We need the humanities, but prior to the financial crisis it seemed to me that it was already widely accepted that we had far more graduates in those fields than we needed, and that the vast majority of them were thus incapable of putting their degree to good use. While enrollment may be half of what it was prior to the crisis, that doesn't necessarily mean there's a problem. If anything, I'm inclined to think that the market has corrected itself and that today's supply of graduates is closer to actual demand for people in those fields.
No, I actually said almost the complete opposite of that, but since you're asking, the Port of Houston is the second largest port in the nation (first is Boston Harbor) and is one of the largest hubs for freight trains in the US, which together played a large part in why it was selected for this sort of work in the first place by NASA.
But, really, it makes more sense to use Houston for mission control and design work (as it's been used up to this point) while launching from Brownsville or the like. At that point, you could just float whatever you need down the coast to the launch site, do final assembly down there (just as is already done at Cape Canaveral in the VAB) and then proceed without as many of the concerns that come from launches in heavily populated regions.
Apples phones devalue different to other phone companies. The drop in price like a stone after launch
Once I figured out what you were trying to say, I found that much of it didn't ring true to me, so I decided to do some research. Here are the used and launch prices for the highest-capacity, non-plus-sized, unlocked, currently-supported flagship models from both Apple and Samsung:
- iPhone X (256GB): $862 used, $1149 new (25% drop in 9 months, or 2.8%/mo.) - iPhone 7 (256GB): $500 used, $849 new (41% drop in 22 months, or 1.9%/mo.) - iPhone 6S (128GB): $231 used, $849 new (73% drop in 34 months, or 2.1%/mo.) - iPhone 6 (128GB): $165 used, $849 new (81% drop in 46 months, or 1.8%/mo.) - iPhone 5S (64GB): $120 used, $849 new (86% drop in 58 months, or 1.5%/mo.)
- Samsung Galaxy S9 (256GB): $650 used, $840 new (23% drop in 5 months, or 4.5%/mo.) - Samsung Galaxy S8 (64GB): $380 used, $750 new (49% drop in 16 months, or 3.1%/mo.) - Samsung Galaxy S7 (64GB): $150 used, $672 new (78% drop in 29 months, or 2.7%/mo.)
I'll break down my methodology in detail at the bottom, but I think the numbers kinda speak for themselves.
Take, for instance, the fact that the worst average monthly drop in value we see for the iPhone is nearly the same as the best average monthly drop we see for the Galaxy. And the fact that despite having higher launch prices (and higher capacities, which you said would be worse for resale), the iPhones consistently maintained more of their value than Galaxy models of comparable age. There is a steep drop for each of them in each of those first few years, but that's to be expected, simply because smartphones are a still-maturing market, meaning that there's a relatively rapid upgrade cycle for most buyers (and a corresponding glut of used devices for those most recent few years).
If you're wondering why there are fewer Galaxy models listed, as I said at the top, I limited myself to currently supported models. 2015's Galaxy S6 is running Android 7 and 2012's iPhone 5 is running iOS 10, so neither made the cut.
All of which is to say, this falls in line with what I've seen and heard anecdotally over the years regarding iPhones being better supported with OS updates and retaining more of their value than their competition. The numbers seem to bear those anecdotes out.
Personally, I'm astounded that my five year old, 64GB iPhone 5S is still worth $120 today. I've actually had the money set aside to upgrade for years, but Apple has said that the 5S is going to still be receiving OS updates, and mine still has enough storage for my current needs, still gets a few days of light battery use on a single charge (though it's noticeably worse than a year ago), and still performs well enough with all the apps I use. As a result, I'm seriously contemplating holding off on upgrading yet again for another year, just like I did last year and the year before, though I may do a $30 battery replacement via ifixit.com.
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Methodology: Each "used" price is the current, highest trending price shown on eBay based on the last 90 days of sold listings. For models without a trending price, I used the median price of all sold listings. Each "new" price was the SIM-free/unlocked launch price direct from the manufacturer (except in the case of the S7, since Verizon seemed to be the only place to purchase it unlocked at launch). I only considered unlocked models in an effort to keep things fair, because otherwise I expect that the steep discounts locked iPhones have historically benefitted from would significantly bias the results in their favor. Plus/+/Edge/etc. models were excluded simply for the sake of consistency (e.g. there is no iPhone X Plus) and, frankly, to save myself the time of looking up dozens of more models. The highest capacity of each model at launch was used because you said higher capacities were worse for resale.
You do realize that no one is talking about launching rockets from Houston, right? They’re talking about design, production, and mission control work. Houston is the fourth largest city in the US, built on top of a giant swamp. It’s in no way suitable for launches.
...but if do want to talking about launching rockets in Texas, Brownsville is further south than Cape Canaveral, the land is cheaper and easier to build on than coastal Florida, and private companies are already conducting launches down there, so there’s infrastructure already in place.
About a minute by car or five on foot. The school is on the edge of our neighborhood, so it's easy to access, and because our neighborhood has no cut-throughs the traffic just hits the school and turns around without ever entering the neighborhood itself. We get all the benefits of close proximity (i.e. fast commute, letting the kids walk themselves, etc.) without all of the drawbacks that close proximity typically entails (e.g. lots of traffic in the neighborhood).
Exactly. I lack public transit along my route, so (aside from podcasts or audiobooks, which will never have my full attention while I drive) my commute is nothing but unproductive, wasted time that I will never get back. As a result, I specifically chose to purchase a home that's an 8-minute drive from where I work, that way I could minimize that lost time.
