You have to wonder why someone did not think of this form factor sooner. I have the original X4 and have been enjoying it a lot. My Kobo mostly lies unused because I do most of my reading in bed and the X4, even with a clip-on light, is so much easier on the wrists.
Dual core Arm CPUs, Android etc used by mainstream readers are a serious waste of resources. A microcontroller paired with the SD card is more than enough. And CrossPoint is a gem! The list of pros is long and the device recommends itself. But there is one con that you must watch out for:
The screen is delicate.
I love cases but hate screen protectors, and tend to use my devices with care. So it has worked out fairly well for me the past few months. But you might have a different experience.
I subscribed to Claude Pro for one month earlier this year. The subscription lasts as long as you chat with it in the UI. The moment you use Claude Code, it becomes useless and you keep hitting limits. So, great for hammering out a specification, not so great for actually writing and debugging code.
I have a lot of hobby projects and cannot afford to drop $200/m for assistance from LLMs with above average intelligence. The Chinese models work quite well, and are cost effective, in comparison. My usage over the last few months:
- Gemini / AI Studio = translations
- Kimi 2.5 / OpenCode Go = Compiler/VM project, AI for some board games, a new document format and compiler for it,
- DS4 Flash / DeepSeek (had some credits lying around) + OpenCode Go = Template-based OCR engine
- MiMo 2.5 and MuseSpark 1.2 Contributor = The OCR engine + a product I am brainstorming + a lot of single page tools
If you select models judiciously, and can write good AGENTS.md and extremely short but potent ARCHITECTURE.md documents, the $10 you pay to OpenCode Go will last a long while even when you consume a hundreds of millions of tokens (mostly cache hits) a day. You can get multiple models to perform code review of modules against the ARCHITECTURE you have specified and get other models to execute the fixes.
> Overall, our results suggest that context files don’t improve coding agent performance, and should only contain specific additional instructions beyond what is already available in the codebase
That's what the study says.
I recently did a much smaller scale test. Some coworker was pestering me about some brilliant skill file so i backed up Claude's state and told it to make a plan for some refactoring task with and without those skills installed.
The results were identical. I didn't measure token use though.
For me, an average long session results in about 200-300M cached input, 4-800K input, 2-400K output. Mostly the lower bound. Output depends on how much the model thinks.
There are two problems here:
- cache hit pricing (both Muse Spark 1.2 Contributor and MiMo 2.5 are around the $0.002-3/M mark)
- cache persistence time
Muse Spark drops the cache in less than 5m. MiMo keeps it around for at least an hour based on my experience with whoever is serving it for OpenCode. This difference itself will inflate bills massively.
A 500K token input repeatedly read by MS 1.2 for full input price 12 times an hour = $0.60. You would be expecting $0.012. So a 50x difference. Same thing on MiMo 2.5 is $0.018 because of longer cache times.
I have used all three extensively. DS4 Flash is quite smart. I would rank MS 1.2 below it. MiMo is the dumbest of them all but good enough for basic stuff.
MiMo wins handsomely if you want to think about your code for minutes at a time as you write. I use it to make changes as I think. I know it will screw up some stuff. I then switch to MS/DS4 once every few hours and have it do a code review and fix the broken stuff. So much cheaper than getting MS to do it on its own.
I am using the Xteink X4 as my primary e-reader now-a-days. Simple ESP32 microcontroller. Plastic+glass shell with an e-ink screen. MicroSD card works like a cache. Battery lasts for weeks. Works great.
Don't get me wrong. I like modern CPUs with huge caches and incredible power, but you do not need this for most devices. Also leads to lazy programming practices and calculators consuming hundreds of megabytes of RAM.
Size is pretty similar to the original iPhone. The actual screen is the size of a credit card. You do not really notice the size once you get reading. It is light enough to be carried anywhere.
But you need a strategy to protect the screen which is the most delicate part of the entire assembly. They do sell screen protectors of various kinds and even supply one in the original box. I bought their magnetic case which works for my use case (I do not store it in a pocket with keys and other objects that might damage the screen).
Physical books and digital content is special in that you can mostly archive their content almost permanently for cheap. Buildings, paintings, idols, living things, natural features of the environment ... not so much.
So the solution is:
- mandatory copyright registration and renewal with links to where the work can be acquired
- a blanket carve out for any non-commercial trust-style org so that they can scan books etc and keep the data on their servers. They should be able to issue digital membership cards for a fee so that patrons can access the archives. Any work that is "live" based on the registration database will be locked. All "dead" material can be shared with members.
In this way, a hundred digital preservation societies can bloom.
This is what caused the problem in the first place. If people had unrestricted access to content then the world would be a better place. And works wouldn't be so rare that it's worth AI companies buying and destroying them to gain some edge, as well as remain in legal compliance.
I completely agree. IPR as a concept is suspect. But it is the world we live in, with timelines extending like crazy. There are works produced before I was born that will remain under protection till long after I am dead.
A targeted modification to the laws could produce most of the benefits for a minor cost.
Copyright should be globally determined so that if I cant pay fair market value for a piece of content, it's deemed out of copyright protection and I can use whatever means to get it digitally.
Like if a game isn't available for sale anywhere in my region, I can get it without breaking any laws. A book is out of print and I can't pay money for it digitally -> free game.
(Why "fair market value?": So that skeezy publishers don't have an online shop with one physical copy of every book they own for $1Trillion just to fulfill the law)
Copyright should be banished out of existence so information, which is a trivially reproduced intangible, can be freely copied and distributed anywhere it can be useful. Instead of having the crap like what happened with the Internet Archive during/after Covid.
Bought an LFP battery+inverter set recently to replace an old dying lead acid based system. We need this kind of AC-DC roundtrip systems in India because of the unreliability of grid power (random power cuts, seconds/minutes to hours long).
Chinese cells (EVE etc) and BMSes (Daly etc) are easily available and all kinds of workshops build batteries at small to medium scale for all kinds of uses: electric auto rickshaws, power backup, sink for off-grid solar. Prices are $100-200/kWh for the battery depending on V, Ah and brand.
Every couple of years, I revisit my PL dev hobby and this time I decided to create a language/runtime with pre-emptive scheduling using instruction fuel. While I always do freestanding builds, this time I decided that I also wanted to support native FFI.
That is when I realized the true horror of (g)libc. It wants to inject itself at the root of the library/program and everything from threading to dlopen/dlsym is impacted. I tried a lot of workarounds including trying to implement a loader myself, but the complexity (and fragility) grew so much that I felt it was not worth it.
