Russia after starting aggressive war against Ukraine quickly deployed own version of payment system. And it has been working much better than Visa/Madtercards with much more straightforward integration with online services and very intuitive apps. Russian people who moved from Russia as refugees or just to escape mobilization or prosecution have found banking system in EU/UK/US are rather unsmooth to put it mildly.
1. "Quickly deployed" is misleading. The work started after 2014 when the idea of closing Russia from the SWIFT system was first discussed. Europeans didn't do that at that time (and they were, that would have been hugely problematic for Russian banks), but made Russia initiate technical work to add in-country backend. In 2022 they finally had to turn it on. But the work was 8 years in the making.
2. When it comes to Mir (Visa/Mastercard) alternatives, it is not that wide-spread.
3. The awesomeness of Russian Fintech (and IT/tech in general) is a separate thing, that has everything to do with Russians' technological ingenuity, not the government/sanctions/patriotism/safety/risk-management/sovereignty/independence.
One of the big advantages of types is documenting what is *not* allowed. This brings a clarity to the developers and additionally ensure what is not allowed does not happen.
Unit tests typically test for behaviours. This could be both positive and negative tests. But we often test only a subset of possibilities just because how people generally think (more positive cases than negative cases). Theoretically we can do all those tests with unit testing. But we need to ask ourselves honestly, do we have that kind of test coverage as SQLLite? If yes, do we have that for very large codebases?
Since money has not exchanged hands, you could always decide not to buy at the counter. So atleast in the countries I have been, it is not legally binding.
Only if deliberate. If the incorrect price is corrected as soon as the problem is noticed then that is (legally) fine. If the incorrect price is left displayed, or was put up deliberately to draw people in, then it is bait & switch.
The other solid bait & switch is advertising a product that they don't have any of to sell, in the hope that you'll come in and buy something more expensive (or lower value) instead.
> Without government interference, someone who is stronger/more brutal than you can kill you and take your property, partner, and anything else they like.
I cannot understand how people can idealize anarchy. It is as if they read some cool novel and believe that a world without functioning government is going to be something comfortable and safe.
To be devil's advocate, a lot of peoples problems, especially in the US, is from the government. If you get a few years in jail for drug possession, or lose your license because some cop claimed you were high even though you haven't smoked in 12 hours, or they seize your cash or possessions over dubious civil forfeiture laws, or one of any number of other things, the government is your biggest problem and the simplest but naive solution is to eliminate government.
It isn't very forward thinking, but most people are mostly concerned with their immediate problems, not indirect problems that would take decades to culminate afterwards. US governmental problems are now, the problems of potential anarchy are a long ways down the road.
> As Moroccan firms will already pay a carbon price domestically, their exports are likely to avoid additional CBAM charges at the EU border, helping them remain competitive
As per some reports, EU was not agreeing to a similar proposal from India.
There are many other computing devices that can run operating systems other than Android and iOS, including devices that can run completely unlocked versions of Android. You're just lying.
So your argument here is "Apple isn't a monopoly. The Fairphone is always ab option"?
I'll keep pounding it in people's heads that 30 years ago Microsoft was hit over a web browser. It's a shame these days people would instead revert that and say "just download Netscape". If that worked, sure. But we have decades of market lock in showing it doesn't
The flaw in the Microsoft comparison is that the web browser was installed in, what, 95% of actual computing devices? Remember phones and all of this other cool technology we have didn't exist.
Today there are many phones to choose from. You can buy an iPhone, or a Pixel, or a Galaxy. You can even buy a more open-source style phone with open-source style stores just like any other generic product feature. There is a marketplace and there is competition, it's just that, unlike what so many people here seem to desire, locked-down stores are what the market prefers.
>Remember phones and all of this other cool technology we have didn't exist.
I don't think phones and PCs compete against each other, though. A phone can act like a general computer, but a PC can't act like a phone.
>Today there are many phones to choose from.
We had Linux, mac, BSD and a few other OS's back in the day as well. If we're saying Windows is 95% of PCs back then, I don't think it's controversial saying Apple and Android are 95% of phones. Especially in a day and age where phones are now needed to act as verification for work and school and chat communications are expected to be snappy (so it's not like I can just opt out and go back to dumb phones).
>locked-down stores are what the market prefers.
That's why anti-trust isn't left to "what the market prefers".
Yes, society will always waiver towards idyllic destruction if left ubchecked. People generally "like" monopolies. People yearn for that society on WALL-E where they do minimum work and get maximum dopamine. It's a quirk genes that benefitted us 1000 years ago that haven't adjusted to modern realities.
Governments and non-monopoly businesses alike hate it, though. Don't want to put all your eggs in one basket. Don't want to have a single businessman hold the country hostage later and shift to a plutocracy as they abuse your citizens who work.
That's why it's best to stop it much earlier and not when the company becomes a trillionaire. But now is the 2nd best time.
Seems like there are a relatively large number of competitors to Apple and Google. Eg. Samsung, Motorola, Lenovo, OnePlus, LG, HTC etc. Not to mention Asian brands.
Duopoly might apply if those companies were using their combined dominance to collude and push other competitors out but that isn't really happening as evidenced by the amount of competitors that are in the market.
The friction already existed long before supreme court orders. No two departments agreed upon what ID they would need for doing the work. It could be rationcard, PAN, passport, driving license etc. Some organizations asked for more than one ID just in case. India just has too many IDs and it is asked for too many use cases.
Aadhar made it easier than before. It is really a quality of life improvement.
The main issue is government requiring IDs even when it is not usually needed in other countries. Mostly in the name of security. This is the root cause. Aadhar is just the symptom.
However Aadhar does enable deeper breaches into privacy due to its unified nature and the way it is validated through government owned infrastructure. There is full tracking possible on all the services that the residents used.
If Aadhar was a self sovereign ID, then having a single ID is definitely a good thing. It keeps privacy intact while usable where needed.
My point wasn't that no id was required before Aadhaar. It's that any id from a range of acceptable ids like passports, ration card, drivers license worked.
Post Aadhaar, even though all of those IDs are still legal and acceptable under law, the govt has added so much friction on the non Aadhaar path that in practice those IDs are unusable.
> It's that any id from a range of acceptable ids like passports, ration card, drivers license worked.
In reality different IDs were accepted at different departments and there was no consensus. It was really a pain. If someone took ration card as valid, others wanted another ID. In some states it was even worse.
It is true that the government has indirectly made Aadhar mandatory, contrary to the spirit of supreme court order.
> and it's a simple hop to create a similar circumstantial evidence trail with someone using GrapheneOS.
I think this is a bit exaggerated for effect. No one in India considers having a Linux laptop as being circumstantial evidence in case of a crime. Whereas having Tor installed would be.
Like any business Apple needs growth to satisfy the shareholders. New growth would come from India and China. Apple didn't leave China and neither it will leave India. India can and will survive without Apple. Though having it in the country would be good for optics.
The moment mobile companies locked down sideloading, ability to uninstall bundled software, etc., they made it impossible to argue techincally against bundled, uninstallable software from the government.
> Apple didn't leave China and neither it will leave India. India can and will survive without Apple
They can both survive without each other. But neither is going to break the arrangement without a lot of pain. They have mutual leverage with each other, and that becomes particularly material when one stops treating India as a monolith.
> India can and will survive without Apple. Though having it in the country would be good for optics