In a few years, if self-driving cars are a thing we can reasonably afford, I wouldn't mind moving out into the country and commuting to work, since our dollar would get us more land and more home without the loss of productive time we'd suffer now. I'd simply rearrange my morning and evening routines so that the things I do by myself (e.g. checking news feeds, catching up on reading/TV/film/games, etc.) happen during my drive, thus allowing me to spend even more time with my family.
But until self-driving cars are here, there's no getting around the fact that those hours really add up, so I haven't regretted having a shorter commute in order to have those extra minutes each day to spend on things that matter.
If you’re over in Dallas, I’m afraid I didn’t buy your home. The couple whose home I purchased still lived in the area as recently as last year. Mine is an 1800 sqft home on a third of an acre, tucked into a nice, quiet neighborhood in Bryan. I purchased it at $163K in 2013. We had it reassessed in 2016 for a refinancing (by the same assessor, no less), and it had already gone up to $205K at that point, what with market improvements and modest upgrades we had been making to the home. At this point, I’d wager we could get quite a bit more than that, were we to list it, just based on what less updated comparable are going for in the neighborhood.
Oddly, my monthly mortgage is less than I was paying for that apartment (though obviously there’s insurance and property tax as well, so it ends up being more), but 2011 was when I started working a full-time job, so the money started piling up quite a bit faster at that point. Also interestingly, my wife was making roughly the same full-time salary as I was when we met in 2014, but the cheapest place she could find where she lived in D.C. was a cramped basement apartment that cost her 3x my monthly mortgage payment, so it was a no-brainer for her to join me down here once we got married.
I was making $1500/month in grad school as recently as early 2011, which was enough to afford a two-story apartment, eating out regularly, no lack of groceries, and still have a few hundred bucks a month that I was able to set aside to start building up a 20% downpayment for the house I bought in 2013 in this same area (Bryan/College Station, Texas). $1000/month is doable, at least around where I live now, but you definitely wouldn’t be able to afford a big city.
AMD's contract with GlobalFoundries was ending this year anyway, so AMD doesn't lose anything with this announcement, other than a potential alternate source. In fact, it's entirely possible that GF's failure to secure AMD as a client may have played into their decision to drop 7nm.
That said, with only Samsung and TSMC on the leading edge now, it does mean that AMD has one less bargaining chip next time negotiations come around (i.e. they can't realistically threaten to go back to GF), whereas Intel will continue using their own processes as they always have. So, at least in that minor regard, I suppose this does benefit Intel and harm AMD somewhat.
True. Just look at Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Al Gore, Tom Steyer, and all the other crony capitalists and their political lackeys. And those are the people you want to put in charge.
I do? I've never voted for a single one of them at any level, and I encouraged others to vote against at least two of those people. You may have read something into what I wrote that wasn't there, since I agree that crony capitalism is bad and will gladly condemn those who practice it, regardless of whether they have an R or D next to their name.
It is those freedoms you want to destroy.
I think you've misread my observation of flaws in our current system as an advocacy for some other system. Take what I wrote at face value, rather than assuming motive. Our system has flaws, which I would hope we can agree on. But other systems have flaws too. If advocates for capitalism, socialism, or whatever other -ism can't admit the flaws in their system, they're in denial. Recognizing and admitting flaws is not necessarily an indictment of a system, and it certainly wasn't intended to be one in this case.
Honestly, I haven't taken the time to form a thoughtful opinion about what we should do to address our system's flaws, but I do think that change is necessary lest we end up in a situation that isn't tenable. At least for now, however, I'm not advocating that we adopt some other -ism in place of capitalism, nor am I pushing for any particular change to how we practice capitalism, though I reserve the right to change my mind later.
I actually have no idea. As I mentioned in another reply, I wasn't advocating for any particular change, I was merely observing flaws in our current system.
Other than bringing it up as a way to reinforce the notion that any "fixes" would take time, the reason I brought up the Constitution is because the way it's currently written (i.e. its checks and balances, the distribution of authority between state and federal governments, etc.) effectively limits us to a very narrow form of capitalism and nothing more. As such, pretty much no matter what change you wanted to make—whether a minor-but-necessary modification to how we practice capitalism that happens to exceed Congress' authority, or a major change to a different -ism altogether—you'll need to amend the Constitution to make it happen.
But without first having a sense of what changes we want (which, again, I freely admit I don't have), I couldn't tell you what changes we'd need to make to the Constitution. I'm actually not pushing for anything in particular in place of what we have today (again, it's worked great for a long time, and it'll work for at least awhile longer yet, I should think), though I reserve the right to change my mind later.;)
Apparently your fears aren't confined to capitalist systems.
I never suggested they were (nor would I!), nor would I saw they're fears, just flaws. Nearly all systems have flaws. I was making note of flaws in capitalism here because that's the topic of discussion, but I'm sure most of us could easily rattle off issues in communism, socialism, communalism, feudalism, or other -isms as well. At their most fundamental level, they're all flawed because they're all built on top of flawed humans. There is no such thing as a perfect socioeconomic system. There's just the question of how easily or quickly a system breaks down in the face of our flaws.
Mind you, I'm not advocating for any particular change. I'm merely pointing out a few issues that I've observed while suggesting that something will need to change if we want to be able to sustain things. What those changes will be, I have no idea, and I frankly don't even have an opinion formed at this point about what they should be when it comes to questions this large, so I'm not sure what goal you thought I was driving at. The only reason I brought up the Constitution was because it limits our ability to practice anything other than a very narrow form of capitalism, so if we want to change how we practice capitalism or want to adopt a different -ism, we'd have to amend it.