Finally, I retreated into the safe world of a freestanding runtime + syscalls. FFI, if it has to happen, will occur via IPC of some kind. A second process linked against glibc that will manage calls on behalf of the clean first one.
Right, this has second and third order effects. I am sure this must have been brought up during the discussions and overruled for whatever reason. The bureaucrats and politicos involved are not stupid. But there is some game being played here.
Some P2P is between family/friends. Or you are paying rent etc. But a lot of it is business transactions that move funds from one savings account to another because the auto driver is accepting a payment in his mother's or wife's account or something similar. There is so much friction in the banking system if you have to create a current account that this is pretty common.
The system needs to improve drastically to support the two sides instead of letting it be. Should help your use case as well if that happens
India is forced to subsidize farmers to the tune of $37B JUST for urea. Governments routinely offer free bus services to women, free cash handouts to women, free electricity to farmers (who then use the power to pump out groundwater and grow paddy in areas otherwise not suitable for it). The list goes on.
A $1B subsidy to eliminate friction on the payment front is peanuts.
One of the reasons why the fee is being considered is under the pressure of other payment providers who are loosing to UPI in Indian market. Its been believed to be one of the negotiation points by the US-India trade deals
Same reason the US is going after Pix in Brazil. The world is decoupling from the US and the US is going to try to flex against it as it continues. Dollar dominance and the “exorbitant privilege” continue to erode (with the acceleration self inflicted). Also shrinks the TAM of these private US firms to only the US versus the world.
It goes both ways: What if the ONLY payment method was the one approved by your "elected" government. A balance where they can all exist is the best, and most difficult decision.
Currency is already managed by the elected government, and every democracy in the world traces electronic transactions. Some (like Italy) forbid cash payments in large sums altogether. So what's the boogieman here?
The boogyman is just what you described, and every democracy in the world absolutely does not trace electronic transactions.
Some have a more hands off approach, including size of transactions and flagged behaviour as indicators of when payment processors must report to the government.
The Goverment should absolutely have no idea who spends what, where. Warrants and court orders, check values should be required before anyone can know. The potential to suppress political opponents, to squelch legitimate protest, to interfere with elections, is too dangerous.
Simply because some countries, like the US after 9/11, decided to give up this aspect of a free people, does not make it right.
Governments have a monopoly on violence and thus technically the ability to do whatever they want. But it matters how theoretical that ability is and how publicly apparent misuse of the ability will be. Having all transactions flow through the government makes abuse both trivial and invisible to the public.
Currency is a barriers bond that affords a degree of decentralisation-in-operation and use that isn't afforded by digital payments, even crypto for practical purposes.
Yes, and this is a bad thing, and free societies are impossible without the possibility of payments that the government doesn’t want you to be able to make.
Cryptocurrency solves that problem well, which is why governments have moved hard to effectively nerf it everywhere.
Visa and Mastercard don't, but right now cash more or less does. If the state has a monopoly on digital payments, and can thus mass surveil all digital payments without any scrutiny, the state has a huge incentive to disincentivize or bar the use of cash. Then all it takes is a bad actor to come into power and abuse the system.
> Not relevant to the point I was making at all - the state running digital payments is no more an incentive to stop cash payments than Visa/MC.
Yes, it is. The state acting as a direct intermediary for all transactions creates new mechanisms of both mass surveillance and economic control that do not exist in the status quo where the state functions merely as the issuer of cash.
When private businesses create digital transaction systems that augment the cash economy, the state itself does not have direct access to or control over the transactions that flow through those systems, and must work within legal strictures to interact with the organizations managing them.
> User data is available from either and in the case of Visa/MC it also likely leaks overseas.
Perhaps, but the legal implications between the state obtaining access to illicitly leaked data and the state itself being the originator of that data are drastically different.
The Italian government has no power over foreign cards, and will be careful to not hinder those transactions lest they want to lose their tourism income.
When it comes down to it they do have power over the use of foreign cards in their jurisdiction. But the further indirection from the government does matter and makes abuse harder.
Realistically the most they can do is exercise power over cards issued by Italian banks. They can't do anything about cards belonging to Italians, which have been issued by foreign banks, unless they ban all foreign cards. In which case they will lose all tourism and destroy their country completely.
Fixed it for you. You had left some extraneous quotation marks there.
Either way, while governments should not get free pass and should be scrutinized by its citizens, we definitely should not allow corporations with ties to hostile governments (such as the case of Visa and Mastercard) any oversight of payment infrastructure.
> What if the ONLY payment method was the one approved by your "elected" government.
Yeah, what if?
You didn't provide any argument, didn't point to any real problem. You just hinted at a "terrible bad thing". Would we have monsters under our beds or bad guys in corners to ambush us?
This sounds like VISA/Mastercad/Apple Pay playing FUD[1].
You realize you're arguing for a monopoly, right? One where competition is not only non-existent but also illegal, and which has complete control over how you're allowed to spend your money.
I think arguing "but it's a democratic monopoly" is little comfort in this situation. Maybe you trust your government not to ever be incompetent or to use the powers granted by this monopoly in a way you disapprove of. Maybe in the short term you'd even be right to do so. But I think history has proven that over the long term that's a very foolish assumption to make.
Which is completely irrelevant because as the government of the country they have the power to make laws, now and in the future which compel private entities to perform actions like AML (anti money laundering) and KYC (know your customers).
The end result is private entities taking money out of the system at some stage, and it doesn't shield you in any way from government incompetence or malice.
Suppose you have an actually decentralized payment system, like cash, or any digital system that preserves the same properties whether or not it involves a blockchain.
An example of one that doesn't would be a global decentralized protocol for transferring money. You're standing in a coffee shop in LA and want to pay for a coffee so you tell your bank to transfer $5 to their bank. It works the same if your bank is in Brazil and their bank is in Switzerland as if both banks are in Nebraska, involves no intermediary other than each party's bank, and their bank shows them the transfer immediately so they know to give you the coffee.
Then the panzers roll into Washington and der Führer wants to reintroduce financial surveillance to make sure nobody is covertly buying a computer that doesn't censor the internet. Obviously they can force the bank in Nebraska to inform on the dissidents, but your bank is in Brazil and the seller's bank is in Switzerland.
