Sunday traffic curiosity

Thu Apr 2 14:24:04 UTC 2020

On 1/Apr/20 21:46, Owen DeLong wrote:

> I don’t pretend to have a global view. I have my own perspective. I do my best
> to understand perspectives of others. Claiming to be able to speak from a global
> view is beyond my abilities. I am truly impressed that you are able to do so.
>
> Please teach me how to develop such a perspective.

There was a time when having a different mobile phone was the thing. The
smaller, the better.

Then there came a time when running a different OS on your phone was a
thing. Symbian or Windows Mobile or BlackBerry.

Then came smartphones in 2007, and owning an iPhone was a thing.

Then there was a time when having certain apps was a thing.

Then Samsung and Google hit the scene and owning one was a thing.

Then there was a time when having a certain version of Android was a thing.

In 2020, nobody cares what phone you have, how large or small it is,
what apps you have or use, or how long your battery lasts. In this
hyper-connected world, all most people care about is utility and value.

If 2 billion people of God's green earth can all coalesce around
Facebook and WhatsApp, how different are we, really?

> Yes, but the solution to that is education.

In this new economy, the concept of how the kids learn is changing fast.
While we want to force many of them to follow the traditional schooling
system we all went through, I'm not sure that's the right approach
anymore. Information is a commodity now, and the kids will learn the way
they want to, formal schooling or not.

So yes, education is certainly how you fix this. But how do you
effectively get that message across to a set of people who will only
tune into what they like, when they like, and find all your rules boring
and overbearing?

> Not so sure about that. I think that GDPR and similar legislation sweeping through
> the world is an indication that more and more people are becoming aware of the
> issue, even if the tide is not yet turning against the surveillance economy.

When this lockdown is over, I'll randomly ask the kids, street vendors
and taxi drivers what GDPR is.

I'll let you know what I find :-).

> Only among the weakest-minded parents.

The world is a diverse place.

> Actually, it makes me rethink whether the child should be using Twitch at all.
> When my child cries her lungs out because she’s deprived of some app or
> connectivity for some period of time, the result is that she loses access to
> that item for a significantly longer period of time. It only took a few instances
> of this for her behavior to shift from temper tantrum to negotiation.

Good man.

>
> Keeping my child connected is absolutely NOT a factor in an automotive
> purchase decision in my household. It’s a byproduct of keeping me and/or
> my wife connected, if it is a consideration at all. (So far, not).

Good for you, and the Mrs.

>
> Mobility services, again, focus is the needs of the adults in this area. The
> child has a wifi-only iPad and a bare-bones unlimited plan on her mobile
> that comes with 2GB of LTE high speed data per month and drops to 128k
> after she burns through that (usually in the first 5 days of the billing cycle,
> though she is getting better about rationing it and paying attention to when
> she’s using mobile data vs. wifi.

I'm delaying all that for as long as I can.

For the moment, they are reasonably sociable human beings, whose first
words when they enter someone else's home aren't, "What's the wi-fi?"

I'll enjoy these moments. This hyper-connected world is only going to
get worse.

> IMHO, if parents are catering to a greater level of screen addiction in their
> kids, they’re not teaching their kids a variety of important life skills.

True story.

> I’m not as convinced of this as you are, but time will tell.
>
> There is definitely behavior in evidence that aligns with your statements. However,
> there is less evidence to support your conclusions of the reasons behind that
> behavior.

I like studies and papers and all that, but I also have a healthy dose
of 1+1.

I'm not always right (if ever), but I don't strive to be. I'm just
observing my surroundings.

> LOL
>
> My daughter has a phone. She’s 11. She’s had a phone since she was 7.
> However, she has that phone for the convenience of the adults. It provides
> an easy way to track her whereabouts and an easy way for us to get in
> touch with her to coordinate things. Any other benefit she derives from
> the phone are “privileges” subject to restriction (her phone has parental
> management on and most of the settings are locked down. She cannot
> install new apps without specific permission (enforced via the app store)
> and she has a very limited set of apps on the phone.). The web browser
> is disabled on her phone. She’s required to put it in “airplane” mode
> before school each day and take it out of “airplane” mode when she
> leaves school each day.
>
> Again, not because she wanted a phone, but for the convenience of the
> adults in the household.