...except for all the rest. Or, at least, that's how the saying goes.
Given that capitalism is fundamentally based on an assumption of greed, which seems to be a fairly consistent trait among humans, it has functioned remarkably well up to this point. But given enough time and not enough regulation, it's inevitable that the greed of some will outpace that of others, resulting in the system approaching a state where wealth has accumulated in the hands of a few, as well as that those who (or that which) are less capable of defending themselves will inevitably be exploited by those who are more capable. For us, that means the exploitation of the middle-class, the lower-class, and the things we share with the wealthy, such as our shared natural resources. Unsurprisingly, this sort of exploitation is exactly what we're seeing happen on a more and more frequent basis.
I think parts of the US are slowly waking up to that fact, but a cultural awakening of this sort usually takes decades or generations to complete. We're just starting to recognize the problem. It'll be decades more before we're willing to fix it. And, at least in the case of the US, the necessary changes will almost certainly require changes to the Constitution, but we won't be able to make those changes until the people are demanding those changes en masse, and we're nowhere close to that point yet.
This attitude is just one of the many things that keep the issue alive in the first place. "You are not educated enough to understand the issue" used as an argument always indicates that you are the one who does not understand the issue.
Except that isn’t what I argued. I said people aren’t equipped to understand, so you should be equipping them to do so or pointing them to people who are equipped to do so. I never suggested people are too stupid to understand. That’s an argument you’re trying to shove in my mouth.
If you understand something, you should be able to explain it in a simple and straightforward way, so that any layman could understand it.
I literally spent an entire paragraph explaining why you were wrong in a simple and straightforward way so that you could understand. It was the paragraph right before the one you quoted. I was practicing what I preach: attempting to equip you with better information so that you can actually make an informed decision, rather than telling you to go read random things and make up your own mind without a basis for understanding what you’re (mis)reading.
Misreading other people's arguments is another thing you should stop doing. I did not say that vaccines were linked to autism;
A) I never said you did. I simply addressed the falsehood that you had floated. B) Even though you didn’t out-and-out claim it, you might as well have, given your use of “supposedly”, “claimed”, and other weasel words to try and obfuscate the issue.
Being not as dangerous as methylmercury very different from being "perfectly safe".
Agreed, but I didn’t say that it was “perfectly safe”. What I actually said, which you even quoted, was that “it was always perfectly safe at the dosage levels present in vaccines” In high enough dosages even water is toxic to us. There was a woman a few years back who died from water poisoning in a “Hold your wee for a Wii” water drinking contest that a radio station was putting on. Do you get similarly concerned about water?
As for the MSDS saying 10 micrograms is the maximum allowable exposure, could I get a link? Because I see nothing resembling that when checking around. Moreover, toxic exposure levels are typically expressed in terms of dose/kg, which is especially important in this conversation, given that children’s masses are wildly different from ours. What I see is that the LD50 is listed as 75 milligrams/kg on Wikipedia, which is several orders of magnitude higher than what you’re suggesting but it’s also the LD50, so it admittedly has minimal relevance here.
Your own link indicates that you’ve got the cause and effect backwards. It wasn’t normal people being wary of thiomersal that led to its removal: it was the removal of thiomersal that led to normal people being wary of it.
The reason thiomersal was removed from vaccines was because it metabolizes to ethylmercury, which is similar to a known-danger, methylmercury. Working on the assumption that it was just as dangerous, the CDC did some naive extrapolations from what we knew about methylmercury dosages and determined that the dosage of thiomersal in a vaccine, while likely not dangerous, was close enough that it was better to have it removed. So, as a purely precautionary measure, the CDC had thiomersal removed from all vaccines beginning in 1999 (with Europe following suit), which was the right thing to do until further studies could be done. Later studies discovered that ethylmercury flushes out of the human body much faster than methylmercury and interacts very differently with our tissue, making it nowhere close to as dangerous as methylmercury, meaning that it was always perfectly safe at the dosage levels present in vaccines.
As for your advocacy that people make up their own minds, how about you let someone who has gone to school for the better part of a decade so that they could specialize on this topic break the issue down for you, rather than relying on Wikipedia? What next, hand people the source code to the Linux kernel and tell them they should make up their own minds about whether it’s being used to spy on out children? People aren’t equipped to make up their own minds about these sorts of topics. Either equip them to do so or point them to those who are. Telling people to “go and make up their own minds” without a foundation to do so or any of the relevant context that is necessary for an informed opinion is like pushing someone off a cliff without a parachute or any training on how to use one.
And while a few people took note of thiomersal’s removal and bandied around conspiracy theories, it probably would have blown over, were it not for Andrew Wakefield publishing his long-since discredited, retracted by its publisher, fraudulently-researched paper indicating a link between vaccines and autism. In doing so, he effectively threw fire on the burgeoning anti-vax movement, allowing it to become the circus it is today, with brainless celebrities repeating utter and complete FUD as fact. Mind you, he was never licensed as a medical practitioner in the US, and he was stripped of his license in Europe as a result of his name being erased from the medical register by the UK’s General Medical Council, which is the strictest sanction they could impose after finding him guilty on all charges brought against him.
As for thiomersal in vaccines being linked to autism, it hasn’t been. In fact, the rate of autism has continued to increase since thiomersal was removed back in 1999, which is a contraindicator to the notion that it’s at fault. But hey, why let facts get in the way of what you’re saying?