Unless the system allowing that is dismantled ahead of time so the dystopia can be switched on overnight instead of needing years to erode entrenched decentralized infrastructure.
"They could theoretically seize control of everything anyway, so we should just let them seize control of everything now without a fight" doesn't seem like a great argument to me.
Things like the constitution, separation of powers, checks and balances, and decentralized control of communication and commerce serve as bulwarks against tyranny. That they all could be dismantled in the future is not an argument against doing our best to preserve them now. Tyranny is not a binary state, it's a gradient with many steps along the path thereto.
(Also, "taking money out of the system" is not optional; payment systems cost money to maintain whether it's done by a private entity or by government.)
You go far enough on fiscal tracking and you just wind up back where we've always been: barter. All currency is as useful as the regime backing it, and when that regime falls, barter always comes back in. Everything else is just rent seeking scaffolding to reduce barter friction (cash let's me store all the value I've created, but so could gold bars, or bitcoin, or vodka).
This is to say: All currency is about control and convenience (you trade "invisible transaction" for "easily able to resolve payment") because those in power want to know/control the money and everyone else wants convenience.
> You realize you're arguing for a monopoly, right?
Right! Like all the other monopolies that governments already have: public security (police and courts of law), external security (armed forces), public healthcare in many civilized countries, inspection of health regulations and consumer safety, monetary policy, etc.
> you trust your government not to ever be incompetent
Oh, I don't. But Apple, Visa, Mastercard and Google Pay aren't very "competent" either.
> history has proven that over the long term
History has proven that privatization of many of government monopolies are disastrous: Roman generals making private armies and destroying the Republic, abuse of forced labor from inmates in private prisons, exorbitant fees from payment providers (Visa, Mastercard), food dangerous for public consumption because the governments didn't inspect them, etc.
> Like all the other monopolies that governments already have
Your examples are things that aren't inherently monopolies and are significantly worse if you try to make them such. It's better to give people the right to self-defense than to put them in jail for violating a "public security" monopoly for not allowing someone else to kill them when there were no police around. It's cruel to prohibit someone from paying for their own healthcare in cases when the procedure exists but the public system won't spend the money. What argument could you even make for prohibiting private inspections of products and services the likes of Consumer Reports?
The things that are better as a monopoly are so rare that they plausibly don't exist.
You're motte-and-baileying here. Arguing that there are natural/desirable monopolies for government to possess in certain high-risk cases does not automatically translate into an argument that it's desirable for governments to have monopolies in every case imaginable. As a rule of thumb, it's best to avoid monopolies wherever possible, and rely on government solving complex coordination problems only as a last resort.
Pointing out that it's reasonable for governments to suppress private armies maurauding around and having wars with each other does not in any way sustain the argument that it's reasonable to allow governments to act as a forced intermediary in everyone's commercial transactions.
> But Apple, Visa, Mastercard and Google Pay aren't very "competent" either.
The article doesn't say and I know nothing about India. I could guess consumers are oaying using their smartphones. So Google/Apple duopoly are still the gatekeepers to use UPI making huge profits. Of course using one of the American backends would make their control and profits orders of magnitudes bigger.
Payment rails are a natural monopoly so yeah I’m good with the gov owning it and as the article says, everyone is free to compete with the services they offer.
Your government already controls your currency and thereby your assets, why would you die on the this particular hill of how you can transact this government-created currency? For free as opposed to for a fee no less? You don't believe transaction data isn't shared (sold) by commercial parties do you?
> I don’t want international private companies controlling payments, better have my own elected government manage it.
The ideal of course is decentralized payment systems with no middlemen, but if there are going to be middlemen, a competitive marketplace of middlemen driven primary by predictable financial incentives is vastly less scary than monopolization by power-centralizing political institutions.
The interesting thing is that Visa's payment rails are cheaper than Pix. Pix charges businesses 0.22% to 0.33% while the Visa network rate is only 0.10% to 0.15% per transaction.
The main thing that makes card transactions more expensive is the merchant bank assuming chargeback risk, but that's because card payments are an entirely different transaction type. Pix is digital cash. You typically cannot get refunded for any reason. Cards are not digital cash. You can get refunded for fraud and unauthorized transactions.
> The interesting thing is that Visa's payment rails are cheaper than Pix. Pix charges businesses 0.22% to 0.33% while the Visa network rate is only 0.10% to 0.15% per transaction.
This is not factually accurate. Pix also has fraud controls built into the platform, and does fine doing far more volume than credit card rails in Brazil. It is an objective success, having avoided US financial service firms from skimming hundreds of basis points of total economic activity out of the Brazilian economy.
Brazil's Pix ‘much cheaper' than card payments, paper by central bank economists shows - https://www.reuters.com/article/business/brazils-pix-much-ch... - March 23rd, 2022 ("Brazil’s Pix retail instant payment system is “much cheaper” than card payments for merchants, according to a paper published Wednesday by the umbrella body of the world’s central banks, highlighting its growth potential for businesses after its vertiginous rise among individuals. The paper, which was co-authored by economists at the Brazilian central bank for the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), says Pix costs an average of 0.22% of a transaction’s value for merchants, whereas debit cards cost slightly above 1% and credit cards reach 2.2% in Brazil.")
> In this paper, we employ an instrument and individual-level banking data in Brazil to
examine the effects of a novel payment technology, Pix, on the use of other payment
technologies and its impact on the banking sector. We find evidence that Pix increases
use of the four most common payment technologies in Brazil among individuals and
firms. Furthermore, our empirical evidence suggests that Pix contributes to an
increase in the number of bank accounts, their use and access to credit, benefiting
different types of banks. The findings indicate that the implementation of new
payment technologies yields advantages not only for firms and individuals but also
for the broader banking and payment industry.
If the US had any foresight it could stave this off by making its own global payments system be the one with the lowest fees, and thereby keep people using US currency and US institutions.
Whereas if you give other countries the obvious win that they can stop paying ~3% of their entire economy to a foreign payments network then you lose the fees anyway and that other stuff on top of it.
> If the US had any foresight it could stave this off by making its own global payments system be the one with the lowest fees,
What global payments system? We have the worst payment systems in the developed world.
The US money transfer situation is so bad that all the major banks got tired of The Fed's incompetence...and simply bypassed The Fed. That's how we ended up with Zelle, which actually does instantaneous (or at least within minutes) transfers.