Growing up, we waited for our folks to come pick us up from school.
Sometimes, when they were late, they found us crying, and that was a
guaranteed slap across the face. We stopped crying for them being late
after that.

For my kids, their school has a phone booth. They know our phone numbers
by heart. We give them a calling card. Else, we'll pick them up from
school when it closes for the day, or receive a call from their teacher
or principle as to an emergency. If they are not at school but also not
at home, they are with us.

We bought them cheap tablets (those no-name brand ones that run some
dodgy version of Android) which we lock up for the entire week of school
and only release to them after class on Friday evening. They will enjoy
that for the weekend and return them on Sunday night. Rinse, repeat,
until the school holidays.

Obviously, they know their way around the Internet more than I or the
wife probably do, but we can all enjoy 5 days of them not staring at a
screen, unless it's 25 minutes in the evening for all of us to catch the
day's local soap episode on the tube :-).

> Not at all. I believe that a higher percentage (3-5% or so) of the adult population
> understand and actively try to avoid surveillance vs. the 4-5 year old population
> (close to 0% even know the word surveillance).

Mostly agree - I think the adult % is lower than that, if you consider
"adult" in this hyper-connected age is anyone over 13.

Certainly, many adults are concerned about privacy, especially of their
kids being online (whether they can actually control it or not is an
entirely different matter). However, I'm not so sure they are as
vigilant when it comes to themselves.

As part of my DJ'ing thing, I am now holding shows online, streaming to
Youtube and what-not. I installed an app to turn my phone into a 1080p
camera... cheaper than buying a new web cam or trying to turn my idiotic
Go Pro camera into a sensible digital device. This app won't allow me to
use until I give it permission to access both my camera and microphone,
even though I only need the former. Fair point, you can disable the mic
in the software once it's loaded, but you can't open the app if you take
away its ability to reach the microphone as a base rule.

Plenty of social apps used by several adults behave in this way. For
those that are configurable, it's too much admin. for folk, and they
simply trust the app's author to "have their best interests at heart".
And as I said before, people will give your app one try, maybe two. If
it's too complicated, they move on, and part of that includes them
tapping every little dialog box that says, "Agree and Continue".

> Yep… As I said, 95-97% of adults are in this camp. But I bet it’s closer to 100%
> of the 4-5 year olds, given the chance.

You're generous on the adults, but agree re: the kids :-).

> Actually, I appreciate the way Apple has done this. They specifically don’t use
> your data, they just transport it. They encrypt it so that even they can’t see it.
>
> Google, OTOH, not so much.
>
> iCloud is the opposite of what I am railing against. It’s rather well implemented
> and does contain strong privacy protections. So much so that it has frustrated
> multiple governments.
>
> 	Subpoena — Give us user X’s data.
> 	Apple — Well, we can give you the encrypted stuff we have, but we don’t
> 			have the key, so good luck with it.
> 	Government — Decrypt it for us.
> 	Apple — We don’t have the key, we can’t do that.
> 	Government — Install a back door.
> 	Apple — Uh, no.
>
> This almost went to a US test case after the shooting in San Bernardino in 2016.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI–Apple_encryption_dispute
>
> Though that was an iPhone and not iCloud, it showed Apple’s commitment to
> getting this right. The only reason it didn’t become a test case was because the
> FBI found a third party that hacked the phone for them (the vulnerability
> they exploited was limited to older phones, Apple hardware of the time could
> not be broken this way).
>
> It’s not clear how the case would turn out or what Apple would do if they lost.

I largely agree with how Apple (advertise that they) protect privacy.
But my point wasn't that or to pick on them. My point was very few of us
will actually check to verify that the privacy claims being advanced by
a service provider or vendor are actually true. Most people will blindly
assume that the provider has their best interests at heart, has thought
about it all, and that they can take them at their word for it. After
all, they are a big name brand with a globally-recognized company logo
and service, surely they did they checked all the boxes before pushing
out this app/service, right?

