed two involved with the production process: [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/nov/24/china- executes...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/nov/24/china-executes- milk-scandal-pair)

The blockchain solution presented here wouldn't have verified safety in that case, although the author did mention the case which makes the article misleading. Melamine was added to the formula to fool a protein test. The chemical was added by trusted members of the supply chain. Since the members were trusted, they would pass the authenticity test of the blockchain.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, unfortunately you cant do a checksum on physical ingredients.

<comment><USER3> Actually, from the article, it mentions this:

> Leanne Kemp, an Australian who in 2015 founded a company called Everledger, > has now encrypted the distinguishing features of 1.8 million diamonds and > their provenance on a blockchain.

> More than 40 features are logged to create a fingerprint for each diamond, > logging it from mine to ring.

So it seems, in the case of diamonds, they are unique enough to create a fingerprint. I'm no expert on diamonds, so that might not really work in reality.

<comment><USER4> I can't find very much information on Everledger's features process, just on the blockchain aspect, which doesn't inspire confidence. It's not enough for them to create 40 features you can fingerprint a diamond by, they have to be 40 features that are independently and consistently verifiable.

If I have to send my diamond to Everledger to verify it, I'm effectively just trusting them. Representing a physical object as a cryptographic hash for security doesn't work if the consumer can't independently verify the hash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The pharmaceutical companies are basically using blockchain as a data store. The only benefit of blockchain here is availability and security (hacking is more difficult), but they could use exactly the same mechanism and use a traditional database.

People still need the technology in there phone to scan the product, and we need to ensure that those proofs can't be tampered directly on the products. That also seems hard.

</comment><comment><USER8> The author and editor of this article apparently made no attempt to comprehend what a blockchain is or what it can do, and there's no detail in the article that tells me how using a blockchain solves the authenticity problems described. Paperwork can be bought for a bribe? Why couldn't a blockchain record?

<comment><USER9> A theoretical solution is a gadget that can read the chemical composition of a powder placed in front of its sensor, and digitally sign it... obviously there's a MITM attack there, if I can go between the sensor and the CPU, I can tell the CPU "the sensors read these values..."

<comment><USER6> Consumers would need the ability to easily verify that the chemical composition of the product they purchased matches the manufacturers claim.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm afraid I don't get any of this.

" _A small wire in the formula label wraps around the container, explains Alexander Busarov, chief executive of blockchain startup WaLiMai. "You cannot open the can of baby food without breaking the label," he says._

" _The wire acts as an antenna for a signal from an RFID chip, which a smartphone can read. The chip, like some bank cards, generates a new code each time it is scanned. Authenticating takes about two seconds, says Mr Busarov, then you get the result, the logistics details, a picture of the product and where it was labelled._ "

They're using magic encryption technology and remote servers to ensure that someone hasn't _opened the can and replaced the contents?_

I kinda see the diamond example, although I'm not sure what the block chain adds over a simple database. But the problems with the other products invoice a worker dumpling a bag of melamine powder into the mixer with the other ingredients and then lying about it. How does this, or any other, technology stop that?

</comment><comment><USER11> The article gets some technical details wrong but does point the way of what I think are blockchains big use cases.

I took the edX blockchain for business class that covers these use cases and has some hands on exercises - not much programming, but experimenting with Hyperledge projects. I am interested in a different use case [http://hyperledgerai.com](http://hyperledgerai.com) but I have not made much progress yet.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think a good idea would be for the brands to "sign" each product they're selling, so that you could verify the signature in a very simple way (scanning a qr code? ).

I think the blockchain is not really necessary here, and it solves a problem that's not very likely to happen (someone hacking the pharmaceutical's database to remove evidence of tampering).

</comment><comment><USER12> What actually makes this a blockchain? That it uses a Merkle Tree?

Is a CT log a blockchain?

<comment><USER7> A blockchain is a just a linear merkle tree.

<comment><USER13> Put differently, it's like a branching DAG with economic incentives to always treat the longest path as "master."

Quite a lot like a Git repository: you usually want to follow the branch with the most cumulative work on it.

<comment><USER7> It's more of a tree than a DAG : you'll never have merging in a blockchain.

