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> but if it succeeds, good on Suhail! Well, not exactly. There's plenty of people who have been successful at, frankly horrible things. I count this kind of

> but if it succeeds, good on Suhail! Well, not exactly. There's plenty of people who have been successful at, frankly horrible things. I count this kind of "not your computer, ours" rent seeking change as "bad if successful".

dvt 5y ago
I don't really buy this. A lot of complaints are about the privacy of the whole ordeal. That's kind of moot considering Google has access to all of my banking emails, Dropbox has access to all of my invoices, Apple has access to all of my photos, and Equifax already leaked my SSN years ago. Most of my life already doesn't happen on my personal locked-down device.
- suhail 5y ago
  Fwiw, unlike the examples above, we have permission to your data (if you give it to us) but we don't own or control any of it. We don't store it elsewhere. We don't sell it to the highest bidder. We don't mine it for some other purpose. Let me be clear: we plan to charge a subscription. That's our only business model. I think we can improve privacy and security for most users who have trouble managing it. For instance, we can patch Chrome zero-days (many have occurred this year) a lot faster for everyone. What we offer today is a faster way to use applications that do own your data so you can be much more productive and hopefully enable a new set of applications never before possible. We help improve decentralization of the web over duopolies like Apple/Windows. We make the browser more powerful, not less. We improve the market share of Linux as a consumer computing OS as it underlies our tech. In time, we might be open to people owning their own hardware and running Mighty on it but I think a lot of people will prefer we make it "just work" for now. I don't view either world as mutually exclusive. If there's an opportunity to research making things trustless, we'll work on that.
  - sirsinsalot 5y ago
    I dont have an issue with this specific case, more the industry shift to rent seeking. Cars have subscriptions. Next your thin client hardware needs to pay rent to work. It is a slippery slope and claiming virtue doesnt decrease the gradient. Also, history tells us when companies say they wont be evil... they mean "not yet". It is a middle man power play pure and simple. The rest feels like classic SV/startup window dressing to get the job done.
    - N00bN00b 5y ago
      >I dont have an issue with this specific case, more the industry shift to rent seeking. Cars have subscriptions. Next your thin client hardware needs to pay rent to work. I think that's just called "switching to a subscription model". "Rent seeking" has a different meaning. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking
    - suhail 5y ago
      > "Also, history tells us when companies say they wont be evil... they mean "not yet". It is a middle man power play pure and simple." That's factually incorrect that, that always happens and I am not sure why you think we're grouped into that without any evidence or a basis of reasoning.
zem 5y ago
i have a hard time classifying mighty as 'rent seeking' - they are providing you computational resources in return for money, not seeking some sort of gatekeeping money by virtue of owning a scarce or critical-path resource.
- sirsinsalot 5y ago
  Agreed, my concern is about the trajectory of the product offerings more broadly. Embrace-extend-rent seems a common theme. I hope the case of Mighty has better intentions. Perhaps I am too cynical. I wonder if the pitch deck had the same value proposition we are getting or if it said "lets own consumer virtual desktop starting with Chrome". Both are valid. Feels like a bait and switch.

dvt 5y ago

I don't really buy this. A lot of complaints are about the privacy of the whole ordeal. That's kind of moot considering Google has access to all of my banking emails, Dropbox has access to all of my invoices, Apple has access to all of my photos, and Equifax already leaked my SSN years ago. Most of my life already doesn't happen on my personal locked-down device.

suhail 5y ago
Fwiw, unlike the examples above, we have permission to your data (if you give it to us) but we don't own or control any of it. We don't store it elsewhere. We don't sell it to the highest bidder. We don't mine it for some other purpose. Let me be clear: we plan to charge a subscription. That's our only business model. I think we can improve privacy and security for most users who have trouble managing it. For instance, we can patch Chrome zero-days (many have occurred this year) a lot faster for everyone. What we offer today is a faster way to use applications that do own your data so you can be much more productive and hopefully enable a new set of applications never before possible. We help improve decentralization of the web over duopolies like Apple/Windows. We make the browser more powerful, not less. We improve the market share of Linux as a consumer computing OS as it underlies our tech. In time, we might be open to people owning their own hardware and running Mighty on it but I think a lot of people will prefer we make it "just work" for now. I don't view either world as mutually exclusive. If there's an opportunity to research making things trustless, we'll work on that.
- sirsinsalot 5y ago
  I dont have an issue with this specific case, more the industry shift to rent seeking. Cars have subscriptions. Next your thin client hardware needs to pay rent to work. It is a slippery slope and claiming virtue doesnt decrease the gradient. Also, history tells us when companies say they wont be evil... they mean "not yet". It is a middle man power play pure and simple. The rest feels like classic SV/startup window dressing to get the job done.
  - N00bN00b 5y ago
    >I dont have an issue with this specific case, more the industry shift to rent seeking. Cars have subscriptions. Next your thin client hardware needs to pay rent to work. I think that's just called "switching to a subscription model". "Rent seeking" has a different meaning. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking
  - suhail 5y ago
    > "Also, history tells us when companies say they wont be evil... they mean "not yet". It is a middle man power play pure and simple." That's factually incorrect that, that always happens and I am not sure why you think we're grouped into that without any evidence or a basis of reasoning.

zem 5y ago

i have a hard time classifying mighty as 'rent seeking' - they are providing you computational resources in return for money, not seeking some sort of gatekeeping money by virtue of owning a scarce or critical-path resource.

sirsinsalot 5y ago
Agreed, my concern is about the trajectory of the product offerings more broadly. Embrace-extend-rent seems a common theme. I hope the case of Mighty has better intentions. Perhaps I am too cynical. I wonder if the pitch deck had the same value proposition we are getting or if it said "lets own consumer virtual desktop starting with Chrome". Both are valid. Feels like a bait and switch.