We most sell clothing in b&m retail stores. Customers get to see and touch the product, try it on, and have a higher confidence that it'll meet their needs. Our returns rate is usually 1% and we usually opt to have the retailer destroy anything they deem unsaleable. It's of course going back to a retailer that understands that product category and can usually make a pretty good call. We've sampled those returns from time to time, but the majority are truly unsaleable and it's not worth the shipping cost (and carbon footprint) to bring them back to our facility.
We also sell a little on Amazon and we request back all the "unsaleable" customer returns, which are probably 3-4x higher than our b&m rate. Still the majority that comes back to us from Amazon simply has the packaging torn open and the item appears to be in perfect condition. We've got an outlet channel we can funnel that through and we collect a little value back, though for a seller that didn't have anywhere to liquidate those products I can see why they'd opt for destruction.
So you've got this pool of gray items that aren't "resealable as new" and aren't "total trash". There are plenty of viable solutions here
- let the customer keep the item and/or donate it locally - have domain-specific returns staff that understand what they have and how to test it. An electronics retailer wouldn't destroy a cellphone that appears to be in good cosmetic condition. They'd test, erase and sell it as open-box. That's harder for Amazon, but by no means impossible. - Send all the "gray area" items back to the manufacturer/supplier where they can do the testing or liquidation
The governments job isn't to mandate the solution. Solutions exist, they just happen to be more expensive than throwing stuff in the trash. All the government would need to do is tax the destruction of otherwise saleable items, or simply of destroying more than x% of the product that's returned and it'd suddenly be cost effective to fix the issue
Horrific as it is, it sounds like it's most a byproduct of neodymium production. While that's obviously used in electric cars and wind turbines, I'm pretty sure you'll also find it in many coal and nuclear plants.
While the Mountain Pass Mine in California doesn't have a stellar environmental track record, it does prove that you can extract rare earths with a lot less impact than the chinese operation. The bigger issue is that we treat these things as commodities without regard to the external costs that go into producing them. We need a "blood diamond" type movement for rare earths to put more pressure on consumers to demand better from their electronics providers
Yeah it feels like it would be really awkward. If there is something interesting to see then I often crane my neck up so that I can see more of the ground. I just don't think a screen will ever feel "right" in that context.
I flew London to Milan a few years ago on business and from my window I got to see the White Cliffs of Dover, the Eiffel Tower and some stunning views of the Alps. I don't think I've ever seen so much stuff out of the window.
Plus, the big thing that deterred me from putting down money in the first place was that it was quite clear that the combination of the $35k car and the full federal tax credit was pretty much a pipe dream. I expect a lot of people though they would get both of those and effectively have a $28k car, but in reality nobody is getting that.
Right, but from an investment point of view a company with a solid gross margin and high R&D is a decent (though still risky) bet. The fundamentals seem to be in place that Tesla could be significantly profitable in the future.
The biggest risk I see is that if they continue losing cash then that'll cause a schism in the board between those who want to try and make the mass market car work versus those that want to cut their losses and go back to selling luxury cars only. That has the potential to get ugly.
I've got a little 35mm QL-17 as my daily carry camera for taking pictures of the family and interesting stuff that i see in my day to day life. The film may be grainy but the fast glass on it has a really nice quality to it. The scanned images may have fewer megapixels than my phone, but for shots of the kid goofing around that's really all i need.
Yeah after about a decade break i'm getting back into mostly shooting film again too. While i miss the immediate gratification, I like the lack of immediate disappointment. I don't get discouraged because something doesn't look like i want, and by the time I process the roll/sheet I can look at the image differently and might find something else that works.
Still I can't imagine buying a new film camera at this point. I've got a Canonet Rangefinder for daily use, my 4x5 for arty stuff and there's so much on the used market that new gear simply isn't attractive.
I'd bet Canon stopped making film cameras about a decade ago and are now drawing a line in the sand about how much stock they need to service the warranty and replacements until 2025.
It's hardly a municipal power issue. If you went to Xcel and asked for a GW of power delivered to your building then they'd want to make damn sure you were going to be a long term customer. Building out that kind of infrastructure is typically done on a decades-long process of capital investment and no entity (public or private) is going to front that cost for something that could vanish tomorrow
There's something of a game of chicken going on between Evraz Steel and Xcel in Colorado where Evraz "depends" on low rates and Xcel "needs" their single largest customer.
I'm not saying they are useless - i'm saying that even after completing them we'll still encounter situations where people die because the system failed.
That's true of many other things too - aircraft systems still fail, hospital equipment still fails, abs systems fail...
Ultimately if google calls up every store in the country and asks "Are you open on your normal hours on memorial day?" and can then put that data into their search results and confirm that they've checked the opening hours then that'll mean less random people calling up to ask the same question.
