tlianza

Seems like a useful app idea. Probably not something that would get much repeat use though.

> and “for sale” became Facebook Marketplace.

Ummmm... 1. Does the data suggest that is true? 2. If it were true, would it support the "unbundling" narrative given that it would be a case of something being part of another bundle?

The "small codebase" claim hinges on the fact that you're not counting the lines of code in nginx, leveldb, and other external software that are glued together to make this system. Those systems may reflect the years of battle-hardening you seek.

So, it may be more reliable than you think by virtue of that selective counting of codebase lines.

> It definitely beats OnePlus.

Vs. a OnePlus 6 it has a smaller screen, worse camera, one fewer sim slot, lacks a headphone jack, half the RAM, a slower processor, no face recognition, and a smaller battery.

In what way is it superior? Just screen resolution?

I'm not sure where the optimism comes from. I too have been surprised at how mediocre most conferencing software is, and concluded that it's probably harder than it seems.

What would great videoconferencing software look like, and what are the odds that this is it?

I think it's more like they're part of the "Android ecosystem" where you have a lot of choice around fundamental components, as compared to the iOS ecosystem.

I get your point that Android, broadly, is a competitor to Apple. But, I think he's not just highlighting that the world needs an Amazon alternative (it has several).

I think he's saying the world needs a more open ecosystem where they have the choice of best-of-breed components from different companies. And, in that world, you might be able to pick the world's best compute stack from one company, use Cloudflare as the world's best edge/networking stack, etc.

Biggest downside is the FireOS, Amazon store instead of Google Play, etc.

If you want to do basic web surfing stuff, this is a phenomenal deal. I doubt you'll find a better one.

If you want to experience all that modern Android tablets are capable of, these tablets will not provide that. In particular anything related to Google services (mail/apps) and Android apps that are delivered through the Google Play store but not delivered though the Amazon store. There are a lot of mainstream apps that don't bother to push their apps to Amazon's store.

> The ASP->PHP conversion was extremely low-hanging fruit (the conversion involved almost no logic).

This is where I'm curious that they didn't just start writing PHP from that point forward. It was already a cross-platform language. And, if I recall, had a lot of hype and was gaining traction fast I'm the late 90's and early 2000's.

Certainly hindsight is 20-20, but I remember a lot of folks betting big on PHP at the time.