It’s an odd day when a condemnation of a President and pointing out that he’s ineffectual at affecting most Americans is taken as a defense of him. I didn’t vote for him. Don’t lay this at my feet.
Yeah...I didn’t settle for him, nor do I understand why others did either. For my part, I refused to vote for him. The guy’s crazy. No way would I vote for that.
It looks as though you have someone who is completely out of control as president of your country.
Thankfully, he's not really in control of the country he's ostensibly running, so things are—at least for the most part—running just fine on a day-to-day basis, despite him.
Truth be told, while I (a Republican) don't like his policies or the direction they're aiming us as a country, nor do I like basically anything he's doing or saying, I can't actually point to anything he's done so far (aside from poisoning political topics to the point that we can't have civil discourse any longer) that's actually affected me on an everyday basis yet. If left unchecked, there are plenty of things that eventually will hit me, but most of them have been pushed through via executive order, so they're easily (and hopefully will be) undone by the next person in office. The changes to the tax plan are one of the few things that comes to mind that we're genuinely stuck with, but even that doesn't hit me until I file my taxes next year...
Those are some interesting facts that have no relevancy here for three simple reasons: 1) Google does not provide and is not required to provide e911 support for iPhones, so the supremacy clause has no applicability there. It doesn't compel them to engage in data collection on that platform, nor does the clause protect them from any penalties against data collection that would otherwise apply.
2) Inasmuch as they are required provide e911 support (e.g. Android), Google is NOT required to store the location data. They merely need to ensure that the data is forwarded from the device to the 911 call center, so the supremacy clause does not provide them with protection from legal or contractual obligations that otherwise forbid them from storing that data...such as the constitution of California and their agreed upon privacy policy.
3) Inasmuch as they are required provide e911 support, Google is NOT required to collect the data on a 24/7 basis. They merely need to forward it in response to the caller initiating a 911 call, so the supremacy clause does not provide them with protection from legal or contractual obligations that forbid them from collecting that data.
Really, e911 support and the supremacy clause are nothing more than red herrings you guys are bringing up that have zero relevance to the discussion. Google is collecting location data regardless of whether they are required to support e911 or not, they are storing that data despite there being no requirement that they do so, and they are flagrantly disregarding the laws and policies forbidding them from doing so
I take it you didn't actually check the sources your article used? Because the links they cite in their very first sentence contradict what that sentence says. They said:
Since the repeal of “net neutrality” took effect on June 11, the U.S. internet speed has gone from 12th to 6th fastest in the world
But if you follow those links, you'll see that the "12th" link goes to December 2017—seven months prior to the repeal of net neutrality taking effect—rather than to June 11th, when it actually happened. On June 11th, the US was ranked 9th, not 12th.
Now, you might argue that 9th to 6th is still a big improvement, but it really isn't. That jump only required a meager 5 Mbps improvement because there was a cluster of countries in the rankings all around the same speed. In contrast, the jump from 12th to 9th—which, again, happened prior to the repeal taking effect—required a 15 Mbps improvement due to the countries being more spread out in speed around those ranks. So when you're saying that "internet traffic in the US has increased significantly" since the repeal took effect, let's be clear that the actual increase isn't the 21 Mbps that the article would have you believe: it's only a quarter of that.
But even if we ignore the inconvenient facts that contradict the article's claims, the real argument they are trying to make is that speeds are better today because of the repeal. But if you look back through the data, all I see is a trend line that—aside from a three month blip when there was a lot of uncertainty leading up to the vote—has been fairly consistent for some time now. Blip aside, things were were steadily improving before the vote to repeal, kept up prior to the repeal taking effect, and have continued now that the repeal has come into effect. There really isn't an argument to be made either way.
If Google is “only” doing this to provide e911 service, why were they also collecting location data for iPhone users who aren’t using Google Voice?
And if the state constitution provides a right to privacy, then a violation of said privacy would constitute harm, in and of itself (not to mention that it may be a breach of contract, given that they acted contrary to their own privacy policies). Harm needn’t be monetary for people to have standing in court.
The older I get, the more I interact with cats, and the more examples I see of cats behaving erratically in response to various forms of stimuli (e.g. putting tape on their backs or sides, using a clip on the nape of their neck, their reaction to stationary cucumbers, etc.), the more convinced I become that cats are actually incredibly dumb. What we interpret as aloofness is actually just their inability to comprehend what's going on using a brain that amounts to little more than randomly-firing neurons.
More recent reporting on the issue (e.g. MacRumors' reporting) suggests there wasn't a runaway thermal event of any kind involved, just leaking battery acid from a device that had been punctured and was in for repairs. Once the employees saw the leak, they treated it as the indicator for a runaway thermal event that it could have been and evacuated the store out of an abundance of caution. It turned out that nothing was wrong in the end, but the evacuation seems to have caused a panic among the customers, as well as a lot of breathless reporting in the initial news on what happened.
MacRumors' reporting on the issue directly contradicts the claim that there was an explosion at all. Apparently it was just a leaky battery. The employees in the back noticed that an iPad with a punctured battery that was in the queue for repairs was leaking, they evacuated the store (which apparently caused a panic among the customers) and called the fire crew in as a precautionary measure, the fire crew aired the place out just to be safe, and less than an hour later things were back to business as usual.
They're also refuting the claim that anyone received medical treatment. As best as I can figure, it sounds as if three employees had possible respiratory issues that the medical team was able to quickly rule out with a quick check, without ever having to provide any treatment.