In 2026 it is virtually impossible to quickly move money from one account to another because every single bit of it has to pass through the US Federal Reserve's ancient systems. We're the laughing stock of the rest of the world's banking systems. Thirty years ago europeans could walk into a store, do a fund transfer to pay for something, and walk out. We still can't do that.
Literally the only way to buy something expensive in a store in the US is via credit card.
You can't use a debit card because of transaction limits and lack of consumer protections.
You can't use any of the "app" payment methods.
You can't do wire transfers.
You can't do checks because the US check clearing system is so bad, a check can initially clear (after a day or five), and then weeks later, bounce.
You can't do cash because it's now legal for cops to consider having an unusual amount of cash to be enough for reasonable suspicion and they've done some gymnastics that allow them to seize the cash and keep it even if the person is not charged or charges are dismissed.
Notice that this is entirely a regulatory problem. Do we imagine that entrepreneurs in the US can't produce the technology for a good payments system? That's not the reason. The reason is that anyone who wants to build it gets squished by the regulators captured by Visa and Mastercard because they don't want anything that would take away their cut.
Zelle made it through by having various limitations that make it hard for it to displace credit cards, and even that took decades before it happened.
>In 2026 it is virtually impossible to quickly move money from one account to another because every single bit of it has to pass through the US Federal Reserve's ancient systems
Which is why FedNow went live in 2024. In 2025 it already completed processing of $864 billion in transactions in real time.
It’s not just about cost, it’s about control and sovereignty. Other countries do not want to have their payment systems rug pulled at the whim of whomever US voters decide to put into office each election cycle. The cost to build your own is reasonable compared to what losing the capability costs.
“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
> Other countries do not want to have their payment systems rug pulled at the whim of whomever US voters decide to put into office each election cycle.
Which is the reason the US is also shooting itself in the foot every time it rug pulls them.
If you want people to trust and rely on your thing then you kind of need to avoid being untrustworthy and unreliable.
I won't be surprised. In Australia, no public transport system accepts the national payment system (EFTPOS) and instead it is either a public transport specific card or one of the 3 American rails. In NSW, there was promise of a second phase to support EFTPOS but that is hasn't happened yet.
From the Wikipedia article it sounds like these typically require PIN entry which is something that would make them less suitable to public transport applications. Normal credit cards and mobile wallets all have modes of operation that directly target the public transit use case and if EFTPOS does not then it may be excluded on that basis without imperialistic US interference.
Putting your card in, say, Apple Pay is equivalent. How do you think Apple Pay works? It’s tap-to-pay, equivalent to your credit card. That’s why you can use Apple Pay wherever you use tap-to-pay on your card. That’s why Apple Pay doesn’t work at Walmart and merchants need to do no work to support Apple Pay.
In the US you really have no options. It’s card, or card, or maybe even card. There’s Zelle, which is irreversible. PayPal and friends, which charge a fee, so no. And crypto, which is used for drugs.
In india, nobody cares about Apple Pay. We care about UPI. Every nook and corner, every person old or young, every chai wala, every kirana shop uses it. The constraints that plague the US is irrelevant for us.
Salesman can scream the amount, the customer can zoom and scan without meddling through the crowd and make the payment from a distance while the loudspeaker announces the payment.
Imagine using cards there, people will riot :)
Shops in general are wary of cards. Busy shops simply won't tolerate cards as they require someone to enter the figure.
Busy shops will shudder. Goto banglore, visit a busy street chai shop, ask him to accept cards, he will shudder.
Besides the whole Tap to Pay itself is problematic as it puts the customer at the mercy of the receiver and his device. UPI ensures customer controls how much money is being transferred. More secure. Less hassle. No physical cards. More modern
In 2026 "backward" is a dysphemism for "reliable".
Not sure what's making you shudder about carrying a payment instrument that doesn't need its batteries charged, doesn't need to run firmware or an OS, doesn't need a network connection independent of the payment terminal, and isn't simultaneously a surveillance device, but whatever floats your boat, I guess.
Sure. Just as the people walking away from the cliff edge are literally going "backwards" in relation to the folks whose trajectory will take them off the cliff.
You can make whatever comparison you want in terms of short-term convenience, but none of it addresses the inherent risk and diminished reliability of the solutions you're arguing for.
> If you insist on defending a relic from a bygone age, then by all means do it.
I'm not "defending a relic from a bygone age", but rather defending what actually works in the present-day status quo against idealized notions advancing a clearly inferior and more dangerous solution for the sake of pure novelty.
Clearly you have not been to India. I advise you visit a busy street chai shop in Banglore and see UPI in action.
If you still have the audacity to claim that cards, an inherently inferior payment method, as forward, then I have nothing else at my disposal.
Physically a hassle, technically inferior, putting customer at the mercy of the merchant device, unusable at busy merchants, etc... and the list goes on.
What a fall from grace for the progenitor of Non-Aligned Movement to be bowing down to USA and hurting its own people. The Nation has been betrayed by the State.
I agree with the sentiment - however, even after independence, India has been ruled by the same Anglophone/phile elite with nearly the same set of laws/policies/ interests. Even the Indian constitution comes in large part from the 1935 GoI Act passed in the British Parliament.
(Anglo-)India is of the Anglophones, by the Anglophones and for the Anglophones for all practical purposes.
That's why laws etc. are mandated to be written in this foreign language that's incomprehensible to the majority, and why there's a strict near-apartheid like barrier preventing higher education (and with it, higher employment) to non-Anglophones.
The only reason I imagine we don't hear about this systematic discrimination that prevent downstream material development like industrialization (as opposed to the ethereal one like caste) is perhaps because Western institutions have vested geopolitical interest in having such a large vassal, intellectually if not politically.
EU laws get written in 24 languages - and the CJEU (the equivalent of SC) doesn't give precedence to any one "master" language. These arguments for a "master-language" (let alone a foreign one), by both Hindi/Tamil nationalists, are cliched and threadbare.
In my opinion, these are just excuses for continued colonial-era English-imposition - because it's often only the aforementioned section that makes such brain-dead arguments.
For all the politically-ostentatious love of their own mother-languages there's not a single technical-university of any great reputation in either of these (it's worse in other Indic languages). The economic-value of these languages is close to zero if not negative.
Sheldon Pollock notes that, even in classical studies and literature, the institutions have turned utterly incompetent and filled with political retainers who can barely hold a mantle to people from previous generations who were experts in linguistics and manuscriptology.
