Technology catch-all thread

[chw42]

I came to this thread wondering if anyone had commented on it. I take a lot from the fact this was the only comment I see.

 

Samsung's getting pretty complacent.

[Y2HH]

Samsung's getting pretty complacent.

 

In Samsungs defense (I can't believe you have me defending Samsung here), the smartphone market is technologically mature now, and there isn't much other than incremental updates to add/tweak at this point. It's not unlike what the desktop market became over the years, where a bit more speed was the only real differentiator.

 

Until a battery breakthrough is made, which is an obvious improvement, or a yet unknown and much less obvious idea emerges, there isn't much they can really do at this point.

[chw42]

In Samsungs defense (I can't believe you have me defending Samsung here), the smartphone market is technologically mature now, and there isn't much other than incremental updates to add/tweak at this point. It's not unlike what the desktop market became over the years, where a bit more speed was the only real differentiator.

 

Until a battery breakthrough is made, which is an obvious improvement, or a yet unknown and much less obvious idea emerges, there isn't much they can really do at this point.

 

If people thought the S4 was a bad incremental update, then this is a far worse incremental update.

 

I think the best thing Samsung could have done was improve the build quality of the phone. I don't think that requires anything groundbreaking to do. But they really didn't manage to do that. Instead, they made a phone with a slightly better feeling back that's bigger than the previous iteration in every way.

[Y2HH]

If people thought the S4 was a bad incremental update, then this is a far worse incremental update.

 

I think the best thing Samsung could have done was improve the build quality of the phone. I don't think that requires anything groundbreaking to do. But they really didn't manage to do that. Instead, they made a phone with a slightly better feeling back that's bigger than the previous iteration in every way.

 

We agree on that, I think a flagship phone needs to be made of some sort of metal/alloy these days, I'm not a huge fan of plastic stuff at these prices. But that'd still be incremental.

[chw42]

We agree on that, I think a flagship phone needs to be made of some sort of metal/alloy these days, I'm not a huge fan of plastic stuff at these prices. But that'd still be incremental.

 

It doesn't even need to be like the HTC One. Sony's phones are absolutely gorgeous (see new Z2), although I don't know how shatter-proof they are.

[Y2HH]

It doesn't even need to be like the HTC One. Sony's phones are absolutely gorgeous (see new Z2), although I don't know how shatter-proof they are.

 

That's just something that doesn't concern me, as I've had every iPhone since the start and have never broken one of them, despite not using a case. They're phones not hammers, don't be careless with them. I don't throw my expensive watch around, either...it's not a baseball, it's a delicate instrument and though made to withstand some punishment, the wrong drop at the wrong angle can destroy it, so it should be treated as such. If a shatterproof phone is what you need, they make them, and they're huge ugly monstrosities. Oh, I don't throw rubber balls at my plasma tvs, either, because they'll shatter.

 

That being said, IF that's such a concern to you, buy the insurance which is available for any device you buy and then you can shatter them at will.

[Jake]

There's a difference between being indestructible and being so poorly constructed that it creaks and bends if you handle it roughly.

[Steve9347]

I read $10B was the proposed multiple for DropBox and I crapped myself. Its a f***ing cloud. Maybe I'm a newb, but what the hell is such a difficult barrier to entry. Yes, they have market share, but how the hell are they a $10B (or even worse if it is truly valued at $20B) Company? Where is the logic. Earnings have been growing at a pretty high clip but you or I could start a company up and figure out how to do what they are providing and there are a lot of different people who have big server space out there that could jump into the cloud game to really keep them from ever having enough margins to be extremely profitable. Plus...I think even with all of their sales growth, DropBox is a $200 - $300M per year company in revenues. I can't imagine what Net Income is and EBITDA has to be significantly lower. The multiples of these tech companies are absurd and there is zero logic to them.

It's all about users and recurring revenue.

[Chisoxfn]

It's all about users and recurring revenue.

Ummm...revenue isn't all that great of a metric if you aren't turning a profit. They have thin margins and aren't profitable.

[chw42]

That's just something that doesn't concern me, as I've had every iPhone since the start and have never broken one of them, despite not using a case. They're phones not hammers, don't be careless with them. I don't throw my expensive watch around, either...it's not a baseball, it's a delicate instrument and though made to withstand some punishment, the wrong drop at the wrong angle can destroy it, so it should be treated as such. If a shatterproof phone is what you need, they make them, and they're huge ugly monstrosities. Oh, I don't throw rubber balls at my plasma tvs, either, because they'll shatter.