Slashdot Mirror
We need the humanities, but prior to the financial crisis it seemed to me that it was already widely accepted that we had far more graduates in those fields than we needed, and that the vast majority of them were thus incapable of putting their degree to good use. While enrollment may be half of what it was prior to the crisis, that doesn't necessarily mean there's a problem. If anything, I'm inclined to think that the market has corrected itself and that today's supply of graduates is closer to actual demand for people in those fields.
No, I actually said almost the complete opposite of that, but since you're asking, the Port of Houston is the second largest port in the nation (first is Boston Harbor) and is one of the largest hubs for freight trains in the US, which together played a large part in why it was selected for this sort of work in the first place by NASA.
But, really, it makes more sense to use Houston for mission control and design work (as it's been used up to this point) while launching from Brownsville or the like. At that point, you could just float whatever you need down the coast to the launch site, do final assembly down there (just as is already done at Cape Canaveral in the VAB) and then proceed without as many of the concerns that come from launches in heavily populated regions.
Apples phones devalue different to other phone companies. The drop in price like a stone after launch
Once I figured out what you were trying to say, I found that much of it didn't ring true to me, so I decided to do some research. Here are the used and launch prices for the highest-capacity, non-plus-sized, unlocked, currently-supported flagship models from both Apple and Samsung:
- iPhone X (256GB): $862 used, $1149 new (25% drop in 9 months, or 2.8%/mo.)
- iPhone 7 (256GB): $500 used, $849 new (41% drop in 22 months, or 1.9%/mo.)
- iPhone 6S (128GB): $231 used, $849 new (73% drop in 34 months, or 2.1%/mo.)
- iPhone 6 (128GB): $165 used, $849 new (81% drop in 46 months, or 1.8%/mo.)
- iPhone 5S (64GB): $120 used, $849 new (86% drop in 58 months, or 1.5%/mo.)
- Samsung Galaxy S9 (256GB): $650 used, $840 new (23% drop in 5 months, or 4.5%/mo.)
- Samsung Galaxy S8 (64GB): $380 used, $750 new (49% drop in 16 months, or 3.1%/mo.)
- Samsung Galaxy S7 (64GB): $150 used, $672 new (78% drop in 29 months, or 2.7%/mo.)
I'll break down my methodology in detail at the bottom, but I think the numbers kinda speak for themselves.
Take, for instance, the fact that the worst average monthly drop in value we see for the iPhone is nearly the same as the best average monthly drop we see for the Galaxy. And the fact that despite having higher launch prices (and higher capacities, which you said would be worse for resale), the iPhones consistently maintained more of their value than Galaxy models of comparable age. There is a steep drop for each of them in each of those first few years, but that's to be expected, simply because smartphones are a still-maturing market, meaning that there's a relatively rapid upgrade cycle for most buyers (and a corresponding glut of used devices for those most recent few years).
If you're wondering why there are fewer Galaxy models listed, as I said at the top, I limited myself to currently supported models. 2015's Galaxy S6 is running Android 7 and 2012's iPhone 5 is running iOS 10, so neither made the cut.
All of which is to say, this falls in line with what I've seen and heard anecdotally over the years regarding iPhones being better supported with OS updates and retaining more of their value than their competition. The numbers seem to bear those anecdotes out.
Personally, I'm astounded that my five year old, 64GB iPhone 5S is still worth $120 today. I've actually had the money set aside to upgrade for years, but Apple has said that the 5S is going to still be receiving OS updates, and mine still has enough storage for my current needs, still gets a few days of light battery use on a single charge (though it's noticeably worse than a year ago), and still performs well enough with all the apps I use. As a result, I'm seriously contemplating holding off on upgrading yet again for another year, just like I did last year and the year before, though I may do a $30 battery replacement via ifixit.com.
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Methodology:
Each "used" price is the current, highest trending price shown on eBay based on the last 90 days of sold listings. For models without a trending price, I used the median price of all sold listings. Each "new" price was the SIM-free/unlocked launch price direct from the manufacturer (except in the case of the S7, since Verizon seemed to be the only place to purchase it unlocked at launch). I only considered unlocked models in an effort to keep things fair, because otherwise I expect that the steep discounts locked iPhones have historically benefitted from would significantly bias the results in their favor. Plus/+/Edge/etc. models were excluded simply for the sake of consistency (e.g. there is no iPhone X Plus) and, frankly, to save myself the time of looking up dozens of more models. The highest capacity of each model at launch was used because you said higher capacities were worse for resale.
In retrospect, I should've taken t
You do realize that no one is talking about launching rockets from Houston, right? They’re talking about design, production, and mission control work. Houston is the fourth largest city in the US, built on top of a giant swamp. It’s in no way suitable for launches.
...but if do want to talking about launching rockets in Texas, Brownsville is further south than Cape Canaveral, the land is cheaper and easier to build on than coastal Florida, and private companies are already conducting launches down there, so there’s infrastructure already in place.
About a minute by car or five on foot. The school is on the edge of our neighborhood, so it's easy to access, and because our neighborhood has no cut-throughs the traffic just hits the school and turns around without ever entering the neighborhood itself. We get all the benefits of close proximity (i.e. fast commute, letting the kids walk themselves, etc.) without all of the drawbacks that close proximity typically entails (e.g. lots of traffic in the neighborhood).
Exactly. I lack public transit along my route, so (aside from podcasts or audiobooks, which will never have my full attention while I drive) my commute is nothing but unproductive, wasted time that I will never get back. As a result, I specifically chose to purchase a home that's an 8-minute drive from where I work, that way I could minimize that lost time.
