One big negative aspect is that everything tends to cost around $10/month, from a verified Twitter account to an app to teach English to my children.

Now, it may be small change for single people with Silicon Valley salaries, but I have a family to feed on my French experienced engineer salary, and I basically have around $150-$200/month left for entertainment for the whole family.

I cannot buy 10 internet services, whereas I could perfectly afford buying, say, a dozen or so $50 software a year.

Hmm, I'm debating a lot of this now for my work. What if they said $10/month or $50/year? Or would you prefer a software you could buy for $50 until it falls apart? (I built an app and didn't update it as Android and iOS changed and it doesn't work anymore)

Edit: ok not falls apart but maybe doesn't stay updated and becomes obsolete, or has bugs that don't get fixed, etc.

Look at what Jetbrains does. When you complete a 1 year subscription, you get a permanent license to a version of the software you're subscribed to, that is 1 year older than the latest.

It is at the same time a subscription to the latest updates, and a one time purchase of an older version that will still be able to open your files, if you drop the subscription. Or the company disappears.

I think that is the best option for a subscription. If you go the one off purchase route though, consider also adding a "grace period" where users get free upgrades to the next version or at least a good discount. For example, if I buy your $50 dollars software, and the next week you show up with a new version with really cool features for the same $50 dollars, I would feel scammed, especially if you hadn't made any announcements that the new version was about to come out. Try to either have a release schedule where you announce a month or two before they're out, or to offer a month or two or free upgrades if you someone buys a version right before a new one comes out.

Maybe your employer is lowballing you. 200 disposable income as senior dev is too low.

He's in France. Tech salaries aren't nearly as high as the US there.

I have no problem with the 'contact us for pricing', but I am astonished at the number of dark patterns that some big Internet e-commerce sites use. Maybe time for some regulations or monopoly-breaking?

Imagine you have to communicate something precise to me and I am stuck in a meeting:

- you send me a picture, it may be ambiguous;

- you leave me a voice call, I have to go out of the meeting room to listen to it

- you write a message, it just works. If there is info to use, I will easily copy your message in any application (Excel, Word, SAP...).

Also, text can be stored easily, so I will keep an archive of your text, probably far less an archive of your voice message or diagram, as they are very heavy.

It is interesting to think about it in the context of coding.

There is a strong opinion (which I share) that text coding is much more efficient than 'graphical' alternatives due to text flexibility and nice features ( easy compare, universal medium...)

I think the choice boils down to a few questions:

- do you need relational data, or something more simple, or something more flexible ?

- do you need transaction integrity ? Transaction integrity is a nice feature, but you can also design all your code so that if something blows "in the middle", it is somehow repaired automatically in a further event.

Maybe a third point: most of our relational / transactional database technology is quite old. Could we do something better than SQL query language, common database types, and the actual database code that was very optimized for magnetic spinning disks, but maybe is not optimized for SSD ? Maybe, we would need something like SQLV2.

And my god how much hype bullshit is inserted in those technical discussions.

'NoSQL' can be transactional and relational. The question should always be: "this is my problem, what's the best database?". NoSQL is such a huge bucket that the original question doesn't make sense imo. So is SQL, some traditional databases have quite some nifty features to support specific patterns.

SQL will (maybe sadly?.. maybe not?) not go away. Many so-called 'NoSQL' are looking into providing SQL or already provided SQL (with or without limitations) to their users because they just want to use what they know. I would be stoked for an SQLV2 standard!

it is impressive for me that the game has managed to reproduce a real-world phenomenon: people forced into slave labour.

Don't we play MMOs exactly to have this kind of adventure ?

I think you should look harder for content you like, whether a Youtube channel that fits your interest, or a specific topic you want to know more about. Internet is at its best when you actually have a personal goal, and look for relevant information and people.

Also, you should probably limit the time you spend randomly browsing for the internet. It is just like TV or video-game: this makes your brain tired in a strange 'addictive boredom' if you are half-passive in front of it for too long.

Actually, it cannot be totally realistic for sure, else it would become a ... space program. Still, I am convinced we can make an appealing game with the main real-life constraints of early planet colonization.

But as for the choice of time period, I find the close future much more appealing than the far future. It is easier to immerse into, and I expect that, in the years to come, the players could actually related there experience in the game to the events unfolding in real life.

Also, the period of the first pioneers is probably more exciting than the period where you manage complex cities. If you play Civilization, the first turns have a special flavour that you do not get anymore later in the game.

In my humble opinion, there are two problems to e-mail, and they are already solved in a product such as gmail. - Searching through the data works very well with gmail. I can retrieve all mails relevant to a topic very well. - Displaying conversation in an easy to read way.

I think it is nice to make very elaborate products, but simple technology, such as e-mail, is extremely powerful, as it is universal.

A slight comment: I usually look at the cost of the service for 3 years (the average time, say, I keep a laptop or smartphone). $5 or $10 per month is $150 to $300 for 3 years. That is quite a lot.

For which country ? Or maybe you divide the world between San Francisco peninsula and places that do not exist ;-).