Comments like these do injustice with Indian constitution which grants:
1. Protection of Language and Script (Article 29)
Article 29(1): "Any section of the citizens... having a distinct language, script or culture of its own shall have the right to conserve the same.
Article 29(2): "No citizen shall be denied admission into any educational institution maintained by the State or receiving aid out of State funds on grounds only of religion, race, caste, language or any of them."
Article 30(1): "All minorities, whether based on religion or language, shall have the right to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice."
Article 350: "Every person shall be entitled to submit a representation for the redress of any grievance to any officer or authority... in any of the languages used in the Union or in the State..."
Article 350. Language to be used in representations for redress of grievances- Every person shall be entitled to submit a representation for the redress of any grievance to any officer or authority of the Union or a State in any of the languages used in the Union or in the State, as the case may be.
Article 350A. Facilities for instruction in mother-tongue at the primary stage - It shall be the endeavor of every State and of every local authority within the State to provide adequate facilities for instruction in the mother-tongue at the primary stage of education to children belonging to linguistic minority groups; and the President may issue such directions to any State as he considers necessary or proper for securing the provision of such facilities.
Article 350B. Special Officer for linguistic minorities-
There shall be a Special Officer for linguistic minorities to be appointed by the President.
It shall be the duty of the Special officer to investigate all matters relating to the safeguards provided for linguistic minorities under this Constitution and report to the President upon those matters at such intervals as the President may direct, and the president shall cause all such reports to be laid before each House of Parliament and sent to the Government of the States concerned.
The only unequal part which is only applicable to Hindi and not other languages:
Article 351. Directive for development of the Hindi language- It shall be the duty of the Union to promote the spread of the Hindi language, to develop it so that it may serve as a medium of expression for all the elements of the composite culture of India and to secure its enrichment by assimilating without interfering with its genius, the forms, style and expressions used in Hindustani and in the other languages of India specified in the Eighth Schedule, and by drawing, wherever necessary or desirable, for its vocabulary, primarily on Sanskrit and secondarily on other languages.
Amendment Act Year Languages Added Resulting Total
Original Constitution 1950 14 Original Languages 14 languages
21st Amendment Act 1967 Sindhi 15 languages
71st Amendment Act 1992 Konkani, Manipuri, Nepali 18 languages
92nd Amendment Act 2003 Bodo, Dogri, Maithili, Santhali 22 languages
96th Amendment Act 2011 "Oriya" to "Odia" 22 languages
Doubt in Germany a user can submit documents in French and can get have special protection by Germany for promoting French language.
These laws mean zilch - the state of Karnataka, which hosts Bengaluru, where demagogues routinely raise Xenophobia based on language, has exactly 1-school that teaches Science/Mathematics at the high-school level (PUC, 11/12th) in Kannada.
Try using these "laws" and "rights" when you're trying to apply for a university, or asking a IIT to teach you in Hindi/Tamil LOL. These provisions are mostly used to skirt around the (generally onerous) laws by so-called "minority institutions" (eg. Manipal).
It's very disingenous to make such arguments by anyone with their eyes open in India. It's almost like the classic quip (almost a criticism of proto-liberalism) about the British empire: everyone is free in it as long as he's British!
Indians will go to Germany and learn German; go to Japan and learn Japanese; but will resist building anything of value with the culture/language of their own states of residence. The Anglophone-Indians will religiously preach a particularly seductive form of nationalist-liberalism internally for India that continues all the colonial structures of the British empire, because it helps them optimize for their own economic outcomes (ofc. they do this internationally too).
Absurd state of affairs tbh - and it has (eg. Blume Ventures' report) and will keep India poor with the wealth limited to ~5-10% of the population.
> Indians will go to Germany and learn German; go to Japan and learn Japanese; but will resist building anything of value with the culture/language of their own states of residence. The A
I wish they do. If you read Facebook group Indians in Frankfurt - you will the entitled Indians - especially those coming for IT jobs - in deputation for Infosys etc (that speak in many ways not the best english) trying to talk in English with all bureacrats or even 85 year old - and expect - every damn plumbber or cleaner to speak English - as if they have scored 99.% in TOEFL or so.
They constantly say: See in India everyone speaks English. why can't you all speak English? When I point out if your go to Coimbatore and speak English in Tahsildar office or RTO - you will get f*ked.
I know the feeling because - I am from South - grew up in North. average person has so much hatred. Until you fix that you cant do anything.
> but will resist building anything of value with the culture/language of their own states of residence. Th
You have some horrible feeling for UK. Forget that. Go and tell Narayanamoothy or Modi to give jobs in software (and every other whitecollar) exclusively to people that have linguistic ability.
Blaming others is the escapism that you Indians are happy for.
> You have some horrible feeling for UK. Forget that.
You have a serious issue with general comprehension, sir.
I've not once brought up UK or Western countries - my issue was/is/will-be with the Anglophone-Indian elites (who think they're honorary part of UK now ?), who will paint themselves as saints to the world with M.K Gandhi's face, but who are vicious corpulent vessels of the most vile forms of racism from the worst periods of the British-empire of 1 1/2 century before. India has more British laws inherited from this period, while UK itself has completely transformed itself (including the Civil-Service).
I'll not reply to the rest of the screed - that well-studied pedagogical gap of having to spend inordinate amount of time "muggin-up" things in English instead of actually understanding things means that I can't get much across anyway...
Last I checked, the Union Govt is not going around imposing English everywhere like they are pushing Hindi.
Also India's wealth is always going to be limited to 5-10℅ of the citizenry. India is pretty much USA on steroids at this point - a handful of capitalists controlling a lot of public infrastructure, ministers openly indulging in corruption, routine exploitation of the working class, piss poor healthcare and education provision where they try to skirt around the evolution question and Gandhism. The bowing down of India to the US is no surprise, given all of these other factors already playing around in the background.
> Doubt in Germany a user can submit documents in French and can get have special protection by Germany for promoting French language.
I did submit a non-German language document to get my German citizenship.
At the end, whatever you say - India is f*ked up by regional politics. With English a poor person from region A can go to B and find some job/livelihood.
Are you against it? I understand you want homogeneity - it is not there.
But people like you creating divisions by telling
>>>> It shall be the duty of the Union to promote the spread of the Hindi language, to
will promote more chaos. Good for rest of the rich world especially west and China.
Like my physics teacher used to say in Chennai... We don't need foreigners to mess us - We Indians do it for us.
All you want is India to fight like Arab states - internally. Divide and conquer. Thank you from the West and China.