Most folk will go after the convenience, because in that convenience,
they perceive value, and the providers know how to keep that value
coming to them to retain their patronage.

You, me and the rest of the folk on the list will be a little bit more
discerning, a lot less trusting, and generally always suspicious. But
that's about what, +/-10,000 people in a sea of billions? More,
obviously, but you know what I mean.

And corporations aren't trying to "unhook" eyeballs from this paradigm,
because that's what brings the money in. Heck, I wouldn't mind a piece
of the action myself :-).

> Well, $CABLECO is also $ISP and $ISP+$CABLE < $ISP alone in this
> weird world of perverse economic incentives, even after accounting
> for that annoying unnecessary charge.
>
> I’d love to switch to a different $ISP, but unfortunately, the choices here are
> Comcast ($CABLECO) CMTS and AT&T ($TELCO) DSL. I get 200M/5M
> from $CABLECO. The best $TELCO can do is 1.5M/384k (on a good day
> when it’s dry outside).
>
> As such, I’m kind of stuck.

I hear you. It's kind of crazy, actually, isn't it :-).

I've found you get a lot more flexibility in plenty of countries around
the world you, ordinarily, would not expect, if you use the U.S. as an
economic gold standard :-).

> Oh, gender roles remain much more traditional in Africa and to some extent in
> Asia than in the North America, Europe, and Australia, no question about that
> based on my observations in fairly wide travel.

No, it's not that.

Rwanda has over 60% of women in gubbermint. Namibia is just over 46%.
South Africa is at about 43%. Worldwide, that's #1, #6 and #10,
respectively. In that top 10 list, the only European country that
features is Sweden, at #7. Mexico is at #4 with just under 50%, and
represents all of North America. Don't even know where Australia ranks.

My point is, culturally, while gender roles may be alive and well in
Africa, Asia-Pac and Latin America, women in these countries have the
same level of access to programming as their fellow men do. They just
have significantly less interest in it.

> I don’t have data to support this, but it seems to apply equally well to at
> least Football and Baseball. Less so to the gear-head sports, but the
> female audience for those seemed to be growing there too.

I'll spend some time observing this more. Fascinating...

> Ford had to be ordered to do so. First reasonable EO to come from the Orange
> Idiot. (though he resisted doing it as long as he could)

:-)... no one is immune, not even Orange.

> Perhaps. The question remains whether that will result in long term economic
> viability.

Well, as with pretty much any business in 2020 that needs the Internet
to support not only its growth, but its survival, straight-up "Here's a
service, pay me money", is not going to be a viable model for most anymore.

The model now is: acquire the user, retain the user, use data provided
by (or learned from) the user to make the actual money. Then retain that
user further so that if the initial reason you acquired them is no
longer working, pivot that to something else (e.g., you stop selling
books and move into online retail + cloud computing) to keep them so you
can keep using their data to keep making the actual money.

> Not really. Online games are relatively low bandwidth compared to streaming
> video.

At APRICOT this year, we had a paper that an author had submitted about
the rise in game watching, i.e., kids that watch other kids playing
games. Unfortunately, due to the Coronavirus and all that, he wasn't
able to make it to Melbourne to give the talk. But it opened my eyes to
what I was already seeing at home and in the general gaming community in
South Africa. Twitch, UStream, Smashcast.tv, Youtube Gaming, Periscope,
e.t.c., are starting to play their part in increasing the rise in online
video traffic.

The preso would have shown that in 2020, online gaming and game watching
will be a US$170 billion business, growing to just under US$200 billion
in 2022, with Asia-Pac leading that charge at nearly 50% of the market.

So while we try to figure out whether Netflix, Disney+ and friends need
to throttle back on video resolution in order to "save the Internet", I
expect that by the end of this decade, we shall have had to engineer for
a major rise in online game watching, as it appears that more kids watch
others playing games online than actually play games themselves. Nothing
special, it will just be more video - but not from the current usual crop.

