NireBryce

Nire Bryce

@NireBryce

reality is the battlefield

the first line goes in Cohost embeds

🐥 I am not embroiled in any legal battle
🐦 other than battles that are legal 🎮

I speak to the universe and it speaks back, in it's own way.

mastodon

email: contact at breadthcharge dot net

I live on the northeast coast of the US.

'non-functional programmer'. 'far left'.

conceptual midwife.

https://cohost.org/NireBryce/post/4929459-here-s-my-five-minut

If you can see the "show contact info" dropdown below, I follow you. If you want me to, ask and I'll think about it.

log inask
NireBryce
@NireBryce
atomicthumbs
@atomicthumbs
NireBryce
@NireBryce

if you still use opera, not crashing upon seeing that shouldn't be the only reason you consider quitting

as of 2020 they're EXTREMELY into predatory lending in countries that don't have easy access to financial information/education and haven't seen the current type of predatory lending yet.

"Post-IPO, Opera has now also made a similar and dramatic pivot into predatory short-term loans in Africa and India, deploying deceptive ‘bait and switch’ tactics to lure in borrowers and charging egregious interest rates ranging from ~365-876%."

Summary (NASDAQ: OPRA)

  • Opera went public in mid-2018 based largely on prospects for its core browser business. Now, its browser market share is declining rapidly, down ~30% since its IPO.
  • Browser gross margins have collapsed by 22.6% in just one year. Opera has swung to negative $12 million in LTM operating cash flow, compared to positive cash flow of $32 million for the comparable 2018 period.
  • Opera was purchased by a China-based investor group prior to its IPO. The group’s largest investor and current Opera Chairman/CEO was recently involved in a Chinese lending business that listed in the U.S. and saw its shares plunge more than 80% in just 2 years amid allegations of fraud and illegal lending practices.
  • Post IPO, Opera has now also made a similar and dramatic pivot into predatory short-term loans in Africa and India, deploying deceptive ‘bait and switch’ tactics to lure in borrowers and charging egregious interest rates ranging from ~365-876%.
  • Most of Opera’s lending business is operated through apps offered on Google’s Play Store. In August, Google tightened rules to curtail predatory lending and, as a result, Opera’s apps are now in black and white violation of numerous Google rules.
  • Given that the vast majority of Opera’s loans are disbursed through Android apps, we think this entire line of business is at risk of disappearing or being severely curtailed when Google notices.
  • Instead of disclosing to investors that its “high-growth” microfinance segment could be imperiled by these new rules, Opera instead immediately raised $82 million in a secondary offering without disclosing Google’s changes to investors.
  • Opera’s short-term loan business now accounts for over 42% of the company’s revenue and is responsible for eye-popping top line “growth”. Meanwhile, the segment experienced massive defaults (~50% of lending revenue) and company-wide cash flow has worsened. Post IPO, Opera promptly directed ~$40 million of cash into businesses owned by its Chairman, including $30 million into a karaoke app, and $9.5 million into an entity used to acquire a business that Opera had already operated and funded, via a questionable transaction.
  • We think Opera collapses on its own worsening financials, with that timeline accelerating significantly if Google bans its lending apps or if its Chairman/CEO continues to draw cash out of the business through questionable related-party deals.

it's worth noting that they're biased, ofc, since, well... Hindenburg Research is about short-selling stocks of companies it thinks are a problem by revealing that they're a problem. But it's also in their interest to be correct.

Initial Disclosure: After extensive research, we have taken a short position in shares of Opera. All APR extrapolations/calculations were based on a 365 day year. This report represents our opinion, and we encourage every reader to do their own due diligence. Please see our full disclaimer at the bottom of the report.

excerpts:

As to the actual interest rates, we received loan documents from OPay as part of our research. The fine print at the bottom of the contract shows that the interest rate is 1% a day, plus another 1% per day if a user is late. In other words; 365% per year, or 730% for late borrowers:

In the fine print of the OPesa terms of service, we see that late loans are charged at a rate of 2.4% per day, an APR of 876%.

These rates were also corroborated by our email exchange with OKash support shown earlier, which confirmed that the actual interest rate is approximately 1% per day (365% APR), charged in the form of an up-front origination fee.

According to the app’s Terms of Service, late users are charged 2% per day if late, an APR of 730%!

Lastly, Opera’s CashBean description suggests a “maximum” APR of 33%. Our consultant was unable to procure a loan, but we found numerous user reviews that claimed 15 day loan terms at 15%, which doubles if late (365%-730% APRs). Here are two recent examples:

You must log in to comment.

in reply to @kobold's post:

in reply to @NireBryce's post:

atomicthumbs
@atomicthumbs

There is no other web browser that handles my browsing habits correctly and allows me to have hundreds to thousands of tabs open while still remaining usable and maintaining normal performance. I've excised as much of their bullshit from the browser as I can, but if you want me to switch, go tell the Chrome or Firefox teams to let users change the behavior of their tab bar to shrink tabs instead of making them scroll or just pushing them off the edge of the screen

edit: yes, I am very pissed about being trapped into using this browser because the other two major ones have destroyed users' ability to customize their tools

login to reply
NireBryce
@NireBryce

yeah.

I just went looking for all the extensions I used to transition off of opera to ff in 2020 before replacing it for chrome in late 2021 bc mobile tab groups, and.... uhhhhh half the extensions are just completely gone so I can't even recommend that

outside of these, but they aren't anywhere near the whole exp https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sidebery/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-manager-plus-for-firefox/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-deque/

login to reply
atomicthumbs
@atomicthumbs

I just remembered Vivaldi exists; I'm giving it a shot. Seems much more customizable and like it has a lot more respect for the user than chrome or firefox, but I tried opening a couple dozen blank tabs and it seems slow as hell, presumably because the interface is written in React

edit: gonna load 2,300 tabs by pasting a list of jpg urls into "copy all tabs" and see how it goes

edit: down to about 2 tps (tabs per second) with 330 tabs open

login to reply
NireBryce
@NireBryce

I dont know if this will help, but being frustrated at everything i've migrated to Tabs Outliner, which lets me save windows and then offload them, pulling them back when I need.

I honestly would love to move to other options but os few of them outside of Tabs Outliner let me do this

login to reply
Pinned Tags