In a few years, if self-driving cars are a thing we can reasonably afford, I wouldn't mind moving out into the country and commuting to work, since our dollar would get us more land and more home without the loss of productive time we'd suffer now. I'd simply rearrange my morning and evening routines so that the things I do by myself (e.g. checking news feeds, catching up on reading/TV/film/games, etc.) happen during my drive, thus allowing me to spend even more time with my family.
But until self-driving cars are here, there's no getting around the fact that those hours really add up, so I haven't regretted having a shorter commute in order to have those extra minutes each day to spend on things that matter.
There was this event called “D-Day” that went fairly well due to some information being withheld.
If you’re over in Dallas, I’m afraid I didn’t buy your home. The couple whose home I purchased still lived in the area as recently as last year. Mine is an 1800 sqft home on a third of an acre, tucked into a nice, quiet neighborhood in Bryan. I purchased it at $163K in 2013. We had it reassessed in 2016 for a refinancing (by the same assessor, no less), and it had already gone up to $205K at that point, what with market improvements and modest upgrades we had been making to the home. At this point, I’d wager we could get quite a bit more than that, were we to list it, just based on what less updated comparable are going for in the neighborhood.
Oddly, my monthly mortgage is less than I was paying for that apartment (though obviously there’s insurance and property tax as well, so it ends up being more), but 2011 was when I started working a full-time job, so the money started piling up quite a bit faster at that point. Also interestingly, my wife was making roughly the same full-time salary as I was when we met in 2014, but the cheapest place she could find where she lived in D.C. was a cramped basement apartment that cost her 3x my monthly mortgage payment, so it was a no-brainer for her to join me down here once we got married.
I was making $1500/month in grad school as recently as early 2011, which was enough to afford a two-story apartment, eating out regularly, no lack of groceries, and still have a few hundred bucks a month that I was able to set aside to start building up a 20% downpayment for the house I bought in 2013 in this same area (Bryan/College Station, Texas). $1000/month is doable, at least around where I live now, but you definitely wouldn’t be able to afford a big city.
AMD's contract with GlobalFoundries was ending this year anyway, so AMD doesn't lose anything with this announcement, other than a potential alternate source. In fact, it's entirely possible that GF's failure to secure AMD as a client may have played into their decision to drop 7nm.
That said, with only Samsung and TSMC on the leading edge now, it does mean that AMD has one less bargaining chip next time negotiations come around (i.e. they can't realistically threaten to go back to GF), whereas Intel will continue using their own processes as they always have. So, at least in that minor regard, I suppose this does benefit Intel and harm AMD somewhat.
True. Just look at Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Al Gore, Tom Steyer, and all the other crony capitalists and their political lackeys. And those are the people you want to put in charge.
I do? I've never voted for a single one of them at any level, and I encouraged others to vote against at least two of those people. You may have read something into what I wrote that wasn't there, since I agree that crony capitalism is bad and will gladly condemn those who practice it, regardless of whether they have an R or D next to their name.
It is those freedoms you want to destroy.
I think you've misread my observation of flaws in our current system as an advocacy for some other system. Take what I wrote at face value, rather than assuming motive. Our system has flaws, which I would hope we can agree on. But other systems have flaws too. If advocates for capitalism, socialism, or whatever other -ism can't admit the flaws in their system, they're in denial. Recognizing and admitting flaws is not necessarily an indictment of a system, and it certainly wasn't intended to be one in this case.
Honestly, I haven't taken the time to form a thoughtful opinion about what we should do to address our system's flaws, but I do think that change is necessary lest we end up in a situation that isn't tenable. At least for now, however, I'm not advocating that we adopt some other -ism in place of capitalism, nor am I pushing for any particular change to how we practice capitalism, though I reserve the right to change my mind later.
I actually have no idea. As I mentioned in another reply, I wasn't advocating for any particular change, I was merely observing flaws in our current system.
Other than bringing it up as a way to reinforce the notion that any "fixes" would take time, the reason I brought up the Constitution is because the way it's currently written (i.e. its checks and balances, the distribution of authority between state and federal governments, etc.) effectively limits us to a very narrow form of capitalism and nothing more. As such, pretty much no matter what change you wanted to make—whether a minor-but-necessary modification to how we practice capitalism that happens to exceed Congress' authority, or a major change to a different -ism altogether—you'll need to amend the Constitution to make it happen.
But without first having a sense of what changes we want (which, again, I freely admit I don't have), I couldn't tell you what changes we'd need to make to the Constitution. I'm actually not pushing for anything in particular in place of what we have today (again, it's worked great for a long time, and it'll work for at least awhile longer yet, I should think), though I reserve the right to change my mind later. ;)
Apparently your fears aren't confined to capitalist systems.
I never suggested they were (nor would I!), nor would I saw they're fears, just flaws. Nearly all systems have flaws. I was making note of flaws in capitalism here because that's the topic of discussion, but I'm sure most of us could easily rattle off issues in communism, socialism, communalism, feudalism, or other -isms as well. At their most fundamental level, they're all flawed because they're all built on top of flawed humans. There is no such thing as a perfect socioeconomic system. There's just the question of how easily or quickly a system breaks down in the face of our flaws.
Mind you, I'm not advocating for any particular change. I'm merely pointing out a few issues that I've observed while suggesting that something will need to change if we want to be able to sustain things. What those changes will be, I have no idea, and I frankly don't even have an opinion formed at this point about what they should be when it comes to questions this large, so I'm not sure what goal you thought I was driving at. The only reason I brought up the Constitution was because it limits our ability to practice anything other than a very narrow form of capitalism, so if we want to change how we practice capitalism or want to adopt a different -ism, we'd have to amend it.
screed
I don't think you know what that word means.