 

That being said, IF that's such a concern to you, buy the insurance which is available for any device you buy and then you can shatter them at will.

 

I personally have never broken a phone due to clumsiness. I've come close (dropped my uncle's iPhone 4 from about chest high straight onto hard flooring and it somehow survived) though.

 

However, you can't account for situations you just can't control sometimes. In those cases, I'd rather have a phone that's less likely to break if I do drop it.

 

I use cases though, so usually that's not an issue. I've dropped my Nexus 5 with the case on a few times and it's still in perfect condition.

[Y2HH]

I personally have never broken a phone due to clumsiness. I've come close (dropped my uncle's iPhone 4 from about chest high straight onto hard flooring and it somehow survived) though.

 

However, you can't account for situations you just can't control sometimes. In those cases, I'd rather have a phone that's less likely to break if I do drop it.

 

I use cases though, so usually that's not an issue. I've dropped my Nexus 5 with the case on a few times and it's still in perfect condition.

 

I agree, but for accident prone people, they do have insurance for phones ... and if you're going to break it, it's cheaper to buy the insurance than having to replace a flagship smartphone these days.

[Y2HH]

Ummm...revenue isn't all that great of a metric if you aren't turning a profit. They have thin margins and aren't profitable.

 

It doesn't work like that when you're in a bubble -- and make no mistake -- we are in the middle of a second tech bubble. Of course, like Warren Buffett says, investing is like sex, and it feels best right before it pops. Those that don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat it, and that's exactly what's happening now.

 

.com v1.0 - people didn't understand the Internet, and didn't want to miss the boat on the next big industry, so they invested in anything/everything that contained a .com or had a website, no matter how shaky or stupid the idea actually was.

 

.com v2.0 - people still don't understand the Internet, social medias place on the Internet, where cloud computing is going, and once again, they don't want to miss the boat. They're overvaluing everything on "potential" future profits to the tune of insanity, and of these investments, a handful will emerge victorious, becoming the next Microsoft or Google.

 

Apple is one of the most financially successful companies in the history of world, churning out unseen profits for almost a decade now, and at their absolute peak profit earning power, it's P/E never eclipsed 20. Think about that for a second. We're talking about one of the most successful profit generating companies EVER. Meanwhile, they're speculating on "potential" future earnings from other companies like NetFlix, Amazon, Facebook, WhatsApp, etc...pumping their valuations into the stratosphere.

 

Now, for arguments sake, let's say they're right. Let's say Amazon somehow starts making money (after two decades of NOT making money), even if they blew away any realistic number you can imagine, what I can safely say they will NOT do is make more money than Apple did at it's peak, therefore the speculated earnings potential is insane based on it's P/E ratio alone. To justify some of these P/E ratios (or even their future P/E ratios, if they ever even materialize), these companies would not only need to start making profits, but they'd have to start making profits to the tune of multiple times what Apple was making at it's peak.

 

Now, re-read that last line.

 

Because that's never going to happen in bottom feeding profit industries like retail or media (aka Amazon/Netflix). That's not to say they can't make money (NetFlix does), but with profit margins of about 4% they're not going to see profits like Apple or Exxon.

Edited February 25, 2014 by Y2HH

[RockRaines]

Ummm...revenue isn't all that great of a metric if you aren't turning a profit. They have thin margins and aren't profitable.

Thats kind of the norm these days for start ups. You are putting every single dime back into dev and your people. We arent profitable but we are going IPO and will have a nice valuation. Tech companies are like that.

[Jake]

It seems to me that cloud storage should have wonderfully high margins if you want it to

[southsider2k5]

It doesn't work like that when you're in a bubble -- and make no mistake -- we are in the middle of a second tech bubble. Of course, like Warren Buffett says, investing is like sex, and it feels best right before it pops. Those that don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat it, and that's exactly what's happening now.

 

.com v1.0 - people didn't understand the Internet, and didn't want to miss the boat on the next big industry, so they invested in anything/everything that contained a .com or had a website, no matter how shaky or stupid the idea actually was.

 

.com v2.0 - people still don't understand the Internet, social medias place on the Internet, where cloud computing is going, and once again, they don't want to miss the boat. They're overvaluing everything on "potential" future profits to the tune of insanity, and of these investments, a handful will emerge victorious, becoming the next Microsoft or Google.

