> Stripe advices to refund based on signal's they get that a disput is requested.
I think that's if you're lucky enough to receive an early fraud warning, in which case, you have maybe ~12 hours to refund the money, but who knows, it's completely opaque to the merchant. As a merchant, I've even had previously refunded payments become disputes hours after issuing the refund.
Most of the time, the charge back is sprung on the merchant without warning. It can be worth fighting some. I've successfully countered several, it feels like I win maybe around 50% of those that I counter. I usually counter when the reasons are nonsensical, such as "Subscription renewed after cancelling", yet there was only one payment for the subscriptions creation.
To add insult to injury, Stripe charges an additional fee to counter the dispute (which you might get back if you win).
The whole process is infuriating. Charge backs are a tiny % of transactions, but cause a large amount of distress. I can't see why Stripe / banks don't offer an early dispute window, in which the merchant has say 7 days to refund without penalty. If they ignore or decide not to, it becomes a standard dispute.
I can't find an official source, but I suspect the blast radius isn't limited to the AZ.
I have systems running in us-east-1, and over the course of the incident, I noticed unexplainable intermittent connectivity issues that I've never seen before, even outside of az4.
A good lot of them seem to be from Matt Lakeman, whose writing I highly recommend. He goes into detail about history, politics, and tries to understand why things are the way they are in the places he travels.
They can, they will be available on the black market along with every other widely used illicit recreational drug.
Banning tobacco won't make the problem disappear, people want their poison, including sensible rational people who accept the risks and use in moderation.
Banning tobacco will push it underground, giving criminals a new revenue stream which can fund more harmful activities.
Not only will the govt lose out on tobacco tax, they may have to ramp up law enforcement expense to crack down on the now illicit tobacco trade and ever more empowered criminals.
Users of the black market products will have no guarantee of quality assurance, products may contain additional harmful additives.
There's an optimal level of tax and regulation to keep distribution out of criminal control, educate the general public, and offer support to the serious victims, all the while collecting tax to fund these activities.
This is precisely what many countries are already doing to varying degrees.
And the same argument can be made for many vices, including gambling and alcohol.
> As a consequence there is a quiet crisis in young people, 18-30, deeply in debt, working second and third jobs so that they have a bit more money to gamble.
> We installed mitmproxy on a Mac, configured an iPhone to route traffic through it, and installed the mitmproxy CA certificate on the device.
> All HTTPS traffic was decrypted and logged. No modifications were made to the traffic. The app was used as any normal user would use it.
Is it really that simple to inspect network traffic on an iPhone, namely to get it to trust the user-installed cert? I do quite a bit of network inspection on Android and I find it to be painful, even if the apps don't use certificate pinning.
Regardless, it highlights the importance of having control of our own devices, including the ability to easily inspect network traffic. We have the right to know where our data is being sent, and what data is being sent.
I recall during COVID it was discovered that Zoom was sending traffic to China. There was also the recent case of Facebook tracking private mobile browsing activity and sending it to their servers via the FB app. Imagine how much questionable traffic goes unnoticed due to the difficulty in configuring network inspection for apps.
There are a huge number of factors to consider depending on your company's goals and your personal goals. Things like access to investors, access to talent/staff, your desire to relocate, your profit/reinvestment intentions and tax treatment.
Maybe describe why you're interested in Netherlands & Estonia.
If you've ever built a website for mobile but never heard of PWAs (Progressive Web Apps), I recommend checking them out. In essence, adding 2 files can make the site installable from a mobile browser and define caching behavior for offline functionality.
1. manifest.json: a JSON file that defines the app's name, icons, theme colors, and how it should launch when installed.
2. Service worker: a JS file that controls things like resource caching for offline usage
Unfortunately PWAs don't receive first class support compared to native apps. Still, I still hope to see wider adoption. I think for many not-too-complex apps, they can significantly lower the cost of development, and the development experience could be as simple as
- Building with HTML + JS + CSS. No clunky SDKs, reduced need to test on painfully slow emulators or expensive physical devices
- Installable from a browser. No need to maintain a listing in the Playstore/App Store, avoiding policy headaches, rent, etc.
I recently came across Open Web Advocacy (OWA) who summarize my mobile-platform concerns well. They "advocate for the future of the open web by providing regulators, legislators and policy makers the intricate technical details that they need to understand the major anti-competitive issues in our industry and how to solve them."
Their top 3 priorities:
1. Apple's ban of third party browsers on iOS is deeply anti-competitive
2. Web Apps need to become just Apps. Apps built with the free and open web need equal treatment and integration. Closed and heavily taxed proprietary ecosystems should not receive any preference.
3. All artificial barriers placed by gatekeepers must be removed. Web Apps if allowed can offer equivalent functionality with greater privacy and security for demanding use-cases.