A tree where the longest path is considered the real branch.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


"We were 2 days from total economic collapse - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/Whats-something-that-is-common-knowledge-at-your-workplace-but-would-be-mind-blowing-to-the-rest-of-us/answer/Joseph-Wang-9?share=1 <comment><USER2> I imagine this was posted for the insight about the financial industry which was OK.

But the insight into recruitment at Facebook was fascinating, as well as article after that.

Strange, the linked article was just for finance, but if I clicked on the headline it lists all of the answers for that question, which I thought were more interesting.

[https://www.quora.com/Whats-something-that-is-common- knowled...](https://www.quora.com/Whats-something-that-is-common-knowledge-at- your-workplace-but-would-be-mind-blowing-to-the-rest-of-us#)</comment>


Shark Tank Recap - Man Sells Whole Company for $400k - <AUTHOR> http://www.centernetworks.com/shark-tank-recap-february-10

<comment><USER2> I love this show. I thought the "puppy cakes" product was a little ridiculous.</comment>


Settle is now Droplet - <AUTHOR> http://willgrant.org/settle-is-now-droplet/

<comment><USER2> For what it's worth, iZettle got back to me with a statement after I covered this on The Next Web:

"Being a startup ourselves we always encourage entrepreneurship, including innovation in the payments space. In this case, unfortunately, their very similar company name – in combination with also being in the same industry- risked confusing both our and their users. We believe that changing their name will benefit the both of us and we wish them all the best with Droplet."

Link: [http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/08/13/mobile-payments- sta...](http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/08/13/mobile-payments-startup- settle-forced-change-name-droplet-izettle-drops-trademark-complaint/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I prefer the new name in any event but that doesn't take into account the goodwill you have built up with the old name. The problem is the lack of certainty over the outcome of litigation. Clearly iZettle have at least an arguable case that there is a risk of consumer confusion but obviously it requires a court's determination to provide certainty.

The problem is that the larger entity is more likely to have the resources to engage in litigation which in itself means smaller entities are less likely to fight back.

Trade mark litigation is often costly due to the need for survey evidence to show confusion amongst consumers. One benefit of going via OHIM (rather than the courts) is that costs are limited in this regard and you can get an early determination from OHIM as to whether there is a likelihood of confusion between the marks.

For example, if you applied for the 'Settle' mark at OHIM, and iZettle challenged, you would have limited costs exposure to the other side if you lost (although on the flipside, limited recovery if you won). Somewhat besides the point in the current case but I thought it an interesting point to include in my comment.

At least the existing trade marks incorporating 'Droplet' are in much more dissimilar areas so you are less likely to face issues with the incumbents.

<http://www.ipo.gov.uk/ohim?ohimnum=E10714392> <http://www.ipo.gov.uk/ohim?ohimnum=E9331851>

<comment><AUTHOR> Goodwill is definitely an issue. It's with regret that we had to move on from 'Settle', but as I said, we need 100% focus on our product at the moment.

<comment><USER3> Sounds like you have the right attitude. Good luck for the future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow, that is frustrating. iZettle is a pretty terrible name which makes this even worse.

Just checked to see if zettle is a Swedish word for settle, nope.

</comment><comment><USER5> A bit like if Apple sued somebody whose company were named pod.com, or phone.com...

</comment><comment><USER6> That sucks. Settle and iZettle, for me, are easily distinguishable. I'd be fuming.

<comment><USER7> You aren't the person courts worry about when talking about trademarks...

I don't know the history of iZettle or Settle, but it seems like iZettle is much further along. I don't know about UK trademarks, but iZettle applied for their US one in 2011. I didn't find a "Settle" mark at all in the US. Given all of that, and that they are both in the "payment processor" category, I could easily see a court siding with iZettle on this one.

Still sucks to have to change a name though...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Droplet in itself isn't a horrible name... but for your product it is. One of these days I'd love to see somebody stand up to a baseless claim like this, despite the costs that might be involved.

</comment><comment><USER9> Am I the only one who immediately associates apps/services starting with "Drop" with Dropbox?

<comment><USER10> I think it's slightly different because droplet is an actual word in itself. If it was drop-pay (bad example), then I might agree.

