Comment by anonymous908213
10 hours ago
1bil+ people have surrendered their right to artistic expression to Google, and another 1bil+ to Apple, and another 1bil+ to Microsoft. Many more billions have surrendered it to Visa and Mastercard. The world will only continue to get worse for the foreseeable future as five corporations assert global control over what is allowed to be published. It is mournful knowing that humanity's peak is behind us.
Hey, on the other hand, zero malware! It is zero, right? Please say it's zero...
Just today I found a malicious version of Ledger on the macOS app store. It's been there for five weeks, and there are already some anecdotes out there of people losing their coins.
I guess that's somehow the developer's fault for not "staking their claim" to their name, as Apple seems to only monitor for malicious duplicate submissions if the original is in the App Store to begin with...
A year or so ago I had to speedrun turning on developer mode on Android because my grandma had somehow installed an app that did a ransomware-like fullscreen popup after about 10-20 seconds after bootup. Could've factory reset it and called it, but wanted to try to rescue it for my grandma. Used adb to figure out what app was doing it and removed it. I might be misremembering details, but I think one of the reasons it could do what it was doing was it was using Samsung-specific permissions, which Google shouldn't allow on the store. I reported the app and looks like it's gone now.
And only 30% fees, just for being on the app store!
Only if you charge for your app - and how much free labor and bandwidth do you give away? Apple gives away millions.
15 for most
Sure, and zero ads and total privacy, as well
Ads would never be used for malware either, thankfully.
Brazil and India have created alternatives to Mastercard/Visa duopoly. EU is seeking to do the same.
Many European countries have had viable online alternatives since forever, and a lot of them are being consolidated into Werk, which will also enable physical payments
I think you mean Wero
I'm pretty sure that I know what the answer is (sadly), but I'll try anyways:
Any chance folks in the US can use these, in the US?
This is a genuine question, although I don't have my hopes up. It would be nice to have some actual competition / choices
It costs you nothing but a few hours (heck, you may even make money on the points) to get a Discover card, which you can use on Japanese game sites that don't apply the Visa/Mastercard censorship (they have a partnership with JCB). It's a small move, but most people can't even be bothered to do that much for competition.
Hope you like carrying cash.
China has cleverly replaced the Mastercard/Visa duopoly with an AliPay/WeChat Pay duopoly.
They'd like to. Vending machines will no longer sell to you unless you can pay that way.
For more significant things, you can still use cash. I'd go down to my landlord's bank every three months to pay the rent.
2 replies →
Many countries have alternatives already. In Poland Blik is ubiquitous and very very easy to use. And I love how it's implemented, Visa and MasterCard could learn from it.
Tldr - you open the app on your phone and it gives you a 6 digit BLIK code, you give that code to the seller, then a notification comes up on the app saying "seller X is trying to debit your account by amount Y, agree?". It's brilliant because then the seller gets nothing identifiable about you. Even if someone overhears the code, it's only valid 60 second so it's useless. Unlike with regular cards there is no risk of losing one or using a fake terminal that scans your card instead. And any transaction has to be explicitly rather than implicitly approved. Love it.
BLIK rocks. In addition to being a payment system for goods and services it can be used for instant private money transfers between individuals.
This is indeed one of the biggest weaknesses of "pull-based" payment cards, and something most if not all natively phone-based methods do better.
The best credit and debit cards can do is PIN verification or biometrics (for Apple/Google Pay), but even there you still trust the terminal to not show you a different amount than you'll be charged (assuming the screen is even pointing towards you; I've often been asked to tap without seeing what I'm even consenting to).
Online, there's 3DS, but that's not required everywhere and for every transaction.
There once was a vision to extend both positive cardholder approval and cardholder authentication for each card transaction, but it turns out the friction of that is higher on average than just letting everything but the most egregiously suspicious fraud go through by default and handle the rest via the disputes process.