Same thing when a storm hits, google could call and get updates about whether a business plans to close early and relay that information to the rest of us.
I suppose the problem will be if twenty different companies call to get the exact same information.
The issue is that no matter how much testing you do in a controlled environment, it isn't a substitute for testing in an uncontrolled one.
Most of what i've read suggests that Uber is significantly behind Waymo, but it's really only a matter of time before a waymo car kills a pedestrian. Or indeed a Traction Control system does. Or aircraft autopilot downs a plane in the ocean.
At some point we're going to have to face that we do have to decree when a system is sufficiently test and STILL accept that it will kill people in production.
Yeah I guess it does. Though they aren't prominent and don't seem to be required or widely used. A scanned the thread I had open and nobody in it had their face as an avatar.
Firstly - yeah, how do you tell. StackOverflow doesn't have avatars and the poster's name appears underneath their comment. You'd have to really go out of your way to find out if someone was a women or gay or whatever unless that user is screaming it.
Secondly - what are "newer coders" doing in that group. That's not a protected status or marginalized group (unless they are suggesting that it's got more minorities in it than the rest of stack overflow, but I see little evidence of that). From a business perspective, obviously they need to find a way to engage that group without frustrating more experienced contributors - but that's not really in the same category as being more inclusive to people of color.
It's harder still since my car seems to add about a second of buffering delay when i'm using bluetooth audio, and even that second is quite hard to get used to when you are driving in a city environment.
I think your comment about modeling the behavior is almost certainly true.
If i just turned left, and there's only one left turn lane, then they can look back a few seconds and adjust GPS to reflect that. Similarly if you are driving down a two-lane highway and they can use the accelerometer to detect lane changes, then they can calibrate the GPS to reflect the "probably-right' lane in each case.
Yeah, as far as I can see, the most extreme likely case would be charging up the house at around $20/MWh and discharging at the peak when power is up around $200/MWh. But that sort of swing doesn't happen every day.
Still with 50kWh of capacity (4 x powerwall2) that'd mean it'd cost about $1 to charge at night and would discharge for $10 during the day. You'd make $9 in arbitrage on every cycle. Except the power walls would cost about $24k, and at their rated 5000 cycles that means they'd cost you $4.80 per cycle (not counting interest, or any ability to refurbish them at the end of their life).
However as renewables take off those rate differentials could be higher. Indeed there have been times when the wholesale rate in california has been negative, and one point last year where the rate was above $700/MWh - if you could charge your power wall for free and discharge it for $35 (while only putting $4.80 of wear on your battery) then it's suddenly a lot more attractive.
If i had a popup on my phone that let me "sell" the right to use my electric car that evening for $35. I'd probably go for it quite often.
Sure, and a lot of us would have felt very differently if it were a tariff on imports from businesses who don't meet our standards for social or environmental responsibility.
However that's not what this is. You can still run a textile plant in China and dump your dye-laded waste water directly into a river with no treatment; you can have people exposed to repetitive stress injury building phone parts; you can have people working in metal stamping facilities where a wrong move could cost them one of their limbs.
This is a direct targeted attack on sustainable energy.
In practical terms it'd be much easier to identify a gorilla in video. Once you can actually observe it moving it's suddenly a lot clearer that it's not a person.
Plus i should note that some of those underserved areas fall into the same zip code, so on paper i'm sure they are listed as having gigabit service available to them:/
The US has comparable density to many european countries. Places like Estonia & Sweden have lower density than the US and generally still manage fine.
I think it's more of a regulatory problem. European governments are inclined to mandate serving rural areas, whereas in the US its left to the free market.
I have 3 or 4 choices for gigabit service in my small US city, but you only have to get 5 miles from here before you are reduced to cellphone or satellite.
My city (Longmont) has been operating their own utility for over a century and i'm not aware of any jacking of electricity rates in that time. The suggestion that they will jack up internet rates is simply baseless scaremongering. Certainly it could happen if their costs for wholesale bandwidth rise, but that could happen to any ISP. The city of longmont provide water, sewer, power, fiber, phone, trash, compost and recycling and while it's a large monthly bill, the rates are better than private providers in surrounding areas. Plus when I call them i'm talking to someone in an office downtown, who likely lives in the city and spends their salary here. That provides more benefits to the immediate area.
I assume Fort Collins will also have their city-owned electricity company do the same thing. They've been in business since the 1887 and haven't fucked over customers significantly during that time, i'd be very surprised if they can't manage a smooth rollout.
Slashdot Mirror
I think there is a solution to be found here.