<comment><USER9> I knew droplet is a actual word but my brain made the link nevertheless. Maybe it's because english is not my first language

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Dropbox Dropmark Droplet Dropsend

<comment><USER12> That could be a real scenario. "I'll just Dropmark this file stored on Dropbox, and also Dropsend it to my colleagues, then I'll Droplet the client for payment."</comment></comment>


When Exploring, Keep a Log - <AUTHOR> http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2015/03/30/when-exploring-keep-a-log/

<comment><AUTHOR> Key point: don't trust your memory, keep a log.

       In new situations, keep a journal of your experiences.  This helps you
       organize your thoughts and remember observations clearly. When
       exploring, keep a log. This strategy is useful if you are starting a
       new job, a new project, forming a startup or launching a new product in
       an unfamiliar market.</comment>


We Should Never Have to Vote in Person Again - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/04/opinion/coronavirus-vote-by-mail.html <comment><USER2> Sigh, though I think this article is correct, this is one of those fantasies that assumes the reason we don't have mail-in-ballots is because our legislators have never realized that making voting easier and more accessible and simply needs a little informational push, preferably with graphs. Of course mail-in raises participation in a country without election-day holidays. It's blindingly obvious.

The reason we don't have mail-in is because both parties wish to depress turnout. US elections are nearly unique in the democratic world for how bad they are, while at the same time, the power of the US state both domestically and abroad is nearly unmatched. They aren't going to let the little people fuck with the great game, so they just give us a pretend democracy and manipulate voter access and eligibility in such a way that reliable tribunes of American business get in there and people, particularly people of color, are deprived of the war-economy destabilizing right to vote.

<comment><USER3> > particularly people of color, are deprived of the war-economy destabilizing > right to vote.

how is anyone deprived the right to vote in 2020?

<comment><USER4> [https://www.aclu.org/facts-about-voter- suppression](https://www.aclu.org/facts-about-voter-suppression) Best source I could find off the top. Looks like it's a combo of small changes that result in bureaucratic obfuscation of the process which is not so abruptly suppression, but likely to negatively influence some voter turnout.</comment></comment></comment>


China's Three Gorges Dam faces severe flooding as Yangtze overflows [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zp74CTV5m9g <comment><USER2> The Yangtze is notorious for overflowing and the geography does not help. If you visit towns along its course you are struck by the huge safety margin between the level of the water (on a normal day) and the height of the first buildings, and with the size of the protective dikes.

I'm sure that this has been considered when they built the Dam.</comment>


Satya Nadella: 'We clearly missed the mobile phone' - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2016/10/25/satya-nadella-we-missed-the-mobile-phone <comment><USER2> I would argue that they did not miss mobile phones so much as poorly execute on it. They knew mobile phones were an opportunity from the outset and made multiple attempts at gaining traction. But all the attempts missed. How many versions of Windows did they try out for the phone?

I have a Lumina phone running Windows 10 and it is a great phone. But it is way too late. Just because they know they need to be in AR/VR does mean they will be able to execute on it and win.

</comment><comment><USER3> I remember a friend having a windows phone years before iPhone was introduced.

It had a resistive touchscreen, and the UI was basically Windows in smaller screen.

So, no they didn't miss, they just didn't have what it takes to make it happen. They had to wait for someone to show them how it is done.

Hence I don't have high expectations on seeing something extraordinary coming out of MS in the VR space. They just don't have the imagination.

</comment><comment><USER4> I would love a phone that I could plug into a dock and use just like a regular computer. I was certain that's what Microsoft was going after with their Windows 8 release. I'm not sure why they aren't pursuing it. I think I read somewhere that Intel dropped their mobile chip line.

<comment><USER5> Canonical was working on that with Ubuntu Touch, and I remember that someone had tried making a GNOME (or was it KDE?) fork that had support for that. It's definitely something the free software community is looking into, but my main concern is that whatever we end up with being based on free software. Otherwise it would be a step back as a community.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not only did they miss the mobile phone opportunity, they aimed away from it. Windows phones are objectively bad.

Further: "company won't make the same mistake with augmented reality and virtual reality." What, they're not going to port Word, Excel and PowerPoint (ugh!) to AR and/or VR?</comment>