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Both the Bose and Sony offerings are, in my opinion, better sound quality and better noise cancellation than AirPods.


Or medical insurance.


People used to buy NS-10s because they knew professional studios used them. They were then underwhelmed when they sounded worse than the hifi speakers they had at home.

Many audio engineers live by the mantra "if it sounds good on NS-10s, it'll sound good on anything".

We need such a touchstone for software engineers.


It'd be moving touchstone is the problems, speakers in the consumer space don't evolve as fast as computing tech in the user space.

You could get somewhat close by looking at what was a middle of the road consumer laptop from Dell/HP/Lenovo 5 years ago and buying one of those though.


Many, often, quickly.


He actually explains it. It's due to the round trip time increasing from further away water droplets when filmed at an oblique angle. Light hitting a droplet 3m away has a 3x times longer round trip than light hitting a droplet 1m away.


Annoyingly, Ableton Push 3 Standalone runs on Linux. This means that Ableton have a working Linux version of, at least the core, of Ableton Live working on Linux. I sincerely hope they release a true Linux version soon. It's the last thing tying me to Windows.


If you use the word "Socialise" then the current trend of reactionary ill-informed is to assume "Communism". It's an argument I'm sick of having, but it's an argument that needs to be had.


> it's an argument I'm sick of having, but it's an argument that needs to be had

OP [1] is the first person to make the argument that socialising anything implies communism in this thread. The entire shtick is a straw man. It doesn't need to be argued if it's only brought up by the side tearing it down.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45575045


The first in this thread. I often come across people making this claim.


Calling the current US administration "commie" wan't on my bingo card. I swear most people these days have no actual concept of the things they argue against.


They are as commie as it gets but lets say heavily promoting socialism, nationalizing private companies, subsidizing farmers etc etc… and it is getting worse by the minute


If it takes a misunderstanding of communism to get trump kicked out, I'm all for it, but this is far from "as commie as it gets". What's the definition of communism as far as you understand it?


Samsung didn't copy the damn iPhone. This is revisionist history. HTC was on the scene for popular Android smart phones before Samsung, and they also didn't copy the iPhone. Early Nokia Symbian devices were on the scene before HTC and they also didn't copy the iPhone. Touch screen phones were going to happen. Apple made the first, popular one, but they were going to happen.


We’re talking about transfer of critical technologies or knowhow, and how company relationships lead to such situations. Not Apple vs Android contents or how touch screen phone were already meant to be. A lot of industrial countries fail to manufacture good phones, not because they don’t have the capacity but they lack the knowhow.

Samsung was the original manufacturing partner for Apple, which allowed them to amass incredible amount of knowhow to create their own, and before that they were not even in the phone market much, yet alone launch their own phone.


In the initial years HTC was one of the biggest Android manufacturers and their phones didn't really copy the iPhone.

Samsung was just better at marketing and other business aspects.

> and before that [Apple] were not even in the phone market much, yet alone launch their own phone.

This applies to Apple, too. Samsung learned how to make them. As did HTC, Sony, Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo, OnePlus, etc, etc. Turns out, making smartphones is a very competitive business, but a lot of companies were good at it, at least for periods of time.


Australia has very strong consumer protection laws but international companies still sell products here. They are forced to comply with the regulations and the prices are mostly comparable with other countries. Regulations work.


Multinationals cherish and welcome regulations. They have whole compliance departments for exactly that: obeying regulations.

How’s Australia’s startup scene though? Startups are the hardest hit by regulations.

Fewer startups mean less competition for incumbents. This is how de-facto monopolies appear: through regulating competition out of existence.


Australia's startup scene is doing ok, but the funding model is lacking. There are a few reputable VCs, and very limited government funding. I don't think it's regulations that are cramping Australian startups, I think it's more lack of investment from both private and public sectors. I know many people who are running successful startups in Australia.

I'd argue that having a system of lobbying government and lax rules on political donations would have a much greater effect on stymying competition. It seems that monopolies in the US are very much protected by a lack of regulation on political donations rather than too much regulation.


> I'd argue that having a system of lobbying government and lax rules on political donations would have a much greater effect on stymying competition.

Interesting. My belief is that regulations are the most harmful since they raise barriers to startup competition and thus protect monopolies (since startups, due to their hunger, are the most important source of competition in a market - incumbents usually end up in monopolies and cartels instead). We're seeing that here in the EU every day.

But let's explore your point: how exactly do you think lobbying and donations are stymying competition? What's the mechanism at work?


The mechanism is as old as the hills. You pay for favourable conditions for your business, and unfavourable conditions for your competitors. Australia has a classic history of political figures being given very comfortable jobs in the private sector after they've greased the wheel for their largest donors. This applies to tech, communications, finance, property development and probably every other money making sector.

When contracts are awarded to companies based on lobbying and donations it stymies competition.

The following quote is from the report linked at [1]. It's worth reading the entirety of that report.

"the growing politicisation of public service, exemplified by political appointments to government bodies (Griffiths et al. 2022), may spill over into the contract market. Links between politics, donations, and contracts may negatively impact competition and firm entry".

[1]: https://e61.in/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Political-Economy-...


What you are describing is how governments prop-up incumbents. But this rarely apply to startups, who seldom stand a chance at getting government contracts and the like. Entrepreneurs will ignore those and build the startup from the bottom up, with small customers first.

Of course a less corrupt government could help here, like the x-prize helped SpaceX and electric car subsidies helped Tesla. But that's too much to ask from politicians of most countries.

To actually prevent startups competing and disrupting the market, I maintain that regulations are much more effective: they will prevent entrepreneurs from even thinking of entering and competing highly regulated domains. See the three canonical examples (health care, education and housing) where high prices and scarcity are the name of the game.


I think we're debating around the actual core of the issue: Regulations are only as good or bad as the content of the regulations, and corrupt governments can (and do) ignore and enact regulations at their pleasure.

Ideally, regulations can promote startups and overall market competition. We do see that ideal in some Australian regulations (and I would guess in most countries) but regulations are decided by the government, and that means that their enforcement (or lack thereof) and intent is often pro-incumbent.

I still maintain that regulations on political lobbying and donations would go a long way to open up the playing field for startups. Unfortunately, I don't see any evidence of any political party in any country doing more than pay lip service to actually doing this.


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