...except for all the rest. Or, at least, that's how the saying goes.
Given that capitalism is fundamentally based on an assumption of greed, which seems to be a fairly consistent trait among humans, it has functioned remarkably well up to this point. But given enough time and not enough regulation, it's inevitable that the greed of some will outpace that of others, resulting in the system approaching a state where wealth has accumulated in the hands of a few, as well as that those who (or that which) are less capable of defending themselves will inevitably be exploited by those who are more capable. For us, that means the exploitation of the middle-class, the lower-class, and the things we share with the wealthy, such as our shared natural resources. Unsurprisingly, this sort of exploitation is exactly what we're seeing happen on a more and more frequent basis.
I think parts of the US are slowly waking up to that fact, but a cultural awakening of this sort usually takes decades or generations to complete. We're just starting to recognize the problem. It'll be decades more before we're willing to fix it. And, at least in the case of the US, the necessary changes will almost certainly require changes to the Constitution, but we won't be able to make those changes until the people are demanding those changes en masse, and we're nowhere close to that point yet.
This attitude is just one of the many things that keep the issue alive in the first place. "You are not educated enough to understand the issue" used as an argument always indicates that you are the one who does not understand the issue.
Except that isn’t what I argued. I said people aren’t equipped to understand, so you should be equipping them to do so or pointing them to people who are equipped to do so. I never suggested people are too stupid to understand. That’s an argument you’re trying to shove in my mouth.
If you understand something, you should be able to explain it in a simple and straightforward way, so that any layman could understand it.
I literally spent an entire paragraph explaining why you were wrong in a simple and straightforward way so that you could understand. It was the paragraph right before the one you quoted. I was practicing what I preach: attempting to equip you with better information so that you can actually make an informed decision, rather than telling you to go read random things and make up your own mind without a basis for understanding what you’re (mis)reading.
Misreading other people's arguments is another thing you should stop doing. I did not say that vaccines were linked to autism;
A) I never said you did. I simply addressed the falsehood that you had floated.
B) Even though you didn’t out-and-out claim it, you might as well have, given your use of “supposedly”, “claimed”, and other weasel words to try and obfuscate the issue.
Being not as dangerous as methylmercury very different from being "perfectly safe".
Agreed, but I didn’t say that it was “perfectly safe”. What I actually said, which you even quoted, was that “it was always perfectly safe at the dosage levels present in vaccines” In high enough dosages even water is toxic to us. There was a woman a few years back who died from water poisoning in a “Hold your wee for a Wii” water drinking contest that a radio station was putting on. Do you get similarly concerned about water?
As for the MSDS saying 10 micrograms is the maximum allowable exposure, could I get a link? Because I see nothing resembling that when checking around. Moreover, toxic exposure levels are typically expressed in terms of dose/kg, which is especially important in this conversation, given that children’s masses are wildly different from ours. What I see is that the LD50 is listed as 75 milligrams/kg on Wikipedia, which is several orders of magnitude higher than what you’re suggesting but it’s also the LD50, so it admittedly has minimal relevance here.
Your own link indicates that you’ve got the cause and effect backwards. It wasn’t normal people being wary of thiomersal that led to its removal: it was the removal of thiomersal that led to normal people being wary of it.
The reason thiomersal was removed from vaccines was because it metabolizes to ethylmercury, which is similar to a known-danger, methylmercury. Working on the assumption that it was just as dangerous, the CDC did some naive extrapolations from what we knew about methylmercury dosages and determined that the dosage of thiomersal in a vaccine, while likely not dangerous, was close enough that it was better to have it removed. So, as a purely precautionary measure, the CDC had thiomersal removed from all vaccines beginning in 1999 (with Europe following suit), which was the right thing to do until further studies could be done. Later studies discovered that ethylmercury flushes out of the human body much faster than methylmercury and interacts very differently with our tissue, making it nowhere close to as dangerous as methylmercury, meaning that it was always perfectly safe at the dosage levels present in vaccines.
As for your advocacy that people make up their own minds, how about you let someone who has gone to school for the better part of a decade so that they could specialize on this topic break the issue down for you, rather than relying on Wikipedia? What next, hand people the source code to the Linux kernel and tell them they should make up their own minds about whether it’s being used to spy on out children? People aren’t equipped to make up their own minds about these sorts of topics. Either equip them to do so or point them to those who are. Telling people to “go and make up their own minds” without a foundation to do so or any of the relevant context that is necessary for an informed opinion is like pushing someone off a cliff without a parachute or any training on how to use one.
And while a few people took note of thiomersal’s removal and bandied around conspiracy theories, it probably would have blown over, were it not for Andrew Wakefield publishing his long-since discredited, retracted by its publisher, fraudulently-researched paper indicating a link between vaccines and autism. In doing so, he effectively threw fire on the burgeoning anti-vax movement, allowing it to become the circus it is today, with brainless celebrities repeating utter and complete FUD as fact. Mind you, he was never licensed as a medical practitioner in the US, and he was stripped of his license in Europe as a result of his name being erased from the medical register by the UK’s General Medical Council, which is the strictest sanction they could impose after finding him guilty on all charges brought against him.
As for thiomersal in vaccines being linked to autism, it hasn’t been. In fact, the rate of autism has continued to increase since thiomersal was removed back in 1999, which is a contraindicator to the notion that it’s at fault. But hey, why let facts get in the way of what you’re saying?
