Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by wpietri 3982 days ago
It does matter for a couple of reasons.

One is having approximately equivalent alternatives. If something is wrong with a particular kind of chewing gum, I can easily switch to the next brand over. But when that's not the case, standards should be higher, because normal market forces no longer constrain players in the same way.

The other is the size of the potential impact. If one corner-store merchant keeps their credit card receipts in a box under the counter, it's a much smaller problem than, say, Target or Home Depot keeping them in a poorly secured network.