>
> Of course the live streaming of video of online game contests could be a different
> matter, but I suspect that if the network becomes an issue there, they’ll simply
> develop “watch-only” clients for the games in question that take the same stream
> from the play server as any other game client. At that point, it’s a low-bandwidth
> thing again.

No, my focus is more on watching of games, live or post-event, not
actually playing them. Turns out that ratio isn't 1:1 - more kids spend
plenty of time watching games that were played in the past, than playing
them. Especially those who don't have very advanced gaming rigs, or
restrictive game-playing hours.

> Now if you’re still operating a high latency or worse, a high-jitter network, then
> you’ll have some issues you’ll need to address as games are very sensitive
> to both latency and jitter, but that’s a solved problem in most of the developed
> world already.

It's the usual - get the game servers closer to the eyeballs, just as we
did with other web traffic and CDN's.

> Uh, no. First, no airline (at least in the US) is buying their bread from some
> local bakery. Second, the bakeries in shopping centers aren’t suffering
> from on-line sales because people want their baked goods fresh, not
> via overnight fedex. In fact, the proliferation of new bakeries that 
> was happening prior to COVID clearly indicates otherwise. At least here
> in the US, people like their fresh baked goods and are willing to pay
> for them in person.

My point was every supplier has a supplier, and when supplies run low,
they call on everyone. So while the little bakery down the road does not
supply the airline directly, they probably support the company that
supports the company that supports the company that does.

Re: the mad-buying rush, same here, as with everywhere else I'm sure.
The moment the prez announced the lockdown (3 days ahead of it), the
panic-buying started. I've never seen more cars or people in one place
at the same time. The worst was the day before the lockdown; you'd think
we'd just been told Earth was relocating to another solar system and
everyone wanted to make sure the ride would be filled with food, beer,
toilet paper and hand sanitizer :-). But that's just a lapse back into
human nature, and our intrinsic need for basic survival and preservation.

> Sure… But really, I don’t think that’s permanent and most people that have
> gym memberships are paying for them on autopilot and don’t think to
> cancel even if they aren’t using it. Why do you think gyms never raise
> their prices on old memberships? They don’t want to do anything to
> remind that customer that’s paying and not using about that fact.

People that actively move from physical to online gyms will cancel their
memberships. The rest that visit the gym 3 out of 36 times that they
should be just "feel good" that the membership is there. All it takes is
a kid with a 360-degree idea about getting rid of that membership and
"getting results" from home, to flip the entire gym model on its head.

And that's what I've been saying all along - the traditional gym model
works, but they'd do well to adapt to the new economy while they still
can, before they realize Uber came and stole their taxi rides right form
underneath their sweaty palms :-).

> Sure, but that’s been the case since before the industrial revolution.
> There’s nothing new about this from of economic evolution.

The industrial revolution was a major shift from the way economies were
operated prior to it.

Yes, the industrial revolution has given us technology and the Internet,
and much of it still depends on it. But make no mistake, the industrial
era, as a model for the future at scale, is pretty much dead. We are now
in a digital era, where information is commoditized and everyone is
hyper-connected to receive it all, good and bad.

The industrial revolution focused on roles. The digital era wants impact.

The industrial revolution focused on expertise. The digital era wants
continuous learning.

The industrial revolution focused on profit. The digital era wants care
and compassion.

The industrial revolution focused on giving instructions. The digital
era calls for asking questions.

The industrial revolution focused on knowledge. The digital era wants us
to be curious.

The industrial revolution set static goals for us to achieve (job,
house, car, spouse, children, wealth, legacy). The digital era wants us
to find purpose.

It's going to hit. And it's going to hit hard! I mean, you are seeing it
already with the Coronavirus, which has only amplified and accelerated
the above.

> There are still various moves afoot to try and cause additional regulatory
> burden and/or legislative difficulty for the app-based ride-shares and
> the so-called gig-economy.

It won't work, because for the kids, Command & Control is gone. You
can't force them to use a service or system from which they do not
derive value. One try, maybe two, and if they don't like your app, it's
gone. Simple.

