I prefer dumb phones, and then prefer to not have to carry one 24/7. Device lock-in is a whole other discussion. Why can't phones be switched off anyhow in terms of telco signal? Yet their Wifi and Bluetooth can be. Weird. What are they doing in stealth?

Look how cheap x402 transactions are (ie almost free) https://gemini.google.com/share/cbf1adb1570c It's a new thing - have business models adapted accordingly?

"source" of an LLM chat

https://www.x402.org/ >AI agent sends HTTP request and receives 402: Payment Required

>AI agent pays instantly with stablecoins

Smells like a weird ad to me.

Well, I was thinking of integrating payments into the scrolling chat, the more you scroll down, the more payment increments you hit. It happens in the background, and there can be a tally somewhere on the screen of how much you are spending. Also, compute usage can be used as a multiplier.

More is written about it here: "https://gemini.google.com/share/6113940b8e1e "What are the best examples of x402 payments being made currently?"

From what I've read on HN, running advertising technology is an expensive and complex undertaking. I'd be trying to skip it altogether and keep the subsequent costs, intrusions and headaches away from users.

The other good thing about micropayments: being able to instantly divert some of the revenue back to content and training sources. That'd make it more righteous too and make it more conducive to cooperation from them (eg realtime pings.) Content will improve as a result, better justifying the costs. Could lead to less bot rampage too lowering bandwidth costs overall.

It'd also remove the temptation (hopefully) for AI companies to resort to black-hatting: scamming, backdoors and trojans to recoup their costs. That's seriously important and code-checking can become less of a priority and thereby result in time-saving for end users.

You don’t think your preference for not using a smart phone makes a viable market do you - seeing global penetration of smartphones is 90% and even higher among those who can afford to travel?

I think compulsory 2FA and the trend towards must-have downloadable phone apps is a problem, but that may not be fully evident... yet. In my experience, being tied to a phone and phone number is a problem. Also, when you carry your phone, your funds are at risk too from tech-jacking (as opposed to car-jacking) .. especially with crypto, right?

"I keep a cheap travel eSim plan active on it so that if I am somewhere sketchy I can leave my main phone at home." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46639157

It's a personal choice - you are also tied to a battery charger. Wait, solar panels are getting better.

Why is it so difficult to run a mobile app on a PC? Why can't there be a device that I connect to my laptop to turn it into a phone (voice + texts) whenever the need arises? Weird. What's with the identification required at SIM point-of-sale? Is someone trying to track me or something?

So now instead of carrying a phone around with you to make a call, you want to carry around a laptop?

Again, your use case is not a business model. What next bring back pay phones?

I'd be more inclined to carry around a smartphone if everything about it was open-source and based on open standards. It's just another networked computer, really.