Out of curiosity:
> you open the app on your phone and it gives you a 6 digit BLIK code, you give that code to the seller
Is this the flow for online payments as well, or only for in-person payments?
5 replies →
That's the problem. Every country has an alternative or ten, but what people actually need is one system that works across borders. That's the only way it reaches enough critical mass to be useful internationally beyond the EU, which nowadays is a requirement for it to be able to replace Visa/Mastercard in a decade or so.
1 reply →
I misread blik as “bilk” which is… probably the last word you’d want associated with your credit card or payment processor in English.
1 reply →
Yeah but approving every purchase from a merchant I trust, like Amazon, would be annoying. Gotta allow for one tap to purchase, like eg apple pay does
1 reply →
6 digits effectively the time salted … the other digits are your lat long lol.
Bitcoin exists. Completely permissionless, anyone on earth can use it. Easier to accept as a merchant than any third party integration. Doesn't require you to trust any government at all.
Cool, but unfortunately, it has the same same drawbacks as cash. If you get scammed, accidentally pay too much or lose your wallet you will never get it back. I sleep safer knowing that there is some protection in the banking system against losing money all of sudden.
People are downvoting you, but I can literally pay for my meal using CashApp at a diner in the middle of nowhere using Bitcoin.
Unfortunately it's also pretty clunky for tax reasons in many places and inherently deflationary (and as such problematic from an economic point of view).
Sure, great if you don't trust your government or whoever issues your local currency, but if you can, there are better alternatives. Trust is an asset, not just a liability.
4 replies →
The EU 'seeks' to do a lot of things but is notoriously ineffective.
The EU already managed to make card payments significantly cheaper and more secure within a few years than they'll probably ever be in the US (still no PINs and no 3DS, and interchange will probably never get regulated because everybody freelances as a severely underpaid lobbyist thanks to frequent flyer miles), to say nothing of regulating a free and instant bank payment scheme into existence while FedNow is still rolling out.
Say what you will about EU inefficiency and regulations, but in my view, at least their financial ones have been largely on point.
Wirecard was pretty good. Assuming you're Jan Marsalek.
The walled garden approach stifles creativity and robs talented artists of the opportunity to express their work and get paid fairly.
Hope the EU or another progressive regulatory body allows users to fully control what they can/can't download and from where on to the phones they purcahsed.
Sellers across every marketplace have to rise up and demand interoperability and then these rent seeking marketplace will fade.
Not Microsoft. "Sideloading" is not even a term in Windows culture the way it is with Apple and Google because it's not a second-class citizen.
Old windows yeah. Now they also require code signing, etc.
Not required
Source: I use Windows and Windows VMs sometimes and install whatever I want without hassle.
1 reply →
That’s not for lack of trying, though: remember Windows RT?
MS has mostly abandoned that approach now. But during Windows 8 days? Yeah. There was a legitimate concern that MS will lock down Windows and try to funnel everything through Microsoft Store, establishing an Apple-style walled garden.
The concern was serious enough that Valve took a defensive posture and started investing into Linux support. Which, at first, largely failed - but eventually resulted in Steam Deck.
1 reply →
WinRT wasn’t locked down.
1 reply →
> Not Microsoft
No Steam on Xbox Series X/S, last I heard.
> Apple
Steam still works on macOS, last I checked.
macOS and Xbox are rounding errors compared to iOS and Windows.
I wonder if this was coerced by Visa/MasterCard yet again, as they have done against many Japanese styled games in the past years. Despite some motions from the current administration, the payment processor monopoly seems keen on policing the public, which is one reason why crypto must still exist as a plan B payment method.
Monero, or honestly any cryptocurrency is a huge improvement on trad payment processors.
Maybe regulators can be bothered this decade to do something about these corporations abusing their power over mobile app distribution and payment processing.
The EU's DMA has been a step in the right direction, even if it's yet been fairly toothless with Apple and Google flouting it.
They could be bothered if they weren't indirectly (or directly, I imagine) on the dole.