Making it 45 languages etc will not solve issues. The point is not master or slave. Stop that victim mindset.
If people follow law and order all will be fine. Telling reputation etc is all good. Foreign people study and celebrate Indic languages better. Foreign institutes spend more grants in that.
> there's not a single technical-university of any great reputation in either of these (it's wor
It was tried in S.India - Anna University. Very few people joined to do B E in Computer Science Engg.
The real question is every ruler wants to keep population stupid.
You still celebrate people like NarayanaMoorthy or L& T chairman. biju or ola CEOs lying in public.
At the end, there is endemic corruption. Blaming UK or West will not solve anything.
I assume it does have advantages. The common law of the ex British colonies are all broadly compatible, so there's the possibility of having judges from other countries decide cases. Trade and maritime law is/ was basically British law. I would guess it also helps foreign investment if the law is in a language those investors understand.
Yes, these were probably better reasons in the past though.
Melodramatic much? It's a trade deal (if the parent is to be believed). Both sides are getting something out of it. Presumably, India needs access to the US market more than the other way round.
What do you mean "finally"? And why are you so willing to accept the fault of Kings but not the fault of the current Government in circumstances that look increasingly similar each passing day?
Just because a Government was elected doesn't mean that it can't be corrupt, what kind of naive understanding of politics is this?
Well, NAM would only be successful with two power centers. One of the power centers disappeared which precipitated this state. It has nothing to do with the state as such.
India has gotten more powerful since the Cold War. If Iran can stand up to USA, then surely India can too; but only if the State has not sold its soul and its Nation.
India's per capita income is still only 1/6th of the world average. Iran can stand up to USA with a lot of destruction, which is exactly what is happening with India.
Indian numbers look impressive just because of the size of the population and demographic dividend and 90's information technology. However, successive governments have squandered all of those benefits, and the bad infrastructure, bad governance and badly educated population is coming to bite them back.
Things do not look good for India at all. I was born and lived in India till around a decade ago, everytime I go to India, I just see more potential being wasted and things become worse (even though they appear good on paper). India's GDP in 2020 is for the first time back at the 1965 levels (in relation to the world GDP) and now climate change is going to wreak havoc and things will get worse again.
I hope to be proven wrong but I'm sorely disappointed everytime.
Any such issues on health care side? Here in India, at least in my state (Kerala), American Private Equity giants such as BlackStone and KKR are acquiring major hospital chains. I am worried they will ruin our healthcare just like what happened in USA. Healthcare was one thing India had better than USA (at least in availability and cost, availability as in being able to see a doctor same day or getting an MRI in a few hours). Now, that will disappear.
> The research from the United States — which is a decade further down this road — is sobering. Studies of PE-acquired hospitals document consistent patterns: non-revenue-generating services reduced, staff-to-patient ratios cut, ancillary charges inflated, and a systematic shift toward high-margin procedures.
I haven't observed it happening in the context of hospitals, but it absolutely is happening to medical education. Brazilian conglomerate Afya was born as a literal PE firm and by now has rolled up many if not most of the private medical schools. It's controlled by some german education conglomerate though.
Their SEC filing mentions they engage in "deregulation advocacy" which is no doubt a hilarious euphemism for lobbying the brazilian government so it relaxes quality standards for medical schools. No doubt they're responsible for much of the enshittification here.
There it is! Behind every revealed shittery and fuckery, there's one name that constantly come up. As for this example, I'll give you a clue: it's not India.
> One of the reasons why the fee is being considered is under the pressure of other payment providers who are loosing to UPI in Indian market.
Correlation is not causation. Banks have demanded this (getting rid of Zero MDR) for many years, even prior to Trump assuming office. However, it may have momemtum now due to the impending trade deal. But that's speculation either way, and the burden of proof rests with whoever is making that assertion.
What the government conceded (or gained, which could be a boring topic relatively) would make an impactful story. Unfortunately, newpapers today mostly rely on correlation rather than doing the hard work of finding someone who'll spill the beans. There's very little of Tehelka-style "Operation West End" (or "All the President's Men" for a movie equivalent) going on these days.
I assumed you were joking about this, but wow, the US indeed did demand this from both India and Brazil. Brazil rejected while India knelt and surrendered. US also demanded that India not enforce any market cap limit for UPI payment providers to prevent monopolies - and India surrendered there as well.
Unfortunately, current Modi govt is compromised due to Adani and the Epstein files. It can only hop and jump to whatever Trump orders.
>India is forced to subsidize farmers to the tune of $37B JUST for urea. Governments routinely offer free bus services to women, free cash handouts to women, free electricity to farmers (who then use the power to pump out groundwater and grow paddy in areas otherwise not suitable for it). The list goes on.
>A $1B subsidy to eliminate friction on the payment front is peanuts.
These are entirely independent issues.
Should India subsidize farmers like this? IDK, maybe
Should India charge fees on UPI payments? IDK, maybe
I don't think adding a 0.5% surcharge to transactions over Rupees 2000 is "pound foolish". Most transactions are smaller, and someone has to pay to maintain the infrastructure. :shrug:
Also: just because money is being wasted on cause $X does not mean that there's more of it lying around to be wasted on cause $Y! You've got to draw the line somewhere!
> someone has to pay to maintain the infrastructure
Do you know what it costs to run the cash infrastructure? Maintaining physical branches, employees to handle cash, counting machines, counterfeit detectors, security personnel, armoured transport, theft risk etc. The costs of maintaining a centralised digital infrastructure pales in comparison to this. If anything you should get a discount for using digital.
There are other hidden benefits as well. Tax evasion and money laundering become a lot harder in a system that tracks transactions. That can be massive benefit or a dystopian nightmare depending on the people in charge, but for many governments that's something worth throwing money at.
But only since the digital age did the government actually _succeed_ in controlling currency on a massive scale, right up until the point cryptocurrency took off (and even that can be tracked, most cryptocurrencies are based on a public ledger after all).
> That can be massive benefit or a dystopian nightmare depending on the people in charge,
That just resolves to "dystopian nightmare", then. Any system whose proper functioning is dependent on always having the right people in charge is one that will inevitably function improperly.
> someone has to pay to maintain the infrastructure. :shrug:
Under Indian law, companies must spend 2pc of their net profit on CSR activities (corporate social responsibility). Ask banks to use that money. The Indian banking sector made a combined profit of $40B this year. 2pc of that is $800M. Close to the $1B number.