 

Apple is one of the most financially successful companies in the history of world, churning out unseen profits for almost a decade now, and at their absolute peak profit earning power, it's P/E never eclipsed 20. Think about that for a second. We're talking about one of the most successful profit generating companies EVER. Meanwhile, they're speculating on "potential" future earnings from other companies like NetFlix, Amazon, Facebook, WhatsApp, etc...pumping their valuations into the stratosphere.

 

Now, for arguments sake, let's say they're right. Let's say Amazon somehow starts making money (after two decades of NOT making money), even if they blew away any realistic number you can imagine, what I can safely say they will NOT do is make more money than Apple did at it's peak, therefore the speculated earnings potential is insane based on it's P/E ratio alone. To justify some of these P/E ratios (or even their future P/E ratios, if they ever even materialize), these companies would not only need to start making profits, but they'd have to start making profits to the tune of multiple times what Apple was making at it's peak.

 

Now, re-read that last line.

 

Because that's never going to happen in bottom feeding profit industries like retail or media (aka Amazon/Netflix). That's not to say they can't make money (NetFlix does), but with profit margins of about 4% they're not going to see profits like Apple or Exxon.

 

This is a great post. I have no idea when it is going to happen. As long as the government is propping up the economy as much as it is, it probably won't happen. But when they step away, eventually, it will happen. There are still some insane assumptions being priced into the market.

 

[southsider2k5]

It seems to me that cloud storage should have wonderfully high margins if you want it to

 

It should be an industry that matures into a low profit margin area quickly. There are no barriers to entry, and it is a low cost sector. It won't be hard to undercut pricing to levels that cut margins down to very low levels. It isn't like there are high labor, high entry, or high production costs here.

[Jake]

It should be an industry that matures into a low profit margin area quickly. There are no barriers to entry, and it is a low cost sector. It won't be hard to undercut pricing to levels that cut margins down to very low levels. It isn't like there are high labor, high entry, or high production costs here.

 

Honestly...now that you mention it, this is going to become free and ad-supported.

[Y2HH]

It should be an industry that matures into a low profit margin area quickly. There are no barriers to entry, and it is a low cost sector. It won't be hard to undercut pricing to levels that cut margins down to very low levels. It isn't like there are high labor, high entry, or high production costs here.

 

The biggest barrier to entry into cloud services will be trust, and since modern encryption/security standards have been exposed as "not ready yet", a lot of these companies will run into trust issues, and once this sort of trust is broken, without playing this properly to the media, you may lose people in droves...

 

Hell, look at the 19 billion dollar WhatsApp...they had a 3 hour outage the other day and it's direct (and free) competitors were signing people up by the millions...because of a short outage.

Edited February 25, 2014 by Y2HH

[RockRaines]

Honestly...now that you mention it, this is going to become free and ad-supported.

But its not just "storage." Its Document Management software and it's moved into the enterprise industry where there requirements for indexing, sharing and discovery that goes much further than what consumers use it for. Companies are paying big bucks for cloud-based document management that is intelligent.

 

Consumer-based subscriptions will still be there for larger and more fully functional instances but the basic plan may always be free if only to hook people into the software.

[RockRaines]

The biggest barrier to entry into cloud services will be trust, and since modern encryption/security standards have been exposed as "not ready yet", a lot of these companies will run into trust issues, and once this sort of trust is broken, without playing this properly to the media, you may lose people in droves...

 

Hell, look at the 19 billion dollar WhatsApp...they had a 3 hour outage the other day and it's direct (and free) competitors were signing people up by the millions...because of a short outage.

huh? SAML has been ready for YEARS and is implemented across the board. OAuth and OpenID Connect are not far behind.

[Y2HH]

huh? SAML has been ready for YEARS and is implemented across the board. OAuth and OpenID Connect are not far behind.

 

The NSA scandal has exposed most of the standards in use as inadequate and easily crackable, as there is always a point where the data resides in an unencrypted form, and that's the area of target.

 

I'm sure there are some encryptions that aren't so easy to break, but most aren't using them, and once again, when accessed by a user, it inherently needs to be unencrypted.

 

And of course, the easiest part to crack remains the people not to mention their use of overly simplistic passwords.

 

So I'm not exactly sure what's confusing about my statement.