And more importantly, your customers are no longer just the folk that
walk into your store from up the road. They are anyone, anywhere, in the
world, with an Internet connection.

The Internet never had geographic boundaries. In the digital era, this
is much more obvious.

> Then if you really want to go through the looking glass, we’ve now got
> a president claiming that Amazon is “abusing the postal system” by being
> one of its largest customers.

And like all clever companies that think on their feet and pivot their
model to adapt to the changing times in this digital era, what do Amazon
do? Not fight, or try to take on Orange; they instead create their own
form of "Uber" for deliveries (many of whom were former Amazon floor
staff), and build an airline to ship goods. Simple.

Adapt or die. Especially if you still have the money and time to do so.
I have no sympathy for anyone that tries to stay in business through
legislation.

> Nobody is ever safe, economically speaking.

Yes, but as your body needs external nutrients daily to survive, you
have to do whatever you can to improve your chances of economic survival
- because even if we suddenly came to all of our senses and stopped
aspiring to amassing as much money as we can in lieu of purpose, there
will still be an economy, of some sort or other.

> My favorite version of this was the real estate investor that tried to explain
> to me that now that we had virtual servers, the next step would be to virtualize
> the datacenter and eliminate physical infrastructure altogether. I wished him
> the best of luck with that plan and walked away shaking my head.

You should have offered him a seat on the B737-MAX to go visit the
construction site on Cloud Nine, while you were at it :-).

> Yes… The trick here is consumer education and regulation that requires
> fully informed consent by the consumer willing to become the product.
>
> The reason these meet with such high success today is that most consumers
> don’t realize they’re becoming a product.

And to be honest, many don't want to know.

Haven't you noticed that the first networks a new peer on an exchange
point wants to have eBGP sessions with are always the same 4 or 5. The
world over? And that they will fall (not bend) over backwards seeing to
those sessions coming up like their entire network and business depended
on them? Heck, they'd sign away their grandmother in a heartbeat for
those eBGP sessions.

Most folk don't want to know. They are just after obtaining their value.

> Sure… But at the end of the day, someone still needs to deploy that
> infrastructure. Hopefully it will be a few years yet before that degrades
> salaries too far. Hopefully in about 15 years, I won’t care.

Well, in 15 years when you don't care, there are others, our kids, who
will. What are we leaving behind for them?

Many CxO's of many companies that are going to die because they refuse
to adapt, are only sticking around to milk those companies until they
have enough stashed away to say, "Right, I'm done. Time for someone else
to sink this ship". They all already see the decline. They already see
the new economy chipping at their heels. They just don't have the DNA or
the culture to make the shift. For those, I have no sympathies,
especially if you are wise to what's coming.

> Sure, this is every day news regardless of industry.

Well, mobile businesses have been cash cows for years. All they had to
do is sit at a desk, design swanky ads, find clever ways to sell the
same Megabyte of data 50 times to the same person, and watch the ATM
print money.

Well, voice and SMS died, and Data growth is putting pressure on the
P&L. Even when they made 110% margin back in the day, and are probably
still at a healthy 40% margin in 2020, that's a big dip. And rather than
find a way to pivot their business into one that offers value
(connectivity is not value; what's at the end of it is), it's easier for
them to do the usual - cut salaries, cut jobs, and save cash all the way
into profitability.

> Did you ever see the movie “Wall Street”?

Yep, both of them :-).

It'll all come to a head. I mean, it's not like it hasn't happened
before - 2000, 2008, 2010 and now again in 2020.

They never learn.

> That wasn’t about how large they are, but about how diverse they are.

I'm sure you know what I meant :-).

> That’s why I mentioned the specific ones that were global even before
> they were acquired by Disney. Disney’s been on  a crazy buying binge
> ever since they got rid of Eisner (AKA Lord Farquaad and thank
> goodness he’s gone).
>
> A lot of their purchases have been aimed at expanding their international
> capability.
>
> That was my point. Domestically, they’ve been a very effective executor.
> Internationally, it’s just a matter of time and acquisitions before they find
> the right mix. Their domestic performance and conservative cash management
> has left them with a pretty strong war chest for international experimentation
> until they get it right.