> You've got to draw the line somewhere!
Draw it in the farm sector! They do not have to pay income tax on their income, get subsidies on fertilizers, free electricity, guaranteed prices for their crops. Small farmers cannot take advantage due to average holding size, and large farmers laugh all the way to the bank!
I think you overestimate how many millionaire farmers we have. Most of Indian farm sector is small holdings and they need the subsidies. Most of the power is with intermediaries and not farmers themselves. The intermediaries fund the farmers through high interest loans and additionally they provide distribution. The situation is much more complex and needs a thorough rework.
The problem is not with the poor/small farmers. Those people are genuinely fucked over. The problem are the larger "farmers", quotations because they do not do the farming themselves, rather renting the fields out to landless laborers at extraordinary costs, in a system reminiscent of the medieval feudal systems
Agree. Antiquated Indian farm subsidies are the biggest impediment to sustained growth. Nothing can be done, because it'd be electoral suicide to touch them. India's holding more than 100 million tons (!) of grain due to the mandatory procurement policy. It is not merely wastage, but also an environmental disaster to keep doing this.
$1B or even $5B is nothing, given the impact UPI has had across the country.
Most of these reserve grains are already being diverted for Ethanol production once they "expire". It is sold to these Ethanol producers at low rates (subsidised). The Ethanol producers however sell these grains and make a tidy profit. They also buy back near-rotting grains dirt-cheap from these same suppliers and other markets. And then make Ethanol from it. The suppliers who bought the rice illegally, repack it and sell it again to the government! A good example of indian systemic corruption - Ethanol manufacturing: The ₹1,000 crore rice scam explained - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lMw47iw6PQ
India (central govt.) also doesn't tax farmers even when they've made bumper profits from their produce. The moment a political party even mentions of taxing rich farmers, their politics is over.
Basically country is going to shits purely due to votebank politics, and this is true across party lines no matter who is in power.
They certainly wield power to mobilise poor farmers, leading to anarchy.
Highly recommend reading about Farm Bills that govt. had to take back even when surveys by Supreme Court showed that over 85% farmers across the country were in favor of those bills and wanted them turned into laws.
Where do you see $1B subsidy? There is no subsidy. The system is already profitable. This will generate a new revenue stream of $1B for banks out of thin air that has no reason to exist.
Indian farmer subsidization is retarded. india needs to make farming as unattractive a profession as possible. Every social ill in the subcontinent is ultimately due to the fact that the majority of the population is in farming.
You don't need the majority of your population in farming to feed your people. In developed countries basically no one does farming. Farmers are technologists who operate vast fleet of machines to do the bulk of the work for them and who think in systems, not the quaint image of a simple man and his plough
In other words in developed countries farming is mechanized in India it's not and until it's mechanized India is doomed to always be an agricultural pastoralist developing Nation
The majority of Indians are involved in farming. In developed countries it's like three percent of the work force directly involved in farming. The job of farming is completely different in India versus developed nations. In developed countries farmers are essentially technical factory operators who use immense mechanization to grow crops. In India, a guy is steering an ox pulling a cart. You cannot build a developed nation without mechanized farming.
India is a conservative society. Women are 50% of the vote bank. They actually vote in larger numbers compared to men in many constituencies. They manage households and are very quick to notice price increases etc. The free bus rides and cash handouts are basically a transparent attempt to buy their vote. It is what it is.
It fits perfectly literally everywhere on earth, the main challenge is in claiming that the masses can tolerate not being "intoxicated". For all we know religion is an inevitable characteristic of the human species.
Are the political parties really giving freebies because they want to serve the poor and improve their lives? Or is it a means to come to power so that they can loot us more? And are the political parties that resort to such tactics even capable of improving our economy in the first place, or ruin it further? I don't trust these tactics.
> Treat the payment backbone as a public infrastructure.
Yeah. Let banks fund this out of the 2% of NP they must use for CSR activities if they have to.
> he too subscribes to the anarcho-right political ideology of transferring wealth from the poor and the middle-class to the rich
I do not see this. In fact, he is TOO socialist. He was elected on the platform (one of them at least) of "minimum government, maximum governance" and has actually continued to expand the reach of government. The bureaucracy has not been tamed. The government continues to run businesses. Build a sovereign wealth/investment fund like Singapore if you want a share of the growth in the economy instead of running loss-making businesses for decades.
And all the centralization of decision-making. He is more of Nehru/Indira than he thinks he is.
> I do not see this. In fact, he is TOO socialist.
GST implementation, Demonetisation, unnecessary COVID restrictions etc. resulted in anarchy that was all designed to drain wealth (make labour cheaper) and / or transfer wealth from ordinary people or small businesses to the corporates (to make select rich, richer). He has also weakened all social welfare programs of the previous government by reducing funds or introducing restrictions designed to sabotage it for the intended beneficiaries. The centralised decision-making stems from the fascist ideology that he subscribes to (RSS, the indian organisation that he emerged from, admired Mussolini and Hitler).
Needed. I run a business. The previous tax system was horrific in its complexity and corruption.
> Demonetisation
Implementation could have been better. But there is too much cash in the system for my comfort. Things must be digitized. We must ensure people pay their rightful share of taxes.
> unnecessary COVID restrictions etc
Hindsight. I remember how the media was blaming every single death on the government and making videos of funerals. We saw the best and worst of humanity during that period.
> He has also weakened all social welfare programs of the previous government by reducing funds or introducing restrictions designed to sabotage it for the intended beneficiaries
Have you looked at the subsidy bills? Have you looked at the finances of the state governments? You know Modi was against the rewadi culture and then had to get into competitive cash giving? I absolutely hate it. But that is the cost of doing politics in India.
Cities provide free bus rides to women, and run buses in competition to metro routes, making metros nonviable. This is such short-sighted behavior. I do not know what to say.
> fascist ideology
I do not agree with the criticism. At all. This is fairly typical of the nominal left in India and outside. Will paint with a large brush. To understand the RSS, you must go back to Hindu-Muslim relations in British India, to stoning of Hindu processions in Nagpur of the 1920s (which continue across India to this day), to the Moplah massacres and forced conversions of Hindus, and even farther back.[1]
My biggest problem with the RSS is the hubris in the top echelon and deep anti-intellectualism. Bhagwat's "same DNA" theory is a laugh riot.
But this is a different topic more suitable for a different thread.