It’s an odd day when a condemnation of a President and pointing out that he’s ineffectual at affecting most Americans is taken as a defense of him. I didn’t vote for him. Don’t lay this at my feet.
Yeah...I didn’t settle for him, nor do I understand why others did either. For my part, I refused to vote for him. The guy’s crazy. No way would I vote for that.
It looks as though you have someone who is completely out of control as president of your country.
Thankfully, he's not really in control of the country he's ostensibly running, so things are—at least for the most part—running just fine on a day-to-day basis, despite him.
Truth be told, while I (a Republican) don't like his policies or the direction they're aiming us as a country, nor do I like basically anything he's doing or saying, I can't actually point to anything he's done so far (aside from poisoning political topics to the point that we can't have civil discourse any longer) that's actually affected me on an everyday basis yet. If left unchecked, there are plenty of things that eventually will hit me, but most of them have been pushed through via executive order, so they're easily (and hopefully will be) undone by the next person in office. The changes to the tax plan are one of the few things that comes to mind that we're genuinely stuck with, but even that doesn't hit me until I file my taxes next year...
Those are some interesting facts that have no relevancy here for three simple reasons:
1) Google does not provide and is not required to provide e911 support for iPhones, so the supremacy clause has no applicability there. It doesn't compel them to engage in data collection on that platform, nor does the clause protect them from any penalties against data collection that would otherwise apply.
2) Inasmuch as they are required provide e911 support (e.g. Android), Google is NOT required to store the location data. They merely need to ensure that the data is forwarded from the device to the 911 call center, so the supremacy clause does not provide them with protection from legal or contractual obligations that otherwise forbid them from storing that data...such as the constitution of California and their agreed upon privacy policy.
3) Inasmuch as they are required provide e911 support, Google is NOT required to collect the data on a 24/7 basis. They merely need to forward it in response to the caller initiating a 911 call, so the supremacy clause does not provide them with protection from legal or contractual obligations that forbid them from collecting that data.
Really, e911 support and the supremacy clause are nothing more than red herrings you guys are bringing up that have zero relevance to the discussion. Google is collecting location data regardless of whether they are required to support e911 or not, they are storing that data despite there being no requirement that they do so, and they are flagrantly disregarding the laws and policies forbidding them from doing so
I take it you didn't actually check the sources your article used? Because the links they cite in their very first sentence contradict what that sentence says. They said:
Since the repeal of “net neutrality” took effect on June 11, the U.S. internet speed has gone from 12th to 6th fastest in the world
But if you follow those links, you'll see that the "12th" link goes to December 2017—seven months prior to the repeal of net neutrality taking effect—rather than to June 11th, when it actually happened. On June 11th, the US was ranked 9th, not 12th.
Now, you might argue that 9th to 6th is still a big improvement, but it really isn't. That jump only required a meager 5 Mbps improvement because there was a cluster of countries in the rankings all around the same speed. In contrast, the jump from 12th to 9th—which, again, happened prior to the repeal taking effect—required a 15 Mbps improvement due to the countries being more spread out in speed around those ranks. So when you're saying that "internet traffic in the US has increased significantly" since the repeal took effect, let's be clear that the actual increase isn't the 21 Mbps that the article would have you believe: it's only a quarter of that.
But even if we ignore the inconvenient facts that contradict the article's claims, the real argument they are trying to make is that speeds are better today because of the repeal. But if you look back through the data, all I see is a trend line that—aside from a three month blip when there was a lot of uncertainty leading up to the vote—has been fairly consistent for some time now. Blip aside, things were were steadily improving before the vote to repeal, kept up prior to the repeal taking effect, and have continued now that the repeal has come into effect. There really isn't an argument to be made either way.
If Google is “only” doing this to provide e911 service, why were they also collecting location data for iPhone users who aren’t using Google Voice?
And if the state constitution provides a right to privacy, then a violation of said privacy would constitute harm, in and of itself (not to mention that it may be a breach of contract, given that they acted contrary to their own privacy policies). Harm needn’t be monetary for people to have standing in court.
The older I get, the more I interact with cats, and the more examples I see of cats behaving erratically in response to various forms of stimuli (e.g. putting tape on their backs or sides, using a clip on the nape of their neck, their reaction to stationary cucumbers, etc.), the more convinced I become that cats are actually incredibly dumb. What we interpret as aloofness is actually just their inability to comprehend what's going on using a brain that amounts to little more than randomly-firing neurons.
Mind you, I like cats, but, man, they're dumb.
More recent reporting on the issue (e.g. MacRumors' reporting) suggests there wasn't a runaway thermal event of any kind involved, just leaking battery acid from a device that had been punctured and was in for repairs. Once the employees saw the leak, they treated it as the indicator for a runaway thermal event that it could have been and evacuated the store out of an abundance of caution. It turned out that nothing was wrong in the end, but the evacuation seems to have caused a panic among the customers, as well as a lot of breathless reporting in the initial news on what happened.
MacRumors' reporting on the issue directly contradicts the claim that there was an explosion at all. Apparently it was just a leaky battery. The employees in the back noticed that an iPad with a punctured battery that was in the queue for repairs was leaking, they evacuated the store (which apparently caused a panic among the customers) and called the fire crew in as a precautionary measure, the fire crew aired the place out just to be safe, and less than an hour later things were back to business as usual.
They're also refuting the claim that anyone received medical treatment. As best as I can figure, it sounds as if three employees had possible respiratory issues that the medical team was able to quickly rule out with a quick check, without ever having to provide any treatment.