We most sell clothing in b&m retail stores. Customers get to see and touch the product, try it on, and have a higher confidence that it'll meet their needs. Our returns rate is usually 1% and we usually opt to have the retailer destroy anything they deem unsaleable. It's of course going back to a retailer that understands that product category and can usually make a pretty good call. We've sampled those returns from time to time, but the majority are truly unsaleable and it's not worth the shipping cost (and carbon footprint) to bring them back to our facility.
We also sell a little on Amazon and we request back all the "unsaleable" customer returns, which are probably 3-4x higher than our b&m rate. Still the majority that comes back to us from Amazon simply has the packaging torn open and the item appears to be in perfect condition. We've got an outlet channel we can funnel that through and we collect a little value back, though for a seller that didn't have anywhere to liquidate those products I can see why they'd opt for destruction.
So you've got this pool of gray items that aren't "resealable as new" and aren't "total trash". There are plenty of viable solutions here
- let the customer keep the item and/or donate it locally
- have domain-specific returns staff that understand what they have and how to test it. An electronics retailer wouldn't destroy a cellphone that appears to be in good cosmetic condition. They'd test, erase and sell it as open-box. That's harder for Amazon, but by no means impossible.
- Send all the "gray area" items back to the manufacturer/supplier where they can do the testing or liquidation
The governments job isn't to mandate the solution. Solutions exist, they just happen to be more expensive than throwing stuff in the trash. All the government would need to do is tax the destruction of otherwise saleable items, or simply of destroying more than x% of the product that's returned and it'd suddenly be cost effective to fix the issue
Horrific as it is, it sounds like it's most a byproduct of neodymium production. While that's obviously used in electric cars and wind turbines, I'm pretty sure you'll also find it in many coal and nuclear plants.
While the Mountain Pass Mine in California doesn't have a stellar environmental track record, it does prove that you can extract rare earths with a lot less impact than the chinese operation. The bigger issue is that we treat these things as commodities without regard to the external costs that go into producing them. We need a "blood diamond" type movement for rare earths to put more pressure on consumers to demand better from their electronics providers
Yeah it feels like it would be really awkward. If there is something interesting to see then I often crane my neck up so that I can see more of the ground. I just don't think a screen will ever feel "right" in that context.
I flew London to Milan a few years ago on business and from my window I got to see the White Cliffs of Dover, the Eiffel Tower and some stunning views of the Alps. I don't think I've ever seen so much stuff out of the window.
Plus, the big thing that deterred me from putting down money in the first place was that it was quite clear that the combination of the $35k car and the full federal tax credit was pretty much a pipe dream. I expect a lot of people though they would get both of those and effectively have a $28k car, but in reality nobody is getting that.
Right, but from an investment point of view a company with a solid gross margin and high R&D is a decent (though still risky) bet. The fundamentals seem to be in place that Tesla could be significantly profitable in the future.
The biggest risk I see is that if they continue losing cash then that'll cause a schism in the board between those who want to try and make the mass market car work versus those that want to cut their losses and go back to selling luxury cars only. That has the potential to get ugly.
I've got a little 35mm QL-17 as my daily carry camera for taking pictures of the family and interesting stuff that i see in my day to day life. The film may be grainy but the fast glass on it has a really nice quality to it. The scanned images may have fewer megapixels than my phone, but for shots of the kid goofing around that's really all i need.
Yeah after about a decade break i'm getting back into mostly shooting film again too. While i miss the immediate gratification, I like the lack of immediate disappointment. I don't get discouraged because something doesn't look like i want, and by the time I process the roll/sheet I can look at the image differently and might find something else that works.
Still I can't imagine buying a new film camera at this point. I've got a Canonet Rangefinder for daily use, my 4x5 for arty stuff and there's so much on the used market that new gear simply isn't attractive.
I'd bet Canon stopped making film cameras about a decade ago and are now drawing a line in the sand about how much stock they need to service the warranty and replacements until 2025.
It's hardly a municipal power issue. If you went to Xcel and asked for a GW of power delivered to your building then they'd want to make damn sure you were going to be a long term customer. Building out that kind of infrastructure is typically done on a decades-long process of capital investment and no entity (public or private) is going to front that cost for something that could vanish tomorrow
There's something of a game of chicken going on between Evraz Steel and Xcel in Colorado where Evraz "depends" on low rates and Xcel "needs" their single largest customer.
https://www.denverpost.com/201...
I'm not saying they are useless - i'm saying that even after completing them we'll still encounter situations where people die because the system failed.
That's true of many other things too - aircraft systems still fail, hospital equipment still fails, abs systems fail...
Ultimately if google calls up every store in the country and asks "Are you open on your normal hours on memorial day?" and can then put that data into their search results and confirm that they've checked the opening hours then that'll mean less random people calling up to ask the same question.