Dr. Manmohan Singh's conception of GST was indeed a good and necessary idea. But they way it was twisted and implemented to benefit crony capitalists and destroy India's informal economy was foolish as it was corrupt.
Who even writes these articles?! India used to have an excise, sales tax (replaced by VAT in the early 2000s) and octroi system. And LBT (Local Body Tax) where the municipal corporation staff that do not understand the B of balance sheet could harass you endlessly on your purchase and sales record. And a hundred other random industry-specific taxes. GST replaced all of that.
Businessmen were able to navigate all this mess and were suddenly unable to handle GST? Please!
Again, we are a large country and implementation is more often than not a shit show. The bureaucracy is extremely corrupt and the politicians in charge of ministries cannot tame them. They literally say to businessmen: "The minister will leave after the election next year. I will still be here."
> But GST inspectors (many of them have seen the good old days of sales tax and VAT, and obviously don’t want to let go of their power to extract bribes) harass such firms on flimsy grounds like ‘why don’t you have a company’s nameplate clearly displayed’ that can create nuisance in residential areas. [from the Print article]
This is very common low-level harassment. very little you can do about it except rewrite the laws to make such things non-actionable.
Article 311 of the constitution makes it next to impossible to fire public servants. This is why all the corrupt/non-performing officers get transferred, not sacked![1]
[1] 311. Dismissal, removal or reduction in rank of persons employed in civil capacities under the Union or a State (https://indiankanoon.org/doc/47623/)
> India used to have an excise, sales tax (replaced by VAT in the early 2000s) and octroi system.
And all of them were introduced with care to reduce the transition pain points of the MSMEs. None of it was as deliberately convoluted and poorly rolled out as the initial rollout of the GST by the Modi government. The tax officials themselves did not understand half of it, adding to the chaos and confusion of implementing it. Again, all this was deliberate and by design, in my opinion.
I am not sure where you are from but just look at PC's comments and notice the clear and pronounced ideology segue from the first comment of this thread to the comments down this thread. Just notice how, as the the typical for the right, this commenter slowly starts saying things like "Who even writes these articles?" for anything that clashes with or questions questions their ideology. Very specifically pointing out "free bus rides to women" which is very famous in India and associated with a state not run by the BJP (i.e central ruling party)
> Businessmen were able to navigate all this mess and were suddenly unable to handle GST? Please!
I mean someone can say this with straight face in India today? Ffs :D
Anyway what I am trying to say is - PC very swiftly tried to portray that they are here for "engaging" until they were not and to resort the "this is fake media" style of engagement.
I mean ffs PC themselves linked an article by India Today. Yes, India Today.
> Very specifically pointing out "free bus rides to women" which is very famous in India and associated with a state not run by the BJP (i.e central ruling party)
I am a pretty political/ideological person. I never try to hide that. But I support the government when I think they are right, and criticize them when they are wrong.
I guess you missed my point about cash handouts to women? That BJP governments are doing right now? My very first comment is a criticism of the government's current step! You want me to criticize the cash handouts and spare the free bus rides?
> I mean someone can say this with straight face in India today? Ffs :D
Say what with a straight face? Someone who managed to deal with the excise department but is unable to handle the GST department beggars belief. Which is what all those articles were about. Excise/sales tax/vat/GST are all the same people. Their nature is not going to change because the law changed.
> "engaging"
I am "engaging." It does not mean I have to sing the tune you expect. This is why I specifically said "But this is a different topic more suitable for a different thread," because talking about the politics of it eventually leads to flamewars and tone policing.
> article by India Today.
It is an opinion piece. About Islam on the Indian subcontinent. If the RSS is brought up, people need to know the context of their origin. About what happened on the subcontinent in that era.
As for invoking @dang, I hope dang at least has some sort of custom notification for his own username mentions. I wouldn't mind this entire thread/sub-thread getting nuked, along with mine and your comments (yes, both!). But as things go on hn, and dang has emphatically shown over the years, some OT discussions are more OT than other OT discussions. So yeah, there you go.
And you specifically pointing out things in your comment? There was a reason I chose not to reply to you. (And no, I am not implying you should not have chosen to reply to me, not at all!)
All the data about India's demonetisation points to it being a complete and utter waste of time. The goalposts kept shifting and the whole aim was never clear. People died, please do not minimise their deaths.
The absolute disaster of how COVID was managed was a shame, and is a borderline crime against humanity. Again, please do not minimise the deaths of millions of Indians as "the media was blaming every single death on the government". The government of Indian was directly responsible for that entire fiasco.
> he too subscribes to the anarcho-right political ideology
Trump is not at all a libertarian? He's probably the least libertarian republican president in modern history. He is big government, anti-free market and anti-global markets (tariffs), pro-state intervention in industry favouring big legacy businesses (CHIPs act, auto companies, etc), and big on debt spending.
Did Trump's Tariffs create confusion and mayhem, increase price (drain wealth) and ultimately lead to the siphoning of billions of tax payer money (again, another drain) to rich corporates? Yes, it has. Make of that what you will ...
you have no concept of the political or economic spectrum, gotcha
If you need some help google "authoritarian capitalism", "state capitalism", "crony capitalism", or "corporatocracy". All of those are in opposition to anarcho-capitalism. Aka rather than limit government power they encourage the expansion of government influence in industry, thereby enriching the entrenched power players (megacorps) and subsequently greatly reward politicians and ex-gov employees who played along.
Anthropic/Dario is working on becoming the modern poster boy of this.
Your confusion is understandable as Americans use a different political spectrum scale (i.e. Americans have their own political labelling system) - outside America, anyone would scoff, and even laugh, at the claim that the Democratic Party in the US is supposed to be the "left". (For the rest of the world, both the Democratic party and the Republican Party are centre-right parties, with current Trump administration leaning even more to the right- ...).
> outside America, anyone would scoff, and even laugh, at the claim that the Democratic Party in the US is supposed to be the "left".
Everyone is aware Europeans are as ideologically and culturally self-centered as Americans. They make this apparent every chance they get on the internet.
Dual core Arm CPUs, Android etc used by mainstream readers are a serious waste of resources. A microcontroller paired with the SD card is more than enough. And CrossPoint is a gem! The list of pros is long and the device recommends itself. But there is one con that you must watch out for:
The screen is delicate.
I love cases but hate screen protectors, and tend to use my devices with care. So it has worked out fairly well for me the past few months. But you might have a different experience.
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