Edited February 25, 2014 by Y2HH

[southsider2k5]

The biggest barrier to entry into cloud services will be trust, and since modern encryption/security standards have been exposed as "not ready yet", a lot of these companies will run into trust issues, and once this sort of trust is broken, without playing this properly to the media, you may lose people in droves...

 

Hell, look at the 19 billion dollar WhatsApp...they had a 3 hour outage the other day and it's direct (and free) competitors were signing people up by the millions...because of a short outage.

 

American consumers, especially business, is largely motivated by $. If someone offers cheaper, many will switch, regardless if they are the best at what they do, or not.

[RockRaines]

The NSA scandal has exposed most of the standards in use as inadequate and easily crackable, as there is always a point where the data resides in an unencrypted form, and that's the area of target.

 

I'm sure there are some encryptions that aren't so easy to break, but most aren't using them, and once again, when accessed by a user, it inherently needs to be unencrypted.

 

And of course, the easiest part to crack remains the people not to mention their use of overly simplistic passwords.

 

So I'm not exactly sure what's confusing about my statement.

Its confusing because SAML is neither easily crackable nor inadequate. Its a one time token with expiration. If you are talking about once you are in the application, then encryption may be what at times is easier to crack since you have a long session and data is pretty easy to tap into. That why companies like ZScaler are making coin with cloud adoption.

[Y2HH]

I mean, Dropbox is so confident in everything they're doing they've also issued a new "automagically" opt-in TOS where users give up their right to be able to bring them to court and/or form class action against them...

 

http://consumerist.com/2014/02/21/dropbox-...online-opt-out/

 

"Another company is taking the coward’s way out of resolving legal disputes with its customers by tweaking its Terms of Service to take away users’ rights to take the company to court and to prevent multiple users from having their complaints heard as a group. This time, it’s online storage service Dropbox, which is currently notifying users of the bad news.

 

In a new blog post, Dropbox details the latest changes to its ToS, including the forced arbitration clause.

 

“Arbitration is a faster and more efficient way to resolve legal disputes,” lies Dropbox, “and it provides a good alternative to things like state or federal courts, where the process could take months or even years.”

 

Thank you Dropbox for unburdening consumers of their statutory right to seek legal redress in a court of law! It’s like you read our minds. We’d all much rather be heard by a paid arbitrator in a process that is heavily unbalanced in favor of businesses."

[Chisoxfn]

It doesn't work like that when you're in a bubble -- and make no mistake -- we are in the middle of a second tech bubble. Of course, like Warren Buffett says, investing is like sex, and it feels best right before it pops. Those that don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat it, and that's exactly what's happening now.

 

.com v1.0 - people didn't understand the Internet, and didn't want to miss the boat on the next big industry, so they invested in anything/everything that contained a .com or had a website, no matter how shaky or stupid the idea actually was.

 

.com v2.0 - people still don't understand the Internet, social medias place on the Internet, where cloud computing is going, and once again, they don't want to miss the boat. They're overvaluing everything on "potential" future profits to the tune of insanity, and of these investments, a handful will emerge victorious, becoming the next Microsoft or Google.

 

Apple is one of the most financially successful companies in the history of world, churning out unseen profits for almost a decade now, and at their absolute peak profit earning power, it's P/E never eclipsed 20. Think about that for a second. We're talking about one of the most successful profit generating companies EVER. Meanwhile, they're speculating on "potential" future earnings from other companies like NetFlix, Amazon, Facebook, WhatsApp, etc...pumping their valuations into the stratosphere.

 

Now, for arguments sake, let's say they're right. Let's say Amazon somehow starts making money (after two decades of NOT making money), even if they blew away any realistic number you can imagine, what I can safely say they will NOT do is make more money than Apple did at it's peak, therefore the speculated earnings potential is insane based on it's P/E ratio alone. To justify some of these P/E ratios (or even their future P/E ratios, if they ever even materialize), these companies would not only need to start making profits, but they'd have to start making profits to the tune of multiple times what Apple was making at it's peak.

 

Now, re-read that last line.

 

Because that's never going to happen in bottom feeding profit industries like retail or media (aka Amazon/Netflix). That's not to say they can't make money (NetFlix does), but with profit margins of about 4% they're not going to see profits like Apple or Exxon.

Y2, you are preaching to the choir on this. It literally blows my mind.