Same thing when a storm hits, google could call and get updates about whether a business plans to close early and relay that information to the rest of us.
I suppose the problem will be if twenty different companies call to get the exact same information.
The issue is that no matter how much testing you do in a controlled environment, it isn't a substitute for testing in an uncontrolled one.
Most of what i've read suggests that Uber is significantly behind Waymo, but it's really only a matter of time before a waymo car kills a pedestrian. Or indeed a Traction Control system does. Or aircraft autopilot downs a plane in the ocean.
At some point we're going to have to face that we do have to decree when a system is sufficiently test and STILL accept that it will kill people in production.
If that were the definition then you could sail the 60th parallel south and head due west and keep that course infinitely.
Yeah I guess it does. Though they aren't prominent and don't seem to be required or widely used. A scanned the thread I had open and nobody in it had their face as an avatar.
Firstly - yeah, how do you tell. StackOverflow doesn't have avatars and the poster's name appears underneath their comment. You'd have to really go out of your way to find out if someone was a women or gay or whatever unless that user is screaming it.
Secondly - what are "newer coders" doing in that group. That's not a protected status or marginalized group (unless they are suggesting that it's got more minorities in it than the rest of stack overflow, but I see little evidence of that). From a business perspective, obviously they need to find a way to engage that group without frustrating more experienced contributors - but that's not really in the same category as being more inclusive to people of color.
It's harder still since my car seems to add about a second of buffering delay when i'm using bluetooth audio, and even that second is quite hard to get used to when you are driving in a city environment.
I think your comment about modeling the behavior is almost certainly true.
If i just turned left, and there's only one left turn lane, then they can look back a few seconds and adjust GPS to reflect that. Similarly if you are driving down a two-lane highway and they can use the accelerometer to detect lane changes, then they can calibrate the GPS to reflect the "probably-right' lane in each case.
Yeah, as far as I can see, the most extreme likely case would be charging up the house at around $20/MWh and discharging at the peak when power is up around $200/MWh. But that sort of swing doesn't happen every day.
Still with 50kWh of capacity (4 x powerwall2) that'd mean it'd cost about $1 to charge at night and would discharge for $10 during the day. You'd make $9 in arbitrage on every cycle. Except the power walls would cost about $24k, and at their rated 5000 cycles that means they'd cost you $4.80 per cycle (not counting interest, or any ability to refurbish them at the end of their life).
However as renewables take off those rate differentials could be higher. Indeed there have been times when the wholesale rate in california has been negative, and one point last year where the rate was above $700/MWh - if you could charge your power wall for free and discharge it for $35 (while only putting $4.80 of wear on your battery) then it's suddenly a lot more attractive.
If i had a popup on my phone that let me "sell" the right to use my electric car that evening for $35. I'd probably go for it quite often.
It'd also be nice to add a checked bag when you go into the comparison so you don't have to mentally track that.
Sure, and a lot of us would have felt very differently if it were a tariff on imports from businesses who don't meet our standards for social or environmental responsibility.
However that's not what this is. You can still run a textile plant in China and dump your dye-laded waste water directly into a river with no treatment; you can have people exposed to repetitive stress injury building phone parts; you can have people working in metal stamping facilities where a wrong move could cost them one of their limbs.
This is a direct targeted attack on sustainable energy.
In practical terms it'd be much easier to identify a gorilla in video. Once you can actually observe it moving it's suddenly a lot clearer that it's not a person.
Plus i should note that some of those underserved areas fall into the same zip code, so on paper i'm sure they are listed as having gigabit service available to them :/
The US has comparable density to many european countries. Places like Estonia & Sweden have lower density than the US and generally still manage fine.
I think it's more of a regulatory problem. European governments are inclined to mandate serving rural areas, whereas in the US its left to the free market.
I have 3 or 4 choices for gigabit service in my small US city, but you only have to get 5 miles from here before you are reduced to cellphone or satellite.
Looks like it! I've heard of him before but didn't know he was local
There's really no precedent for that.
My city (Longmont) has been operating their own utility for over a century and i'm not aware of any jacking of electricity rates in that time. The suggestion that they will jack up internet rates is simply baseless scaremongering. Certainly it could happen if their costs for wholesale bandwidth rise, but that could happen to any ISP. The city of longmont provide water, sewer, power, fiber, phone, trash, compost and recycling and while it's a large monthly bill, the rates are better than private providers in surrounding areas. Plus when I call them i'm talking to someone in an office downtown, who likely lives in the city and spends their salary here. That provides more benefits to the immediate area.
I assume Fort Collins will also have their city-owned electricity company do the same thing. They've been in business since the 1887 and haven't fucked over customers significantly during that time, i'd be very surprised if they can't manage a smooth rollout.