Domestically in the U.S. doesn't really interest me, because everyone
fighting over 330 million people (many of whom aren't economically
addressable) can only take you so far.

It's how they execute globally that I am watching, and where I think
Netflix have done a fabulous job. I'm not saying they can't be unseated.
I'm just saying Disney will need to do a lot more than "just show up".

> I think this will eventually evolve over time. If Netflix shows stronger success,
> then all they have to do to kneecap Netflix is start doing so.
>
> Why take that risk when you can sit back and see what happens to the other
> guy and make a later decision with very little cost and nothing at risk?

Because in this new economy, you are in a better position if you
experiment when you have both the time and the cash. You have just about
zero chance if you lose one or both of those attributes.

> But it’s a fleeting advantage and it’s not clear yet whether it’s an actual
> advantage over-all.

I've seen it work in Africa and Asia-Pac, where folk who have never been
interested in VoD services suddenly sign-up (even if for the free trial
period) because of a show that spoke to them at a local, personal level,
in lieu of some production made in a country whose language they can't
speak.

My boss' mother is pushing 80-something, and is an avid Netflix fan
because they have a huge catalog of content made for her country. Before
then, she couldn't be asked.

The U.S. (apart from the Asians and Latinos) is mostly a single,
English-based culture. My guess is you'd have a lot of Asians and
Latinos watching plenty of related content on Netflix in the U.S., but
that's just my 1+1, since I don't live there. This strategy is a hit for
Netflix, because outside of the U.S. and the UK, most other countries
have a diverse range of cultures within them, and English hardly
features, if at all.

> Disney’s own CDN is wider spread than I think you realize, but that doesn’t
> really matter… If you want to turn up a CDN overnight in a new territory,
> then all that is really required is VPS providers in the territory and the
> ability to deploy your CDN onto VPS. Disney definitely has both of those
> things. Beyond that, it’s just a matter of clicking the GO button for each
> territory you want to target. Then for places that show significant demand,
> you can deploy actual infrastructure later as a cost reduction measure
> to free you from the high cloud fees.

That's my point - it's the usual "99% strategy 1% execution" model...
sit back, wait for demand, push the GO button.

Since moving back to Africa in 2012, I spent about 5 years roaming
Europe and the U.S. trying to talk every CDN provider I could find into
building in Africa; and this was on the back of me doing all the hard
work (space, power, cooling, bandwidth, remote hands, e.t.c.). All they
had to do was put a warm body on the matter. Many scoffed. The few that
listened saw the vision, and put both their feet in. Those are the ones
sitting pretty right now, while all the rest are 4 years too late and
scrambling with VPS providers that aren't always adequate.

And yes, there is a reason Netflix are the #1 VoD provider in Africa,
much like the rest of the world.

> Sure, but at this point, it remains to be seen how many cinemas will exist
> post COVID-19.

Like I've been saying, many will die. They can blame it on the
Coronavirus all they want, but that was merely an accelerant, and an
amplifier.

> Well, they already have the streaming capability for all of their “old” content,
> so really, that’s just a matter of making the decision to release new content
> through that mechanism. Of course it would also involve either adjustments
> to their revenue expectations for that or to their current pricing models for
> that service. Maybe something like Amazon Prime where some content is
> free and other is available for an additional fee.

And as they remain in that "just a matter of making the decision" phase,
they keep losing ground.

It's the 99% world vs. the 1% world.

99% execution, 1% strategy. Or as more dirty words would call it,
"Agility".

Move away from % points, and think about philosophy. Some failure and
associated batteries included - but START!

> I doubt that they will miss the boat entirely, but I think they’re watching CBS,
> Netflix, and Amazon Prime to see which model wins before jumping all in
> on digital.

Well, if anyone still thinks digital is the little brother to the
industrial revolution, they are already late to the party.

