Several Garmin watches last for weeks (24 days full charge, actual 1-2 weeks with heavy gps and fitness tracking), and I struggle to understand why consumers accept anything less. It seems like consumers don't realize what's available.
I think cost is one factor. I have a Vivoactive 4 and I love it but it has a reported battery life of 8 days and I get maybe half that with regular run tracking. I'm guessing the 24 days/1-2 weeks is for a considerably more expensive model.
Given the international presence of WhatsApp, I was almost willing to bet that this would be a big deal, however the features to this plan are really lame. Exclusive stickers and changing app theme for a monthly fee is not what I expected.
I expected a mid-range plan that increases the communication features and maybe also some of these "fun" features. I was certain it would have enabled partnerships with mobile network operators to include add-ons to plans that include WhatsApp premium. This is still possible, but "free WhatsApp stickers" when you pay more per month isn't the power move I was expecting from such a global force.
That said, the low cost of premium is critical because so many people world-wide use WhatsApp because a data-only plan is cheaper than data and cell service. The low price point is amazing.
In hindsight I guess I don't know why I expected more amazing features, but this doesn't seem like the game changer I was expecting and hoping for.
I was surprised by the superficiality of the Plus benefits as well, which led me to submit the article to HN at all. (That is maybe why there is still no official WhatsApp blog post about it.)
I expected something that would increase lock-in. Maybe a more capable version of their AI feature. I'm not sure. There is also AFAIK no success story for monetizing messaging yet, beyond what Telegram is doing.
Some things on Earth (especially in the ocean) you'd think were extraterrestrial... What a gift to still be able to find such amazing animals out there.
They all, so far, share the same basic biochemistry, derived from the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA).
What would be extraordinarily interesting would be if we could find life on Earth with a fundamentally different biochemstry. Very different genetic code, even. This would be sign that Origin of Life is not the Great Filter. And we don't even have to go to another planet to conduct this search for "alien" life.
Using a platform-specific tool feels like vendor lock-in. Given the recent trends, behavior, and activity of GitHub, it sure seems like this is the opposite of what the world should be going for generally.
Also if someone could help me understand: Are these so-called stacked commits not possible with multiple commits on a single branch? I prefer to write my commits as atomic, independent, related changes, on a single branch, with both Git and Mercurial. I am apparently missing something: why can't a better UI simply show a multi-change PR?
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