Let's be 100% clear on this - nobody is forcing the merchants into accepting credit cards. In fact, many don't. They do fine as cash-only businesses.
The hard economic reality is that accepting credit cards increases your sales, presumably enough to make the interchange fees worth it.
At last, Afterpay, Affirm etc. charge 600 bps (6%) interchange for their 4 split payments offer. Again, no one forces merchants to accept these payment methods, but the ones that do clearly see the benefit to the top line resulting from higher conversions.
I think this comes down to you being Norwegian (ie getting good quality govt services in exchange for your taxes). Now imagine being Greek. If folks realised they're paying 22.5% to the govt on top of everything they purchase... they wouldn't be very happy.
Oh, I'm not Norwegian. I'm American, I just moved here some years ago. Considering everything, I'm probably paying fewer total taxes than I did in the US - if anything, because I'm getting stuff like healthcare for my tax money now.
Greece is in the EU, which means they are paying at least 15% VAT on most stuff, assuming everyone is paying their taxes (which might or might not be). Trust me, even being built into the cost, everyone knows how much they are paying in taxes on goods. Greek folks aren't unintelligent. This sort of tax isn't a secret any more than sales tax was in the US.
In 2018 an obnoxious researcher working at a company known at the time as DeepMind told me (who was working in healthtech) that "AI in healthcare is a solved problem".
It's 2023 now. AI in healthcare is a rounding error and will likely stay that way for a decade or longer. Google blew a 7 year lead of being an AI-first company to a non-profit. DeepMind is now a team within Google, similar to Ads, Drive, and Shopping Express.
IMO Google flunked it on the public side, I think the reason most of it was very hush-hush for years is because it was used for private, government purposes. Now, maybe they can't release most of their prior work without permission, so they're regrettably starting over with a blank slate in various departments.
Agreed. It seems like they have the capabilities, but failed on the product side of things, as it seems they do often these days.
I disagree with the GP that they "blew a 7 year lead". They still have a lot of the top industry minds in this area, and it's still early days; ChatGPT was launched less than 6 months ago (which seems crazy). I'm thankful OpenAI is forcing them to stop resting on their laurels. How they will deliver on all of this remains to be seen, but this Google I/O has at least made me hopeful.
I know how much money I have at risk and how much is insured. It would be pretty irresponsible for me to not and just assume someone will step in and give me their money if I lose mine.
I'm personally a conservative investor, which means amongst other things I forgo notional returns by making safer investments. So it definitely makes my angry to see people that had a less responsible money management strategy get to participate in all the upside and not have to take the downside.
Libertarian, "small govt" VCs squealing for govt intervention... It would be funny if not for tens of thousands of people who might not receive their paycheck next week.
Agreed with the first part, amazing how quickly Tan and Sacks turned to government for a handout. If they get one, that will only incentivize bigger problems next time.
Second, forgive a naive question since I know nothing about graphics, but would the method described in the article perform better than Alacritty + Neovim?
The hard economic reality is that accepting credit cards increases your sales, presumably enough to make the interchange fees worth it.
At last, Afterpay, Affirm etc. charge 600 bps (6%) interchange for their 4 split payments offer. Again, no one forces merchants to accept these payment methods, but the ones that do clearly see the benefit to the top line resulting from higher conversions.