Luckily for Hollywood, they have deep pockets. But as you can see due to
the Coronavirus, those pockets suddenly have a bottom when your
traditional model is taken for a spin in the new rocket:

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/18/movie-theater-owners-request-a-bailout-amid-coronavirus-pandemic.html

> Yep. I expect this to be an increasing trend. Netflix put a big finger-in-the-eye
> on the other studios when they simultaneously released the same feature in
> theaters and on streaming.

That's what I'm talking about... 99% execution, 1% strategy.

Keep being agile, flip the game over and over and over; not only to keep
your competition guessing, but also your customers. Just like in
romantic love, customers who are always guessing, stay to find out
what's next. It's quite simple, really :-).

The goal is to keep your customers sticking around. You don't make money
from empty seats.

> No doubt. Never said otherwise. I figured this conversation was more about
> what would likely succeed vs. likely die as we move forward, not so much
> about the extent to which everyone would suffer.

Well, that's also relevant, because many companies will suffer in
realizing they need to adapt to the new economy, and then survive.

Yes, it will mean drastic changes to how the business is operated,
staffing, services, e.t.c. But the biggest changes will be the two
hardest ones to achieve:

  * Leadership philosophy; advancing to a style of humility,
    vulnerability, and most importantly, empathy.

  * Culture philosophy; is your goal profit, or purpose?

Notice none of the two points above speak to titles, roles, experience,
education, products, services, equipment, infrastructure, money in the
bank, size of the team, number of Senior VP's, and all that stuff we've
been raised to think is what will chart businesses into this new economy.

The kids don't care if you're a famous CEO, a broke or wealthy one, if
you advertise for an hour on radio everyday, if you have a fancy logo,
if you are a Fortune 100 company, whether you have a PhD, or any of that
drivel. All they care about it is, "Does his app work, do I like the
service, am I willing to use it, does it give me value".

The rest, these kids couldn't care less if you paid them.

> Sure, but some are actually benefiting… Local grocers and warehouse stores
> as an example. Panic buying, more restrictive return policies, hoarding have
> all led to increased sales and reduced costs for them.

And what is it that those businesses do? That's right, sell real things.
And what do real things do? Real things offer real value.

People are always chasing value, in whatever form it comes. How it comes
is the execution. The point is, are you offering it either way?

>
> Also, this probably isn’t something you’re used to,...

Ummh, not sure what you mean...

I mean, I'm healthy and all and rarely see the inside of a hospital, but
my house isn't far from three or four in my neighborhood alone, so I can
count the cars going in and out :-).

>  but hospitals are also seeing
> an increase in business in the US., as are urgent care clinics, testing labs,
> etc. That’s all big business in the US.

In South Africa, almost all the Coronavirus testing is happening at
private hospitals, for reasons I'm sure you can imagine.

Even though those hospitals are benefiting, I don't see it that way. In
this country, the gubbermint have struck a deal with private hospital to
share beds as patients overflow.

Money is useless if we are all dead.

>
> Impacted — Yes, but in some cases, positively impacted, not negative.

Well, that's a point of view. What good is money if the shop you used to
run down to to spend it has closed down because they can't make rent,
have had to lay off staff and are probably losing their home?

It's a cycle - if one person loses out, many will. Having money in
isolation is like being on an island by yourself with a case of
hundred-dollar bills and gold. And that's why during this pandemic, even
if plenty of private companies will "make money", it will only be useful
if gubbermints dig deep into those coffers and bail out those that won't.

>
> >From a humanity perspective, an overburdened hospital is a terrible thing.
> >From a P&L standpoint, it’s a goldmine. (at least the way health care works
> in the US) I’m not saying that’s a good thing or that it’s right. Just that it is
> how it works out.

Agree, but as above.

> Well, yes and no. Uber is still allowed to operate here even in the lockdown,
> but I’m betting they are seeing significantly fewer riders.

Well, in some countries in Africa, it's totally banned.

In South Africa, it's permitted to operate but only to transport
essential service workers within a controlled window of hours during the
day.

> Well, if you find him, introduce us. I want to see the product implemented and deployed.
> If someone else has the resources to do that, I’m happy to work with them on the
> process.

I'm not a hater, I'll keep an ear out :-).

Mark.
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